the meaningful life — Philip Carr Gomm How to Live Authentically

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Are you living a life you really believe in, or are you filling in time until your real life begins?

Are you waiting on marriage, a better job, a new exercise regime, or a beautiful house to create an authentic life?

On this classic episode, we're going to be discussing Finding Your Authentic Self with Philip Cargom, who's both a psychotherapist and a druid.

We are creatures of desire.

What we most desire is meaning.

What makes us suffer most is a lack of meaning.

The Meaningful Life with Andrew G. Marshall.

Marital therapist, author, and communications trainer Andrew G. Marshall invites guests from all walks of life to discuss what makes life meaningful.

Hello, I'm Andrew G. Marshall.

Welcome to The Meaningful Life.

Today, I want to start by asking an important question, perhaps the most important one you'll be asked today.

Are you living the life you truly want or just filling in time until some golden moment in the future when your real life will begin?

My witness on The Meaningful Life is Philip Carl Gomb, who is a transpersonal psychologist and psychotherapist.

He used to be the leader of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, and is the author of several books on the topic, including What Do Druids Believe?

He trained at the Institute of Psychosynthesis over 30 years ago and is still a non-executive director there.

What is psychosynthesis?

It's an approach which combines psychology and spirituality, which is the mission of this podcast.

He's also one of the founders of the Sophrology Institute, which teaches a relaxation technique which both calms and energises.

He lives in Sussex near the Sussex Downs, which is where I used to live, so I think we're going to have quite a bit in common.

Our topic today is stop living the provisional life and create the life you truly want to live.

Hello, Philip.

I think we should sort of start off by explaining what is the provisional life?

Yes.

Hello, Andrew.

So the provisional life is really the statement that exists internally, I think, where we say, I'm really going to start living.

I'm really going to be happy.

My life is really going to be what it's supposed to be.

When?

When?

dot, dot, dot, and then you fill in the blanks.

And the blanks are when I get married, when I get divorced, when I get that job, when I quit that job, when I move to another country, something in the future that we tell ourselves will mean the starting point of our true lives.

I don't think it even needs to be the true lives.

It could be something that is actually really important for us or something we've always wanted to do, but we're going to do it at some point in the future.

Well, exactly.

And this is where it gets tricky because, of course, we need to have goals and we need to plan.

I mean, I suppose I became aware of the sort of importance of tackling this issue.

issue purely through sort of introspection and observing my own life and my own process psychologically is, you know, I'm quite ambitious and I plan a lot.

And, you know, I make lists.

I have a kind of day book of endless lists, and then I take great pleasure in crossing off the items and so on.

I can see I might have inherited it from my mother, who's 98, who, when I go and see her in the nursing home, she says things to me like, well, I think I'm making progress.

And I

And I restrain myself from saying progress towards what?

But it's very sweet and touching, and it sort of keeps her alive in a way.

So on the one hand, this human and natural need for us to plan and to think forwards is what motivates us, keeps us going, and is necessary in many ways.

On the other hand, it's also a tendency that can introduce the idea and feeling that when you reach a particular point,

then you'll be happy or then you'll be fulfilled or whatever it is.

Can you give us an example from your own life of something that you were thinking, oh, that will be the golden moment?

Oh, yes, absolutely.

My first marriage was very difficult.

I went through that process, which I'm sure is quite common of thinking, well, when my son's grown up, you know, when he's a teenager, then I'll leave.

I'll sort of fulfil my obligations to the family and then I'll leave.

So in that first marriage, I was living a provisional life, waiting to sort of get out of it.

That was one strong example.

During that time, I had stumbled upon a profession, as it were, of running a travel company.

I was always from an early age fascinated by spirituality and in a sort of holiday job.

I got a holiday job in a travel company.

And it ended up being my full-time job when I dropped out of university.

And I started my own company and it became very successful.

So I spent 14 years trying to escape my sort of success.

I was making lots of money.

The company was growing rapidly.

very fast.

But I always was interested in psychology and spirituality.

And that was where my heart lay.

So I spent 14 years telling myself, you know, when I can sell this company, when I can get out of this.

And it's amazing how many talents...

we have that will lead us in the wrong direction.

You know, there you were good at running a company, but just because you were good at it, it didn't necessarily mean that's what you should be doing with your life.

Yes, exactly.

And it was reading a sort of line from Robert Frost, the poet who said that it was just the way out is the way through.

And it just hit me at the right time.

Say that again.

The way out is the way through.

So unpack that for me.

Well, yes.

I had spent, by that time, I'd probably spent about 10 years trying to get out of running this company.

So dinner guests would always be surprised when I offered them the company.

I'd say, look, would you like to run a travel company?

Just give me 20% or something, and I'll be quite happy with that.

And would you like the travel company or coffee?

Yes, yes, that's right.

Absolutely.

So I spent about 10 years trying to sort of slip out the back door, I suppose, trying to sort of offload this company.

