Martha Beck:
Hey Ro, the folks, our Cahoot out there listening to the Bewildered podcast, we have a meaty one coming up this time.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh my gosh, it was such a good one. We heard from one of our Cahoot, Rebecca, who was asking about having the courage to shine your light in the world and to get paid what you’re worth. So we got stuck right into that, didn’t we?

Martha Beck:
Yes! And so we turned it around and twisted it up and inside out, and we came out with three magical little words that can set you free to do those things, to shine your light and get what you’re worth.

Rowan Mangan:
Hope you enjoy this episode, folks. See you on the other side.

Martha Beck:
Hi, I’m Martha Beck.

Rowan Mangan:
And I’m Rowan Mangan. And this is another episode of Bewildered. That’s right. The podcast for people like me, like you, like Martha Beck, who are trying to figure it out.

Martha Beck:
So, Rowan Mangan, Gracious Badger that you are, what are you trying to figure out?

Rowan Mangan:
Marty, I have been in this country of yours, this fair country, I’m now a citizen, if you can believe that.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. So is it really of mines or is it of ours?

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, so this country of ours has a weird relationship with clothing sizes, and this is what I’m currently trying to figure out. So “vanity sizes” I just learned about not too long ago. So if you want an edge–

Martha Beck:
She’s so sweetly naive, my daughter.

Rowan Mangan:
If you want an edge in, as a clothing store, what you do is you make people, on some level, say things like, “I love shopping at [insert clothing store name] because I’m only a size eight at that clothing store. Anywhere else I’m a size 10 or 12” or whatever the numbers are. So they started going, I’m going to make it look like a smaller number. Right?

Martha Beck:
Not really make it look like a smaller number, just make clothes the same size, but put a number on ’em that is smaller.

Rowan Mangan:
Put a different number on the tag. And in fairness to those places and those people, it seems to have worked.

Martha Beck:
Oh, like a charm!

Rowan Mangan:
A different number? This is fantastic! Here take my money and let me take my different numbered clothing away. So this is what happens. So first you’re a size, I don’t know what you are, you’re a size 10, and then suddenly you’re like, “Wow, I’m exactly the same size and now my clothes say 8.” And then you go and then, okay, so Marty, at a certain point on this march towards like non-existence through tininess, you end up being a size zero. And I just want to say–

Martha Beck:
Isn’t that stupid?

Rowan Mangan:
No, no, that’s impossible. That’s not a size. That’s the absence of a size. You cannot be a size zero. What happens? Okay, so you’re a size zero. Oh no. And then you get the stomach flu, and then what happens then? Suddenly you’ve gone backwards and you’ve like backed from zero, gone backwards. You are through the space-time continuum. You’ve ripped it. You’re now living your life backwards like Benjamin Button. You can’t be a size zero and you can’t be beyond size zero. Oh my God, Marty.

Martha Beck:
I was steering along as a size two and suddenly I was a size zero. Whoa! Who saw that coming? And then I did get stomach flu and went to the store and the zeros were too big and I found that they had created a new size: double zero. Oh my God. Which as you say, sort of bends the space-time continuum because it makes no sense. Zero doubled is just zero. No matter how many zeros you put on an article of clothing.

Rowan Mangan:
What it has to be by its own logic, smaller than a size zero has to be a negative one.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, that’s true.

Rowan Mangan:
You’re a minus one.

Martha Beck:
You know what I’m wondering?

Rowan Mangan:
You’re a percentage less than an actual human.

Martha Beck:
Or even a whole factor less. Do you know if this is true in men’s clothes?

Rowan Mangan:
I have no idea.

Martha Beck:
Do men have size zeroes? Google it.

Rowan Mangan:
I don’t think they would want them. I don’t think they would want them. I think they’d be like, “Rawr! I go into this store and it means my pecs have developed” or something. I don’t really know what men think. I’m a lesbian.

Martha Beck:
At a certain point in my life, I started only picking up like men’s muscle mags to read on airplanes back when we read magazines on airplanes because all the women’s stuff was like, “Here’s how you can be smaller and smaller and smaller.” And these muscle mags were like, “Here’s how you can be bigger and bigger and bigger.” And they still had total body dysmorphia or whatever that’s called, didn’t like their bodies. But I don’t know if men have size zero.

Rowan Mangan:
I don’t know either. I just want to say the whole thing is a massive gaslight, and it’s bullshit, okay. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I never will. I never will. But if you happen to know what the living heck that’s about, please send us a postcard. Marty, what are you trying to figure out?

Martha Beck:
Something really stupid by comparison.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, because mine was intellectual.

Martha Beck:
Yours has existential ramifications. Yours makes me question the nature of my own physical being in the universe. I mean, maybe there’s an alternate universe where there’s a negative me that is a double zero of myself. Anyway, mine is really simple.

