E102 - Fundamentals of Self-Development (Fear of failure, Procrastination, Breaking Patterns, Self-Acceptance)

Today Alex chats with Dr. Alex Meaburn, a speciality doctor in psychiatry who has been working on the podcast behind the scenes. They discuss some of the fundamentals of self-development including how to audit your time, break out of unhelpful patterns, some of the problems of modern living, the importance to cultivating your intuition, why play is fundamental to our lives, and much more.

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 Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. My name is Alex. I'm a consultant psychiatrist. Today I'm very happy to be here with doctor. Alex Meaburn, a specialty doctor and psychiatrist, completed his first three years of psychiatric training, and he's been doing a lot of behind the scenes work, helping us organize different interviews. So a lot of the recent interviews have done what I've been organized very graciously with Access Help. Today we're going to be doing something fun. And I recently put out an episode about neuroscience with Doctor Camilla Nord, and when I listened to it, I was jealous because she was doing it in person and I haven't done an in person podcasts in a while. So I thought to take the opportunity we've set up at the studio here and we're going to be answering questions all about some of the fundamentals of self-development and psychology. Stuff that's quite close to my heart and stuff that I think can be quite helpful, even in the psychotherapy world and the psychiatry world. So, Alex, thank you very much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. And I have to say, I'm quite excited hearing you do that introduction. Just sort of being back to listening to the podcast. So it's nice to actually be here in person. Excellent. So what questions do you have for us today, Alex? Well, where to start? Um, perhaps that is a nice segue into where to start. Um, so I'll explain that. Essentially, I want to talk a little bit about some of the common difficulties I've been I've been experiencing just in life. And as a psychiatry trainee, um, and my hope is that these, these difficulties will be sort of relatable to, to our listeners. So when I say where to start, I think that that really is the the problem. I often find myself thinking, where do I start? I'm finding myself overwhelmed a lot of the time. And. By that. I guess what I'm trying to say is, uh, you know, I'm a busy doctor. I work busy shifts. But then outside of being a doctor, I have to worry about my portfolio and my appraisal. There's a lot of extracurricular stuff that I have to find the time to do on top of everyday life that everyone has to do. And I find myself with very precious little time. And then when I have that time, I. I'm trying. I'm sort of stuck. I'm sort of going, well, what should I do? How do I use this time? I guess my first question to you is, is that do you find that that's a common sort of feeling for people in the modern day world, feeling overwhelmed with how they use their their spare time? Yeah, I think so. We're in a very specific time, and I think I've released a few episodes about this recently, about understanding the nuances of the time you're living in. And I think nowadays, especially in the West, we're in a time of over optimization for everything. We're in a time of intense careerism. I think for many people we do actually have more possibilities than we've ever had before. But I think the danger with that is we've kind of slept, walked our way into a scenario where we're there's this constant drive to achieve as much as we can without actually thinking about what our goals or what we want. I think one thing that's really lacking in the modern context is people have stopped thinking about their values. There isn't a sense of stepping back and all the thing, what do I actually care about as a first step towards how do I actually want to live my life? I think when religions and other sort of spiritual institutions were more dominant, there was more of an emphasis on reflection on where you might actually want your life to go. And nowadays I worry that that that's lacking. And instead we kind of seek automatically we we go into these defaults of the things I want to be famous, I want to make a lot of money. I want to generate a sense of achievement, but often it's lacking in any kind of introspective grounding. So if someone. Comes to me with a predicament like yours. You know, I'm not really sure what to do. I'm kind of overwhelmed. It sounds like you've already achieved a lot. And you're pursuing a lot. Certainly more than the average person. But you feel kind of overwhelmed and you're not sure what to do with your time. The first step, and this would be the first step in any kind of self-development journeys to audit that to see, like how am I using my time? And what of the behaviors I'm doing is giving me benefit versus what's taking from me and what what might I actually want my life to look like? How do I want to spend my time? What are the things that give me energy? Versus what are the things that take energy from me? What are the things which are actually wasting my time? What are the things? What are the ways I'm solving problems that are actually counterproductive? That might feel good on the front end, but actually on the back end, uh, is taking things away from me. So I think the first step is getting a clear understanding of how you're spending your time. The ways in which it's benefiting you and the ways in which it's not. And then that leads to useful information that someone can use to to like more consciously, more intentionally design their lives, if you like. I appreciate that what you're saying. And I guess for me, the question that brings me on to is the there's there seems to be there must be a sort of an ideal, um, or I say ideal a, a good sort of ratio of doing, I don't know, things that are sort of life admin things are that, that are productive towards growth, things that are for fun. How do I how do people go about working out? What's the right balance for them? Is it simply a case of auditing and cutting out the things that aren't good for them, or is there? Is there something else that they need to think about? Does I need to think about, okay, am I spending enough time, um, enjoying myself? Am I spending enough time progressing? How would you sort of approach that question? It's a very individual question. And sort someone, sort and answer anyone can really give you. I would say it's a process of ongoing experimentation. Uh, but also a process of. Becoming more and more self aware and familiar with yourself, more in touch with your feelings about all of these things. Because I think one of the things that's wrapped up in your question is the fact that we have all sorts of competing needs, as you've outlined. So we want to grow. We want to feel satisfied. Sometimes we just want to have fun, but we also need to make money. We also need to have good relationships. We also need to send that email that we need to send on Tuesday. So that's really what makes life so complicated is that we have these competing, these competing needs. And those competing needs are also played out across time, short term, medium term, long term. And what might be like often what's considered a mistake or a waste of time is something that feels good in the very short term, but is bad in the medium term and the long term. I don't think there's a magic ratio particularly. One of the things people think about a lot in humanistic psychology and humanistic therapy, which I really appreciate, is you have to, as I said earlier, get in touch with your feelings about these things. You have to learn to that sense of fascination. Like when am I fascinated, but also that sense of burnout and overwhelm? When am I too overwhelmed? When am I too afraid? Or when am I just incorrectly afraid in that sweet spot of fear that will get you out of your comfort zone? What I'm saying is we have all sorts of emotions. That evolution has given us over hundreds of thousands of years, and we need to tap into those emotions. And because they can give us a clear sense of what, where to go and what paths to go down, rather than relying on a more top down. Okay, this is the magic ratio someone told me I needed to to reach. So, for example, taking burnout. It's good to develop a clear sense of where when do I feel overwhelmed? Where do I feel that in my body? How do I know how much is too much? And then countering that, how do I know when I feel replenished? What things actually give me that feeling of replenishment? How much sleep do I need to feel replenished? So I think a continuous process of experimentation, but then also getting in touch with your senses and your perceptions that I think one