Greg McKeown:
Dear listeners, we find ourselves so often entangled in the relentless pursuit, a kind of fevered race whose core stretches indefinitely and whose end is ever obscured. But it’s not in this endless doing. It’s in the quiet being that nourishes the spirit. We’re not meant to labor as though the value of our existence were in just the sweat of our brow only. Life is not a ledger. It’s not the sum of our busyness.
So we have to look beyond this cycle, dare to seek something richer, more enduring, a joy that does not depend on more, a peace that doesn’t come from the surface level of achievement. And in that spirit, I have invited Israa Nasir to come to the podcast today. She’s the author of Toxic Productivity. It’s about how to reclaim your time and emotional energy in a world that always demands more.
Israa, welcome to the podcast.
Israa Nasir:
Thank you for that lovely introduction.
Greg McKeown:
It’s easy to think about a subject like toxic productivity in a surface kind of way, I think. But it seems to me that the work you’ve done in this book, in what I know is a much longer journey to get to the book, that you will have had to dig deep and go beyond that surface. And so, in a sense, I want to start at the end. Having written this book, having done the work, and so on, what do you now, at the end of that, believe is the true purpose of all of our striving? What’s it all about?
Israa Nasir:
Well, it’s a very philosophical question, but this is my opinion. In a sea of opinions, I’ve started seeing myself a little bit more as a mosaic. I feel like the striving is to find pieces that fit together to create something vibrant, interesting, and rich by the end. So, not a singular thing, right? Because a mosaic is made up of many different things that have different textures, layers, and colors. I think that is what I would like to strive for: a rich, interesting existence that I look back on at the end.
Greg McKeown:
And when you look back at the life that you’ve lived so far, how’s the mosaic coming?
Israa Nasir:
The mosaic is coming along. You know, I’ve done a lot of really disparate things. A lot of people didn’t understand it. They were like, “Why are you…?” Like, “You just kind of do a lot of random stuff.” A lot of people will say things like, “You do too much. Why are you doing so many things that don’t seem to connect?” People want to put you in a box so that you are easier for them to understand. They want to, like, be like, “Oh, so you’re a therapist. That means that’s all that you do, just these therapist things.”
The mosaic is coming along really well. I’ve noticed that every five years, there’s like a seasonal turnover in my work, my relationships, my things I get into and get interested in. So I feel like I’m at that precipice right now as well. So I’m very excited.
Greg McKeown:
When you say “people say this,” which people say that?
Israa Nasir:
You know, sometimes I’ve interviewed at group practices and the clinical director—this actually did happen to me—she, in the interview process, did say that she felt like I was doing too many things that were disconnected from each other. It comes up when people go to my website, and they read things, and then they go on my social media and see a whole bunch of different things.
And another example is when a PR agency told me that I should streamline all of my social, my digital footprint, so that it just says one thing only. I mean, I just don’t think that we are that simplistic. I didn’t do that. If you go to my TikTok, it’s like, so different and so… But you know, it’s like a reflection of who I am, the things I think about, the things I have opinions on. And I think we’re just so much more dynamic. And I think productivity culture wants to take away this individuality and have all of us just driving all the time.
Greg McKeown:
If you were done right now, if this were it, we’re in our final conversation, if you knew this was the last conversation on earth—actually, now I can’t escape that thought experiment—if you knew this was it, you had just these last few minutes left, and you cut this conversation off, what would you go and do? Who would you go and talk to?
Israa Nasir:
There are two paths this question can take. One is the really raw one. If this was literally my last moments on earth, I would candidly want to be with my family.
Greg McKeown:
Who in your family? Who was the first person in your family if you had to choose one person?
Israa Nasir:
Oh my, you’re going to get me in trouble because they’re all still alive and here. But I think it would be my parents. It would be my parents.
Greg McKeown:
What would you say to them?
Israa Nasir:
I would tell them that a lot of what I’m grateful for about my life at this last moment is because of their support to me. They definitely changed the framework of being South Asian, Muslim, immigrant parents. They changed a lot of their own belief systems so that we could excel, so that I could, you know, have this horizon open for me. You know, there’s a lot of cultural stuff that sometimes holds women back, and they did not let that happen.
And so I think they did a lot of their own—I don’t know if it’s like, work—but they just knew that they didn’t want me to be trapped by some of the old world traditions. And so I would thank them for that.
