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00:00In a world that feels increasingly unsettling, joy can seem like a luxury we can't afford.
00:05But what if joy isn't about feeling good, it's actually about something much deeper?
00:09We experience happiness psychologically as a sense of ease. It will feel relaxing. It will feel like
00:16your coffee's the right temperature, something lovely is kind of around the corner. It will be
00:21incremental. It will feel like it's built out of all the small circumstances that make life lovely.
00:28Joy, on the other hand, is also a positive feeling, but it won't feel relaxing. It'll feel
00:35big and bright and enlivening. And that's because it's engaging both our reward system,
00:41but also our stress systems. Kate Bowler knows about the highs and lows of life. She's a scholar
00:47of faith and religion at Duke University, and she was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer,
00:52aged just 35. I don't have any cancer in my family. And to go from having a life
00:58that I really, really loved to one in which everything had come apart, I was in the hospital
01:04and so angry and frankly, just so heartbroken. Kate draws on philosophy and ancient wisdom to
01:10help us navigate mental health in dark times. And her message isn't about toxic positivity
01:14or always pretending everything's fine. Kate Bowler, professor, author, and expert on faith
01:20and the human condition. Welcome to Well Enough. Thanks for having me.
01:23I'm really excited to ask you so many questions because I do consider myself quite an existential
01:28person. And I know that you've had this really interesting career where you're an expert on
01:36Christianity, on faith, but you've written a book about joy. And I'd love to understand how it is
01:42that you've arrived at this place in your career because people come to you for comfort. You know,
01:47they come to your social media to listen to your podcast for all kinds of different aspects of
01:51advice on just how to make it through modern life. And I'd love to ask you how it is that
01:56you came
01:56to do what you do. Well, I have a kind of a weird background. My specialty really early on was
02:02in
02:03stories about health, wealth and happiness that religious communities tell. But it mostly meant
02:09that for all my 20s, I interviewed televangelists almost full time. So very good with like a man with
02:16a, it actually almost always started with like a joke about how they have the hair for ministry
02:20next to their private jet. And it went from there. And what it really taught me was that
02:25we're all hoping we can have that feeling that we're climbing a ladder that we desperately want
02:30progress, but we're not always sure where, whether those hopes are sustainable in good times and bad.
02:38And so I think that really led me to want to explore something like joy to ask if it might
02:44be
02:44a lovelier, more, I don't know, like realistic alternative than just a best life now paradigm.
02:53It's very interesting, the concept of joy. And we've mentioned happiness a lot on this podcast.
02:58And we've talked about why we're trying to get after it all the time, why it plagues us so much,
03:04what it is from a scientific perspective. But you suggest that happiness and joy are actually not
03:09the same thing. And I wonder if you can explain why? Yeah, I did think that they were the same.
03:14But
03:14it turns out that they're sort of cousins, but that they're psychologically distinct, that we
03:19experience happiness psychologically as a sense of ease, it will feel relaxing, it will feel like
03:26your coffee's the right temperature, something lovely is kind of around the corner, it will be
03:31incremental, it will feel like it's built out of all the small circumstances that make life
03:37lovely. Joy, on the other hand, is also a positive feeling, but it won't feel relaxing, it'll feel
03:45big and bright and enlivening. And that's because it's engaging both our reward system, but also our
03:52stress systems, which helps kind of explain this one little weird quality about joy, which is that it
03:59can pop up in the most unusual times. It could be at a funeral where the pastor has mispronounced
04:06your friend's name for the fourth time. And then you just feel like this weird, delirious, like, oh my
04:12gosh, I could hate myself, but I want to laugh. And I think that it's kind of a relief to
04:17know that
04:18if joy can be a surprise in the middle of life's reality, it might actually be a wonderful skill to
04:28develop, to be able to carry us through times that we might not always be able to be happy.
04:34I mean, I'd like to go back to what you just said about the funeral, because you've also said that
04:39you
04:39can't be happy and sad at the same time, but you can be sad and also experience joy. I'd love
04:45to dig
04:46down on that a little bit. What do you mean by that? Yeah, the idea that we can be joyful
04:50and sad
04:50is a very neat trick. And it's in part because joy as something that hits both our reward and our
04:59conflict systems has the ability kind of to open our aperture to reality. So in a happiness paradigm,
05:07everything has to be going well for us to have that lovely feeling. When it comes to joy,
05:12joy, it will oddly be able to allow us to say, yes, it's so good to be alive, even in
05:21the midst of
05:22the lives we actually have. And I think these kinds of grounded emotions that we can have that are very
05:31realistic, I find to be kind of a relief, because they don't then have to be built up by a
05:37million
05:37lovely things happening all at once that you can actually feel quite leveled, and then suddenly
05:42expect to go from zero to 100. You talk a little bit about something similar to that in your book,
05:48where you talk about being in a hospital bed, and experiencing intense rage, because you've just
05:54received a cancer diagnosis, something that would completely topple anybody. But then you also talk
06:01about experiencing a sense of joy. That, to me, really stood out as something that, in that moment,
06:08I really understood it, because I feel that all of us have probably experienced a moment like that in
06:13our lives. But you characterize it really, really well. And I'd love to ask you a bit more about that
06:19moment itself and what it felt like to you.