of the dangers, again, of of a modern context is we think we're like in a time of hyper rationality where we feel everything can be worked out beforehand. And we've almost started to distrust our immediate perceptions of self and others. And I think that's a huge mistake. As I alluded to earlier, I think we have all these emotional systems for a reason, and they're not perfect. And the more you use them, the more I believe finely calibrated they become. So for example, your sense of overwhelm can become finely calibrated as you get in touch with us over time. But we need to use these systems, and it's not something you can just think rationally about and work out with a spreadsheet, you know, something like that. I mean, I'm interested that you said, um, bodily sensations being attuned to them. Uh, what can our bodily sensations tell us about? You know what? How we can sort of attune to more fun or more more progression. Our bodies tell us everything and our emotions tell us everything, and so do our thoughts. I also think paying attention to your thoughts is a good idea, but one of the things you do in one of the reasons someone might come to therapy is because they're kind of cut off from the neck down, so they're not actually finely attuned to their emotions. So a really common intervention in psychotherapy. Uh, someone might say, I feel depressed. The therapist might say, what does it feel like for you to be depressed? Indeed. How do you know that you are depressed? And they might say, well, I feel this kind of sinking feeling in my abdomen, for instance. Or I feel my the sinking feeling in my chest, or I know I feel anxious because my heart is beating fast, or because I'm sweating or because my legs start shaking. Our bodies are giving us all sorts of clues as to what we're feeling and what we might need, and then give a moment. But again, many people aren't attuned to that. There's lots of reasons why that might be the case. Learning to become more attuned can mean as you go through life, you can start to sense what's impinging on you. What do you need? What do you desire? And then you can therefore more reflexively make moves to get what you want, or importantly, to protect yourself against what you don't want. So, for example, that's a big feature of a big feature of Gestalt psychotherapy, which is a humanistic therapy is like being able to spontaneously, reflexively get what you like, behave in a way that's an appropriate response to the situation. Someone impinges on your rights, you get angry with them and stop them. For instance, you see something you want and you feel you can go and you can can go and ask for t want without having an emotional block towards that. So that's the kind of thing, I mean, I think your body can tell you all sorts of, of valuable information and paying attention to it is the first step then towards learning to respond reflexively to it. How important is, uh, is finding time or leaving time to have fun? Do you think fan is important? Well, I can tell you that if I have a weekend after a long day at work, a long week of work where I'm super productive, I get all of my admin done, I get some portfolio stuff done, and that's all I leave time for. I come back to work on Monday feeling exhausted, feeling quite negative about the start of the week. Um, I feel quite differently if I've had a weekend full of fun doing fun activities. Perhaps it's a little bit too far in that in that favour? Sometimes. Sometimes I could quite happily just have fun. And because. Because the working week so busy. So I guess I've answered my own question. Fun? Is it fun is a mammalian thing. Uh, actually play if you like. It's a very mammalian thing. It's kind of observed in some other animals as well. But the general idea is that they don't have neurological structures complex enough to do things like play and have fun. Play is fascinating. We don't think of players sophisticated, but play is very sophisticated because it is a way of trying out, simulating different actions that might be very important before we need them in the real world. So for example, Lions play fight and Wolves play fight. And that's one of the ways that mammals learn how to use their body, where their body ends and the body of another individual begins. Of course, children play fight. And it's it's actually very important. Uh, playing is like it's like a physical brainstorming. And that's why it's not, you know, of course, fun and play hugely increases your quality of life. So that kind of goes out saying there's the quality of life aspect. If you have a life that has no fun or no sense of play, chances are it's not going to really be a life worth living. Uh, but on the productivity side of things, plays immensely useful at brainstorming and getting through creative blocks, because play invites the possibility of doing something new, and it lowers the risk of making a mistake. If you. If one dog fights another and the dog doesn't do so well in that fight, makes a mistake, it's not such a big deal. It's not as big a deal as if it made a mistake in a real fight. And similarly, if you're having a play fight with your partner or your spouse, that can be really valuable. And that's a way of each partner in the relationship testing each other's limits so that when they have a real fight, they have a greater sense of of how to do that and where the boundaries are. Um, so play has all sorts of functions. It's going to improve and deepen our social relationships. It's going to relieve stress, as you've said, even the fact that it's just taking up time where you're not doing lots of cognitively heavy work, obviously, it's going to cool the jets a little bit so that when you get back to work, that's going to be easier. But because play allows us to put puts us in that safe place where we feel we can take risks, then we can come up with something new. So, for example, recording a podcast is a kind of a play because. This is a conversation which doesn't have super high stakes or high consequences. We're not talking to clients or patients. Um, and we're speaking off the cuff, which means we're going to stray into territory, which we didn't necessarily plan on staying in psychoanalytical. You could think we're even tapping into our unconscious, which I kind of believe you are in a good conversation. So you're discovering something new. So I think Farnam play important for all those things. I think the mistake people might make is they make fun. Then Northstar and another word for that is hedonism. And I think that's a problem because I think I think fun is really important. I think if fun becomes your North Star, you quickly, quickly becomes quite meaningless for people very often and comes it comes with a sense of nihilism. I think to some extent it depends on your personality. Make up some people are more into fun than other people. I think it's important for everyone, but I think for no one should be the The North Star because I think fundamentally we evolved to deal with difficult challenges. The form close bonds with each other to overcome those challenges and to have fun along the way. So that's roughly where I put fun. That's how I think about it in the sort of overall landscape of things. It's nice to hear a sort of an evolutionary and biological sort of underpinning for for fun. I've never really thought of it that way. Yeah, we've made a lot of podcasts about evolutionary psychology, and I think it's really helpful for people because it actually did pathologize a lot of our behaviors and our mental attitudes and our emotions. So you take something like jealousy, for example. Jerry sees the kind of thing no one wants to admit to. Uh, no one wants to admit that. That they're that they're having these feelings of jealousy or envy. But once you understand, there's a clear evolutionary rationale to why we might have those feelings, like a really good rationale, then you can come to understand them and accept them. And ultimately, the important thing is to not necessarily give in to all of our emotions, but to understand that we have them, to accept them, and that can help us move past them and perhaps make better decisions. Alex, I find myself, um, even when I do have the best intentions, and I've. I think I've, I've been in tune to my body and I've got my ratios kind of worked out. I find myself frequently procrastinating. Uh, particularly when I've got a big task to do. I wondered if you could speak to a little bit. About what? About the psychology behind why we procrastinate. Procrastination is often like in the introductory stages of self-development, sometimes in psychotherapy as well. I think it's an interesting one. Ultimately, like many things, procrastination is a behavior. So it's an outcome. And as we know in mental health there can be many different routes to