I am proud to say that I have been influenced and inspired by some pretty special people.
Some have passed, some are still with us. Regardless, having never met them, they have still reached me through books, courses, podcasts, articles, and online videos.
These people include the late Alan Watts, Eric Berne, and Albert Ellis. Along with contemporary thinkers like Robert Sapolsky and Jordan Peterson.
And I’m sure that most of you would have heard the name, Alain de Botton.
Alain delivers his message in a kind and calm manner
I wanted to share some wisdom from a man who is a philosopher and an author but also has a wonderfully soft and human quality about him. I have no doubt he is often the brightest person in the room, but I doubt he makes others ever feel lesser.
This recent interview with Chris Williamson gives you a great sense of who Alain is, but if you don’t get the chance to watch it in its entirety I thought I would share some of Alain’s pearls of wisdom (in many cases here I am paraphrasing him).
He says therapy is like learning a new language because it helps you better understand yourself and be able to explain yourself to others. But, it is also like learning a new language in that it takes time (you wouldn’t expect to understand Italian in three lessons!).
Alain believes that the more you can define yourself (in other words the more personal understanding and awareness that you possess) the easier life gets.
But he says often we only know the headlines of ourselves and not the meat of the story (which is where therapy can help).
The ability to better understand yourself and communicate your needs helps, especially in our relationships.
He also makes the point that sometimes the most profound information can often be just simple wisdom.
Alain believes that we in the West are too quick to dismiss simple-sounding messages, and he believes this means that we miss the opportunity to find the meaning in things, in other words, to essentially meet it halfway.
And he believes strongly in the power of validation
In the interview, Alain talks about the importance of both internal emotional validation, and being able to validate others.
He makes an excellent point that we typically validate the feelings and thoughts of our children, but tend to struggle providing it to other adults.
The perfect example of this is the situation where a young child says to his mother that “he doesn’t like his teacher”. Alain says the mum is most likely to respond in such a way as to ask why the little boy feels that way, and not reply with an invalidating response such as “You just need to listen to him, he works very hard to be a good teacher for you.”
He said that love is ultimately acceptance of another person and their inner experience.
This also really resonated with me – how people overdo things because they adopt the behaviours at an earlier point as a coping mechanism.
Alain says anything that is “too much” eg working too much, drinking too much, joking too much, even reading too much, can be a sign of a previous defense mechanism being activated.
Alain believes that our adult relationships are a litmus test for our emotional health and evolution.
Some other wisdom from Alain includes the need to sometimes just sit and think (and not be doing), how meditation can help people but there is a limitation in not having an external perspective helping you find new areas of yourself.
And that we’re all fundamentally foolish and blind and that means we should have much more compassion for each other.
Lastly, no matter how great the idea or strategy is there is always a use-by date. In other words, it might have worked yesterday, that doesn’t mean it is the right approach today.
If you do have the time, please check out this great interview with Alain de Botton: