Voices in the Dark

Napoleon Hill, author of the mega-seller Think and Grow Rich, believes that the single biggest thing holding you back in life is a lack of self-confidence. Thankfully, he's provided us with the tools to overcome the problem... Or has he?

In this episode, we try to understand what Hill means by having 'faith' – is this an irrational belief in your own abilities, or is it more of a willingness to change the negative stories we tell ourselves?

Jon wonders if he personally has 'Negative Faith' – a destructive inner dialogue which constantly undermines his self-confidence. If Napoleon Hill is trying to boost our confidence levels to +10, is that really possible without finding a way to get to an even-keeled zero first?

Auto-suggestion is a powerful tool, but it can also seriously backfire. Belief, like power, is neutral – which makes using it unconsciously potentially very dangerous. It's just as easy to programme yourself into negative thought-patterns, but – even worse – at the neurological level, our brains continue to hold emotional connections that it's hard to shake. So, even if you discovered your spiritual side to help deal with depression (as Jon did), it can still be deeply associated with a fearof depression, giving all that feel-good namaste action a brittle, rather desperate edge.

So could we reprogramme ourselves to reinterpret our emotional lurches differently? What if, for example, we could respond to the butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling not as fear, but as a signal that something exciting and significant is about to happen?

That might be a tall order, given that Napoleon Hill seems to advocate a philosophy that's the polar opposite of Buddhism: he wants us to attach positive meaning to everything so that everything will therefore be amazing. But, as the Buddhists teach us, attachment is the root of all suffering – and they seem an awful lot more chilled that Napoleon!

On the other hand, can life really have meaning if we don't feel a driving emotion behind what we do? If we become too 'enlightened', is there any drive left inside us to want to get up and play the game of life each day? We think there's a balance to be struck here – to flow between ambition while still being open enough to take things as they come and ride the wave of spontaneity.

At the heart of Think and Grow Richis a confusion which has muddled the thinking of many a self-help aficionado. Cultivating a positive mindset is definitely a good thing, but the biggest trap of this book (and others like it) is to think that success will be automatically generated as a result. Having faith in yourself is powerful fuel, but drinking dozens of protein shakes a day but never working out simply won't produce results. You still have to put in the hard work (and you can still get injured in the process).

This is a packed episode in which we also get into the dangers of becoming too attached to your personal philosophy, whether you can literally think yourself to death, and why Gandhi and Mother Theresa are never going to be on our Christmas card list!

'Your mind is a tool. You can use it in different ways in different situations, or not... So are you going to choose to consistently make it a stick you shove through the spokes of the bicycle of life, or are you also going to use it in other ways?'

– Andrea

• What the hell is faith?
• How to be present, but gently
• Vampire Morality
• Placebo and Nocebo
• Are there limitations to the mind, really?
• 'Mental Suicide'!

• What sort of self-talk do you have which isn't helping you? How could you start to change it?
• What conversation have you had recently which could've gone better if you hadn't used absolutelanguage?

• We'll be chatting about the episode on our Facebook Discussion Group
• And you can find us on Instagramand Twitter
• Or email us: [email protected]

To keep the podcast going, we need your support! Please consider making a pledge on Patreon to help us meet our target to ensure we can continue delivering high quality conversations about Learning How To Human – thank you!

Napoleon Hill, legendary author of Think and Grow Rich, thinks that all thought has a tendency to manifest itself in reality. In his view, if you come to believe something strongly enough, you're going to see results in the real world. If that's true, then you can achieve anything you want to through sheer willpower and self-programming.

This is auto-suggestion – telling yourself that something is true (about yourself or the world) until you've internalised it and made it the unconscious launching pad from which you then act.

But is it true? Andrea agrees that the human brain is incredibly powerful, but more because it can simulatepractically any reality. And that doesn't mean we should buy into our self-made reality so deeply that we mistake it for being objectively true. You can believe as strongly as you want that you can fly, but just try jumping off a building and see how that works out for you.

Which brings us to the central tension at the heart of this episode: does it benefit us to use auto-suggestion to get ourselves to believe certain realities? Is there a healthy way to do this which can genuinely benefit us, or are we simply courting megalomania and delusion?

Napoleon thinks it's all about vibrations. 'Vibration' is a heavily overused word these days, which can become as meaningful as saying 'everything's energy, maaaan'. We dismantle the pseudo-scientific, spiritual language and try to uncover if there's a genuinely useful tool lurking in its shadows.