the same outcome. So for example, depression is an outcome. Anxiety is an outcome. One person might be feeling anxious because they drink ten cups of coffee. Another person might be anxious because they haven't slept enough. Maybe they've eaten too much sugar. Perhaps they had some difficult, traumatic experiences. Which means when they go into experiences which resemble the trauma, they end up feeling anxious. So what I'm saying is procrastination, like anything else, is going to be based on all sorts of factors. If you're working with procrastination, you might want to be thinking. Sure, on the on the more superficial. And I don't mean superficial in a derogatory sense, but on the more superficial end of things. What are the behaviours that person could be doing to lessen the likelihood of procrastination? Um, and that could be simple things like making sure there aren't distractions, setting aside enough time, making sure you're having enough fun so that when you come to do the thing you have to do, you're mentally ready to do it, and you have the environment that's been set up appropriately. But but I think for any one individual who's questioning, there's going to be deeper reasons. There's going to be deeper reasons why they might be doing that. And so again, a self audit, a self understanding of what might be the reasons for them. Now there are obviously common reasons people procrastinate. One might be a fear of failure. For instance one might be a fear of judgment of other people. Another might be set your sights too high. Say you want to learn how to play the piano, and you think I'm going to be playing Chopin in three days. Well, obviously you're not going to be playing Chopin in three days and using this podcast as an example or even like any of my career choices, if I had been subdued by either a fear of failure, a fear of judgement of other people, um, or set my sights too high too quickly, I wouldn't have been able to do any of the things that I could do, including this podcast. Those things are very like hampering, and they often create quite powerful internal blocks for people. So taking them one is time. Fear of failure. It's very important to become like self-development. 101 for me is comfort with failure and rejection. So comfort with the idea that the vast majority of the time, the thing you're planning on doing isn't going to work out the way you wanted. And that's fine. But also, other people might think less of you and other people might judge you. And this these are just necessary stepping stones along the way. I mean, I think the fear of judgement is a big one because that's. Truly a hangover of our evolutionary past, when we did exist in tribes of 100 and 150 people. And your reputation really followed you throughout life, and what people thought of you really didn't matter. We still have those instincts. But now, obviously we have the freedom. We have freedom from reputation a lot of ways because we can move. And what our close family thinks of us isn't necessarily that important. And yet people are still really hampered by this fear of judgment. And similarly with the fear of failure, I think the less you fail, the more intolerant you are of failure, and the more it hurts and it feels like a really big deal. I tried to play this piano piece and didn't quite work out for me, and then it's directly impacts my self-esteem. So I think something that's really important is understanding failure as a part of the process, and almost detaching the results you get the quality of the work you produce from your ego and your self-esteem. So it would be hard to do a podcast if you felt you're only as good as your last podcast. Especially if you're just starting out. Whereas personally, when I started out and started making podcasts, I became comfortable with the idea that I was making things which were flawed and by no means perfect, and in many ways still making things which are flawed and by no means perfect. But that means you can actually do it, and you can make it and you can put it out, and then you can get real feedback from the world. And then ultimately, it's the feedback that's going to help you shape whatever it is you're doing into a better product or a better service or a better set of skills. That's why failure is so important. It's not it's not some sort of sense of you have to be this stoic, perfect person and nothing bothers you. It's more that failure is the evolutionary pressure, which sculpts things into quality. And I and I and I think you can apply that every day. I don't know, that's why you procrastinate necessarily. But I think fear of failure, fear of judgement and setting the bar to a high. Are very big reasons, and it really is really worth understanding that any, any activity worth pursuing is built on repetition and iterations. If you want to learn to play the piano. It's not about learning a song. It's about learning a thousand songs and being a different person on the other end of that, or making 100 podcasts and being another different person on the other end of that. It's not about any one podcast or any one unit of production. It's about the process, about the repetition. So one of the first pieces of advice I tend to give people if they are procrastinating is lower the activation energy, lower the threshold for success. So if you want to start a podcast, maybe don't start out with trying to do an hour long interview with your dream guest. Maybe try talking to a microphone for five minutes and maybe don't even release it and let yourself feel successful, even if you achieve that really low bar, allow yourself to say, well, yesterday I didn't record a five minute podcast. I've never done a podcast before yesterday. Today I made a five minute podcast, some 1%, maybe 0.1% closer to my goal. And then all of a sudden you have like a beachhead, you have something that you can start to build on. So I think taking taking that view start super small and then small, consistent over time will will always win. So I don't know if that addresses any of the reasons you procrastinate. Hopefully it does. I think if anything has given me many more questions, I think that's okay. I was wondering if if perhaps as well the the type of thing that you do when you procrastinate is might be indicative of why you're procrastinating. Um, so I frequently find myself scrolling on YouTube, um, when I'm when I've got something that I need to do or when I'm just generally not feeling 100%. I wonder if that might be a sign of perhaps the reasons or or if if you couldn't really generalize it like that. What do you think? The fact that you go to scrolling, what do you think that says about the reasons for your procrastination? Personally, I think because I find myself doing it when I'm tired. Um, maybe when I'm a bit pissed off when I'm I, I maybe just having lower energy, lower cognitive capacity. So I want something easy to do. Um, and I think it's just, I mean, my take has always been that it's just a quick fix of something easy to do. Um, and it's basically a bit sort of indicative of what I'm capable of at that time. Although I don't think that's always true, because if I really just took the time to, you know, actually pick up the book that I could be reading instead, or the game that I want to play or the film that I want to watch, you know, all of those things. Are you know, now I'm not now, I guess I'm talking about sort of choosing to do something that would be otherwise refreshing or replenish replenishing, and even that I can't choose one of those ones that I know would, would give me back the good sort of the reward and make me feel topped up. Instead, I go for the quick instant. You know, and I'm saying it now knowing that that's why I'm going for it. I'm going for that quick, instant sort of fix. I mean, does that does that resonate with you? Do you think you see a lot of people doing that kind of thing? I talked about auditing time earlier. Uh, when you do that, the real low hanging fruit. So the way to get a lot of time back is to, I think, cut out exactly the kinds of activities that kind of time that you're talking about. So I call that the gray area between fun and work. Now, obviously, your work can be fun and you can have fun working, I understand that, but roughly speaking, you have things in your life which are productive, which are accomplishing your goal, and you have things in your life which you enjoy, which are replenishing you in some way. A huge problem again, in in modernity, I think, is we have so many things available to us which don't exactly make us feel good, happy or relaxed. But it's just so easy. It's so damn easy to give your attention to them. And this is things like scrolling and instant messaging and dating apps and online gambling and pornography and video games. There are things that