06:21I just had a stage four cancer diagnosis. I was 35 years old. It was completely out of nowhere. I
06:30don't have any cancer in my family. And to go from having a life that I really, really loved,
06:35to one in which everything had come apart. I was in the hospital and so angry, and frankly,
06:41just so heartbroken. And I could not understand then why, for this one little weird stretch,
06:51I had this almost helium feeling of being kind of bubble wrapped in this beautiful, big feeling where
07:00somehow it was like everything was okay and nothing was okay. And it sort of like hits the high notes
07:05and the low notes in like one chord where suddenly you can still say, like, answer this question we have
07:11inside of ourselves, which is, is it still good for us to be? Is my life still somehow good? And
07:19even
07:19though I felt worthless, and frankly, like quite disposable, because I had been treated very badly
07:24before the, I mean, it really stretched out for a long time before I was finally diagnosed. I, it felt
07:33incredibly mysterious and like kind of bizarre to be like, wait a minute, I think that this is joy.
07:39And knowing that that could come even then was a helpful sort of gift that I could remind myself
07:49of as I move forward. And were you aware of that gift before? Or was this a kind of turning
07:55point
07:55for you? No, I think, I think, I think for the most part in the past, my emotions had lined
08:01up with
08:01reality. Yeah, that's what I kind of love about, um, there's a psychologist, Lisa Demore, and she calls
08:06mental health, emotional appropriateness, where you're having the right feeling at the right time.
08:11So if you something awful has happened, and you're very angry, congratulations, anger is mental health,
08:18as opposed to crowding everything else on the positive end of the spectrum. But I think until then,
08:24largely, my feelings had matched up with my circumstances. But then after that, when things,
08:29I think sometimes we have seasons where we just life has a very surreal quality, like,
08:35why is this happening? It stops making sense. And strangely, joy seems to find us in a moment like
08:44that, where we couldn't have organized our lives. And yet, we get moments of being rescued by something
08:51that is not made, and then somehow better. It's funny, the way that you just described having the
08:59right feeling at the right time, it reminded me of a substack that I wrote, where I was talking about
09:03getting frustrated, because I never seem to be able to have the thought I should be having at the time
09:08I should be having it. Totally. Which I think is very common for everybody. You know, we often want
09:14things to be like we see in movies, but what's going on inside our own heads, and the emotions
09:19that we feel in response to things. Often, they do seem a bit out of our control. Yeah, they are.
09:25And I
09:25think maybe that's, that's probably a good thing to remind ourselves of is we wish that control was
09:32the default setting. We wish that our days were organized. And I think in a world of aggressive
09:38optimization, we are told that we were supposed to be in control. I think one of the most concerning
09:44parts about the modern self is that we're told that we are not just a person with like whimsy and
09:51random thoughts and weird hobbies, but we're a problem to be solved. We're like a project with a
09:57lot of homework. So you don't just have a day, you've got 24 hours. You don't just have a sunrise,
10:02you have a morning routine. And I think the desire to be more and more like machines is so tempting,
10:11especially when life feels very chaotic. But I think it will, it will stop allowing us to kind
10:18of have the emotional range that we actually need in order to see life as it really is.
10:24Yeah, I really agree with you. I think in wellness, there's a real problem with the idea that we are
10:28supposed to optimize and, or supposed to do anything, you know, what is supposed to,
10:34I find, I find it jarring sometimes, particularly as someone who reports on wellness. Yeah.
10:39And I, I would also love to know what you think about this phrase, because you talk about people
10:43using it when you received a diagnosis. And it's the idea that everything happens for a reason.
10:48As someone who is very expert, when it comes to faith, what do you make of that phrase? Because
10:56people around me use it all the time, particularly when bad things are happening.
11:00Yes, totally. And I think it's a very tempting thing that when someone's going through a tragedy,
11:06everybody just hands them a reason. And it's one of the, I think it's one of the most difficult
11:11things about suffering is that we are drowning in other people's reasons. I know that when I was
11:18very, very sick, and we thought that I was going to die, everybody seemed to know why.
