September 10, 2024 • 62 mins
In this episode, Yowei Shaw delves into how to bounce back after a layoff and navigate the related difficult emotions. With a wealth of personal experiences, she offers insights and advice for individuals struggling to cope with the aftermath of job loss. Her candid storytelling and unique rituals for emotional healing provide a source of inspiration and hope for those facing similar challenges.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Learn how to navigate and heal from the emotional impact of layoffs
- Discover the powerful benefits of cognitive diffusion techniques for managing emotional distress
- Explore the transformative potential of creating personalized rituals for emotional healing and resilience
- Uncover the stigma and challenges associated with reemployment after a layoff
- Understand the impact of the meritocracy myth on the employment landscape and individual well-being
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
When people in my life are going through a hard thing,
I just listen. I don't try to say, oh, you
must be feeling X, or oh it'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I try to listen first.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
(00:38):
or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
(00:58):
how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Jowey Shaw, an award winning podcast host, producer, and self
proclaimed emotional investigative journalist. She's the host of Proxy, a
show about niche emotional questions answered through conversations with strangers
who have shared experience. In her previous Life. She spent
many years making NPR's Invisibilia podcast, first as a producer,
(01:39):
then as a co host and editorial lead. Her work
has also been featured in places like This American Life
and pop up magazine.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
Hi Joe, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Thank you for having me. What an honor.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Yeah, well, it's an honor for me to talk to you.
You were involved in one of the great podcasts of
our age, Invisibilia, So I've known your work for a while,
as do many people who listen to NPR and follow
MPR podcasts. And we'll get into your time in Invisibilia
and then what kind of came after that getting laid off.
(02:12):
But before we get into all that, let's start like
we always do with the Parable. And in the Parable,
there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about
(02:35):
it for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well,
which one wins, and the grandparent says the one you feed.
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you in your life and in
the work that you do.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I love this parable.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I love thinking about it because I feel like it's
actually what drives my work.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
What power is it? Like, I'm really drawn.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
To that emotional noise between the good wolf and the
bad wolf. You know, we all have the good wolf
and bad wolf constantly chattering. There's always that struggle about
countless different issues every day, and I am really drawn
to examining those battles that we feel like we can't
(03:25):
settle on our own, that we have trouble settling, and
I like trying to make sense of it. And so
this is sort of like why I am now calling
myself a little bit tongue in cheek an emotional investigative journalist,
because I want to investigate those battles and then try
to report on it. Like that's sort of how I
(03:48):
deal with my feelings in general. I've been a reporter
now for fifteen years, which is most of my adult life,
and like that's sort of how I deal with those
battles between the good wolf and the bad wolf when
I can't figure it out through the or for like
by meditation or talking about it with friends. And so
I found that like when you report on your feelings,
when you talk to experts who can help contextualize that battle,
(04:12):
like what systems and ideas and histories have led to
you having this particular battle of voices, How can maybe
you think about it differently in a way that's more
helpful to you. And then getting to talk to strangers
who have shared experience who can tell you how they've
dealt with that battle themselves. I found that really helpful.
(04:34):
And so yeah, I feel like that's sort of like
what I like to do in general, for myself and
for other people.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Wow, that's really powerful. Now I'd like to turn this
to our listeners. What part of that message struck a
chord with you as you think about nourishing your good wolf?
What specific ideas or actions come to mind for me
this month? It's relationships. Relationships are the cornerstone of our
well being. When they thrive, we flourish, and when they struggle,
(05:03):
we suffer. Many of us face relationship challenges, feeling lost
and frustrated, but there is hope. Strong relationships aren't just
about fate. They're built on learnable skills. By developing these abilities,
you can transform your connections and in turn, your life.
So relationships are this month's theme and our weekly Bite
(05:24):
of Wisdom for a Wiser, Happier You newsletter, and I'd
love to send them your way. Each week we send
a menu of a few small exercises you can put
in practice to feed your good Wolf, along with a
reflection and a related podcast episode on the topic. At
the end of this episode, I will be giving you
a tip from this week's newsletter, But in the meantime,
(05:46):
if you'd like to join thousands of others who are
already benefiting from these tips, go to Goodwolf dot me
slash relationships. That's good Wolf dot me slash relationships. I
love that title. An emotional investigative journalist. That's great and
one of the things that many psychologists in different schools
(06:08):
of psychology will talk about is this idea of getting
distance from our thoughts and emotions right being able to
sort of separate from them. And that's exactly what you're
describing and why it's helpful for you. It's by reporting
on it and asking about it and looking at it
from different angles. It's a way of disentangling. It's a
way of creating that distance in the healthy sense of
(06:31):
the word, not distance in the unhealthy sense of the word,
but in the sense of disentangling. Or the founders of
acceptance and commitment therapy would call it diffusion, not being
fused with those thoughts and emotions. They call it cognitive diffusion.
So I think that's kind of what you're describing there,
and it's a well known way of working with thoughts
(06:53):
and emotions skillfully.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Well, I have a lot of questions for you. I
did not know about this. I'm going to ask you
for some book wrecks after this.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, I feel like you know now that you're saying
this is like an actual technique, you know that has
been studied for how to deal with your emotions and
move through them. I think that, Yeah, Like reporting on
my feelings is like one way I've been able to
do that through work for myself and for other people.
But I've also found that like creating a ritual through
(07:26):
like a kind of absurd art project has also.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Been really working for me lately. And what do I
mean by that?
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Okay, So, recently, I got laid off and felt really
bad and I felt a lot of shame. And one
of the things that happened afterwards was like I knew
that I needed to be around my people, like the
people who loved me, and yet I wanted to get
away from them. I didn't want anyone to look at
me like I felt so so much shame that I
(07:56):
didn't want anyone like other people's gaze, like it was
like daggers, you know, it was like hurting me. And
so after I got laid off, I was like, Okay,
I know I'm having this issue. And you could like
frame it in terms of the parable like the good
wolf is like, you know, you need to be around
your people who love you. These people love you, they're
(08:17):
not thinking about you differently. They want to support you.
Then the bad wolf is like, no, everybody hates.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
You, nobody wants to be associated with you anymore. You're
such a burden, Like, get over it already.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And so what I did was I tricked out my
basement to be a massage parlor.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
I like massage, I like dabble.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I love getting massages, and I dabble in the bit
of body work for other people as a form of care,
and so I created Yowi Shpa, which was like, I
got a massage table.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
The theme was pink.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I got some fake plants, I got a hot towel steamer.
I just like tricked it out and then I sent
around a signup sheet to my friends and was like,
yoweish open for business. And basically I ended up massaging
a friend a week for the entire summer after I
got laid off, And like, I think that was my way,
like just creating a fun, weird ritual to try to
(09:13):
deal with the bad wolf voice in me.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
I love that and in the hot towel steamer, that's
going for it. Now here's a dream I've long had,
and maybe you, as a fellow lover of massage and
a reporter, maybe I've met the person who can help
me bring this to life, which is that I feel
like there should be massage review services. Like you go
to get a massage and you don't really know where
(09:37):
to go. There's so many different choices, and so I thought, like,
would that not be the dream job, like to be
a massage reviewer, Like that would be brilliant.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yes, for every local paper you know, Now you have
like the restaurant critic. You need like a bodywork critic
to me, like an alternative health bodywork whatever for accutructure,
for massage for like, I don't know. There's so many
different services these days.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
I love that. Now I'm going to try to manifest
that as my new job for both of us. You're
in New York, right, I'm in Philadelphia.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Oh, Philadelphia? Okay, all right, I thought you were in
New York. I have my city's mixed. Well, Philadelphia is
a big enough city. You could probably pull that off.
I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
In Chris, plenty of places to review who need our services.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Yeah, a reviewers there is. Yeah, I would read a
massage reviewer for sure before I went anyway. That and
this is strange. My other dream career that I think
about maybe someday when I retire, is similar. I want
to be a dog messuse.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Wait a minute, do you have a dog?
Speaker 5 (10:45):
I do, yes?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
And do you already dabble in dog massage?
Speaker 5 (10:48):
Oh? Yes, yes, yes, Wow. I might like to massage
her more than she likes to be massage, and I'm
not entirely sure. Sometimes she really.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Seems to like spread out your services.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
And every once in a while, She's like, get off
of me. Yeah, exactly, leave me alone. So, yes, it
just seems like that would be a lovely career.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Now, I have another thing I'm going to ask you
about after this is I want to learn how to
be cat massage my two cats.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
Okay, well I'm going to assume it's similar. I'm not
qualified for this job, but there is such a thing
and they do offer training in it. Anyway, Okay, that's
not what we're here to talk about. But apparently we
both could talk about massage for a long time. But
what we're going to talk about is led to you
creating the yo a spa that I say it right,
(11:32):
a spa.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
What led to you creating that, which was you getting
laid off. So you worked your way up to being
a co host of a popular show called Invisibilia, which
was a great show. You'd been a reporter for it,
you became a co host, and then you were laid off.
Talk to me about that experience, maybe how it happened
and how you felt.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, Okay, so at MPR we had an unusual layoff,
which is because MPR told us gave us like a
huge heads up that they were going through budget trouble
and they needed to lay ten percent of us off
and we'd find out who in a month. And so
I had a whole month with the rest of my
colleagues to sort of have panic attacks, sweat it out,
(12:20):
have sleepless nights, do a lot of teeth grinding, and
then the day came where we'd find out who got
the email, you know, to let us know that you
needed to have a meeting with HR.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
And I ended up getting.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
The email, And yeah, I have to say that in
the beginning, I was I was numb. I think that
like that whole month leading up to the actual layoff
kind of functioned like a form of exposure therapy, Like
I was just getting used to the idea that I
might lose my job for an entire month. And so
(12:54):
in some ways I was not surprised, because like I
knew it could happen, But on the other hand, it
still felt like a shock, like I still was so
completely thrown and it was very confusing to me because
you know, getting laid off in journalism these days, I
(13:14):
mean that's practically a rite of passage at this point,
you know, Like I knew that was the deal. Going
into this profession, NBR had literally told me and my
colleagues that I might get laid off, and yet I
was still so shaken to my core. I felt like
my operating system was glitching. And yeah, basically, for the
(13:36):
next several months after that, I went through this roller
coaster ride of feelings.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
There was a lot of shame. There was a lot
of spiraling about.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
What could I have done differently, you know, was it
this mistake or was it that mistake? There was a
lot of paranoia about interacting with other people and potential employers.
I went to like a journalism conference last summer for
Asian American Journalists Association, and I just remember just being
so paranoid. Like anytime anyone asked me like how are you, like,
(14:12):
I would be this close to just like bursting into tears,
or like, you know, have you found another job yet?
Just really benign questions would throw me for a loop.
And yeah, I basically like I knew I had about
as good of a layoff as it gets, truly, Like
we had a very good union contract at MPR, so
(14:33):
I got severance. There were healthcare for like a few
months after I had savings I'm married, I have a
husband who can support me. I don't have kids, you
know what I mean. Like I had a lot going
for me materially to like help soften the landing here,
and yet emotionally I was just completely a mess. And
(14:57):
that disconnect between like my material reac and my emotional
reality was really you know, like I said before, like
whenever I have an emotional problem like this that I
can't figure out, I start to report on it.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
And so that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
And yeah, I ended up reporting the series trying to
understand like why do layoffs mess us up so badly?
And I just want to say, you know, this is
just my experience. I have friends who got laid off
from the same company and did not experience it this way.
