The Amazing and Brutal Results of Zero Lies for 365 Days — Martha Beck

1. 0:00 – 1:19

   Preview

   1. MBDr. Martha Beck0:00

      Most people, when they wanna say no and they don't know how to say it, will try to become victim-y and say, "I can't because of this, this, and this," which is horrible because the person always thinks of a way out of those things. [laughs] I love this quote from Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, where he plans-- His wife says, "Don't go to the, the Senate. I had a horrible nightmare you're gonna get stabbed." So the guy comes to get him, and he says, "Go tell the council Caesar will not come. That I cannot is false. That I dare not, falser still. No, go tell the council Caesar will not come." Boom! Like, that is my model.

   2. TFTim Ferriss0:41

      [laughs]

   3. MBDr. Martha Beck0:41

      And there have been really good studies that show that to get out of depression... One study had control group, a group that had therapy, a group that had meds, and a group that did nothing but eliminate the words "I can't" and "I have to" from their responses.

   4. TFTim Ferriss0:56

      Hmm.

   5. MBDr. Martha Beck0:56

      Instead, they had to say, "I choose not to, I choose to, I will, I won't." And they came out of their depression faster than any of the other groups. [upbeat music]

2. 1:19 – 1:47

   My contribution to teen atrociousness.

   1. TFTim Ferriss1:19

      Martha, it is so nice to finally connect and to see your face. [bell dings]

   2. MBDr. Martha Beck1:23

      Finally.

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:24

      And I really appreciate you taking the time.

   4. MBDr. Martha Beck1:26

      Oh.

   5. TFTim Ferriss1:26

      Thank you.

   6. MBDr. Martha Beck1:27

      It's my honor. I gave your four-hour work week to my then teenage children.

   7. TFTim Ferriss1:32

      Mm.

   8. MBDr. Martha Beck1:32

      I said, "I want you to learn the way this man thinks. Whatever you do-"

   9. TFTim Ferriss1:36

      [laughs]

   10. MBDr. Martha Beck1:37

       "... just study his mind. It is your new Bible."

   11. TFTim Ferriss1:40

       Thank you for that. Hopefully, it didn't, uh, turn them to the dark side. Didn't take them-

   12. MBDr. Martha Beck1:44

       Oh, they're atrocious. Yeah.

   13. TFTim Ferriss1:45

       [laughs]

   14. MBDr. Martha Beck1:46

       [laughs]

3. 1:47 – 7:55

   Connecting with Boyd Varty.

   1. MBDr. Martha Beck1:47

      Thank you.

   2. TFTim Ferriss1:47

      That was the beginning of the end, so thank you.

   3. MBDr. Martha Beck1:48

      [laughs] Yeah.

   4. TFTim Ferriss1:49

      Thank you, Tim, [laughs] for derailing-

   5. MBDr. Martha Beck1:51

      [laughs]

   6. TFTim Ferriss1:52

      ... derailing the development of my, my children.

   7. MBDr. Martha Beck1:54

      [laughs]

   8. TFTim Ferriss1:55

      Let's talk about a mutual friend briefly-

   9. MBDr. Martha Beck1:58

      Yeah

   10. TFTim Ferriss1:58

       ... because our connecting point, the way we directly connected, even though I have had observed you from afar for quite some time, is Boyd Varty. And for people who don't know Boyd-

   11. MBDr. Martha Beck2:08

       Boyd

   12. TFTim Ferriss2:08

       ... he's the author of "The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life." He has been... There it is, right behind you. Beautiful little book, which I've read multiple times, and he is one hell of a guy. He's one of a kind.

   13. MBDr. Martha Beck2:20

       He really is.

   14. TFTim Ferriss2:21

       And I wanted to ask you to perhaps begin with describing how the two of you connected.

   15. MBDr. Martha Beck2:29

       It was such a strange thing. I mean, he's told me the, the story from his side since.

   16. TFTim Ferriss2:34

       Mm-hmm.

   17. MBDr. Martha Beck2:34

       All I knew that I wa- was that I was in a weird period of my own life. I'd written a book about leaving Mormonism, and a lot of people didn't like it, and I was getting death threats and legal threats, and I sort of ran away to do a book tour in a-- in South Africa. And I went to my favorite place there, which was a l- game preserve called Londolozi, where I'd been once before, and I... It was like the thing I had saved up for and the thing I'd been looking forward to. And I felt safer there with the lions and the rhinoceroses and whatnot than I did anywhere a-among people. I was terrified of people at the time.

   18. TFTim Ferriss3:10

       [laughs]

   19. MBDr. Martha Beck3:10

       Still sort of am, but I was really terrified at that time. So all I knew is that I had a certain ranger who was supposed to be taking me out on safari, and the guy who showed up was a different guy.

   20. TFTim Ferriss3:21

       [laughs]

   21. MBDr. Martha Beck3:21

       All right. I didn't really care.

   22. TFTim Ferriss3:23

       Mm-hmm.

   23. MBDr. Martha Beck3:24

       But we got talking as we drove around, and here I am-- like, he's twenty-three. I'm forty-three, I think. So we start talking housewife to game ranger, just like a heart-to-heart would be. [laughs] And-

   24. TFTim Ferriss3:39

       Mm-hmm

   25. MBDr. Martha Beck3:40

       ... I don't know how. Within, within five minutes, we were in such an intense conversation, and we were laughing at each other's jokes, and we were, we were having this amazing time. And we went back to the, to the game preserve place, to the camp, and we had tea together, and he told me, "You know, my family's been going through some difficult times. They've had really strange legal things happening," and it kind of paralleled what I was going through in some ways.

   26. TFTim Ferriss4:07

       Hmm.

   27. MBDr. Martha Beck4:07

       So I felt really understood, but I also thought, oh my gosh, he doesn't understand really what the dynamics of what's going on. And I, I'm a sociologist. That's... I study psychology by as my trade. So I started talking to him about it, and he says, "You have to meet my family." I didn't know that his family was the family that owned the game preserve-

   28. TFTim Ferriss4:26

       [laughs]

   29. MBDr. Martha Beck4:26

       ... and had started it and, like, reforested it and everything. Before I knew it, I was at, at their house with his sister, Bronwyn, and his parents, Dave and Shan, and I was talking to them as fast as I could about how to deal with attacks from psychopaths. [laughs]

   30. TFTim Ferriss4:43

       [laughs]
4. 7:55 – 12:26

   The path of not here.

   1. TFTim Ferriss7:55

      Yeah, exactly. We'll have to come up with a custody plan.

   2. MBDr. Martha Beck7:57

      [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss7:58

      So he has a, a name for the experience of getting lost, the path of not here.

   4. MBDr. Martha Beck8:03

      Isn't it?

   5. TFTim Ferriss8:03

      Now, I have not heard him say that. What does that mean, the path of not here?

   6. MBDr. Martha Beck8:08

      Well, we're out wandering around trying to track... I remember once tracking a porcupine with Boyd, and it was easy on the road because the quill drags are easy to see. And then the porcupine left the road, and it was just scrub and rocks and everything, and I didn't, I didn't know what he was looking at, but he kept walking. And I said, "I haven't seen anything for a long time, and, you know, I'm completely lost." And he said, "No, you're never lost. What you're getting is the information that the place you are now and the way you're going isn't the way you wanna end up." And that is an incredibly important place called the path of not here. And every time you realize you're in it, you have the option of shifting, of going somewhere else. Without recognizing that this is the path of not here-

   7. TFTim Ferriss8:58

      Mm

   8. MBDr. Martha Beck8:58

      ... you can't shift. So when I coach people, they're almost always way into the path of not here.

   9. TFTim Ferriss9:04

      Mm.

   10. MBDr. Martha Beck9:04

       You know, they hate their job, their marriage is awful, whatever, and they've just kept going and going and going and going, and they haven't woken up a- and seen that there's not been a footprint for a very long time. And then, by the way, Boyd found the damn porcupine den in the middle of [laughs] like... How he tracked this thing over a rock, I don't know how.

   11. TFTim Ferriss9:28

       [laughs]

   12. MBDr. Martha Beck9:28

       But he was quite pleased. [laughs]

   13. TFTim Ferriss9:30

       I'm sure he was pleased. Yeah, watching these expert trackers track is akin to having some type of ethereal-

   14. MBDr. Martha Beck9:43

       Oh my God

   15. TFTim Ferriss9:43

       ... experience on a different plane. But for them, it's very scientific, right? There's nothing mystical-

   16. MBDr. Martha Beck9:48

       Oh, yeah

   17. TFTim Ferriss9:48

       ... or very little mystical about it. It's very much deductive Sherlock Holmes type work.

   18. MBDr. Martha Beck9:52

       I call it the technology of magic because it looks like magic to us. If you showed someone from an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon an iPhone, they would say, "Oh, magic," and we'd say, "No, no, technology." When people from... are using this, these ancient forms of wisdom that we don't have, it looks like magic.

   19. TFTim Ferriss10:12

       Mm-hmm.

   20. MBDr. Martha Beck10:12

       And we say, "Magic," and they say, "No, no, technology."

   21. TFTim Ferriss10:15

       [laughs]

   22. MBDr. Martha Beck10:16

       And I remember the first tracking lesson I ever had with Renias, who is-- I couldn't believe he would be so generous, especially to a female, because they don't usually train women as trackers. But we're just walking along. He's not saying anything. He picks up a stick and makes a circle in the sand, and then he just stands there. Doesn't say a word. And I look down, and there's a huge paw print.

   23. TFTim Ferriss10:37

       [laughs]

   24. MBDr. Martha Beck10:38

       And it's obviously a lion, so I'm like, "It's a lion." [laughs] And he was like, "Mm-hmm," and he just stood there. And I kept looking at it, and then he, he held up his hand, and he did this. He just shifted it, like, a quarter inch to one side, and I looked down, and I saw that the print had been disturbed in exactly that way. And suddenly I felt myself as if I was down on all fours, and I shifted that left paw, that left hand, just that little bit, and I realized the lion had looked over his left shoulder, and that had made a slight, a little swish in the track. And so the lion was either looking at something, one of his pride mates or one of his potential prey, and he was gonna go around to that spot, so we could cut over there because the lion had looked at that significantly. And I remember it's like learning to read for the second time. Even when you only know a couple of words-

   25. TFTim Ferriss11:34

       Mm-hmm

   26. MBDr. Martha Beck11:34

       ... it's magic.

   27. TFTim Ferriss11:36

       Yeah, totally. Renias is something else. There are levels, and then there are levels.

   28. MBDr. Martha Beck11:39

       [laughs]

   29. TFTim Ferriss11:39

       So there... And, uh, and as you were talking, I thought of a quote that I really enjoy from s- the very much storied science fiction writer, Arthur C. Clarke.

   30. MBDr. Martha Beck11:51

       One of my faves.
5. 12:26 – 17:18

   Finding joy in the body can save your life.

   1. TFTim Ferriss12:26

      I would love to know what that intervention looked like, or maybe to be more specific, what are some of the questions, cues, things that you did with Boyd that might be instructive in terms of helping someone get off the path of not here?

   2. MBDr. Martha Beck12:45

      Right. Okay, so the first thing is for me, I know, and I wanna be delicate about this because people get worried when we talk about it, but I, I watched your TED Talk doing homework-

   3. TFTim Ferriss12:56

      Mm-hmm

   4. MBDr. Martha Beck12:57

      ... for this. I watched it again. And you start out very courageously in one of your TED Talks talking about being in a depressive period and thinking you might wanna end your life.

   5. TFTim Ferriss13:08

      Mm-hmm.

   6. MBDr. Martha Beck13:09

      And [laughs] I was so surprised to hear that there are people who haven't been there. [laughs] I just thought-

   7. TFTim Ferriss13:14

      Hmm

   8. MBDr. Martha Beck13:14

      ... that was how you spend a Thursday, you know? [laughs]

   9. TFTim Ferriss13:18

      [laughs]

   10. MBDr. Martha Beck13:19

       So I remember sitting in the Lamont Library at Harvard when I was 17. I call it the Lament Library 'cause all these people had carved their woes into the carrels.

   11. TFTim Ferriss13:29

       [laughs] God.

   12. MBDr. Martha Beck13:29

       It was a freshman library, right?

   13. TFTim Ferriss13:31

       Not surprising.

   14. MBDr. Martha Beck13:31

       And I was like, "Why, why stick around? We're all getting off the bus at this, at... We're all gonna die, so why not get off the bus now?" And I remember sitting there and thinking the only possible reason for sticking around, and I remembered Emerson's statement that beauty is its own excuse for being.

   15. TFTim Ferriss13:51

       Hmm.

