Relating to Self

Relating to self. A podcast that helps you create a better relationship with yourself.

Hey, I'm Joachim, welcome. Do you realize that there is only one relationship that you will always be in? The relationship with yourself. Improving that relationship changes everything. On this podcast, I share my thoughts, and I invite real people to have vulnerable conversations about how they relate to themselves and what we can learn from that. In today's episode, I speak with Andrew Rose, who is striving to be someone who does good work. Enjoy. Andrew, welcome to the Relating to Self podcast. Hi. So you are quite an interesting specimen. I think you are quite young, but you have been building new cities in the States centered around being car-free.

You've been an entrepreneur, build software, and you're currently building social structures because you think that American culture isn't very healthy and you want to contribute to improving the culture of America. And so you do a lot of community work. Oh, and you also used to run a Montessori school. And you are married to Priya, who we had previously on the podcast. Yeah. So a lot of these things. Yeah. I've been lucky to live like quite a wild life. And I think, I mean, I'm happy to dive into any of that.

I'm kind of curious. I haven't listened to any of the podcasts yet. So I'm curious where it's going to go from here. Cool, fresh. Well, the podcast is all about how you relate to yourself, basically. So my traditional first question is, when you hear the term relating to self, what comes up for you? Well, I think right now, a bit of anxiety comes up, actually, because I'm going through a bit of a career transition at the same time that I'm planning my family and growing this community in New York. And I think the intersection of all those things is like, oh, there's a lot swimming around in my mind. And I'm not really sure what social roles I'm supposed to be filling. In particular, one of the ways that I relate to myself is as somebody who does good work, and I'm not sure what good work I'm supposed to be doing right now. That's fascinating.

Mostly because, well, it reminds me of a conversation I had with Priya, your wife, as in when I asked her about her relationship to herself, she also almost immediately went into the social aspect, like, you know, the community, the social roles. And for you, that seems to be the case as well, where your relationship to yourself seems to be quite defined by the social role that you take. And right now, maybe you don't really know what that is. I guess I'm curious in like, diving in deeper into what you actually do towards yourself.

Like, you know, how, how kind are you to yourself? How kind are your inner voices? Or who, how not kind? Or how much space do you give yourself? How do you talk to yourself? How present are you to yourself? How do you navigate maybe the relationship you have with yourself in terms of self-regulating or, you know, practices that you have or don't have to help you build a healthier connection with yourself? Because I do agree with you that, in general, quite a lot of our contemporary cultures are not very healthy in the way they are constructed.

And so they don't really work well for people. I think part of my reason for doing this podcast is that I believe that if each of us builds a better relationship with ourselves, a lot of stuff will improve in the world, right? So yeah, I'm curious what your thoughts are on how you treat yourself, basically. Yeah. Well, I think the main thing that's important to point out is that I'm not sure there's any good that comes out of feeling bad, basically. I think I explored a lot of that space and am now pretty firmly in the camp of like, I actually I don't need to, I don't need to feel bad. So a lot of the way that I relate to myself is I notice times where I'm feeling pain of different sorts. And, you know, I try to focus on where that's where that's coming up in my body and then maybe do a bit of parts work and figure out like, well, what maybe can I assign some sort of identity to that pain or identity to that feeling? And maybe from there, do a bit of a negotiation around like, OK, where is this coming from?

Like, you know, what do we need to do? What signal is this?

Is this trying to give me? And I find that oftentimes once I get that out and get that on paper, it becomes a lot easier to have equanimity again. So which I guess moves into a broad point about relating to self, which is that increasingly I find that I'm I'm not really in my own head. I've never actually really had like the voice like I've never had an internal narrator or anything like that.

So I'm not. But I do identify with times where I feel like much more ego full than normal. And I think now I'm feeling my ego quite a bit because I I need like a navigator again, but I haven't actually needed a navigator for quite some time. So I think for a while I was kind of just flowing or something. Great. So what I hear is that you are familiar with IFS, internal family systems, something that has come up on the podcast quite a bit. And so you use that part's work to kind of negotiate with maybe the pain or the anxiety or whatever comes up.