But I do think a significant portion of Americans do
(15:32):
experience it this way, and that's what I was interested
in figuring out.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
So you've alluded to some of the emotional difficulty that
was there. You've alluded to shame. I assumed there was
fear in their embarrassment, which sounds like shame. What were
the primary sort of emotions that you were going through?
Are there others that I've missed?
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Hmm, fear, shame, embarrassed. There's other ones too, Let's take
them one by one. So, yeah, so we already covered shame,
which was really confusing to me.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Why I would.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Feel like the company told me it's not my fault. Right,
that's the definition of a layoff. It's a no fault termination.
You're getting laid off because of something that has to
do with the company, not because of you, right, And
they generally always tell you it's not you, it's not
about your performance. This is just a business decision. And
(16:32):
yet why was I taking it so personally? Why did
I feel like this was an indictment about me? Why
did it feel like MPR was rejecting everything about me?
Speaker 2 (16:43):
You know? Why did I feel deficient? You know?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
So that was a big one. And then yeah, fear,
thank you for mentioning that one. Yes, even though you
know I am relatively privileged, I was still really scared,
like I'm the prime breadwinner for my family. I was
like afraid about kind of running through all the scenarios
that might happen. You know, well, if I don't get
(17:09):
a job for these many months, Okay, well then what
will happen if you know, we lose the house, and
like where will we move? And da da da da da,
how will we feed the cats? You know, just like
kind of spiraling in those material ways. And then there
was also fear around getting another job. And this was
also I mean, the podcast industry is not doing great
(17:31):
at the moment, especially the narrative podcast industry sort of
you know, the bottom has.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Fallen out of it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
So yeah, there is some point to that fear, some
justification around maybe I won't be able to find another.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Job, but also I have fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Of experience, like I am a pretty seasoned podcast person,
Like it didn't totally make sense how afraid I was
compared to like my circumstances.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
And then I was like, oh have I peaked? Like
is this it?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Is this like the pinnacle of what I'll be able
to do in podcast journalism and trying to think what
are all the other emotions?
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I think?
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Also the thing that really stuck with me was like,
why do I feel like people are looking at me differently?
Is this just in my head? Or are they looking
at me differently? It felt like a kind of microaggression,
you know, when people would say things to me like
have you found another job yet, Are you gonna be
(18:34):
changing switching industries?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Are you?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
You know, just just like little things that became so
much bigger when your entire body is a scuffed me,
you know.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
And so I really.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Wanted to understand just like, why is this just me
being a drama queen? Or is there something to like
what I'm feeling? Are there cistims and dynamics contributing to
the way I feel?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (19:05):
And so what did you find out as you began
to investigate this? What did you find out about what
happens to people during layoffs and why it impacts again,
not everyone, but some of the people so strongly.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yes, Okay, so the first thing I learned, I mean,
the history on layoffs is pretty wild. It's very interesting,
Like before the nineteen seventies, you know, companies pretty much
avoided white collar layoffs, Like this is a pretty recent phenomenon.
If a company were to experience layoffs, that would be
an indictment of the company, right, you know, like the
(19:44):
company needs to feel shame, and now it's slipped. So
now we sort of accept layoffs as just like that's just.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
What business has to do these days.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
But it wasn't always like that, and so that was
the first kind of like data point of like, oh okay,
so like it wasn't always like this, you know, like
there are these structural things that are happening that are
leading to this situation in the first place. And then
I've talked to the sociologist over Sharon, who has done
a lot of really interesting work on stigma and laid
(20:16):
off workers and unemployed workers. I went to therapy during
this whole period, and like, honestly, talking to him was
more enlightening and revelatory than any therapy session I had
at this time, because he could just everything I was
telling him about what I was feeling.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
He would he would be like, yep, there's a reason
for that. Yep.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
All these people that I talk to you feel exactly
like that, yep. And some of the things he told
me were that the stigma that I'm feeling this kind
of paranoia around are people.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Looking at me differently? Are people looking a differently?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Like that's not just in my head, Like people probably
are looking at me differently. And that was like a
huge relief to sort of just be like, okay, I
can call it like it is these feelings that I'm
feeling this intuition, like I'm not wrong, and yeah, there's
just a lot of stigma around not just laid off workers,
but unemployment in general. When you grow up in school,
(21:15):
your teachers are asking you, you know, what do you
want to be when you grow up? You don't really,
I don't even know if the word unemployment has I
don't think it was mentioned to me during my schooling years.
We don't have much familiarity with it, even though it's
a fact of this economy. And he said that the
stigma really comes down to this myth of meritocracy that
(21:37):
we have in this country, basically the idea that your
actions and hard work equal your position in life in society.
And even though you know the myth of meritocracy exists
in a lot of countries, there have been research studies
that find that in the US we believe it the
most and the hardest and the deepest.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
What that means is if you get laid off, well,
then it's your fault.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
You know, Like that's the emotional story that I think
I was telling myself, even though intellectually I know that's
not how it works. And so he helped me kind
of solve this puzzle that I was feeling, whereas like,
I know it's.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Not my fault.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
I know I shouldn't feel like this, and yet I
feel like it's my fault.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
I feel like this is about me.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
And he talked about like interviewing a union organizer whose
job it is to explain to workers how our economy works,
and even like a union organizer would feel like it's
her fault, right, you know, even though intellectually she knows
it's not. And so, yeah, so talking to him about that,
(22:50):
talking to him about hiring discrimination that unemployed workers and
laid off workers face, that it's twice as hard to
get a job interview than someone who has the same credentials.
That was also disheartening, but also helpful in that it's
like it's like that whole kind of like system versus
(23:10):
the individual thing of like is it me?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Is it just me? Or am I part of a pattern?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
And I feel like there's a moment where it just
clicked for me, like, oh, I'm part of a pattern,
these feelings I'm feeling.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
I'm not an alien.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
There are reasons why I feel this way, and that
helped make sense of it.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
There's so many things in there I would like to
go back and touch on, but the question that just
came to mind is you're a journalist working in a
podcast industry, doing something that clearly really matters to you.
Do you think it's harder in that circumstance than when
you're laid off from a job that maybe you are
(24:18):
less personally invested in.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, I think absolutely absolutely, And yet part of me
also I have my hackles up when I get asked
this question because I think like there's this whole movement
right now around like work shouldn't be your identity and
like we know better than to, like, you know, care
(24:42):
so much about our jobs, and life is about so
much more than work. And I guess as somebody who's
very very into her work, and like it is a
huge part of my identity. But I also I'm like,
how can it not matter your job?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
You know?
Speaker 1 (24:59):
I feel like in that movement there's a little bit
of like, you spend so many hours of your life
doing this thing, you have social networks around this occupation.
To not have it part of your identity seems unrealistic,
you know, Like I think that's one response I have
(25:22):
to that question. And then of course absolutely yes, if
I didn't care so much it would hurt a lot less.
Speaker 5 (25:31):
Absolutely, Yeah, yeah, I certainly didn't mean it in any
sense that the ideal thing would be to care less. Actually,
I think all in all, to have a job that
you care about deeply and provides you meaning is the
better situation than to have one where you simply go
through the motions. Right. I mean, that's just my personal opinion,
but I do think in general, right, the more you
(25:53):
care about something when you lose it, the harder it
is to lose it. It's sort of one of life's
equations that it's just true. When I think about things
that I've lost that really really hurt, usually the consolation
I find is, oh, but I really really cared, so
that's good, right, Like I had something I loved enough
to lose it. And I think to your point, though,
(26:14):
there are aspects of what we're talking about that probably
happen at all different levels, because yes, we are invested
in our work, most people take some degree of meaning
from it, and our relationships are there. I find it
so interesting this idea of the myth of meritocracy. And
as I was listening to your podcast called Proxy, and
(26:37):
I think it's a three episode arc that's about this process.
And as I was listening to that and you start
talking about the myth of meritocracy. As somebody who probably
has bought into the myth of meritocracy to some degree
over my lifetime, I don't buy into it into the
same degree that I used to. I had a little
bit of like, but it kind of is true, sort of.
(26:59):
I think what's interesting about it is that it's one
of those things that's true and not true at the
same time. And what I mean is that it is
true that how much effort you put in and how
hard you work and all that is an element in
what goes into being successful or not successful. But it's
(27:21):
far from the only element. As we can see, right,
we know people who are very talented who the world
just does not treat fair for a thousand different reasons.
So it's one of those things that like, on the
one hand, I'm like, well, but you can't totally throw
it out, and yet on the other hand, it's not true.
I mean I suffered a layoff. I told you about
(27:42):
it a little bit. It was a long time ago,
but I mean I was working as hard as you
could possibly work at the time.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Right.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
It was just that an early online company got bought
by another company and the layoff occurred. And so I
can see in all different cases that the myth of
meritocracy is just that. The other thing I thought was
interesting as we're talking about the stigma, and I found
this idea that people who are unemployed have a far
(28:11):
harder time getting job than someone employed. Right, there's an
old saying which is the best time to look for
a job as well you have a job, right, And
it's just based on that very at least in my mind,
I always heard that phrase to mean exactly that, right,
that for whatever reason, you look like a better candidate
when you have a job versus when you don't have one.
(28:34):
But it was amazing to hear as you did this
investigative reporting how open recruiters really were about this fact
about just pretty much straight out saying like, yes, we
get a lot of applicants, you know, it's hard to
sort them out. So one way that we do so
is if you have a job, we rank you higher
than if you don't.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, it was wild to hear what recruiters would say.
And basically, it's discrimination when you think about it, when
it's like a characteristic about you that you cannot help
you know, that you cannot change necessarily. It's like it's
a form of bias and discrimination that is just openly
accepted in our employment system. And that's yeah, that's wild
(29:18):
that we were just like, yep, that's just the way
it is.
Speaker 5 (29:20):
Well, it's based on that same sort of half true
thing about the myth of meritocracy, right, because you're assuming
that if somebody doesn't have work, it's because something they
have done.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:32):
And while in certain cases, right, like some people who
would come to you to look for work and they
don't have a job is because they're not very good,
you know what I mean, Like, there are those people,
but it's certainly not everybody with layoffs, and I think
these part true things. It's easier to throw something out
that's completely always falls.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Yeah, And you know, these recruiters also talked about how,
you know, even the ones who didn't really buy into
that way of thinking, they're like they don't see you know,
a resume and see, oh you've been laid off. That
means you are a worse performer. You know, there are
recruiters who talk to the sociologists who are like maybe
(30:13):
that's true, maybe it's not true. It's getting out what
you're saying. This half truth, this partly true assumption for
these recruiters because they just have a huge pile of
resumes to get through, and also they don't want to
get in trouble with, you know, with the manager the
team that they're hiring for, Like what if it is
true and they end up letting somebody in that isn't
(30:34):
going to do a good job, And so they just
are conservative and sort of air on the side of, well,
let's talk to the people who already have a job.
Let's just air on the side of, you know, we
just want to be safe.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
It reminds me of another saying. I was in the
software business for a long time before I became a podcaster,
and so there was an old saying that, like, nobody
ever got fired for hiring IBM, And what they mean was,
it's the safe choice, right, It's just the safe choice,
Like it may not be the best choice, it may
not be the right choice, but it's the choice that
(31:05):
everybody would at the end of the day go, well,
that sort of makes sense. So I can't penalle lot,
you know what I mean, It's that same sort of
thing now as somebody who you know, sort of made
my way through the startup business without a college degree
and all that. Like, I sort of was like, well,
you know, I didn't like that phrase. You know, you
want to hire somebody like me, the punk rock weirdo
(31:26):
that showed up at your door today is your best choice.