11:23And then when I was in remission, and suddenly living a very different life, everybody seemed
11:30to know why. And feeling surrounded by these very totalizing stories where things are always
11:39happening for reasons. I think a couple things are going on. One is, we are always desperate,
11:48we're pattern-seeking creatures. We're desperate to find the meaning. But what we've then done is
11:54tried desperately, we've looked into the eyes of people usually having the worst day of their life,
11:58and then we've tried to assign them a lesson that they were supposed to learn. But in that way,
12:04it almost imagines that people's life is like math. Like it was, oh no, you've had a sudden and
12:10horrible subtraction. Let me try to pay you back by all the lessons you've learned. And it's just not
12:18true that we will, that we will always gain more than we lose. And so pretending that everybody is
12:25not just having a setback, but a setup can be reality denying. It can prevent people from having
12:34the long stretch that they need to say that they've lost more than they ever intended to.
12:41And also, it will usually assign them a reason that they, if there was one they needed to come
12:49to themselves. Does that kind of lead into the realm of toxic positivity? This idea that, you know,
12:56perhaps by trying to stack everything up as positive or a lesson, we might actually be doing more harm
13:02than good. I really think so. It's also, I think one of the, so I'm a religion scholar, and it's
13:08one
13:09of the ways in which people who imagine themselves to be secular are actually doing something that's
13:13entirely religious, is the idea that your, so positive thinking and toxic positivity rests on
13:20the belief that your mind is a powerful engine, and that you have to have positive thoughts and then
13:25speak them into reality, which is why like manifesting became the word of the year a couple years ago.
13:31And that's just an endless rebrand of a religious movement that started in the late 19th century
13:37to help explain. It was really to explain the rise of big cities is why is it that some people
13:43rise to
13:44the very top and other people fall to the very bottom. So we love to look at inequality and assign
13:49it a reason. And what people started to do is they start to say, well, maybe it's my attitude. Maybe
13:54it's my positivity that will make the difference. So we've now had about 150 years of insane positivity
14:02being thrown at just a lot of inequality. And we've been told that that's the latter out of any
14:09problem. Yeah, that bothers me too. I've got to say this idea that we're just not manifesting hard
14:15enough is slightly worrying. And in particular populations too. I mean, we see it with teenagers
14:21who then end up getting into credit card debt. We see it with, I don't know, areas like the
14:27manosphere where, you know, you're not a man unless you're really grafting and you're going after it and
14:33you're just not pushing hard enough. And it's like, actually, that's completely undermining your sense
14:37of identity. So yeah, I really agree with you that there's this sort of cognitive dissonance there
14:44where we think about positivity. Yeah, cultivated cognitive dissonance. Like, isn't it wild that now
14:50emotionally gaslighting ourselves is considered cultural winning? Yeah. I'm always really worried
14:58when people need positivity more than they need an honest account of what's really happening.
15:06I think people like that's the kind of double suffering that we will always add onto our lives
15:12and the lives of others. And if we could just sort of scrape away that extra story where it has
15:16to be
15:17positive or else it's not good. It just reminds me of my friend, Dr. Sam Wells. He says, well,
15:24if it can't be, if it can't be happy, can we at least make it beautiful? And so I just
15:31think those
15:31are like, there's other ways of managing just how tough life could be without saying, isn't it great?
15:37Yeah, there's no point lying to ourselves, is there? But I think being able to find joy
15:45in small moments, you talk about it as a tool that you can kind of cultivate. And I'm quite
15:51interested in that because that's quite different to just being positive for positivity's sake, isn't it?
15:57I think the idea of finding your little glimmers, I suppose, that's something that we can do that
16:05isn't necessarily lying to ourselves, but it's, it's finding something that exists. Yeah. But it's hard
16:12sometimes to acknowledge that it exists. Yeah. And I think that's probably exactly the, the place to
16:17start is to say, if we don't, if we're not trying to crowd everything over to the positive end of
16:22the
16:22spectrum, if we just allow there to be a little bit of oxygen in the life that is, if we
16:29can say,
16:29honestly, this is not what I would have picked for myself for right now. I think we can then trust
16:34that as sort of we emotionally move up and down the spectrum from like, sad, bored, irritated,
16:42vengeful in traffic, to some of the lovelier things, very excited about rainbows, you know, anything
16:49particularly lovely, that we just have to know that one of the best things about joy is, as we know
16:55now,
16:56it's, it's not scared of sadness. It will allow, it will meet you wherever you are on that emotional
17:03spectrum. And, and we have an incredible capacity for it. Like, everybody has the ability to receive
17:13joy as a surprise, but also kind of cultivate it almost like a personality trait, you can be someone
17:19more and more capable of having joy find you. Because one thing that you do mention in the book
17:25is this idea that we can't necessarily get away from ourselves and being human, we're always going to
17:31have something that you call the ache, this idea that, you know, we've always got this kind of grief
17:36that we're carrying around. And that's just being human. And I actually really found that the idea
17:44of the ache, calling it something really resonated with me, especially as someone that has studied
17:50philosophy and spent a lot of time thinking about, you know, why is it that we feel a sadness almost
17:55as a default. Um, and I'd love to ask you more about, you said, it's not a glitch in the
18:02system,
18:02it's part of the engine. It's necessarily part of being human to feel about that sadness. Yeah.