Greg McKeown:
Would you be willing to just not just tell me what you would say to them, but just, like, say it? Like, actually put that into words to them? If they were here listening to this conversation, what would you actually say to them?
Israa Nasir:
I would say, “Thank you for letting me take all the adventures I did. Even when it made you uncomfortable, even when you had to answer questions to the community or contend with your own beliefs and, ideals, and traditions. But you put that aside because you had a bigger vision for me, and it allowed me to tap into my own potential.”
So that’s what I would say.
Damn, Greg, I was not expecting this. This is a very powerful exercise. I love it.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, you said it a certain way just then. And I suspect that if you were actually in anything like the scenario that we are exploring together, it would feel differently. But really, what you are saying is something like you owe not only your life itself, which is, of course, for all of us, not nothing but the whole trajectory and possibility of your life, that your sense of agency was allowed, empowered by them, supported by them, even when it isn’t what they would have chosen for you. So that’s the very test of agency, is when someone isn’t going to do the thing that you really think would be better for them to do, or that would fit better with the story you have for them or the narrative, and to allow the agency of another to be able to breathe and grow and be manifest.
I mean, you’re saying thank you for life and for the permission to pursue that life. Yeah, it’s a lot, isn’t it?
Israa Nasir:
I appreciate my culture a lot for many things, but I know what my life could have been had my parents had just made the smallest changes. Even immigration changes the trajectory of your life. Immigrating. Right.
Greg McKeown:
So not the smallest thing because emigrating, having done that myself, is massive. It’s still one thing that changed for you everything.
Israa Nasir:
Yeah, completely. And I think, like, modeling a lot of gender parity. My home is very gender… there’s a lot of gender equality in my home between my parents. And so I… and you know, like, I think women… there’s a lot of gender inequality, and then culturally, religiously, there’s like different ideas of what men and women do and what they’re afforded. So I think that knowing that in my home created a kind of confidence that is unshakable.
Greg McKeown:
That’s an interesting word to finish that sentence with. Unshakable is a really strong word. Not just encouraged or open or possible—unshakable. That this was honored. You know, the individual was honored. You didn’t have to fit in the box, perhaps, of the culture that they had been raised in.
So, let’s stay in this level of intensity for a second more. So if this were the end, if this was it, now you’re having this conversation with your parents. Now you have a moment to reflect just on your life right now. Everything you’ve done. This mosaic, this, what you assumed was a half-finished mosaic, many more colors to add, but, oh, now suddenly, this is it. This is what you’ve had. What colors, experiences would you say, “My goodness, I wish I could have added those.” Is there something on there you say, “Oh, this would have made all the difference? Or now if I were given a couple more years, I would add this?”
Israa Nasir:
Yes. I think there is one thing that I am very passionate about, but it’s like a longer project, and so I know that it’s going to take more time. I have been intending to write a selection of short fiction stories that explore what happened with families after the British left India. And then there was another partition in ’71. So this is like my personal stuff. And my family was impacted both times.
Greg McKeown:
Between India and Pakistan.
Israa Nasir:
India and Pakistan. And then in ’71, between what is now Bangladesh and Pakistan. So there was like these two partitions that happened 30 years apart that displaced a lot of people. And so I think that a lot of the ordinary stories of people and I… there’s so many interesting anecdotes from my own family. Right. I would have liked to explore that. And it’s something that I started doing six or seven years ago, but I would like to kind of make it fictional in a short story format and like a collection of six or seven. And I think, like, I would want that to… like, I would feel sad if that color was not there.
Greg McKeown:
Well, it’s such a provocative premise to the story because it reminds me of the East-West Germany moment where people literally woke up and they are building a wall not between two countries but cutting a city in half, cutting a country in half, cutting families. You just… I mean, it is unthinkable to those of us who haven’t experienced this. It’s almost fictional for us to imagine that such a world is possible.
And yet, that’s what they were waking up to. And they’ve got one family on one side of the wall, and they’re on the other, and some people are trying to rush over, and some people can’t get over, and the machine guns are already there. And that’s how it was. They couldn’t get out sometimes for decades, never even saw each other. These fictional stories, well, the fictionalized stories of actual lives, has that sort of quality to it. That one moment, this is your life, this is your home, this is your world, this is your city, this is your community. And then, just a second later, by a decision you didn’t make, now it’s not, now you’re leaving. The end.
