Secret #70: So Many Paradoxes with Dr. Emma Waddington and Dr. Chris McCurry
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What happens when we look back on a year of conversations and discover the recurring themes that shape our lives? In this special year-in-review episode, hosts Chris McCurry and Emma Waddington reflect on the surprising paradoxes they've encountered throughout their podcast journey—the uncomfortable truths that keep emerging despite our best efforts to avoid them.
From the trap of constant productivity to the power of embracing our emotions, they unpack four fundamental paradoxes that have emerged across dozens of conversations with thought leaders and experts in psychology, business, and personal growth.
Highlights:
The Paradox of Rest: Why the harder we try to fix ourselves, the more stuck we get
The Paradox of Avoiding Feelings: How the emotions we push away become the things that ruin our lives
The Paradox of Community: Why the "self-made" myth keeps us isolated when we need connection most
The Paradox of Acceptance: How fighting what we can't change only deepens our suffering
Struggling well versus struggling perfectly: A new definition of resilience
Finding humor and self-compassion in life's contradictions
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 — Introduction to the year in review
01:00 — The Paradox of Rest with Alex Pang
04:00 — Burnout as a badge of honor
08:00 — Wise effort and deliberate rest
09:00 — The Paradox of Avoiding Feelings
10:00 — Anger as a signal, not a strategy
13:00 — Belonging, rejection, and our need for connection
15:00 — Righteous anger and its disconnecting effects
18:00 — Safety versus safeness in relationships
21:00 — The Paradox of Community
24:00 — The hermit who needed a village
27:00 — Conflict resilience and sitting with disagreement
28:00 — Turning toward discomfort as a practice
31:00 — The Paradox of Fighting What We Can't Change
32:00 — Living with chronic conditions and death
35:00 — The complexity of human experience
36:00 — Struggling well: redefining resilience
39:00 — Accepting life's inherent struggles
40:00 — Finding humor in paradox and enjoying every sandwich
42:00 — Gratitude for listeners and looking forward
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Secret #70: So Many Paradoxes
[00:00:00]
[00:00:40] Introduction and Hosts
[00:00:40] Chris McCurry: Hello and welcome to Life's Dirty Little Secrets. I'm Chris.
[00:00:47] Emma Waddington: And I am Emma Waddington. And today we are gonna talk to you all about our year at Life's Death, little Secrets.
[00:00:55] 1. The Paradox of The Harder We Try to Fix Ourselves, The More Stuck We Get
[00:00:59] Emma Waddington: And sort of as we were looking back at 2025 we [00:01:00] noticed something quite surprising that we keep landing on the same uncomfortable truths. The first one is that the harder we try to fix ourselves, the more stuck we get.
[00:01:11] Secret #68: Secrets of Rest with Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
[00:01:11] Emma Waddington: And honestly, as I was listening to our conversation that we had with Alex Pang about rest, I realized that it really is very difficult for dur rest. And despite having listened to his podcast, despite having had conversations about, you know, thriving versus striving and knowing that, you know, rest is more productive than grinding.
[00:01:36] Emma Waddington: I still struggle. I feel like my to-do list is inviting me all the time and that I can't rest until I finish it, until everything is done and it feels like a real trap. Despite knowing it, I can how it keeps going. And now with the end of the year, conversations about holidays
[00:01:56] Emma Waddington: and plans,
[00:01:56] Emma Waddington: my to-do list is just bulging.
[00:01:59] Emma Waddington: With [00:02:00] demands and expectations, and it feels like rest is even further away.
[00:02:06] Chris McCurry: And also we, what was interesting for me about that conversation was how he defined rest. And it's not necessarily taking a nap that the research shows that, uh, what's most restorative can be other activities, things that are, you know, quite different from what we think of as our work perhaps but are nonetheless, energetic
[00:02:33] Chris McCurry: even, or uh, certainly get us focused in a different direction. And we can listen to some samples of that podcast in a moment. But it reminds me of that story allegory, whatever you want to call it, where the man is walking through the forest when he comes upon somebody who's got a big saw and he's sawing down a tree. And he looks very tired and sweaty The traveler in before says, [00:03:00] Hey, you know, you look pretty exhausted. Why don't you, and the saw looks pretty dumb 'cause you've been working for a while. Why don't you take a break and sharpen the saw and then get something to drink and go back at it.
[00:03:10] Chris McCurry: the
[00:03:10] Chris McCurry: guy sit and the guy says, no, can't do that.
[00:03:12] Chris McCurry: Got a saw down this tree and he keeps sawing with the saw. That's getting more and more dull and he's getting more and more tired. And
[00:03:20] Chris McCurry: the idea there too is you gotta take a break sometimes and sharpen the saw
[00:03:25] Chris McCurry: And
[00:03:26] Chris McCurry: that that could be working in the garden or it could be you know, for me it's grabbing my guitar and, you know, playing a few chords and then getting back to whatever it is and up do it.
[00:03:37] Emma Waddington: Yes.
[00:03:38] Emma Waddington: I love that metaphor and it is, I think for me it's just very humbling to realize that no matter how much we know, this continues to be hard. Like we've had so many of these conversations this year around toxic striving, you know, we had a great conversation about burnout too. That is that relentless stress that's so dangerous.
[00:03:57] Emma Waddington: And yet
[00:03:58] Emma Waddington: it sort of calls us, doesn't it? [00:04:00] Because we do live in communities that you know, like you were just saying about Atlanta having a hustle culture. We do live in communities that keep inviting us to do more, to be more and the invitation is always there to do more and be more that will never go.