And I have some questions about that. And then the other thing you said that I thought was really interesting, you said, once I get it out on paper, that's usually enough. So that means that you have some kind of a writing practice, I guess, to help you navigate your relationship with yourself. And I'm interested in both.

First, the IFS. Do you have any formal experience with IFS therapy?

No, just through reading. Oh, so you've read Schwarz's book? No, not even just reading like in the blogosphere broadly about like I just I kind of read other people do parts work publicly, or I talked to them. And I'm like, Hey, well, you just like, show me what you do when you do parts work. I've had conversations like that. And I've read blog posts where people just kind of like walk through what they do.

And then I've done those things. So I don't know if I'm doing it right. Yeah, I don't think it matters, to be honest. I think there's something I neither do I, which is, I think there's something really powerful in having examples. Right. And that's the thing. I think in my life, that's one of the things I missed so much in my early life.

The only thing that was available to me were books, basically, right? The whole blogosphere didn't really exist yet. I didn't really know anyone who was going through healing processes of any kind. Or maybe they were, but they didn't tell me.

So I was just reading some books. And that's it. But then now you obviously learning so much from people that you see, are going through these kind of modalities, whatever they are, IFS or something else. I think that's really interesting that you probably pick up, let's say like 80-20 of the value of these modalities by just engaging with others.

And that's wonderful. Yeah, that's how I feel. Yeah, great. And then the writing part, what does that look like specifically? You know, sometimes I wish I was more structured about it. So I can't tell you necessarily, like a specific, I don't zettle or anything like that. I do now have like a knowledge base, which is on a canvas using a software called Heptabase. And so I put all my notes somewhere on a canvas. And that kind of helps like to arrange my thoughts in two dimensions and kind of like connect them to each other. But I also think that's kind of like fancier than it needs to be. Most of the time, I'm just writing down on a piece of paper in a journal somewhere.

And I like don't really go back and read it. I assume I will go back and read all my journals at some point.

But I just haven't gotten around to it yet. That's so interesting that you mentioned like, oh, I'm not really organized. And then you have this canvas with some kind of software tool where you connect your thoughts two dimensionally. I'm like, that sounds pretty organized, more organized than I am in any case.

Can you say something more about that? Like, what does that not very organized version of your organization look like? How do you connect these thoughts in 2D?

What is that? Yeah, so it's something that's actually quite recent. I've only been doing it for a couple months. And I feel like I've, I've kind of moved between different like tools for thought. Aside from like, my favorite by far has just been pen and paper. And I've been trying to figure out like, what is the digital equivalent?

Like what makes me as happy as writing things down in a journal? Because if I could figure that out, I wouldn't have to transfer everything from a journal to some sort of cloud backup somewhere. And this has actually gotten pretty close. Like I've really quite enjoyed the process. So what I tend to do is I keep a diary, where I just jot down thoughts, which, which I guess ends up looking a little bit like Zettle, where like each thought is kind of its own unit. And then I can then move to a sort of canvas view and drag each of those individual thoughts somewhere on the canvas.

And then I can basically connect them on a total map. And I can also create any arbitrary number of maps. So I have a map, my favorite one that I actually contribute to the most is just called inspiration. And it's where I go when I'm feeling like I need to find myself again, or something. And so it has different sections, which I kind of color.

So like, there's a section on education. So like, when I want to find my educator self, I go there. And there are like, examples of my favorite articles that I've ever read, or some of my own favorite thoughts that I've had, that inspire me to work on that field. And similarly, with like software and with cities and community buildings. So I kind of the domains that I care about, I put on the inspiration page, so that if I ever kind of forget who I am, with respect to that domain, I can go back and check. And then I have some other pages, like one is about like business ideas. And another one is, you know, just devoted to education alone.