So all these things are true. So the other thing
that I thought was really interesting is that one of
the things that I think is obvious and you heard,
is that if you show up for an interview, so
you've been laid off and now you're back out and
you're looking for a job, if you have a sense
(31:47):
of a desperation or be of negativity about what happened,
or negativity or feelings of doubt about your own ability,
that's not good for getting a job. You don't want
to show up with that. So we would seem the
ignoring what we've just been talking about, not knowing that
to be true, might be better, because if I know
(32:10):
that you're going to discriminate against me, then I'm going
to be more doubtful, I'm going to be more afraid.
But it seems like that the research that this gentleman
that you were mentioning, did shows that that's actually not true,
That there is a way of both recognizing the stigma,
recognizing the difficulty allowing the negative emotions to be there,
(32:31):
and then also not projecting them as you go into
trying to find other work. How does that happen?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
This is something that I was experiencing myself as I
was reporting the story on layof's. I was reading all
these depressing statistics about how layoffs, you know, are linked
with higher risk of divorce, higher risk of decreased earnings,
you know, higher risk of hospital just like all these
bad things that layoffs are linked to. And I was
starting to get in my head like, oh no, Like
(33:01):
am I going to end up as one of these statistics?
Like I got to get another job?
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Like ah?
Speaker 1 (33:06):
And I asked over Sharon the sociologist, this question of
like it seems like it would be counterintuitive, Like it
would not be helpful. It seems like it would not
be helpful to learn about all these depressing statistics, right,
And what he said was he said that yes, it hurts,
but also it helps you see that.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
It's not your fault if you do have trouble.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
It's that deep personalization thing that we were talking about earlier.
So over Sharon the sociologist, he did this study where
he got all these volunteer career coaches and all these
people in Boston who were out of work looking for
a job, long term unemployed. He had the coaches try
(33:51):
a different approach called sociologically informed support, which to me,
I love that term. It's so nerdy, it's so funny.
To me, it's hard to say sociologically informed support. So
basically what happened was, at the beginning of the day,
Offer would go up in front of everyone and be like,
(34:12):
I'm sorry to tell you, folks, but here's what it is,
and which is like go through all the odds that
are stacked against them, and then he would say, I
know this hurts, I know this sucks to hear this,
but I want you to know this so that you
don't blame yourself for having a hard time getting another job.
(34:33):
There's a reason, a concrete reason why you are having
a hard time. Because if you blame yourself, if you
internalize all those you know, failed job interviews, all those rejections,
all that silence from employers, then it'll make it harder
for you to get a job, because you will be
(34:53):
even more negative, you will be even more insecure, you know,
you'll just leak more negativity, which will then make it
harder to get a job, which will make you feel
even worse about yourself. And then you just start to
like get into this vicious cycle of negativity. You know,
like it's harder for you to get a job that
makes you feel worse about yourself, that makes it then
(35:16):
harder to get a job when you go show up for.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
An interview, and then you just end up in this
really toxic, hard loop.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
And so what the sociologist recommends is important to know
what you're dealing with, What are the odds that are
stacked against you, How hard is it for you to
get another job? And then get up and sort of
shake it off, and then you need to get to
(35:45):
work looking for that job. You need to like go
ask colleagues for a recommendation. That's like the best way
to sort of overcome that bias against unemployed workers or
laid off workers is a recommendation from somebody inside the company.
And you basically need to prepare yourself for a marathon,
not a sprint, and you need to protect your mental health.
(36:09):
You need to prioritize it. You need to understand that
there are all these negative feedback loops that could be
coming from maybe a spouse who's maybe blaming you for
not finding worker, for getting laid off, maybe your friends
who maybe don't understand or have distanced themselves, who knows
(36:30):
there are a number of negative feedback loops that you
could be dealing with. And so you sort of need
to like map out all the negative feedback loops that
you might be dealing with and then find your safe people,
find the people that you can vent about your negative
feelings and they won't judge you. They won't say, oh, well,
that's your bad attitude. That's why you're not getting another job, right,
(36:53):
You know, people you can be safe with, and then
just keep trucking along in until you get that chance.
Because the longer you are unemployed, the harder it is
to get a job. And the best way to deal
with all those negative consequences that come with unemployment and
laid off is getting another job. It's just like this
(37:16):
mental jiu jitsu you have to do with yourself. Yeah,
that I find very interesting and really goes against what
the dominant approach is with career coaches and career centers,
which is very like pull yourself up.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
By the bootstraps. You can do it.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
You just need the right attitude, You just need the
right resume, You just need the right outfit, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
And all that matters. All that stuff matters.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Is not to say that like you shouldn't learn how
to interview better, or you shouldn't polish your resume.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
All that stuff matters. But also it is harder for
you to get a job.
Speaker 5 (37:54):
Yeah, it's a little bit like recognizing the effects of
what trauma can do in your life, because on one hand,
it's frightening to hear things like, for example, there's something
called the Adverse Childhood Effects Survey. If you get a
high score on that, meaning you had a bunch of
adverse things happened to you as a child. The list
(38:15):
of consequences of things that can happen to you is long, right,
I mean, it goes from addiction to heart disease to depression.
I mean, it's just not a happy story. So on
one hand, it would be kind of good to not
know that, and yet of course you're having impacts from
it that are actually happening like you said, it's this
jiu jitsu a little bit of like, Okay, I know
(38:37):
that that's all true. I know that that is all
having an impact on me, and at the same time,
I'm determined not to let that be the whole story.
And I think that's we're talking about something similar here. Yes,
as a person who's lost your job, there's stigma against
you getting rehired. It's harder to get it right. There
are these negative things that can occur. You're dealing with
(38:58):
negative feedback loop of people who don't understand, people who
think the fact you don't have a job is your fault.
You've got all that happening. To pretend it's not happening
makes you feel insane. Right to pretend it's not is
to sort of feel crazy. Same thing if somebody has
a bunch of adverse childhood effects, to pretend that stuff's
not having an effect makes you feel crazy because you're like, well,
(39:19):
something isn't right. And yet you can't let it be
the whole story either, otherwise it becomes self fulfilling prophecies.
At the same time, and I think people who are
dealing with difficulties, systematic difficulties of any sorts run up
against this, which is, yes, the system is not fair,
(39:39):
and yet you still have to find a way within
that not to let that be the thing that defines you.
And I don't know exactly how people do that. I mean,
I think we all all wrestle with it. But it's
one of those sort of true half true things we
talked about before, where if you end up only accepting
one side of that, your reality is not whole. I
(40:00):
guess does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Yeah, it really makes sense. It makes me think about So.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
One of the things that this sociologist found was most
helpful in doing this mental jiu jitsu of trying to
like hold the bad statistics in one place and also
stay hopeful and like prepare yourself for the marathon ahead
so that you don't end up becoming a statistic.
Speaker 5 (40:24):
Right.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
One of the things he found that was most helpful
for participants was the solidarity. How important it was to
talk about it with people who understand and won't judge you,
who won't blame you for having a bad attitude.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
You know, it's the support group model.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
He said that like in these career centers, usually when
somebody raises their hand and says I'm having a hard time.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
They're told, sh don't talk about it. You don't have
the right attitude.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
You know, that's not encouraged in these places most of
the time. And so where does all that negativity go,
You know, you internalize it or you know, comes.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Down in weird places.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
And so that's one lesson that I think is like
kind of common sense but also really important to remember
for all kinds.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Of problems that you face.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Is like the importance of being able to share and
vent in a safe space.
Speaker 5 (41:45):
I interviewed a woman recently. She wrote a book about
dark moods and their benefit. In it, she described an
experience she had of reading a book that's gonna take
me a second of set up, but I think it's
actually going to be worth it. If not crystal cut
it all out. But she's described, you know, a woman
who is getting back into the job market after having
been a parent, right and so kids are going off
(42:07):
to school. She's been out of the job market for
twenty years. She's older, and she's expressing to her husband
and son her concerns that her skills aren't really up
to date. And she knows that you know, older women
it's harder for them to get hired and all of this, right,
And her husband and son just are saying to her, No, no,
you're wonderful, you're great, You're going to be just fine, right,
(42:29):
And the psychologist who was writing the book was describing
how they were right, and she had what the psychologist
was calling a negative explanatory style. The woman writing this
book had a big problem with this, right. She was like, well,
but of course there's discrimination against women of a certain age,
and you don't have you like, of course, she's right,
(42:52):
And I'm reading it thinking, well, they're both actually right
in a way, right, And this is exactly what we're
talking about. If she complain lely internalizes that attitude, then yes,
she's going to have a hard time finding a job.
And yet if she doesn't, if nobody recognizes those factors,
she's going to think that she's all the problem. And
(43:14):
the answer turned out to be relatively simple, right, which
was that what she needed was her husband to just say, yeah,
I understand, you know that's frightening, that's hard. Of course, yes,
I bet it. You know it's going to be harder
for you than it might be, say for me, if
I was to go look for a job, like that's
all true, and then she's heard. Because when we're not
(43:35):
heard on stuff like that, what my experience is is
we end up arguing for our own limitations. We end
up trying to convince everybody that we're right, that it
really is that bad and that hard. Whereas most people,
if that difficulty is acknowledged, then we can move on
to solution. But if nobody will acknowledge that difficulty, we
(43:59):
end up arguing for or instead of them being able
to move into this piece you talked about, which is like, Okay,
how do I prepare for the marathon not the sprint?
Speaker 2 (44:07):
That's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Yeah, it reminds me of this experience that I would
have again and again after my layoff, where with friends
and family, people you know, who love me and want
the best for me, When I would talk about my
feelings of shame, despair, you know, and maybe being a
little melodramatic whatever, people would sort of cheerlead me sometimes
(44:29):
and sort of be like no, no, no, like you
got this, like you'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Look at how much experience you have. Da da da
da da. And it always bugged me.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Like it always made me so it's just like no, no, no,
like yeah, I know, and also like these are my
feelings right now, and I'm allowed to feel these negative
feelings right and like I know you want it to
be okay, you want to put a band aid on it,
but like we don't know if that's gonna happen, like
if I will come out of this. It's almost like
(45:01):
you want some acknowledgment of your reality, your emotional and
material reality, so that you don't feel insane, yes, so
that you don't feel like people are trying to crowd.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Out your feelings.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
This whole experience with my layoff has really taught me
that when people in my life are going through a
hard thing, I just listen. I don't try to say, oh,
you must be feeling X or oh it'll be fine.
I try to listen first to what they're saying, you know,
because I think we're uncomfortable with like those kinds of
hard feelings, because we want the people in our life
(45:37):
to be okay.
Speaker 5 (45:38):
Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
One other thing I'm thinking about to go back to
this myth of meritocracy is there's been some interesting research.
It's very preliminary, there's some research that suggests that when
people don't expect to be laid off, they are more
emotionally wrecked than people who are aware of the possibility.