[00:04:15] Emma Waddington: And so. What I've learned from these conversations this year is that I need to take charge a bit more of the way and the way I want my life to be and to have permission because, like you said, you know, rest has actually helped me in many ways. Like, it not, it's not just about. not doing the work when we rest, it's actually also doing some other really important things and taking that time out of work can help us do better work, but it also can help us feel better about our lives.
[00:04:50] Emma Waddington: Because he was talking, Alex was talking about, you know, rest being engaging in this deliberate activity that actually is quite meaningful.
[00:04:58] Clip from Secret #68: Secrets of Rest with Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
[00:04:58]
[00:05:00] Alex Soojung - Kim Pang: It turns out that the most restorative kinds of rest are not always passive. So the idea of rest is something that's active is I think an important thing for all of us to understand. They are things like taking walks, doing stuff in the garden, things that sometimes are involve a mix of physical exertion and some mental exertion or challenge that's different from work that takes your mind.
[00:05:28] Alex Soojung - Kim Pang: Off of your work or your troubles. So you think of rest as the time that we spend rebuilding or recharging the mental and physical batteries that we spend down when we're working or being a parent or such.
[00:05:45] Emma Waddington: And it sort of aligns with some of the stuff that we heard with our conversation with Debbie on burnout, that, you know, what burnout helps us really understand is all the things we're missing from our lives, all the things that gave us value that have [00:06:00] been dropped in the service of doing more work or more parenting or whatever else where it's sort of stuck in is what we need to recover.
[00:06:10] Chris McCurry: We end up with a very narrow definition of ourselves that is
[00:06:13] Chris McCurry: not restorative.
[00:06:15] Emma Waddington: And very narrow definition of success too.
[00:06:18] Chris McCurry: Yes, definitely.
[00:06:20] Emma Waddington: Like
[00:06:20] Emma Waddington: as if you know, it's only when we finish our to-do list that we will feel like we've done a good enough job or. That conversation we had about toxic striving was very powerful. And Paul has sort of spoke about, you know, how everything has become striving, right? We can't even just sleep. We've gotta optimize our sleep.
[00:06:39] Emma Waddington: You know, everything has been touched with this performance,
[00:06:42] Emma Waddington: this performance enhancement. Narrative,
[00:06:46] Emma Waddington: just means that it's, yeah, I can feel really relentless and not a lot of permission just to do things and to savor them and to walk slowly to move through the
[00:06:58] Emma Waddington: world.
[00:06:59] Chris McCurry: and [00:07:00] burnout can be a badge of honor. I mean, one of, one of the very first books on burnout is called The Cost of Caring.
[00:07:08] Chris McCurry: So, you know, it's like I care. So the I care, therefore I'm burned out. And,
[00:07:15] Chris McCurry: uh, and if, and if I'm not burned out, then maybe that means I don't care and I don't want anybody to think I don't care.
[00:07:21] Emma Waddington: Exactly. I think we're stuck with that with the, we talked about burnout in parenting as well.
[00:07:26] Emma Waddington: I
[00:07:26] Emma Waddington: think we get, we can easily get stuck with that in parenting, can't we?
[00:07:30] Emma Waddington: if we didn't. And at the moment, I mean, I dunno what it was like, but at the moment, being a parent, you know, I know we parent more than we ever have.
[00:07:39] Emma Waddington: We work more than we ever have. And you know, it's an impossible equation to do both, you know, to the extent that we are expected to. But I do find there are a lot of demands from school around, you know. Being there for activities, you know, supporting with homework [00:08:00] extracurricular activities.
[00:08:00] Emma Waddington: I mean, there's a lot and there's expectation that we're super involved in it all. And perhaps the expectation on the kids is unrealistic, which means that parents need to step in, which sort of keeps us trapped in this, like you're saying, like if I care about my kid, I'm not gonna let him fail.
[00:08:16] Emma Waddington: But we're sort of trying to solve the wrong problem. The reality is that it's probably not realistic for my kid to do that level,
[00:08:23] Chris McCurry: In my clinical practice, I saw a lot of families where, the high school student was taking, you know, four advanced placement classes and two sports and something else, it was all in the service of getting into that, you know, top end university. But it was killing the whole family.
[00:08:44] Emma Waddington: Yeah.
[00:08:44] Chris McCurry: It's, the pressure is, floating down and affecting our kids too. So
[00:08:50] Emma Waddington: That's right.
[00:08:51] Chris McCurry: is, it Is dely toxic striving.
[00:08:54] Secret #30: Wise Effort with Dr. Diana Hillv
[00:08:54] Emma Waddington: Yeah. So I think that the wisdom is that we need to know [00:09:00] how to rest and how to really think about where to put our energy. A bit like Di Diana Hill, I love her book and her work around wise effort, right? At least seeing the wisdom on where we put our effort and that the invitation to do more is always going to be there.
[00:09:17] Emma Waddington: But how is it really working out for us?
[00:09:20] Chris McCurry: Right, and to give And to give ourselves permission to not do more.
[00:09:25] Emma Waddington: more. And it might, we might do better as a result, like with Alex's you know, conversation on deliberate practice that actually taking rest from this high intense activities is really good for us on many levels.
[00:09:41] Emma Waddington: So that's the first paradox.
[00:09:45] 2. The Paradox of Avoiding Feelings: They Become Stronger
[00:09:49] Emma Waddington: The second paradox we came up with is this paradox of the more we avoid our feelings, the stronger they become. That was another theme this year, which is obviously very aligned with our acceptance and commitment [00:10:00] therapy. Work. And, you know, we had a few conversations that seemed to circle back to this truth.
[00:10:06] Emma Waddington: You know, the feeling we push away becomes a thing ruining our lives. and the vulnerability that the, is often the feeling that's behind that initial feeling. and that's the thing we avoid most.