And then this realization dawned on me that the way out is the way through and that what I should do is I should embrace it and completely engage in it and basically build it up even more to a point where I can sell it successfully.

There are various hoops to go through of getting ABTA licenses and IATA licenses and getting the kind of lease on a building where the company becomes more valuable because it's got a lease and so on.

So I went through a process that took about three or four years of building it up in a specific way, getting more engaged in it in order to then get out successfully, which I did.

I sold it to a multinational at the end of that process.

So let's look at that idea with non-businessy sort of kind of things like emotional things.

How can the way out be through in that?

Commonly, what we do when we're in a difficult relationship or a difficult exchange for many of us is to use the mechanism of denial.

So, you know, you just won't listen to the other person.

You won't take on board the attack or the perceived attack, the criticism, and dissociate in some ways.

And it's very hard to go against this because that's a very natural response to difficulty in interpersonal relationships.

But if one can actually engage with the person and with the problem and really listen and really take it on board and allow oneself to feel the pain that that might bring,

then I think the chances of coming through it or resolving it, or if not resolving it...

It sort of almost becomes a joint decision that the relationship can't go any further.

If you've really talked it through, both of you decide, actually, this is madness.

We're not going to make each other happy.

Rather than one person sort of unilaterally deciding it, walking out the door and the other person is left saying, hang on, what happened?

Why are you going?

And by going through and really engaging with the problem, trying to solve it, but trying to solve it, you realise just how big the problem is, and neither of you actually have got the energy or the desire to transform that relationship.

But you can decide together that maybe this isn't working.

Exactly.

And that process, which we can talk about so easily together now,

It is, of course, so difficult in reality.

One of the things that always intrigues me about when I'm hurt, for instance, say if my partner says something that is hurtful or conflictual in some ways, my natural tendency to withdraw is so strong.

that I find myself in a situation of saying to myself, isn't it interesting that you can't even open your mouth to say something?

And of course, you learn various techniques like saying something like, what just happened there?

Or, you know, can we just talk about what just happened or what happened yesterday?

Or there are ways that we learn slowly of how to engage with it.

But I think we can do that if you take that sort of specific example of a particular exchange and sometimes how hard it is even to take that first step.

You know, I've found that I can say things like I'm finding it really difficult to even say something.

but this now, you know, anything just to get the conversation going.

If one can imagine that sort of process extending to a whole life, and in its extreme, I think many people are stuck in a situation where that sort of thing is happening all the time at work,

where they can't even begin to express the dissatisfaction they're having or the problems they're having with their work and interpersonal relations in work or just with their work in general, and so on, and extend that out to the family, relationships in the family.

I can see how taking one small interaction, so for example...

My partner and I had a row literally just before this podcast started.

And the tendency will be to put that to one side and try and brush it away.

Because let's be honest, nobody wants to stick with a nasty argument.

But what you're saying is that actually, if we really go through that and get that one solved, it could open up

other things that need to be talked about, because nearly always arguments are connected to a whole range of other things as well.

And you can begin to deal with the bigger picture, but you start with it, you go through in a little keyhole rather than trying to put a big lorry through the issue, which is our sort of tendency.

We want to sort of drive a big lorry through it, get it solved once and for all.

And probably the keyhole is the most that we can manage.

Well, exactly.

And of course, isn't it interesting that we can take one interaction like this or a relationship, and it gets really quite complex because, of course, although it's the case, at least in my experience, the case that often engaging with an issue and finding a way to talk about it can help, sometimes it doesn't help.

And you could actually, I suppose, play with Robert Frost's idea and say, the way out is sometimes the way round.

I mean, sometimes...

Because the risk, of course, is that it then becomes a confrontation and it becomes bigger than it needs to be.

So it's almost like in these situations, I find that the challenge is, or the question is, is this a moment in which the way out is the way through and I need to bring up this issue and say, hey, look, can we talk about this?

Because what you just said, I found really difficult.

Yeah.

Or is this actually a moment where it's best to just leave it because it's like the weather and the cloud is going to go and it'll be better talking about it tomorrow or whatever.

So we're always looking for sort of rules.

And it's never quite as simple as that because it's a constantly changing picture.

So sometimes way round is better than the way through.

How do you decide which is which?

I've given up trying to work out what the rules are.

So with my partner, for instance, we've been together.

We met when we were 17.

We fell in love when we were 17.

It's a long time ago, over 50 years ago.

We were almost too compatible.

We just sort of clicked immediately.

And it's almost as if we needed, as young people, to have...

A more difficult life, strangely enough.

And so we, you know, because... Oh, I think I want a more difficult life.

Yes, I think, yes.

More challenges, more sort of grist to the mill.

And we both married two Capricorns, almost exactly the same age, and we both married two Virgos.

if one believes this astrology stuff, apparently incompatible with Capricorns.