18:08Do we necessarily default to that sadness? Do you think? Is that a kind of natural state of being
18:13for us?
18:13Yeah. And maybe if we don't call it sadness, we call it kind of like a bittersweet longing.
18:20And because I think that will help when we realize that we have this achy feeling, not just when we're
18:26going through difficult times, but when we're experiencing something really beautiful, like
18:30you're looking into the face of somebody that you really love. And almost like it burns at the edges
18:36of our lungs, like, because we know every gorgeous thing is like, there will never be enough. And I
18:43know when I look at my son and like, you just see the eyelashes on little boys and you just
18:48think like,
18:49I will eat you up. And that, that knowledge that every lovely thing also reminds us that it's fleeting
18:57just is, it will help us not feel quite so crazy when beautiful things make us cry,
19:03when actually sad things make us cry, because we know how precious and fleeting and temporary
19:09our lives are. And I think knowing that that ache is, is just, it's, it's either that there's
19:17something specifically wrong with me, which I'm not saying there isn't, or that there might possibly
19:24have this particular missing piece in everybody, that that missing piece isn't something wrong with
19:30us. It's this little space that will always remind us that we are desperate to be alive.
19:36And that vitality can actually like point us in the right direction. It can also just make us buy
19:42stuff on Instagram. I'm always looking for a comfortable jumpsuit as it turns out, but I think
19:48it will remind us that like the hunger is an engine and it will hopefully be drawing us more and
19:56more and
19:57more toward wanting to make this life truly worth living.
20:02Humans are interesting, aren't they? We kind of, we're always getting after it. We're always getting
20:06after something and whether that is a kind of emotional peace or maybe trying to buy our way
20:11into peace. I mean, you mentioned buying things on Instagram. I'm very, very interested in the
20:16intersection of capitalism and wellness. And I write a lot about our need to kind of patch ourselves
20:23up and perfect ourselves by buying things. And this idea of, you know, wellness washing and the fact
20:29that we don't necessarily need all this stuff. And we're being convinced that we do because we are
20:34somehow broken and need to fix ourselves. I guess the ache is maybe exacerbated rather than fixed
20:41somewhat by our need to buy things and the way that we are marketed things. What do you think?
20:46Oh my gosh, I love this so much. Yes. And I know, I mean, I'm so critical of it too,
20:52in part because
20:53I always feel how attractive it is. I mean, you cannot get me away from like a successful woman's
20:59morning routine account where like she wakes up in the morning and she has her green juice, but then
21:05also her red light therapy, but then also her sauna, but then also her Pilates. And then by the time
21:10she's like rollerblading with her twins in denim, you know, then I'm like, wait a minute, like,
21:16what time is this? Like, is this woman still in the morning? Or do I buy to be more like
21:21her?