   16. MBDr. Martha Beck13:51

       And I thought joy is its own excuse for being. That is the one thing I can experience that makes it worth sticking around for the suffering this life entails. So I shifted my entire life toward a sort of very simple test, does it bring me joy or does it not? And joy became the track I was following. And so Boyd had learned to track animals, but he'd lost the track of his joy a long time before. And I remember feeling, well, jumping ahead, taking some people out in a seminar and having him turn and s- tell the group that you track your life the way you track an animal, but the track you're looking for is joy in the body. And it's so simple to put it that way. And I think that's the first thing where we really connected, and I said, "Boyd, you have to find joy in your body." And he was-- He'd been through so much trauma. I mean, good God. It wasn't just the break-in. I mean, he tried to rescue a man from a hot spring. A, a guy had fallen in. The guy died. He was basically boiled alive. He was-- He, you know, he's e- almost eaten by a crocodile. He's been attacked by more deadly animals and snakes and all kinds of things than you can even imagine. So here was this guy who had been-- He was tough and strong and brave, and he had long ago gone numb. And the funny thing is that there are a lot of people who haven't had such a wild life who are sitting under fluorescent lights somewhere, and they're just as far off their track as he was. They're just, they're almost as miserable. If you can't find joy, you can't find joy. It's like oxygen. You need it. [laughs] Doesn't matter how you lose it or what it looks like to you, you need it. So I remember when he, Boyd and his sister came to Phoenix to visit me shortly after we met, and I put them through a kind of American therapy, which was I made them lie down on the living room floor and watch Eddie Izzard routines on TV while I brought them ice cream for about three days. And they had just worked like mules their entire lives, physically worked, psychologically worked. And they were like, "When do we start working?" And I'd just say, "Sit, eat, laugh." And at the end of the three days, I saw them start to be able to access relaxation, which is the first step toward joy in the body. And our culture is so cerebral when we think that thinking is superior to the physical being. But our thinking process is very late in evolution. Our cognitive minds process about forty bits of information per second. The nervous system of our entire bodies is processing about eleven million bits of information per second. The body is smarter than the mind. That is a very long answer [laughs] to a very good question. But if you haven't found joy in the body-

   17. TFTim Ferriss16:54

       That's why this is a long podcast. We have time. [laughs]

   18. MBDr. Martha Beck16:57

       You did say you wanted me to tell stories. So yeah, I think when I could see him relax, and I saw-

   19. TFTim Ferriss17:04

       Mm

   20. MBDr. Martha Beck17:04

       ... his shoulders open, and I saw him smile spontaneously instead of to be polite, I s- "There you go. That's the track. That's what we're tracking." And that's what we've done ever since in years and years of wonderful conversations.

6. 17:18 – 23:25

   The pregnant pause that ended Martha's obsession with intellect.

   1. TFTim Ferriss17:19

      So I'm gonna come back to Boyd probably just as an instructive case study.

   2. MBDr. Martha Beck17:22

      Yeah.

   3. TFTim Ferriss17:22

      Right? And, uh, we'll, we'll probably come back to Boyd. But I would love to ask you about re-attuning the body to the nervous system.

   4. MBDr. Martha Beck17:34

      Mm-hmm.

   5. TFTim Ferriss17:34

      And specifically I'm asking because as I've done research for this conversation and listened to interviews and read so much, I've noticed that you have a prodigious ability to recall quotes. As one example-

   6. MBDr. Martha Beck17:51

      [laughs]

   7. TFTim Ferriss17:52

      ... you mentioned Harvard and 17, which is not an age that most people associate with Harvard. So you seem to have a lot of horsepower between the ears.

   8. MBDr. Martha Beck18:02

      Hmm.

   9. TFTim Ferriss18:02

      Generally, now I don't know this about you, but generally when I encounter that, and to maybe a lesser extent I encounter that in myself, you get rewarded for using this analytical workhorse.

   10. MBDr. Martha Beck18:15

       Yeah.

   11. TFTim Ferriss18:18

       You end up perhaps a little less attuned to the physical body.

   12. MBDr. Martha Beck18:20

       Mm-hmm.

   13. TFTim Ferriss18:21

       So I'm curious how, how you have reconnected with that intelligence, and, uh, specifically, this may or may not be related, but I would love for you to discuss equine therapy-

   14. MBDr. Martha Beck18:34

       Mm-hmm

   15. TFTim Ferriss18:35

       ... or interactions with animals, and if that is related.

   16. MBDr. Martha Beck18:38

       The first place I'll go, I, I learned to brutalize my body. When I was-- I mean, w- that year at Harvard, I was running 100 miles a week and trying to eat less than 1,000 calories a day. I was-- I did not have any regard for my body at all. I got sick. I got very sick with a multitude of autoimmune diseases. My body correctly figured out that I was it-- the greatest threat to my own health. So I was actually on crutches and a back brace. I was in a lot of pain for a long time. Went back to Harvard after a year off for this issue, and got engaged to another b- we Mormon, I'm an ex-Mormon. We get engaged very young. [chuckles] So I got engaged and married another guy from my hometown, and I stayed at Harvard for my master's and my PhD. And we had a daughter, and then my second child was conceived when I was halfway through my PhD. And I was caught in an apartment fire right in the middle of the pregnancy, and because of that, they ran a bunch of tests. And they came back and told me that the fetus had Down syndrome, and I had two weeks to terminate. I was, like, six months along. So I don't know if you've ever been pregnant, Tim.

   17. TFTim Ferriss19:56

       Not that I'm aware of.

   18. MBDr. Martha Beck19:57

       [laughs]

   19. TFTim Ferriss19:58

       You know, I have suspected, though, at points. People say I'm glowing recently. I don't know. Maybe.

   20. MBDr. Martha Beck20:02

       Yeah, you do look really, mm, flush.

   21. TFTim Ferriss20:05

       [laughs]

   22. MBDr. Martha Beck20:06

       Yeah. I had the one baby already, and I had bonded so strongly with the second one that even though I'm very pro-choice, saying, you know, he's gotta go, it just didn't... He was already my child. I'd seen him sucking his finger on the ultrasound and everything. And I, I just-- I couldn't do it. I've advised other people. I've helped other people go and, and terminate their pregnancies in similar situations. I just couldn't do it. And I remember-- And the, the head of gynecology and obstetrics at, at Harvard at the time, 'cause I was part of that, the university system, there were five of them. They all thought that I was making a huge mistake to not terminate. And the, the head honcho came in and told me this is like having a malignant tumor and not letting me remove it. And I remember looking at him, and I was being rehydrated 'cause I've-- couldn't stop vomiting and stuff. Oh, it was such fun how I laughed. I was looking at this guy, and he's saying, "You need to do this. You're gonna ruin your life." He said, "You're throwing your life away." And I looked at him, and it w- suddenly it appeared he had two faces, and I was really curious. And it was as if there was a face that he was presenting that was this stern Harvard doctor, and then right behind it was this terrified face. Terrified. And I'd been sort of terrified myself, but when I saw this, I was, like, fascinated. I just watched him and I said, "Do you know anyone with Down syndrome?" And he, he was very flustered. He was like, "No, that-- No, I wouldn't bother with that." And I just watched him and I thought, "Oh, he's not telling me to do this because he thinks I'm making a mistake to keep the stupid little boy inside of me. He thinks that there's a stupid little boy inside him, and he's trying to kill that." And I thought, "Oh, he didn't end up at Harvard because he knew he was smart. He ended up there for the same reason I did. He thought he was stupid. He wanted to prove he wasn't." And at that moment, I looked at him and I thought, "You know, the reason for my life is joy. I don't see joy on either of this man's faces, and I don't think he understands his own path to joy at all." And I remember I said, "I've heard that people with Down syndrome can experience joy." And he said, "I wouldn't know about that." And I was like, "Yeah. No, I think they can." And right then, everything changed for me. I waddled around Harvard pregnant out to here. Everybody knew, and I would go into my professors' offices and they'd be like, "You've got to put this child in an institution. You're r- throwing away your career." And I'd look at their little offices and their little piles of books, and I'd just... I'd look them-- at them and think, "Are you in joy? Do you live in joy? And-- Because if you don't, you can't tell me where it is."

   23. TFTim Ferriss23:16

       Mm-hmm.

   24. MBDr. Martha Beck23:16

       And I lost the obsession with intellect that I had learned not only at Harvard, but in all of Western culture. That's

7. 23:25 – 27:03

   Sensitivity and suffering.

   1. MBDr. Martha Beck23:25

      when it really shifted for me.

   2. TFTim Ferriss23:27

      Hmm. That's a powerful story, and I'm, I'm sure we'll come back to pieces of it. How do you then elicit that realization or teach people to re-engage with sensitivities that they've perhaps neglected or accidentally put offline or deliberately put offline?

   3. MBDr. Martha Beck23:49

      Yeah.

   4. TFTim Ferriss23:50

      How do you cultivate that in someone?

   5. MBDr. Martha Beck23:52

      I can't teach it. I can't cultivate it. I can't do it, but I have an unfailing ally, and its name is Suffering.

   6. TFTim Ferriss24:00

      [laughs]

   7. MBDr. Martha Beck24:01

      Because when we lose the track of our joy, we suffer, and that's the only thing that gets our attention enough to make us stop and say, "Maybe, just maybe, I need to find another path here."

   8. TFTim Ferriss24:14

      Hmm.

   9. MBDr. Martha Beck24:15

      You've had it yourself, I, I'm sure.

   10. TFTim Ferriss24:17

       Oh, for sure. And I promised I would bookmark this and come back to it just to give, give Boyd a little sloppy kiss on the cheek again.

   11. MBDr. Martha Beck24:25

       [laughs]

   12. TFTim Ferriss24:27

       Something else that I'm pretty sure was in that book, it certainly was in the curriculum when I've spent more time there with Renias and Alex and other incredible trackers, losing the track is part of tracking.

   13. MBDr. Martha Beck24:40

       Yeah.

   14. TFTim Ferriss24:40

       Like, that is always part of tracking. You are n- almost never going to A to Z track something perfectly. You always lose the track.

   15. MBDr. Martha Beck24:48

       Yeah.

   16. TFTim Ferriss24:48

       So part of good tracking is finding the track again-

   17. MBDr. Martha Beck24:53

       Mm-hmm

   18. TFTim Ferriss24:53

       ... or finding a proper track. In the case of Boyd, he's on the path of not here.

   19. MBDr. Martha Beck25:03

       Mm-hmm.

   20. TFTim Ferriss25:03

       Unsure of what to do with himself. I'm sort of imposing a narrative that [laughs] I don't...

   21. MBDr. Martha Beck25:08

       He's not here. He can't defend himself. Let's just do this.

   22. TFTim Ferriss25:11

       Yeah. Yeah, he can't defend himself.

   23. MBDr. Martha Beck25:12

       [laughs]

   24. TFTim Ferriss25:12

       So you're welcome, Boyd. And just using him as a stand-in for the audience, right? But since you've worked with him-

   25. MBDr. Martha Beck25:18

       Not because we love him so much, Tim

   26. TFTim Ferriss25:19

       ... and we love him so much. What are some of the things, once you'd fed him ice cream and had him relax, you see the shoulders open, what happens then? What do you do with... Once you see that opening, that change, what do you do?

   27. MBDr. Martha Beck25:35

       The first thing that happened for me when Boyd took me tracking, we went for, to look for a rhinoceros. They're fairly easy to track. Surprisingly difficult, though, at the same time. The first thing they do is they show you what a rhinoceros track looks like, clear, plain, and simple in really good terrain. Now you know what a rhinoceros' whole foot looks like, and you're gonna go out through grass and rocks and trees and everything, and sometimes you'll just see the side of one toe or an imprint where the palm has pressed l- a leaf down or a bit of mud on a stick. But until you've seen that first track, you don't know what you're looking for.

   28. TFTim Ferriss26:12

       Mm-hmm.

   29. MBDr. Martha Beck26:12

       So that's why I fed him ice cream for three days. And when I saw the relaxation, I could say, "That's your track. Now, let's look at the things you're doing in your life." His mom was telling him she thought he should get a PhD, and I said, "Okay, hold that thought. More joy? Less joy?" "Less." "Okay. Don't go there. So take over Londolozi for the rest of your life. More joy? Less joy?" "I don't know. It's not clear." "Okay, we don't go there yet." You know, we just... It's like going to the optometrist at that point. You know suffering and you know joy, and if it's more like suffering, it's the path of not there, and there are a million ways to suffer. And if it's joy, you know it's the path of yes, and there's actually only one path that takes you straight along the line of joy.

   30. TFTim Ferriss27:01

       Hm.
8. 27:03 – 32:59

   The year of living lie-lessly.

   1. MBDr. Martha Beck27:03

      I believe in that stuff.

   2. TFTim Ferriss27:04

      [laughs] All right. [laughs] I'm gonna be keeping track of a lot of bookmarks. I knew I would.

   3. MBDr. Martha Beck27:09

      [laughs]

   4. TFTim Ferriss27:10

      So I came prepared, pen in hand. For those of you who can't see us, I cheat. I use a pen.

   5. MBDr. Martha Beck27:16

      Oh, shocking.