Often have been intentionally designed to be as attention grabbing and hooking as possible. But then after you've done them for a while, after you've spent any amount of time doing them, it feels kind of depleting. It feels empty. And I usually draw the analogy with food, like you have food that, um, is genuinely replenishing. It may not give you like a high when you eat it, but it's genuinely replenishing and it's enjoyable to eat and it tastes good. And then you have junk food, which if you abstain from junk food for any length of time and then you have some junk food, you realize how artificial it is because it almost feels like a high that you're getting. It feels very artificial. And I think these technologies are like that. There have been good books written about this, like Dopamine Nation by Annoncé, who we had on the podcast about a year ago, and there's this idea of dopamine balance, the things that cause dopamine to be released very quickly, very easily are often these technologies which are very distracting, which hook us but ultimately deplete us, and what we need to look for and as much as, as much as possible conditioned ourselves towards, is more slow burn releases of dopamine. Like watching a great movie, reading a great book even. Even playing a great video game. If it's something that genuinely gives you a sense of satisfaction from it. But that goes back to what I was talking about earlier. You have to cultivate that sense of you have to get in touch with your body to know when you are feeling fulfilled, satisfied, replenished, versus when you are feeling depleted, empty, more like agitated. We don't pay attention to signals. We'll never know which zone we're in. But roughly speaking, I think that dead zone, that gray area where you're just kind of mindlessly scrolling like you could take a nap in that time and you would actually, if you spend half an hour taking a nap, you'd feel quite replenished. And then as long as you're mindful about what the things you're doing are accomplishing for you, I think that that goes a long way to and can get rid of that gray zone. Something I wanted to ask you about, or something that bothers me a lot, is that I've been sort of, uh, you know, told and I've heard throughout my life and, and as a doctor in particular, that it's okay to make mistakes. Um, as long as you learn from your mistakes, um, you know, the idea that, you know, some failure is good. And you've talked about this plenty before, I guess. What I often find myself doing is making the same mistakes over and over again, and I can't get my head around why I do that. So a lot of what we've spoken about, for example, my use of YouTube, I'm aware of, I, you know, it's not brand new to me yet. I still find myself making these mistakes again. I know that this is great time, as you call it, and that I could be using it better and I could, and this isn't going to replenish me. And on a similar note, or on the flip side, there are things that I know that are really good for me, that I've really have really benefited me over, over the years. So one thing in particular, meditation, for example, um, I sort of dabble with meditation, particularly, um, find the headspace app useful if people are, um, familiar with that sort of guided meditation. I find that really helpful, but I only seem to be able to maintain it for a short while. And even though I know it has benefits for my concentration, my overall levels of anxiety and wellbeing. I can't keep that behavior going. And as soon as I, you know, it just drops off. Why do I make the same mistakes all the time? And why am I, you know, a hopeless cause? This is a very common problem. I think the first thing to understand is that we are habit forming creatures. Most of the behaviors we do every day are automatic behaviors. They're not things that we consciously decide to do. So giving your YouTube example, I don't think you really make the issue. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you make the correct the conscious decision to go on YouTube. It's more that you find yourself on YouTube often. Yes. Yeah. So we have most of our behaviors are automatic. So the question is how do you slowly, over time, begin to influence what your automatic behaviors are. But before we get to that it's also important to understand the nature of a mistake. Exactly. I mean, it does relate to something we've talked about before. Our mistakes largely aren't super senseless. A lot of the things we do, which we classify as mistakes, are giving us some mix of benefits and downsides. And we usually come to the conclusion that that's a mistake because it's a net negative. But if we had to look at it honestly, um, we'd see that's actually a mix of upside and downside. So, for example, uh, if someone with alcohol problems is seeing me and they want to stop drinking alcohol, one of the first things that I might get them to do, and this is about a bit counterintuitive, is ask them what are actually the things that alcohol does for you? How does alcohol help you? Because that's the first step to understanding what that person needs to replace alcohol with in their life. So someone might say, well, I drink because actually it helps me with my negative emotions or it helps me get to sleep, or it helps me socialize more easily, or it helps me deal with some trauma from the past. What one of the issues with mistakes is it can lead to a lot of automatic self-blame. And I'm a bad person, and then people feel guilty. And when people are in a state of guilt, they really want to improve themselves. So rather taking a more realistic but at the same time compassionate view over one's mistakes. One realizes really that mistakes are just coping mechanisms, and rather then sort of almost cleansing yourself of your of your coping mechanisms, it's about substituting not so good coping mechanisms for better, more sophisticated ones. So with the YouTube problem, it's worth understanding. Like why? Why am I going on YouTube? What actually is the function that it's serving? So it might be if I'm in a state where I feel depleted, bored, angry, frustrated, it's a way of taking my mind outside of getting outside of my head, for instance, while maybe getting a bit entertained or learning some useful information. But there's a mindlessness to it. So then the next question would be, what are the things I could replace that with that help you to serve that same function, but with less of the downsides and probably more benefits? Making sure there aren't like deeper internal blocks. So as I said earlier, with some kinds of common mistakes procrastination, among others, sometimes there are deeper internal blocks. I think self-esteem is a really important one. Not necessarily applicable in your case, but worth talking about. Uh, in general, uh, and assuming there aren't internal blocks, then you get to sort of standard behavior work. So how do we program in these better behaviors in your day? And that's all about scheduling, making sure that you have regular time to do that thing, but also regular time in your week to think like, okay, am I going, am I on the right track? So even that reflective time say once a week weighting. How is my YouTube use going? Am I still using the YouTube? Am I still not doing enough meditation? So there's enough of a set of corrective and, you know, giving yourself leeway to make mistakes. And obviously it's not about being perfect and never doing the bad thing that you don't want to do, but then seeing more gradual improvement over time. So that's probably how I would think about this. We've spoken quite a bit about sort of I mean, the whole theme of what we're talking about today is about personal development and growth. Um, and I find myself wondering, we seem to be so driven by this idea of growing, improving, and I wonder how much of that is, is sort of implicit to our, our nature, our being. And I wonder how much of that is because of maybe, you know, are we sort of internalizing capitalism, the idea that we've got to be growing? You sort of you mentioned it earlier on, in fact. And I just, I, I mean, I'm also thinking about sort of, you know, general wellbeing and happiness. And if you look at look towards Buddhism and meditation, sort of the idea of being content with what you have and present in the moment, how that seems to sort of be almost in direct contrast with this idea that we need to grow and and develop and acquire more. Is there a balance to be found between the two? And I guess my my original question was how much of this is implicit to our, to us as a, you know, humans and how much of it is because society says we need to grow. I like this question, and I think there are some really useful distinctions to be made. So the first question is, is there something implicit inherent to being a human