Rather than getting too caught up in the mumbo-jumbo, we try to make Think and Grow Richmore concrete and practical. Programming yourself to feel a certain way can certainly have its benefits. Entering situations with confidence rather than fear doesinfluence what happens. Or, if we find ourselves in negotiations for money or services, believing that we're worth more than someone wants to pay can be a powerful boost, financially and psychologically.

Jon shares stories of pushing beyond his comfort zone to craft an external persona to get better results in the world, but this still brings us back to the question: how much is delusion, and how can we use this tool of self-programming safely and healthily? After all, Bill Cosby managed to convince himself that drugging and abusing women was totally fine: auto-suggestion can have incredibly disturbing consequences when used unethically.

We've got a better idea than thinking that the power of your mind is genuinely crafting reality. Instead, realise that you're primingyourself to see more positive things. Reap the benefits, but don't delude yourself into thinking that there is a causal connection between your belief system and the objective nature of the world around you. You can change the filter through which you see reality, but it's vital to remember that that's what you're doing.

Napoleon also insists that we need to have faith to succeed. But what is faith? A blind belief in spite of all evidence? Or is there a more subtle, more useful and much healthier way we can think about the concept? What if this is more about nurturing trust in yourself?

Ultimately, you're neither doomed nor destined. But how you feel about it is up to you.

• Reprogramming your negative reactions
• Bartering to get what you feel you deserve
• The risks and benefits of confirmation bias
• Is failure always of your own making?
• Developing 50 Cent-itis
• What does plastic surgery tell us about psychology?

• Would you avoid getting plastic surgery after an injury? How attached are you to your external appearance?
• Have you ever convinced yourself of something successfully (self-programming) and was that a good thing?

• We'll be chatting about the episode on our Facebook Discussion Group
• And you can find us on Instagramand Twitter
• Or email us: [email protected]

In Part 2 of Think and Grow Rich, we find Napoleon Hill riding the knife-edge between profound insight and total lunacy. He tells us that, in order to achieve anything, we need a burning Desire, clearly worked out, and then repeated to ourselves every morning when we get up, and every evening before we go to bed.

Now, while it's certainly important to get clear in your mind what you want to achieve, we're not so sure about Napoleon's reasoning. Like so many self-help books, this one relies heavily on stories riven with confirmation bias, unfalsifiable claims, and a serious confusion between correlation and causation.

We set out to find the grains of truth and inspiration – the things which can really help you – without getting too caught up in fanciful and downright misleading examples.

A central idea in this episode is the importance of 'burning the boats' – of leaving yourself no option of retreat, and thereby (apparently) guaranteeing you will succeed. But what kind of person needsto be motivated by the idea of total personal annihilation in order to tryto succeed? Does going All In really require having no possibility of mitigating potential defeat and disaster? Some of the most successful businesspeople in the world, like Sir Richard Branson, are actually immensely risk-averse.

We deconstruct the dangers of survivor bias when we look at success stories. It's not the scars that successful people got that made them successful, it's the scars they didn't get, the things that didn'tprove fatal, which were the key to success.

All the same, Napoleon points out a vital difference between wishingfor a thing and being ready to receive it. If you don't feel you deserve or can achieve anything, you're never going to be able to. Instead, you need to create a new voice in your head which can overcome all the negative self-talk and give you the faith to pursue your goals.

So, does that mean affirmations work, after all? Maybe. But not the way that most self-help books claim they do.

• The difference between DESIRE and an idle wish
• Do Affirmations really work, or are they cultivating delusion?
• What is kindness, and should you apply it indiscriminately?
• Becoming a Practical Dreamer
• Overcoming disability by force of belief

• Choose Yourselfby James Altucher
• The beautiful movie Youth

• We'll be chatting about the episode on our Facebook Discussion Group
• And you can find us on Instagramand Twitter
• Or email us: [email protected]

Time for something new here at Voices in the Dark. By popular demand, we're going to dissect the original self-help classic, Think and Grow Richby Napoleon Hill. This baby has sold over 100 million copies and shows no sign of slowing down. More importantly, it's the backbone of allself-help and personal development books. Scratch the surface of that latest bestseller, and you'll find it's just another remix of the original.

All the same, does this 1930s text really hold up today? Is this a bandwagon that just keeps on going, or can it still teach us vital lessons for the modern world?

First impressions leave us conflicted. There's a surprisingly strong smell of the bestselling bullshit title The Secretwafting from Think and Grow Rich. And later on there's a chapter about sexual energy transmutation... so this ain't gonna be some dull ride through a series of business strategies, believe me!

