“You Should Have Imposter Syndrome Every 18 Months” - Jimmy Carr
CChris Williamson
Mental HealthManagement
Transcript
00:00:00I was in the gym a couple of months ago and one of my friends was talking to me about how his wife
00:00:07keeps on complaining at him that he uses his phone at night and he's always sending messages,
00:00:12organizing stuff, running businesses or whatever. And he came up with a very fortunate, but I think
00:00:18actually philosophically pretty interesting excuse, which was he said, I've got a mind that
00:00:24likes to solve problems. I'm just trying to give it good problems to solve. I think lots of people
00:00:29have a problem solving brain, but only some people have great problems that they're going to solve
00:00:35with it. Well, that's what I think of with anxiety. My mind is often racing. I often wake up with,
00:00:41I suppose, what you call a panic attack at like four or five in the morning. I'll wake up when my
00:00:46mind's just on and I'll worry about stuff. And it's often counterfactuals. Worried about things going
00:00:53wrong, people getting hurt. You just kind of ruminate on crazy stuff. And if I give it like, oh, no, but we
00:00:59to write a joke about Keir Starmer or Andy Byrne or something, you go, okay, right, great. Give it
00:01:06something to do. So using action as an antidote to anxiety then. Yeah, I love that. I love the idea
00:01:11that you go, well, that's, that cures it pretty, pretty well. It's very difficult to worry about
00:01:15the future when you feel like you're moving yourself toward it. And yeah, that, that problem solving brain
00:01:20thing is interesting because I wonder how many people are churning themselves up inside because they have a
00:01:27brain that likes to solve problems, but they don't have any good problems to solve. So they pay attention
00:01:32to politics or porn or their ex or this situation that's outside of their control in some foreign
00:01:40country that they, they can't get access to. Well, have we, is that not what the news is though? I mean,
00:01:44if you were trying to design something to, um, engender mental health difficulties, you'd make
00:01:49someone aware of a problem and give them no agency, right? And that's what reading about
00:01:54the Middle East is, right? So you just go, I'd say absolute clusterfuck of a situation and there's
00:01:59nothing. Good luck dealing with that. We can do about it. There's nothing we can. There's nothing
00:02:03that you can do about it. Yeah. Because if, I don't know, I wonder whether it would feel better or worse
00:02:09for the situation to actively have nothing you could do about it. There's an asteroid coming to earth.
00:02:13No one can do anything about it. It's the, the simulacrum that someone could fix this, but not you.
00:02:20Yeah. I mean, we're not, we're not in that game. It's, uh, yeah, it's, it's very, I think that thing
00:02:26about having, uh, agency at a, I think, I think that, okay, there's a, there's a bigger thing here,
00:02:32which is, I think we give maybe empathy to people that we like and agency to people that we don't like.
00:02:42So if you imagine there's two marches, right? And one of them is like super far right, uh, dudes
00:02:48marching with skinheads and jackboots. We give them agency. If they put a brick through a window,
00:02:53we say, right, lock them up and throw away the key. Right. And then there's another, um,
00:02:59march and it's people marching for social justice. Right. And we, we, and they throw a brick through
00:03:04a window. We go, well, you know, that's the language of the, the streets, you know, the unheard,
00:03:08that thing of like, go, so we give them empathy and then agency and actually you should give both,
00:03:12both. You need agency and empathy for everyone. Like the idea that you go,
00:03:19believe that people can handle it and believe that they're, you know, everyone's got like, um,
00:03:24a part to play. We need to be responsible for the things that you did, but also you're
00:03:29enmeshed in the situation that sort of brought you to that point too,
00:03:33like the motivations of what got you there. But yeah, that, that, that problems thing,
00:03:36I really do think, I wonder how many people would, all that they need a better problems to solve. All
00:03:45that they need is something to focus their time and their attention on in a better way. And yeah,
00:03:50if you've got this situation that's occurring overseas, I came back from a meditation retreat
00:03:53last week. I'd spent seven days without my phone, almost exclusively in silence. And I came back and I
00:03:58was flying out of SF and walked into the departure terminal. And one of the pieces of advice that we'd
00:04:04been given was to put sunglasses on and put AirPods in because you'd basically been in silence for a
00:04:09week and no screens, no nothing. Like it's a lot of stimulus to go from zero to a hundred. I went and
00:04:16sat down in this, some airport restaurant thing and I looked up at the screens and it was wildfires in
00:04:23Europe raging. That was the first thing I saw on a screen basically, since I'd got off of this retreat.