that's about growth and development? And in my view, the obvious answer would be yes. Because if you look at the human animal across the lifespan, and I think this is well understood in psychology at this point, we of course grow. We grow physically, we develop new physical capacities, we grow mentally, we develop new mental capacities. We also grow as a species. We as a species develop new capabilities and the ability to do new things over vast stretches of time. I think if you look at the work of people like Maslow who talked, who was one of the first people, but I think not the first to talk about the concept of self-actualization, I did a one of the one of our inherent psychological tendencies is to actualize our self in the world in different ways, or the the or the work of Carl Jung, who talks about individuation. So part of our life's task is to become an individual. Um. I think it's clear that there is something about growth and the development of new capacities that is inherent to being human. However, one problem is when we don't grow in a manner which is conquered into our true selves, but we absorb just the values of the people around us or the systems we happen to form part of. So, for example, one person for one person, like building businesses, making money, and being an entrepreneur that might really speak to their true self. They're like a leader. They love producing wealth and they love forming organizations. It's true to themselves to pursue that path. Another person they might be more soaking up by osmosis what they think they should do, by virtue of existing in a capitalist context, like encapsulate, is in a capitalist context. I am not an anti-capitalist, but in a capital. In a capitalist context, someone might say, okay, making money clearly is the way to be successful. And obviously lots of people fall into this trap and then they spend half their lives trying to make a lot of money, and they do. And then they're still terribly unhappy because unlike the first person, making money isn't really concordant with their value system. Actually, what they really want to do is fill in the blank. So I think growth is a huge part of our nature, but it's really important, as I said at the beginning of the conversation, to develop a conscious awareness of what you care about, what fulfills you, what fascinates you so that you're not growing some sort of image or persona of yourself you can use to get through life that other people will approve of. Uh, but you're actually developing, uh, you're actualizing your own set of values, something that's concordant with your true self. Like, you love to help people. You become a doctor. So, um, I think it's really interesting then bringing in concepts of Buddhism. So as you said, Buddhism is more about acceptance, acceptance of self, acceptance of the the way the world is. And doesn't that contradict notions of growth? I don't think it's an either or. So if you look at Gestalt psychotherapy, one of the really interesting things there is the paradoxical theory of change in this theory. It's outlined that in order to change and grow in a way that's healthy and useful, you first have to accept yourself. So imagine if you have a weight problem and you'd like to lose weight. If you can't accept that you're overweight, if you can't bear to look at yourself in the mirror, if you can't bear to step on the scales, if you can't bear to examine what you've been eating or how you've been living your life, it's actually going to be really difficult to change. If you feel you have rock bottom self-esteem because you're at a particular weight, it's going to be really difficult to change. The more you accept where you are and accept that wherever you happen to be, in whatever area of your life, you have value and you deserve good things in your life, that removes a lot of the mental blocks to the behavioral change which you find so difficult. So if you're 30kg overweight, but you can look yourself in the mirror and say, you know, even though I'm 30kg overweight and I'd like to change that, I can still, on some basic level, accept myself. I don't have to burden myself with self-criticism. Then a person can begin to do the things they might do quite naturally to change. Okay, now I'm going to hire a personal trainer, or I'm going to go for a run on the weekend, or I'm going to take a look at my food, and I guess I have to start to swap out some of the unhealthy foods with healthy foods. Often when we're stuck in life, it's all because we don't know what to do. It's because we have those blocks, and I think one huge block is a lack of self acceptance. So that's, that's I think I think it's not an either or if now if you accept yourself and you overcome these blocks and actually want what you want to do is meditate in a cave for ten years and so be it. And some people have done that and that have actually led really interesting lives and wrote really interesting books about that. And some people, some people were not all the same. Some people have that contemplative nature. Some people want to do things in the world and they want to build things. Some people are more introspective, some people are warriors. We have these different predispositions and you will grow in that direction. The person who is sitting in the cave meditating is still growing. It's just in a kind of more subtle and more quiet way than the entrepreneur. Uh, but I guess what I'm getting at is the more you can develop a reasonable level of self acceptance, then there's this kind of what humanistic psychologists call a self actualizing tendency takes over kind of start to grow kind of automatically the way if you put seeds in fertile soil and water it, it just grows. You don't have to tell the plant what to do. You've created the right conditions. So this, for example, is a big feature of person centered therapy where Carl Rogers, who found this person centered therapy, talks about you create the right conditions for a person to grow and develop in therapy, and they grow and develop. And there isn't. Sometimes we do too much in therapy. We try to make people change or make people grow, and that can be a mistake. So at the same principle, acceptance and growth don't contradict each other, but they can complement each other. You give me lots of different thoughts there lots to think about. I think, um, perhaps the one I wanted to just pick up on was, uh, this idea that you can sort of grow in the direction that's right for you. Um, and I'm hearing a lot today about how we can work that out from paying attention to ourselves, listening to our bodies, working out what feels right and what doesn't. Because I think something is a again, as a as a doctor, I find there's quite a lot of pressure in the field to, to rise up and, you know, become a leader in something or a published loads of articles and become a professor. Never seems to be just okay to be a good doctor. And I find that difficult because I'm personally don't want to be the next Royal College of Psychiatry president. Don't use that against me. That's gonna run in ten, 20 years. So. But, um, I, you know, I just I just want to to be good at my job, be good for my patients, and then have a life outside of work is that, you know, is that so bad? The pressures that, you know, I feel would. Would make me think that it's bad and make me feel that I can't do that. But if I really listen to my body, that's that's an I'm honest with myself. That's what I want. So you're asking like, is it okay to I don't know is it's okay to be average? I don't know if that's the right question, but is it I guess you're really asking the question, is it okay to want what you want. Yeah. And not be super ambitious. Sort of be happy with, you know, what you might see is a relatively reasonable, attainable goal. It's not sort of you're not aiming for the sky. You're just sort of saying, I'd like to be, you know, here and I'm I'm happy with that. So I've talked about this when I've talked about personality theory and like the big five theory of personality traits. So one of the really useful things about learning a model of personality or this model of personality, is it gives you a framework to understand yourself. But the first thing a person needs to understand is that, as I said before, people are different in all sorts of ways, in pretty much every way you could conceive of. Just like people come in a range of heights and weights, there's the same level of variation in terms of our personality. Some people are much more naturally ambitious and hardworking. Some people might be ambitious and hardworking when it comes to one specific thing, but then not a lot of other things. Some people are more interested in being around people and leadership. Some people are more naturally enthusiastic. Some people are more or less