   6. TFTim Ferriss27:16

      The pen is... I know. The weakest ink is stronger than the strongest memory, therefore blue pen. So individual destiny, that's my note I'm taking. And I didn't even add a question mark because I probably agree with you on-

   7. MBDr. Martha Beck27:30

      Mm-hmm

   8. TFTim Ferriss27:30

      ... on some levels. Let's talk about your own chronology a bit.

   9. MBDr. Martha Beck27:34

      Mm.

   10. TFTim Ferriss27:34

       And I believe it was at 29-

   11. MBDr. Martha Beck27:36

       Yeah

   12. TFTim Ferriss27:36

       ... correct me if I'm wrong, you decide to not tell any lies for an entire year.

   13. MBDr. Martha Beck27:42

       Yes.

   14. TFTim Ferriss27:42

       Now, my understanding is that led to losing your family of origin, your religion, your job, your marriage, so [laughs] it was an eventful year.

   15. MBDr. Martha Beck27:51

       My home, my career, my entire industry. Yeah, it was, it was quite a brisk year.

   16. TFTim Ferriss27:56

       It was brisk, right?

   17. MBDr. Martha Beck27:57

       Yeah.

   18. TFTim Ferriss27:57

       So it was like the flamethrower approach to personal development.

   19. MBDr. Martha Beck28:00

       [laughs]

   20. TFTim Ferriss28:02

       [laughs] Why did you do this, and what did you take away from it that other people can use?

   21. MBDr. Martha Beck28:11

       Why did I do it? Suffering. I'd like to say I had noble intentions. I was unhappy. I was very physically ill. I'd been with this sick m- at that point for 12 years.

   22. TFTim Ferriss28:21

       Mm-hmm.

   23. MBDr. Martha Beck28:21

       So in chronic pain for 12 years. And I was trying to live the way my... I had this baby with Down syndrome, and I thought nobody at Harvard's gonna... I, I just didn't want them all staring at me. So to finish my dissertation, I went back to Utah where I knew that everybody would be thrilled with me not having an abortion, which they were, but then they assumed that I was super Mormon, and I tried to fit in just bec- out of respect for my, you know, culture of origin. And it took me about-

   24. TFTim Ferriss28:51

       Can you just say a quick sidebar on your father and who your father was?

   25. MBDr. Martha Beck28:54

       Ah, yes.

   26. TFTim Ferriss28:54

       I think this is useful context.

   27. MBDr. Martha Beck28:57

       So I come from a very-

   28. TFTim Ferriss28:57

       Not just any run-of-the-mill Mormon.

   29. MBDr. Martha Beck28:59

       No, he was not. He was... My father was an apologist, which is a word for somebody who defends the principles of a religion. So Mormonism makes a lot of truth claims about things like the American Indians are descended from a group of Israelites that came over in a ship in 600 BC, and lots of, like, real archeological, anthropological fact, truth claims. They don't stand up well under modern science, and my father, he was asked to be an apologist for the church. He was a professor at Berkeley, and they brought him back to BYU, Brigham Young University, and he started defending Mormonism against all attacks. And he became very well-known in the church, and he was the foremost apologist of, of Mormonism, I think, in the church's history. So I was considered Mormon royalty. They have a whole structure there. So I went back to Utah and tried to be a good Mormon. [laughs] At the time, they came out and said there was a lot of unrest because the... People were just learning too much, and the Internet wasn't a thing yet, but there were just too many scientists doing too much research and finding out too much stuff that was disproving Mormonism's claims. So- The church got very, very upset and came out and said the three greatest threats to God's kingdom in the latter days were feminists, uh, intellectuals, and gay people. So yeah, it turned out I was all three. [laughs] I didn't identify as gay at the time. I was married with children. So I was closeted to myself. That involves a lot of suffering that you don't understand when you're going through it. I had sexual abuse issues from my father when I was a child. Those were bashing their way to the surface and coming out in flashbacks and it was, it was gnarly. And the one thing I knew is that when I heard the statement, "The truth will set you free," it brought me a sense of joy, a sense of peace. So I thought, "I don't know exactly what to do or what the truth is, so I'm just not gonna lie for a year and we'll see what happens. We'll find out what the truth is." And I found out that mostly what I was lying about, I didn't tell lies like about my taxes or anything, or in my personal life even. I was telling lies about how I felt. I feel fine. I wouldn't say that anymore. People would say, "How are you?" And I'd say, "I'm not well." [laughs] You know?

   30. TFTim Ferriss31:40

       Mm-hmm.
9. 32:59 – 43:16

   An illuminating change of perspective.

   1. TFTim Ferriss33:00

      Now, this may not be the right question, but what gave you the courage to risk burning it all to the ground? Or was it not courage at all, it was just, "This is suffering and I want something other than this suffering," and so you were just kind of rolling the dice on door number two?

   2. MBDr. Martha Beck33:19

      The suffering was bad, but it wasn't bad enough to make me endure the, the suffering of losing my family. I mean-

   3. TFTim Ferriss33:27

      Mm

   4. MBDr. Martha Beck33:27

      ... seven siblings, all their wives and husbands and, and my nieces and nephews and, uh, like, everyone. For every friend I'd made growing up.

   5. TFTim Ferriss33:35

      Mm-hmm.

   6. MBDr. Martha Beck33:37

      I couldn't have done that. But right-- [sighs] I think I made that pledge the day after I came out of an emergency surgery and [sighs] I've been told that you are willing to entertain woo woo things but... [laughs]

   7. TFTim Ferriss33:57

      [laughs] You know, it's W- it's Wednesday, right? Yeah, every Wednesday.

   8. MBDr. Martha Beck33:59

      Yes, for the skeptics, Ty.

   9. TFTim Ferriss34:00

      Woo woo Wednesday.

   10. MBDr. Martha Beck34:01

       It's woo woo Wednesday.

   11. TFTim Ferriss34:02

       [laughs]

   12. MBDr. Martha Beck34:03

       So I'm rushed in for surgery. Actually, I was teaching a psychology class and I was behind a, a one-way mirror and the students started to talk about... It was a free discussion. I was observing. And they started to talk about a number of the women had been raped and I suddenly got really hot and feverish and I ran into the hall and passed out cold. I, like, fell down. I looked up, all the students were around me. I got rushed to the hospital and they thought I had a, a tumor in a very intimate place. They immediately put me in surgery and while I was lying there, I looked up at the-- I sort of woke up and looked at the surgical lights which was odd because my eyes were taped closed. And then I thought, "This is odd that I can see," and I sat up which was strange because my body was on the table and I looked around and I watched them operating on me and they said, "There's no tumor. It's just blood. This is scar tissue from old trauma." And then I lay back and I thought, "I don't know what's happening to me." And between the surgical lights another light appeared and it was about the size of a golf ball when I first saw it and, you know, they say we can only see about a trillionth of the available light spectrum and I think this light had all of it. Like-

   13. TFTim Ferriss35:34

       [laughs]

   14. MBDr. Martha Beck35:34

       ... you can't describe it. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was absolutely captivating. And as I looked at it, it grew and it, it seemed to sort of penetrate things instead of bouncing off them and when it touched me, this incredible warmth. I mean, talk about going from 12 years of chronic pain, a lot of psychological suffering to no suffering. Zero. Absolute joy, beauty, warmth, physical, emotional, every kind of warmth you can imagine and laughter. There was so much joy in this light and I was laughing with it and I heard the surgeon say to the anesthesiologist, "She's crying," and I'd started crying from happiness and they could see tears coming out and- And they thought that I could feel the pain.

   15. TFTim Ferriss36:31

       Hmm.

   16. MBDr. Martha Beck36:31

       So the anesthesiologist was going to give me more medication, and I talked to him the next day to make sure it wasn't a drug event. And he said that a voice had told him, "Don't increase the anesthesia. She's crying because she's happy." And he said, "Did I do the wrong thing? That never happened to me before." [laughs] So that was odd. Anyway, basically, the light was saying to me, "You totally bought this whole thing about you're just a physical thing and then you die." And I was like, "I know. I said I wasn't gonna forget, and then I totally forgot." And we were laughing and laughing and laughing. And then it said, "Look, you're gonna go through something really horrible. But I'm always here. I'm right here. I've always been here. I always will be." And I woke up in the recovery room and there was a, there was this guy who was there from the prison on some sort of work detail, and he was mopping the floor in this room where I woke up, and I looked at him and I said, "I love you so much." [laughs]

   17. TFTim Ferriss37:38

       [laughs] He's like, "I'm not even getting paid for this." [laughs]

   18. MBDr. Martha Beck37:41

       He went to get the nurses. [laughs]

   19. TFTim Ferriss37:46

       [laughs]

   20. MBDr. Martha Beck37:46

       Yeah, and I was just... I, I was like, "Ah, do people cry?" And they said, "Yes, surgery is traumatic." And I'm like, "No, do they cry because they're happy?" And they were like-

   21. TFTim Ferriss37:55

       What?

   22. MBDr. Martha Beck37:56

       ... not really. So yeah, the next day, the big thing was I'm never doing anything that makes me feel separated from that light, not ever.

   23. TFTim Ferriss38:09

       Hmm.

   24. MBDr. Martha Beck38:09

       And lying was the first thing to go. And I'm... That is still, to this day, one of the weird things about experiences like that is they don't fade. It's always right there with you in every choice you make, and that, that's what gave me the ability to do everything else.

   25. TFTim Ferriss38:27

       All right. I have, I have quite a few follow-up questions. So thank you for sharing that.

   26. MBDr. Martha Beck38:31

       [laughs]

   27. TFTim Ferriss38:32

       The broadest question is, what do you make of that experience? The other, and you can tackle these in whichever order, but did you talk to the surgeon and other personnel about what you observed them saying?

   28. MBDr. Martha Beck38:47

       The surgeon came in and was oddly tender with me. I mean, really, really tender. And I think the reason was that what had happened was I was bleeding internally from a lot of scar tissue that had happened when I was sexually abused very young.

   29. TFTim Ferriss39:02

       Hmm.

   30. MBDr. Martha Beck39:02

       And they knew that that's-
10. 43:16 – 47:06

    The path to taking a black belt integrity cleanse.

    1. TFTim Ferriss43:16

       you and I are probably gonna have quite a few conversations.

    2. MBDr. Martha Beck43:18

       Ooh. I hope so. [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss43:20

       On and off records, so-

    4. MBDr. Martha Beck43:21

       [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss43:22

       ... to be continued. I'm gonna just take a slight sidestep to integrity cleanse. If somebody wanted to do an integrity cleanse-

    6. MBDr. Martha Beck43:32

       Mm-hmm

    7. TFTim Ferriss43:32

       ... or attempt what you did-

    8. MBDr. Martha Beck43:34

       Yeah

    9. TFTim Ferriss43:34

       ... but with the lessons learned, maybe they are not willing to go kind of full throttle-

    10. MBDr. Martha Beck43:41

        Yeah

    11. TFTim Ferriss43:41

        ... how would you suggest they do that? Uh, because most people listening, myself included, have, have never attempted something like this.

    12. MBDr. Martha Beck43:48

        Mm.

    13. TFTim Ferriss43:48

        And just as a quick humorous sidebar, I'll say if, if people wanna read something very funny, there is an article, it's an old article from Esquire [laughs] called "I Think You're Fat" by a friend of mine, A.J. Jacobs.

    14. MBDr. Martha Beck43:59

        [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss43:59

        And it's about his experiments with rad- radical candor.

    16. MBDr. Martha Beck44:03

        [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss44:04

        [laughs] And his wife was like, "How do I look in this?" And he's like, "I think you're fat," and it-

    18. MBDr. Martha Beck44:07

        Oh my God. [laughs]

    19. TFTim Ferriss44:08

        You can imagine it didn't go super well.

    20. MBDr. Martha Beck44:11

        Oh, goodness.

    21. TFTim Ferriss44:12

        He learned a lot, but ultimately it was, it was a pretty tough experiment. So what would you suggest to people? And what is an integrity cleanse and what's the kind of like white belt, blue belt, black belt version or however you would like to answer that?

    22. MBDr. Martha Beck44:26

        Let's do the white belt r- first. Take a smaller time period. I said a year. Take three days a week. And you don't have to say everything you think.

    23. TFTim Ferriss44:38

        [laughs]

    24. MBDr. Martha Beck44:39

        But you do have to be aware when you're saying something that you don't believe. So have a little journal or something so that you can, when you lie to someone else to... A- and most lies are told to smooth social interactions.

    25. TFTim Ferriss44:55

        For sure.

    26. MBDr. Martha Beck44:55

        [laughs] Nobody says, "You look fat."

    27. TFTim Ferriss44:58

        [laughs]

    28. MBDr. Martha Beck45:00

        [laughs] So just note in a little book, "Okay, I said this, but what did I really... What was I actually thinking?" So somebody said to me, "Oh, we'd love you to come out and visit," and I said, "Sure, sometime."