Rowan Mangan:
Maybe there are two negative you’s, one for each zero.

Martha Beck:
Oh my goodness. Well, there probably would be a universe for every possible combination of zeros, which is infinite. Maybe there’s a universe where I literally wear a hundred times zero.

Rowan Mangan:
What if the zero spins because it’s gone into a black hole or something beyond the zero-ness and it spins so hard, it becomes an eight.

Martha Beck:
Whhhip!

Rowan Mangan:
Then you get small enough and like boom! You’re a size 8.

Martha Beck:
I am not shopping at that black hole anymore! I got so heavy when I was being pulled into that unintelligible smear of space-time. I felt so big, okay, which could be a good thing. Anyway, back to my problem, which is, and people will not be surprised. They will not be surprised. And that’s exactly why I have to talk about it. They will not be surprised because it’s so obvious that I have this problem. I cannot stop talking about animals. I just finished edits for my book that’s coming out in a few months and my editor was like, “It’s a book on anxiety. Your readers don’t care that wombats poop in cubes. They don’t care.” And I’m like, “No! No woman! Everybody cares. How could we not care?” Anyway, there were animal stories on like every other page. It was like some sort of children’s book with pictures of happy animals in the margins. So I took all that out, pretty much. But then as we were driving, this happens a lot. We’ll be driving and you, Rowan Mangan, Gracious Badger, are very efficient. And you have Siri connected to the car writing and reading your texts. You’re doing communication as we go, right?

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. And reminders and stuff. My big one is “Siri, remind me when I get home to…”

Martha Beck:
Or “Text so-and-so and tell them this.” And then so Siri listens to this and then there’s a pause and then Siri says, “Your text to so-and-so says this, shall I send it?” And then you say, send it. Well, all of that part is way too long for my brain to focus, the ADHD brain. As soon as you stop speaking, I’m done. And there’s always something in our beautiful Pennsylvania neighborhood, there’s always something waddling or trotting by.

Rowan Mangan:
Yes.

Martha Beck:
And I have to talk about it immediately. And so today we were driving and you dictated a text to your assistant, and then you held up a finger at me very significantly.

Rowan Mangan:
Yes.

Martha Beck:
Now I realize that the finger meant–

Rowan Mangan:
Don’t, do not talk about animals for the next 1.5 seconds.

Martha Beck:
Yes, because it will become part of my text and that is not what I wish. But I followed the valence of the pointing finger and my eyes did land upon, you will not guess it, a donkey. So naturally–

Rowan Mangan:
So the text that my assistant received this morning read– “Please make an appointment for me at the chiropractor in about two weeks, Donkey!”

Martha Beck:
Donkey. And then in a flash I realized what had happened because oh listener, this is not the first time nor even the hundredth, this is a continuous issue for us. And I realized, ah, I did it again. I mentioned a donkey right in the middle of a text. It’s not what most people have to fight and cope with. And I think I deserve some kind of special compassion because of it.

Rowan Mangan:
I think I deserve some kind of special compassion because of it. I mean, I lifted the finger, Marty, I know you so well. And the thing was that happened to me is: I was driving the car, I was managing the chiropractics and all you were doing was just having to sit there. I started the text to our beloved Nataly, and as I turned the corner, as I was beginning to dictate the text and I saw those donkeys there and my brain just triangulated the scene and went, oh no. Oh no. And so I held up my finger desperately to prevent–

Martha Beck:
I know, desperately pointing to the donkey because you needed to talk about it out loud that very second. I get it.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s so funny because people would think it’s Martha Beck, it’s Dr. Martha Beck.

Martha Beck:
Donkey!

Rowan Mangan:
She must have some really sophisticated take on animals. Donkey, donkey, donkey, donkey.

Martha Beck:
I literally saw two donkeys grazing in a field of buttercups and I just was like, “Oh, what a world!” So, yeah. Sorry, Nataly, I do not think you’re a donkey.

Rowan Mangan:
We’ll be right back with more Bewildered. We don’t say this enough. We are so glad you’re a Bewildered listener and we’re hoping you might want to go to the next level with us. By which I mean if you rate and review the podcast, it helps new people find us so we can keep bewildering new souls. And you know how much we love that. Ratings are very much appreciated. Obviously the more stars you give us, the more appreciation is forthcoming. Reviews are quite simply heaven and we read everyone and exclaim over them and we just love you all.

Martha Beck:
We should probably get to our topic.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. What’s our topic today, Marty?

Martha Beck:
Well, it’s a BeWild Files episode. We’re getting questions from a wonderful listener.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, as we do like to say from time to time, very rarely actually, it’s not all about us.

Martha Beck:
What? It’s about us and a donkey.

Rowan Mangan:
Us and a donkey and one of our beloved other butterflies whose name today is Rebecca. So let’s hear from Rebecca.

