The Curiosity Cure: Martha Beck’s Guide to Befriending Anxiety

Jen: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the For the Love podcast. It’s me and Amy. 

Amy: Thanks for joining us. 

Jen: Me and Amy are here. I’ve loved having you on the show with me. Right this very second while we’re recording, my friends are in there. They have a design business and they’re, like working on my house right now. And Jenny was just asking you, she’s like, “are you having more fun on the podcast now that Amy is on? I said “by a factor of 1 million.” I just told her that right before we started this episode–we’re having fun. 

Amy: People keep asking me. Like, “do you love it?”  It’s, so much fun. And my standard answer is, “love is a strong word.”

Jen As is fun. 

Amy As is fun. But it feels right. 

Amy: But even with each step up that I comprehend, it still feels okay. Which again, you all don’t know this, but that’s huge. 

Jen Listeners, okay. What you need to understand is that when Amy says feels okay, that’s the top rung of the ladder. Okay. Like we’ve reached it. So I’m saying fun, enjoyable. She’s like, feels okay. I’m saying we’re saying the same thing. 

Jen Like you’re like. It actually feels okay. 

Amy It feels okay. And I’m going to stay in it. 

Jen That’s it. There it is. I’m very proud of you. You know, I’m very, very proud of you. This was a big ask and a big yes. Big, big. 

Amy A huge yes. 

Jen: A huge yes. And that is a good segue because,well, first of all, you guys, we have Dr. Martha Beck on today. So, I’ll roll out her credentials in a minute if you don’t know about her. Anyway, she’s a big deal. Oprah’s favorite.. And that’s going to bring us to our first segment before Martha comes on, which is Bless and Release. 

These are just things that Amy and I are like, at this stage in our life, there are certain things we are just going to hold in our little hands and then open to the world and say “goodbye. Good luck on your journey. I won’t be holding you anymore. I am unable to deal with this. I am unable to care.” So in Bless and Released today, this is the idea. What will you release at the end of this sentence? It’s too late for me to… 

Amy Honestly. I’m releasing the entire sentence. The entire idea of “it’s too late.” I’m not going to pick one certain thing. It’s everything. It’s because it’s not too late for anything. 

Jen Truly. 

Amy At all. And I don’t really like that. I like things in categories, in compartments, safe, predictable. I want to have a plan and know what’s coming up. And if you actually admit that it’s actually not too late, then that opens up a lot of things that can be surprising and that you can’t control. And in the past I would have said, “no, thank you, thank you. That’s not for me.”

Jen That’s not quantifiable. 

Amy But I’m learning that it might be better to admit that it’s true. It’s never too late. We’ve heard that our whole lives. It’s never too late, but…

Jen Yeah, but there’s one thing about hearing it, and there’s another thing about believing it, right? You know, I mean, that’s not a trope, but that’s kind of a phrase, right? 

Listen. I’ve asked you this on the show several times and you don’t seem to care. So you’re 53. And you’re just starting a new job. 

Amy I’m starting a new job? 

Jen Yeah, because this is a job. 

Amy Technically, I did ask for it. Just not specifics. 

Jen What do you mean by that? 

Amy Well, you and I have been having this conversation for a while, but I know specifically for at least a year, I would say I have had no idea what I’m going to do. Like, here’s my skill set. Here’s the things I have to work around that are not going away anytime soon. A 40 hour a week job is not going to fit for me. 

Jen Nope. 

Amy I already have a part time job. Like, what on earth could I do? And at first I asked it with a little panic. 

Jen Sure. 

Amy Like I have to be doing something. I have to be making a difference. I have to be like, spending my time wisely, using my gifts. But then I started asking with curiosity. “What on earth is the universe going to drop in my lap? Like, what could it be?” And it’s not that I was saying like, I would like it delivered next Tuesday, but I was becoming more and more open to just seeing what happened. And then this happened. 

Jen I know that’s true because my invitation to you to be my partner on this podcast is so outside your zone. So outside, it’s not even adjacent to your zone. This level of visibility just for a million reasons. But you said yes before I even told you what it was. 

Amy: I know. 

Jen It’s not even your way. 

Amy That’s not my nature. 

Jen God, it really isn’t. And so it’s never too late. 

Amy It’s never too late. 

Jen Never too late, to your point, to cultivate this internal spirit of curiosity and then just see what happens. I love that I listen in a granular way. I mean, if you just want to get down to super small things, just this very year, I decided with so much evidence to the contrary, so much all of it, all evidence pointing in an opposite direction. And yet I said. I want to be a person who has life plants in her house. I want it. I want life in my home. I want leaves that are planted in soil and putting oxygen into mine. I want to be a plant person. Having no no evidence that I could succeed at. And you’ve done it. I have done it. I have done it mostly. Okay. I have mostly done it. And because of that, I’m a gardener. Now I’m a plant person. Some plants come and go. So I’m making my peace with some of the life cycle of some of these damn things. Like the fiddle leaf. 

Amy Well, that’s a special case. It actually is a snowflake. 

Jen You are. 