(46:03):
And I think this gets at the same kind of
thing we're talking about, where it's like just knowing, having
a kind of realistic view on like what could happen,
helps prepare you more for the possibility, so you're not
totally destabilized if it happens. And I think, like, yes,
(46:24):
you know the myth and meritocracy, it's half true, it's
half not true. And also it's a comforting story to
tell yourself because then if you have control if you
work hard, if you're telling yourself that if you work hard,
you will be safe, if you do a good job,
you will be safe, then you can have control in
(46:47):
this volatile, scary economy where people can be laid off
and fired because we have at will employment right. That
was like one of the biggest lessons for me from
all of this reporting was like, oh, Okay, it could
be not motivating to think, oh, if I do a
good job, I still might be laid off. I was
afraid that I might kind of go in that direction
(47:09):
of like oh, like, well, then what's the point and
kind of throw my hands up in the air, and
I found that that's not where I am right now.
Like I don't have a salary job right now, you know,
I'm doing my own thing, shooting my shot with this
new podcast. But I just I think that reality, even
if it hurts, it is generally always more helpful than
(47:31):
the like false story.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
That's comforting.
Speaker 5 (47:34):
I tend to agree. I think what's interesting about that is,
like many things we're talking about, is this balance, right,
Because if we were really grasp and spend a lot
of time thinking about how truly out of control we
are in this world, it would be paralyzing and we
would never get out of bed, right. I mean, because,
(47:55):
as a poet Mark Nepo calls it, the terrible knowledge
that anything can happen to anyone any time is true.
You can't live in that constant recognition of that fact,
or you'd be a basket case. And yet there's some
amount of recognition of that that's really useful, right, to
really realize, Like, yeah, like life is a frightening and
(48:17):
scary place, and terrible things happen to really good people
all the time, and good things happened to bad people,
and average things happen to average people, like it just
all happens, and so it's interesting. I think getting laid
off at the age that I did, I was twenty eight,
my wife was six months pregnant with my son. I mean,
it was a terrifying experience. I think that there was
(48:39):
something about that that just I from that moment on
did not believe that my safety came from a company.
And I remember, I mean, I worked in software startup companies,
so I guess for a while you do that, you
just kind of know, like, well, the odds are pretty good,
this thing is not going to make it. I went
(49:00):
on to do consulting for these really big big companies,
Fortune one hundred, Fortune five hundred companies, and my mom
would be like, I wish they would hire you. And
I'd be like, they actually offered to hire me, and
I said no, and she's like, you're crazy. And I
was like, Mom, do you think that working for this
company is like safe? Do you actually think that, like
(49:21):
the fact that they hired me as an employee is safety.
It's not anymore. I understand in your day and age
perhaps it was, but it's not anymore, you know. And
I felt like the fact that I was a consultant
and knew that I was going to need to prove
to somebody else anywhere from three months to six months
to a year from now that I was worth hiring
(49:44):
was more safety. Again, there's no complete safety, but it
was more safety because I just assumed that sooner or
later they're going to be done with me and I'm
going to have to go convince somebody else, And so
I just always felt like the fact that I knew
that made me stay a little bit more on top
of certain things. It's not that any of its safety,
(50:08):
but I think there was a I'm not counting on
a company to take care of me, because I don't
think that's a safe bet anymore in today's world. I'm
not demonizing companies. I'm just saying that, like, as we know,
if they need to cut costs, they're going to cut costs,
and if you happen to be part of that, you're
going to be gone.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
I'm curious if your relationship with risk changed after that moment,
because my relationship with risk has changed as a result
of my layoff. Like I would say that I am
a pretty risk averse person generally speaking, you know, maybe
it's like being the daughter of immigrants, who are the
(50:52):
children of refugees.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
Like it's just like I want to be safe.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
We need to have we need to have savings, we
need to security very important to like my operating system.
After like kind of the quote unquote worst thing professionally happened.
I know it's not the worst thing, but like it's
one of the worst things. Just losing your job kind
of liberated me from this kind of grasping need to
(51:18):
control and be safe. This new thing that I'm doing,
which is starting a podcast. I mean, it's not a
good time to start podcast. I really might fail. I
probably will fail, but I'm having fun doing it. I'm
learning a lot, and it's okay if I fail.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
Like I think it has.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
Really rewired my relationship with failure and just like my
tolerance for it and my tolerance for risk.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
I'm grateful for that.
Speaker 5 (51:43):
Actually, yeah, it's hard for me to know what recalibrated
my relationship with risk. I was a homeless HEROD at
twenty five, so I clearly wasn't playing anything safe to
begin with. But this job was my first attempt to
try and be safe. And it was interesting because when
I got laid off. I actually did gamble a little
(52:06):
bit because it was given severance, and I applied for unemployment,
and I recognized also that there was job retraining money available,
and so I took some of the severance and some
of that money, and I invested in a series of
software related courses, thinking like I might be able to
(52:27):
actually come out of this even better off, which it
turned out to be the case. And so I think
I was taking a risk then and then working in
software startup companies. Like I said, after that, I think
I just you do that long enough, your relationship to
it is just very different.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
It's like the water you swim in, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (52:45):
It is. It is the water you swim into a
certain degree. And so I think I just over the
years built more and more of a tolerance for it.
Although it's interesting as I get older, I'm finding my
risk tolerance becoming a little bit more like, well, hold
on a second, like, do you realize like the chance
that you know this is you know, I mean running
(53:07):
a podcast, right, Like we're in a pretty good position
as a podcast, and yet it is hard out there.
It is harder than it's ever been out there, and
there's risk you know there's there's risk I am aware
of very regularly.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
It's like has really made me want to shoot my
shot more in general, Like I feel like it has
kind of unleashed. It's kind of like aggressive, but like
not in a bad way. I hope we'll see, but
just like just kind of this version of me that's like, yeah,
like I'm gonna go for it, and it's okay if
(53:42):
I fail, Like I have already failed on my face
in a very public way, So why not shoot my shot?
Why not try? And yeah, I just feel less afraid Now.
Speaker 5 (53:53):
Yeah, I think that's good. I think that's good. I
think that's ideally the way to move to the best
of our ability. We're about out a time, but I
would be remiss if I did not at least ask
you about one of the things that you did as
part of this project is you decided to create a
(54:18):
layoff song. This sounds a little bit like the YOEI Spa.
But you decided to create a layoff song.
Speaker 1 (54:27):
It's exactly like the Yo A Shpa. I have discovered
that I'm really into inventing weird rituals as a way
of healing. So basically what happened was I was laid off,
feeling bad, trying all kinds of things to try to
feel better, reporting a series about it, doing this yoa
(54:47):
SHPA and massaging my friends, like doing a lot to
try to feel better. And I have to say, like
six months after the layoff, I was still.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
Feeling really really bad.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
I'd really it was not much further than I was
at the very beginning, and that kind of bummed me out.
And then I had this recital coming up. So like
one of my hobbies is I pole dance. I'm not good,
it's just for fun. My studio has this like very cute,
kind of nerdy seasonal recital where you can do like
(55:19):
a solo or a group dance or whatever. And so
I had a recital coming up, and I had signed
up to do like a solo thing and you have
to choreograph your own thing, and I'd never done it before,
and I was like.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?
Which song am I gonna choose? And I was like,
I know what I'll do.
Speaker 1 (55:34):
I need to do like an interpretive layoff dance because
that sounds fun to me, and I'll dress up in
a clean xbox, and it'll just be this ridiculous kind
of joyous reclamation of this whole situation. And so then
I started looking for layoff songs to dance too. Maybe
(55:55):
not surprisingly, there are not that many layoff songs out there.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
It is not a well developed genre as yet.
Speaker 5 (56:02):
Well the depths of country music. You sure, there's not
more out there.
Speaker 1 (56:05):
I know what I should have, but you know what
I was saying, I sure, but also I'm not sure
that would match the vibe of my fourreography. So anyways,
I was like, why not just make my own layoff song,
Like we're already here, why not go all the way.
And I'm very lucky to have a music producer as
(56:26):
a husband who can make it so, and so he
helped me out and we made this ridiculous song called
gold Star. And the reason why it's titled gold Star
is because after I got laid off, I remember like
people would do all kinds of nice things for me.
Send me fried chicken. I love fried chicken. People would like,
get me a massage. I love massage, just like all
(56:47):
these nice things, but like what I really wanted, if
I'm being honest, was a trophy.
Speaker 5 (56:54):
Okay, I just wanted.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
Like a trophy to my self esteem, like something to
combat the like negative voices in my head. It like, basically,
I want a gold star to sort of combat what
I'm feeling. And so this is like I'm hoping it
finds laid off folks. You know, this is sort of
a gold star, Like I'm soothing myself and hopefully you know,
(57:20):
this can be a gold star for you. And then
I made this ridiculous pull dancing video that is available
online right now, though it might not be forever because
I might come to my senses. I decided to pull
it from the internet.
Speaker 5 (57:35):
If it's still out there when this episode releases, we'll
put a link in the show notes. I've heard the song,
I have not yet watched the video. The thing that
made me laugh the most during that process, though, I
mean every part of it is great and funny, was
your husband introducing you to auto tune, which is a
way of, you know, trying to make those of us
who don't sing very well sound coherent. And it's so
(57:58):
funny because he was like, I've never seen my computer
have to work this hard. And it's funny because this
is quite some time ago. It probably at least fifteen
years ago. I went to a friend's house in Tennessee
and I used to be a songwriter, and so I
had some songs and I was trying to sing, and
(58:18):
we got what must have been a very early version
of auto tune.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
Right.
Speaker 5 (58:22):
It was a box. You didn't plug it into your computer.
And the running joke basically after that was that like
anytime it tried to process me, the box would start smoking.
It had to work so hard. So when he said
I've never seen this machine work this hard, I had
a good laugh. I was like, I've been there.
Speaker 2 (58:41):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (58:42):
Yeah, auto tune is my friend. Thank God for autotune. Yes,
there's no way I would have the courage to have
sung that song or put it on the Internet without
the help of a lot of autotune.
Speaker 5 (58:55):
As we wrap up, I'm curious, out of all the
valuable ideas we've explored today, what's the single most impactful
insight that resonates with you listener. For me, it's about relationships.
Many of us grapple with relationship issues in silence, uncertain
how to mend the cracks, the reality cultivating a fulfilling
relationship isn't solely about compatibility or fate. It's about developing
(59:19):
crucial interpersonal abilities. How's that for a fancy phrase? Basically
means we can improve our relationships. And here's a quick
tip for you. Focus on active listening. Make a conscious
effort to listen more than you speak in your next conversation,
focusing entirely on understanding the other person's perspective. Being a
(59:41):
good listener goes a long way in making our relationships better.
This month's newsletter focuses on relationships. Get practical exercises, reflections,
and podcast links to nurture your connections. Sign up at
goodwolf dot me slash relationships. Thousands are already benefiting from
these tips. Join us in fostering stronger relationships at goodwolf
(01:00:05):
dot me slash relationships. All right, well we are going
to wrap up now in the post show conversation. We're
going to talk a little bit longer because I want
to talk about You've launched this new podcast to report
on this, but there was an interim step in there
along the way that ended up I think being the
(01:00:25):
hardest maybe emotional moment for you of this whole journey,
and i'd like to talk about that a little bit
in the post show conversation listeners as always, if you
would like access to that, if you would like access
to add free episodes, a special episode I do each
week called a teaching song and a poem. And to
be part of our community, we have community meetings once
(01:00:47):
a month. We'd love to have you be part of
the community. You can do that by going to oneufeed
dot net slash join yowai. Thank you so much. This
has been really enjoyable from top to bottom.
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Thank you for having me. This was so fun. Thank
you for listening to my song and not judging me
too harshly.