In this episode we cover the Introduction and Chapter 1, exploring tales of striking gold, working with Thomas Edison, and how you can (but maybe shouldn't) demand the impossible.

How much of success comes from self-delusion? Can we be healthily self-deluded, and is that what 'adopting a positive mindset' really means? Or is failurewhat we really need in order to grow?

Maybe. But there's different kinds of failure, as we explain, and sometimes having a wildly positive mental attitude can take you way over the edge and into brazen egotism. Jon and Andrea compare notes over where they sit on the spectrum... and neither is sure they're doing it right.

• What 99% of people get wrong when using self-help books
• Do you need a toolbox or a plan?
• Self-help as a performance-enhancing drug
• Does wanting better for yourself mean you're not good enough now?
• Demanding the impossible

• We'll be chatting about the episode on our Facebook Discussion Group
• And you can find us on Instagramand Twitter
• Or email us: [email protected]

This is a special episode of the podcast where we take stock, see where we're at, and think about where we're going to take the show next.

We've both been hitting some hard times, personally and professionally, so making the show has been a challenge. In this episode, we open up about some of the shit we've been dealing with, and reflect on what the podcast means to us.

We question what it means to be offering life advice if you can't always live it yourself; what we'd like to talk about on the show going forward (if we continue); and, most importantly of all, we want to hear from YOU, our dear listeners, about where you think we should go next.

Thanks for listening, and please hit us up with your thoughts:

• Email [email protected]
• Instagram
• Facebook Discussion Group

As psychedelics increasingly hit the mainstream, we need to educate ourselves about their risks as well as their incredible potential for healing and growth. While the headlines keep on coming about psychedelics boosting creativity and 'curing' depression, there's far less accessible information available about the care and precautions involved in the research behind the news stories.

That's where Psychedelics Today comes in, with a brilliantly-designed course on 'Navigating Psychedelics' (see below for our exclusive discount code!), dedicated to helping us approach, use and integrate psychedelics safely and to maximum effect. Kyle Buller, one half of the Psychedelics Today team, joins us this week to talk about the course, and why we need it.

Kyle suffered a near-fatal snowboarding accident as a teenager. As he lay in the hospital, his life hanging in the balance, he had an unusual meeting with death. Instead of a confrontation or a desperate clawing for life, he found himself absolutely at peace... which made coming back to life a lot more complicated.

He fell into depression, which would ultimately lead him to experiment with psychedelics in the effort to understand himself, life, and how to make sense of our fleeting existence on this planet. Since then, Kyle's gone on to train in Transpersonal Psychology and has taught a History of Psychedelics course at university level.

We dig into the history of psychedelic therapy, from the times when LSD was shipped out to psychotherapists around the world with the request that they find some kind of use for it, to the prohibition years and the Third Wave of Psychedelics which we're in today.

But this isn't just about mushrooms and LSD. This is about healing and personal growth. The Navigating Psychedelics course incorporates a wealth of knowledge from the explorations of Stanislav Grof into the body's ability to heal itself through breath- and bodywork. How much trauma do we hold onto in the cells of our body? And can meditative, trance-like states release repressed memories?

All of this is hard work, not to be taken lightly. We have to confront our shadows if we're ever to integrate them. As Grof put it himself:

'The full experience of a negative emotion is the funeral pyre of that emotion'

– Stanislav Grof

• Setting and mindset for a psychedelic trip
• Finding and vetting your shaman
• A road-map for navigating psychedelic experience
• Understanding the risks and knowing what substance you've actually got

• Download a free psychedelics checklistfrom Psychedelics Today
• The Navigating Psychedelics Course– use discount code VOICESINTHEDARK on checkout!
• Psychedelics Todaywebsite
• The work of Stanislav Grof

These days, everyone's claiming to be 'a little bit OCD', but the popularisation of the term has been at the cost of understanding the condition. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a spectrum which isn't simply about having fanatical cleaning habits and lining up your bathroom paraphernalia in height-order.

OCD can be immensely challenging and outright destructive to those with the condition. You can end up trapped in your own mind, unable to work, unable to maintain relationships with friends and loved ones... and stillnot even have a tidy bedroom to show for it!

So what is OCD? How does it work? Why are there so many misconceptions about it? And how can we help ourselves or others with the condition?

At this year's Edinburgh Festival, I saw an incredible, heartfelt exploration of OCD's impact on a person's life – Lost in Thought, by Lucy Danser. So, I got in touch with Lucy and invited her on the show to talk about these questions and many more besides.