Rebecca:
Hi Rowan. Marty, thank you for Bewildered. It’s such a generous act and we all really appreciate it. So thanks for battling the technology. My name’s Rebecca and I’m one of the “other butterflies.” My question to you is how do I get wilder in my imagination of how to have my own business? I’ve had a business since January of 2020, but my old-world conceptions of what work means have really gotten in the way of me shining my light, telling people about it, enrolling people in the mission, and allowing myself to charge a lot of money so that I can support myself and also make this even bigger. How would you structure a business in this day and age with your neurodivergent brains? And do you have any advice for me? Thanks.

Martha Beck:
Oh, Rebecca, this is so right in the sweet spot of what we need to know ourselves. Yeah. Yes. With our neurodivergent brains. Ro, what do you think about all this?

Rowan Mangan:
I have so many thoughts. The first is, yeah, I have no idea, Rebecca. It’s really hard, but it’s a really, really, really, really good thing for us to focus on, I think, because what I heard you say actually is my old-world conceptions about work are stopping me, blah, blah, blah. But I think that your old-world, oh my God, why can’t I say it? Your old-world conceptions about worth are what is actually going on here and my clue for that—

Martha Beck:
So it’s not work, it’s worth.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s worth. And my clue that you were doing that is where you kind of apologize for why you want to charge a lot of money—”to support myself and so that I can make it bigger.” Not because I’m greedy, I’m not! That’s the implication. And I heard it because I do it. So it’s like that’s not the thing. And as far as work goes, you’re running your business, you’ve been doing it for at least four years, you’re good at it. Work’s not the problem. It’s the worth piece, I think. Tell me where I’m wrong. So if you know your thing is good, the business that you’re running, you probably do, if you’ve spent years working to share it with people, and if you still feel a sense of smallness or shame around telling people how good it is and charging a lot of money for it, then I think that you and many, many, many of us are being remote-controlled by the culture in this area. What do you think, Martha Beck?

Martha Beck:
Yeah, it’s even more like when people break free of the soul-killing jobs and start to do what gives them real passion. The irony is what they’re putting into the world is of much more value to them and I think therefore to other people than doing a job they hate. But they become very, very troubled about asking money for it. There’s something about putting your heart out there that means asking for a lot of money is going to get you shamed. Anyway, we will talk much more about this, but I just wanted to say that I still have trouble allowing myself to charge money for anything. And some of the things I do are– they’re expensive to run, so they’re expensive for people who come to them. And I’m always apologizing inside. Sometimes I’ll like hold it in. But at one point I said, I don’t want to do any one-on-one coaching again. This was like 10 years ago. And the people I was working with at the time said, no worries, we’ll just, we’ll charge an absurd amount for a one-on-one session with you. So I was like, “Oh, ugh, okay.” And they said nobody will buy it. So I was like, okay. So they did it and people bought it. They bought sessions. And I remember just sitting in a session with this woman, knowing how much money she had paid. And believe me, to her it was a raindrop in a hurricane. I mean, this woman was not hurting for money, but I was covered with fire ants. I couldn’t stand how much she was paying for every moment, every minute. And I had to stop. I couldn’t do it because I still go into that “Yes, this is only to feed my children.” This is only, thank God I have another child now, so I can– “I have a dog, I have to feed it.” And yeah, that’s arguing for your needs and your caretaking propensities. It is not saying, “Look at this beautiful thing that I alone am able to create, potentially. It’s worth a lot of money to a lot of people, so that’s what I’m going to receive for it.” Oh, that’s hard. That is so hard for me. I can’t do it really. I can fake it a little.

Rowan Mangan:
And I think a lot of this is just reminding each other that it’s a thing. And so one of the things you told me once, which was very helpful is you were explaining to me that sometimes there’s a way that we do that. It’s humility, I guess, but it’s a way of making ourselves small. And you told me that’s still ego. There’s an ego element in making yourself small. Could you explain what you meant by that?

Martha Beck:
Well, the thing is, if you’re using ego in kind of the Asian philosophical sense, not the Freudian sense, where ego is the little person in the head that is separate from the world and frightened and wanting to control everything and doomed to die, and then the awakened self, which is the true self, is relaxed and doesn’t have that kind of fear. So if you’re going to awaken out of your small self and into your true self, your awakened self, the word “Buddha” just means awakened. You have to stop thinking of yourself as Ozymandias, the emperor who is in charge of everything and who rules everyone. You have to stop being narcissistic. You have to stop thinking you’re all that and a box of cookies, but you also have to stop projecting images of yourself designed to please other people, even if they aren’t the emperor.

Rowan Mangan:
Because that’s a lie as well.

Martha Beck:
Exactly.

