Oliver Burkeman is an author and journalist based in northern England. In his new book, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, he lays out a practical guide for living meaningful and fulfilling lives as finite, imperfect humans.

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Burkeman to discuss what we gain by letting go of the delusion that life is something we have to solve, how our attempts at avoiding our anxieties often backfire, and why everything is much worse than we think—and why that’s OK.