[00:10:20] Secret #61: Reimagining Anger with Russell Kolts
[00:10:20] Emma Waddington: But that's where we wanna be going more. So our conversation with Russell
[00:10:25] Emma Waddington: coz on anger, we realized really that, you know, often anger, I remember his folks, you know, is a great signal,
[00:10:33] Chris McCurry: Strategy.
[00:10:34] Emma Waddington: but a bad strategy. I love
[00:10:36] Clip from Secret #61: Reimagining Anger with Russell Kolts
[00:10:36] Emma Waddington: that.
[00:10:36] Emma Waddington: I've used that a lot since, One thing I'll say is anger is really good at alerting us to stuff that's not okay. Right? Yeah. Stuff that crosses our values or stuff we're not all right with, and that sort of queing us that maybe I want to do something about this now.
[00:10:52] Russell Kolts: Maybe I wanna say something about this now. And so if we can use some of that energy to provoke us to think, okay, what would be a. [00:11:00] Functional way for me to work with this thing that's activated my anger, right.
[00:11:05] Emma Waddington: you know, it is a, it's a great signal, it's intense, it's ferocious. It calls us into action.
[00:11:12] Chris McCurry: It's the idea of repurposing these difficult emotions, to see them as allies, as something we need to pay attention to. Listen to. As opposed to something we need to fight with or get rid of.
[00:11:27] Emma Waddington: and that. They're messengers. Right? I remember our conversation with Ross White.
[00:11:32] Secret #48: The Tree That Bends with Ross White
[00:11:32] Emma Waddington: He talked about, you know, treat emotions as messengers, that their messengers are telling us something, but they won't necessarily be telling us what to do. They're just telling us that something's up. And I think that's particularly powerful with anger, right?
[00:11:45] Emma Waddington: Because anger can
[00:11:47] Emma Waddington: really propel us into action, but often that action has. Far greater consequences than we necessarily want.
[00:11:56] Chris McCurry: Right, so it has to be handled well.
[00:11:59] Emma Waddington: what James [00:12:00] Kova
[00:12:00] Secret #62: The Connection Paradox with James Cordova
[00:12:00] Emma Waddington: said about connection. Yeah. He was talking about that anger, right. That in relationships, you know, often we walk around like little
[00:12:11] Emma Waddington: porcupines. You know, pricking each other and upsetting each other and that anger will come up first. Right. And it's very hard. When we met with anger, not to respond with anger,.
[00:12:23] Chris McCurry: He called it getting quilled.
[00:12:25] Clip from Secret #62: The Connection Paradox with James Cordova
[00:12:25]
[00:12:26] James Cordova: So the idea of the porcupines dilemma is that we're all porcupines and, and you know, like, we're like porcupines in love. Like, like we want to be close to each other. We wanna get in there and snuggle and have that sort of warmth and sort of mammalian connection. But we're also covered in quills. So you know, you get in close enough.
[00:12:51] James Cordova: It is inescapable. It is absolutely guaranteed that you're gonna catch quills on a relatively regular [00:13:00] basis. So it's one of those, you know, it's an, it's an aphorism, right? Like you, you hurt the people that you love, right? Like the, the people that you are most vulnerably exposed to are the people that are going to sting you.
[00:13:14] James Cordova: They're gonna quill you the most frequently, usually. By accident, usually inadvertently just in a grumpy mood, not necessarily meaning to take it out on you. And of course, similarly, the people that are most vulnerably exposed to you are the people that you are going to sting and hurt and quill the most frequently.
[00:13:35] James Cordova: So the dilemma is we're trying to get in there and be close and cuddly, but we're also having to navigate. That that is inescapably painful territory.
[00:13:48] Chris McCurry: Yeah, turning and facing, you know.
[00:13:50] Chris McCurry: The anger, of abandonment as it might be in relationship issue. Yeah those are hard moves to make,
[00:13:57] Secret #65: The Self-Help Paradox with Joe Oliver
[00:13:57] Emma Waddington: really hard. Joe Oliver used to call [00:14:00] them Jedi skills, which I always thought was really.
[00:14:04] Chris McCurry: it may get easier with time and experience, but oof than initial. Turning toward, it's always, I think, gonna be very aversive. And if we have an experience of that working for us in a relationship particularly or just anything we're trying to accomplish I think we can use that next time to motivate ourselves to go ahead and
[00:14:27] Chris McCurry: take
[00:14:28] Chris McCurry: that plunge.
[00:14:29] Emma Waddington: It's so true, isn't it that, I mean, the bottom line is that often what hurts. Is what truly matters, right? If we're longing for, you know, when we are in relationships, be it friendships, be it you know, partnerships even at work, right? We, you know, the kind of monkey we are is a monkey that wants to be connected and wants to belong.
[00:14:50] Secret #55: Belonging with Meg McKelvie
[00:14:50] Emma Waddington: And we had that great conversation around belonging with Meg McKelvy and. The idea of not belonging is terrifying. The [00:15:00] idea of being rejected is terrifying. And those micro moments, you know, those small interactions where there is this micro rejection, this micro you know, disconnect can feel incredibly.
[00:15:15] Emma Waddington: Painful. And I believe there's studies that have shown that in sort of MRIs, when we have that moment, it actually activates the part of the brain that feel pain, like it's physical
[00:15:28] Emma Waddington: and that's why often, you know, we respond to it like a dragon 'cause it's just so upsetting. But the response itself often perpetuates the problem.
[00:15:41] Emma Waddington: And leads to more disconnect. But if we start to have that wisdom and that realization that, you know, I'm getting really angry here. Let's be curious. Why is this upset me so much? And we can reach through our dragon and actually speak from that place of fear then it'll be easier [00:16:00] for us in the long run, even though it is.