00:04:28And I remember feeling this strange constriction inside of me. And I'm like,
00:04:33I better get a hose.
00:04:35Why? Yeah. Why the fuck is that? What's on? I'm aware. Like, is it newsworthy? Like, yeah,
00:04:40kind of, but like, what does it do? It's, it's, it makes us feel like we're being informed about the
00:04:46world, but really all it's doing is just piercing our nervous systems and making us feel worried about
00:04:50the stuff. Strange. And yeah, I want to be informed about what's happening in the world. I feel like I
00:04:55I'm so, I guess, addicted to that. Like, I like knowing what's going on. I like thinking about
00:04:59what the solution might be, but I guess you don't, you know, you get to chat about it, but you don't
00:05:04really get to, uh, influence what happens. The gratitude points is Michael Smokes got this
00:05:12line where he says, I have a hard time celebrating my achievements because in my mind, it was my obligation
00:05:17to achieve it. A lot of people that are high performers have this sense that the higher that
00:05:21you climb, the further you have to fall. As you get better, your standards are always going to increase.
00:05:25So you're always going to suck in comparison to what you think that you should do. That's great because it
00:05:29continues to push you to work harder, to improve, but also it means that success isn't a cause for
00:05:37celebration. It's just the minimum level of acceptable performance and anything less than success becomes a failure.
00:05:42Yeah. Well, I think that, that thing then you need to, you need to be in a state of, um, uh,
00:05:51I guess, imposter syndrome once every 18 months, two years. You need to level up constantly where
00:05:58you feel like you're in a space where, oh, well, this is, this is, I can't believe I did that.
00:06:01That was good. Uh, like push yourself a little bit. I think try and do something else.
00:06:05Is that difficult when you've got close to the top of your game?
00:06:07Well, it depends what game you're in. You can change games. You can just sort of do things a
00:06:12little bit differently. So that thing of like going, it's, um, it's about, I suppose, you know,
00:06:17my, my business is, uh, you know, you're, I'm in the service industry, right? I, I make something
00:06:21that people want. I make them happy. And no one seems to remember any of my jokes, but they remember
00:06:27how I made them feel. And the show tonight is nothing more than an advert for the show when I come
00:06:32back next time. That's the way I'm kind of thinking of it. And then you're trying to find these moments
00:06:37now. I think the show's changed over the last couple of years where there's moments in every
00:06:41show. There's like a moment, someone will ask something and you'll chat to them and it'll be
00:06:45slightly more, um, heartfelt and they'll, they'll always be kind of that, that kind of sweetening
00:06:51the pill with laughter. Why did you change that?
00:06:53I think it was, I don't know what happened. I don't know what, you know, went on that I suddenly
00:06:59started chatting to people in the audience and we started to connect in a slightly different way.
00:07:04It's been really lovely. And people, I think, I think comedy is, it's a, I love that line,
00:07:11laughter is the shortest distance between two people. And I've often done this thing, I've spoken
00:07:16about it, I think to you before about, um, if you, your best friend is the person you have the least
00:07:21filter with, right? So, so if you meet someone on a plane and you go, wow, I see the World Cup,
00:07:26it's a good game, isn't it? Nothing, right? Surface level. And if you say, oh my God,
00:07:30you have to see these hemorrhoids, it's incredible. Like it's a, you know, it's connecting at another
00:07:35level. You're just like, you've got no filter with that person. That's your best friend in the world.
00:07:38And if you treat the audience like that, you get paid back, um, 10 times over. Like people feel
00:07:43that, oh, okay, there's no, he's treating us like adults.
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00:08:44and the full length episode is available right here. Go on.