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The Shakespeare Mindset: Improve your life the Bard way not the hard way
Never More Connected, Never Felt Lonelier? Shakespeare Struggled With This Anxiety And Stress But He Found A Way Through And You Can Too
Ep. 36
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"Society is no comfort, to one not sociable."
We keep being told how exciting it is to be so connected to the rest of the world, but at the same time you and I know, don't we, that that little glowing box of the universe in our pockets isn't making us less lonely - if anything it's making things worse. This contradiction sneaks up on us and before you know it, to quote someone's podcast show notes about PTSD I just read, "your stress bucket can fill before you even realise you're running on empty." Which has now become my favourite mixed metaphor in the English language.
There are so many types of loneliness that it's difficult to know where to begin. Thankfully Shakespeare has helped us tremendously with so many of his plays, that before we work out our own problems we can start to separate out the different types.
So many of the plays deal with the loneliness of the person who rules the kingdom. It's tough at the top. Okay so I'm guessing that doesn't refer specifically to you and me, but these people are the same as us, they have the same desires and flaws, only their decisions have bigger consequences.
It's when we look at loneliness despite being connected that Shakespeare captures so beautifully that feeling of painful isolation. He examines grief, mismatched friendship, family differences and without pretending that the end result will always be rosy and cheerful, helps us navigate our way through and teaches us to cope.
Thanks to Shakespeare we can ensure that our stress bucket remains empty while our cars fill up with petrol.
Plays featured this week include Richard the Third, Hamlet, and Henry the fifth's greatest hits from Henry the fourth part one through to the play where he gets his own name in star billing.
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35. Is Your Anxiety and Stress At an All-Time High Because AI's Destroying Humanity? Steal Shakespeare's Strategy For Dealing With Doom & Gloom News
27:22||Ep. 35"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve..."Just as we're learning to live with endless wars, warming oceans and a new series of Traitors, along comes a nerdy scientist who tells us that AI might possibly destroy humanity. Thanks for cheering me up mate.Of all the worries that we have to face in the world, our everyday struggles and anxieties, there's nothing more guaranteed to raise the blood pressure than this little snippet of jollity reported recently that 'there's a 10 per cent chance the world is about to be destroyed by robots.'How on earth are we supposed to get on with our lives with all this nonsense screaming in our ears? Shakespeare may have wondered this too, living in an era when the end of the world was expected every second Thursday.Shakespeare found a number of ways to deal with the doomers and gloomers, not always with fun and laughs - although joking about it certainly helps. He also dared to confront the new King, James the first who was himself a true believer in the apocalypse, with plays that explained how every problem happening in the world was not created by celestial conjunctions, evil devils or the big hand of Him, but almost invariably a human being. A person, just like you and me.I know I'm supposed to be reassuring you and I've probably just made things worse. But we have survived 180 separate predictions of the world's end since 1500 alone so you never know, there's life in the old planet yet.Plays mentioned in today's show: Macbeth is the biggie, but honourable mentions also for Richard the Third and a selection of Sonnets dealing with the end of the world as we know it.34. Feeling Anxious? I've Got A Mind To Relieve Your Stress
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24:30||Ep. 32“O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee!” Do you ever find yourself scrolling down your phone and stopping only when something truly terrifying grabs your attention? (You do know that's the economic model for these platforms don't you? You know they're not deliberately trying to scare you, it's just they know your old brain is wired to read the grim stuff so that you stay on their platform and generously hand over you data to them.)Has there ever been a more anxious time to be a member of the human race? Actually yes in Shakespeare's time they had several plagues, a climate disaster, forever wars, fears of big food shortages and angry men arriving at ports to shout at the immigrants fleeing in boats across the English Channel.This week I'm hoping to bring your anxiety levels down from "aaarrggghh" to "ahh", although removing all those rrrgggs was made harder when half way through writing one of those Large Language Model companies currently burning a hole in the whole of America's finances gleefully announced that they were developing a machine that could probably wipe out all of humanity in the next few years or so. Don't Panic. Keep Calm and try not to get too stressed by those annoying tea towels that urge you to keep calm and grow a bonsai tree or whatever. You can start by breathing gently, being aware of your physical needs, but also by seeing how a number of Shakespeare characters coped with the stress of plagues, angry kings and heavy crowns.Plays featured in this episode are Hamlet, Henry the Fourth, Much Ado About Nothing (for the first time I'm delighted to say), Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth - all the big anxious heavyweights there.31. It’s Okay To Disagree