Why does it speak to you so much? Do you know of people that it happened to? It didn’t happen to you, but, you know, family members it happened to, is that right?
Israa Nasir:
Yes. So, my parents were internally displaced in the ’71 conflict. So, they were internally displaced refugees when East Pakistan and West Pakistan broke up. And they were on the wrong side. Their families knew each other. They were neighborhood friends, if you will. But even it’s not just my personal connection, because my entire family was displaced in this on both sides because they were… both families lived in the same area.
But I think it just speaks to the human spirit and resilience. I find that to be very fascinating both from like a clinical perspective but also a personal perspective. How do people pick up and rebuild? Like, how do you pick up and rebuild when something like this happens? You know, one of my favorite books is Man’s Search for Meaning. And, you know, he’s asking the same question. How do you pick up and rebuild? How do you stay resilient in extraordinarily difficult times where there is violence and death everywhere? Right. I mean, war is probably horrific, and I’m lucky that I’ve never experienced it. But I’m very curious to capture what happened with my family in some fictionalized narrative.
Greg McKeown:
Well, there’s sort of two ways of thinking about history. It seems one is, you know, those people back then, and then there’s really imagining that we are those people. They don’t live in the past. David McCullough put it that way. There’s no such thing as the past. There’s no such thing as people living in the past. They’re not over there in a museum. They lived in a present with all the kinds of uncertainty that we live in our own lives, not knowing even what we’ll do this afternoon. Yes, we can put it on a calendar, but we don’t know. We don’t know how our conversation’s going to go. We don’t know.
And so they were living in that same way. And so there is this sort of trick, I think, about history, where you can say, you know, I… fill in the blank, our name today found that we would be moving because of this division in the country, and not to think about them doing it. But presently, I do this. And to really live those experiences as much as possible, I think, is something that I can feel some holy envy from Judaism, that when they’re going through their various holidays and rites, they’re not remembering the people who went through the Red Sea on dry ground. They are doing it. Everything is first-person. And I think that’s something all of us, whatever our story is, can do to do it first person.
I moved to America to seek a new life. To do it in that first-person way, I think, changes everything. And this speaks, I think, to this piece of the puzzle that you would want to add to your own life. In wanting to write these stories, it sounds to me like wanting to live those stories for yourself, bring them alive for yourself. Your thoughts.
Israa Nasir:
Yeah. You know, I think it’s like creating a bridge of empathy between what people have experienced and what you experience because I think it allows for a kind of rootedness. You know, I work with a lot of young adults who are struggling with identity formation. And I think one of the things that really helps us integrate our identity is understanding where we came from. And so maybe this is my own way of trying to build that bridge between, you know, these people who, many of them, I don’t know, I don’t know a lot of my family because I didn’t grow up in Pakistan.
But I also think to pull from the lessons that people have learned while doing these difficult things. So, if I can put myself in that and glean those lessons, I do believe that I will become more resilient. And so I think this is, yes, I would like to write the book for the world, but I think it’s really more for me now that we talk about it a little bit. And, you know, I think it creates an ability to be present. You know, when you started speaking about first person, that was the first thought in my head, is when we are first person, we are also more present. We are also more here and now. And I think that is also really a radical thing in today’s day and age because presence is the one thing that we all struggle with.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, it’s like a panoramic now where you can see past, future in the present. So it’s not quite the same, I think, as the general mindfulness movement, enormously helpful and important as it is, which is all about you’re in this moment, you’re sensing the physical vibrations of your internal, external system so that you’re hearing yourself breathe, you can feel the air around you and so on so that you are very present. It’s beyond that because, yes, you’re present, but in the presence, you find a Technicolor reality. I am both past, present, and future in one. I know who I am and how I’m connected to all of that. And I think this is the very fabric of meaning. Like, I think these are the strands with which meaning is sewn.
And it’s an interesting contrast because as you talk about your parents and what you would say to them, what you thank them for, it’s this duality because, on the one hand, the gift they’ve given, the thing that you would say you’re most grateful for, is the choice and chance not to be a function of the past, not to simply live out those stories yourself. But in the same journey, like, the other side of that is a disconnection to the past, like, potentially disconnected. Because in the shifting in that I don’t need to be that. I can choose something else. I can embrace a different culture. I can embrace maybe the culture that I’ve born into and so on. Something can be lost, too.
And so I wanted to come back specifically to what you said, that you work with a lot of teenagers who are struggling with identity. And I wonder if you could tell us more about that.