Rowan Mangan:
The fake smallness and the fake bigness amount to the same thing.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. I was just working with someone who was a world-class champion at a bunch of things, and I said to them, “Oh, that’s great. I mean, you’re a genius.” And they were like, “No, no, no, no, I’m just ordinary.” And by saying that, what they were doing was saying, “Everybody can do what I do. You all just must me lazy or negligent or barking up the wrong tree or something” because this person was so talented, and by pretending to be normal, by insisting on normalcy, they distorted the reality that everybody else can see. Like, “You’re better at this stuff than almost anybody.” “No, I’m not.” “Yeah, you are.” To say I’m not better than anybody else at whatever my specialty is, that’s a lie designed to make you fit in so that people won’t pound on you for being better at stuff than they are.

Rowan Mangan:
But I think there’s a confusion there because it’s like you’re not, regardless of if your ego is driving you to narcissism or a fake smallness, it’s not about you being better at anything. It’s about you making things and offering things of value to the world. So I think that’s where we get confused is we get it all mixed up with our own identity and our own sense of worth when we charge stuff. And some of that has to do with what we expect, which is always culture-based, right?

Martha Beck:
Yeah. There’s actually, there was a period in psychology where a lot of folks were doing research on what was called expectancy theory. And it was amazing how they found that people’s expectations of themselves and other people’s expectations of each other were determining certain, a significant amount of what value that person was given or their work was given. So they would go to elementary schools, public schools, and they would divide the classes in two, randomly, and then tell the teachers that one group of their students was gifted and the other group was delayed. And the kids didn’t even know this was happening. But at the end of the year, the kids that the teacher had been told were gifted, were performing really well. Those that the teacher had been told were delayed, were not performing up to their own ability level. So the teacher’s expectation, even without the kids knowing what was happening, seemed to have a real impact on how they performed. And it’s such a circular thing because there are so many factors that have been assigned by society that say, “You’re not worth as much as another person,” or “You’re worth more.” And those feed into the structures. Then we are in the structures, and also we are being taught the same things about what to expect for ourselves.

Rowan Mangan:
Even unconsciously. Like those kids.

Martha Beck:
Yes, it’s deeply unconscious a lot of times, but for me it’s always like there’s an insistent pattern that’s coming up that says, “I just can’t get this one thing to be valued.” And I always find that I don’t value it, but it is, it’s a total circular thing where you don’t expect as much for yourself. You, I don’t know, put out a vibe. And society also doesn’t expect you to be worth much. And hey, if you’re living a Bewildered life, if you have decided to step out of the culture, that means that the culture is invested in telling us we are worthless, and the work we do outside the culture is worthless. That’s not our truth. So we have to find our ground, dig in, and expect the hell out of our own value.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, yeah. No, I think it’s such a great point. And I don’t want to, before we move on from the expectation piece, I do want to without oversimplifying stuff because gender and race and all these things are more complex than I’m going to make them seem. But I do think that privilege plays a part here. And I remember Liz, our friend Liz Gilbert doing this talk once where she was talking about, there’s a lot of research, I guess, in the HR kind of world where men consistently overestimate their own abilities when they’re going for jobs, and women consistently underestimate their own abilities to do a job and Liz, and that’s the effect of the teacher saying we’re either advanced or we’re slow, right? That’s the equivalent. The society is like, “Your role is to succeed in your career” and that has its own pressures, or “Your job is, don’t worry about that, love. It’s not really your cup of tea.” And we’re getting these messages and it’s playing out in that. You can see it in the research. But Liz was saying, she’s like, “We’ve got to be more like men. We’ve just got to be like, I’ve never done that job before, but how hard could it be?” She’s going through all these examples and she’s like, “I’ve never invaded a country before, but how hard could it be?”

Martha Beck:
Let’s do it. I’m sure I’ll be good at that. I’m good at everything everyone tells me. So yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And I want to say that this is a piece of the larger conversation that we have on this podcast where the fact that in some way it’s inevitable that we do create our own cultures. Because that’s what people do in a clump is that this is where the Cahoot, like our Bewildered Cahoot, really comes into the fore because the only real way that we can consistently believe in our own worth independent of the messages we’ve received is to fucking “Rah! Rah!” buck each other up a bit.

Martha Beck:
That’s right. That’s right. It is kind of like you have to be the child who says the emperor has no clothes. And the child who says, “That person over there who’s been designated as worthless is incredibly special and valuable.” That child has to not only call the privileged on their illusions, it also has to call us on our own illusions of being inferior or worth less because we’re outside the culture. The child has to not only say, “That emperor is naked,” but also has to say, “And that person over there is amazing.”

Rowan Mangan:
But I don’t think we want, I feel like to me it’s not about saying it to a third party. It’s about saying it to the person. Let’s say it to each other rather than proclaiming it to someone else.