And we both married two Virgos after being together for a few years.

And we were in marriages, long-term marriages that were very difficult.

And then we met each other again in our mid-30s.

And we thought, why have we put ourselves through all this grief?

Let's get together.

And so we both got divorced and teamed up together.

That was 2018.

30 years ago or something.

And we have a strong relationship, but it's also volatile because we're not afraid to engage with each other.

So we tell each other to F off if we want to.

And sometimes there's thunder and lightning.

And I used to try to work out

when it was best to confront and say, oi, can we talk about this?

And when it was best to ignore.

And I now just kind of work intuitively, or if you're going to be cynical, you could say randomly, but it's not random.

I think it's intuitive.

I just get a sort of sense.

Is this a time to say, come on, let's talk about this?

Or is this a time to just go for a walk and forget it?

Because often it just seems to blow away and we're back on an even keel.

So I think perhaps I will give some examples of when I have been living the provisional life, because things that I thought always I would do one day, you know, in the meantime, I was still living a pretty good life, actually turned out to be things that were really important.

So I always told myself that someday I would get a dog and

And actually getting a dog helped me through a bereavement.

And for the last 20 years, I've had a dog.

And it is something that has really enriched my life.

I also thought that one day I would like to live in another country.

And it took me until I was almost 60 to do that.

And I now live in Berlin rather than down the road from you.

That has really enriched my life.

And the other thing that I put off doing was asking what is the meaning of life and trying to answer the big spiritual questions.

I always thought I was far too busy to ask what is the meaning of life and is the life after death and what's the purpose of life and all these other questions.

and I always thought I would do it one day in the future.

I mean, have I answered those questions?

Well, no, but at least I've made a start, and I think my life is richer for it.

I suppose what I'm saying is often we have all these things that we want to do.

It doesn't stop us from having a good life today, but actually something inside us or something is telling us these are areas that could be fruitful to investigate.

But often we don't because, you know, what am I going to do with a dog when I'm going to go on holiday?

And what am I going to do about my pension if I go to live in another country?

And where on earth women will start with the question of, is the life after death?

Where do you start with that?

And so you put off doing it.

How do you think we can actually stop ourselves from putting off doing these things and confront our fears and just sort of start down the road?

Funnily enough, I think the answer for me, again, rather like the way out is the way through in terms of confronting the issue of provisional living, rather than simply saying, oh, gosh, yes, that's a trap.

I don't want to fall into that trap of thinking when I move to Berlin, then my life will be great when I get a dog and so on.

to actually engage in sort of conscious planning of your life.

So in other words, to say, okay, there are these various things I want to do with my life that I think would be great.

And let me plan my life and develop some goals and develop strategies for achieving them.

And then because you've done it consciously, because you've said, okay, within the next five years, I'd like to be living in another country, say, then you can work towards it.

You can give the sort of goal setting and taking the various steps towards achieving that goal.

You can give them the attention they deserve without falling into the trap that your life hasn't started yet.

You see, I think provisional living in its sort of most extreme form is one where you're not really living because you're believing your life will start when.

So it's not that.

It's saying, no, I'm having a great life now.

I'm doing what I want to do.

And one of the things I want to do is work towards.

And I'll give you an example of that, which is towards the end of the last century, I was invited to New Zealand to go on a speaking tour.

And I had a fantastic time giving talks in Wellington and Christchurch and all the rest of it, and had one day off from not giving talks.

And we sat in a place called Cable Bay, beautiful bay in the South Island.

And I went canoeing for the first time in my life.

I was probably in my...

50s then, I suppose, and had a picnic with friends.

And they said, why don't you spend some time living in New Zealand?

Take a year off and live in New Zealand.

And they said, look, you could rent a house like this.

And there was a house on the bay.

Beautiful.

And I did a sum on the back of an envelope.

I said, how much would it cost to rent that house?

And I basically worked out how much it costs electricity and food and all that.

But if we rented our house in Lewis and Sussex, we could live off the house rental.

Because the difference in those days was New Zealand, everything was about a third cheaper.

So I set that up as a plan and it took about three years to achieve.

And after three, we went and spent a year in New Zealand and it was utterly magical.

And then we set up another plan, which was to live permanently there because we loved it so much.

And that took probably about eight years of working towards the goal of living in New Zealand.

And then that never actually happened.

So you see what I mean?

We were working towards goals.

And every so often, I would fall into a trap of thinking life will be great when this happens.

But because I was aware of this provisional living trap, I think being aware of it is really helpful because you can just tell yourself, hey, come on,

You're here now and enjoy life now as it is because you never really know what's going to happen in the future.

Now, what about people that actually don't know what they want to do?

You and I, we've got all these plans, which is brilliant.

What if you're aware that you're just sort of marking time and you're not really even certain what you're marking time until?

Yeah.

And so it's a provisional life, but you've got no idea what the way out of it is.

Well, sure.