Israa Nasir:
Yeah, so they’re young adults, so they’re all, like, over 18, but they’re in this, like, 22 to 28, I would say. And that’s interesting, right? Like because as society has changed, the timeline has changed. So people are exploring themselves well into their late twenties, whereas before, people were not doing that as a function of just school and economics. Right. But yes, that’s the group I work with a lot. And they are often either first generation, immigrant, biracial, or, you know, second generation. So they’re all diaspora of some kind. And identity is so fractured for people sometimes because they are forced to choose. They’re forced to choose one over the other.
And so when you’re at home, you have to practice the family identity, the cultural identity, which sometimes is at odds with a lot of Western concepts of identity. And so when you go out with your friends, you now code switch, and now you’re a different identity. And so what happens is the work is in integrating these different pieces.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, it’s an interesting phrase, “code switch.” I mean, I think what you’re describing is really playing roles that are so different. It sort of creates an almost split personality type existence. I think everyone who goes to high school and then comes back to their family has these different communities and plays a different role. All of us play a different role with each person, slightly based on their expectations, based on our past interactions with them.
And so we all know this multifaceted way of being. But you’re describing something deeper than that because it’s such a split. This is the modern version of me when I’m with my friends. This is the cultural version of me when I’m at home. And I’m trying to be what they need me to be at home. Well, it’s a pretense. There’s some… There is a degree of pretense here. I’ll be this version of me here, but that’s such a different version of me than there that I start to wonder, well, who am I? Which one am I? If I can be so different in these different environments? And then, your job, people will come to you saying, “Help me to put it back together, help me to figure out who I am.” I mean, you said at the beginning, identity level, “Who am I?”
Israa Nasir:
And you know, there is sometimes a pretense involved. Absolutely. You know, people will put on a facade, sometimes in front of their friends, sometimes in front of their family. Right. What makes it more complicated is that people like disparate parts of their different identities. And so you might like the way you are at home for certain things, but you feel like you either have to be one or the other. It’s this enforced binary that’s false that distresses people.
So, my work is to help them integrate and understand that we actually get to craft our identities. We don’t have to inherit the identities or adopt them. We get to choose things that might feel contradictory to each other. There’s a lot of things I do as a South Asian person that is very contradictory to the Western side of me, the Canadian side of me. Right. But instead of forcing myself to choose between the two, I decided that I’m just going to be a menu, and I’m going to pick things from here and here and craft my own identity. So, I think that’s integration.
Greg McKeown:
Another term we might use is self-authorship, where you say, “I’m not going to be limited by the meaning frame that I had previously. I have to be either this or this.” There is a way to integrate your different ways of being. It’s like integrity. It’s not either this or that is good or bad. It’s, “How can I have integrity in myself as I go into my different roles in life?”
Israa Nasir:
Yeah. And that requires releasing shame and guilt.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. Somebody recently said it to me this way. They just said, “Shame is satanic.” And I thought that was a really profound way of saying it because I think when we’re experiencing shame, it’s different than when you think, “Oh, I could have done that better. I need to go make it right.” Shame, I think, is discernible, and therefore you can distrust it.
I think it’s also that it reveals some locked or limited meaning frame that you don’t yet know what it is, but the symptom is the shame. And so when you have the symptom, you can know, “Okay, let’s look and discover what the limited or locked meaning frame is.” If we can find it, we can alleviate so much of the pain and expand the set of choices available to somebody. But where someone is simply in a pattern of behavior, we might say a “shame cycle,” they’re just trying to force their way out of the cycle through willpower, through investment, through sacrifice. It’s like, man, the meaning frame will win. This is so much more powerful than everything else going on, but it’s just hidden many layers below the surface.
It sounds like one of the ways that you’re helping people is to point out, “Oh, hey, here’s your meaning frame. You think it’s either/or. That’s a meaning frame, and that gets you all trapped. But here, I can help you. There’s a different meaning frame. You could be integrated.” And that alone will alleviate this sense of strain, this black-and-white, either/or thinking that has kept them trapped.
Those are the thoughts I have as you’re describing this. This is a term I keep coming back to recently with guests on the podcast: having an intergenerational self. And there’s good research on it, too, that you are more resilient if you develop an intergenerational self. That’s literally true. Part of the reason it’s true is because you actually hear stories of people in your own history who overcame unbelievable odds. It might not be your parents, but in order for you to be alive.