[00:16:03] Emma Waddington: Like we call the Jedi skill, it's a very difficult thing to do in the moment when you're feeling so activated and so triggered. And it's so very human.
[00:16:11] Secret #64: Moral Outrage with Kurt Gray
[00:16:11] Emma Waddington: And we saw it in that conversation with Kurt as well around moral outrage. You know,
[00:16:16] Emma Waddington: That when we are activated, when something has been said that has really outraged us.
[00:16:21] Emma Waddington: There is this righteousness that happens, right? We feel righteous, we feel better than we feel superior. But that creates a lot of disconnection in communities, but also in families, in our relationships. That just perpetuates a feeling of isolation, which is ultimately what we don't want.
[00:16:40] Chris McCurry: There's
[00:16:41] Chris McCurry: a self-protective feature to that righteous anger.
[00:16:46] Chris McCurry: It puts up a wall.
[00:16:47] Clip from Secret #64 Moral Outrage with Kurt Gray
[00:16:47]
[00:16:48] Kurt Gray: Conflict is just all around us. I have a colleague John Sarro, and he says, conflict flattens people. You take the richness of [00:17:00] others, you know their humanity and you flatten them. And my work reveals that we flatten them in a very particular way. And that is we see them as perpetrators and we often see ourselves.
[00:17:12] Kurt Gray: As victims of their wrongness. So in couples, it's exactly the case, right? You always do this, you're thoughtless, you're hurting me, and I'm, I'm just trying to live my life. And all I do is feel pain because of your terrible actions. And so the flattening is really about perpetrator versus victim, and it's always us or our preferred side.
[00:17:35] Kurt Gray: That's the victim. And the reason that we flatten people in this way is because. Our feelings of pain or fear are so obvious to us, right? Because they're in our own minds. But the feelings that of fear or pain that people on the other side, right? Our spouse for instance, or people on the other side of the aisle might be feeling, it's harder for us to.
[00:17:59] Kurt Gray: To [00:18:00] understand, right? We have to work and overcome our own feelings of fear, of victimhood to really appreciate that they might be feeling the same way. And it's that kind of deep asymmetry in like our own fear versus that of others that entrenches our views of I'm the victim and you're the perpetrator, and I refuse to think otherwise.
[00:18:20] Emma Waddington: yeah,
[00:18:22] Emma Waddington: boy. Does it feel good though, doesn't it? It feels so good to be righteous.
[00:18:29] Chris McCurry: one of my favorite feelings,
[00:18:31] Emma Waddington: I know. I
[00:18:32] Chris McCurry: particularly when I'm driving
[00:18:35] Emma Waddington: So I think that's important too, right? When we are feeling righteous, even though we are sort of pushing away from our partner, pushing away from our child, you know, our colleague at work, you know, the other driver, whatever it is, it feels so good in the brain. Is it like a sense of safety, but it's a sense of Yeah.
[00:18:53] Emma Waddington: Of being better than.
[00:18:55] Chris McCurry: Well, it's almost, personal experience. It's less a feeling of safety and [00:19:00] more not feeling unsafe.
[00:19:02] Emma Waddington: Yeah
[00:19:03] Secret #61: Reimagining Anger with Russell Kolts
[00:19:03] Chris McCurry: because as Russell Colts talks about this, when he talks about compassion focused therapy and
[00:19:09] Chris McCurry: Systems that we have, you know, be the threat system, fight or flight.
[00:19:13] Chris McCurry: flight,
[00:19:14] Chris McCurry: The nurturing system and then what he calls the safeness system, which is different from he makes a distinction between safeness and safety, and he says that, you know, the guy on his front porch with the rifle, you know, ready for anybody that tries to rob him. That safety, that safeness is a much more calm.
[00:19:39] Chris McCurry: comforting of affirming kind of place to be. It's not that tight, Kind of feeling that the guy on the porch with his rifle, you know, is experiencing
[00:19:51] Chris McCurry: and he may feel safe, but he's certainly not feeling good about his situation.
[00:19:57] Emma Waddington: Yeah, I love that. What we're [00:20:00] talking about the sort of safety is the urge, right? When we get triggered in relationships with others, the urge is to create that sense of safety, either from that place of, you know, righteousness or, Fighting
[00:20:15] Emma Waddington: threat.
[00:20:16] Chris McCurry: And safeness is more akin to the. I'm not doing justice to these three different systems, but the system that is creating closeness and you know, it's, and each of these have different neurochemicals associated with them. And, you know, the oxytocin that's associated with connection and safeness, it's just a,
[00:20:37] Chris McCurry: it's just a different state.
[00:20:38] Chris McCurry: one of community and connection and and vulnerability too, which seems odd that you would equate safeness with vulnerability, but it's the ability to feel vulnerable and feel safe. It's sort of like the definition of a holding environment from the work of Winnicott and some of the [00:21:00] other folks. That parents provide where they're creating a holding environment where things are scary but safe where your child can be, you know, upset in some way, angry, anxious, sad. And the parent is providing that context in which that's okay. You can feel that. And it's not the end of the world and the child learns that they can tolerate, they can feel difficult stuff, and it's not the end of the world.
[00:21:31] Chris McCurry: They don't have to try to get rid of those feelings, act them out in some way that's gonna be maladaptive.
[00:21:37] Chris McCurry: Are all kind of interconnected.
[00:21:38] Emma Waddington: And I guess that's what we're seeking in relationships is that place, that holding space too.
[00:21:45] Emma Waddington: , when we get that sense of safeness,
[00:21:46] Emma Waddington: safeness.