21:21Exactly. Does she need to work at any point? So I, I think it is very, this $12 billion a
21:30year
21:30enterprise that particularly falls on the shoulders of women in which we're told we were always supposed
21:36to be better and fix ourselves by now really can make that ache into a very like hungry,
21:43hungry hippos kind of problem. Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, it's, it's so exacerbated
21:49by social media because I'll be feeling fine and I'll open Instagram and see someone's bathroom and
21:54think, I failed at life. I don't have that bathroom. Yes. My grouting is not nearly as,
22:02yeah, once you see a woman's, you know, marble vanity, it's, it's game over. Yeah. The his and
22:08hers sinks are enough to send anyone to a crash out. But, um, you know, I, I do also think
22:15that
22:15the relationship with the ache changes as we go through different seasons of our lives. And I'd love
22:21to ask you whether or not you kind of have a sense of what it felt like for you prior
22:27to your diagnosis
22:28and what it felt like afterwards. Yeah. Did your relationship with that kind of bittersweet longing
22:34change? Yeah. Well, I, no, I hadn't thought of like, you're exactly right. Just how seasonal those
22:41feelings are. And for, for some people it's around, well, a lot of people it's around fertility and just,
22:48you know, the desire to be a parent, the inability to be a parent. I know I suffered from infertility
22:56for
22:56years. And when I had this like smushy little giant pumpkin headed monster, baby, so, so shocked
23:08that I could even ever, it just felt bottomless. Like that feeling that like when you just even hold
23:17up their tiny clothes that you just, that, you know, they'll immediately grow out of that ache
23:22just burns. And I think our loves probably the fastest way to figure out what makes us ache is
23:28to point us toward our longings and our loves. And I think for a long time, it was like the
23:34real want
23:35of a baby. And then for a long time, it was just like, I wanted a cool job. I really
23:40wanted, I'm,
23:41I had like very niche ideas about what I wanted. I just wanted to be an academic with like many
23:47leather bound books and many gargoyles and like very compliant students who were just in awe
23:55of my footnotes. But there's been just seasons of want. And, and it's, and then sometimes when
24:04you get what you want, it's also just, you want something else. So it's hard then to remind us of
24:09even the beautiful things that have come our way. That's the problem. I think I often have this
24:14discussion with my mum and I always say, we both have quite a complex relationship with want.
24:19And for me, I really need to remind myself to enjoy what I have got and what I have achieved
24:25because Emily a few years ago really wanted that and didn't have it. And so I think it's really
24:31important to kind of, I have this concept of looking inside a vault full of jewels and making
24:36sure that I remember to open it and look at the jewels. Oh, that's lovely. Because I didn't have them
24:40before. But if you're always striving for what's next, it's really hard to look in the vault and
24:46see everything you've got glittering at you because you forget about it because it's locked up.
24:51That's really beautiful.
24:52Yeah. It's something that I really have to kind of tap into often. Otherwise I just think what next,
24:57what next? Totally.
24:58And I think we all kind of live with that a lot. We're constantly striving. And I guess it can
25:04look
25:04different for everybody, but it's a, it's a bit of a problem. I think, especially nowadays.
25:08My sister just reminds me your vault full of jewels. My sister started sending herself postcards
25:16and she was just, when she was having a really good moment and she's, and then, and then she
25:22would just like tuck them away. And then, so one time when I called her, I was like, Hey, how's
25:26it
25:26going? And I could just hear like a wall of screaming in the background that like every child was having
25:32some kind of like horrible crisis. And she said, you know, but Kate, if I, if I had sent myself
25:37like two years ago, if I'd sent myself a postcard saying that this moment was going to happen,
25:43I would have called it a miracle.
25:45I love the idea of kind of checking in with your future and past selves for that reason.
25:50I was recently at a workshop and we were asked to write a letter to our future self and to
25:55our past
25:56self. And when you look back at those letters, it's really interesting to think of yourself
26:01crystallized in that moment as someone who had no idea what was going to happen.
26:05Yeah.
26:05And I think, I love that idea of writing the notes to oneself because it's a, I guess,
26:12a more consistent view on how to do that and how to check in with different versions of yourself.
26:16Or you could be like Matthew McConaughey and just think future versions or past versions of yourself
26:21in your own thank you speeches.
26:22Do you know what? That is someone who, I mean, how amazing is he at manifesting?
26:27The guy's magic. Like, I don't understand how he's managed to do it. Green light.
26:32Green light. He does really believe in manifesting.
26:35But it seems to have worked out really well for him. So, you know, good on him.
26:38That is sort of the circular logic of manifesting.
26:41I mean, we talked about sort of doing it in the wrong way earlier, but I am someone that's into
26:45it.
26:46So, I like it.
26:49I hate it. And I like you for wanting things.
26:53I think I just, I love to watch people have ambition and vision.
26:59And I think what's beautiful about the idea of manifesting is that you can have a granular sense of purpose
27:07and hope.
27:08I think what's always missing about manifesting is it imagines that it had to be so.
27:15And if you imagine yourself outside of contingency, outside of just like fate, then you'll stop thinking of yourself as
27:22being just like everybody else, which is unbelievably hardworking and also unbelievably lucky.
27:28And if we can recover like a cultural language of luck, I'll be so happy.
27:33You have a theme that kind of runs through your work about going with flow and accepting that I think
27:40is quite hard for a lot of people to hold.
27:42I think it's very difficult.
27:44You were talking about how the brain sort of jumps to conclusions to explain things.
27:47And there must be a reason for this.
27:49Sometimes everything happens for a reason, but holding so many truths in our hands at once, you know, we can
27:55be experiencing great sadness, but we can also be experiencing great joy.