Speaker 5 (01:01:03):
No, it's a good pop song.
Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
consider making a monthly donation to support the One You
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It's our way of saying thank you for your support.
Speaker 5 (01:01:37):
Now.
Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
We are so grateful for the members of our community.
We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
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To learn more, make a donation at any level and
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(01:01:59):
the show
When people in my life are going through a hard thing,
I just listen. I don't try to say, oh, you
must be feeling X, or oh it'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I try to listen first.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
(00:38):
or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
(00:58):
how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Jowey Shaw, an award winning podcast host, producer, and self
proclaimed emotional investigative journalist. She's the host of Proxy, a
show about niche emotional questions answered through conversations with strangers
who have shared experience. In her previous Life. She spent
many years making NPR's Invisibilia podcast, first as a producer,
(01:39):
then as a co host and editorial lead. Her work
has also been featured in places like This American Life
and pop up magazine.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
Hi Joe, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Thank you for having me. What an honor.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Yeah, well, it's an honor for me to talk to you.
You were involved in one of the great podcasts of
our age, Invisibilia, So I've known your work for a while,
as do many people who listen to NPR and follow
MPR podcasts. And we'll get into your time in Invisibilia
and then what kind of came after that getting laid off.
(02:12):
But before we get into all that, let's start like
we always do with the Parable. And in the Parable,
there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about
(02:35):
it for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well,
which one wins, and the grandparent says the one you feed.
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you in your life and in
the work that you do.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I love this parable.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I love thinking about it because I feel like it's
actually what drives my work.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
What power is it? Like, I'm really drawn.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
To that emotional noise between the good wolf and the
bad wolf. You know, we all have the good wolf
and bad wolf constantly chattering. There's always that struggle about
countless different issues every day, and I am really drawn
to examining those battles that we feel like we can't
(03:25):
settle on our own, that we have trouble settling, and
I like trying to make sense of it. And so
this is sort of like why I am now calling
myself a little bit tongue in cheek an emotional investigative journalist,
because I want to investigate those battles and then try
to report on it. Like that's sort of how I
(03:48):
deal with my feelings in general. I've been a reporter
now for fifteen years, which is most of my adult life,
and like that's sort of how I deal with those
battles between the good wolf and the bad wolf when
I can't figure it out through the or for like
by meditation or talking about it with friends. And so
I found that like when you report on your feelings,
when you talk to experts who can help contextualize that battle,
(04:12):
like what systems and ideas and histories have led to
you having this particular battle of voices, How can maybe
you think about it differently in a way that's more
helpful to you. And then getting to talk to strangers
who have shared experience who can tell you how they've
dealt with that battle themselves. I found that really helpful.
(04:34):
And so yeah, I feel like that's sort of like
what I like to do in general, for myself and
for other people.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Wow, that's really powerful. Now I'd like to turn this
to our listeners. What part of that message struck a
chord with you as you think about nourishing your good wolf?
What specific ideas or actions come to mind for me
this month? It's relationships. Relationships are the cornerstone of our
well being. When they thrive, we flourish, and when they struggle,
(05:03):
we suffer. Many of us face relationship challenges, feeling lost
and frustrated, but there is hope. Strong relationships aren't just
about fate. They're built on learnable skills. By developing these abilities,
you can transform your connections and in turn, your life.
So relationships are this month's theme and our weekly Bite
(05:24):
of Wisdom for a Wiser, Happier You newsletter, and I'd
love to send them your way. Each week we send
a menu of a few small exercises you can put
in practice to feed your good Wolf, along with a
reflection and a related podcast episode on the topic. At
the end of this episode, I will be giving you
a tip from this week's newsletter, But in the meantime,
(05:46):
if you'd like to join thousands of others who are
already benefiting from these tips, go to Goodwolf dot me
slash relationships. That's good Wolf dot me slash relationships. I
love that title. An emotional investigative journalist. That's great and
one of the things that many psychologists in different schools
(06:08):
of psychology will talk about is this idea of getting
distance from our thoughts and emotions right being able to
sort of separate from them. And that's exactly what you're
describing and why it's helpful for you. It's by reporting
on it and asking about it and looking at it
from different angles. It's a way of disentangling. It's a
way of creating that distance in the healthy sense of
(06:31):
the word, not distance in the unhealthy sense of the word,
but in the sense of disentangling. Or the founders of
acceptance and commitment therapy would call it diffusion, not being
fused with those thoughts and emotions. They call it cognitive diffusion.
So I think that's kind of what you're describing there,
and it's a well known way of working with thoughts
(06:53):
and emotions skillfully.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Well, I have a lot of questions for you. I
did not know about this. I'm going to ask you
for some book wrecks after this.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, I feel like you know now that you're saying
this is like an actual technique, you know that has
been studied for how to deal with your emotions and
move through them. I think that, Yeah, Like reporting on
my feelings is like one way I've been able to
do that through work for myself and for other people.
But I've also found that like creating a ritual through
(07:26):
like a kind of absurd art project has also.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Been really working for me lately. And what do I
mean by that?
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Okay, So, recently, I got laid off and felt really
bad and I felt a lot of shame. And one
of the things that happened afterwards was like I knew
that I needed to be around my people, like the
people who loved me, and yet I wanted to get
away from them. I didn't want anyone to look at
me like I felt so so much shame that I
(07:56):
didn't want anyone like other people's gaze, like it was
like daggers, you know, it was like hurting me. And
so after I got laid off, I was like, Okay,
I know I'm having this issue. And you could like
frame it in terms of the parable like the good
wolf is like, you know, you need to be around
your people who love you. These people love you, they're
(08:17):
not thinking about you differently. They want to support you.
Then the bad wolf is like, no, everybody hates.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
You, nobody wants to be associated with you anymore. You're
such a burden, Like, get over it already.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
And so what I did was I tricked out my
basement to be a massage parlor.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
I like massage, I like dabble.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I love getting massages, and I dabble in the bit
of body work for other people as a form of care,
and so I created Yowi Shpa, which was like, I
got a massage table.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
The theme was pink.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I got some fake plants, I got a hot towel steamer.
I just like tricked it out and then I sent
around a signup sheet to my friends and was like,
yoweish open for business. And basically I ended up massaging
a friend a week for the entire summer after I
got laid off, And like, I think that was my way,
like just creating a fun, weird ritual to try to
(09:13):
deal with the bad wolf voice in me.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
I love that and in the hot towel steamer, that's
going for it. Now here's a dream I've long had,
and maybe you, as a fellow lover of massage and
a reporter, maybe I've met the person who can help
me bring this to life, which is that I feel
like there should be massage review services. Like you go
to get a massage and you don't really know where
(09:37):
to go. There's so many different choices, and so I thought, like,
would that not be the dream job, like to be
a massage reviewer, Like that would be brilliant.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yes, for every local paper you know, Now you have
like the restaurant critic. You need like a bodywork critic
to me, like an alternative health bodywork whatever for accutructure,
for massage for like, I don't know. There's so many
different services these days.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
I love that. Now I'm going to try to manifest
that as my new job for both of us. You're
in New York, right, I'm in Philadelphia.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Oh, Philadelphia? Okay, all right, I thought you were in
New York. I have my city's mixed. Well, Philadelphia is
a big enough city. You could probably pull that off.
I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
In Chris, plenty of places to review who need our services.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Yeah, a reviewers there is. Yeah, I would read a
massage reviewer for sure before I went anyway. That and
this is strange. My other dream career that I think
about maybe someday when I retire, is similar. I want
to be a dog messuse.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Wait a minute, do you have a dog?
Speaker 5 (10:45):
I do, yes?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
And do you already dabble in dog massage?
Speaker 5 (10:48):
Oh? Yes, yes, yes, Wow. I might like to massage
her more than she likes to be massage, and I'm
not entirely sure. Sometimes she really.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Seems to like spread out your services.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
And every once in a while, She's like, get off
of me. Yeah, exactly, leave me alone. So, yes, it
just seems like that would be a lovely career.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Now, I have another thing I'm going to ask you
about after this is I want to learn how to
be cat massage my two cats.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
Okay, well I'm going to assume it's similar. I'm not
qualified for this job, but there is such a thing
and they do offer training in it. Anyway, Okay, that's
not what we're here to talk about. But apparently we
both could talk about massage for a long time. But
what we're going to talk about is led to you
creating the yo a spa that I say it right,
(11:32):
a spa.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
What led to you creating that, which was you getting
laid off. So you worked your way up to being
a co host of a popular show called Invisibilia, which
was a great show. You'd been a reporter for it,
you became a co host, and then you were laid off.
Talk to me about that experience, maybe how it happened
and how you felt.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, Okay, so at MPR we had an unusual layoff,
which is because MPR told us gave us like a
huge heads up that they were going through budget trouble
and they needed to lay ten percent of us off
and we'd find out who in a month. And so
I had a whole month with the rest of my
colleagues to sort of have panic attacks, sweat it out,
(12:20):
have sleepless nights, do a lot of teeth grinding, and
then the day came where we'd find out who got
the email, you know, to let us know that you
needed to have a meeting with HR.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
And I ended up getting.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
The email, And yeah, I have to say that in
the beginning, I was I was numb. I think that
like that whole month leading up to the actual layoff
kind of functioned like a form of exposure therapy, Like
I was just getting used to the idea that I
might lose my job for an entire month. And so
(12:54):
in some ways I was not surprised, because like I
knew it could happen, But on the other hand, it
still felt like a shock, like I still was so
completely thrown and it was very confusing to me because
you know, getting laid off in journalism these days, I
(13:14):
mean that's practically a rite of passage at this point,
you know, Like I knew that was the deal. Going
into this profession, NBR had literally told me and my
colleagues that I might get laid off, and yet I
was still so shaken to my core. I felt like
my operating system was glitching. And yeah, basically, for the
(13:36):
next several months after that, I went through this roller
coaster ride of feelings.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
There was a lot of shame. There was a lot
of spiraling about.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
What could I have done differently, you know, was it
this mistake or was it that mistake? There was a
lot of paranoia about interacting with other people and potential employers.
I went to like a journalism conference last summer for
Asian American Journalists Association, and I just remember just being
so paranoid. Like anytime anyone asked me like how are you, like,
(14:12):
I would be this close to just like bursting into tears,
or like, you know, have you found another job yet?
Just really benign questions would throw me for a loop.
And yeah, I basically like I knew I had about
as good of a layoff as it gets, truly, Like
we had a very good union contract at MPR, so
(14:33):
I got severance. There were healthcare for like a few
months after I had savings I'm married, I have a
husband who can support me. I don't have kids, you
know what I mean. Like I had a lot going
for me materially to like help soften the landing here,
and yet emotionally I was just completely a mess. And
(14:57):
that disconnect between like my material reac and my emotional
reality was really you know, like I said before, like
whenever I have an emotional problem like this that I
can't figure out, I start to report on it.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
And so that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
And yeah, I ended up reporting the series trying to
understand like why do layoffs mess us up so badly?
And I just want to say, you know, this is
just my experience. I have friends who got laid off
from the same company and did not experience it this way.
But I do think a significant portion of Americans do
(15:32):
experience it this way, and that's what I was interested
in figuring out.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
So you've alluded to some of the emotional difficulty that
was there. You've alluded to shame. I assumed there was
fear in their embarrassment, which sounds like shame. What were
the primary sort of emotions that you were going through?
Are there others that I've missed?