[00:21:48] Emma Waddington: which is what we're asking for many times where we can be ourselves and we can be vulnerable. It does lead to connection, which is so good for our brains and so good for our [00:22:00] hearts, but it requires us to take a risk.
[00:22:02] Emma Waddington: Right in the
[00:22:03] Chris McCurry: Sure, at least, you know, initially, certainly, you know, are
[00:22:06] Chris McCurry: you the person that I can trust to, you know, allow me to be who I am, in
[00:22:12] Chris McCurry: all my vulnerabilities and all my foibles and all that sort of thing. And if you are, then. I'm gonna like check with you I know get this very often in life. And we have to cherish and take care of those people in our and hopefully give them what they're giving us in terms of the ability to be who they are and have that be not just okay
[00:22:35] Chris McCurry: but even,
[00:22:36] Chris McCurry: you know, valued them.
[00:22:38] Emma Waddington: That's right.
[00:22:38] Emma Waddington: right.
[00:22:39] 3. The Paradox of Having to do Life Alone[00:22:39] Secret #69: No One is Self-Made woth Dr. Lakesha Hallmon
[00:22:39] Emma Waddington: And that sort of brings us onto this third paradox that we talked about more recently with Lakeisha Helman, this self-made myth and this idea that you know, and perhaps this is one of the most dangerous paradoxes, is that, we have to do it alone and go it alone. That's the way that you're more [00:23:00] likely to be successful and.
[00:23:02] Emma Waddington: That individualistic sort of narrative kind of keeps us in that space where we're feeling under threat because you see others as competition and not your community. And from, you know, what you were describing, it reminded me of, this place of wanting to connect with others versus fight others.
[00:23:25] Emma Waddington: in your relationship, obviously it feels like, you know, something that we're doing day in, day out is, you know, either pushing or pulling our partners away. But I think we do it in our communities as well. And, you know, at work everywhere really is, we're kind of testing to see if, those around us are really
[00:23:44] Emma Waddington: going
[00:23:44] Emma Waddington: to support us or not.
[00:23:46] Emma Waddington: And this idea that. we're self-made,
[00:23:49] Emma Waddington: goes against what we're, what we really need. We need community. Lakeisha talked about being village made. I love that. You know, really recognizing that it takes a [00:24:00] village to build us.
[00:24:01] Emma Waddington: us, we
[00:24:02] Emma Waddington: can't go it alone.
[00:24:04] Emma Waddington: That's not how we're wired. We're not wired to do things alone. You know, we have an, a loneliness epidemic.
[00:24:09] Emma Waddington: People are feeling incredibly lonely, even in, very built up cities. In fact, I don't know what the data shows, but I wonder if in the villages people are feeling less alone that in the big cities, because there is more of a community. But having a community is hard. It means you bump up against other humans who do things You don't like who say things you don't like, who perhaps smell in ways you don't appreciate. You know, there's just being amongst humans brings up lots of challenging emotions. And I feel that the.
[00:24:43] Emma Waddington: the invitation is to recognize that. We need community. It's really important for us. It makes us feel good.
[00:24:53] Emma Waddington: It makes us really flourish and we need to learn how to build our village and our [00:25:00] because it isn't always idyllic, right? It means sometimes you have to have the hard conversations. Sometimes you have to hear stuff that you don't like and you don't agree with, and you'll feel righteous. And so.
[00:25:12] Emma Waddington: there's a lot to be doing as we're building our village and working in our communities and a lot to be feeling.
[00:25:19] Chris McCurry: It
[00:25:20] Chris McCurry: is a lot of work and anybody has served on some kind of board, knows fraught this could be. When everybody presumably has the same, you know, goals, the same agenda but people being people and it gets messy and we have to do the give and take. And I think it's also just recognizing that
[00:25:41] Chris McCurry: the village
[00:25:43] Chris McCurry: is really the norm that, you know, we all have come up through.
[00:25:48] Chris McCurry: Societies of bigger and smaller, you know, starting with the family and, you know, the education that we got for better or for worse where we work. I mean, I suppose there are people who [00:26:00] can avoid people quite well through, you know, their occupation or where they lived, something like that. But, you know, I heard a story once about some hermit who lived on the hillside mountaintop above a village down below in the Bowie, and he never had anything to do with the village
[00:26:17] Chris McCurry: down below. And one year a big flood came along and wiped out most of the village and all the villagers moved away. And so the hermit moved to a different HUD and a different mountain above a different village, and didn't have anything to do with those people either. So, you know, we all need connection. Even if it's to claim we don't have a connection.
[00:26:39] Secret #57: Conflict Resilience with Bob Bordone and Joel Salinas
[00:26:39] Emma Waddington: Interesting. This is so true and I do think it's a real muscle, like the conversation we had on conflict resilience
[00:26:47] Emma Waddington: where
[00:26:48] Emma Waddington: we spoke about, you know, the fact that communities are becoming more polarized and we are finding it harder and harder to sit with others who see things [00:27:00] differently and Bob.
[00:27:02] Emma Waddington: Was talking about how he thinks that, you know, partly we blame everything on social media, but the fact that we no longer watch TV the way we used to, where you had your four channels and you had to listen to the perspective of these, you know, four different viewpoints versus today we sort of live in these echo chambers where we just listen to our version.
[00:27:21] Emma Waddington: reality
[00:27:22] Emma Waddington: And so we get less and less exposed to the feelings, the uncomfortable feelings that come with having somebody say something that you don't agree with. And they talked about how we need to get back on in back into the place where we're sitting with others who have different perspectives.