relationship focused. Um, so it comes down to, again, just being sure. Coming to terms with what is your nature? Removing those and making sure that there aren't blocks, uh, obfuscating your nature. Because I think that can happen, especially in a world that's very busy, as we've talked about, very filled with distractions. It's very easy, actually, to not be introspective and to therefore kind of not have a good understanding and not not a good level of self-awareness. And I think that's a problem. And then, you know, things I do think things like unconscious fears, unconscious desires can get in the way, uh, as well. But assuming you do come to know yourself, you could do come to understand your nature. You do get in touch with your body, and you're good with certain choices. Then you're making certain. Then that seems fine. And and one of the things I think about maturing and getting all those, realizing you have to make certain choices and also not making a choice is a choice. And there's a huge amount of opportunity cost to be considered, like you're becoming a psychiatrist. That means the more you become a psychiatrist, the less you can be an orthopedic surgeon. And hopefully that's good. Then that's the right. Decision based on your nature. Many people make that choice incorrectly because they do the thing, perhaps that their parents wanted them to do, so they fully qualify as a lawyer, for example. And actually, it wasn't in their value system to become a lawyer to what their parents wanted or them. So I think people run into this these problems actually quite often. And that might be the formation of a mid-life crisis for people where people wake up one day and therefore it is and realise that made certain decisions, um, that they can't strictly answer, they can't undo, perhaps they can change direction, but there's a certain finiteness to life, which means you do have to be careful and conscious about your choices. But the first step, I think, is understanding your nature. I mean, it does come as a trap there where if you're not really attuned to your to your to your body and your needs, you could fall into the trap of, of of thinking that the path of least resistance is what you want. Um, and what's what's good for you? Yeah. Um, and actually that, you know, that might feel good at the time or might feel fairly easy, but actually, there's a there's got to be a balance there of actually pushing yourself a little bit and making sure that you're not just going, you know, you're not leading, you're going down the path of avoidance. So one idea I like to play with is called the economics of discomfort. And that's the idea that you get to choose. Like discomfort is inevitable in life. It's a part of life. Like in Buddhism, life is suffering and you get to choose well. You don't always get to choose. If you're lucky, you get to choose when you feel that discomfort can either have a little bit of it up front consistently, or you can delay it delayed, delayed, and you get a huge amount, uh, at the back end. This is what also talks about in dopamine. When she talks about dopamine balance, you do a lot a lot of get a lot of cheap dopamine highs. And then all of a sudden you're dopamine depleted. Another example when it comes to nutrition and and and lifestyle, you can avoid exercising because it's comfortable. You can eat junk foods because it's comfortable. You can do that for ten years. You can delay discomfort as much as possible. At some point, you're going to have to pay the bill, and paying the bill might look like having heart disease or being obese, having problems getting upstairs. The alternative is to pay the discomfort upfront. And that might be, uh, going for the run in the morning or eating the salad. And so the pizza, these small discomforts, which if you do them often enough, what's the reward you get on that investment? You get a healthier body and you have less health problems. You have more energy. You sleep better. So this economic discomfort I offer, this economics of this comfort idea is a really good shorthand for being like, is this behavior actually making me feel really good right now? And I'm going to have to pay for this later. As we might know from more concrete examples like taking drugs, say, for instance, where you take ecstasy, they can get a flood of serotonin and the person feels really great, and then they have a comedown, or am I going to pain a little bit of discomfort proactively, but then that's going to benefit me in the long run, like doing a meditation, which feels annoying. But then I have an enlightenment enlightenment experience in a couple of years and I feel really amazing. Or I'm just more at peace with myself or whatever. That's a really good way of helping to make these distinctions. I think I'd like to change gears a little bit and just talk about a different sort of area, if that's okay. Um, this is perhaps something that our, um, many of our listeners, um, who are either in or working in sort of as mental health professionals, you know, be that therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists may experience. And that's the idea that. We're dealing with in our line of work every day or often people who are very distressed, experiencing very broad, high range of emotions. And we're exposed to that and we hear very difficult stories. I wonder, in your experience, how important is it to protect yourself from these emotions? And and I guess what I mean by that is now more than ever in my current job. Um, I'm finding that I take home a lot of my, my work, you know, a lot of it I ruminate on or it sits on my shoulders a little bit, and I find myself being affected by some of the difficult stories I hear. Is that is that a good thing to be experiencing? Should I be taking active steps to protect myself, do you think? I think if you work with people. Juan. A lot of distress, a lot of mental distress. It has to be tackled proactively. The same way if a firefighter is walking into a burning building, they're going to put on protective gear. And that's not to stigmatize mental health problems, but it's just the fact of working with mentally distressed people. You know, we are hyper social beings. Emotions are contagious. And if you're working around distressed people, it's going to be it's going to have its difficulty can be emotionally draining. I would say some personalities can probably handle this more easily than others. So if you work in mental health, it's good to have an awareness of actually how vulnerable am I am to someone else's distress. Do I take everything on automatically myself? Are these emotions really contagious to me, or am I quite resilient with it? But I'm knowing that can help inform what stream you work in. Because within mental health there are obviously different streams with different levels of acuteness and severity. There's a difference between working on an acute psychiatric ward, say, or seeing people at an outpatient for an autism assessment, much different levels of intensity. But regardless of your disposition or what stream you work in, you want to be proactive. I think one of the basic things everyone in psychotherapy lands, and I think more people in psychiatry should learn, is it's important to have a developed understanding of what's your responsibility versus what's your patient or client's responsibility, and to not mix those up to make it very clear and explicit in your mind what your role is in general in mental health. If you're working in that area, your responsibility is going to be to help and facilitate. It's not going to be to solve that person's problems for them. There are exceptions. If you're a psychiatrist and you're seeing someone who is acutely psychotic in hospital or manic, and perhaps they don't have what's called the capacity to make decisions or that are appropriate and safe for them, and then temporarily, you and sort of the hospital and the organization have responsibility for them in those instances. But that's really just in the short term. Once they're better, once they've improved in the medium to long term, it's still their life. Ultimately. And for the most part, it's still going to be the responsibility to, um, make the best decisions that they can. This is not an argument against helping people. People need help. Many people in our society need help, whether they have a mental illness or not. But help is different from solving a problem for someone. In fact, if you solve people's problems too much for them, you disempower them. So again, this is a feature of program therapy or person centered therapy, which one of the fundamentals of that kind of therapy is not directness very much not giving advice, not telling a person what to do. Because when you tell a person what to do. On some subtle level, you take away their agency