And in fact, you know, at the time that we're recording this podcast, we're going through the second or third.

I've lost track now of lockdowns that's happening with the pandemic.

And this is a sort of interesting process that in a way the world is going through of nobody being quite certain and finding it hard to make plans because they don't know what's going to happen in it.

It's very disconcerting.

And the particular way that I favour is taking it on as a project of saying to oneself, allocating a period of time.

So you'll spend an evening where you'll think about what would you really like to do?

And I think there are various ways you can trigger this.

One is to say, if you had all the time in the world, what would you really like to do with your life and what would you like to achieve?

And then just write whatever comes up, you know, travel to China, you know, get a degree in nuclear physics, whatever it is, just try and get it out and be as wild as, you know, allow yourself the freedom to write anything you like, however outrageous, because you can always go back and prune it.

Then you can try a question of, if I only had six months left to live, if I only had a year left to live, see if that, these are just ways to try and generate material.

See if that generates material.

And then to organize those into long-term goals, mid-term goals, and short-term goals.

So a mid-term goal might be, say, to learn a language.

A short-term goal might be to repaint your bedroom.

And a long-term goal would be to get a degree or move to another country.

So you start off by mind mapping.

In other words, just allowing yourself to brainstorm as many different ideas as possible.

You then get linear and logical about it and prune it and choose a few in each category or one in each category.

And then you work out the steps to achieve that.

I'm sure when you decided you wanted to move to another country, there were steps you had to do.

And then I think what I'd add to that, though, and it's really important, is also allowing for serendipity and for however much you plan something.

serendipity can come along and either apparently derail you in a different direction or suddenly introduce a new opportunity which you had no idea you were going to go for.

I don't think we should get stuck in this overplanning.

Now, here's a thought that I read that spoke to me.

I wonder if it speaks to you.

And the idea is if you've got no purpose in your life, you've got no plan, you're probably leading somebody else's plan.

By that, you're probably leading the life your parents wanted or the life that your partner wants or your teacher's thought or society thinks or even your children want.

What do you think of that idea?

If you've got no plan, you're probably leading somebody else's plan.

Totally.

No, I really agree with that.

And I think a very interesting way of looking at it is with the concept of inner directedness versus outer directedness.

And, you know, to put it in a terribly simple way, you can sort of divide the population into people who believe that fundamentally they have no control over their lives, so that their lives are at the mercy of the weather, politics, economics, genes, their parents, and so on.

And there are people who believe that they are responsible for their lives, that they have inner direction.

And of course, the reality is that, you know, of course, politics and economics and the weather affects us and so on.

But it seems to me that ideas of personal development and spiritual development are around helping you to develop a sense of inner direction.

Sorry, I mean, that's a huge topic, but I think it's hugely important.

And that's always interested me is how can I write my own script or be open to a script?

If you get into the sort of the spiritual end of the scale, then it's not about your ego's script.

It's about something beyond the ego, the transpersonal.

It's funny that we've got to exactly the same point and exactly the same moment, because I was going to say there's a difference between what your ego wants, and let's define ego.

And that's the sort of, I want, I want fast cars, I want security, I want a piece of cake, please.

And what your soul needs.

We're beginning to get into, as you say, transpersonal material there.

What do you mean by transpersonal?

Okay.

Okay.

Well, exactly as you say, there's the ego, you know, without going into sort of specific definitions, we could say in esoteric terms, sometimes people talk about the desire body, or there's that whole cluster of urges and desires that you might have, as you say, for more cake, whiskey and wild, wild women, you know, whatever, whatever it is, the needs of the ego, the personality, the everyday self.

But I think as you take the path of spiritual development or personal development,

You discover a real sense of fulfillment, a sort of deeper sense of happiness, if you like, and comes from a different place, which some people call the soul, some people call the transpersonal, some people call the self as opposed to the personality or the different ways of talking about it.

You might even say it comes from the heart as opposed to the mind.

But however you conceive of it, I think we've all had that experience of satisfying our desires at the level of the personality or the ego and finding that we're still not satisfied.

I mean, I believe that the only true satisfaction comes from that level of the soul, that satisfaction that comes essentially from love, I think, in the final analysis.

You know, when you love people and you're helpful and kind and generous and where you have a sense of meaning and purpose and you try to live a life of integrity and, you know, where the values you hold dear are in place.

I think we're talking about that, really.

So we're on to sort of spiritual matters.

And you're a druid, which, from my understanding, can be a religion, it can be a philosophy, and it can be a personal development path.

So let's sort of find out a bit about druids.

What do druids believe?

What does this druid believe?

Exactly, because there's an old joke in the Druid community, and I'm sure lots of other people use this joke as well, which is, you know, you ask 10 Druids for their opinion and you'll get 11 answers.

So it's just this Druid.

