Martha Beck, BEYOND ANXIETY: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
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[0:45]Martha Beck is the author of Beyond Anxiety, Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's
[0:50]Purpose.
[0:51]By the way, I have quoted from this book and the spot-gas like 20 times already since
[0:55]I recorded it.
[0:57]Martha Beck is a best-selling author, life coach and speaker, who specializes in helping
[1:01]individuals and groups achieve greater levels of professional and personal success.
[1:06]She is the author of nine nonfiction books and one novel, and has been a long-time contributor
[1:10]to Oh, The Oprah Magazine.
[1:12]She holds a PhD in sociology from Harvard.
[1:15]Welcome Martha.
[1:16]Thank you so much for coming, and mom's turn on all three books.
[1:18]I'm excited to have you here.
[1:20]Thanks for having me, Zibi.
[1:22]It's great to be here.
[1:23]Thank you.
[1:24]Okay, Beyond Anxiety, Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose.
[1:29]I mean, what else do we need?
[1:30]This is, like, the ultimate hand.
[1:32]Okay.
[1:33]Yeah.
[1:34]I don't.
[1:35]I would write no more forever.
[1:36]Yeah.
[1:37]It's pretty topical, I think, right now.
[1:40]You know, when I started writing it three or four years ago, I thought, you know, it was
[1:44]right after the pandemic, I thought people are really, really anxious.
[1:48]I wonder if anything else will happen.
[1:50]Oh, my gosh.
[1:52]Yeah.
[1:53]Do you mind if I read just a paragraph from your introduction that I thought was so funny?
[1:58]Okay.
[1:59]Okay.
[2:00]Okay.
[2:01]My own funny feeling.
[2:02]I've been studying anxiety all my life because I have it.
[2:05]Have had it.
[2:06]Have had it in white hot volcanic eruptions and foul sky darkening billows.
[2:11]Have had it for years on end, for richer and for poorer in sickness and in health.
[2:16]I remember being knotted up with anxiety on the eve of one birthday, worried sick because
[2:21]time was passing so fast, and I had yet to accomplish anything significant.
[2:25]I was turning four things only got worse once I started school.
[2:31]You said, I'll just read this one paragraph.
[2:33]The first time I was assigned to write a poem, my fear of inadequacy kept me awake for five
[2:37]consecutive hallucinatory days and nights until my pediatrician, my pediatrician, put me
[2:42]on a short, blessed course of volume in high school when I joined the debate team and
[2:46]stood up to speak in front of a judge.
[2:48]I passed out cold.
[2:50]And then you just said, all of this anxiety was one of the reasons I gravitated toward the
[2:54]social sciences.
[2:55]If I could understand the mind, my own mind, then maybe someday I could free myself from
[3:00]constant unease.
[3:01]So how did that go for you?
[3:04]No, it was a long ride, but it has gone surprisingly well.
[3:10]I dug into this to researching anxiety during the pandemic because it was such a major issue.
[3:18]Anxiety worldwide went up by a full 25% during the 2020, sorry, so I jumped in and read
[3:27]all this brain science that's been done and read widely, I'm a sociologist by training.
[3:34]So I read all the things that add anxiety to the culture and I kind of figured out how
[3:40]to make my anxiety go away and it hasn't been back.
[3:46]I mean, it starts to rise sometimes and then I'm like, oh, I know how to fix this and
[3:51]I stop it.
[3:52]Wow.
[3:53]I'm like, this is still going to be true, but I really have not felt anxiety since I started
[3:58]using the steps I described in this book.
[4:01]Wow.
[4:02]That is, I mean, there's no more powerful advertisement than that.
[4:05]Oh, I'm sold.
[4:06]Yeah.
[4:07]Well, you start the book by telling us, of course, the difference between fear and anxiety
[4:13]and your encounter with the leopard and now that was quickly showed you that real fear
[4:18]is, of course, quite different than the hauntedness of anxiety.
[4:21]Tell me about that and how you can identify the two.
[4:25]So we desperately need our fear without it.
[4:26]We'd all be dead.
[4:28]Why?
[4:29]So when something dangerous is actually in our physical presence, we have this highly evolved
[4:35]instinct that makes us immediately go into very strong concerted should to avoid a danger or
[4:42]run away from it, fight it, whatever.
[4:44]And then once the coast is clear, the fear goes away.
[4:48]Now the animals, they get afraid.