Martha Beck:
That’s what I meant, yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
I hear you. I hear.

Martha Beck:
Although when I see somebody awesome, it’s hard for me to not yell, “Donkey!”

Rowan Mangan:
But in the long run, I don’t know if that’s going to help that individual that you just walked by and shouted donkey at them. I don’t know if your more nuanced message that that means they’re awesome, is really getting through.

Martha Beck:
It’s a metaphor. What I really mean is that sometimes I pass a field of buttercups and I see a person grazing in the field and I scream, “Person! Person in buttercups!” When I see someone outside the culture doing something awesome, I cannot keep it to myself. It’s exactly like seeing a donkey. Take that to the bank.

Rowan Mangan:
I’m right there with you, babe. I’m right there with you.

Martha Beck:
Okay.

Rowan Mangan:
Absolutely. So I think if we can invert that unconscious sense of being worth less, not without worth, I don’t mean to be dramatic but worth less than someone who can charge a lot for their business, right? If we can invert that inside ourselves, then we can also do it among ourselves. And we’ve got to remember, okay, so we run a business. People want to get something really good that will help them or will just delight them. And sometimes in order to be delighted, it takes in us apportioning a certain value to it and passing on some bucks to represent that value. And then I can value it. And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so you put a high price on what you do. You’re saying don’t get caught up in an idea of “You don’t have any money, but I’m taking your last bit of money.” No, no, no, no. It’s just like, look at this cool thing. Do you want it? It costs this?

Martha Beck:
Yeah. And it’s such a hard, it’s like a razor-thin line between the abuse of capitalism saying, “Give me all your money for this thing” and “Look at this delightful thing. Isn’t it worth some of your, will you trade for me something of yours?” Because what we’re really doing when we pay each other money is we’re symbolically exchanging our energy.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
So, when you, for example, buy a book, you are paying for the energy of the author, but mainly for the energy of the publishers and the people who put the book on paper and the people who drove it there. And it’s weird because money’s in the mix. We evolved to just be hunter-gatherers and hunter-gatherers lived for hundreds of thousands of years, human hunter-gatherers, in great abundance without money. So it’s really hard for our heads to grasp this money thing, and it tends to follow biases and systems of oppression much more. I mean, when they give chimpanzees food, they’ll trade it and barter it, but if they give them chips they can trade for food, they get crazy and start ripping each other’s arms off.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh my god, this is what’s happening with Lila with our surprise economy.

Martha Beck:
Did she rip your arms off?

Rowan Mangan:
She tried to.

Martha Beck:
I knew this was coming.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, this is so interesting. We just went off the deep end a bit with trying to teach her to, anyway, it doesn’t matter, but follow a star system. So should you do this, you get your shoes on, you get a star, you get a star, you get a star. The stars start to add up and eventually you trade all the stars for a surprise. And she just turned into a surprise monster, surprise-obsessed, preoccupied always with the look for the surprise. And that was our fault.

Martha Beck:
A token economy. And by that I mean the token being the star or the coin or the check or whatever it is, the fantasy number in somebody’s in some bank computer. I mean, there’s all this money floating around that doesn’t even exist. We just agree that if I tap a card on a machine, money goes from my personal possession into the possession of the grocery store or something. It’s so weird. So weird. And we aren’t really evolved to deal with it. And so it becomes a talisman exemplar of the way we apportion value and it makes us crazy and it makes the world crazy. And that’s a good reason to step outside of culture right there.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, I hear you. All right, so how do we solve it, Marty?

Martha Beck:
Oh, that’s easy. I’ll tell you in a minute.

Rowan Mangan:
So how would you say that we solve the issue of how to present or offer or share something with the world that is wonderful to you without somehow feeling guilty for charging money or telling people it’s great?

Martha Beck:
I think if you back away from culture, then you end up in nature. And in nature you’re just enjoying the essence of whatever it is you are utilizing or consuming, like a delicious fruit you’re eating or something. And you’re like Eve in the Garden of Eden, “Hey Adam, this is delicious. You’ve got to try it.” I mean it’s interesting that they put that as the ultimate sin: “This is delicious. You should try it.”

Rowan Mangan:
Marketing: the ultimate sin.

Martha Beck:
Yes, it really is. Anyway, it’s a very natural thing for animals to, I remember one time when we had a beagle, Cookie. Cookie, the dog, and I had my first lot of kids were really little, and my ex-husband and I on Easter put all these hardboiled eggs everywhere, decorated the eggs, hid them everywhere, went to bed hoping to get up as late as possible for the Easter egg hunt. And at four in the morning we hear, “Arrrrr!” And we go out and there is Cookie the beagle completely round and very flatulent surrounded by countless fragments of colored eggshell. And he was in there going, “Oh my god, you guys, there is food everywhere!”
So he was calling the pack, man, calling the pack. And this is how I feel when we see something wonderful on television like Gina Chick on Australia Alone. If we haven’t, if you–

Rowan Mangan:
Alone Australia.

