This podcast is a discussion of psychologist Kati Morton's book: Why Do I keep Doing This? Kati is a clinical psychologist, author, public speaker and has a large online following. The book is largely about people who suffer with an obsessive need to control: whether that is to control their own thoughts, feelings and behaviors, and/or also other peoples' attitides and behaviors towards them. They are people pleasers, perfectionists, self-deprecators, and so on. But the book has relevance to a wider audience because we all fall into this need to control how other's perceive and value us. Kati shows that such attempts at control are illusory and counter-productive and the book is full of practical ways one can regain one's authenticity and and self-steem. But it is no quick fix self-help book. THe reason we 'keep doing this' is that these are deep, automatic, often uncosncious patterns of feeling, thinking and doing. The book explains the realistic and diverse strategies to gradually live more spontaneously, with more self-compassion and more freedom. It is a book about learning how to let go. It was, needless to say, a stimulating and informative discussion.

Not surprisingly the Luca Fogale podcast stimulated a deep and enlightening discussion covering: Luca’s phrase ‘the soft panic in the background’; how music builds deep community; how solitude can stimulate an artistic life, the poetic sensibility, Luca’s very personal and exploratory ‘mattering project’, the difficulty of coming off tour, abiding in ambiguity and uncertainty and developing character and virtue.

In this roundtable we discussed my podcast with Steven Puri and the topic was his website and app designed to encourage flow at work and a state of inner calm and satisfaction (Sukha). We began with the value of the community of users, especially for those who work predominantly from home. We then discussed procrastination and how Sukha helps. We agreed that ‘I’ am the biggest distractor of ‘me’ and we compared the less distracted mind to a cultivated mindfulness. We also considered how meaningful work structures and directs the mind in healthy ways. A key conclusion was that productivity is not the goal, nor does it lead to happiness. Rather, the goal is Sukha. Finally, we saw how thai app allows for idiosyncratic and personal tailoring: what works for you. As usual, a great conversation!