The Shocking Reason You're Tired, Lost & Doubting Yourself | Esther Perel

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   What do you think is unique about the modern workplace, and what are the consequences for us in our lives if we are experiencing problems in our jobs?

2. EPEsther Perel0:14

   So, the first thing is the, the workplace has fundamentally changed its meaning. We are bringing to our relationships, personal and professional, a host of needs that we used to bring to our communal life and to our religious lives. We are wanting from our work to g- give us a sense of belonging, identity, community, and meaning. And those are not needs that used to be traditionally associated with work. If relationships as a whole are often defined by our ability to creatively and adaptively respond to changing circumstances, I mean, that is one of the foundational elements of a vibrant relationship, is its adaptability and its flexibility. That is now demanded from us in the workplace more than ever. Because with everything that has changed, primarily around remote work, distributed work, global workforces, and technology that is, and AI particularly, that is completely changing not just the work landscape, but our entire society. We have never had to adapt faster and more, but we are adapting to something that we don't know. We are adapting with uncertainty. We are adapting to a world that we have no idea what's coming because it's a complete revolution that is happening to us, and this is all happening as you go to work every day. You know, it's kind of the s- the, the, the ground on which you stand at this moment. Now, relationships in general are not necessarily permanent, but they're even less permanent at work. So we want to experience belonging and intimacy and connection, but we also wanna move or sometimes need to move every two years. [laughs] So it doesn't really pr- provide itself for... lend itself to what we really want. Belonging usually is a process. It, it takes time. We develop it. Here, we want something that is very instant, and it's hard to do this kind of instant thing on a little box like the one that we are looking at ourselves in at this moment. Even though we are so thankful that we can have this conversation-

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:36

   Yeah

4. EPEsther Perel2:36

   ... you and I, thanks to technology, we have very little context. You know, here you are. You see me in a very, in a frame. I see you in a frame. And, uh, and we are going to have, try to have an important conversation about meaningful things without any context, and context is essential to understanding people and relationships.

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:59

   So therefore, if the modern workplace has changed so much, if our relationship to our work has changed so much, what are the consequences for us individually when there are problems in our work?

6. EPEsther Perel3:16

   Look, I, we all know that if you have a bad day at work, it comes home with you. If you have a bad day at home, it goes to work with you. So these two spaces that are the pol- poles of our lives at this moment are very interconnected. If you feel diminished and unseen, undervalued, stressed out at work, you bring some of that tension. It lives in your body, and it comes home with you. If you experience, uh, at work, a sense of elation and, um, and, and recognition and ambition, you come home, and if you don't get that same thing at home, you start to have a reaction. Why is it that those people can appreciate me, and you can't? So these two spaces are constantly in conversation with each other, way more than we like to recognize. What I would say is this: No amount of free food or benefits or privileges or gyms will compensate for a miserable relationship at work. I mean, we all know what it's like to stay awake at night fretting about something- [laughs]

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:30

   Yeah

8. EPEsther Perel4:30

   ... and somebody, you know, who sometimes is sleeping perfectly fine for that matter, while we are ruminating and obsessing about how we're going to handle this. So, um, we tend to not think about relationships in the workplace as much. We talk about collaborating, collegiality. We have other words for it. But in fact, at this moment, relationships a- are fast becoming the bottom line of what we're looking at in the workplace. It used to be that they were soft skills. Soft skills often meant that they were feminine skills. Feminine skills often meant that you can idealize them in principle and disregard them in reality, and now it's really become the competitive edge. How people relate, how these relationships affect culture, and how the culture and the relationships affect performance and achievement. It's one straight line.

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:26

   Yeah. And what's really interesting is when you were talking about work stress or conflict at work and how we bring that to our home lives, it's not just us bringing it to our home relationships. It also impacts our behaviors, right? Because if you come back really stressed out because you feel undervalued by your boss, and y- you're really tense when you come home, you're more likely to want the sugar. You're more likely to open the bottle of wine. You're more likely to scroll for three hours on Instagram instead of doing something perhaps more helpful in your life. And so-For me, it's very clear that work relationship stress-

10. EPEsther Perel6:07

    Mm-hmm

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:07

    ... will absolutely impact your lifestyle behaviors

12. EPEsther Perel6:11

    So let's round this off. You know, you come home, this is great image, right? So I see you, you're coming home. A, you're irritable. You're irritable. Your frustration threshold has de- de- lessened. Then you want that little sugar, which of course creates a, a, another reaction. Then you may want to scroll, but you certainly don't wanna talk to somebody. And the last thing you want is someone to say, who says to you, "You didn't pick up the milk." You know, you don't want, you don't... Oh, you are, you, you, you are, you have a, a space that small before you start to react, right? Because of what happened. But you're not necessarily going to tell the people at home what just happened at work.

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:53

    Yeah.