There’s something freeing about that—to know, “I come from something strong, and when tough things happen to me, that’s okay too because I come from a line of people who could do things and survive things.” All of us, every person listening or watching this conversation, comes from a hundred generations of survivors. I just think that’s such a profound way to live. Yeah, well, you’re going to survive too. We’re going to survive. We’re going to pass this on. We can have families. We can pass this on to them as well. This legacy of survival and overcoming and figuring things out.
How does your work with these young adults, working in therapy, connect now to this work on toxic productivity?
Israa Nasir:
The direct through line is that, you know, when I’m working with people who are struggling with their identity, a lot of them are struggling with knowing what they want. Many of them are playing these inherited roles. They are studying what they were told to study. They’re pursuing the things they were told to pursue. And there is this enormous pressure to succeed. And you know, you can say that this is cultural because I predominantly work with East Asian and South Asian young adults. But I think it’s across cultures, across the board—there is this enormous pressure to succeed at what you do. And it needs to be perfect; it needs to be done well.
And I think that’s really where a lot of this investigation began, outside of my own personal experience with it. One of the things that kept coming up—and it came up for me as well—was the idea that if I’m uncomfortable, if shame is coming up for me before my front brain can even recognize what’s happening, I’m going to start doing something. I’m going to start, you know, being productive, some comfort.
Greg McKeown:
Or just activity.
Israa Nasir:
Yeah.
Greg McKeown:
It could just be reactivity or activity.
Israa Nasir:
Yeah.
Greg McKeown:
You’re going to do something. You’re going to distract yourself with something. It might not even be productivity.
Israa Nasir:
Yeah. So I think, you know, it’s like a perfect storm, right? You’ve got these overachieving individuals. You’ve got this moment in time where everyone is telling you that you are only valuable if you produce something because people are now monetizing their hobbies. Social media is ablaze with content creators making six figures in two days, right? And so we have this culture that is promoting this, and then we’ve got the economic climate, political instabilities, and people are confused. People, especially Gen Z, are asking questions like, “Is there even a future?”
And so there is this claw for control. People are trying to claw back a sense of control. And how do you do that? You do it by being super productive, right? Like, “I’m going to do all of the things. I’m going to do it all right. I’m going to work really hard. I’m going to hustle, and then I’m going to be protected from all of the instability.” And it’s leading people to burnout.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. There was something else that you said—not just control, but the idea of value. That if I achieve A, B, and C, then I will be valued. Then I’ll be okay. Then I’ll matter. Then I’ll be enough. Then, person X or these people will be impressed. Then, I’ll get the affirmation I’ve always wanted. Those are deep desires in people. And if someone came from a family of origin that didn’t affirm, “You are enough right now. You are good right now. You are valuable right now. Your value isn’t going to change based on whether you achieve X or don’t achieve X,” and I think most people come from a culture that’s like that, and even if their family of origin wasn’t like that, their high school was.
So those two superstructures, those two systems, define so much of our sense of self that we can lean into productivity. And that sounds like a sort of healthy way to handle this underlying fault in our stars. But you are, of course, arguing that, no, it’s not healthy. It’s toxic, in fact. So, talk to us about why you think it is so toxic.
Why isn’t this a perfectly reasonable response—to be productive? At least then, you have that going for you.
Israa Nasir:
That’s a great question. So, I’ll bring you back to something you said a few minutes ago: that this need for acceptance and belonging is very deep within us. I would take it a step further and say it is a core human need. We are driven to feel a sense of belonging, acceptance, and connection. And so what happens with productivity is that you have a false sense of security that you’re receiving those things.
Because any connection, belonging, or acceptance that is contingent on you producing is not inherently true. It’s contingent on your production. And so we produce, we work hard, but we feel that the return is not actually what we need.
Greg McKeown:
What you’re saying is it cannot meet the need.
Israa Nasir:
Yeah. It meets a different need. You know, we have these core emotional needs—like the need for purpose. As human beings, we have a need to create, design, and have purpose. Productivity meets that need, but it won’t meet the need for connection or belonging because that requires emotional connection.
And from a lot of my reading on productivity literature, emotions are not something people really consider when it comes to productivity. Productivity is not going to elicit that authentic vulnerability. It’s not going to elicit that warmth, that validation. It’s not going to make you feel seen for who you are. You will feel seen for your achievements, which are an extension of you. But you’re still behind your achievements.