    29. TFTim Ferriss45:16

        [laughs]

    30. MBDr. Martha Beck45:16

        But, but you write down, "Okay, that was a lie. I would rather die a thousand times than go to stay with these people." Whatever. Write the truth down in your little notebook for yourself. That's the path of the truth. Everything else is the path of not there. It's just mushy. And I, I wrote a whole book on this based on The Divine Comedy because Dante starts that book just saying, "In the middle of my life, I found myself just wandering through this horrible, dark wilderness, and I had no idea how I got there or where to go because I'd lost the true path." And then he shows how you find the true path. So most of us are doing that, and the way you find the true path is to start writing down the things that are true after you've said the things that are not true. Just do that for three days. That's the white belt.
11. 47:06 – 51:24

    Owning your right to say "No."

    1. TFTim Ferriss47:06

       [laughs] All right, so quick tactical question for people who want to maybe get somewhere between the blue and black. Right?

    2. MBDr. Martha Beck47:15

       Yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss47:15

       So they're gonna make an attempt at fewer lies, more truth. So not just becoming aware of it, but actually changing some behavior.

    4. MBDr. Martha Beck47:23

       Yeah.

    5. TFTim Ferriss47:24

       You mentioned offensive, you mentioned rigorous. Somebody who is being truthful is going to say no-

    6. MBDr. Martha Beck47:30

       Mm-hmm

    7. TFTim Ferriss47:31

       ... in some form a lot more than someone who's being untruthful.

    8. MBDr. Martha Beck47:34

       A lot more.

    9. TFTim Ferriss47:36

       What are some of your go-to phrases or language that you like to use-

    10. MBDr. Martha Beck47:43

        Hmm

    11. TFTim Ferriss47:43

        ... that is not the equivalent of, "I think you're fat"?

    12. MBDr. Martha Beck47:46

        [laughs]

    13. TFTim Ferriss47:46

        Maybe it is. In terms of saying no to the many things that would otherwise consume your time and your life.

    14. MBDr. Martha Beck47:55

        Most people, when they wanna say no and they don't know how to say it, will try to become victimy and say, "I can't because of this, this, and this," which is horrible because the person always thinks of a way out of those things.

    15. TFTim Ferriss48:06

        [laughs]

    16. MBDr. Martha Beck48:07

        I love this quote from Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, where he plans... His wife says, "Don't go to the, the Senate. I had a horrible nightmare you're gonna get stabbed." So the guy comes to get him, and he says, "Go tell the council Caesar will not come. That I cannot is false. That I dare not, falser still. No, go tell the council Caesar will not come." Boom. Like, that is my model.

    17. TFTim Ferriss48:36

        [laughs]

    18. MBDr. Martha Beck48:36

        And there have been really good studies that show that to get out of depression, one study had control group- A group that had therapy, a group that had meds, and a group that did nothing but eliminate the words, "I can't" and "I have to" from their responses.

    19. TFTim Ferriss48:51

        Hmm.

    20. MBDr. Martha Beck48:51

        Instead, they had to say, "I choose not to, I choose to, I will, I won't." And they came out of their depression faster than any of the other groups.

    21. TFTim Ferriss49:00

        Hmm.

    22. MBDr. Martha Beck49:01

        Every verbal thing we say that is not true hurts-

    23. TFTim Ferriss49:04

        Mm

    24. MBDr. Martha Beck49:04

        ... our bodies, hurts our psyches, and leads us to anxiety and depression. So in that case, keep a book that says... You'll have to deal with the people who don't like you saying no. I've lost a lot of friends this way, [laughs] friends that perhaps needed losing. But I always say, just think, know what you really know about something. Okay. Feel what you really feel. Say what you really mean, at least to yourself in your notebook, and then do what you really want. And that sounds so self-serving, but in fact, it's quite stoical. I know you follow the stoics and the hedonists, they were weirdly similar. Like, they'll do what is true because it's more felicitous to them in every way. So have a notebook where you write down what you would do if you were being really honest, and then after a while, once you know what you're dealing with, start to become that person in the way you actually conduct your life. And as you make mistakes and as you don't keep your commitments, forgive yourself. 'Cause one of the things I've found is that it's never true to hate yourself or to condemn yourself. It's never true.

    25. TFTim Ferriss50:22

        What do you mean by that?

    26. MBDr. Martha Beck50:24

        We are such little monkeys, you know? I just, I just got back from Costa Rica and we had a fabulous monkey encounter, and they had this fear expression, "Ah, oh!"

    27. TFTim Ferriss50:36

        [laughs]

    28. MBDr. Martha Beck50:36

        And, and they were afraid of so many things and I just thought, "We are this far from them. All we've got is shoes to differentiate us from them." [laughs] And we're terrified of everything all the time, and most of us are really doing our best, and we have all kinds of socialization weirdness, and we ra- our brains get reconditioned and rewired for fear. If you're not in integrity and you didn't manage to pull it off and be honest in a hard situation, kindness and gentleness are the truth. And that's... I actually wrote a book that's coming out next year after I wrote The Way of Integrity, 'cause I was so tough on myself in the integrity thing, and it was making people anxious. And there's a level beyond just telling the truth, and it is called compassion

12. 51:24 – 55:05

    Alternatives to "No" that remain honest.

    1. MBDr. Martha Beck51:25

       and it's truer.

    2. TFTim Ferriss51:27

       Forgive me while I get really nitty-gritty-

    3. MBDr. Martha Beck51:32

       Oh, please

    4. TFTim Ferriss51:32

       ... with maybe a mundane question, but it's, it's building on what we were just talking about. And I'll give an example.

    5. MBDr. Martha Beck51:39

       Hmm.

    6. TFTim Ferriss51:39

       So w- we were first corresponding via email-

    7. MBDr. Martha Beck51:42

       Yeah

    8. TFTim Ferriss51:43

       ... and I was exploring the potential for maybe doing something in person.

    9. MBDr. Martha Beck51:48

       Mm-hmm.

    10. TFTim Ferriss51:48

        And, which is not to say you didn't want to do that, but the logistics weren't gonna work out.

    11. MBDr. Martha Beck51:53

        Right.

    12. TFTim Ferriss51:53

        And you had a line that was something along the lines of, "I would love to do in person, but I can't due to life Tetris." Something like that. And I was like-

    13. MBDr. Martha Beck52:03

        Yeah

    14. TFTim Ferriss52:03

        ... "Life Tetris. Due to life Tetris. That is a good phrase I am gonna steal."

    15. MBDr. Martha Beck52:07

        [laughs]

    16. TFTim Ferriss52:08

        And so I am wondering-

    17. MBDr. Martha Beck52:10

        You can't steal it 'cause I give it to you freely.

    18. TFTim Ferriss52:12

        Oh, thank you. I will gratefully receive this phrase. I'm wondering if, let's just say, hypothetical example, really close friend of yours and his wife... So a male friend. His wife invites you to a costume party on a Thursday night.

    19. MBDr. Martha Beck52:31

        Hmm.

    20. TFTim Ferriss52:31

        And in your mind you're like, "I would rather throw myself face first through a plate glass window-

    21. MBDr. Martha Beck52:36

        [laughs]

    22. TFTim Ferriss52:36

        ... than go to a costume party on a Thursday night," for any number of reasons, right?

    23. MBDr. Martha Beck52:40

        Uh-huh.

    24. TFTim Ferriss52:40

        Like, perfectly nice person. You do not wanna go to this thing. But you know it would be meaningful to her, you know it would therefore be meaningful to the husband who might have to deal with some flak. Who knows? Like-

    25. MBDr. Martha Beck52:54

        Hmm

    26. TFTim Ferriss52:54

        ... back channel if you say no, yada, yada, yada-

    27. MBDr. Martha Beck52:56

        Yeah, yeah

    28. TFTim Ferriss52:57

        ... but you really don't wanna go. What do you say?

    29. MBDr. Martha Beck53:00

        I would say something like, "What else could we do together?"

    30. TFTim Ferriss53:04

        Hmm.
13. 55:05 – 57:42

    The language of candor.

    1. MBDr. Martha Beck55:05

       So that was the track.

    2. TFTim Ferriss55:06

       Mm-hmm. Got it.

    3. MBDr. Martha Beck55:07

       And it was a little awkward, but it worked.

    4. TFTim Ferriss55:09

       Mm-hmm. This is the last time, I won't beat this dead horse any further, but any other language that you find helpful? For somebody, for people who have trouble saying no, is there any, like, starter language where you're like, "Try this on for size"?

    5. MBDr. Martha Beck55:20

       For some reason, when you said any other language, [laughs] I literally thought of Chinese. [laughs]

    6. TFTim Ferriss55:25

       [laughs] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Just respond in a different language.

    7. MBDr. Martha Beck55:29

       Right. I don't, I don't speak language.

    8. TFTim Ferriss55:32

       What?

    9. MBDr. Martha Beck55:32

       [speaks foreign language] Um, so... [laughs] I remember-

    10. TFTim Ferriss55:40

        Oh

    11. MBDr. Martha Beck55:40

        ... the most awkward... Oh, Tim, when I was freaking out about my family and my, oh, the sexual abuse and everything, my mother called me and said, "We hadn't s- we haven't seen you for a while. We'd really li- we miss you," and I had just taken this pledge, and I said to her, "I miss the concept of having parents." [laughs]

    12. TFTim Ferriss55:59

        Oh, wow. [laughs]

    13. MBDr. Martha Beck56:01

        Because it was the truest thing I could say. Whoa.

    14. TFTim Ferriss56:04

        Return volley strong. Yeah. [laughs]

    15. MBDr. Martha Beck56:05

        Yeah, but I didn't wanna hurt her, I just, I was... I had to tell the truth because that light was still, like, right there-

    16. TFTim Ferriss56:12

        Yeah

    17. MBDr. Martha Beck56:12

        ... and I hadn't gotten any experience being skillful.

    18. TFTim Ferriss56:16

        Yeah.

    19. MBDr. Martha Beck56:17

        Here's another bit of language: know what you really know and feel what you really feel.

    20. TFTim Ferriss56:20

        Mm-hmm.

    21. MBDr. Martha Beck56:20

        So for me, it might be something like, "Ugh, you know what? Lunch sounds great. Breakfast is just too early for me. I'd be miserable."

    22. TFTim Ferriss56:29

        Mm-hmm.

    23. MBDr. Martha Beck56:29

        That's just the truth. I'm not being a victim.

    24. TFTim Ferriss56:32

        Mm-hmm.

    25. MBDr. Martha Beck56:32

        I'm just telling them the truth. I'm not a morning person. So you sort of claim your right to joy.

    26. TFTim Ferriss56:39

        Mm-hmm.

    27. MBDr. Martha Beck56:40

        And you make it really clear that you want them to have joy, and you expect yourself to have joy, and no one has to keep secrets or cross boundaries that are hurtful in order to make the other person feel good, because that's not true, and a relationship built on that isn't a real relationship. It'll fall apart. There's so much manipulation going on where people are pretending to do things that each other like, and both of them are miserable.

    28. TFTim Ferriss57:07

        [laughs] Yeah. There was a piece in, I think it was McSweeney's. No, well, there was a tweet, and then there was an actual written piece that sort of resembled this, but it [laughs] said, "Being an adult..." This was a tweet. I wish I had the attribution. [laughs] "Being an adult is, is saying so sorry for getting back to you so late over and over again until both of you die." [laughs]

    29. MBDr. Martha Beck57:31

        [laughs]

    30. TFTim Ferriss57:31

        Something like that. [laughs] Sorry for the delayed response.
14. 57:42 – 58:59

    Ending relationships that have run their course.

    1. TFTim Ferriss57:42

       Yeah, The New Yorker.

    2. MBDr. Martha Beck57:43

       Yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss57:43

       That's an amazing piece. So when there is someone where you're like, "You know what? This is just not a relationship I want-"

    4. MBDr. Martha Beck57:48

       Yeah

    5. TFTim Ferriss57:49

       ... in my life-"

    6. MBDr. Martha Beck57:50

       Yeah

    7. TFTim Ferriss57:50

       ... how do you break up with those people?

    8. MBDr. Martha Beck57:53

       You do what you really want to do.

    9. TFTim Ferriss57:55

       Mm-hmm.

    10. MBDr. Martha Beck57:56

        Like, I remember I had one friend, she wanted to come stay with me. I didn't want her to come.

    11. TFTim Ferriss58:01

        Mm.

    12. MBDr. Martha Beck58:02

        And I remember saying, "Let me think about it," and then we had a conversation later where she was very, very upset, and she said, "You, you paused, and you had to think about it, and we were friends," and like... And I said, "Yeah, that's... Sometimes I have to think about it." And she said, "Well, is it, is it that you had something else going on, or did you really not want me there?" And I was, like, pinned to the wall, and it was physically painful to speak the truth, but it would've been more painful not to. So I said-

    13. TFTim Ferriss58:33

        Yeah

    14. MBDr. Martha Beck58:33

        ... "Yeah, I really, I wasn't in a place where, where our energies were gonna work well together. I just did not feel like it would be good for either one of us."

    15. TFTim Ferriss58:41

        Hmm.