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Hmm, fear, shame, embarrassed. There's other ones too, Let's take
them one by one. So, yeah, so we already covered shame,
which was really confusing to me.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Why I would.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Feel like the company told me it's not my fault. Right,
that's the definition of a layoff. It's a no fault termination.
You're getting laid off because of something that has to
do with the company, not because of you, right, And
they generally always tell you it's not you, it's not
about your performance. This is just a business decision. And
(16:32):
yet why was I taking it so personally? Why did
I feel like this was an indictment about me? Why
did it feel like MPR was rejecting everything about me?
Speaker 2 (16:43):
You know? Why did I feel deficient? You know?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
So that was a big one. And then yeah, fear,
thank you for mentioning that one. Yes, even though you
know I am relatively privileged, I was still really scared,
like I'm the prime breadwinner for my family. I was
like afraid about kind of running through all the scenarios
that might happen. You know, well, if I don't get
(17:09):
a job for these many months, Okay, well then what
will happen if you know, we lose the house, and
like where will we move? And da da da da da,
how will we feed the cats? You know, just like
kind of spiraling in those material ways. And then there
was also fear around getting another job. And this was
also I mean, the podcast industry is not doing great
(17:31):
at the moment, especially the narrative podcast industry sort of
you know, the bottom has.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Fallen out of it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
So yeah, there is some point to that fear, some
justification around maybe I won't be able to find another.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Job, but also I have fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Of experience, like I am a pretty seasoned podcast person,
Like it didn't totally make sense how afraid I was
compared to like my circumstances.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
And then I was like, oh have I peaked? Like
is this it?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Is this like the pinnacle of what I'll be able
to do in podcast journalism and trying to think what
are all the other emotions?
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I think?
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Also the thing that really stuck with me was like,
why do I feel like people are looking at me differently?
Is this just in my head? Or are they looking
at me differently? It felt like a kind of microaggression,
you know, when people would say things to me like
have you found another job yet, Are you gonna be
(18:34):
changing switching industries?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Are you?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
You know, just just like little things that became so
much bigger when your entire body is a scuffed me,
you know.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
And so I really.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Wanted to understand just like, why is this just me
being a drama queen? Or is there something to like
what I'm feeling? Are there cistims and dynamics contributing to
the way I feel?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (19:05):
And so what did you find out as you began
to investigate this? What did you find out about what
happens to people during layoffs and why it impacts again,
not everyone, but some of the people so strongly.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yes, Okay, so the first thing I learned, I mean,
the history on layoffs is pretty wild. It's very interesting,
Like before the nineteen seventies, you know, companies pretty much
avoided white collar layoffs, Like this is a pretty recent phenomenon.
If a company were to experience layoffs, that would be
an indictment of the company, right, you know, like the
(19:44):
company needs to feel shame, and now it's slipped. So
now we sort of accept layoffs as just like that's just.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
What business has to do these days.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
But it wasn't always like that, and so that was
the first kind of like data point of like, oh okay,
so like it wasn't always like this, you know, like
there are these structural things that are happening that are
leading to this situation in the first place. And then
I've talked to the sociologist over Sharon, who has done
a lot of really interesting work on stigma and laid
(20:16):
off workers and unemployed workers. I went to therapy during
this whole period, and like, honestly, talking to him was
more enlightening and revelatory than any therapy session I had
at this time, because he could just everything I was
telling him about what I was feeling.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
He would he would be like, yep, there's a reason
for that. Yep.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
All these people that I talk to you feel exactly
like that, yep. And some of the things he told
me were that the stigma that I'm feeling this kind
of paranoia around are people.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Looking at me differently? Are people looking a differently?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Like that's not just in my head, Like people probably
are looking at me differently. And that was like a
huge relief to sort of just be like, okay, I
can call it like it is these feelings that I'm
feeling this intuition, like I'm not wrong, and yeah, there's
just a lot of stigma around not just laid off workers,
but unemployment in general. When you grow up in school,
(21:15):
your teachers are asking you, you know, what do you
want to be when you grow up? You don't really,
I don't even know if the word unemployment has I
don't think it was mentioned to me during my schooling years.
We don't have much familiarity with it, even though it's
a fact of this economy. And he said that the
stigma really comes down to this myth of meritocracy that
(21:37):
we have in this country, basically the idea that your
actions and hard work equal your position in life in society.
And even though you know the myth of meritocracy exists
in a lot of countries, there have been research studies
that find that in the US we believe it the
most and the hardest and the deepest.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
What that means is if you get laid off, well,
then it's your fault.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
You know, Like that's the emotional story that I think
I was telling myself, even though intellectually I know that's
not how it works. And so he helped me kind
of solve this puzzle that I was feeling, whereas like,
I know it's.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Not my fault.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
I know I shouldn't feel like this, and yet I
feel like it's my fault.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
I feel like this is about me.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
And he talked about like interviewing a union organizer whose
job it is to explain to workers how our economy works,
and even like a union organizer would feel like it's
her fault, right, you know, even though intellectually she knows
it's not. And so, yeah, so talking to him about that,
(22:50):
talking to him about hiring discrimination that unemployed workers and
laid off workers face, that it's twice as hard to
get a job interview than someone who has the same credentials.
That was also disheartening, but also helpful in that it's
like it's like that whole kind of like system versus
(23:10):
the individual thing of like is it me?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Is it just me? Or am I part of a pattern?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
And I feel like there's a moment where it just
clicked for me, like, oh, I'm part of a pattern,
these feelings I'm feeling.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
I'm not an alien.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
There are reasons why I feel this way, and that
helped make sense of it.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
There's so many things in there I would like to
go back and touch on, but the question that just
came to mind is you're a journalist working in a
podcast industry, doing something that clearly really matters to you.
Do you think it's harder in that circumstance than when
you're laid off from a job that maybe you are
(24:18):
less personally invested in.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, I think absolutely absolutely, And yet part of me
also I have my hackles up when I get asked
this question because I think like there's this whole movement
right now around like work shouldn't be your identity and
like we know better than to, like, you know, care
(24:42):
so much about our jobs, and life is about so
much more than work. And I guess as somebody who's
very very into her work, and like it is a
huge part of my identity. But I also I'm like,
how can it not matter your job?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
You know?
Speaker 1 (24:59):
I feel like in that movement there's a little bit
of like, you spend so many hours of your life
doing this thing, you have social networks around this occupation.
To not have it part of your identity seems unrealistic,
you know, Like I think that's one response I have
(25:22):
to that question. And then of course absolutely yes, if
I didn't care so much it would hurt a lot less.
Speaker 5 (25:31):
Absolutely, Yeah, yeah, I certainly didn't mean it in any
sense that the ideal thing would be to care less. Actually,
I think all in all, to have a job that
you care about deeply and provides you meaning is the
better situation than to have one where you simply go
through the motions. Right. I mean, that's just my personal opinion,
but I do think in general, right, the more you
(25:53):
care about something when you lose it, the harder it
is to lose it. It's sort of one of life's
equations that it's just true. When I think about things
that I've lost that really really hurt, usually the consolation
I find is, oh, but I really really cared, so
that's good, right, Like I had something I loved enough
to lose it. And I think to your point, though,
(26:14):
there are aspects of what we're talking about that probably
happen at all different levels, because yes, we are invested
in our work, most people take some degree of meaning
from it, and our relationships are there. I find it
so interesting this idea of the myth of meritocracy. And
as I was listening to your podcast called Proxy, and
(26:37):
I think it's a three episode arc that's about this process.
And as I was listening to that and you start
talking about the myth of meritocracy. As somebody who probably
has bought into the myth of meritocracy to some degree
over my lifetime, I don't buy into it into the
same degree that I used to. I had a little
bit of like, but it kind of is true, sort of.
(26:59):
I think what's interesting about it is that it's one
of those things that's true and not true at the
same time. And what I mean is that it is
true that how much effort you put in and how
hard you work and all that is an element in
what goes into being successful or not successful. But it's
(27:21):
far from the only element. As we can see, right,
we know people who are very talented who the world
just does not treat fair for a thousand different reasons.
So it's one of those things that like, on the
one hand, I'm like, well, but you can't totally throw
it out, and yet on the other hand, it's not true.
I mean I suffered a layoff. I told you about
(27:42):
it a little bit. It was a long time ago,
but I mean I was working as hard as you
could possibly work at the time.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Right.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
It was just that an early online company got bought
by another company and the layoff occurred. And so I
can see in all different cases that the myth of
meritocracy is just that. The other thing I thought was
interesting as we're talking about the stigma, and I found
this idea that people who are unemployed have a far
(28:11):
harder time getting job than someone employed. Right, there's an
old saying which is the best time to look for
a job as well you have a job, right, And
it's just based on that very at least in my mind,
I always heard that phrase to mean exactly that, right,
that for whatever reason, you look like a better candidate
when you have a job versus when you don't have one.
(28:34):
But it was amazing to hear as you did this
investigative reporting how open recruiters really were about this fact
about just pretty much straight out saying like, yes, we
get a lot of applicants, you know, it's hard to
sort them out. So one way that we do so
is if you have a job, we rank you higher
than if you don't.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, it was wild to hear what recruiters would say.
And basically, it's discrimination when you think about it, when
it's like a characteristic about you that you cannot help
you know, that you cannot change necessarily. It's like it's
a form of bias and discrimination that is just openly
accepted in our employment system. And that's yeah, that's wild
(29:18):
that we were just like, yep, that's just the way
it is.
Speaker 5 (29:20):
Well, it's based on that same sort of half true
thing about the myth of meritocracy, right, because you're assuming
that if somebody doesn't have work, it's because something they
have done.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:32):
And while in certain cases, right, like some people who
would come to you to look for work and they
don't have a job is because they're not very good,
you know what I mean, Like, there are those people,
but it's certainly not everybody with layoffs, and I think
these part true things. It's easier to throw something out
that's completely always falls.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Yeah, And you know, these recruiters also talked about how,
you know, even the ones who didn't really buy into
that way of thinking, they're like they don't see you know,
a resume and see, oh you've been laid off. That
means you are a worse performer. You know, there are
recruiters who talk to the sociologists who are like maybe
(30:13):
that's true, maybe it's not true. It's getting out what
you're saying. This half truth, this partly true assumption for
these recruiters because they just have a huge pile of
resumes to get through, and also they don't want to
get in trouble with, you know, with the manager the
team that they're hiring for, Like what if it is
true and they end up letting somebody in that isn't
(30:34):
going to do a good job, And so they just
are conservative and sort of air on the side of, well,
let's talk to the people who already have a job.
Let's just air on the side of, you know, we
just want to be safe.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
It reminds me of another saying. I was in the
software business for a long time before I became a podcaster,
and so there was an old saying that, like, nobody
ever got fired for hiring IBM, And what they mean was,
it's the safe choice, right, It's just the safe choice,
Like it may not be the best choice, it may
not be the right choice, but it's the choice that
(31:05):
everybody would at the end of the day go, well,
that sort of makes sense. So I can't penalle lot,
you know what I mean, It's that same sort of
thing now as somebody who you know, sort of made
my way through the startup business without a college degree
and all that. Like, I sort of was like, well,
you know, I didn't like that phrase. You know, you
want to hire somebody like me, the punk rock weirdo
(31:26):
that showed up at your door today is your best choice.