It's not about inspiration. It's just about the domain, and mapping kind of everything about it. That sounds so incredibly organized. I mean, it sounds that way. But then when I, I will say it's more organized than anything I've done so far, like, this is the most organized I've been. And, and so it's new to me. It's really interesting, because to me, well, in many of my conversations about relating to self, what comes up is something like the story of self, like, I guess what I would call the ego narrative, the things you believe about yourself to be true, the story you tell yourself about yourself. And it sounds like you are building that story of self, by using an external tool as well to kind of like, as you said, find yourself when you forget who you are.

And that's a really interesting perspective. Is there? I'm really curious, because my method, maybe that's just projection, but my method for doing this is forgetting. I think forgetting is a very useful tool. As in, I kind of trust my, my mind to forget the things I don't need, and to come up again with the things I will need in the future, if I need them. So I don't use any kind of tool to forget the things I don't need. So I don't use any kind of these kind of systems. So I'm wondering if maybe there's a, there's a fear underlying there, that is like this fear of forgetting who you are, that compels you to kind of like, keep everything also in an external brain?

Or, or am I just completely off? Yeah, so actually, no, but I know what you're talking about. This was a debate that I used to have with Priya, my wife, actually, because she was really big on second brain tools for thoughts, stuff like that. And when I met her, I was like, what are you talking about? Like, my first brain tells me everything I need, you know, like, if I forget, then I was supposed to forget. And if I, you know, if it comes back up, then it's important to remember. What I found is that I still believe that to be true. So like, in other words, if I lost all these tools, I wouldn't be afraid that I would be less like, I would like lose myself or anything like that. It's more like, right now, the sort of work I do is, like, this is enabling me to do a type of work, which wouldn't be possible without the tool. And the type of work is like very fragmented, working with a lot of different people on a lot of different domains at the same time, which I think is like, not what we're supposed to do. You know, like, there's some part of my biology that's like, oh, you should be like, much more focused than this.

And you're tribe, so to speak, should be like, also much more focused than the actual tribe that you have chosen for yourself. And I mean, who's to say whether that's healthy in the long run, but I think without a tool to kind of map out all of the things that I'm thinking about at once, I wouldn't be able to think about so many things, which would actually be fine. Like I've been there, and I was super happy doing that, too.

I'm just not right now. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I guess if you have a lot of things going on at the same time, then external help is welcome. Because you mentioned, you know, you're working on many different things. And I want to go back to something you said earlier, that struck me as interesting. You said, I see myself as someone who does good work. And that sounds to me as some kind of like a story about yourself.

And I'm curious about that story. Like, where does it originate? Or what does it mean to you? Yeah. Where does it originate is a little bit hard to say. Definitely one of my major inspirations there is Montessori, Marie Montessori. And I suspect that if I dug down and like really tried to figure it out, one of my inspirations there would be Rand as well.

Though I'd be remiss to say, I think. And Montessori. And I think one of the reasons that actually equate these two thinkers together quite a lot more than you might expect. It's like there's something interesting reading both their work side by side where you're like, these two people had a lot of overlapping thoughts. But and Aristotle, I think also very inspirational for me. Montessori, though, the most inspirational of the three and the one I brought up first, has this idea that like, basically, what we're trying to do when we educate children is we're trying to help them find their work, whatever it is.

And, and it's not like up to us to assign them work. It's like we are their guides in navigating this world. And like they do have work out there, there is work for them. And if we can help them find it, they will flourish, like their, their identity will come out and like their personality will come out and you will suddenly see this child kind of bloom. And I've seen that in the classroom. And I kind of feel like we're doing the same thing as adults where we're all looking for our work.

I think we're just very pro social. I'm very pro social, at least. And so there's this big part of me that's like, I want to be doing something and be happy doing it. And then when I'm done, I want to be able to look at it and be like, I did a good job. I don't know. It's just a satisfying way to spend my time, I guess.