25:58||Ep. 31“O I have suffered with those that I saw suffer.’We’re all only trying to be reasonable aren’t we, and yet the whole direction of discourse over the last decade has been steered by half a dozen social media dudes and their platforms towards certainty about our own beliefs and hostility towards anyone who disagrees with us.In this episode I'm looking at empathy. What is it? Should we have more? Or is there already too much? Shakespeare was brilliant at showing both sides of every argument, and I am hoping this week to use his skills at this to ensure that we find the right balance. I feel like I learn something new every episode I write of this, and I feel like I've learned a little more about how to appreciate the views of people I disagree with.Not least with the Bard himself, whose play The Merchant of Venice made my school life a misery.Plays featured in this episode: Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and yes, The Merchant of Venice, previously known in this household as The Schoolboy Taunting of Cohen.30. How You Can Become Great
24:22||Ep. 30"I have touched the highest point of all my greatness."Have you ever thought about how great it would be to be great? Who among us doesn't at the very least aspire to being the best at what we do?You may be familiar with the Shakespeare line "Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon 'em". Its popularity has been helped because it chimes with everything we read on the internet that offers advice or solutions for improving our lives.The problem is - it's a scam.It's what we might call fake muse - like so much of the internet, and the Large Language Models that are talking to us like the servile robots they are, tugging their metal forelocks and congratulating us for asking them such brilliant questions. The quote comes from a letter designed to flatter and trick the reader, Malvolio, into thinking his boss loves him.Everywhere you look on the internet is motivational advice telling you that with hard work, discipline and application you can become truly great, but this fails to address the most important question - what do we mean by greatness?This week I'll be reframing the definition of greatness. I'm not promising that I can help you run the hundred metres in less than ten seconds, but by the end of the show you'll have a better understanding of what it means to be truly great, and how you might be able to achieve it.Oh and I'll explain how I was scammed this week just like Malvolio.Plays featured in this episode are Twelfth Night, Twelfth Night and Twelfth Night, with a sprinkling of Hamlet and The Tempest and special guest appearance of Falstaff.29. Are You A People Pleaser? And Is That A Bad Thing?
26:53||Ep. 29"Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting."Have you ever agreed to do something for someone while your whole body was screaming NO! Are you scared of the consequences of disappointing the people closest to you?Well hello there friend, come and join me here at SOPPY - the Society Of People Pleasing Yes-men. I've always been a people-pleaser and you know what, there've been a few times when it's been really useful. People liked me - which was very helpful for the job I did for ten years of stand-up comedian, and I was pretty good at defusing potentially difficult situations. But on other occasions I've put other people's needs ahead of my own, or taken responsibility for other people's emotions, and there comes a time when you have to prioritise yourself.There's a simple and obvious way to turn people-pleasing to your advantage that I've never seen anyone try but it works for me. I'm hoping that by the end of the episode you'll have learned to check in on your emotions next time you find yourself saying yes when you mean no; you'll learn the power of 'let me get back to you on that' and you'll understand how to sit with your discomfort.Just hoping, thanks to the Shakespeare Mindset I'm no longer judging my own self-worth on whether or not I make you happy. (But I will be delighted if you succeed. Old habits die hard, or as Bruce Willis would say, die hard too.)Plays mentioned in this episode are Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Timon of Athens, King Lear, Coriolanus and Tybalt & Mercutio, otherwise known as Romeo & Juliet.28. How to Tame The Green Eyed Monster of Jealousy
25:37||Ep. 28"So full of artless jealousy is guilt,It spills itself in fearing to be spilt."Jealousy can take many different forms, nearly all of which can be found in a single Shakespeare play, how we can spot it in others and heaven forbid, even in ourselves - and together we’re going to come clean about our resentful feelings in this department, and see if we can find a way, if not to avoid it completely at least to share space with it like the uncle who annoys you at Christmas but who you can cope with from a distance for the rest of the year.I think you're likely to know which play I'm talking about - it's pretty much the set text of jealousy - yet Othello isn't the most jealous character in the play. Ooh given away which play it is now.Key Shakeaways1 The last person to admit they're jealous is usually you. By which I mean me. All of us. You know what I'm talking about here. Acknowledge the feelings, suppressing them won't make them go away.2 Do what Shakespeare's characters did (along with Elsa): let it go. Let it GO!3 Follow the advice of Orlando in As You Like It, stop worrying about other people and concentrate on your own life.Shakespeare plays referred to in this episode: Othello, The Winter's Tale, As You Like ItOther jealous references:A famous John Lennon song. I'm sure you won't struggle to 'imagine' which one. (No, not that one)