So all these things are true. So the other thing
that I thought was really interesting is that one of
the things that I think is obvious and you heard,
is that if you show up for an interview, so
you've been laid off and now you're back out and
you're looking for a job, if you have a sense
(31:47):
of a desperation or be of negativity about what happened,
or negativity or feelings of doubt about your own ability,
that's not good for getting a job. You don't want
to show up with that. So we would seem the
ignoring what we've just been talking about, not knowing that
to be true, might be better, because if I know
(32:10):
that you're going to discriminate against me, then I'm going
to be more doubtful, I'm going to be more afraid.
But it seems like that the research that this gentleman
that you were mentioning, did shows that that's actually not true,
That there is a way of both recognizing the stigma,
recognizing the difficulty allowing the negative emotions to be there,
(32:31):
and then also not projecting them as you go into
trying to find other work. How does that happen?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
This is something that I was experiencing myself as I
was reporting the story on layof's. I was reading all
these depressing statistics about how layoffs, you know, are linked
with higher risk of divorce, higher risk of decreased earnings,
you know, higher risk of hospital just like all these
bad things that layoffs are linked to. And I was
starting to get in my head like, oh no, Like
(33:01):
am I going to end up as one of these statistics?
Like I got to get another job?
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Like ah?
Speaker 1 (33:06):
And I asked over Sharon the sociologist, this question of
like it seems like it would be counterintuitive, Like it
would not be helpful. It seems like it would not
be helpful to learn about all these depressing statistics, right,
And what he said was he said that yes, it hurts,
but also it helps you see that.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
It's not your fault if you do have trouble.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
It's that deep personalization thing that we were talking about earlier.
So over Sharon the sociologist, he did this study where
he got all these volunteer career coaches and all these
people in Boston who were out of work looking for
a job, long term unemployed. He had the coaches try
(33:51):
a different approach called sociologically informed support, which to me,
I love that term. It's so nerdy, it's so funny.
To me, it's hard to say sociologically informed support. So
basically what happened was, at the beginning of the day,
Offer would go up in front of everyone and be like,
(34:12):
I'm sorry to tell you, folks, but here's what it is,
and which is like go through all the odds that
are stacked against them, and then he would say, I
know this hurts, I know this sucks to hear this,
but I want you to know this so that you
don't blame yourself for having a hard time getting another job.
(34:33):
There's a reason, a concrete reason why you are having
a hard time. Because if you blame yourself, if you
internalize all those you know, failed job interviews, all those rejections,
all that silence from employers, then it'll make it harder
for you to get a job, because you will be
(34:53):
even more negative, you will be even more insecure, you know,
you'll just leak more negativity, which will then make it
harder to get a job, which will make you feel
even worse about yourself. And then you just start to
like get into this vicious cycle of negativity. You know,
like it's harder for you to get a job that
makes you feel worse about yourself, that makes it then
(35:16):
harder to get a job when you go show up for.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
An interview, and then you just end up in this
really toxic, hard loop.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
And so what the sociologist recommends is important to know
what you're dealing with, What are the odds that are
stacked against you, How hard is it for you to
get another job? And then get up and sort of
shake it off, and then you need to get to
(35:45):
work looking for that job. You need to like go
ask colleagues for a recommendation. That's like the best way
to sort of overcome that bias against unemployed workers or
laid off workers is a recommendation from somebody inside the company.
And you basically need to prepare yourself for a marathon,
not a sprint, and you need to protect your mental health.
(36:09):
You need to prioritize it. You need to understand that
there are all these negative feedback loops that could be
coming from maybe a spouse who's maybe blaming you for
not finding worker, for getting laid off, maybe your friends
who maybe don't understand or have distanced themselves, who knows
(36:30):
there are a number of negative feedback loops that you
could be dealing with. And so you sort of need
to like map out all the negative feedback loops that
you might be dealing with and then find your safe people,
find the people that you can vent about your negative
feelings and they won't judge you. They won't say, oh, well,
that's your bad attitude. That's why you're not getting another job, right,
(36:53):
You know, people you can be safe with, and then
just keep trucking along in until you get that chance.
Because the longer you are unemployed, the harder it is
to get a job. And the best way to deal
with all those negative consequences that come with unemployment and
laid off is getting another job. It's just like this
(37:16):
mental jiu jitsu you have to do with yourself. Yeah,
that I find very interesting and really goes against what
the dominant approach is with career coaches and career centers,
which is very like pull yourself up.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
By the bootstraps. You can do it.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
You just need the right attitude, You just need the
right resume, You just need the right outfit, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
And all that matters. All that stuff matters.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Is not to say that like you shouldn't learn how
to interview better, or you shouldn't polish your resume.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
All that stuff matters. But also it is harder for
you to get a job.
Speaker 5 (37:54):
Yeah, it's a little bit like recognizing the effects of
what trauma can do in your life, because on one hand,
it's frightening to hear things like, for example, there's something
called the Adverse Childhood Effects Survey. If you get a
high score on that, meaning you had a bunch of
adverse things happened to you as a child. The list
(38:15):
of consequences of things that can happen to you is long, right,
I mean, it goes from addiction to heart disease to depression.
I mean, it's just not a happy story. So on
one hand, it would be kind of good to not
know that, and yet of course you're having impacts from
it that are actually happening like you said, it's this
jiu jitsu a little bit of like, Okay, I know
(38:37):
that that's all true. I know that that is all
having an impact on me, and at the same time,
I'm determined not to let that be the whole story.
And I think that's we're talking about something similar here. Yes,
as a person who's lost your job, there's stigma against
you getting rehired. It's harder to get it right. There
are these negative things that can occur. You're dealing with
(38:58):
negative feedback loop of people who don't understand, people who
think the fact you don't have a job is your fault.
You've got all that happening. To pretend it's not happening
makes you feel insane. Right to pretend it's not is
to sort of feel crazy. Same thing if somebody has
a bunch of adverse childhood effects, to pretend that stuff's
not having an effect makes you feel crazy because you're like, well,
(39:19):
something isn't right. And yet you can't let it be
the whole story either, otherwise it becomes self fulfilling prophecies.
At the same time, and I think people who are
dealing with difficulties, systematic difficulties of any sorts run up
against this, which is, yes, the system is not fair,
(39:39):
and yet you still have to find a way within
that not to let that be the thing that defines you.
And I don't know exactly how people do that. I mean,
I think we all all wrestle with it. But it's
one of those sort of true half true things we
talked about before, where if you end up only accepting
one side of that, your reality is not whole. I
(40:00):
guess does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Yeah, it really makes sense. It makes me think about So.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
One of the things that this sociologist found was most
helpful in doing this mental jiu jitsu of trying to
like hold the bad statistics in one place and also
stay hopeful and like prepare yourself for the marathon ahead
so that you don't end up becoming a statistic.
Speaker 5 (40:24):
Right.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
One of the things he found that was most helpful
for participants was the solidarity. How important it was to
talk about it with people who understand and won't judge you,
who won't blame you for having a bad attitude.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
You know, it's the support group model.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
He said that like in these career centers, usually when
somebody raises their hand and says I'm having a hard time.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
They're told, sh don't talk about it. You don't have
the right attitude.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
You know, that's not encouraged in these places most of
the time. And so where does all that negativity go,
You know, you internalize it or you know, comes.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Down in weird places.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
And so that's one lesson that I think is like
kind of common sense but also really important to remember
for all kinds.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Of problems that you face.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Is like the importance of being able to share and
vent in a safe space.
Speaker 5 (41:45):
I interviewed a woman recently. She wrote a book about
dark moods and their benefit. In it, she described an
experience she had of reading a book that's gonna take
me a second of set up, but I think it's
actually going to be worth it. If not crystal cut
it all out. But she's described, you know, a woman
who is getting back into the job market after having
been a parent, right and so kids are going off
(42:07):
to school. She's been out of the job market for
twenty years. She's older, and she's expressing to her husband
and son her concerns that her skills aren't really up
to date. And she knows that you know, older women
it's harder for them to get hired and all of this, right,
And her husband and son just are saying to her, No, no,
you're wonderful, you're great, You're going to be just fine, right,
(42:29):
And the psychologist who was writing the book was describing
how they were right, and she had what the psychologist
was calling a negative explanatory style. The woman writing this
book had a big problem with this, right. She was like, well,
but of course there's discrimination against women of a certain age,
and you don't have you like, of course, she's right,
(42:52):
And I'm reading it thinking, well, they're both actually right
in a way, right, And this is exactly what we're
talking about. If she complain lely internalizes that attitude, then yes,
she's going to have a hard time finding a job.
And yet if she doesn't, if nobody recognizes those factors,
she's going to think that she's all the problem. And
(43:14):
the answer turned out to be relatively simple, right, which
was that what she needed was her husband to just say, yeah,
I understand, you know that's frightening, that's hard. Of course, yes,
I bet it. You know it's going to be harder
for you than it might be, say for me, if
I was to go look for a job, like that's
all true, and then she's heard. Because when we're not
(43:35):
heard on stuff like that, what my experience is is
we end up arguing for our own limitations. We end
up trying to convince everybody that we're right, that it
really is that bad and that hard. Whereas most people,
if that difficulty is acknowledged, then we can move on
to solution. But if nobody will acknowledge that difficulty, we
(43:59):
end up arguing for or instead of them being able
to move into this piece you talked about, which is like, Okay,
how do I prepare for the marathon not the sprint?
Speaker 2 (44:07):
That's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Yeah, it reminds me of this experience that I would
have again and again after my layoff, where with friends
and family, people you know, who love me and want
the best for me, When I would talk about my
feelings of shame, despair, you know, and maybe being a
little melodramatic whatever, people would sort of cheerlead me sometimes
(44:29):
and sort of be like no, no, no, like you
got this, like you'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Look at how much experience you have. Da da da
da da. And it always bugged me.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Like it always made me so it's just like no, no, no,
like yeah, I know, and also like these are my
feelings right now, and I'm allowed to feel these negative
feelings right and like I know you want it to
be okay, you want to put a band aid on it,
but like we don't know if that's gonna happen, like
if I will come out of this. It's almost like
(45:01):
you want some acknowledgment of your reality, your emotional and
material reality, so that you don't feel insane, yes, so
that you don't feel like people are trying to crowd.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Out your feelings.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
This whole experience with my layoff has really taught me
that when people in my life are going through a
hard thing, I just listen. I don't try to say, oh,
you must be feeling X or oh it'll be fine.
I try to listen first to what they're saying, you know,
because I think we're uncomfortable with like those kinds of
hard feelings, because we want the people in our life
(45:37):
to be okay.
Speaker 5 (45:38):
Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
One other thing I'm thinking about to go back to
this myth of meritocracy is there's been some interesting research.
It's very preliminary, there's some research that suggests that when
people don't expect to be laid off, they are more
emotionally wrecked than people who are aware of the possibility.
(46:03):
And I think this gets at the same kind of
thing we're talking about, where it's like just knowing, having
a kind of realistic view on like what could happen,
helps prepare you more for the possibility, so you're not
totally destabilized if it happens. And I think, like, yes,
(46:24):
you know the myth and meritocracy, it's half true, it's
half not true. And also it's a comforting story to
tell yourself because then if you have control if you
work hard, if you're telling yourself that if you work hard,
you will be safe, if you do a good job,
you will be safe, then you can have control in
(46:47):
this volatile, scary economy where people can be laid off
and fired because we have at will employment right. That
was like one of the biggest lessons for me from
all of this reporting was like, oh, Okay, it could
be not motivating to think, oh, if I do a
good job, I still might be laid off. I was
afraid that I might kind of go in that direction
(47:09):
of like oh, like, well, then what's the point and
kind of throw my hands up in the air, and
I found that that's not where I am right now.
