Tim Ferriss #656
Tim Ferriss and Brené Brown in February 2020:
Tim Ferriss: My question related to armor is-I’ll get there through a segue, which is a quote that I want to say Tara Brach, the well-known meditation teacher, also writer-Radical Acceptance is a fantastic book-shared with me, which I’m going to paraphrase and it’s along the lines of, “A great sage once said, ‘There’s only one real question that matters, and that is: what are you unwilling to feel?’”
...What do you say to the people you meet who are on the third marriage, their kids don’t talk to them, and there are certain things that they have convinced themselves-subconsciously or otherwise, maybe through an abusive upbringing or trauma, whatever it might be-that it is unsafe to feel certain things?
And you come in, they’ve asked for help, but they do not want to open Pandora’s Box. Right? They do not want someone to drag them into the deep waters of emotions that they’ve kept under lock and key for so long. How do you help someone like that? What do you suggest to them? Because it does get messy. Right?
It’s going to get messy before it gets clean, right? At least in my experience, it’s like, oh, you’re going to do spring cleaning? Guess what? You’ve got to take all the things that are up on the shelves, all the things in the drawers, all the things that are hanging on coat hangers, and you’re going to put them in the middle of the room. And it’s going to be a mess. It’s going to be a fucking mess.
Tim Ferriss: And that is-but you can’t really get past go without that type of steps. So for someone who’s listening to this and says, “You know what? I buy it. I get it. And yet what do I do? Because I’ve been-I’ve had on this armor for so long?”
Brené Brown: So I would say a couple of things. I mean, the first thing I always feel like is really important to say is that I’m a researcher, and so I’m not a therapist. That would differentiate me with Esther. I don’t see clients. If I go in and I’m working with CEOs and this question comes up all the time, what I would say to people is, “Pandora’s Box is closed right now, but are you under the impression that you’re living outside of the Box or in the Box?”
Brené Brown: ...I mean, you don’t want to open Pandora’s Box, because that’s strange to me, because you’re living inside Pandora’s Box. And what I feel like you’ve asked me to come here to open it up, like we’re not going to do this process without walking through some deep shit. There’s going to be deep, swift water. And if the water is super deep and swift, you need to go through that with a therapist and get that settled before we work in the organizational way.”
But what I would say to people, what I always say is the same for me and I’m sure the same for you, that we all grew up and experienced to varying degrees, trauma, disappointment, hell, you know, hard stuff. We armored up and at some point that armor no longer serves us. And so what I think I would say to that person is “How is not talking about this serving you?”
I’ve been sober for 23 years. So someone in AA would be like, “How’s that shit working for you?” I probably would put a softer spin on it than that-over black coffee and a cigarette. But I would say that “It’s not serving anymore. And now the weight of the armor is too heavy and it’s not protecting you. It’s keeping you from being seen and known by others.”
And so this is, I mean, to just tell you quintessentially, this is the developmental milestone of midlife. From late thirties to, through probably your sixties, this is the question. This is when the universe comes down and puts her hands on your shoulders and pulls you close and whispers in your ear, “I’m not fucking around. You’re halfway to dead. The armor is keeping you from growing into the gifts I’ve given you. That is not without penalty. Time is up.” So this is what you see happen to people in midlife, and it’s not a crisis. It’s a slow, brutal unraveling. And this is where everything that we thought protected us keeps us from being the partners, the parents, the professionals, the people that we want to be.
And there are only, I’ve only seen-this is a fork in the road-I’ve only seen two responses to this visit from the universe. Well, I guess there’s, there was my response, which I was like, “Screw you. Bring it. You think you can best me?” And then it was just one nightmare situation after another until you know, you’re not going to win that fight.
I think if you say, “You know what? I’m not going to do it,” then you’ve got to double down. These are the people that walk through the world, double down on their own shit in denial, cheeks squeezed as they walk, and cause so much pain in the world. I mean, yes because it is so much easier to offload pain than to feel pain.
Brené Brown: And so you really have a choice in mid-life whether you’re going to be-you’re going to identify the first step of it, the whole process, is: “What armor?” And I’m not saying just pull off all the armor and streak through Austin, because I think you can replace the armor with something-I think it’s curiosity is what you replace. You just become very curious about yourself, about the world.
“Why did I react that way when Tim asked me that question? I wanted to hit him over the head with a Topo Chico bottle! You know, what was going on there?” Do you know what I mean? Like, “What is my obsession about this?” You just become very curious.
Curiosity is really the superpower for the second half of our lives because it keeps us learning, it keeps us asking questions, and it increases our self-awareness. But when you see, and I think it’s really hard because you know, I’ll walk into a situation and there’ll be the person who invited me is usually the CEO.
And then you’ll have the cross-armed, pissed off, clenched cheek, F-you looking person, usually in operations or technology. And then they’re like, “What’s the business case for you being here? Because, you know, here’s our stock price, here’s what’s going on, here’s our valuation. What do you need?” And then the CEO’ll usually say, “We fucking hate each other and this can only last for so long.”
It’s the end of every great band, right? Like, “This is going to come to an end and it’s going to be terrible.” And so, I don’t know, I think you can’t pull it all off at once. You have to-for all of us, there’s trauma.
And people are like, “No, there’s not trauma for all of us. There’s trauma for people who have ever been abused physically, sexually, emotionally. There’s trauma for people of color and people who have been on the margins.” There’s trauma for all of us. It’s just different levels of trauma.
You know, I mean, to escape childhood with nothing is-I haven’t met that person yet.
Tim Ferriss: No, I haven’t, either.
Brené Brown: Right. So the trauma stuff, literally the trauma message in our body is: “You take this armor off, we die. So you protect us at all costs and leave this on.” A lot of that work has to be done with a therapist.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Yeah. There’s some really good books. I mean, there are a lot of terrible books on this type of topic, but the, I think it’s The Body Knows the Score-or The Body Keeps the Score by-
Brené Brown: Bessel van der Kolk.
Tim Ferriss: Is very interesting in terms of tying the physiology and somatic experience into these past emotional experiences. And you know what you were saying about Pandora’s Box and the question which I liked of, “Do you think you’re living outside of Pandora’s Box or are you just locked inside Pandora’s Box?” Is a really insightful question and also reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine who had a very, very tough time, multiple divorces, fortunately are on good terms with his kids, but a lot of interpersonal strife.
And he said-no doubt you’ve heard a lot-which is like, “Yeah, I’m just not sure I want to go there. I’m not sure I’m ready to open that. Not sure I’m ready to deal with it.” And what occurred to me as I was listening because I experienced this for a long time is “Oh, you’re dealing with it.”
Brené Brown: I was going to say, “Yeah, you’re dealing with it!” Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, your choice is, do you want to deal with it head on in the sunlight, or do you want to have it come oozing out of the corners in the darkness where you can’t contend with it in a direct or systematic way? So you’re dealing with it no matter what. The question is: how are you dealing with it?
Brené Brown: A great Jungian saying: “Keep your shadows in front of you; they can only take you down from behind.”
Tim Ferriss: Oh, I like that. I like that.
Brené Brown: Yeah. You’re dealing with it! Like, here’s the thing: emotion and cognition, undefined and unexplored, drive every decision you make. I mean, you either develop self-awareness or these things control you. I mean it’s, but it’s really, I have to say that it can, as someone who chooses affect or effect words carefully, it can be terrifying for people.
Brené Brown: But rarely does anyone around them who knows them-like you with your friend-say, “Oh, my God, I’m shocked to hear this,” when the reveal comes out.
Brené Brown: You’re like, “Your whole life has been defined by this.”