But I think the reason why Druidry interests me so much and why I've pursued it for so many years, I helped to lead a Druid group for 32 years and developed a sort of distance learning programme in Druidry that brought in the insights of transpersonal psychology and sort of methods into Druidry.

What I think...

the times core for is our love of nature and our respect and need to venerate nature and really look after our home.

And of course, this is common knowledge now, thanks to Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough and so on.

So we know this now, but very often people can pursue a spiritual path of self-development and personal development and spiritual development in a sort of dissociated way, where at its extreme, you're trying to get away from the earth.

So there are certain interpretations.

I'm not saying these are the correct interpretations, but there are ways in which people interpret, say, the Dharmic traditions of Buddhism and so on as ways of getting away, avoiding being reincarnated again, avoiding the sufferings on earth and so on.

And so you develop a kind of dissociation.

And the same thing can happen in the Abrahamic religions, where you're seeing the main aim is salvation and of going to heaven, and life is a bridge, pass over it, but do not build your house on it, and so on.

And the problem with that is that dissociated approach is that it leads to essentially not taking care of the earth and of the natural world.

So Druidry is a spirituality that is what you might call an embodied spirituality, where it doesn't take this dualistic approach, where consciousness is not separated from the body so that it's an idealistic philosophy or spirituality, idealistic in the technical sense of the term, which is an approach that believes that consciousness is everything.

and that matter is a distillation of consciousness.

The opposite approach is materialism, which sees consciousness as an epiphenomenon of the brain.

It sees it as what we call consciousness is just the result of electrical activity amongst cells, and we say that's consciousness, but that the only reality is physical matter.

There's one approach, materialism.

The opposite approach, idealism, which says, no, no, no, it's all consciousness.

And then matter just exists within consciousness as a sort of manifestation of consciousness.

So that's the approach that Druidry adopts, or this Druid adopts, certainly.

And within that, we take our experience of our bodies and of the natural world as extremely important and as the sort of center of our lives.

And so I think Druidry tends to, when you say, you know, what do Druids believe?

I think they believe not only in the importance of revering the natural world and looking after it, but they find that their experiences of spirituality and of connection probably come the most when they're out in the natural world, when they're in beautiful surroundings, when they're relating to trees and to forests and to the mountains and so on.

So how can we all deepen our relationship with nature?

Because it is a wonderful resource that we have, hopefully, on our doorstep.

I mean, there's the obvious answer, which is sort of getting out there more and falling in love with nature again.

But here's another idea that I'd like to suggest, which is why I'm interested in sophrology, which is that it's very easy for us to see nature as out there.

So there's the natural world out there.

So we say, let's get out and be with trees and mountains and so on.

But of course, we are an integral part of nature.

There's no separation.

And our bodies are part of nature.

And so developing a relationship with our bodies is hugely important.

So six or seven years ago, I became interested in a type of therapy, which is called sophrology.

So I've been doing talking therapy for 30 years, psychosynthesis mainly.

And I wanted to bring the body in more.

So I came across sophrology, which was developed by a neuropsychiatrist about 60 years ago.

And it works with breathing and with exercises, physical exercises.

And it's a kind of very detailed, sort of enriched form of mindfulness.

Yeah.

You know, mindfulness involves doing body scans.

I don't know if you're familiar with this, but sort of scanning the body, allowing one's awareness of the body to grow in one's consciousness.

And sophrology goes into this in great depth and brings in physical exercise too and posture and movement and so on.

The answers are out there or the answers are in there to these questions.

So, you know, what is the purpose of my life?

Are the answers out there or in there?

Well, I think that's the interesting thing, because in the end, that question dissolves, because the deeper in you go, the further out you go as well.

That's one of the most extraordinary...

Right.

I think we're going to have to say that again, because this is something we're going to have to think about this one.

Say that again.

Okay.

The deeper in you go, the further out you go.

What I mean by that is, you know, those wonderful visual representations of the molecular and cellular levels where you go down into the atomic and subatomic regions and it starts to look like outer space.

And there's an experience that you can have in meditation where you go inside, down, down, down, in, in, in.

And you find that you're in outer space.

It's like a doorway.

The doorway, the way out is the way through in the same sort of strange way.

There's a doctrine of what's called the macrocosm and the microcosm, which is the idea that the universe is inside us, which is an old idea that I'm not sure when it first started.

You find it in the Kabbalah, that ancient Jewish mystical system.

And I think it's in the Vedanta as well, the ancient Hindu idea too.

I think so.

And in Jainism, this wonderful old Dharmic religion of Jainism, you have this idea that it's within, there's a sort of primal figure of a human being and within them is the entire cosmos and all of reality.

And it sounds a little unbelievable, perhaps, or hard to understand if one hasn't experienced it.

But I think it's an extremely profound experience.

And it resolves the dichotomy between inner and outer completely.

So what if you go in and you discover these answers and actually they're probably not going to be very acceptable to other people?

You know, you want to move to another country, but the rest of your family wants to stay where they are.