Martha Beck:
Alone Australia. Be alone, Australia, out in the ocean. Yeah. Watch the first season of Alone Australia and watch this woman named Gina Chick. We watched it. Why? Because someone said this exact thing to us. And Gina Chick isn’t paying us. She is an astonishing human being and I want everyone to see her.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah get into Gina Chick. She’s amazing. But the person who told us about Gina and Alone Australia wasn’t confused between, “Here’s this amazing thing, you’ll love it” and their own worth. It’s when we have created something that suddenly we think it’s us, that if I say, “You should do my course” or “You should buy my bracelet,” then you are saying, “I think I’m so good and I’m better than–” as though– no one’s saying that. Just “this is the thing I made that I’m offering.”

Martha Beck:
Well, I do have some theories about this. I have some opinions and approaches. But first of all, I want to say that it’s very important to get over that cultural hurdle of this thing that I have made outside the culture of my own mother wit, as Shakespeare put it. I mean Shakespeare was always making up words. He did things that were outside the culture and then he would just plonk ’em down there and say, “Take it. This is amazing stuff.” They say he never blotted a line, he just wrote it down and said, “This is amazing. Go for it.” He was kind of an other butterfly, the other butterfly, which Rebecca says she is too. But I think we have to get over that hurdle and realize that it’s more precious to do something that is completely our own.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s right, that’s right. I saw this cool thing, I don’t how relevant this is now, but I saw this really cool thing of this person talking about being an “other butterfly,” which is our little shorthand in Bewildered for in some way neurodivergent, a bit different, a bit countercultural. And it was a British guy called Chris Packham and he’s a TV presenter and conservationist in the UK and he was talking about why neurodivergent people are essential. And he said for society at a time of crisis or whatever that people say, oh, we’ve got to think outside the box. And he’s like, I don’t see a box.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And it’s like, so that is anyone’s and Rebecca, you identify as one of the other butterflies. So that’s where you can be kind of sure that you’re bringing something unique. You’re bringing something of unique worth.

Martha Beck:
With the world, which other people who are inside the box will not see. They can’t see outside the box. So you can give them something of incredible value and they’ll literally not see anything. It won’t matter. It won’t be significant to them.

Rowan Mangan:
I disagree. I think that as someone with a unique perspective, she can offer people things that they wouldn’t know how to make themselves, but that they will find immense value in it.

Martha Beck:
Actually, you know what? You’re right. And it’s reminding me of something that I worship this neurologist and philosopher named Iain McGilchrist and he talks about how we get stuck in our left hemisphere and the whole culture is very left hemisphere. And he says, “Magic is what the left hemisphere calls it anything it doesn’t understand.” So what happens is, this has been my experience. I’ll do something that feels logical to me with my neurodivergent brain. Other people will say, “That’s really weird. Go back and say that again. I don’t understand it.” And then they say, “Oh, that’s magical.”

Rowan Mangan:
Shut up and take my money.

Martha Beck:
And it’s not magical. To me it’s really evident. But I do have a weird brain and even though I’ve had trouble charging for it and I have to wrestle with the same demons, Rebecca does, you’re right. People have looked at stuff that I thought was–like my first self-help book I was like, “This is so stupid. Everyone knows it.” And people were like, “This is really good. I want to get more.”

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
They liked it. You’re right.

Rowan Mangan:
So we have to internally flip our narrative around worth and actually invert it fully. So how should we do it? How do you think?

Martha Beck:
Well, obviously I have not done this yet, but at least I can sort of, I get the logic of it. But in the moment when it’s time to sort of claim our value, and especially if we’re shamed by people inside the culture who don’t see the value, and that happens a lot. People, especially if you’re like, “I see my own worth.” And the other person is in a position where they would rather have you in a one-down position. You can get slapped hard by individuals and by entire institutions. And when you’re shamed, it’s very hard to hold your ground. And what I think, and this is not “fake it till you make it” or anything, you need a script. You need what to say.

Rowan Mangan:
Can I just say we’ve been taught, sorry, just the thing on scripts. It’s so interesting. We had a conversation about this recently where it was like, it’s funny the thing with scripts because on the one hand we’re supposed to be talking about not being prescriptive and not being like, follow these rules, do this A, B, C, D. But I think and then brilliant Kit, your eldest bio kid, said it’s actually for neurodivergent people. The social scripts thing has its own value. So I just want to say it’s not, the script idea is about offering possibilities, not prescriptions.