Yeah, this is interesting. This, this again, also ties into a thread of conversation that I'm having throughout these podcasts, which is the idea of is your authentic self discovered or is it created? And I think what you mentioned about Montessori and the idea that, you know, just like letting the work emerge from the children or something sounds like they're either discovering it on their own, or I guess they're, they could also create it on their own without external input, right?

And I'm curious. Yeah. In fact, this is what Montessori is sort of trying to get as she's, she's like, the act, like the child's fundamental job is the task of creating an adult. And that this is hard work, like this whole process of becoming is hard. And you have to try out a lot of things. And there's a lot of experimentation, a lot of curiosity. And like, imagine like you were just put into the world with this like body, and you have to learn all the muscles, and you have to learn like all of the different ways of combining all of the muscles. And, and that's not even enough, because we also have this like whole complex brain, and chemical machinery that you have to learn to. And, and yours is unique, and nobody can tell you how to use it. And even if it wasn't unique, we don't even, we don't have the language, we just like, we're animals in some ways, we have to figure it out for ourselves. So there's some sense in which she does believe that like, there's this very difficult task of, of crafting an adult, the child gets to do because the child is quite malleable, but also simultaneously an act of becoming the, like one of the adults that you are capable of becoming.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I'm curious also how that ties into then the social context, because I know from experience how important it is to be in a context that has availability of examples, again, to kind of know what is possible. I think early in childhood, for me, that was one of the things that, that was difficult in creating an adult, is that I didn't really have examples of adults around me. Or, well, I had like, you know, older people and parents and stuff, but they weren't really behaving in ways that seemed very mature, even as a child, I had that feeling, right? So what are your thoughts on the way that you personally have created your story of self or, you know, your adult throughout the process of, you know, going through childhood and seeing these examples from people around you? Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing to point out is like, I'm not done.

Neither am I. Yeah, there's a lot more, there's a lot more me to discover, I'm sure, or to create, or both. I do think that one of the things I think the most about now is, you know, I do think that one of the things I think the most about now is basically modeling. And like a big inspiration book for me here, and an inspiration in terms of how I relate to self, is Keith Johnston's Impro, which is about how people are constantly almost like, he describes it as like, playing high or playing low status, they're playing status games is kind of all the time. And that this is, this is a way to improvise more realistically, if you're an actor. I think it's also a way to like, be more authentic, if you're a human, in the sense that being able to like, notice what social game you are playing in real time, and then maybe like, alter that or change it up, or like, design one intentionally, or to notice, especially as an educator, like to notice the social game that somebody else needs you to be playing, when you're around them. So now, I mean, one of the ways I relate to myself is thinking about like, how do I model virtue for the people around me?

And what is the specific brand of virtue that they need me to model for them? And I think that there are ways to design environments that enable that, and also ways to design cultures that have a lot to do with like, these very nuanced and subtle parts of socializing, like how you look at somebody when you first see them in the morning, or, you know, the specific words that you say to somebody when you go to bed or something, like how you say them.

So I spend a lot of time thinking about how I treat people, I guess. Beautiful. Thank you for bringing up Impro. It's one of those books that really had a big impact on me a long time ago. And I actually bought it again this year, because obviously, I had lost my copy.

And I'm in the process of reading it again. And it's just so, so, so good. It's really good. Yeah. Yeah. I remember reading it in a context where I was working on a on a dance performance, actually. And so the choreographer gave it to me, because we were talking about stuff related to the performance. And then as I was reading this book, I started realizing like, wait, this is not about theater.

This is just about life. Right. Yeah, that was beautiful. I also really liked the phrase that you mentioned that the social game that someone needs you to be playing. That resonates a lot with me, I feel like, wow, that kind of sums up what I was good at from a very young age, right? I was just really good at noticing the social game, other people around me to play, and then I happily played it. Yeah. And it's just such a such a mindfuck, I would say to like, become aware of these things later on, and then, and then have a more intentional approach, I guess, to be more precise with how you want to show up to the world. Yeah. What would you say has reading Johnstone changed for you personally? Like, did it impact the way that you have crafted your own relationship with yourself and the world?