and their autonomy to decide for themselves. Now, I think there's a time and place for more and less directness, but is still a really useful lesson to be gained for that, which is, as health care providers we have, we can have this tendency to take on too much responsibility for our patients and clients, and that's one of the things that can make it very difficult. It's one of the reasons why we might ruminate, um, about someone after we've gone home from work. And it's one of the reasons we might stay late at work. And it's one of the reasons we might take it very personally or can really affect our self-worth if things with our patients or clients don't improve. You know, doctors and other fields, you know, take an oncologist who deals with cancer. They, I think, have a more concrete understanding of some patients, have a really good prognosis. Some patients are terminal. There's a lot in between. I think there's the same is true in mental health. There's different levels of severity and there are different prognoses. And sometimes you can do everything correctly as a healthcare provider, and things don't go the way you would want them to go. So developing a very clear and explicit philosophy around that. And there's the difference between what are your responsibilities and the client or patients I think is very important. I think this is just scratching the surface. The other thing I would say for healthcare providers is we tend to go into healthcare because we're very agreeable, empathic people, so emotions can be more contagious for us. Another thing they talk about in Gestalt therapy is the idea of confluence. So we can become psychologically, psychologically, too close to our clients, confluence with them and have a we can have difficulty establishing clear boundaries. I think. I think it's good for any health care provider, but definitely someone in mental health consider their own psychotherapy, or at the very least, some sort of practice that improves their self-awareness and allows them to introspect. Because just because we're nice, we're nice a lot of the time, healthcare providers. But just because we're nice, it doesn't mean we're not prone to psychological dysfunction. We're just prone to a different kind of psychological dysfunction. And say, a lawyer might be lawyers might be more prone to being, let's say, disagreeable and arrogant because they have a more contentious nature. Perhaps healthcare providers are prone to people pleasing martyr syndrome, self-sacrifice. So we really want to become, if that we do have that tendency, want to become aware of it and develop stronger boundaries again, clearer lines between us and our clients. I think there's a lot more to say. Again, looking after our physical health, of course, making sure there's balance in the rest of our lives as we've talked about. But those are some really common problems with healthcare, I think. And I'm really glad you mentioned therapy, because a follow up question was going to be, do you think we should all be in therapy as mental health professionals? I think we should all try it. Uh, psychotherapy isn't for everyone, so just thinking about the general population, I don't actually think psychotherapy is for everyone. It's clearly a very useful tool for lots of people. But chances are, if you work in mental health and you want to work in mental health and it aligns with your values in some way, I think it makes it much more likely that psychotherapy would be a good tool for you. Most psychotherapy courses, of course, mandate some form of personal psychotherapy and psychiatry programs used to mandate it, but now they don't. And I think that's a shame because particularly in psychiatry, we will we wield a lot of power if we're not very self-aware, uh, and particularly not aware of some of the unconscious forces which govern us. We can not always use that power. And the best way. So I think particularly as psychiatrists, we should be really self-aware. We should be really conscious of the ethical minefields that we work in all the time. But even if you work in one of the other professions, if you're a mental health nurse or even a physio or occupational therapist working in a mental health setting. It's challenging. You're working with distressed people, and you want to go into those environments with a sense of personal integrity and a sense of groundedness and psychotherapy can give you. That probably doesn't have to be psychotherapy. It could be regular journaling, it could be a meditation practice. It could be having at least a few friends where you're comfortable speaking in an unfiltered, non-judgmental, non self-critical way. But if you're stuck, I think psychotherapy would be a good tool to explore. Alex, I, I am something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Um, is quite an, I imagine, quite a normal experience for for many people, but I've not really come across it in terms of, you know, my studies and, uh, understanding psychiatry. Um, this idea that, I mean, I'm assuming I'm not just generated this myself, this idea that sometimes it feels like my mind is against me. Now, what I mean by that is, um, and I think people relate to this. It's not uncommon for me to sort of be doing completely fine. And then suddenly I have an intrusive memory of something awful that happened ages ago, and it comes up and it reminds me. You know, really embarrassing thing. And why is it. Why has it come now? It's come out of the blue, is it? I was having a perfectly good time, and I've got to remember this horrible thing that happened. Or I can have, you know, a negative thought that pops in my head, sort of sort of says that there's no point in doing this. You're going to fail or you're not good enough, that kind of thing, or even just a horrible intrusive thought, which we all get. We'll get sort of intrusive thoughts from time to time. But I guess what I'm saying is, it can feel like a lot of the time that I'm my own worst enemy. I'm battling against myself, um, and I'm often my own. My biggest barrier to my own achievements, to my own success. What do you think it is about human psychology that that creates that feeling? I'm sort of curious about whether or not it's, you know, Freud was on onto something with the ID and ego sort of battling each other. I don't know if that if that would go some way to, to formulating what might be going on, how might you think about some of this? I think Freud had something good to say about it. I think Freud was probably the first person really to talk about what he would call intra psychic conflict, by which I mean. Again compete. We have competing drives. We have competing wishes and desires. And when there's conflicts between them, it causes us a lot of mental suffering. And Cardiology talks about it as well. When he said that generally a lot of what he found was a lot of his patients were at war with themselves. Again, there's this idea, psychoanalytical speaking, that we are kind of a collection of different personalities with different goals and drives, and they get into conflict with with one another. And it's always interesting to examine, you know, when we have competing instincts, what's what is each part of ourselves trying to accomplish? Exactly. So you said, you know, you're trying to do something that, uh, that, that you think might better yourself, but you have this fear of failure. So if you had to think about two parts of yourself, like one part of yourself wants to accomplish something, and the other part is coming up with these fears of failure. Can you make a case for both parts? Like what does each part want? I think in that example, yes, I think I could suggest that the parts driving me obviously wants to grow, wants to maybe, you know, and if you're thinking back in the evolutionary terms, maybe to go out there, put yourself out and get the, the, the food, that's, that's not attainable. And the the sort of negative voices are trying to protect me and making sure I'm not taking too much risk, and I'm not going to injure myself from trying to strive for this and really, you know, socially ruin myself, that kind of thing. I could make a case for that. I'm not sure I could make a case for just remembering something silly I did once, and that was really embarrassing. Just out of the blue or, um. Yeah. Or just generally sort of, uh, I mean, what would be the function? I mean, I'm jumping around a bit, but I, you know, I'm also in the back of my mind. I'm thinking about the idea of the death drive and death instinct and what what would these what I can't think possibly what evolutionary advantage or functional advantage they would have for us. That's a good question, and I'm not sure I can. I have the answer for all of those things, but. I would say for the most part, when we have those negative impulses