We sat down in a park in central Edinburgh and moved beyond the bizarre media portrayals to the human realities of what it means to live with OCD.

Lucy's experience of OCD involves intrusive, unwanted and disturbing thoughts which threaten to come true unless she takes specific actions. The pressing need to docertain things to try to release the intensity of those thoughts can be all-consuming: we might all 'touch wood' for luck, but what if you felt you hadto do it or your entire family would die?

But OCD can't be understood as straightforwardly 'irrational'. Within its own logic, you're actually being extremelyresponsible and conscientious. Ask yourself, if you truly thought that touching wood, repeating a mantra, or performing some other ritual mightstop something terrible happening to a loved one, wouldn't you do it just in case? Would you risk notdoing it?

We also explore how far kindness and understanding of OCD behaviours can ultimately be enabling; how other people around those with OCD can become ill; and whether there might be some upsides to having OCD.

Huge thanks to Lucy for coming on the show to share her personal experience, as well as creating such a moving piece of drama for the stage. This episode was revelatory for me at times and shattered a lot of lazy misconceptions I'd been holding on to. Let us know what you think and about your own experiences of OCD over on our Facebook Discussion Group!

• The Chatback Theatre & Comedywebsite
• Lost in Thought's Twitter

• David Adam, The Man Who Couldn't Stop
• Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein
• John Green, Turtles All the Way Down
• Fletcher Wortmann, Triggered: A Memoir of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

After ten years of blood, sweat and tears, Jon's book has finally emerged into the world! It hit the Amazon Bestseller lists on launch day and has been receiving excellent reviews. This week, we put Jon in the hot seat to talk about it.

In the shadow of the Gulag, Soviet citizens were still cracking jokes. They had to.

Drawing on diaries, interviews, memoirs and hundreds of previously secret documents, the book, It's Only a Joke, Comrade!, uncovers how they joked, coped, and struggled to adapt in Stalin's brave new world. It asks what it really means to live under a dictatorship: How do people make sense of their lives? How do they talk about it? And whom can they trust to do so?

Humour is a universal part of the human condition. It helps us define who we are, who theyare, what's important to us, and what we won't stand for. We use it to mock a rival, charm a stranger and to solidify friendships... but we also use it to deal with the things which oppress and frighten us.

It's easy to forget, but 'funny' and 'serious' are not opposites. People were still cracking jokes in Auschwitz because, even in the darkest times, humour comes to our aid. But how does that work psychologically? Is it some kind of resistance to external power, or is it more like Stoicism – changing how we feel without truly changing objective circumstances?

So does the Soviet story have lessons to teach us about political humour today? Does it have any power to hurt the likes of Trump and Putin, or are we just making ourselves feel better about doing nothing to effect real change?

Plus there's a chance to win yourself a copy of the book!

• The book's website
• Buy the book: USand UK

For all the tales coursing through the veins of the internet about life-changing experiences brought on by a cup of Ayahuasca or a drop of LSD, something absolutely crucial is getting lost. The hardest part, in fact: Integration.

Coming back from the jungle or back from some astral realm doesn't add up to much if you have to turn over everything you learnt at the border of everyday reality. The real challenge is integrating those deep insights into ourselves and into our daily lives afterthe trip. Suddenly rediscovering the things which hurt us or shaped the way we think and act is one thing – understanding what to do about them in a healthy, productive way, is something else entirely.

Realising that your problems stem from some childhood trauma is only the first step of a much longer, harder journey, as Jon's found out first hand. What do you (and can you) dowith that knowledge once you have it?

Our special guest this week is Matthew Pallamary, an author and shamanic explorer who's been journeying into the Amazon for almost 20 years. He's worked in multiple shamanic traditions and written in depth about the psychology of healing and integration.

Matt grew up in a rough neighbourhood in Boston where he felt compelled to be a tough guy, repressing and disowning many parts of himself in the process. Ayahuasca helped him rediscover those parts of himself, but that was far from the end of the story.

In many ways, the integration is actually more important than the experience itself.

– Matthew Pallamary

In this episode, we go beyond trip reports and psychedelic revelations and into the deeper psychology of personal growth. Psychedelics allow the contents of our subconscious to emerge, confronting us with our shadow selves. Our first instinct is to fight back, to push the shadow away and deny it even exists. Next, we start beating ourselves up for having that shadow, for doing or thinking shitty things. Neither of which solves anything.

But we can't disown parts of ourselves and leave them out in the cold, because they just start breaking down the doors. We also need to change in order to grow – so how do we set about welcoming those disowned parts of ourselves back into the warm without them immediately trashing the joint?