[4:50]I mean, they can be in the jaws of a leopard and get away and just give themselves a
[4:54]shake and they're sort of back at baseline within seconds.
[4:58]We humans are the only animals who can make stories in our minds about things that might
[5:04]happen in the future.
[5:05]Like we got away from that leopard, but oh my God.
[5:08]What was it like, remember every detail, tell our friends to think about how much worse
[5:13]it's going to be next time.
[5:15]And so we spin these stories that keep triggering our fear impulse until it's just a spiral
[5:21]of nonstop dread and that is called anxiety.
[5:25]And it's not about anything clear in present in the room.
[5:28]It's in our own sad little heads.
[5:33]So you outlined so many different really effective strategies in the book.
[5:38]If you could pick one and say, okay, this is the beginners, this is your first step, right?
[5:42]You're massively anxious.
[5:44]Where can you start?
[5:45]Which would be the, which would be the step?
[5:48]The first step, oh, I'm tempted to go one further.
[5:51]But the first one is something I call kissed, K-I-S-T, which sounds, is stands for kind
[5:57]internal self-talk, sounds so goofy.
[6:00]But all it is is just telling yourself the things that you would say to sue the frightened
[6:05]baby or baby animal because you are a frightened baby animal.
[6:09]You just say things like, it's fine.
[6:11]I've got you.
[6:12]It's okay.
[6:13]Going to be all right.
[6:14]You're okay.
[6:15]You're okay.
[6:16]These things that we instinctively would do if we found like a trembling half dead kitten
[6:21]on the porch and we wanted to make it feel better.
[6:24]We all have the instincts to self-soothe, but we don't use them.
[6:28]We're not trained to use them culturally.
[6:32]So that's the big first thing where I always have to go.
[6:34]And then if you want a really interesting fun trick, there's something I call
[6:39]sense-strinching.
[6:41]And this is, so I'm going to ask you to do it right now, okay?
[6:44]Okay.
[6:45]Okay.
[6:46]So first, think of something that makes you a little bit anxious so you can get that in
[6:49]your body.
[6:50]Okay.
[6:51]Let's just say the world because that's enough to make anybody anxious.
[6:55]Now what I want you to do is tell me one thing you love to smell.
[6:59]Okay.
[7:00]What is it?
[7:01]Warm chocolate cookies.
[7:02]Okay.
[7:03]Warm chocolate chip cookies.
[7:05]One thing you love to hear.
[7:07]My kid's talking.
[7:08]Okay.
[7:09]One thing you love to see.
[7:12]One thing I love to see the ocean.
[7:14]Okay.
[7:15]One thing you love to touch with your fingers or your skin, just something super soft,
[7:20]like really fuzzy, stuffed sweater or something.
[7:23]Blanket.
[7:24]Okay.
[7:25]And one thing besides chocolate chip cookies that you love to taste, maybe like spaghetti
[7:32]with butter.
[7:33]Okay.
[7:34]So here's an aura.
[7:36]And I want you to envision this very clearly.
[7:38]You can close your eyes if you want to and everybody out there can play along.
[7:42]You are sitting with your children listening to them laugh and talk at the beach.
[7:47]And it's a gorgeous day.
[7:48]You can hear the ocean rolling in out there.
[7:50]There's a tray of warm cookies that's just been pulled out of the oven.
[7:54]It's wafting to your nose.
[7:56]As you eat, was it spaghetti?
[7:58]Yeah.
[7:59]Maybe not the best beach snack ever delicious, but now it's fabulous delicious beach spaghetti.
[8:04]And let's see if I left anything.
[8:06]Oh, and you're wearing the absolute softest cashmere sweater you've ever even conceived
[8:12]of.
[8:13]And think of all these components, every sense being in that scenario.
[8:18]Can you do it?
[8:21]How's your anxiety?
[8:22]Well, now I just feel sad because that I'm not with my kids, like in this idea, like
[8:29]a moment at the beach.
[8:30]Now that is something you can do something about.
[8:34]You can plan to get together.
[8:36]A lot of times these sense, the stretching exercises really help my clients know what to
[8:40]do to feel happier.
[8:42]But when you were holding those sensory images in your mind, how anxious were you?
[8:47]I was not.
[8:48]Yeah, you can't do it because the part of the brain that does anxiety, which is mostly
[8:53]on the left hemisphere, can't stay active when we really, really sink into things that
[8:59]the right hemisphere preferentially uses and things like being sensing things and imagining
[9:06]things and putting things together in our imaginations.