and thoughts, they are still trying to protect us. So even if you are having thoughts of being embarrassed of child from some sort of childhood experience, it sounds like there might be an idiosyncrasy to it as to when our thoughts, our when our minds might produce these thoughts or bring them into consciousness. But then sometimes, if you actually look at the situation, there can be a surprising logic or rationality to it. Like you might be able to you might be about to put yourself in a in an uncomfortable social situation, and immediately your mind goes to embarrassment. So your mind is thinking, remember that time we took a social risk and you dared to be yourself in preschool and it didn't work out well. Don't do don't make that mistake again. And that's certainly the case with like trauma, trauma related anxiety and flashbacks and trauma related hyper arousal where you get really agitated. I think that's a lot about self-protection. I do think in darker states of consciousness, and for perhaps people who have darker experiences, there is there are also more like, frankly, self-destructive impulses, particularly when people have experiences which are so intense that they lead to an intense self-criticism, self-loathing, feeling of unworthiness. I think that's when you get behaviors which aren't just about self-protection. Exactly. Not just about staying in the comfort zone, but are more like actively destructive. And you can see that more in things like alcohol addiction and choosing unhealthy partners for a relationship, things like that, that there's a such a low self esteem that we do things that aren't even going to protect us, but are going to be actively destructive. So I think all of those things can happen. I guess lastly, I was going to ask you about something else that perhaps is out of my comfort zone. Um, and I think many people will be able to relate to this. Um. So I particularly struggle with the idea of public speaking. Ah, presentations, that kind of thing. And I'm guilty of going through much of my sort of earlier years avoiding these things. Um, and, you know, I, I'm not going to go into it today, but I can think I'm sure I can think of much of the sort of psychological origins of why I might have developed these fears in a way, and why I may have avoided them. But here I am today, in a position where I'm finding it increasingly hard to avoid these things. As I gain more responsibility, I have to do more public speaking. I have to be in a position where I am on that podium or I am presenting, and it terrifies me. You do your job well, and, uh, I wonder what what advice would you give to someone in my position at the moment? And if that's too broad, I can narrow it down. No, it's a good question. Using the principles we talked about today. The first thing would be to see if you can get close enough to your nature. By which I mean, is it that you want to do public speaking? You have the desire to, but there are some blocks. You've had some difficult experiences, or maybe have a certain disposition that makes it difficult for you. Or do you just not like public speaking and not particularly want to pursue it? And of course, depending on the the answer, there would be a different prescription. I think a degree of self recognition and self acceptance is important. Uh, if a person does not get value from or finds a particular pursuit difficult, there's no reason necessarily why they have to pursue it. At the same time, it can be very, very valuable to pursue something that's challenging and outside of the comfort zone because it does help us to grow. It creates the sense of courage and resilience, but there's plenty of things that one can do to do that. So for any individual, the question is why do I pursue that specific thing? If you if a person feels that public speaking is like an inevitable part of the life that they just have to deal with, but it's uncomfortable, then yes, it's worth letting that set of skills. If it's something that's optional and they really don't think they get that much value from it, then I think it's perfectly reasonable not to pursue it. If they feel God. It is kind of thrilling, and I do like it and I do get some value from it, but I have all these blocks against it and that it feels very uncomfortable. Then that's definitely a case for slowly exposing yourself to it, figuring out what the blocks are, dismantling those blocks, and also just learning through time. Practice being comfortable with failure and making mistakes when you're doing it and getting getting competent at it and learning how to do it. I do think when it comes to personality growth and change, I'm incredibly pessimistic about people as a groups and as a whole, because the literature on personality tells us that personality remains quite stable over time. But in any one individual, if they say, oh, I just love to. I know I'm an introvert, but I do get a lot from social situations or public speaking, and so I'd love to have at least learn the skills of extroversion. I think there's way more scope to developing that than people think. We think we're sort of in these tracks and we have to like, stay within the lines. And I think with time and practice you can cultivate almost any personality trait, at least the skills of that personality trait. It doesn't may not change fundamentally. We it may not change fundamentally who you are, but it can change what you can do and what you're capable of. So perhaps you're an introvert, but you can learn the skills of being an introvert, of being an extrovert. And at least that means in the situations where you do have the public speak, where you do have the network, where you do have to mingle at the party, you can. It's a choice that you can do rather than you have to be introverted, so you have a greater set of tools. Similarly, if you're really extroverted but you realize sometimes I need to have a deep one on one conversation, or sometimes I need to be by myself and I need help. I need to learn how to make that okay. Then it's important to know you absolutely can learn how to do that. Or if you're naturally not that conscientious and therefore not that hard working, you should know that you can cultivate a work ethic and that it's worth doing because cultivating a work ethic can bring you all sorts of rewards, doesn't, again, won't necessarily change who you are, but it can achieve at least change what you can achieve and what you can actually actualize in your life. So. I think the thing that I'm advocating most in the sciences is a sense of consciousness, developing choices and intentionality and knowing there's nothing you have to do. But there's many more. There's many things you could do, and investing the time and energy to develop capacities that you don't already have will almost always be worth it. Now, which capacity you choose to develop, that's up to you. There's an infinite, you know, there's an infinite amount of things you could do, an infinite amount of skills you can develop, but at least know that you can and then choose carefully. Because as we've talked about before, choices have consequences. Thanks, Alex. It's been really fascinating talking to you. And it's it has been insightful. Um, I think I've certainly taken away some things from, from today. Um, you know, in particular, um, this idea of, well, a lot of the answers that I seek are within, and I really need to pay attention to myself. Um, I need to like what you said, audit myself. Um, and that's not just in terms of how I'm feeling internally, but also my behaviors. And then that would really allow me to kind of actually take a bit of a step back and see what things I feel like there are room for improvement and what things I'm happy with. Um. And I think you've really kind of got across the sense that, you know, there isn't a right or wrong answer. Um, it will be down to a combination of my own personality traits, my own ambitions, my own drives in my own, you know, in things that are going on for me. Um, I've also, um, enjoyed the sort of insight into some of the kind of biological and evolutionary reasons for perhaps why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling and why why we do the things we do. So I've really appreciated talking to you. Thank you. Great. Well, thank you very much for your questions. And we'll do this again. Thanks very much for listening. This is the Thinking Mind Podcast podcast about psychiatry, psychology, therapy and related topics. You guys have any questions for us that you'd like answered on the podcast? To send us an email to Thinking Mind podcasts at gmail.com. Also, if you want to help the podcast out for us on social media, share it with a friend. Give us a rating or review that really helps people to find us. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.