I'm sure inevitably, it's impacted the way that I've crafted my identity. I'm trying to think about specifics. I think it really caused me to pay a huge amount of attention to eye contact. I feel like so and body posture, like both of those things I pay a lot of attention to now I actually like, I notice it every conversation, which is kind of wild to think about.

But I just it's just a part of my noticing. Now. I also practice some like expanded awareness techniques, like Alexander technique. And so it's part of that too, is like noticing, like, where are my shoulders right now?

Are my shoulders like pulled back? And I'm, I'm making myself vulnerable by exposing my chest, but also proud in a way or like, you know, and like, similar with my hips or like, am I shoulders hunched? Am I like making myself small? And I think the way that in pro has most influenced me is that I just can't stop thinking about this. And not just for me, but like the way everybody's positioned toward each other in a room. So like, if I noticed somebody in a conversation at one of my parties, and they're like, half turned away from the person they're talking to, and then like, that's a sign that like, they need somebody to come rescue them from the conversation, because they're actually trying to signal to this person, like, I don't want to be talking to you right now. Like, or like, I have a desire to like go to the bathroom or whatever it is. And we're kind of always doing this all the time with a lot of people just like are unaware of it.

It's like really, it's really weird to be made aware of it, I guess. But also, it seems there's a part of me that's confused about like, how I was ever unaware in the first place.

Was that something that was learned? Like, did I learn to be unaware because it was too uncomfortable? Or is it something that you have to learn?

Do you have to be taught? I'm not sure. Well, I think the thing is that it works even if you don't know if you don't know about it. So even if you're unaware, it's still a language. And we use that language all the time, right?

And it works. And people feel it, people, people sense it, at least if you're a bit attuned to what's, you know, what's happening in the body. Yeah. And of course, it's interesting to then become aware of it and to learn about it and to then be more intentional. And I think for me, the beauty of that whole thing is that it kind of makes concrete, what sometimes is a bit abstract when people talk about presence. I care a lot about presence, you know, being present to life, being present to the now, being present to people, being present to situations, and so on. And so very often, that feels a bit like abstract, what does that mean to be present? But I think it has a lot to do with the things you mentioned, your body posture, your gaze, you know, where are you looking?

What kind of physical presence are you shaping within yourself, right? And yeah, yeah. So it really made me more aware of the ways in which that actually functions. Presence. Yeah, that was delightful.

You mentioned Alexander Technique. I've heard about it. I'm not really familiar with it, though. Would you mind giving like a small primer? Yeah, I will. But it's another one of these things that I've only learned by reading other accountants. I'm not an expert on Alexander Technique. Michael Ashcroft on Twitter is your guy. He has a whole course on Alexander Technique that I want to take but have procrastinated on except for the first session. But the technique that for me broke through was that I heard an example of somebody who was pacing around a lake, and they were first focusing all their awareness inside their body. So sometimes in the heart area, sometimes you can focus all of your awareness in your feet or in your lungs, and then was doing whole body.

So expand your awareness outward until you can feel your fingertips at the same time that you can feel your toes at the same time you can feel your breath at the same time that you can feel the breath on your on the skin of your face. And if you can kind of notice all those things at once, then you're you feel this expanded awareness in your body, and then expand your awareness until you notice the whole lake, you notice all the animals and all the frogs and all the birds, and you notice the wind, and you notice your whole body too. And like, you are now your awareness is not in your body.

And it is not your whole body. But it is like the entire scene that you are part of. So I started doing that while I was walking and just expanding my awareness outward, and also doing that in my bedroom before I was going to bed where I would expand my awareness so that I was my whole bedroom, not just my body in my bed, and certainly not just like behind my eyes or whatever. And something just clicked. It was like, oh, I feel every time that I do this move where I move my awareness outside my body, I become more aware of the people around me, I become more aware of how my body is positioned in the room and where my shoulders are and where like where I am. And I also saw this insane video by a juggler, Nick Camerata, actually on Twitter. But he he was, he did this demonstration of moving his awareness around while juggling. And it was like, so obvious.