Thank you.

I mean, what do you do?

It's interesting you mentioned that as an example, because we both share this thing of moving to another country.

You successfully moved, as it were, because you're there.

And we unsuccessfully didn't move, if you see what I mean.

But that, in a way, was an example of how I think there's a moment where you have to push

And there's a moment where you have to surrender.

Martial arts are sort of good at this and the whole Taoist thing of yin and yang and so on.

And I think knowing and in relationships, I think this is so important, knowing when to push right back to the beginning of our conversation in a way, knowing when to push and to confront and to say, hey, come on, can we look at this?

And knowing when to just let things be because that's the best way to do it.

You know, we spent years gradually getting our residency for New Zealand.

We bought a house in New Zealand.

I was going to and fro.

I had to live for another year in New Zealand on my own in batches of time to secure our residency.

found schools for our kids, worked out our job thing.

When our oldest daughter reached 18, she said, for my 18th birthday, we were due to move.

She said, I'd just like a ticket to New Zealand just to make sure that I want to do this.

And she went out there and she had a video call with us a couple of weeks later saying, look, you know, I love it out here, but there's no way I'm moving.

I'm not coming to live in New Zealand.

And then our 16-year-old daughter said, no, I'm not moving either.

She had a boyfriend at that time.

So they rebelled.

They said, we're not going.

And so we had this crisis.

And I had kidded myself for those eight or so years that I'd been planning this, that I was holding this lightly.

But of course, emotionally, I was really clinging to this in a provisional living kind of way, although I wasn't allowing myself to think that I was doing that.

But after all, we'd bought a house, we'd planned everything.

But

And I think it's the closest I've felt to having a breakdown.

The house at the time was filled with people.

There were friends and guests and relatives and photocopier repairmen.

And the house was just full of people.

And I said to Stephanie, I said, I think I'm going nuts.

I can't handle this because everything was crumbling.

And I did something that I'd never done before.

I said, let's just get out of here and go and stay in a hotel for a couple of days to sort of process what's happening.

Picked a hotel at random about an hour away, drove there and spent two days there, just talked about it, went for long walks and sort of cried and just let this dream disappear because there was no way we were going to go if our two daughters weren't coming with us.

and just surrendered to it.

And here was the magic.

On our way home, we stopped at a restaurant, which looked like a New Zealand restaurant, a particular style of Kiwi restaurant.

We went inside, no customers in there.

It was a fish restaurant, looked great.

We ordered a meal.

It turned out that it was run by a New Zealand chef, a celebrity chef who'd come back from New Zealand.

He came out and asked us how we were finding the food.

And we said, it's fabulous.

And he said, do you mind if I sit down?

And he started talking to us.

And he said, why are you here?

What are you doing?

And we told him the story.

And he was like an angel.

He was sort of somebody sent from the other world.

He said, your daughters have made the right decision.

I lived in New Zealand for 10 years.

I was born in Britain.

I came out.

I lived there for 10 years.

I became a celebrity chef.

I had my own TV show.

But seven years would have been enough.

It was too long.

He gave reasons why New Zealand didn't work for him.

And he just reassured us whether or not he was telling the truth or not, whether it was the truth.

It wasn't the question.

He was just the right person at the right time.

He said, you know, your daughters at that stage in their life, they need a bigger theatre to be in.

There's a kind of richness in Europe that you can't find in New Zealand.

It's a small world.

It's a lovely world, but it's limited.

And he gave us just the right kind of message.

And we came home and we sold the house in New Zealand.

And we've been here for the next 20 years.

And it was the right decision.

So the moral of the tale, I think, is just knowing when to let go and knowing when to hold on.

We keep coming back round to that.

It's sort of when to push, when to go round.

I think what I'm hearing is it takes time to discover that.

And we try to run away from it.

either going through or going round, surrendering or pushing.

And we just need to give ourselves just a bit more time, take it a bit slower, stay in the crucible of conflict for a bit longer, as I put it.

Yes.

And I think perhaps to be good to ourselves, that doesn't, I was going to say gentle, but it's not necessarily gentle.

You know, we can get so worried about making a mistake, making the wrong decision.

I had a little sort of epiphany when I was driving up Highway 1 in New Zealand, which goes from Wellington up to Auckland.

It's one of my favourite drives through the mountain desert road, which is just lovely.

And I'd been wrestling with, should we, shouldn't we?

Should we live in New Zealand?

Should we live in England?

What's the right thing to do?

And I just suddenly thought, it's not about that.

You know, both are fine.

It's just a question of just allowing what's to be to be in a way and just not working oneself up about whether it's right to confront or right to yield, whether it's right to do this.

You know, maybe it comes from way back of being a kid where the teachers are telling us there's a right answer and a wrong answer.

Maybe that's not a helpful way to look at things.

Both answers were great.