    16. MBDr. Martha Beck58:42

        And that, you know, after a while, a few of those, and they'll break up with you, I promise.

    17. TFTim Ferriss58:47

        [laughs] Right.

    18. MBDr. Martha Beck58:49

        You just tell the truth, and people go away. [laughs]

    19. TFTim Ferriss58:55

        [laughs]

    20. MBDr. Martha Beck58:55

        That's joy. [laughs]

15. 58:59 – 1:03:08

    The Asian influence.

    1. TFTim Ferriss58:59

       All right. So I am gonna ask you about anxiety. I wanna ask quite a few questions about that. Before we get to that, so you-

    2. MBDr. Martha Beck59:05

       Mm

    3. TFTim Ferriss59:05

       ... had some Mandarin pop up. I feel like we should give people a little bit of context. So you've lived in Asia.

    4. MBDr. Martha Beck59:13

       Mm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss59:13

       You've studied not just E- East Asian languages, but also philosophies. So this, this is a very... [laughs] This is just a, a sidebar that I thought you might find entertaining, which is I was in Greece many, many, many years ago.

    6. MBDr. Martha Beck59:32

       Mm-hmm.

    7. TFTim Ferriss59:32

       And when something is completely foreign, alien, unintelligible in English, you say, "Well, it's all Greek to me."

    8. MBDr. Martha Beck59:38

       Ah.

    9. TFTim Ferriss59:38

       And then I realized, well, if you're a Greek person, in Greek you see something you don't understand, you can't say, "It's all Greek to me," because that's your native language, so what do you guys say? And they're like-

    10. MBDr. Martha Beck59:50

        Ooh

    11. TFTim Ferriss59:50

        ... "Oh, yeah, good question. "" which is, "It's all Chinese to me." So if you're Greek-

    12. MBDr. Martha Beck59:57

        Ah

    13. TFTim Ferriss59:57

        ... it's all Chinese to me, which I thought was great. Uh... [laughs]

    14. MBDr. Martha Beck1:00:02

        [laughs] That's fabulous.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:00:04

        How has your experience with Asia, Asian languages, philosophies influenced who you are or what you do-

    16. MBDr. Martha Beck1:00:14

        Hmm

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:00:14

        ... let's just say, in a coaching capacity?

    18. MBDr. Martha Beck1:00:17

        Yeah. This was before I had kids or any of the other stuff happened. I went over and spent a year studying Chinese at a research center in Singapore, and then I worked in Japan and studied that for a while. And I wasn't particularly interested at the time in the philosophy, in the deeper wisdom of the Asian cultures. I just saw people offering oranges at little stands on the road and thought, "Oh, that's weird."

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:00:45

        [laughs]

    20. MBDr. Martha Beck1:00:46

        Then I, then I went back to Harvard. So I did my junior year in Singapore, and I went back to Harvard, and I remember sitting in classes and thinking Why do you people assume so much? Like, you just assume so much. You-- Like, there's this edifice of stuff you believe that I see no evidence for. And as I went on studying the languages and philosophies of Asia, they have a very-- they have a reverse idea of perfection. So in the monotheistic Western religions, you are born imperfect. You're an imperfect, original sinning mess, and your job is to get better and better and more God-like until you can be God-like. You have to get better and better and learn more and more. In Asia, the idea is you're formed completely perfect, and you accrue illusions as you grow up. So a baby comes in completely innocent and sees that people react nicely when the baby smiles, and they don't like it when the baby cries, and suddenly they start betraying themselves by smiling when they wanna cry. That's the dawn of the loss of integrity, and everyone does it. We're a social species. But in Asia, when you set out to be free from suffering, you drop your illusions. So, like the illusion, "I should be cheerful all the time," if it causes suffering, it has to go. In the Tao Te Ching, my very favorite book, it says, "In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the pursuit of enlightenment, or the Tao, every day something is dropped, so you know less and less until you arrive at non-action. And when nothing is done, nothing remains undone." I remember thinking, "That is so cool, but I don't know why."

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:02:43

        [laughs]

    22. MBDr. Martha Beck1:02:45

        [laughs] That was even before the white light and everything. I was already sort of on that path. And now everything appears to me to be illusion. All my thoughts are illusion. And truth is something that I can feel or participate in as consciousness, but I've just, just been dropping and dropping and dropping my illusions, and I try to do that every day.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:03:06

        Hmm. So we've been

16. 1:03:08 – 1:04:19

    Sweet or savory?

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:03:09

       jointly baking a nice conversational cake. I just wanna put a little icing on top, and then we're gonna segue to anxiety. [laughs]

    2. MBDr. Martha Beck1:03:15

       [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:03:15

       And then we're gonna make, who knows, like a meringue pie or a key lime pie maybe, a carrot cake perhaps out of anxiety.

    4. MBDr. Martha Beck1:03:21

       [laughs]

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:03:23

       [laughs]

    6. MBDr. Martha Beck1:03:23

       You would probably go on The Great British Baking Show and outbake everyone in Britain.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:03:28

       [laughs] Well, you know, sometimes when kids go through or, or people go through culinary school and they're trying to decide on the sweet or the savory path. So do you become a chef or are you gonna become a pastry chef?

    8. MBDr. Martha Beck1:03:39

       Mm-hmm.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:03:40

       Sweet or savory? And for people who are having a tough time deciding, I remember hearing when I was working on 4-Hour Chef, someone who was involved in one of these very, very well-known schools said, "Well, one question we sometimes ask these students is, 'Do you fold your socks? Do you have them in neat rows in a shelf?' If so, maybe sweet and baking is for you," because it's so OCD-friendly and-

    10. MBDr. Martha Beck1:04:07

        Really?

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:04:07

        ... precision-oriented.

    12. MBDr. Martha Beck1:04:09

        Oh, wow.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:04:09

        So yes. Based on that at least, I would find baking very satisfying.

    14. MBDr. Martha Beck1:04:13

        I love that. I wanna eat what you bake. [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:04:16

        [laughs] You know, there may be a day.

17. 1:04:19 – 1:06:13

    Are you comfortable?

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:04:19

       So the first is a story that I would love you to tell, and tell me if this is enough of a prompt. So it's a story of an audience.

    2. MBDr. Martha Beck1:04:27

       Mm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:04:27

       You're on stage. Are you comfortable? This is the question.

    4. MBDr. Martha Beck1:04:30

       Oh, yeah.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:04:30

       Could you tell this, please?

    6. MBDr. Martha Beck1:04:32

       I do this over and over.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:04:33

       [laughs]

    8. MBDr. Martha Beck1:04:34

       I speak in various places, ballrooms and theaters and places. And I'll be talking about how to do better at work, whatever I've been hired to talk about, and right in the middle I'll stop and say, "Wait, wait. Is everyone comfortable?" And they all look at me as if I'm crazy. And I say, "No, seriously. Are you really comfortable?" And they start to say, "Yes, we're fine. Go on." I'm like, "No, I mean it. Are you really comfortable?" And the whole audience will get quite angry, "Yes, we're comfortable. Just talk." And then I ask them, "Okay, so now answer this question. If you were home alone in your bedroom right now, how many of you would be sitting in exactly the position you're in at this moment?" And maybe one hand goes up in a room full of hundreds of people. And then I say to them, "Why would you be in a different position?" And they literally have to think. And then it comes to them after about five seconds. [laughs] "This isn't comfortable."

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:05:34

       [laughs]

    10. MBDr. Martha Beck1:05:34

        And then I say, "It's okay that you're not comfortable because we can han- We're tough. We're a tough species. We're tolerating discomfort so we can be together in this way. But I do have a problem with the fact that you all just looked me in the eye in clear daylight and repeatedly lied to me, and you thought you were telling the truth, but you knew you were lying."

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:05:57

        [laughs]

    12. MBDr. Martha Beck1:05:57

        And they, they're like, "What? What?"

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:05:59

        [laughs]

    14. MBDr. Martha Beck1:06:00

        I'm like, "Your body is telling you the truth." That's how cut off we are from our bodies, and that's why that's the first thing you know. The first thing you ask yourself when you need to know the truth is, "Am I comfortable?" That'll give

18. 1:06:13 – 1:20:42

    Want vs. yearning and jumping the track.

    1. MBDr. Martha Beck1:06:13

       you everything else.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:06:14

       Mm-hmm. All right. That would be the icing, and there's the cherry on top.

    3. MBDr. Martha Beck1:06:18

       [laughs]

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:06:20

       I'd love for you to expand on a question and-- because these, these words will be words people recognize, but I think the context, I would like to hear more about the context.

    5. MBDr. Martha Beck1:06:30

       Mm-hmm.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:06:30

       What do you want versus what do you yearn for?

    7. MBDr. Martha Beck1:06:32

       Mm.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:06:33

       And that may not be the exact wording that you used, but-

    9. MBDr. Martha Beck1:06:35

       No, it is.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:06:36

        Okay. What is the significance of that question?

    11. MBDr. Martha Beck1:06:39

        It's interesting that you made the comment about is it the exact language. That's one of the few places where I'm very exacting about language because somehow we divide that conceptually when we use language. I ask people what they want, they make me a list of things, a better job, a better relationship, a better car, whatever. And then I say, "When you wake up at night and it's dark and there's no one around, what do you yearn for?" And the list is completely different, and it's very short, and almost everyone lists the same things. Peace, belonging, freedom, love, happiness. That's kind of it. Everybody wants them. And all the lists of things they want, those are all-- I call it the difference between your social self and your essential self. The essential self yearns, the social self wants.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:07:38

        Hmm.

    13. MBDr. Martha Beck1:07:38

        And the stuff you want, you've gotten a lot of stuff you wanted.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:07:43

        [laughs]

    15. MBDr. Martha Beck1:07:44

        It's not the sa- it doesn't make you happy.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:07:46

        Yeah.

    17. MBDr. Martha Beck1:07:47

        Nice.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:07:47

        [laughs] It's nice. It's true.

    19. MBDr. Martha Beck1:07:50

        But if you get what you yearn for, it actually does make you happy.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:07:55

        All right, I can't take the-- I can't resist the bait here.

    21. MBDr. Martha Beck1:07:57

        [laughs]

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:07:59

        So when you have something like a car-

    23. MBDr. Martha Beck1:08:01

        Mm-hmm

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:08:01

        ... right? Okay. So and so wants, you know, the newest Tesla model.

    25. MBDr. Martha Beck1:08:08

        Mm-hmm.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:08:09

        So and so wants the XYZ car. It's very cleanly discrete in the sense that it costs $88,000. I can finance it for this much a month.

    27. MBDr. Martha Beck1:08:20

        Right.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:08:20

        Therefore, I know how much I need to work to earn a bonus, to get this, to do that. It's actionable in a convenient way-

    29. MBDr. Martha Beck1:08:27

        Yeah

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:08:27

        ... kinda like the dru- drunk guy looking for his keys under the-
19. 1:20:42 – 1:22:06

    Rhino ruminations.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:20:42

       to two places. One is gonna be a complete non-sequitur, but just for purposes of trivia, I want to tell s- people something about rhinos. So you mentioned rhinos and the toe of the rhino. Part of the reason as, as you alluded to, rhinos are a good starter animal-

    2. MBDr. Martha Beck1:21:01

       Mm-hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:21:01

       ... for tracking, at least in South Africa, where you and I were in the Sabi Sands Reserve at different times with Londolozi, which coincidentally means the protector of all things.

    4. MBDr. Martha Beck1:21:12

       Yeah.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:21:12

       I believe it's in Zulu. It has this large front toe. You can imagine it like the edge of your big toe toenail, and then-

    6. MBDr. Martha Beck1:21:20

       Yeah

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:21:20

       ... there are these two side toes. And I mean, it just goes back to Pangea and all... It raises all sorts of great questions.

    8. MBDr. Martha Beck1:21:28

       So weird.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:21:29

       But it's so weird. So there are... There is an order called Perissodactyla-

    10. MBDr. Martha Beck1:21:35

        Hmm

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:21:35

        ... which is an order of ungulates, so you could think elk, deer-

    12. MBDr. Martha Beck1:21:40

        Sure

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:21:40

        ... et cetera. The order includes about 17 living species divided into three families.

    14. MBDr. Martha Beck1:21:46

        Mm-hmm.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:21:46

        You have Equidae, which comes back to the equine therapy maybe at some point.

    16. MBDr. Martha Beck1:21:50

        Oh, yeah.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:21:50

        That's horses, asses, and zebras.

    18. MBDr. Martha Beck1:21:52

        [laughs]

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:21:53

        Rhinos and tapirs, which you find-

    20. MBDr. Martha Beck1:21:56

        Uh-huh

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:21:56

        ... in South America.

    22. MBDr. Martha Beck1:21:57

        Oh, cool.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:21:58

        So those are all related, which is pretty wild to think about.

    24. MBDr. Martha Beck1:22:01

        Wow.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:22:01

        Rhinos, tapirs, and say zebras or horses.