[9:10]Those are all functions of the creative right hemisphere.
[9:13]So and they toggle.
[9:14]Yeah, there's tons of research showing that anxiety kills creativity.
[9:19]What I found is that if we can get ourselves to be creative the way you just did in any
[9:24]way, it turns off anxiety.
[9:28]There are scary things happening in the world, but are you in a better position to solve
[9:32]those problems when you're in a panic attack or when you are creative and calm?
[9:38]Creative and calm.
[9:39]Yes.
[9:40]There you go.
[9:42]We're done here.
[9:43]Okay.
[9:44]Great.
[9:45]Oh, that was easy.
[9:46]Thank you for the session.
[9:48]Wow.
[9:49]And that was just the first step.
[9:50]My goodness.
[9:51]Creativity though comes from a place where it's not just that you're not anxious, right?
[9:58]You're feeling that earth.
[10:00]urge to create to, and that you're putting something in the world that doesn't exist.
[10:06]That is a little bit more, like it's more than the absence of anxiety, isn't it?
[10:11]Yes.
[10:12]And that's why this book is called Beyond Anxiety, because a third of the book is about
[10:17]we're all anxious and it helps different, you know, it gives lots of different tools
[10:20]for calming down.
[10:21]But that's when the really good part starts, and we don't end with calm.
[10:26]If we're going to activate the structures on the right, in the right hemisphere that
[10:30]are actually the mirror image of the anxiety structures, we have to go into creativity.
[10:36]We have to start connecting things.
[10:39]People get scared even of the word creativity, because when they're in an anxious place,
[10:43]they think that means, oh my God, they're going to make me draw something in comparison
[10:47]to somebody else.
[10:48]Oh, I can't sing.
[10:49]I can't.
[10:50]Peace, kind internal self-talk, and just know that Zippy just did an amazing creative
[10:58]thing by imagining a delicious scene that has not yet taken place.
[11:04]So all you have to do to become creative, you could pick up a Kleenex and like, wad it up
[11:10]and see if you can mold it into an animal.
[11:13]You can, you can get up and do a little dance around the room, and it does not have to
[11:17]be good.
[11:18]The only thing you do, and there's a lot of research on this too, anything having to
[11:22]do with the arts, but also things like cooking and gardening and creating social events,
[11:29]all of these use those creative structures.
[11:32]And when they are active, the anxious mind is off.
[11:37]The interesting thing is that the anxious mind is also the time part that tracks time.
[11:42]So that's why you can get into something and it feels like, oh my gosh, no time passed
[11:45]and it's been three hours.
[11:49]The anxious part of the brain will truly believe that that time didn't exist.
[11:53]It will say, I've always been anxious.
[11:56]No, I've never had any breaks in my anxiety.
[11:58]What are you talking about?
[12:00]Because it doesn't access these other sensations.
[12:05]So anxious brain doesn't even know about creative brain, but creative brain can use all
[12:11]the information in anxious brain to solve problems just by imagining anything.
[12:18]Wow.
[12:19]This is very powerful.
[12:20]Right?
[12:21]What is this?
[12:22]What are some of?
[12:23]How did that, how then?
[12:25]So this is the explanation for flow state.
[12:27]Right?
[12:28]Okay.
[12:29]How do we then apply that for kids and make things that kids are interested in?
[12:35]What if they don't have, does it apply any differently for children?
[12:39]It does and that they are way ahead of us.
[12:43]So in the 1960s, NASA had a study done to identify creative geniuses so they can hire
[12:49]them.
[12:50]And it turned out that 2% of adults rated as creative geniuses and they kept using this
[12:55]test for a while and then someone thought to give it to four and five-year-olds.
[13:00]How many of them do you think rated as creative geniuses?
[13:04]All of them?
[13:06]Pretty much 98%.
[13:08]And I think probably the 2% just hadn't slept well before.
[13:12]So I think all children are born creative geniuses.
[13:17]And the people who did that study to explain how 96% of their people were losing their
[13:26]genius by the time they became adults, they said it's the school system.
[13:30]It teaches us not to be creative.
[13:32]It likes us to be formulaic, to follow instructions, to give predictable answers, to keep
[13:38]a track of time and all the things and read and write and do arithmetic, all of which
[13:42]is very left hemisphere dominated.
[13:45]So that makes us anxious.
[13:49]Even reading, which I love, forces us to tighten the focus of our eyes, which is a fight
[13:54]flight response.