[00:27:40] Emma Waddington: If we need to solve some of the hardest problems that you know. Our world faces is that we need to come together and listen more and really get better at listening to hard things that we don't agree with. and there really is a muscle that we need to keep working at because you lose it. you [00:28:00] lose that ability
[00:28:00] Chris McCurry: it circles back to the idea of trying to avoid feelings you don't like.
[00:28:05] Chris McCurry: And We're trying to be comfortable all the time. comfort is great and it doesn't often get us where we need to go. Between here and there, you know, some important gold, there's probably some discomfort that we have to feel and be willing to feel even if we don't want to.
[00:28:24] Emma Waddington: That's
[00:28:25] Chris McCurry: That, That is a muscle that, can get better with experiencing. Again, you know, that initial ugh, that initial turning toward is gonna feel awful. and if we have A narrative, a story to tell ourselves about, you know, why it's important that we take that leap of faith, why we turn into the wind we can do it more and feel more successful in doing so.
[00:28:45] Emma Waddington: Yes. So it is practice and I think the recognition the.
[00:28:49] Emma Waddington: You know, being human
[00:28:51] Emma Waddington: when
[00:28:51] Emma Waddington: we're building, you know, these communities when we're doing the stuff that's really important to us, we're gonna bump up against some hard feelings that we have about others. [00:29:00] And it doesn't mean that you should be with other people that you know, don't do, you know, don't care for you.
[00:29:05] Emma Waddington: Don't treat you well, but talking about being abused.
[00:29:09] Emma Waddington: Exactly. We really are not, although sometimes some of us find it really hard to recognize that. But we're talking about, you know, sitting with being, with, making room for some of the hard feelings in the service of being with others, creating communities building bridges.
[00:29:27] Emma Waddington: that feels really good.
[00:29:28] 4. The Paradox of Fighting What We Can't Change
[00:29:28] Emma Waddington: So our final paradox is fighting what we can't change. And we sort of had a group of conversations where we realized that the more we fight our feelings, our situation, our life circumstances, the more we suffer. And some, and these were some of our most popular conversations actually.
[00:29:52] Emma Waddington: So we had a conversation on, chronic pain. We had a conversation on the new normal or there's no normal with Steve [00:30:00] Hayes. And then the conversation we had with Living With Death, they were the most popular. And I think it's because, it's a realization that, part of our human condition is living with some really hard experiences, like, you know, the loss of someone we love or.
[00:30:16] Emma Waddington: The fact that, you know, we're all going to die and that, living with physical pain or, chronic illness, you know, if we treat them as problems to fix our life actually gets smaller and smaller.
[00:30:30] Chris McCurry: Yeah,
[00:30:30] Chris McCurry: It's tricky. I mean, discerning what's changeable and what's not. Is it's very tricky
[00:30:39] Chris McCurry: and, And again, you know, going back to the idea, we don't want people to be abused. Um, you know, we're certainly not saying that I'm in an abusive relationship, I guess that can't change that. Well, you certainly could change that
[00:30:54] Chris McCurry: and Probably should change that. But some things are just, [00:31:00] you know, we're just stuck with, if not. Permanently, at least temporary in terms of, you know, and I think chronic pain is a perfect example of that,
[00:31:09] Chris McCurry: for a lot of people, sadly, you know, they live with conditions make it difficult for them to get around. And they have to accommodate to that
[00:31:20] Chris McCurry: and
[00:31:20] Chris McCurry: not let it shrink their life down to the point where, uh, they're no longer feeling vital.
[00:31:27] Chris McCurry: but, but that's a hard sell for people who are experiencing whether it's chronic pain or some mental health conditions that are just very chronic and can be de debilitating. You know, people with biologically based depression, uh, symptoms or, you know, or other things that plague them.
[00:31:46] Chris McCurry: And they have to cope with that. And, make room for it in a way that allows 'em to see past it and to do what they need to do. That's very tricky. the whole death thing, I mean, we had a great conversation about [00:32:00] that
[00:32:00] Chris McCurry: and the
[00:32:00] Chris McCurry: paradox, Or maybe, you know, maybe these are ironies and it as well as paradoxes is that, know, meeting our death and you know, can, in the way of thinking about it. Recognizing it. Honoring it. Ethan can make our lives more vile. 'cause
[00:32:18] Chris McCurry: uh, it's like I don't have time To
[00:32:22] Chris McCurry: mess around. Um, you know, particularly at my age, I got a lot more years behind me than I do in front of me.
[00:32:28] Chris McCurry: and so what am I doing with it?
[00:32:31] Secret #60: There is No Normal with Dr. Steven C. Hayes [REPLAY]
[00:32:31] Emma Waddington: that was a really poignant exercise that we did with Robin on the episode on Living With Death. So I would recommend Yeah, that timeline.
[00:32:40] Emma Waddington: it
[00:32:40] Chris McCurry: Yeah. I mean, I, you know, when I put my timeline on that timeline was, shocking to me. it's like, wow, sh.
[00:32:49] Chris McCurry: For any of us. I mean, you know, sadly, you know, people, leave for work in the morning and don't come home.
[00:32:56] Emma Waddington: And there is that invitation there I think it was [00:33:00] Manela on the conversation, talked about, you know, it being like the meditation be that reminder to keep bringing us back to what matters
[00:33:07] Clips from Secret #67_ Living with Death_ An Existential Conversation
[00:33:09] A good uh, reminder, that, help me reminding in Spanish is. And the Latin meaning of it is go back to your heart. So that can remind us, we help us to come back to our heart and realize the possibility to choose that it's not the mandatory rule to do, but the possibility to choose to live on the edge of each moment.
[00:33:41] Manuela O'Connell: We have been presented with rowing as a way of creating a meaningful life, moment by moment, step by step. Not in big things, but in the small way of living.