So I think we kid ourselves into thinking, “If I get this salary, if I get this job, if I get this relationship status, then I’m going to matter more.” The truth is, you will matter in a certain domain, but you won’t matter more as a human being. And so you’re always going to feel a little empty.
Greg McKeown:
In your therapy work, have you found what you would say is the primary missing piece for those that are—let’s call them insecure overachievers? What is it that you have found is the real undercurrent? I don’t mean in the generalized term of connection and valuing, but is it precise? Is it, “This person didn’t value me?” What’s the most common root cause of this kind of hyperactive productivity and achievement trap?
Israa Nasir:
The most common root for this is growing up in a home where you learned very quickly that if you were achieving, people were loving you. And so you learn very quickly that you can barter achievement for praise. And praise feels like love. So what happens in those homes is that as long as you’re achieving, there’s psychological safety. That doesn’t mean it’s an abusive home—that’s not always true.
But you make this connection in your head that, “I’m special; they love me a little bit more,” or “They won’t be angry with me if I’m producing if I’m achieving.” That is the most common thread that happens. And there can be other reasons as well. It is so foundational.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. And it’s an interesting question for me, at least, to ponder. What would that behavior look like? Is it praising a child for achievement? Because that’s one version of what you just described. But another would be just living out of that meaning frame yourself. So if I, as a father, just live my life as if achievement is the priority, then it’s not even necessary that I praise achievement in other people or in my children. I’ll just pick it up through the pores of my skin—that’s what matters here. And if I’m not achieving, then something foundational is wrong, something foundational is missing. And so I think that could be a way that it gets manifest as well.
Israa Nasir:
Absolutely. You know, children absorb what they observe more than what you tell them. And so watching parents who model a lifestyle that equates achievement to acceptance definitely sets this up. Active praise or withholding love—being very punitive if you don’t have achievement—is another factor. And the third one is comparisons. A lot of children start hearing from very young ages that their sibling is better, that other kids are better, that someone else is better. And that creates this sense of, “I only matter if I’m better.”
So there’s a couple of things that can happen. It is the most foundational thing, and I do like to share that while we are for sure molded and influenced by our early experiences, they are not our destinies. I always like to tell people that you have more power in your life to undo this stuff, even if your parents unknowingly made mistakes. Very few parents intentionally do this. So even if these things did happen to you, you’re not destined to be miserably chasing achievements.
Greg McKeown:
You’re saying there is a space between what’s happened to us and what we do about it. And the language I’ve used recently when I was writing is that you can be the prisoner of your own mind, you know, of the inherited meaning frames. And I think you do remain a prisoner of that until somebody introduces the idea that, “Hey, you have a way of thinking that’s installed now, pre-installed in your mind. That’s your OS system.”
And you can step outside of it and look at the programming. You are not your thoughts; you are not that programming. And I literally think that being introduced to that idea—even a single exposure to that idea—is really different than somebody who hasn’t been exposed to it. They’re just going through life unaware that all of that is happening under the surface, subconsciously influencing everything. And I think, in that way, it can be intergenerational—intergenerational meaning frames, and generations can go through and still not see clearly their own thinking or examine it.
Let me ask you this: I heard someone recently say that it’s easier to map other people’s thought processes and how they see the world than it is to map yourself. First of all, do you agree?
Israa Nasir:
I do agree. I think we can look at other people as whole. We can often map other people’s good and bad in a very balanced way. But when it comes to us, most people have a very hard time mapping themselves as wholes. So either you look at yourself through deficiency and you only see the stuff that’s bad with you and you internalize it as being your fault, or you have a very lack of awareness of what’s wrong and what needs to change. And you only see the things you’re good at, your strengths. And both of those things are imbalanced perspectives of yourself.
Greg McKeown:
Why do you think that it’s harder to map yourself? You described a specific way in which it’s harder to map ourselves, and that was to map the whole, which I like that distinction. Why is that the case? Just a lack of self awareness? Is it just born into egocentricity as everybody is, and they just never mature out of it, never grow out of their gravitational pull of self? Is that why it’s hard to see ourselves?