Like I don't have a salary job right now, you know,
I'm doing my own thing, shooting my shot with this
new podcast. But I just I think that reality, even
if it hurts, it is generally always more helpful than
(47:31):
the like false story.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
That's comforting.
Speaker 5 (47:34):
I tend to agree. I think what's interesting about that is,
like many things we're talking about, is this balance, right,
Because if we were really grasp and spend a lot
of time thinking about how truly out of control we
are in this world, it would be paralyzing and we
would never get out of bed, right. I mean, because,
(47:55):
as a poet Mark Nepo calls it, the terrible knowledge
that anything can happen to anyone any time is true.
You can't live in that constant recognition of that fact,
or you'd be a basket case. And yet there's some
amount of recognition of that that's really useful, right, to
really realize, Like, yeah, like life is a frightening and
(48:17):
scary place, and terrible things happen to really good people
all the time, and good things happened to bad people,
and average things happen to average people, like it just
all happens, and so it's interesting. I think getting laid
off at the age that I did, I was twenty eight,
my wife was six months pregnant with my son. I mean,
it was a terrifying experience. I think that there was
(48:39):
something about that that just I from that moment on
did not believe that my safety came from a company.
And I remember, I mean, I worked in software startup companies,
so I guess for a while you do that, you
just kind of know, like, well, the odds are pretty good,
this thing is not going to make it. I went
(49:00):
on to do consulting for these really big big companies,
Fortune one hundred, Fortune five hundred companies, and my mom
would be like, I wish they would hire you. And
I'd be like, they actually offered to hire me, and
I said no, and she's like, you're crazy. And I
was like, Mom, do you think that working for this
company is like safe? Do you actually think that, like
(49:21):
the fact that they hired me as an employee is safety.
It's not anymore. I understand in your day and age
perhaps it was, but it's not anymore, you know. And
I felt like the fact that I was a consultant
and knew that I was going to need to prove
to somebody else anywhere from three months to six months
to a year from now that I was worth hiring
(49:44):
was more safety. Again, there's no complete safety, but it
was more safety because I just assumed that sooner or
later they're going to be done with me and I'm
going to have to go convince somebody else, And so
I just always felt like the fact that I knew
that made me stay a little bit more on top
of certain things. It's not that any of its safety,
(50:08):
but I think there was a I'm not counting on
a company to take care of me, because I don't
think that's a safe bet anymore in today's world. I'm
not demonizing companies. I'm just saying that, like, as we know,
if they need to cut costs, they're going to cut costs,
and if you happen to be part of that, you're
going to be gone.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
I'm curious if your relationship with risk changed after that moment,
because my relationship with risk has changed as a result
of my layoff. Like I would say that I am
a pretty risk averse person generally speaking, you know, maybe
it's like being the daughter of immigrants, who are the
(50:52):
children of refugees.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
Like it's just like I want to be safe.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
We need to have we need to have savings, we
need to security very important to like my operating system.
After like kind of the quote unquote worst thing professionally happened.
I know it's not the worst thing, but like it's
one of the worst things. Just losing your job kind
of liberated me from this kind of grasping need to
(51:18):
control and be safe. This new thing that I'm doing,
which is starting a podcast. I mean, it's not a
good time to start podcast. I really might fail. I
probably will fail, but I'm having fun doing it. I'm
learning a lot, and it's okay if I fail.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
Like I think it has.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
Really rewired my relationship with failure and just like my
tolerance for it and my tolerance for risk.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
I'm grateful for that.
Speaker 5 (51:43):
Actually, yeah, it's hard for me to know what recalibrated
my relationship with risk. I was a homeless HEROD at
twenty five, so I clearly wasn't playing anything safe to
begin with. But this job was my first attempt to
try and be safe. And it was interesting because when
I got laid off. I actually did gamble a little
(52:06):
bit because it was given severance, and I applied for unemployment,
and I recognized also that there was job retraining money available,
and so I took some of the severance and some
of that money, and I invested in a series of
software related courses, thinking like I might be able to
(52:27):
actually come out of this even better off, which it
turned out to be the case. And so I think
I was taking a risk then and then working in
software startup companies. Like I said, after that, I think
I just you do that long enough, your relationship to
it is just very different.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
It's like the water you swim in, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (52:45):
It is. It is the water you swim into a
certain degree. And so I think I just over the
years built more and more of a tolerance for it.
Although it's interesting as I get older, I'm finding my
risk tolerance becoming a little bit more like, well, hold
on a second, like, do you realize like the chance
that you know this is you know, I mean running
(53:07):
a podcast, right, Like we're in a pretty good position
as a podcast, and yet it is hard out there.
It is harder than it's ever been out there, and
there's risk you know there's there's risk I am aware
of very regularly.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
It's like has really made me want to shoot my
shot more in general, Like I feel like it has
kind of unleashed. It's kind of like aggressive, but like
not in a bad way. I hope we'll see, but
just like just kind of this version of me that's like, yeah,
like I'm gonna go for it, and it's okay if
(53:42):
I fail, Like I have already failed on my face
in a very public way, So why not shoot my shot?
Why not try? And yeah, I just feel less afraid Now.
Speaker 5 (53:53):
Yeah, I think that's good. I think that's good. I
think that's ideally the way to move to the best
of our ability. We're about out a time, but I
would be remiss if I did not at least ask
you about one of the things that you did as
part of this project is you decided to create a
(54:18):
layoff song. This sounds a little bit like the YOEI Spa.
But you decided to create a layoff song.
Speaker 1 (54:27):
It's exactly like the Yo A Shpa. I have discovered
that I'm really into inventing weird rituals as a way
of healing. So basically what happened was I was laid off,
feeling bad, trying all kinds of things to try to
feel better, reporting a series about it, doing this yoa
(54:47):
SHPA and massaging my friends, like doing a lot to
try to feel better. And I have to say, like
six months after the layoff, I was still.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
Feeling really really bad.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
I'd really it was not much further than I was
at the very beginning, and that kind of bummed me out.
And then I had this recital coming up. So like
one of my hobbies is I pole dance. I'm not good,
it's just for fun. My studio has this like very cute,
kind of nerdy seasonal recital where you can do like
(55:19):
a solo or a group dance or whatever. And so
I had a recital coming up, and I had signed
up to do like a solo thing and you have
to choreograph your own thing, and I'd never done it before,
and I was like.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?
Which song am I gonna choose? And I was like,
I know what I'll do.
Speaker 1 (55:34):
I need to do like an interpretive layoff dance because
that sounds fun to me, and I'll dress up in
a clean xbox, and it'll just be this ridiculous kind
of joyous reclamation of this whole situation. And so then
I started looking for layoff songs to dance too. Maybe
(55:55):
not surprisingly, there are not that many layoff songs out there.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
It is not a well developed genre as yet.
Speaker 5 (56:02):
Well the depths of country music. You sure, there's not
more out there.
Speaker 1 (56:05):
I know what I should have, but you know what
I was saying, I sure, but also I'm not sure
that would match the vibe of my fourreography. So anyways,
I was like, why not just make my own layoff song,
Like we're already here, why not go all the way.
And I'm very lucky to have a music producer as
(56:26):
a husband who can make it so, and so he
helped me out and we made this ridiculous song called
gold Star. And the reason why it's titled gold Star
is because after I got laid off, I remember like
people would do all kinds of nice things for me.
Send me fried chicken. I love fried chicken. People would like,
get me a massage. I love massage, just like all
(56:47):
these nice things, but like what I really wanted, if
I'm being honest, was a trophy.
Speaker 5 (56:54):
Okay, I just wanted.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
Like a trophy to my self esteem, like something to
combat the like negative voices in my head. It like, basically,
I want a gold star to sort of combat what
I'm feeling. And so this is like I'm hoping it
finds laid off folks. You know, this is sort of
a gold star, Like I'm soothing myself and hopefully you know,
(57:20):
this can be a gold star for you. And then
I made this ridiculous pull dancing video that is available
online right now, though it might not be forever because
I might come to my senses. I decided to pull
it from the internet.
Speaker 5 (57:35):
If it's still out there when this episode releases, we'll
put a link in the show notes. I've heard the song,
I have not yet watched the video. The thing that
made me laugh the most during that process, though, I
mean every part of it is great and funny, was
your husband introducing you to auto tune, which is a
way of, you know, trying to make those of us
who don't sing very well sound coherent. And it's so
(57:58):
funny because he was like, I've never seen my computer
have to work this hard. And it's funny because this
is quite some time ago. It probably at least fifteen
years ago. I went to a friend's house in Tennessee
and I used to be a songwriter, and so I
had some songs and I was trying to sing, and
(58:18):
we got what must have been a very early version
of auto tune.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
Right.
Speaker 5 (58:22):
It was a box. You didn't plug it into your computer.
And the running joke basically after that was that like
anytime it tried to process me, the box would start smoking.
It had to work so hard. So when he said
I've never seen this machine work this hard, I had
a good laugh. I was like, I've been there.
Speaker 2 (58:41):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (58:42):
Yeah, auto tune is my friend. Thank God for autotune. Yes,
there's no way I would have the courage to have
sung that song or put it on the Internet without
the help of a lot of autotune.
Speaker 5 (58:55):
As we wrap up, I'm curious, out of all the
valuable ideas we've explored today, what's the single most impactful
insight that resonates with you listener. For me, it's about relationships.
Many of us grapple with relationship issues in silence, uncertain
how to mend the cracks, the reality cultivating a fulfilling
relationship isn't solely about compatibility or fate. It's about developing
(59:19):
crucial interpersonal abilities. How's that for a fancy phrase? Basically
means we can improve our relationships. And here's a quick
tip for you. Focus on active listening. Make a conscious
effort to listen more than you speak in your next conversation,
focusing entirely on understanding the other person's perspective. Being a
(59:41):
good listener goes a long way in making our relationships better.
This month's newsletter focuses on relationships. Get practical exercises, reflections,
and podcast links to nurture your connections. Sign up at
goodwolf dot me slash relationships. Thousands are already benefiting from
these tips. Join us in fostering stronger relationships at goodwolf
(01:00:05):
dot me slash relationships. All right, well we are going
to wrap up now in the post show conversation. We're
going to talk a little bit longer because I want
to talk about You've launched this new podcast to report
on this, but there was an interim step in there
along the way that ended up I think being the
(01:00:25):
hardest maybe emotional moment for you of this whole journey,
and i'd like to talk about that a little bit
in the post show conversation listeners as always, if you
would like access to that, if you would like access
to add free episodes, a special episode I do each
week called a teaching song and a poem. And to
be part of our community, we have community meetings once
(01:00:47):
a month. We'd love to have you be part of
the community. You can do that by going to oneufeed
dot net slash join yowai. Thank you so much. This
has been really enjoyable from top to bottom.
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Thank you for having me. This was so fun. Thank
you for listening to my song and not judging me
too harshly.
Speaker 5 (01:01:03):
No, it's a good pop song.
Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
consider making a monthly donation to support the One You
Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this
monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
It's our way of saying thank you for your support.
Speaker 5 (01:01:37):
Now.
Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
We are so grateful for the members of our community.
We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
To learn more, make a donation at any level and
become a member of the one you Feed community. Go
to oneufeed dot net slash join The One You Feed
podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting
(01:01:59):
the show
Host
Eric Zimmer
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