Amy Correct. Among plants. And don’t don’t discount your previous foray into gardening. Like you’ve done this before with outside plants. You had a beautiful garden. We did this together. It’s all right for a greater purpose. You did well in that season. And then we decided gardening wasn’t for us when it’s, you know, 110 degrees and the bugs eat everything overnight, which was fine, but you learned to do it. And now. You’re taking another step towards it. 

Jen Yeah. We’ll put a pin in that story toward another episode, Amy and I will have to tell you the story of when we planted. At least in your case, a massive backyard garden. That’s a whole thing. 

All right. One more segment before we bring on the just incomparable Martha Beck. This is one of my favorite segments that you and I do; Rant or Rave. 

So I’m just going to drop the word. I’m going to drop it right in between us. Here it is. Emails. 

Amy Rave. 

Jen I know you’re going to say rave. I literally knew you were going to say rave. 

Amy I understand how your inbox can be an agent of chaos. Some of my kids have thousands of unread emails and I can’t even think about it. And every so often I’m like, “can I help you with that?” And they say, “no.”

Jen And then you go, This is not my problem in the universe. 

Amy I don’t say that right away, but…

Jen Sure. 

Amy It’s true. I actually love it. Being an introvert, I can communicate. Well, actively, without having to talk to anybody. I have all my little boxes. I check it several times a day. What do you. 

Jen What do you mean by all my little boxes? 

Amy Sub categories where I can tag things like everything podcast related and everything medical related–I really love it, but I keep a handle on it.

Jen Sure you do. 

Amy I have more than one address, but you know those old ones with some random login that you can’t actually get rid of. But I really only have one working email address that I check regularly. 

Jen Well that is the same for me as you well know. I also have one working email address and it’s the same email address that I very first ever had. Yes, it’s my very first ever email that I still use singularly. It’s AOL and when I have to give that email address in a public setting–you know, they need your email for something–I start having this feeling rise up through my chest. It’s so shame based. Like I get to the first half, you know, the part of my handle and then I always have to give them a little song and dance like, “look, I know this is crazy. And I’m like, the only person on it, but it looks just like AOL, Okay? AOL.com.” And they’re like, always trying to make you feel better. Like “sometimes other people have that.” I’m like, “do they?” 

Anyway, I am mostly rant on email. Yeah, I mostly rant. And I’ll tell you the reason I am mostly rant is because; what my inbox is, is a bossy taskmaster. There is nothing in my inbox that doesn’t need me to do something. Nothing. It’s clean, it’s tidy. And so if it’s in there and I’ve left it in there, it’s because I need to do something. And that is infuriating. Like I have so many I’m just pulling it up right now. Like, I see all these that have been read. All of these need something for now. Every single one. All of them. So it’s just like a workload. And so sometimes I just feel. anger. I feel deep rage when I see a new email pop up as if someone’s offending me. 

Amy It’s like someone actually calling you on the phone. 

Jen Yeah, it is. And I’m like, Well, I guess I’ll just put you in line with the other ones that are already in here who want me to do something. And that’s not really fair because this is my work, you know, it is my job. And these are my partners and this is our shared business. So it makes sense that there are things to do. But for the most part, it is devastating. It’s just absolutely devastating. It’s never personal. It is. It’s like. Okay, let me get back to that when I’m done with this. 

Amy I do understand that.

Jen Okay. 

Amy What do we have today? 

Jen We have a big one. 

Amy I think we have something to help you with your strong feelings and anxiety about your email. 

Jen That’s a really good segue you just made that was really keeping your head on a swivel right there because we have the brilliant Dr. Martha Beck on today. Okay. Amy and I are super familiar with Martha, but in case you’re not, here’s her background info. So she is a bestselling author, life coach, speaker extraordinaire. This is boring, super boring, but she has three degrees from Harvard. It’s just whatever. All in social science. Which makes her so interesting. Also, this is also boring, but Oprah called her one of the smartest women I know. So no big whoop. Martha’s published work has several books and memoirs, over 150 magazine articles, two decades of monthly columns for the O Magazine. Oprah. She also has two podcasts that you would love. One is called Bewildered, and that’s with herself and Rowan Mangan. And then also she has The Gathering Room. There. It just is full of brilliance as she is. So her most recent book that was recently out is called The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self. It was an immediate New York Times bestseller, Oprah’s Book Club selection. I guess I’ve said Oprah like four times in this intro, but it’s quite an endorsement. And then, what we’re also going to be talking about today is her upcoming book called Beyond Anxiety, Curiosity, Creativity and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, which comes out in January. It can’t, frankly, get here soon enough. If what she told us on this interview today is any indication of where this book is going, I mean, we just kept looking at each other during this interview going,..

Amy I thought I knew what she was going to talk about. 

Jen Yeah, me, too. Took me by surprise. Well, all you need to know, listener, and for those of you who like to watch this show over on YouTube in our beautiful new studio, there is a moment in the middle of this interview where Amy has her two hands on her gut. And I have my hands on my chest and she’s telling us what to do and we’re doing it. 

Amy Like, I’m trying not to cry. 

Jen Yeah. I mean, we just kept looking at each other like, whew. Okay. 

So, you guys, that’s enough lead in. Can’t wait for you to hear this incredible conversation with me and Amy and the wonderful Martha Beck.