4min chapter

S6, Ep2 How to Fail: Alain De Botton

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

CHAPTER

The Importance of Mindfulness in Relationships

When we're in situations of envy, we often imagine that their life is perfect. We have this muscle in our brain that is just fantastic at conjuring up images of the happiness of others. The chances of your ex now finding blissful happiness with somebody else are almost zero. They will have all the moods that you have with your own new partner. And I think it's tremendously helpful to keep in mind that almost certainly their level of happiness will be closer to our level of ambivalence.

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Transcript

Episode notes

Speaker 1

Was there a bit of

Speaker 2

you before you had Max where you were anxious because of your previous experiences that we just did about of being the second builder's child and having to parent your siblings. Were you worried about the kind of parent you would be given that you had a specific, yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I just thought I'd mess him up. I really like being around children. I'm full of play. I want to do all the imaginative stuff and I want to build the castles and I want to be the dragon and I do the funny voices and I love being around kids. I

Speaker 2

was like, but my parents messed me

Speaker 1

up. So how do I know how to parent? What do I know about the right kind of emotional structure or what a child should hear and what a child shouldn't. But I guess you've just realised, don't you? You're just like, I wouldn't say that in front of my child. I wouldn't have that kind of argument in front of my child and you just make different decisions. A whole bunch of other new mistakes as well. I mean, you know, poor kid. But you just do things differently because you know what you would have

Speaker 2

liked.

Speaker 1

And do you think you'll have more children? Don't think so. This is the bit in the conversation where not you, but this is the bit where if I was at lunch, people go, you'll change your mind. Oh, he's only one. You'll change your mind. I won't change my mind because again, I brought up so many children. And it's two things actually. One, it's that I admire anybody who could have more than one child. Do I feel sorry for him not having siblings? No, because at the moment he has something like seven cousins all born in the same two years of him. So he's got lots of people to fight with. He also can go to school and make friends. If his worst gripe in life is going to be that I didn't give him a sibling, then he'll be one spoiled child who needs to go and get talk to somebody because I don't think that's, you know, fair. But two, I think the bigger question is, a lot of people out there start having their second child while their first child is still quite young in a kind of effort to get it out of the way. And some people would describe it, get it out of the way as if it just slides out. It really doesn't. But I think there's a question here about if you love your vocation like I do, I love my job so much and I have so many ideas and plans and so many things I want to do. Is it fair to assume that you can just shrink yourself into boxes and be what a child and a person needs completely if the things that you're doing for yourself and your dreams and your aspirations is going to get bigger and bigger? Or is it more honest to say, what can I cope with? I know in myself now having got to know myself better, what I can cope with is giving all that I can to Max and doing all that I can in my job. But I can't do a whole nother Max and that if I do do a whole nother Max, what it will cost me is some of what I want to do. And at least right now, I have no interest in shrinking what I want to do, which may make me sound selfish, but I think it's just honest and I think not enough people are honest

Speaker 2

about what they can do. I totally agree with you and thank you for being honest and you know what that sounds like, not selfish, boundary. Oh there you go. It all comes back to Brennae Rowne. Cush Jumbo, I have loved talking to you. I interviewed you seven years ago, can we do this again in another seven years?

Speaker 1

Let's do it. Let's see how fat we both are by then. We just eat more cake, more tea. We really love

Speaker 2

it. Cush came here with cakes from Gail's name. I am so delicious. You can come back anytime. Cush Jumbo, thank you

Speaker 1

so, so much. Thank you.

Speaker 2

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