    26. MBDr. Martha Beck1:22:05

        Hmm.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:22:05

        But if you look

20. 1:22:06 – 1:34:20

    The Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell, and Byron Katie.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:22:06

       at the tracks, I mean, there are some, some similarities. So I just wanted to mention that-

    2. MBDr. Martha Beck1:22:09

       Cool

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:22:09

       ... briefly because it was just, it needed to get out of my head. And then the second is related to a book you mentioned earlier, the Tao Te Ching.

    4. MBDr. Martha Beck1:22:18

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:22:18

       And I was wondering if you could speak to Stephen Mitchell-

    6. MBDr. Martha Beck1:22:25

       Hmm

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:22:25

       ... and Byron Katie, and what you have learned from them. It could be related to integrity. It could be related to other things. But what have you modeled from them or learned from them?

    8. MBDr. Martha Beck1:22:39

       Oh. Speaking of the concept of having parents, I mean, they're friends more than parents, but I really do feel like they've kind of re-parented me with their books mainly.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:22:49

       Mm-hmm.

    10. MBDr. Martha Beck1:22:50

        I, I read Stephen's version of the Tao Te Ching right around the time I had the white light experience. That's when it was first published, and it was such an intense... I had... It was like my nervous system caught fire when I read that version, and I'd read other versions and they weren't... They didn't float my boat as much. But I actually was... I... There was so much energy in my body that I felt like I was going to literally physically explode.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:23:16

        [laughs]

    12. MBDr. Martha Beck1:23:17

        And I drove to a place where I knew I could hike to a waterfall.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:23:21

        I thought you were gonna say safely explode. Gotta hike to a... [laughs]

    14. MBDr. Martha Beck1:23:24

        I literally ran along this mountain path to this large-ish waterfall, ran under the waterfall and just stood there, and then the cold water beating down on me equaled the sort of heat that was rising. I, I mean, my c- connection to that book was so overwhelming, and I know it's been powerful for a lot of people. So I memorized it, took it around, gave it to everyone I knew. Then I was on a book tour and I saw this book by a woman named Byron Katie, and it said with a foreword by Stephen Mitchell. Never would've looked at it if I hadn't seen that.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:24:02

        Hmm.

    16. MBDr. Martha Beck1:24:02

        And then I found out on the book leaf that they were married, and I was like, "Wow, okay. Now I'm interested."

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:24:09

        Wow.

    18. MBDr. Martha Beck1:24:09

        So I bought the book, got on a plane, read the book. And she had this, a series of four questions, which are very simple. Think of a thought that makes you upset. Is it true? Can you know that it's true? What happens when you think it? Who would you be without it? It seemed very, very simple, and I applied it. I started applying it, and there on the plane, I had a, an injury on my knee, and my thought was, "I'm mad at my knee 'cause it won't let me work out." And Katie has this way of reversing everything that's causing you suffering. After reading her stuff and doing her work forever, I actually believe that the direct verbal opposite of your worst fear is your next step toward enlightenment. I truly believe that.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:24:55

        Okay. Can you say that one more time? So I have some familiarity with her workshops and worksheets and-

    20. MBDr. Martha Beck1:25:01

        Yeah

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:25:01

        ... just for people who wanna find this, they can find The Work by Byron Katie online.

    22. MBDr. Martha Beck1:25:06

        Yeah. It's called The Work of Byron Katie, and you can go online and download free things.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:25:10

        Yeah.

    24. MBDr. Martha Beck1:25:10

        And she's very generous with it.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:25:13

        So could you say that one more time because this seems like an important point.

    26. MBDr. Martha Beck1:25:16

        Yeah. It will sound odd if you haven't been doing The Work for a long time, but this is what I've realized. The exact verbal opposite of my worst fear. So the opposite. Take your worst fear, find the direct opposite of that.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:25:32

        Mm.

    28. MBDr. Martha Beck1:25:32

        That is your next step toward enlightenment. So for example, when I wrote my book about Mormons, and I said to the publisher, "Don't tell anyone until it's published," and they said, [laughs] "You're afraid of the Mormons, how cute." Then the galleys went out and I started getting calls from New York. "Why didn't you tell us? These people are insane. We're all gonna die." You mess with a religion, you get some weird responses.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:25:58

        Yeah.

    30. MBDr. Martha Beck1:25:58

        So I'm on this... This is a different time. I'm on this plane again and I'm thinking-
21. 1:34:20 – 1:37:29

    America's Goethe?

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:34:20

       So let's chat about another great for a second. Goethe.

    2. MBDr. Martha Beck1:34:24

       [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:34:25

       The German writer, innovator, polymath of every possible variety. I'm wondering why, what you find most striking about Goethe. There are a couple of quotes that-

    4. MBDr. Martha Beck1:34:40

       Mm

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:34:40

       ... popped up that I think may resonate with you, that I think you've mentioned in, in, in, uh, conversations before. But, "When you trust yourself, you will know how to live." That's one.

    6. MBDr. Martha Beck1:34:50

       Right.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:34:51

       Another, "Never hurry, never cease."

    8. MBDr. Martha Beck1:34:53

       Yeah.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:34:53

       That's one I've heard permutations of in Buddhism as well, right?

    10. MBDr. Martha Beck1:34:57

        Yeah.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:34:57

        "No hurry, no pause," all these things, which I quite like. Any others that come to mind or any aspects?

    12. MBDr. Martha Beck1:35:03

        From Goethe himself?

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:35:04

        Yes.

    14. MBDr. Martha Beck1:35:04

        [sighs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:35:06

        Or anything. I mean, it doesn't need to be specifically to... We can, we can meander as we want to meander.

    16. MBDr. Martha Beck1:35:12

        I love the stuff about self-trust, and I, I'm blanking actually, which I rarely do. All I can think about is Faust now.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:35:20

        Mm-hmm.

    18. MBDr. Martha Beck1:35:20

        And you know how he talks about the bargain with the devil. I think we all make a bargain with the devil metaphorically because we're forced to confront the question, will we do what it takes to be admired and approved of by humans, or will we follow the soul? Will we trust ourselves, or will we trust what other people want us to be? So the Faustian bargain is the only thing that's really coming to mind right now.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:35:49

        Yeah. Yeah.

    20. MBDr. Martha Beck1:35:49

        Is Goethe a particular favorite of yours?

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:35:52

        I have a collection of aphorisms and lived in Berlin for a period of time, became really infatuated by Goethe just because... And for those wondering what the hell we're talking about, lots of different pronunciations in English, but G-O-E-T-H-E. There's the Goethe-Institut, and it's certainly... I don't know if it'd be fair to call him, like, the, the Shakespeare plus-

    22. MBDr. Martha Beck1:36:18

        Mm

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:36:18

        ... of Germany, but that's one way to think about-

    24. MBDr. Martha Beck1:36:22

        I know why you're into him.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:36:24

        Tell me.

    26. MBDr. Martha Beck1:36:24

        He's just like you.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:36:26

        He's just like me?

    28. MBDr. Martha Beck1:36:27

        Yeah. I mean, there aren't many people like you.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:36:29

        Bald and handsome?

    30. MBDr. Martha Beck1:36:30

        [laughs] There s- there really aren't.
22. 1:37:29 – 1:46:04

    Weighing kryptonite against superpowers.

    1. MBDr. Martha Beck1:37:29

       There you go.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:37:30

       Thank you. No, I appreciate that. That is, that is high praise. I would say for a multitude of reasons, definitely feeling lonely. I mean, that's something I'm familiar with-

    3. MBDr. Martha Beck1:37:37

       Hmm

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:37:37

       ... for sure. I do have different hardware. I'd say that they're, it manifests in maybe unpredictable ways. I did a bunch of cognitive assessments recently because that's kind of a thing that I-

    5. MBDr. Martha Beck1:37:50

       Oh, really?

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:37:50

       ... that's the kind of thing that I do. And for instance, for digit recall, just doing five- and six-digit recall.

    7. MBDr. Martha Beck1:37:59

       Uh-huh.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:38:00

       When I don't have the ability, I don't have the time to use a crutch of, say, a mnemonic-

    9. MBDr. Martha Beck1:38:05

       Mm-hmm

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:38:05

        ... I am terrible. I'm, like, lowest decile in the US-

    11. MBDr. Martha Beck1:38:10

        Hmm

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:38:10

        ... for sure. Like, lowest, bottom 10%.

    13. MBDr. Martha Beck1:38:13

        Ha.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:38:13

        But then there are other things, like the Stroop test, where you're looking at, say, the word "red" but it's displayed in green and you-

    15. MBDr. Martha Beck1:38:20

        Right

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:38:20

        ... have to either indicate red or green depending on some parameter, and it's very fast.

    17. MBDr. Martha Beck1:38:25

        Yeah.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:38:25

        Stroop test, I'm like top 1%.

    19. MBDr. Martha Beck1:38:27

        Amazing.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:38:27

        I have no idea why. I don't know what that translates to. [laughs] It kinda goes on and on. There are super abilities and super weaknesses.

    21. MBDr. Martha Beck1:38:38

        Oh, tell me. This is fascinating.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:38:41

        I mean, they're very, in my experience, often right side by side. They're very adjacent, right? So I would say I can f- or you can see how this would cut both ways. I can walk into a room, I was doing a remodel at one point, for instance-

    23. MBDr. Martha Beck1:39:00

        Mm-hmm

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:39:00

        ... and I'd never seen this, this entire room built, and I walked in and there was a mirror 10 feet away.

    25. MBDr. Martha Beck1:39:07

        Mm-hmm.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:39:07

        And I said, "It's an eighth, it's an eighth of an inch too far to the left."

    27. MBDr. Martha Beck1:39:10

        Hmm.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:39:10

        Like, talking about symmetry. I was like, "It's an eighth of an inch too far to the left," and they're like, "What?"

    29. MBDr. Martha Beck1:39:13

        [laughs]

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:39:14

        And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, it's not centered." And [laughs] they went over and measured it and lo and behold, [laughs] you know? Within a fraction of a second I was like, "Yeah, that's off."
23. 1:46:04 – 1:55:03

    Exploring the opposite of anxiety.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:46:04

       and hypervigilance.

    2. MBDr. Martha Beck1:46:05

       Yeah, I'm the same way.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:46:06

       And there are times certainly when I would trade it all-

    4. MBDr. Martha Beck1:46:14

       Hmm

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:46:14

       ... for the ability to get to sleep easily, the ability to look at the glass as half full instead of half empty. I mean, there are times when I'm like, "You know what? I'm not sure-"

    6. MBDr. Martha Beck1:46:26

       Yeah.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:46:26

       "... right now if someone was like, 'Here's your list of abilities and disabilities, and if you strike out one, you have to strike out something from the other column,' like, I might, I might erase a number of things."

    8. MBDr. Martha Beck1:46:38

       Yeah.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:46:39

       Arrived at a good place. I feel that a number of recent experiments have been particularly interesting, but-

    10. MBDr. Martha Beck1:46:47

        Mm

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:46:47

        ... I'd love to hear from you. This stuck out. This is in some prep notes, and I'd like you to take this wherever you would like to take it. But this is a line.

    12. MBDr. Martha Beck1:46:56

        Okay.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:46:57

        I'm just gonna use it as a prompt. So the opposite of anxiety isn't calm, it's creativity.

    14. MBDr. Martha Beck1:47:02

        Yeah.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:47:03

        I like that. I've never heard it before, but there's part of me that's like, even without dissecting it, it makes some sense to me.

    16. MBDr. Martha Beck1:47:11

        Hmm.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:47:12

        Could you elaborate on that, please?

    18. MBDr. Martha Beck1:47:15

        I came to this conclusion. I was noticing this huge spike in all my clients of anxiety, and I was reading about this massive-- mostly in the pandemic, but anxiety just went bananas, and it didn't come down when things eased a little bit. And at the same time, I got to be friends with Jill Bolte Taylor, the woman who had the left hemisphere stroke when she was a Harvard neuroanatomist. It was the first TED Talk to go viral. And she lost all language and, and analytical cognition while her left hemisphere was offline. Took her eight years to rebuild her brain. But she experienced things with only the right hemisphere that she'd never experienced before, this incredible joy, bliss, awe, the feeling of being completely a field of energy, no barriers between physical objects. It was a very different view of the world. If she hadn't been a neuroanatomist, she probably would be sitting in a, you know, vegetating somewhere. But fortunately, she was among people who knew how to help her rebuild. So now she goes around telling people, "We're overusing the left hemispheres of our brains. We need to be able to access the right." And so I'd been talking to her about this endlessly. I love talking to her.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:48:30

        Mm-hmm.

    20. MBDr. Martha Beck1:48:31

        And I was reading a lot of brain science. Always have, always will. And I noticed that there were tons of studies that showed that the moment someone is even slightly stressed, their creativity goes to shit. Like, they do these creative tests, and then they say, "We'll pay you five dollars if you get the answer." Instead of motivating them, they get that little bit of anxiety, can't do it.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:48:55

        Hmm.