Israa Nasir:
I think there are a couple of reasons, and this is a great question, by the way. It’s getting me to think about things I haven’t thought about in some time. But there’s a couple of things. One is that mapping out your deficiencies requires you to confront your family dynamics. And family dynamics can be emotionally painful, confusing, and chaotic. We tend to avoid that pain. One part of this lack is driven by a desire to avoid pain. Sometimes people are not able to actually see or map themselves because they don’t have the skill of personal accountability. And that can be for a multitude of reasons, but if we have struggles with personal accountability, we can’t objectively view ourselves because everything out of shame, blame, grief, or rage.
But if you can take personal accountability without emotions, then you can see yourself in a different way, and that’s when you don’t want to protect your ego and be egocentric as you were saying. And personal accountability also demands you do something about it. Right? So now that I know these things that I’m good at, maybe I structure my life so I can leverage my life, right? So it demands action and I think people like to stay within the zone of comfort, even if it’s not a fulfilling zone of comfort. We’d rather be comfortable and underfulfilled than risk going out there and changing something and not knowing the outcome. So I think there is obviously more reasons as well, but I think emotional pain is probably the biggest one.
Greg McKeown:
Right. I can see that. Just the resistance within ourselves to, well, to explore how we got here. It’s more familiar to be able to just point to the old story rather than to face whatever the reality is inside, whatever that is. It’s going to take adjustment. You know, the least it’s going to be is like a chiropractic visit where something is now put back in its place. It’s still, there’s still a crack and there’s still some getting used to it. And that’s if what you come to the truth about isn’t too painful. Of course, you could discover all sorts of things inside that can be terrifying for people.
In the therapeutic work that you do with others. There’s a kind of Carl Rogers process of listening and asking questions and empathically getting into other people’s minds and their stories and helping them to see themselves and to create space for them to do that. But I wonder, can a person do that without a therapeutic process?
And I ask it as quite a sincere question because it’s not obvious to me how a person would. What we normally say to people, things like take a mindfulness practice so you can start seeing yourself and your thoughts and noticing them. We would say write a journal. And I think I’m perfectly in favor of that. I’ve written a journal. I don’t think I’ve missed a day in many years. And so I’m perfectly in favor of that. For people, I think there’s a lot of help, but it’s not the equivalent of a therapeutic process that that helps to start putting words and language to different pieces and what’s going on and let’s look under the surface and let’s make this safe.
That’s a different kind of process. It’s more involved. There’s many layers to it. What’s your best attempt? Giving an actionable process that a person listening or watching this conversation could do to start to unravel this. The noise and the stories that are existing outside of their consciousness.
Israa Nasir:
Gosh, my mind was going in so many directions when you were asking this question. So the first thing I’ll say is the process can be therapeutic without a therapist. So you can go through this self healing, self discovery journey without a therapist. I just know that it’s longer without somebody kind of showing you a light because therapists are not taking you somewhere. They’re just kind of shining a light in parts of your mind and your soul that you may have forgotten about or you’ve repressed or you’ve put away, or you’re just too scared of, right?
Greg McKeown:
Or you simply don’t know about them.
Israa Nasir:
But yeah, you just don’t even know about it. You don’t remember. Right. And so I always tell my clients that, you know, like, “I am not the expert. You are the expert. I’m just kind of here to shine a light, hold up a mirror, clean a mirror if it’s a little too dirty so you can see clearer.”
But what I will say, I think that this is one of my most frustrating things, I’ll be candid with you, is the fact that therapy is not accessible to people. Just to do this, just genuinely human work frustrates me to no end. But I am very glad that I am present in this time because people do have more resources. So if you are somebody who is looking for something actionable, I know that there are many guided process oriented journals that have been developed by clinicians who you can walk through the journal on your own. So journaling is like a free flowing practice, right? People sometimes will just journal, whatever, but if you have a thing that you’re trying to work through, there are a lot of resources that are guided journals that will take you from point A to point B.
Along with that, there’s clinician workbooks. Like I know so many great clinicians who have released workbooks that are self directed. So you can journal that’s self guided. You can use a workbook that’s self directed. But I think what is important are the foundational skills that you described. The foundational skill of the building block is being present with yourself. So learning how to observe your thoughts and your mind through a general mindfulness practice, learning how to connect with your body, increasing your emotional literacy.
So here, general self help books become very helpful because they are trying to give you access to language. You know, I have worked with people. These are young adults, these are people in jobs. And when you ask them to label emotions, they can go up to eight, maybe ten, and that’s it. So there is this lack of emotion literacy in our communities because we don’t teach it.