[13:55]And like when an animal sees something scary, it's like really gets intense.
[14:00]So it triggers a whole fight flight phenomenon when we just read.
[14:06]So what I would do, and I happen to be raising a four-year-old helping raise a four-year-old
[14:12]right now, I wish I'd known this when my older kids were younger, don't require them
[14:18]to come out of their creative genius, encourage them, give them time to mess around, break
[14:25]all the rules, give them stuff to just fall around with.
[14:31]And by the way, don't praise them for doing it well, because that makes them anxious,
[14:35]because now they think they're being scored.
[14:38]Just praise them for being amazing and creative and wow, who could even imagine what
[14:45]you'll do next?
[14:47]Just let them be who they are and praise them for being it, but not for being good
[14:55]at it, which ties people in knots.
[14:58]Excellent.
[14:59]Wow.
[15:00]And then how does all of this tie into the purpose of life?
[15:05]Because as you've followed, so there's two spirals, anxiety sends us into a tight, nasty
[15:11]little corner, like a phobia will advance.
[15:13]Someone's afraid of going to the store, then they're afraid of going outside, then they're
[15:17]afraid of going outside the bedroom, it closes in.
[15:20]That's agrophobia, of course.
[15:22]Weird lately.
[15:24]We're locked in during COVID.
[15:26]A lot of people developed that just because we were closed in.
[15:31]Anyway, so it has this tiny tightening effect on the other side, creativity also spirals,
[15:37]but it spirals outward and it connects us with more and more and more things and it connects
[15:42]things.
[15:43]Even the two sides of the brain are a slightly different color because the right brain has
[15:49]more of these long neurons that are insulated with this white substance called myelin,
[15:55]so that it can create what are called far transfers, where it will link two things that
[16:02]seem very different that have never been linked before.
[16:06]And then wow, the whole the whole brain lights up, but it needs these long white colored
[16:12]nerves.
[16:13]So the right side of your brain is actually paler than your left hemisphere.
[16:18]So yeah, and as you get connected to more and more and more things, it never ends.
[16:24]Ultimately, you mentioned flow state.
[16:27]Flow state happens when you're creating something at the very edge of your skill level
[16:31]and you're completely invested.
[16:33]It doesn't mean you're just sitting on the beach, drinking margaritas.
[16:37]It means you're actually creating, you're doing stuff that's not easy for you, but it's
[16:42]joyful and it's meaningful.
[16:45]Then you connect and connect and connect and there comes a moment when you disappear
[16:50]and there is just the creation and that so the books divided into thirds, the creature
[16:57]who's frightened, the creative who thinks about things the way most humans do when they're
[17:04]in creativity.
[17:05]And then the creation when you can actually just disappear into this blissful process that
[17:13]seems to be happening somehow through you.
[17:15]And that is one of the best reasons to be a human being.
[17:18]I have to say, do you feel that's where you are?
[17:21]A lot of the time, yeah, man, it's happening.
[17:25]I get up every morning.
[17:26]I turn on a big bright light and I start drawing, not, and then when I finished a picture,
[17:31]I stick it in a closet somewhere and forget that it exists.
[17:34]I did that first as an experiment to see what would happen if I really pushed the right
[17:38]side of my brain.
[17:40]It made me so happy.
[17:41]I was going to do it for a month and it was like I discovered some kind of incredible
[17:47]drug or something.
[17:48]I was just like thrilled to be alive and completely non-tracking my calendar.
[17:56]People had to come tell me what to do when, but it's a good feeling to live without anxiety.
[18:03]It is so freaking good.
[18:06]Wow, it seems so simple.
[18:08]Let's get more engaged creatively and trick your brain to stop using the side that it's
[18:12]been so used to using.
[18:14]It would be really simple except for one thing.
[18:17]Our entire culture is built on the premises that are present in that anxiety spiral on the
[18:24]left hemisphere of our brains.
[18:26]That part of our brains believes that there is no meaning in life.
[18:29]There is only grabbing stuff.
[18:31]Can you get enough stuff, money, power, fame, get stuff, get stuff.
[18:38]Productivity is everything.
[18:40]Why?
[18:41]You can die having done the most tasks.
[18:43]We have all these anxiety-based rules in the culture, in our workplaces, in our schools.
[18:49]The second you engage with that, you're going to be socially pressured to spin into anxiety
[18:55]again.
[18:57]The spin in the brain is mirrored by the spin in the culture.
[19:01]In order to get really resilient to that, you kind of have to print.