14. EPEsther Perel6:53

    You may, at best, even say, "I had a tough day. Don't give me," you know? [laughs] "Don't pile up on me." But you're not gonna really explain much because you don't necessarily feel good about it, and you don't necessarily wanna be vulnerable again, so you won't get the empathy that you want from your partner that would hopefully understand what happened so that they could give you a break. You're just simply gonna say, "Give me a break." [laughs] And this transposition between work and home happens all the time. When you go to work, you bring that story with you, but when you come back from work at home, you have all the aftereffects of what happened to you physically, how it manifests in your behavior, in your self-care, how it manifests in your relationship with others, and then how it manifests in your ability to even be interested in another, adults or young ones for that matter. You know, to be able to give... People come home and say, "I gave everything I had. I'm, I'm, I'm spent. I've, I've nothing left. You know, I have nothing left, so I need to fill up [laughs] -

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:59

    Yeah

16. EPEsther Perel7:59

    ... in order to get more of that energy," and that filling up isn't of the best kind. So it's everything you describe with, in, in terms of the physical experience, and then it gets attached directly to a psychological and to a social dimension, and you have all three at the same time, the physical, the psychological, and the relational.

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:20

    Yeah, it's, it's so fascinating. As I've been thinking about workplace relationships and actually looking through the questions in your new card deck that you've created to help people improve their work relationships, right, which we, which we're gonna talk about shortly, I, I was thinking a lot about my father and my father's generation. Okay, you've, you've already mentioned how what we want from our workplaces is different, and in a previous, uh, talk I saw you give pre-COVID actually, it was at South by Southwest in 2019, which is really interesting how you were talking about some of these things before the pandemic. But you, in that talk, you said that work these days is there to provide personal fulfillment, purpose, and identity development. Now, if I think about my father, who grew up in India and came as an immigrant to the UK in 1962-

18. EPEsther Perel9:15

    Would never have thought about this like that-

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:16

    Oh, yeah

20. EPEsther Perel9:17

    ... at all. [laughs]

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:18

    To, to, to create a better life, right? And, and Dad literally worked himself into his grave. He worked that hard-

22. EPEsther Perel9:23

    Right. Yeah

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:24

    ... you know. We might've spoken about it last time you came on. He only slept three nights a week for 30 years, and actually, in my work, I talk about burnout, and I talk about this misalignment with our inner values and our external actions. And I think about if I said to my dad, if Dad was still alive, that, "Hey, Dad, what did you think about fulfillment and purpose and identity development at work?" He'd probably go, "Son, what the hell are you talking about? I, I had one goal in mind when I came here. It wasn't about enjoyment. It was simply about two things. It was about making enough money to send home to make sure my siblings and parents were looked after, and it was to make sure I had enough to give you and your brother the very best start in life that I could." And I think about that a lot, Esther, because I think it really, although that may seem like quite an extreme example, I think it beautifully illustrates what you're saying. Work used to, it used to serve a different role in people's lives, but it's completely different now, isn't it?

24. EPEsther Perel10:28

    First of all, I don't think this is extreme at all. This still very much reflects many immigrants' experience who come, who are sent by the family, who take care of two families, one here and one at home, and who experience the joy or the fulfillment from exactly that. Having been able to take care of the siblings at home and the young children here becomes the fulfillment.

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:59

    Yeah.

26. EPEsther Perel10:59

    "I've fulfilled my role, my duty, my obligation. This is what makes me happy," so to speak, and not the intrinsic value of the work, but the, what the work enables me to do outside of the work. And that is a fundamental difference. Still today, some people experience intrinsic value, the work itself has to give me meaning, satisfaction, fulfillment, and some people experience the work as much more functional, pragmatic, but the meaning comes from what it allows me to do, and usually it involves taking care of family. So I think your dad rep- and the way you described him is rep- is a beautiful representation of a f- a very f- frequent experience that is, has, has not changed. In the West, on the other side, and this is your generation even, I mean, the, you could say every dad like yours, their, his children have already internalized the new values, and the new values is work is no longer just a production economy, nor is it even a service economy. Work is an identity economy, and that's where the words fulfillment and meaning and development and all of this start to get attached with work. It's a fascinating thing that it often takes one generation for the meaning of work to literally shift. Um, and I think what's very interesting is that, um-You can't separate this shift from how society has become less communal-

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:40

    Yeah

28. EPEsther Perel12:41

    ... and Western society, and less religious. Because these needs have always existed. What's changed is that we have brought these needs to work. In the West, people often take 10 more years between having studied or finishing high school, and maybe establishing family or choosing partnership. That's 10 years in which the job is the hub for all your social needs.

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:10

    Yeah.

30. EPEsther Perel13:11

    At the same time, and it is an impermanent place to fulfill those needs. So never has work meant as much, never have people expected so much from their leaders, and never has the leadership ability around relationship been so determining of the achievement and the performance in the workplace. They've always been connected, but they, it has really gone exponential, and I'm very glad that I was already talking about this before the pandemic.

Episode duration: 1:16:43