He's like, Oh, my awareness is like, deep in my body. Now his juggling was like, not very good. He's like, okay, like, I've expanded my awareness. And he's like, he's like, I'm getting really nervous.

Like, I actually want to turn the video off. He like, literally said that because his awareness was like in his chest where all of his nerves were. And then he's like, he like took a breath. And then his awareness was in his whole body.

And his juggling got like, markedly better. And it's like, oh, wow, this is insane, like just zero to one difference. And then he's like, okay, now I'm going to expand my awareness to the whole room. And like his juggling got insane. Like it was it was like just a superpower. And that was another sort of breakthrough moment for me where I was able to see what he was doing by watching the video, I guess, which is that he he did suddenly like, who knows what actual simulation our brain is doing. But he did, you know, at least start to think about where his body was positioned with respect to everything else. And obviously, that's helpful for juggling.

Yeah, I can relate to that. I often use this idea of expanding my awareness to the space that I'm in. Also, just as a method of grounding myself in the now, I feel if my awareness contracts to just my body or behind my eyes, as you said, then I tend to get lost in stories. And I am not as present to the now anymore. But expanding my awareness to include the space where I am automatically brings me back to like, hey, this is now this is happening.

This is what I feel right now. And yeah, I think that's a beautiful tool for relating to self in the moment again.

So that's good to hear. Yeah. Andrew, I'm curious if there's anything about your relationship with yourself that feels difficult for you still? You know, I wrote a piece recently, somebody was asking me, like, Andrew, how are you so hopeful all the time? Like, why is why is it that you're, you never seem to be fearful?

You're very fearless. And I wrote this piece about all these moments in my life that I think kind of added up to that, that are like, oh, how would my ego describe this? Or like, what memories pop up when I when I reflect on this question? So I think I got very lucky in a lot of sense. I think I had very good parents. And I like had enough challenge in my life, social challenge that I overcame that challenge and enough emotional challenge that I had to overcome those emotional challenges, but not too much that it broke me ever. And like, all my traumas were, were easy to over, I mean, not easy to overcome, but like, I'd have overcome them. And so I think in many ways, I'm very lucky. And yet there's the shadow of that very quality, which is that if I become too, like, it, it feels very good to be so strong, emotionally. And I think if I become too attached to that, then, you know, paradoxically, it makes me like feel quite fragile, because I feel like I'm alone. And that even, like all these people in my life that I have built community with, it's like I am strong for them.

And if I take on too much risk at once, then I'm the one shouldering the burden. And like, I haven't built slack in the system for me to be a fuck up, or for like me to be kind of the weak person. I think I wouldn't say that that's like conflict. But certainly there is there's like a shadow that I need to be careful of there, which is that like, it's actually not responsible for me to be falsely strong. I can't like, I can't let that become a part of my ego, it just needs to be the natural result of me kind of being present and, and responding to my incentives, I guess. But sometimes I think I can get caught up a little bit in it where I'm doing like performative strength, because I feel like it's important, or because I feel like people are relying on me.

But I don't think that really gets me anywhere. Yeah, I hear you. It sounds like that's not the worst thing, if that's the most difficult thing about relating to yourself. Right? Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, I'm Yeah, I mean, I can try to like, dig in some like, like, right now, I don't feel very good. So I can try to like, dig into like, why?

Why is that? But I also just have so much faith that that's going to work itself out over the next couple weeks, that it makes me feel like that's not really a hard part of relating to myself, either. It's like, I don't know, sometimes, like, people just are going through transitions in life. Especially when, you know, you're shifting career paths or whatever. And that just seems pretty normal. Yeah, I can definitely say that one of the best things I've done for improving my relationship with myself, is to get comfortable with feeling bad, whatever the bad means, right? Right. Yeah, whatever that means. Yeah. Because I just figured out that most of the suffering I went through was because I was worrying about feeling bad or resisting feeling bad or trying to change feeling bad. And as soon as I started accepting, just like, yep, I feel, I feel sad right now, or I feel confused, I don't know what to do.