28:00And life is happening to us all the time.
28:03Going with that flow, I think, is very challenging for a lot of people.
28:07No, totally.
28:08I think that that way of living is very neurologically stressful, which is why we want to skip it.
28:13And I think living with, I mean, these paradoxes, which is when you have to put two truths very close
28:20together and not just be like on Instagram where they go like two things are true at the same time
28:25and then fail to explain how they are actually in relationship and conflict with one another.
28:29I think knowing that the closer we put our ambitions and our wants and our hopes, we will feel the
28:38friction between them.
28:39And then we should just know that that does not mean we're doing it wrong.
28:43That means that we're just, we're frankly just not neurologically wired to not try to smooth the edges between things.
28:53Yeah, it's hard sometimes to sit in discomfort, isn't it?
28:57We kind of want a solution all the time, even if the solution we come up with makes no sense.
29:02I totally agree.
29:04But you say we have to put ourselves in the way of joy.
29:07Yeah.
29:07So be proactive about it, almost treat it like homework.
29:11Yes.
29:12How do we do that?
29:14Well, it's the two parts of joy being that it's a mystery and a surprise so it can find you
29:20anywhere, but also that we should treat it like homework.
29:23I think allows us to imagine that we can be someone who has more and more capacity to be joyful.
29:30And we meet people like that all the time.
29:32And we're like, why are you like this?
29:34Yeah.
29:35And I think it's because they've practiced a couple things.
29:37And this is advice that's attributed to Immanuel Kant about how to live a very joyful life.
29:43And he says, the first thing to do is find something to do.
29:49And what he means by that is there is a very strange alchemy between joy and service.
29:56I think there's, I just know that it was like this for me, that when I was very sick, there's
30:01an accidental narcissism to pain.
30:04We just believe, like, this is only happening to me.
30:08Of course it would happen to me.
30:10And it's very difficult to get outside of our own pain.
30:14Well, service is one of the fastest ways to get out of our own story.
30:20And we find that the more we serve, weirdly, those people are more and more joyful.
30:25It feels really like bad math, though, because when you give, you should have less.
30:29Because that makes sense.
30:31But strangely, when you give, there's a strange bubbling up.
30:34So joy and service are intimately connected.
30:38And then he says, find something to do.
30:41He says, find someone to love.
30:42Because joy gives us this assignment of love where we can, like, be caught up in this web of belonging.
30:50Joy is also highly socially contagious, meaning it's so much easier to be joyful with someone than it is to
30:55just, like, sit alone in your room working at it.
30:59And then the last thing he says is, find something to hope for.
31:03Because when we can be aware of reality but not allow despair to be the loudest voice,
31:11then joy can just remind us, like, this is not the end of the story.
31:15That you are made for this incredible capacity to not just live your life but love your life.
31:22And knowing that that can visit you anytime, anywhere,
31:25it will keep us in the kind of emotional and heart space where we will be ready to, like, find
31:32joy in any circumstance.
31:33I think it's great advice.
31:35It's definitely worth remembering.
31:36And I think it kind of indicates how wellness culture has gone off the deep end a little bit.
31:41Because where we've become hyper-individualistic, we have lost a sense of community.
31:46We've lost a sense of doing things for others.
31:49If we're completely focused on self-development at any cost,
31:53I think we really lose sense of how to find joy in community and in service.
31:59Every really great yoga teacher I've ever met very much sees themselves as someone in the service of others in
32:06the yogic tradition.
32:07And I always think of them as being these kind of shiny beams of light.
32:10They seem like really down-to-earth people.
32:12And I think it's because they've managed to cultivate that joy.
32:16Because they're not all about themselves.
32:18They're very much about others.
32:21Which I think is hugely missing from this idea of being well.
32:25Yeah, I totally agree.
32:27And maybe we can even just imagine that, like, happiness and joy are just for different seasons of life.
32:34So happiness could be because it's incremental and built up.
32:37It could just be for those lovely seasons in the sun where you have more control,
32:41where you're working towards something,
32:43where you have the feeling that progress is possible.
32:47And those are beautiful seasons.
32:49And we should, like, bless them and celebrate them in our own lives.
32:53But joy might be also just for times in which we don't have as much control,
32:57where we need to, frankly, carry and be carried by others.
33:02And we might not always be the luckiest.
33:04But we can know that this, like, soul-filling, enormous yes will not just skip us and find somebody else.
33:12That it will always circle back.
33:14I think that's a lovely idea to kind of hold on to.
33:18Because you also mentioned the idea that for many people, despair might always be the loudest voice in the room.