So I would say foundationally build the skills. And then level two is do the guided stuff, workbooks, you know, or guided journals. And then the third level would be a little more high level, which is like listening to podcasts, engaging in this kind of work.
Greg McKeown:
Well, I love what you just shared. I’ll give you my sort of final thoughts on this as you were speaking as you were describing these guided processes. I mean, I’m familiar with some of them. There’s so many that have been done. I don’t mean for a second to pretend that all of them work a certain way. I simply don’t know. But the ones I’ve looked at, what they’re helpful with is that they’ll give questions.
So it’s a prompt to examine. And these, let’s say, are some of the best questions that they have learned to ask when they’re working with people. And so I think that they’re good at that. Where I don’t see them very good in general is then following an actual next step process. So it’s more like, here’s a question to reflect on. Okay, reflect on it. Here’s another question to reflect on. Okay, now you reflect on it.
Other than my own bias, my own understanding of human systems, internal human systems, is that it’s layer upon layer. And let’s say every person has a hundred layers within them. And that at the heart of those hundred layers are the meaning frames that shape everything else, but they’re hidden. You have to have a process that gets you through those surface layers and then those middle layers and gets you to the really valuable and vulnerable stuff at the center.
And other than the five whys method, which I’m not against that process, that might be the process. I’m not really familiar with other tools that are built on the premise of many layers, increasingly important, increasingly vulnerable, and helping people through that. Are you familiar with tools that help do precisely that?
Israa Nasir:
Yeah. So there are very, like, directed workbooks. So like, let’s say you have a trauma history, right? And you’re trying to work through a specific trauma. There are very specific workbooks that somebody can go through that is trauma informed action plan, cognitive behavior therapy. But if you were to be somebody who likes that kind of work, there are a lot of manuals that are cognitive behavior therapy manuals that literally take you from level one to level two to level three. And it’s not just questions, it’s exercises. And they always ask you to have like an account accountability partner to make sure that you’re actually engaging in the behavior that you’re supposed to do that week and stuff like that.
You know, ultimately though, there does come a point where you do need to find somebody to help you. Right. It’s the difference between having stellar oral care, but eventually you do need to go to a dentist. And so, you know, when it comes to our mental health, if there is something very specific that you are working through. And it doesn’t have to be clinically like diagnosable. It can be something like identity exploration.
You will come to a point where you might need to bring in another partner and be like, hey, let’s do this together.
Greg McKeown:
I love it. A parallel. You know that there’s a lot of work we should do individually. The more we do personally, the better off those moments will be when we engage with others. Because we’re bringing new insight to the table ourselves and we’re discovering things to put on the table in those discussions. But to find in whatever you’re trying to do, whether you’re dealing with trauma or whether it’s more on the other side of things where you say, well, why is it that I am constantly in this behavior? Why am I such an insecure overachiever? Like the spark isn’t necessarily trauma. In fact, the root cause may not be trauma, but it’s something else that triggers this kind of self reflection and process.
The book is Toxic Productivity: Reclaim your Time and Emotional Energy in a World that Always Demands More. Do I want to spend time with this person? Do I want their thinking to impact me? Do I think that they have a life story and an experience that can be relevant and useful to me? And so I encourage everybody to invest more to be able to unpack the deeper reasons that we may participate in the kind of toxic productivity we’ve mentioned in passing, but haven’t necessarily got to in all of its detail.
Give us the final word.
Israa Nasir:
The final word, I think for me is it’s really important to get connected with your emotions. If we can become better at emotional regulation, which requires you to identify, understand, manage and release emotions, we can just show up in our lives more authentically. I think mismanaged, unaddressed emotions make us less vulnerable. We become lonelier. We feel more disconnected. We overdo things, we over commit.
And so my mission in life, even as a therapist and outside as a mental health educator, is really to help people stop being afraid of emotions. So let’s welcome our emotions. They’re not scary. They’re meant to help us and protect us. And only if we hear them.
Greg McKeown:
For everybody that’s been listening or watching this, thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Thank you for participating. Really. Thank you. And what stood out to you in this conversation? What is it that you thought about? What feelings came up for you? What was sparked? Pay attention to it. Can you do differently as a result of this conversation? What’s one thing you could do differently that might shift the direction and trajectory of your own life. And who is somebody that you can share this insight with, this conversation with, now that this conversation has come to a close?