And then sitting with that and going, yeah, that's totally fine. It's a form of compassion.

that's for me. Yeah. You mentioned, you mentioned shadow. And that made me curious if you engage in any kind of shadow work. I actually don't this is Yeah, this is not one of the practices that I've read about the blogosphere. So I've only heard about it, but I have no examples of what shadow work means.

Do you want to tell me about it? Yeah, I can I can briefly say what it means for me, because again, very much like you. And while I have broader thoughts about this, but I kind of just absorb a lot of stuff from seeing other people do things or from reading bits and scraps everywhere. And I never kind of really dive very deep into things. And I've, I've noticed that I also that I have peace with that, right?

I don't see that as a flaw. I'm, I'm like, I have so many interests, and I love just learning a bit about everything. And so for me, the kind of shadow work that I engage with is mostly about identifying the parts of myself that I haven't accepted yet, which are the shadows. And I mostly see them, I think it's easiest to see them through my reactions to other people, like as if, if I have an interaction with someone, and something bothers me about them, then usually that is a sign that I haven't accepted that part of myself. Like if I see someone, for example, for a long time, I had trouble with people being scammy, like doing things that weren't entirely ethical.

And I would react to that very strongly. And then I came to see that, oh, yes, that just means that I haven't accepted the part of me who wants to scam people or wants to have like easy wins or stuff like that, right? Yeah. And then I started working with that part and going like, yeah, it's okay.

I get it. I understand you. I see where this need comes from, you know, scarcity, fear, all that kind of stuff. And then it kind of resolves itself. So that's mostly the kind of shadow work that I do. Yeah. Yeah. Riffing off of that, I think, I think I kind of identified the one that causes the most problem in terms of the way I relate to others as well, which is that I think sometimes I don't quite understand why people feel bad. And sometimes that frustrates me. Like, and one of the things that I am, you know, pretty good at is like, not, you know, projecting my frustrations on other people. But still, it's like, I'm, I'm like feeling all this anxiety and tension in my body when the people around me feel bad for prolonged periods of time, because I'm like, I don't, I don't understand why don't you just choose to feel good or something, which is, I think, precisely pointing out that, that maybe I haven't fully integrated this part of me that just like, feels hopeless.

Or, you know, it's like struggles with how, how painful it can all be, I guess. Yeah, that's, that sounds probably true. Awesome. Andrew, as we near the end of this conversation, I want to ask you one question that I kind of ask everyone also, and it's a bit of a meta question.

So sometimes nothing comes up, and that's fine. But I'm curious if there is a question that you would have loved to answer, but that I didn't ask you.

You know, I'm, I guess not. Which is, which is an odd answer to the question, because I, I suspect that there's something, but maybe just not, not where I am right now. Like, I suspect in five minutes, I'll be like, oh, you know, I remember. I know exactly what I wanted him to ask me. Yeah, no, that's okay.

I get it. Yeah, but that's good. I mean, if in this moment right now, no question comes up, then I guess that's, that's the truth of this moment. I'm totally at peace. Yeah. Beautiful. I love that.

Andrew, thank you so much. It was a lovely conversation. Yeah, thank you, Joachim. I will see you around, I guess, on, on Twitter. And I imagine Twitter is also the best place for people to find you.

Yeah, that's probably right. Twitter or my substack. Okay, then I will also make sure to put a link to your substack in the show notes. If you've enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe to the podcast. You can also read more of my thoughts on Twitter, I will post a link in the description. And if you are interested in improving your relationship with yourself, please subscribe to my email list at relating to self.com. I will then send you meditations, rituals, practices, and more of these beautiful conversations.