Martha Beck:
And then it becomes scripture or prescription and it just turns, it just ossified into a monstrous gargoyle of itself as soon as the culture tries to use it. Anyway, I was reading, actually listening on audio to a book by Samantha Irby, a hilarious, brilliant–

Rowan Mangan:
Brilliant–

Martha Beck:
–author whom I love. And I was reading her book Quietly Hostile, which is I think one of the best titles ever written by anyone. And she gives us a script for what to do when someone shames you. And it’s wonderful to listen to her voice saying it because you get all the warmth and gusto. And so when somebody says to her, “Oh my God, I can’t believe you shop at that stupid store.” She says, “I like it.” People say, “How dare you charge so much money?” “I like it.” “Why are you doing such a stupid thing?” “I like it.” “How come you live such a weird life?” “I like it.” And she says, “You can use ‘I like it.’ Take it. Go with it, run with it. Use it anywhere.” Thank you, Samantha Irby, because that changed my life just a few days ago. And I think that’ll be, moving forward, I’m going to be able to do what maybe Rebecca’s learning to do when people come at us in order to shame us: “I like it.”

Rowan Mangan:
I feel like it’s a way of saying to the person, “This is not a category in which I am able to be shamed. I do not accept the premise that there is anything wrong with shopping at that store. Not only am I unashamed, I’m doubling down on, I like it.”

Martha Beck:
Oh my gosh, I like it.

Rowan Mangan:
It was so funny. Marty started telling us about how much she enjoyed this part of the book. And that night I was secretly beading away in my garrett like I do. And I was watching a very obscure British crime novel from the eighties, nineties. And I did I say crime novel? Crime drama. Crime TV show. Yeah.

Martha Beck:
You’ve got crime novels on the brain, Rowan.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh yeah. I think everything is a novel. And it was just so funny because that exact thing played out with this character where someone sort of quite disapprovingly was saying, “Why do you smoke so much?” And this guy who’s played by Robbie Coltrane who later became Hagrid in Harry Potter, why do you smoke so much? “I like it.” And you drink a lot as well. “I like it.” And why are you always gambling? “Yeah, I am. I like it.” That’s great.

Martha Beck:
There’s nowhere to go with that. When shame hits a surface that has no sense of inferiority, it just slides off it like Teflon. And it was so interesting that I was talking about Sam Irby’s script and that very night you saw a TV show where someone did exactly that. That’s what we call a synchronicity, guys. And lemme tell you something, Carl Jung believed in synchronicities, even though Freud pretty much disowned him for it. And the best thing about having Ivy League degrees is that I can say I believe in synchronicities and that they show us a way through life and that they happen more when we’re on our right path. And a lot of educated people say, “Oh my God, how could you be so gauche and new age?” And: “I like it! I really, really like it.” Anyway.

Rowan Mangan:
It does mean, though, if you want to use that script around this topic, it does sort of imply a proviso there, which is that you can’t be in, what’s the word? You can’t be disingenuous about what your product is.

Martha Beck:
You actually have to like your product. That’s the thing. You have to actually like it. And I can say that about synchronicities because they’ve proven themselves to me, and they’re not of me, they’re not made by me. But right now I’m going through this in a very big and very real way because three weeks ago after drawing obsessively for well over 50 years, I had a conversation with Ro where I said, “In some life, I want to be an artist, a professional artist.” And she said, “How about this life?” And now I take time to paint every day and I don’t feel like I deserve that. And then we have to price these paintings I’m making. Price them? Oh my God, I don’t know what to do. And so we were doing research on how much do you charge for a painting. Because it’s so arbitrary. And this one person online says, okay, you take your painting, you sit down with it, you have a glass of whiskey. Sorry, this was another person–I’m not telling you to drink whiskey. This person said, sit back, look at it, sip your whiskey and say, how much do I like it?

Rowan Mangan:
And whatever that number is, put it on the price tag.

Martha Beck:
Right, exactly. I haven’t tried it yet, but we did read through this and I can feel what Rebecca’s feeling. I can feel this part of the culture gripping my chest when I think about offering art for sale. It’s hard. It’s hard to give your heart to the world and then get barter for it.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, it is.

Martha Beck:
It’s easy to feel inferior.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. Well, but that’s the thing is if we can keep the “I like it” energy. It’s like that, was it Eleanor Roosevelt who said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” So if we are going reject the narrative, we are going to withhold our consent to be made to feel inferior or ashamed for saying, “Oh my God, this is so good. You’ve got to try this.” Right? So if we can reclaim the value in ourselves and in what we make, and just do it cheerfully, because the idea that you shouldn’t charge money is absurd. And the message that you shouldn’t charge money is really there. It’s really there. It’s not your imagination.

Martha Beck:
You’re not imagining this, Rebecca, not at all.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s totally, totally there. And we had this thing, we might’ve talked about this before because I don’t think I’ve mentioned our friend Liz Gilbert on this podcast enough. I don’t know if anyone knows that we’re actually friends with Liz Gilbert.