    22. MBDr. Martha Beck1:48:55

        All these studies showing that little kids happily create things and adults can't do the same things. Why? It always boils down to social anxiety. So there's this spaghetti and marshmallow test. Have you heard of it?

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:49:10

        This is a game of height, right?

    24. MBDr. Martha Beck1:49:11

        Yeah. You're trying to build the tallest tower possible using uncooked spaghetti, a marshmallow, some string and some tape. And they gave this problem to a whole bunch of engineers, groups of MBA students, groups of lawyers, all these people. They all had similar results. Then they gave it to a group of five-year-olds who won by a country mile.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:49:30

        [laughs]

    26. MBDr. Martha Beck1:49:30

        Five-year-olds do better by far at so many creative tests. And why do they stop doing well as they get older? It boils down to socialization and social anxiety. So then I looked at the brain structures, and what Jill told me was You basically have two brains. They're, they're symmetrical, but they don't work the same. The left hemisphere has this alarm signal that goes into fear, and then immediately the brain starts to-- the left hemisphere starts to try to control whatever's going wrong, whatever makes you afraid, and telling verbal stories about it. Problem is, the verbal stories that you tell feed back into the amygdala and as environmental reality. So if I'm afraid something's gonna jump at me from the dark, it's as if something really is going to jump at me from the dark. So when I say I'm-- I may have a fatal illness, there's no evidence, but I can literally go into a panic over that because of language. The left hemisphere is also unable or unwilling to acknowledge that the right hemisphere's perspective exists at all. Like if people have a right hemisphere stroke and they're only in the left hemisphere and you tell them to draw a clock, they'll draw the side of the clock from twelve to six and they'll say, "That's finished." And there's nothing wrong with their eyes. They will not acknowledge anything the right brain is observing. When Jill only had her right brain, zero anxiety, zero time, zero physical reality really. On the right side, the amygdala is afraid, "Ah!" But it starts to get curious. So you said something about curiosity really early on in this interview and I was like, "Oh, that's the trick." 'Cause if something scares you, if you go to control, you're in anxiety. If you go to curiosity, my mind is open, I have no assumptions, and I wanna know what this is about. Instead of anxiety, you get creativity. So it depends which side, and one side shuts off the other, so it toggles.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:51:38

        Mm-hmm.

    28. MBDr. Martha Beck1:51:39

        So when I asked you to talk about the things you love with all five senses, you had to go into the right hemisphere of the brain and it had to shut down the part of the brain that produces anxiety. That's just the machinery. So my premise was anxiety kills creativity. Maybe creativity kills anxiety. So I started designing things to test that and it tests amazingly well. [laughs] Even though I haven't seen any direct studies on it yet, if you put together the science around it, it's kind of an unavoidable conclusion and when I try it myself, oh my God, the results are ridiculously powerful.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:52:21

        What types of exercises do you do for yourself?

    30. MBDr. Martha Beck1:52:24

        Oh, for example, if you were to write your name.
24. 1:55:03 – 2:04:47

    Dick Schwartz and Internal Family Systems.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:55:03

       patterning, a different type of awareness. There are many different ways you could frame it. Gesture drawing, going to live classes where you have nude subjects posing and just in case there are a bunch of guys who are like, "Awesome." You know, you're gonna get some like obese naked dudes too.

    2. MBDr. Martha Beck1:55:20

       Yeah, it's not awesome. [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:55:21

       It's dealer's choice, so just realize you gotta be there for the drawing.

    4. MBDr. Martha Beck1:55:25

       Yes.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:55:25

       It's not a singles bar. Just for people who've never been, the way this works, gesture drawing is so-called because you're intended to capture at least the essence of a pose. The pose automatically changes with a timer.

    6. MBDr. Martha Beck1:55:38

       Yeah.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:55:38

       The timer could be one minute initially and the model will change his or her position every 60 seconds.

    8. MBDr. Martha Beck1:55:45

       Yeah.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:55:45

       And then it might go to two minutes and then to say five minutes. But- The point I wanna make is part of the beauty of this is when things are changing that quickly, I really like gesture drawing l- live classes as an introduction because you just cannot, you do not have the space to overanalyze what you're doing.

    10. MBDr. Martha Beck1:56:07

        Yes.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:56:08

        [laughs]

    12. MBDr. Martha Beck1:56:09

        You don't have time, yeah.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:56:09

        Whereas if I'm like, "Draw this apple on a table-

    14. MBDr. Martha Beck1:56:12

        Oh, no, no, no

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:56:12

        ... and you have two hours to do it," you can scrutinize and tie yourself up in knots every which way from Sunday. But if it's, if it's a pose that changes every 60 seconds, you just have to draw. And in any case, I find it so deeply therapeutic, it's unreal.

    16. MBDr. Martha Beck1:56:29

        I used to put, like, a silk scarf in front of a fan and try to draw it.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:56:35

        Oh, God, that sounds like torture, potentially. [laughs]

    18. MBDr. Martha Beck1:56:37

        No, it's like, it's heaven. Because, I mean, I had this massive depression and anxiety.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:56:43

        Yeah.

    20. MBDr. Martha Beck1:56:43

        And you know from experience, it's when you do it for the joy of it. The moment you're doing it for money, it's just work.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:56:50

        Yeah.

    22. MBDr. Martha Beck1:56:50

        The reason I went so deeply into it this last January is that I'd always been doing it for the result for a long time. I was doing it for money, I was doing it to give to some- whatever, to teach, and this was just to activate the right side of my brain. That was it. So I would just... I would be obsessed with a drawing or a painting, and when it was done, I would just throw it in a-- I don't even know where they are anymore.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:57:15

        Yeah.

    24. MBDr. Martha Beck1:57:15

        They just started littering the floor. [laughs] I was in pig heaven. And it really does. When, when I'm anxious, this is what I tell myself, "Make something."

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:57:25

        Yeah.

    26. MBDr. Martha Beck1:57:26

        Make something. You can't stay anxious if you're making something.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:57:29

        Yeah, for sure. I-- So two quick comments. The first is for people who want a great reinforcement of this, Make Good Art: A Commencement Speech by Neil Gaiman is-

    28. MBDr. Martha Beck1:57:41

        Oh, I love that

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:57:42

        ... unbelievably good. And watch the actual delivery, watch the video, because his mellifluous, dulcet tones add so much to it. His delivery is so good.

    30. MBDr. Martha Beck1:57:53

        Wow.
25. 2:04:47 – 2:07:24

    Compassion even for the self's unwanted pieces.

    1. MBDr. Martha Beck2:04:47

       So there's fear, there's avoidance, there's dread, there's catastrophizing.

    2. TFTim Ferriss2:04:53

       Yep.

    3. MBDr. Martha Beck2:04:53

       Now, what I've found is that when people talk to me about anxiety, they, they're like, "I hate it. I want to get rid of it. I'd do anything to be rid of it." So I had this theory that the part that holds the insomnia or the part that holds the anxiety or depression is a part that wants to be included. Everything wants to belong, right? So when you're saying, "Get away, I don't want you,"

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:05:22

       Mm-hmm

    5. MBDr. Martha Beck2:05:22

       ... the part of you that does insomnia and depression goes into a kind of panic because it's now being told it can't belong. You don't want it. You've rejected it. And so it ups the ante, and all it knows how to do is keep you awake and make you depressed, so it starts to spiral upwards.

    6. TFTim Ferriss2:05:40

       Mm-hmm.

    7. MBDr. Martha Beck2:05:40

       And I had this huge breakthrough when I was, I was meditating, and sometimes when I have a negative thing that won't seem to leave, I just use this little let go, let go mantra, and it wasn't letting go. And I thought, "Okay, how would Byron Katie do this?" And I said, "Let's stay." So I said to my anxiety at the time, "Stay. Don't go anywhere. Please come and sit down. Stay here. I want you exactly the way you are. I accept you exactly the way you are. I want you with me. I care about you. I care about your welfare. I want to know all about you. I want to know everything about you. Come sit by the fire with me." And in a way, it kind of-- It's what I do with every client. It's what I did with Boyd when we were getting to know each other. Sit by the fire with me and tell me your worst fears, your worst stories, 'cause I have room enough in my heart for all of them. And I said being creative is the opposite of anxiety, but you can't get to creativity if you don't start with acceptance and compassion and simple kindness toward the self, toward the parts of the self that are doing the things you can't stand.

    8. TFTim Ferriss2:06:55

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    9. MBDr. Martha Beck2:06:57

       And that was a really dramatic shift for me in my insomnia, for one thing. But in all the negatives, when I started saying, "Stay."

    10. TFTim Ferriss2:07:09

        Hmm. Love that. You know what that also makes me think? Man, oh man, is it time for me to go back and reread Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach probably.

    11. MBDr. Martha Beck2:07:20

        Yeah, it's a great book.

    12. TFTim Ferriss2:07:21

        It's probably time for me to get back on that horse too.

26. 2:07:24 – 2:12:12

    Favorite animal.

    1. MBDr. Martha Beck2:07:24

       Yeah.

    2. TFTim Ferriss2:07:25

       Ah. I love that.

    3. MBDr. Martha Beck2:07:26

       [laughs]

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:07:28

       Adela Field, do you have a favorite animal? Is there a small set of animals, birds, or otherwise where you're like, "You know what? Yeah, I do. I particularly like or find these animals interesting"?

    5. MBDr. Martha Beck2:07:42

       I do. Cheetahs.

    6. TFTim Ferriss2:07:45

       Cheetahs? All right.

    7. MBDr. Martha Beck2:07:46

       Yes. I love big cats anyway, but cheetahs are delicate and scared and skittish 'cause they're built for speed, and they're-- they have those long legs and stuff, and if a lion or a leopard or a hyena gets to them, they're toast.

    8. TFTim Ferriss2:08:00

       Toast. Yeah.

    9. MBDr. Martha Beck2:08:02

       So I had a chance to meet an orphan cheetah, an adult cheetah- And you know how animals have ener- like dogs have this energy that is just dog, like genius ener- and horses have this energy which is like, "I'm about this far away from wild, and I'm scared of everything!"

    10. TFTim Ferriss2:08:18

        Yeah.

    11. MBDr. Martha Beck2:08:18

        [laughs] And lions have this energy like serial killers, because they are, you know?

    12. TFTim Ferriss2:08:24

        Yeah.

    13. MBDr. Martha Beck2:08:25

        But cheetahs, I once [laughs] came upon a cheetah that had just... It ha- was throttling an impala, and it held on until the animal had suffocated, and then it looked up at me and it said, "Meow." [laughs]

    14. TFTim Ferriss2:08:41

        [laughs]

    15. MBDr. Martha Beck2:08:41

        So I've met this adult cheetah. The energy... Tim, you've got-

    16. TFTim Ferriss2:08:45

        Mm

    17. MBDr. Martha Beck2:08:45

        ... to meet cheetahs. They have like dog energy if you put a ton of sugar in it. They are the sweetest animals, and-

    18. TFTim Ferriss2:08:55

        Wait, what do you mean by putting a ton of sugar into it?

    19. MBDr. Martha Beck2:08:57

        They are sweet-

    20. TFTim Ferriss2:08:58

        Just throwing donuts out of the car? Oh, no. [laughs]

    21. MBDr. Martha Beck2:09:00

        Not in the rot your teeth way, but just in the, like how dogs love you?

    22. TFTim Ferriss2:09:05

        Yeah.

    23. MBDr. Martha Beck2:09:05

        Cheetahs love you twice that much.

    24. TFTim Ferriss2:09:07

        Oh, okay.

    25. MBDr. Martha Beck2:09:07

        They love each other twice that much. And it started licking my arm, and it was taking off a layer of skin with every lick, 'cause they have these really raspy tongues. I literally had a scar for months, and I don't care. It could have eaten my arm.

    26. TFTim Ferriss2:09:19

        I mean, as far as scar stories go, [laughs] that's up there with the greats. [laughs]

    27. MBDr. Martha Beck2:09:24

        [laughs]

    28. TFTim Ferriss2:09:25

        "What happened to your arm?" "Oh, nothing."

    29. MBDr. Martha Beck2:09:26

        [laughs]

    30. TFTim Ferriss2:09:27

        "Just a cheetah licked my, cheetah licked my skin off."
27. 2:12:12 – 2:18:47

    Equine therapy.

    1. MBDr. Martha Beck2:12:12

       I, I think you would identify with cheetahs.

    2. TFTim Ferriss2:12:14

       [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love cheetahs. I love, love, love cheetahs. I've, I've only seen them that close that, that one time, but what a, what a wonderful experience. Let's hop to, um, this far from wild and I'm afraid of everything. Horses.

    3. MBDr. Martha Beck2:12:33

       Yeah, yeah.

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:12:34

       I wanna say, did at one point you own a ranch?

    5. MBDr. Martha Beck2:12:38

       Mm-hmm.

    6. TFTim Ferriss2:12:38

       Am I making that up? North Star Ranch.