[19:07]Just moving your brain from anxiety to creativity, because the brain is malleable.
[19:13]We can change it and what fires together, wires together.
[19:16]If every day you have a practice, and I obviously talk about this in the book, if you
[19:21]have a practice that moves you out of anxiety and into creativity, you're going to develop
[19:26]like a muscle that resists the pole on and push of the culture as it tries to make us anxious.
[19:35]I like it.
[19:37]Yes.
[19:38]Now I see why, when I have 8 million things to do, I have to go into Canva and start
[19:42]making a new visual and move things around, you know, because I mean, I'm like, here
[19:46]what's, look at those books behind you.
[19:48]If that is not an act of enormous creativity, I don't know what is.
[19:51]The colors, I'm just like, ah, I just could stare at your bookshelves all day.
[19:57]That is what I did during COVID, by the way.
[19:59]I took all these books.
[20:00]back to your life in theory. So, you know, and you're creating a podcast and you're just,
[20:06]you're actively making stuff. That's one thing I tell people is a quick trick is to say to
[20:12]yourself, if something bad happens, instead of saying, oh my God, what do we do now? What do I do?
[20:17]Say, oh my God, what should we make now? What can I make now? Because making stuff, the moment
[20:26]you're making something, you can't stay anxious. You're explaining a lot of my behavior.
[20:32]I'm liking this very much. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Wow. Oh, thank you. Yeah, this is so
[20:40]great. Amazing. Okay. Well, what is one thing just as a last question that you feel you're able to
[20:48]do now, freedom anxiety that you never ever would have believed that you could have done before?
[20:54]Oh my God, you would not believe how many things. I had, for example, I had, I've had chronic pain
[21:02]for a lot of my life. During my twenties, I was pretty much bedridden. So, from 18 to 30, I was
[21:09]really in tremendous amounts of chronic pain. And then I left that behind. I found ways of living
[21:16]that made my stress levels go down. And that really helped with my symptoms, which is part of the
[21:21]reason I developed, I became a coach with a coaching system. I was trying to find things that
[21:27]showed up in my body as more capability. But I always thought of my body as sort of frail. And then
[21:32]I broke my foot, my toe, five years ago, and it didn't heal well. I was in the African bush, so I
[21:38]didn't see a doctor. And then I had to have surgery on it. And I just, it was really a massive surgery
[21:48]like it was months and months and months without being able to touch that foot to the ground.
[21:54]And so I walked away with kind of a lot of anxiety about I don't want to try too hard.
[21:58]Then I get invited to do this long, what week long walk in England with nine other people,
[22:07]only two of whom I met. And we were going to walk 10 to 15 miles every day for a week.
[22:13]And I, there's no way. There's just no way. For 10 years, I had barely walked. And I thought I
[22:22]couldn't. But everything in my body, when I looked at the email inviting me, said, absolutely,
[22:29]go do it. So I said, okay, I'll be there. And I started walking and realized that much of my
[22:35]fear was related to something called a psychogenic fear, a psychogenic pain, which is when
[22:42]you remember the brain remembers the pain even after the tissues have healed. And it
[22:47]produces the pain, even when the tissues are fine. So I felt like I was having my foot
[22:54]saw it open. And I just kept walking and realized that had been an anxiety pattern, not tissue
[23:00]damage. And I went to England and walked 75 miles in six days. I skipped today because my
[23:08]son was sick. But what? I got rid of my anxiety. And suddenly I couldn't walk 10 miles a day.
[23:17]I'm 62. Like that was, that's supposed to happen when you're 62. I see better. My health is
[23:25]better. My relationships and better. I think, yeah, as I say in the book, when you get to that
[23:30]third part, the transcendence, it feels like you're experiencing miracles on a daily basis.
[23:36]Oh, yeah. I'm going to make that my, my, my, my, my, my, my, no, it's bold. Try it.
[23:42]You're me. I understand me later.
[23:45]Wow. This is so inspiring. Thank you so much. What a way to reframe life and deal with
[23:51]our worries and deal with what is outside of our control. Now there is something, there is a tool
[23:56]you've put in my toolbox that was not there before. So thank you so much.
[24:00]Thank you. And keep arranging books. It's really working. Thank you. Okay. You keep writing them. And
[24:05]I'll keep arranging them. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Take care. Thanks so much.
[24:10]Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi, formerly mom's don't have time to read
[24:16]books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[24:22]and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and bye the books.