Martha Beck:
I think we should switch our drinking game to–

Rowan Mangan:
–from Harvard to–

Martha Beck:
Every time I say Harvard, you drink a glass of water because it’s good for you and change it to, whenever we mention our friend Liz Gilbert, you drink a glass of water because it’s good for you.

Rowan Mangan:
Okay. It’s not so much that we are name droppers, it’s just that we have very few friends.

Martha Beck:
That is so true.

Rowan Mangan:
So there was this time a bunch of years ago where we wanted to do a writing course and we told Liz about it. She’s like, that sounds cool. Do you want me to put something up about it on my Facebook page? This is back in the Facebook, the era of Facebook. And we were like, oh my God, thank you so much. And so she wrote this Facebook post, oh, my friends are doing this course and this is what it’s about and it’s so cool. And she’s like, I’m not getting paid to do any of this, I’m just telling you. And oh my God, the culture came at her because we were charging money for that course. And I guess it came for us as well. But it was just so weird seeing the message, the comments coming on Liz’s post because she was genuinely just like, “Guys, this is so good. You’ve got to try this.” And the culture came down at her as the internet is always a good lens to really view the culture at its most vociferous and nasty.

Martha Beck:
And they came down on her if she were claiming her own value and she wasn’t even talking about herself.

Rowan Mangan:
Not only was it like you’re confused between what I’m offering and me myself, but this wasn’t even something she was offering. She was just spreading the word. Anyway. So one of the comments that we still joke about now that she got in exchange for saying, “Hey, there’s this few months writing course that Martha Beck’s offering,” someone just wrote, “How many millions are enough, Liz Gilbert?”

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And to which it’s like, “I don’t know, 37? Off the top of my head?” Strange question. “I like it. I like it.” Maybe maybe 41 million. I don’t know. But fuck you, culture. I’m making my art. It doesn’t matter. No many millions are enough because I’m making my art.

Martha Beck:
You know what? You are reminding me of something that Liz has said over and over when she comes to–

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, is that our friend Liz Gilbert?

Martha Beck:
Yes. And she does appear. She has been all the vituperation of the culture has been thrown at her and she looks it dead in the eye and says, “I like it.” She’s good at that. She really is. But every time she comes, I’m always working on a painting or whatever, and she always says, “If I could do that, I would be out on the street handing out pamphlets. Everyone in the world would know that I made that. You couldn’t stop me.” And that is actually refreshing for me to, she’s like an other butterfly floating in front of me doing one of those wind shear things that helps you go faster because you’re right behind someone who’s sort of going into the wind.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s a complicated metaphor, but yeah.

Martha Beck:
I keep wanting to say breaking wind, but that’s not how it works. Liz Gilbert’s breaking wind.

Rowan Mangan:
Someone pull out this quote and put it on a little meme: “Liz Gilbert floats ahead of me breaking wind.” –Martha Beck.

Martha Beck:
“To make it easier for me to be an artist.” But this is the thing about having a Cahoot, about having our Cahoot of Bewildereds because when we get together and we look at each other’s work, we can validate what I think you always know in your heart when you make something that is truly, truly original and unique and deeply felt, you know that you like it and you can start, just look at other people who don’t have skin in the cultural race and they can say, “No, if I could do that, I’d be out handing out pamphlets,” and you can start to think, “I like it. I like it.” Yeah. The path of the other butterflies doesn’t have to be a lonely path, and it doesn’t have to be a path someone else makes up for us.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s actually something that we’re thinking ahead about trying to formalize in some way with you all. Because this idea of the Cahoot and the space where we can focus on building each other up and not pulling each other down is something that is really important to us personally. And I’m pretty sure probably is to you all as well.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. We can all break wind for each other. Lovely. Beautiful. No, I mean really we can see each other’s value and love each other’s creativity. And just remember that a wild thing never thinks in terms of value. It just likes things. Right? It likes it!

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. I like it.

Martha Beck:
I like it too. So… stay wild!

Rowan Mangan: 
We hope you’re enjoying Bewildered. If you’re in the USA and want to be notified when a new episode comes out, text the word ‘WILD’ to 570-873-0144.

We’re also on Instagram. Our handle is @bewilderedpodcast. You can follow us to get updates, hear funny snippets and outtakes, and chat with other fans of the show.

For more of us, Martha’s on Instagram, themarthabeck. She’s on Facebook, The Martha Beck, and she’s on Twitter, marthabeck. Her website is, MarthaBeck.com. And me, I too am on Instagram. Rowan_Mangan. I’m on Facebook as Rowan Mangan. And I’m on Twitter as RowanMangan. Bewildered is produced by Scott Forster with support from the brilliant team at MBI.