33:25They might find it very difficult to hear anything over the sense that everything is going to be terrible.
33:31Especially, I think, in complex times, we live against the backdrop of constant noise.
33:39And we open Instagram and we see headlines that are nothing but pain and suffering.
33:43You know, how are we going to navigate that when we have a constant stream of despair just downloaded directly
33:49into our brain?
33:50Totally.
33:50And we might then assume that joy is for delusional people who don't read the news.
33:55Well, especially in a time where we're kind of encouraged to think that being cynical is cool.
33:59Yeah.
33:59You know?
34:00That's right.
34:00Like, hating everything is the default.
34:02And you don't want to believe in things.
34:04And you don't want to be joyful because it's a bit Pollyanna-ish.
34:07Totally.
34:10I think just having to a different account of time in those moments also helps.
34:17Like, right now is a lightly apocalyptic time.
34:21It feels fragile because it is.
34:24Our civic mistrust is rising.
34:28Our sense of the fragility of our institutions on our democratic norms is everywhere.
34:34And so in times of light apocalypse, what's...
34:39I'm a religion scholar, so we love talking about the apocalypse.
34:41Apocalypse lights, Tim.
34:42It is.
34:43But we do...
34:44The funny thing about those seasons is it will...
34:47And even the word apocalypse comes from, like, to reveal, which means we feel somehow like
34:52we're seeing things clearly.
34:53But what that does to us neurologically is we feel hypervigilant.
34:57And we feel like we have to stay alert and engaged.
35:00Otherwise, we're not being realistic or prepared.
35:04So joy is not the worst companion when you're feeling so frenetic.
35:11Because it reminds us that, like, we actually have in us the capacity to move up and down
35:16the emotional spectrum.
35:17We have in us the ability to see reality because it engages our conflict system.
35:21But also to know that, like, man, go outside.
35:25It's just God showing off.
35:28It's just constant sunshine or maybe hear rain also.
35:31But, like, there's beauty everywhere.
35:35And, like, joy kind of allows us to fall in love with the world again as it is.
35:40Because it always was so beautiful.
35:45Yeah.
35:46I mean, I do agree with that because I'm a real nature fanatic.
35:49And every day I try to get outside and look at the world around me.
35:54And you just think, oh, my gosh, in a world where we can see a star that doesn't even exist
35:59anymore in the sky and we can see, you know, how permaculture affects everything that we
36:06do and we can see, I don't know, the tiniest little buds coming out on the spring flowers
36:12at the moment.
36:12You just think, oh, my gosh, this is incredible.
36:15What an incredible time to be alive.
36:16But I think a lot of that is easily hidden from us when we are distracted.
36:23Yes.
36:23So I really like what you say about learning to tap into that because it probably is a
36:28skill that I think many people just need to be reminded that they have and that they
36:32can hone.
36:34And maybe so I think everybody, too, because everyone experiences joy differently, can also
36:40take themselves off the hook that maybe they don't love nature.
36:43My dad believes that air conditioning is God's promise that we never have to go outside.
36:48So maybe for some people, they hate rainbows.
36:51But I just, like, one of the fun sort of things we could look for inside of joy, so we
36:58talked
36:59about being grateful.
37:00You're a vault full of jewels.
37:01I really love that.
37:02We talked a lot about hope.
37:04But the other one is delight because it lights up just you.
37:08Like, it doesn't have to be for anyone else.
37:11It could be what truly, like, makes you laugh, makes you want to call a friend and tell them
37:16about it.
37:17For me, it's world's largest objects.
37:20I have visited, like, hundreds of, like, the world's largest pistachio, the world's
37:24largest ball of twine, the world's largest dehydrated bear legs.
37:28Like, nobody wants this but me.
37:31I love tiny things.
37:32So I feel like we're on the spectrum.
37:34Yes, that's right.
37:35I'll go visit its enormous cousin.
37:37And so I think what's funny is, like, for me, absurdism clearly lights me up.
37:44It's nobody else.
37:45Nobody else wants it.
37:47And knowing that our strange, bizarre specificity is actually, like, part of our capacity to face
37:57the world as it is should allow us to lean in again to, like, maybe to things only some
38:03friends knows about you.
38:05But in difficult times, it's not the worst thing to say.
38:10Go back to a hobby, a strange thing, a private delight that can make your world feel like it
38:19just has a little depth to it.
38:22When I was very sick, I threw a lot of parties, and I started throwing, like, very elaborate
38:28taste test parties.
38:30Like, everyone has to try to catch up, but, like, 12 catch-ups.
38:33Like, it didn't make any sense.