    7. MBDr. Martha Beck2:12:41

       Yeah.

    8. TFTim Ferriss2:12:42

       Uh, do you still own the ranch?

    9. MBDr. Martha Beck2:12:44

       Nope.

    10. TFTim Ferriss2:12:44

        Or-

    11. MBDr. Martha Beck2:12:44

        Moved out to Pennsylvania.

    12. TFTim Ferriss2:12:46

        Okay, but you did. This was in San Luis Obispo. SLO. [laughs]

    13. MBDr. Martha Beck2:12:50

        For six years.

    14. TFTim Ferriss2:12:51

        And... For six years, so-

    15. MBDr. Martha Beck2:12:52

        It actually was in a national park. I mean, the nearest grocery store was an hour's drive.

    16. TFTim Ferriss2:12:58

        Wow.

    17. MBDr. Martha Beck2:12:58

        There was no road going past it. There was us and a national park.

    18. TFTim Ferriss2:13:03

        Mm-hmm. Okay.

    19. MBDr. Martha Beck2:13:05

        I tracked a lot of bears and a lot of mountain lion.

    20. TFTim Ferriss2:13:07

        Oh, I bet you a lot. So equine therapy. Now, I don't know how much time you've spent in that context. The reason I'm asking about it, I, I spent one afternoon here in Texas on a farm that specializes in equine therapy for people with PTSD, kids with-

    21. MBDr. Martha Beck2:13:26

        Yeah

    22. TFTim Ferriss2:13:26

        ... different neurodivergent conditions, including autism, and I wanted to have the experience of interacting with horses.

    23. MBDr. Martha Beck2:13:33

        Mm-hmm.

    24. TFTim Ferriss2:13:35

        And I've ridden horses before, but being in a pen interacting without any objective to [laughs] ride a horse is foreign to me. Could you describe what this is? And I... and if I'm kind of barking up the wrong tree, please stop me, but I'm, I'm just curious what you're... The, the broad question is kind of what you gain from interacting with animals-

    25. MBDr. Martha Beck2:13:59

        Mm

    26. TFTim Ferriss2:13:59

        ... writ large, but since horses will not... are less inclined to eat your face-

    27. MBDr. Martha Beck2:14:04

        Right. [laughs]

    28. TFTim Ferriss2:14:05

        ... than, say, big cats, it's a little more approachable for folks. Can- That is a huge avalanche of word salad of a non-question, but would you like to [laughs] take on the challenge of doing something with it?

    29. MBDr. Martha Beck2:14:17

        I love it. Yeah.

    30. TFTim Ferriss2:14:18

        [laughs]
28. 2:18:47 – 2:22:06

    Selling the ranch.

    1. MBDr. Martha Beck2:18:47

       everything else up.

    2. TFTim Ferriss2:18:49

       So why did you sell the ranch?

    3. MBDr. Martha Beck2:18:51

       Because I felt like it was time. Like, I'm following this energy through the world, and I had s-- I had written a book about a woman, a novel about a woman who gets-- goes into the forest of California and has all these experiences. And then I was gonna write a sequel that happens in the eastern forest, the little piece of the eastern ancient forests that still survive, and I [laughs] it was gonna be about a plague that affected New York City. Hmm. So I moved to a little patch of the ancient eastern forest in Pennsylvania, and then there was a plague that affected New York City. [laughs] And I'm writing the sequel now. But I go through life tracking and saying, "I have a ranch now, I'm a rancher." No. That's-- I know my-- I don't know. I could sell this house and move tomorrow if I felt like I should, and I would.

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:19:46

       Okay. So what was the-- if you, if you flash back to the day or the week or the conversation or the walk in which you're like, "I'm done. No more ranch," what did that look like?

    5. MBDr. Martha Beck2:20:01

       Oh, it was much more gentle than that.

    6. TFTim Ferriss2:20:03

       Okay.

    7. MBDr. Martha Beck2:20:04

       It was like a death. It was like an animal dying. Have you ever had to put down a dog?

    8. TFTim Ferriss2:20:11

       Yeah. Unfortunately, yes.

    9. MBDr. Martha Beck2:20:13

       Unfortunately, and yet it's such a clean pain, right? It's so... Death in nature is not the horror we make it. Death in nature is this deep gratitude for physical experience and then this profound release of the physical form of what you loved, and it teaches you how to die. And when you really know how to die, then you can live without any fear. And I felt the ranch dying for me and something else coming to life. And I grieved

    10. TFTim Ferriss2:20:51

        How did that feel? I'm sorry to interrupt, but just 'cause I think that might sound hard to grasp for-

    11. MBDr. Martha Beck2:20:56

        Yeah, it is

    12. TFTim Ferriss2:20:57

        ... some folks.

    13. MBDr. Martha Beck2:20:57

        I know.

    14. TFTim Ferriss2:20:58

        Yeah. So, like, what does that feel like?

    15. MBDr. Martha Beck2:21:00

        This was exactly the place I was supposed to be, and now... Well, Liz said it in Eat Pray Love, "Now it is time for something that is beautiful to change into something else that is beautiful." And I knew that if I kept, if I stayed there, the beauty of it would, would decay.

    16. TFTim Ferriss2:21:18

        Mm-hmm.

    17. MBDr. Martha Beck2:21:18

        Because the real beauty... It's like I said to myself in that month of, of my right hemisphere stuff, it's not about the picture I'm painting. It's not about the painting. It's about painting. It's about the process of being in continuous creative response to whatever is present, that state of mind. And it said buy a ranch, so I bought... I literally, on my 50th birthday, [laughs] spent every penny I had on a ranch, and six years later I sold it. [laughs] And you know something great? We had a wonderful massage therapist who used to come out and work on people there. And, you know, she'd have her massage table in her car, but I'm sure she was living kind of paycheck to paycheck or hand to mouth. When we decided to leave, she inherited a whole bunch of money and bought the ranch. [laughs]

    18. TFTim Ferriss2:22:02

        That's wild.

    19. MBDr. Martha Beck2:22:04

        And Boyd loves her. We all

29. 2:22:06 – 2:24:10

    The monkey whisperer.

    1. MBDr. Martha Beck2:22:06

       love her.

    2. TFTim Ferriss2:22:07

       That's amazing.

    3. MBDr. Martha Beck2:22:08

       Yeah. And then this place, there were wild turkeys and, and deer and everything. And the place we came here, first thing that happened when I saw this house was a whole flock of wild turkeys walked out of the forest, and I've never seen them since. [laughs]

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:22:24

       [laughs]

    5. MBDr. Martha Beck2:22:24

       It was just like I was being welcomed. You know how Londolozi is.

    6. TFTim Ferriss2:22:28

       Mm-hmm.

    7. MBDr. Martha Beck2:22:28

       Nature is like that everywhere, and that's why it's worth it to tell the truth and let people hate you, because nature loves you when you tell the truth. [laughs]

    8. TFTim Ferriss2:22:38

       [laughs]

    9. MBDr. Martha Beck2:22:38

       And it tells you to go places and have adventures. I just went to Costa Rica. We didn't see any monkeys for six days. So I went and I energetically called monkeys. I know it's stupid. We got mobbed by monkeys. [laughs]

    10. TFTim Ferriss2:22:53

        [laughs]

    11. MBDr. Martha Beck2:22:53

        They were everywhere until my son got scared of them and I had to ask them to leave with my mind. [laughs]

    12. TFTim Ferriss2:23:01

        [laughs] The monkey whisperer. I don't see that in your bio. [laughs]

    13. MBDr. Martha Beck2:23:04

        Ah, I haven't gotten around to it. It was just last week.

    14. TFTim Ferriss2:23:07

        Oh, wait, no. Here it is on your LinkedIn. That's right.

    15. MBDr. Martha Beck2:23:09

        There we go.

    16. TFTim Ferriss2:23:10

        Okay. [laughs]

    17. MBDr. Martha Beck2:23:10

        Yeah, I mean, life is full of wildness.

    18. TFTim Ferriss2:23:12

        2020 to present, Monkey Whispering, Inc. Yeah. [laughs]

    19. MBDr. Martha Beck2:23:16

        Yeah.

    20. TFTim Ferriss2:23:16

        I like it. Monkeys also... Look, I mean, all of the fables about monkeys, there's something to it. Those beautiful creatures can also be r- mischievous rat bastards, and they can-

    21. MBDr. Martha Beck2:23:27

        Scary animals.

    22. TFTim Ferriss2:23:28

        [laughs]

    23. MBDr. Martha Beck2:23:28

        They are scary. Oh my God. Boyd's stories about baboons are the most hilarious.

    24. TFTim Ferriss2:23:33

        Oh, baboons are especially terrifying. Yeah. Oh, boy. I was listening... You know, it's funny you mentioned baboons. I was literally listening to recordings from Londolozi two days ago. [laughs]

    25. MBDr. Martha Beck2:23:44

        Wow.

    26. TFTim Ferriss2:23:45

        I shouldn't have done it right before bed 'cause I had some terrifying dreams.

    27. MBDr. Martha Beck2:23:48

        [laughs]

    28. TFTim Ferriss2:23:49

        But I was listening to baboon alarm calls. Yeah, don't listen to baboon.

    29. MBDr. Martha Beck2:23:53

        Oh. Buh, buh, buh.

    30. TFTim Ferriss2:23:54

        Don't listen to baboon alarm calls right before you go to bed.
30. 2:24:10 – 2:30:25

    Parting thoughts.

    1. MBDr. Martha Beck2:24:10

       scary, just a little.

    2. TFTim Ferriss2:24:11

       And they can get a little scary. Well, Martha, we've covered a lot of ground. Is there anything else that you would like to chat about before we land the plane for this first conversation?

    3. MBDr. Martha Beck2:24:25

       This might sound so yarfy, but I just, I'm really grateful for you and for the life you've lived and for your differences and how you've pushed them, and then you've given them to the world just so generously and completely, and you've given me so much time today. And I just [laughs] I feel an enormous joy and... Okay, I love your, your presence, your energy, your being. I am awash in wonder the way I am when I'm in nature and I meet a really interesting creature. [laughs]

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:25:11

       [laughs] Thank you. Thank you so much. I've been a fan from afar from, um, for a long time, so it's, it's really nice to finally connect, and Boyd has-

    5. MBDr. Martha Beck2:25:22

       It is

    6. TFTim Ferriss2:25:23

       ... has been sort of patiently waiting, I guess, [laughs] for me to make the, make the connection. I've wanted to for quite a while, and the stories certainly that he tells, and now we've gotten to pay him back with stories about Boyd when he can't defend himself.

    7. MBDr. Martha Beck2:25:40

       That's right.

    8. TFTim Ferriss2:25:40

       [laughs]

    9. MBDr. Martha Beck2:25:40

       We should all hang out and make some more stories because I will tell you one thing. If you go wherever you feel you're supposed to go to maximize your joy-

    10. TFTim Ferriss2:25:48

        Mm

    11. MBDr. Martha Beck2:25:48

        ... your adventures just increase. [laughs]

    12. TFTim Ferriss2:25:52

        Yeah. I feel like I'm in a liminal phase right now-

    13. MBDr. Martha Beck2:25:56

        Mm

    14. TFTim Ferriss2:25:56

        ... between one thing and the next. And, well, there's probably quite a bit running in parallel, but I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm not-- I have no idea what that next big thing is.

    15. MBDr. Martha Beck2:26:07

        You know that in some traditional cultures in, like, Europe, for example, tribal Europe before civilization The, the threshold is the place of magic because it's not one place or another, and when you're on it, you're not anyone anywhere. You're-

    16. TFTim Ferriss2:26:22

        Mm-hmm.

    17. MBDr. Martha Beck2:26:23

        A liminal phase is the place where you're completely unformed, but that's why it's a place you can do magic.

    18. TFTim Ferriss2:26:30

        Mm. I like it.

    19. MBDr. Martha Beck2:26:32

        So maybe you should just stay in the liminal phase.

    20. TFTim Ferriss2:26:34

        Just hang out here. Hang out in the waiting room for a little bit. [laughs]

    21. MBDr. Martha Beck2:26:38

        Yeah. Learn some magic.

    22. TFTim Ferriss2:26:39

        Yeah, the customs office between [laughs] territories.

    23. MBDr. Martha Beck2:26:42

        [laughs]

    24. TFTim Ferriss2:26:45

        Yeah. Yeah, the boundary walking, I enjoy just walking-

    25. MBDr. Martha Beck2:26:47

        Yeah

    26. TFTim Ferriss2:26:47

        ... on it as opposed to crossing over it. So maybe I'll hang out here for a bit. We'll see.

    27. MBDr. Martha Beck2:26:51

        That's where the shamans live.

    28. TFTim Ferriss2:26:52

        [laughs] Ah, tricksy, tricksy shamans. Yes. [laughs]

    29. MBDr. Martha Beck2:26:57

        The monkeys of the human race. [laughs]

    30. TFTim Ferriss2:27:00

        Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's for sure. [laughs]

Episode duration: 2:30:37