Living in New Zealand was great and living in Sussex is great as well.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So we're going to just pause for a second before we look at a letter that's been sent in to us to discuss, which I think is going to fit into this whole subject of the provisional life.

And if you'd like to be part of this project, be a supporter of it and be able to get the full conversation that Philip and I are having to be able to write in and other benefits as well, here is a little bit of information that might be helpful to you.

The Meaningful Life with Andrew G. Marshall.

Please follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and visit our website, andrewgmarshall.com forward slash podcast, where you can join our supporters club and unlock bonus material and other benefits.

In June, I will run my third men's retreat near Berlin.

In a chaotic and challenging world where the rules of masculinity are getting blurrier and the criticism of us more strident, this growing community of like-minded men is an important resource.

This retreat is called Balancing Priorities, being both the barefooted warrior and the embodied lover, and runs from Thursday 11 June to Saturday 13 June 2026.

The weather will be wonderful, and we can take full advantage of the lake and the unspoiled nature around us.

The main themes of the event will be how to have the strengths to stand up for yourself and your family, yet at the same time be the empathetic and engaged lover your partner longs for.

How to both protect and nurture.

Come and join us and learn how to be both the barefoot warrior and the embodied lover.

More details and registration at www.andrewgmarshall.com.

Look forward to meeting you.

Please do find out about becoming one of our supporters because at higher levels of support, you can join in our Ask Me Anything discussions that happen on a regular basis.

And of course, you get the benefits of the regular level and you can send in a letter like this one.

We live in two different countries.

I'm in the USA and my partner is in Poland.

In normal times, we see each other about every six weeks.

And of course, we spend holidays together like Christmas and Easter.

It's been two years now and we're beginning to think about a future together.

However, although we love each other, there are a lot of misunderstandings.

He says he understands what I'm saying, but sometimes I wonder if we're on the same page.

I want to settle down and have a family.

I'm in my late 30s, and I thought we were agreed on starting a family.

Perhaps it is culture, perhaps it's language, perhaps he's getting cold feet, but he's talking about someday, and I think we need to make plans and put our family first.

I have a good job in the US and he has an okay job in Poland, but he's worried about finding a job here and becoming dependent on me.

Money is a bit of an issue because he wants to go half on everything.

And that sometimes means not going somewhere because he can't afford it, but he won't let me be the person giving the treats.

I feel we're marking time, but when I try and talk, we end up fighting.

What do I do?

So I think we have a sort of provisional life here.

And actually knowing if this is the right life or the right life with the right person is a very difficult question to answer.

So what are your thoughts, Philip?

Gosh, yes.

Well, it's very relevant to what we've been talking about, isn't it?

It's, of course, completely natural that we make plans and that we have visions for a future life.

You know, won't it be wonderful when we're together?

And it would be unnatural to try and stop oneself thinking in that way.

The only thing that I can suggest perhaps is that perhaps the answer is to create special times in which rather than thinking these thoughts randomly when they come to one during the day, would be to allocate a time in

in which you say, okay, now I'm going to think about our future life together.

And you spend whatever it is, 20 minutes, half an hour, whether that's on your own or in conversation with your partner.

The rest of the time, you try to be in the now and to really enjoy your life as it is now.

I learned a technique of play therapy for children.

I read a book called Dibs by Virginia Axline, which is a small paperback.

It's the only book I've ever bought a dozen copies of and just given to my friends.

The normal approach in play therapy prior to her coming up with this, I believe, was kind of analytical therapy, where when you're working with a child and the child picks up a doll and starts whacking it on the table...

You would say, oh, you're very cross with mummy, aren't you?

Which she said is invasive and inappropriate.

And instead, what you do is you simply mirror the child.

You say, you're hitting the doll on the table.

You're hitting the doll on the table.

You're just with the child.

And so I trained in this form of therapy.

And it's very powerful.

And the DIBS book talks about this.

But it's a sort of book that anyone can read, even if they're not interested in kids or play therapy.

It's just a wonderful book.

The way it transfers into family life is, you know, when you have kids, they can be so demanding that it's very natural to constantly be kind of shrugging them off and kind of saying, oh, look at your iPad for 20 minutes while I do this.

And what it says is, no, no, just spend some time and ring fence.

It's a for the next time.

hour, I am with you.

We used to have a set frame.

For the next hour or for the next half an hour, I'm completely with you.

And you're totally focused on the child and what they're doing.

And then you mirror them by doing what they're doing, by copying them, by mirroring back their thought.

And this has the effect of giving the child loads of attention.

When the hour's over, you say, oh, time's up.

Now, you know, daddy's going to go and do some work in his office.

You're on your own now sort of thing.

And you satisfy that need we have for attention.

So this is applying the same idea and satisfying our mind and heart's need to think about our future life.

But you ring fence it.

You say, okay, I'm going to think about our future life this evening at six o'clock for an hour, half an hour.

But what I'm going to do now is I'm just going to live my life as if this is it.