38:35But, like, finding those places where you can create discovery, I think, is part of that
38:41relationship with joy is surprise.
38:44I love that advice, the idea that you should lean into your personal joy.
38:49Your weirdness.
38:50Yeah, well, I think, you know, again, we see a lot of flattening of culture, a lot of
38:56kind of encouragement to homogenize and to be like everybody else.
38:59And I find that quite insidious, personally.
39:03I think if you lean into the things that you really like and you stop trying to be like
39:07everybody else, you will then find it much easier to access that joy.
39:12I love this.
39:13Yes.
39:14If everyone can get off the, like, enormous water bottle hydration programs and the aggressive
39:21gratitude journaling, I would be so happy.
39:23Yeah.
39:24I mean, gratitude journaling, I've got to say, it has helped me because for me, as a writer,
39:30writing things down was something I lost.
39:33I started using a laptop every day for my job.
39:35Yeah.
39:35And then stopped writing in diaries and journals.
39:37And that was actually something I loved doing as a kid.
39:40Yeah.
39:40So I was encouraged to start doing things I enjoyed doing as a child to find my joy again.
39:45Nice.
39:46So, you know, the journaling then became just remember to write down a few things that you're
39:50grateful for every day.
39:51Yeah.
39:52And doing that was good for me because, you know, it's really helped me cultivate a sense
39:56of isn't it amazing to be alive?
39:58Yes.
39:59Which is great.
40:00But I do think the people writing gratitude journals for the sake of it.
40:03Well, it turns out the study about gratitude journals shows that they actually have limited
40:07use.
40:08So meaning a couple things is great.
40:11You get the benefit from it.
40:12But too many things.
40:14You can actually be too grateful.
40:16I'm just, you heard it here first.
40:18You can be too grateful.
40:19And I think what happens is the practice of doing it goes back into that very homeworky
40:25place where people are kind of desperate to make everything into that happiness paradigm
40:29again.
40:29So I love that one or two things, you've done it.
40:32You maxed out.
40:33But if you did 20, we would have to talk again.
40:36Yeah, I do think 20 is too much.
40:37I think it defeats the point.
40:39And also they, I think they've got to kind of be micro things.
40:43Yeah.
40:43You can't get too macro with it.
40:45No, that's right.
40:45It's got to be tiny little glimmers.
40:47Yeah.
40:48Things that you just think, oh, that's, that's something I didn't realize really perked up
40:53my day.
40:54But actually, it changed the way I move all day.
40:56I try to be hyper specific about both my gratitude and also my resentfulness.
41:04Because I have found, for instance, it wasn't just something in general.
41:07It was Linda.
41:08That ability to then name what's happened has also been very good for honesty and truth
41:14telling and getting through things.
41:15And then the equally like, oh my gosh, why is sourdough bread that's lightly grilled with
41:20that much butter so much better?
41:22I feel like that is a glimmer for everyone.
41:24Lovely little.
41:25But I think, I think love and, and resentfulness is in the details.
41:31Yeah, and actually, I think remembering that it's okay to acknowledge things that are triggering
41:35you and making you cross is a good tip too.
41:39You've given me so much amazing insight on ways to find joy and ways to notice it.
41:45And obviously, your book is full of incredible tips too.
41:47So I would recommend that everyone reads it.
41:48But I always ask my guests for one final tip.
41:51And that is, what makes you feel well enough?
41:54So not perfect, you know, not the wellest you can be, but you know, one thing that, that
42:00gets you to the point where you feel like this is enough, what would your tip be?
42:05I love that question.
42:07I think for me, it's knowing that I am a group project.
42:12I've always called my friends.
42:14They don't like this.
42:15But you remember in the medieval period where they couldn't build buildings very tall?
42:19And they're like, man, we need some outside scaffolding, like flying buttresses is what
42:23they were.
42:24And they're like, gosh, this can be significantly taller if we have some outside support.
42:28I've always gone a lot further in my life, been able to be more ambitious, maybe even
42:34more caring, more brave when I knew that I was going to be surrounded by people who could
42:39make me tall.
42:40So yeah, friends as external scaffolding has been one of the great keys to living better.
42:49I think that's such good advice.
42:51Remembering that you don't have to do everything alone and, you know, having a good team.
42:54Something behind you can make all the difference.
42:56I think sometimes we often think we are completely by ourselves in life.
43:00Yeah.
43:01And it's not necessarily true.
43:03No, it shouldn't.
43:04I hope not.
43:06Amazing advice.
43:07Well, Kate Bowler, thank you so much for joining me for Well Enough.
43:10This was so much fun.
43:11This was so much fun.
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