[00:33:56] Chris McCurry: Yeah. And you know, to not to be morbid about it or, [00:34:00] cynical about it, but just to recognize that we're not gonna be around forever. And even the idea of being around forever sounds kind of boring.
[00:34:08] Emma Waddington: Yeah. What would that look like?
[00:34:10] Emma Waddington: Like how would that change the way that we live our lives?
[00:34:14] Chris McCurry: I'd be even worse at procrastinating than I am now.
[00:34:18] Emma Waddington: That's right. Oh yes.
[00:34:20] Secret #60: There is No Normal with Dr. Steven C. Hayes [REPLAY]
[00:34:23] Emma Waddington: And then the conversation we've had with Steve Hayes, you know, real invitation to stop trying to figure out, what's normal, what's not normal. You know, that permission to be we
[00:34:31] Emma Waddington: are and to live life the way that brings us the most meaning.
[00:34:37] Chris McCurry: Right.
[00:34:37] Chris McCurry: Not put other people into boxes.
[00:34:40] Emma Waddington: Yeah. Which is, you know, including ourselves,
[00:34:43] Emma Waddington: you know, as the one who can't dot dot or as the one who only.dot. That actually we're far more complicated than that.
[00:34:52] Chris McCurry: Right,
[00:34:53] Chris McCurry: and far more
[00:34:54] Chris McCurry: individual than
[00:34:55] Chris McCurry: that. I mean, my wife, works with people with [00:35:00] dementia, you know, early onset schizophrenia, different, all the different kinds of dementia that she talks about. In the saying in the world with of
[00:35:10] Chris McCurry: Alzheimer's
[00:35:10] Chris McCurry: researching in clinical work is if you've met one person with Alzheimer's, you've met one person with Alzheimer's.
[00:35:19] Chris McCurry: Because it's so varied and it's the same with schizophrenia and someone in these other things. uh, either there are over 600,000 different combinations of symptoms out of the diagnostic manual, all of which meet full criteria for post-traumatic stress You can have
[00:35:37] Chris McCurry: over 600,000 different presentations, post-traumatic stress disorder. Um, so all of these things, you know, are very nuanced and individualized and they have to be approached as such.
[00:35:51] Emma Waddington: That's
[00:35:51] Chris McCurry: One size doesn't fit all.
[00:35:53] Emma Waddington: Yeah. And it kind of brings us back to this,
[00:35:55] Emma Waddington: the fact that we don't all fit in boxes. The fact that, We can struggle in [00:36:00] very different ways. Brings us back to this sort of idea that it take, you know, as we live in communities and we have all these different, you know, colorful humans who are messy you know, giving ourselves permission to be and giving others permission to be will just allow us to, I think live for learn more.
[00:36:21] Emma Waddington: Meaningful lives, richer versus needing to, be a certain way. And because it's so hard, we are, you know, in a way it's just so hard. If you are having a very experience, a very difficult experience, be it, you know, emotional or physical, it's so hard not to have the feelings that we have, like it's impossible.
[00:36:43] Emma Waddington: So creating communities where we start being more open to the sort of lived human experience, which is multifaceted and complex, will hopefully make it easier [00:37:00] for us to hold the heavy stuff like Ben in our conversation.
[00:37:04] Emma Waddington: We're in it together, we're
[00:37:06] Chris McCurry: And it brings up my favorite definition of resilience, which you heard
[00:37:10] Chris McCurry: many times
[00:37:11] Struggling Well: A New Perspective
[00:37:11] Chris McCurry: before, and our listeners have as well, which is struggling. Well,
[00:37:14] Chris McCurry: I get up in the morning,
[00:37:16] Chris McCurry: that's my goal for the day. I'm gonna struggle. Well.
[00:37:19] Emma Waddington: And can you unpack that for our listeners? What does struggling well
[00:37:23] Emma Waddington: look like?
[00:37:25] Chris McCurry: It means that it's recognizing that life is struggle. Would sometimes tell parents that I worked with ones that I had a good relationship with. I would say if having problems is a problem, you have a big problem.
[00:37:40] Chris McCurry: Because family life is full of problems. Parents would problem solve. Your child
[00:37:45] Chris McCurry: announces that morning that, oh, by the way, I need to bring in like, you know, two dozen cookies for, you know, the, my class today.
[00:37:53] Chris McCurry: And it's like, no. Why did you tell me that, you know, two days ago. Mom's gotta deal with that. Dad's gotta deal [00:38:00] with the the broken shoelace, you know, or whatever. So life is full of problems and we can't think of having problems as a problem. And so struggling is part of a deal as a human being and struggling well just means, you know, I did my best I didn't shirk from this. You Responsibility, uh, I wasn't perfect. And tomorrow's another day.
[00:38:28] Chris McCurry: So it's not beating yourself up because, you didn't do things perfectly. And going back to the idea of the the to-do list, you know,
[00:38:37] Chris McCurry: my to-do list, you know.
[00:38:39] Chris McCurry: Scratch three things off and put four more back on by the end So,
[00:38:43] Chris McCurry: um, It's an ever ending thing. And you know, we feel like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill and it rolls back down again. And if we can accept that's deal is the rock, you know, I'm gonna roll the rock. It's gonna roll back down again. I'm gonna roll it up again. It [00:39:00] can take the edge off that.
[00:39:02] Chris McCurry: you know,
[00:39:02] Chris McCurry: This is not right, this is not fair, this is not okay. Kind of crust that can wrap itself around these situations. That doesn't help us at all,
[00:39:12] Chris McCurry: makes us feel worse, and probably doesn't allow us to see opportunities that exist to actually do something.
[00:39:19] Emma Waddington: that's a really, I think that's a tremendous summary of our conversation today.