This isn't a rehearsal.

This is my life now, and I'm going to live it to the maximum.

even if I'm not with my partner or the person that I love.

And so by actually not looking at it, deliberately not attending to it for a certain amount of time, I think it would be certainly worth trying that.

When you are actually talking about it together...

really stay with your partner's thoughts rather than trying to knock them down.

Our tendency is if somebody says, well, I'm having second thoughts about ABC, you don't actually stay with that and say, tell me more about it.

you tend to try and argue them down.

And then the two of you just go round and round in circles.

But this is possibly back to you can go through to get out of the issue.

So, you know, you really look at those fears about the job, for example, and you stay with those rather than trying to push them away.

Exactly.

The doctor, she was a GP in London who taught me the play therapy technique.

was very interested in what she called creative listening.

And she was a Quaker as well as a doctor.

And she developed a whole bunch of techniques for interpersonal work.

And one of them, which is really good, is where you agree to have a conversation where you will not respond.

It's very counterintuitive, this, but you say, I know you've got various concerns about our plans for the future.

What I'd like you to do is please voice them.

And I'm just going to really listen.

And I'm not going to respond.

We'll finish the conversation.

I'll say thank you at the end.

And we'll finish the call.

I'm not going to try and answer you in any way.

I'm just going to completely receive what you're saying.

So that's great, because that removes precisely the barrier that you were talking about, where we have a tendency to, even as the person is talking, we're formulating our response and countering

And that means we don't really hear them, do we?

We don't really hear them.

So you say, I'm going to really hear you, and I'm not going to try and defend myself or counter-argue about this.

I'm just going to listen so you can say whatever you like.

And radically, Rachel Alpinney, the doctor, said, this I've never quite been able to do.

But her radical thing was, you don't come back to them the next day or a week later with the counter-arguments.

It's very hard to do that.

But they might come back to you themselves with the counter-arguments.

Right.

Well, exactly.

Just getting it out may shift things.

There's another technique that's harder to do, but it's very powerful as well, which is where you say, I think you're really concerned about this issue, and I'm now going to talk as if I'm you, and I'm going to say what I think it is that's on your mind.

Please just hear it, and we'll finish the conversation, and then we'll talk about it tomorrow.

you know, then I would say, I would imagine in this lady's case, and I'd imagine I'm her partner, and I'd say, I'm really worried about coming to the States because I don't think I'll get a job.

And actually, I'm rather getting into the job I'm doing in Poland now, and I'm quite enjoying it.

And I've started to get cold feet about the movie.

So you act as if you're the partner.

And that can yield some really quite interesting material.

And then, you know, the next day or the next week, the partner can come back and say, well, actually, thank you.

That's exactly how I've been feeling.

Or, you know, I wasn't feeling that way at all.

But you actually separate the time out so you don't do it directly after the other person has spoken.

Yes, just to give space to that.

Yeah.

Rather than it then becoming ping pong, backs and forwards.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, we've had an awful lot.

What have I actually learned from today?

I think the thing that I'm going to take away from it is definitely going through to go out.

Our tendency is to just dissociate or just nip out the door when nobody's looking.

And actually, often the answer is to go through more often than going round, I suspect.

I think our natural tendency is to go round or to skip.

out the door yes yes but actually if in doubt go through so i think that's what i've learned from this conversation today we'll find out what you've learned from this conversation today in our supporters club but you've been here as the witness for what makes life meaningful so we have to ask you what makes your life meaningful

Ah, well, my family, my children, the natural world.

We have a lovely garden here, the natural world.

And coming to accept my primary interests, I used to tell myself for years that I was interested in lots of things.

And then I realized that actually my focus is on a specific thing, which is quite big in a way, which is the overlap between psychology and spirituality, where the two overlap and meet.

That's my prime interest.

I'm a sort of geek, in a way, of that particular area.

And that's the subject that really interests me.

And that's where your life is the most meaningful, when spiritual matters coincide with psychological matters.

And I think our profession rather tends to put one, the spiritual belongs with the vicar over there, and we're just doing the psychological.

And actually, that's really just not possible in the same way the vicar can't leave the psychological with us.

that the two things are sort of interlocked.

Absolutely.

And the kind of conversation you and I have had today is exactly the sort of thing that I love.

I love talking about this area.

And it's funny, I thought that I would love talking to you and I was right.

Great.

Thank you very much for being my guest on The Meaningful Life.

Now, if you join our Supporters Club, details about how to do that in a moment, you'll be able to hear the rest of this conversation.

You'll be able to unlock the three things that Philip knows to be true, really true.

And there's all sorts of other benefits as well.

So go to www.andrewgmarshall.com forward slash podcasts.

So for the time being, Philip, thank you very much.

Thank you.

It's been a pleasure talking with you, Andrew.

You've been listening to The Meaningful Life with Andrew G. Marshall.

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