Why Things Feel F*cked - Andrew Sloan Will Help You Get Unstuck

I’ve learnt the hard way over the years that I need help. And not just help in a way that lightens my to do list or makes things slightly easier on a day to day basis, but the help from those around me in being able to withstand the part terrifying part invigorating approach to re-building my life over the last three years. From holding me when I needed support to sharing insights about my behaviour I couldn’t see to being of service and supporting this enterprise in ways large and small, I know that I need help, and usually much more than I realise. And in a day to day professional context working on climate risk and the science of how the atmospheric conditions of our planet have shifted to what our species have never encountered before and all the volatility that entails, as well as being a father to a small boy and the uncertainty and fear I have as to what the future looks like, I can find it easy to slip into nihilism or cynicism.

All of that is to say today’s guest, Andrew Sloan, has written the book I needed to read - Why Things Feel Fucked; Your Practical Guide to Getting Unstuck. Andrew’s personal experience as a gay man and advocate against outdated and insane conversion practices as well as his career as a psychotherapist has left him perfectly placed to combine the best tools that all of us can use to live more calm, connected and curious lives, while explaining that many of the institutional systems in place today play a huge role in our experiences when we’re languishing or despairing or overwhelmed. It not you, it’s the systems. When it’s easy to buy into the idea that it’s up to us - and us alone - to rise above the productivity trap, to always be climbing onto the next tier on the ladder of status, to be in a perpetual pursuit of doing more to be more, it can leave many of us, me included, feeling like a rat in a maze. It’s simple, be everything to everyone, all the time, and look effortless doing it. Put a sick cell onto a Petri dish with healthy cells and it becomes healthy. Put a healthy cell onto a Petri dish with sick cells, and it too becomes diseased.

In Why Things Feel Fucked Andrew offers a different perspective on the reasons for how we end up feeling stuck, the science of how our nervous system is degraded by the chronic stress of all that doing and pursuing, and what we can all do - individually and together - to change our own and collective narratives for the types of lives we want to live.

We chat about a million things in this conversation - his own experiences in getting stuck and the progressive process of becoming unstuck, nervous system science, institutional systems, self leadership, strengths, shame, healing, connection, fear and the components of healthy relationships.

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Support for today's show comes from Jamberoo Mountain Tiny Home - add Finding Nature to the comments in your booking to receive the hot tub sunset package added for free. 

Thanks to Leah Mazzone for website, brand and social media assets and Rob Rogers for theme song. 

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