[00:39:23] Emma Waddington: It's wrapped up a lot of what we touched on. You know, you've talked about acceptance you know, the struggle is and change, right? Yeah. Where can we change that sort of serenity prayer that they use in aa, you know, grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
[00:39:45] Emma Waddington: And that permission to struggle. Like, it's funny, as you were describing this sort of, you know, life as a struggle, I sort of noticed my body relax, like,
[00:39:54] Chris McCurry: I mean, it's so
[00:39:55] Chris McCurry: obvious, you know, you just.
[00:39:57] Chris McCurry: You know, get getting out of [00:40:00] bed in the morning, you know, when the sun doesn't come up till almost nine o'clock and here in Seattle and it's cold and you know, rainy to boot. You know, it's like just getting out of bed is sometimes in pure active will,
[00:40:13] Emma Waddington: Yeah. right.
[00:40:15] Emma Waddington: Like it seems so obvious we don't want it to be so, and our effort in trying to not make it so makes it so much harder.
[00:40:24] Chris McCurry: Yeah.
[00:40:24] Chris McCurry: It does.
[00:40:26] Emma Waddington: So.
[00:40:27] Appreciating Life's Paradoxes and Ironies
[00:40:27] Emma Waddington: As we wrap up, what's our invitation to our listeners?
[00:40:30] Chris McCurry: To appreciate how messy life is and how it's full of paradoxes and ironies,
[00:40:37] Chris McCurry: and maybe we can find some humor in some of this.
[00:40:43] Chris McCurry: and to not take ourselves quite so seriously and to get cut ourselves some slack in terms of not having to be perfect.
[00:40:52] Chris McCurry: So
[00:40:52] Chris McCurry: self-acceptance to nurture community relationships. 'cause that's a big, that's been a big [00:41:00] theme There was a singer songwriter named Warren Ziva, who died I think he was in his forties, you know, several years ago.
[00:41:09] Chris McCurry: He had cancer and he knew it was dying and he was being interviewed once and the interviewer said, so, you know, how are you like approaching death?
[00:41:22] Chris McCurry: What words of wisdom do you have? And he said, you have to enjoy every sandwich. And I think that's good advice. You know, I think we have
[00:41:33] Chris McCurry: to enjoy every sandwich. We have to enjoy every encounter we have with our partners and our kids,
[00:41:39] Chris McCurry: friends, family. E even when it's not exactly joyful perhaps,
[00:41:46] Chris McCurry: To appreciate Reed Coucher would say, because, you know, life is hard and everybody's struggling.
[00:41:52] Emma Waddington: Everybody's struggling. That's absolutely
[00:41:57] Emma Waddington: true.
[00:41:57] Emma Waddington: Wonderful.
[00:41:58] Chris McCurry: Everybody's got their
[00:41:59] Chris McCurry: burden [00:42:00] to bear, so
[00:42:01] Emma Waddington: They
[00:42:01] Chris McCurry: each other some slack.
[00:42:03] Emma Waddington: Yeah. So we wanna lean more on community and. It's less about self-improvement and more about building communities and
[00:42:12] Emma Waddington: that feels really good to end up at.
[00:42:14] Gratitude and Community
[00:42:14] Chris McCurry: also to thank all our listeners for
[00:42:17] Chris McCurry: their support and, Curiosity and interest in what we've been doing
[00:42:23] Chris McCurry: this last year,
[00:42:24] Chris McCurry: which
[00:42:25] Chris McCurry: is now, this is, we finishing up our third year.
[00:42:28] Emma Waddington: It's coming up to our fourth year, three and a half years. We started in April, three
[00:42:34] Chris McCurry: Yeah. So we appreciate everybody who's downloaded these episodes and it's very gratifying. It's been a hoot. It's been a
[00:42:42] Chris McCurry: lot of
[00:42:43] Chris McCurry: fun. And I thank you, Emma, for. Talking
[00:42:46] Chris McCurry: me into this. And thank you to all our guests who
[00:42:51] Chris McCurry: were willing to, you know, come on and
[00:42:54] Emma Waddington: that's right.
[00:42:54] Chris McCurry: Enjoy these conversations.
[00:42:56] Chris McCurry: And we
[00:42:56] Chris McCurry: look forward to,
[00:42:57] Chris McCurry: Some very interesting ones in the coming year. We've [00:43:00] got some people lined up
[00:43:01] Chris McCurry: for the next six months.
[00:43:03] Emma Waddington: My goodness is so exciting.
[00:43:04] Chris McCurry: some repeats, Some, you know, people coming back as well as a lot of new folks that I think people will find very interesting and inspire.
[00:43:14] Emma Waddington: I didn't actually expect you know, one of the things that this Life Schedule Secrets podcast taught me is actually has allowed me to really. See the generosity that people are so tremendously generous with their time, with their knowledge with their care.
[00:43:31] Emma Waddington: Like we've, I felt really blessed to have so many fantastic guests that have come and given us their time and their knowledge and it feels like a real act of community. Smart.
[00:43:45] Chris McCurry: smart,
[00:43:45] Chris McCurry: accomplished, like
[00:43:47] Emma Waddington: That's right.
[00:43:48] Chris McCurry: It's been amazing.
[00:43:50] Emma Waddington: It's been amazing. Very humbling. And yeah, we've built our little community here.
[00:43:55] Emma Waddington: Very special.
[00:43:56] Emma Waddington: So thank you and thank you Chris for coming on the ride. [00:44:00] I wouldn't do it without you.
[00:44:01] Chris McCurry: You're very welcome. Here's to 2026.
[00:44:05] Emma Waddington: That's right. Thank you all.
[00:44:08]