We explore the idea that all these 'negative' traits and habits were ultimately self-defence mechanisms which emerged to helpus.The trouble is, they keep on churning away like independent little modules in our minds that we don't even realise are there. The challenge is to gently and compassionately disarm them – to thank them for what they've done, but let them know that the war is over and now they can come home.

This is about taking responsibility for yourself and your life, which is not the same as needing to blameyourself for what you've done and been in the past.

You are not your ego. You are not your thoughts. We are all made up of different elements, impulses, and personalities – to take responsibility means to become the conductor of your mind's orchestra, to become the curator of your expression into the world.

In the end, we're all a cast of thousands.

– Matthew Pallamary

Ultimately, we're all carrying some kind of trauma (maybe even from childbirth itself), but Andrea strikes a note of caution that we shouldn't fetishise and inadvertently inflate it. Trauma is part of life, not an aberration. It can be the ground beneath our feet which we need if we're ever to push upwards to something higher.

As Matt puts it,

One of the things about this path if you continue on it, is that you have to take responsibility for who you are and what your actions are... Trauma is actually there to help you grow.

– Matthew Pallamary

This one gets very personal.Jon talks about his continuing battles with depression, and wonders whether the key is not to see them as battles at all. In a sense, depression is also trying to 'help' him – to assuage a sense of total powerlessness in the world by bringing him the final power of being able to say 'no' to everything. That's a power of sorts, but it's anathema to life.

In the end, the core lesson of integration is that it's never over. Because, in essence, it's the work of being alive.

• Matt's website
• Matt's latest book

• Esther Perel's podcast series, 'Where Should We Begin?'
• Jon's experiences with Ayahuasca and Huachuma

Open relationships. We've all heard about them. But how do they work? Would one be right for you? And how can you even broach the subject with your partner?

And then, if you get into one, do you need to set rules? Can they change? Do you need to ask for permission beforehand, or take video footage to share with your partner afterwards?

It gets very complicated very quickly, and in this special episode, we set out to answer all these questions and more. The goal isn't to unconditionally praise open relationships, but to explore what they are, how they work, and what the many benefits and pitfalls can be.

First off, we dig into the biological and anthropological history of monogamy. Andrea breaks down some of the dodgy science being cited by open relationship evangelists, while Jon takes the side of Chris Ryan (author of Sex atDawn) and his argument against the idea that monogamy is simply 'natural'.

Why is this all so emotionally charged for us in the first place, though? In large part, it's because we've been fed a gluttonous diet of unrealistic and idealised versions of what 'true love' is and should be through TV, movies, books, and magazines. But real life and real people aren't so simple (or so boring). Few people are sexually monogamous with one person for their whole lives, so it raises the question of why being serially monogamous is somehow 'better' than getting jiggy with multiple people at the same time.

Jealousy is the obvious issue here, and it's one of the biggest fears about open relationships: How will I be able to deal with my partner being intimate with someone else? But jealousy doesn't have to be a bad thing. Relationship counsellor Esther Perel argues that jealousy is 'an erotic rage', which can be channelled in positive directions – to inspire you to bring your best self to your relationship, to recharge your energy and really take your investment in your partner to the next level.

And that shouldn't be confused with possessiveness. Possessiveness is when we try to keep our partners on a short leash because we're afraid and insecure that surely they'll leave us if we even give them a sniff of other possibilities. If the fear of being open is that your partner might fall for someone else and run away with them, it's worth pausing to reflect that they can always do that anyway, unless you physically lock them in the house.

In any case, exploring an open relationship is neither a recipe for an immediate jealousy implosion nor abundant wall-to-wall orgies. As Jon explains from personal experience, it's more of a crash course in confronting your deepest insecurities.

To work well, open relationships require morecommunication, morewillingness to be vulnerable, moretrust, and so on. This isn't the absence of commitment, but a much more active and conscious approach to that commitment. It's a process – often an immensely challenging one – which can be incredibly rewarding for your personal development, self-understanding, and your ability to remove the masks of fear and truly connect with another person.

Jon shares plenty of stories from his own experiences of open relationships – including his many fuck-ups – and why, despite all the challenges, he wouldn't want to go back to monogamy. Andrea is, if not on the other side of the debate, at least standing on the fence, so this is a juicy discussion rather than a manifesto.

But being a discussion – and on such a hot topic – we want your questions! Get in touch via our Facebook Groupor through [email protected].

We'll be recording a follow-up episode where we dig into the digital mailbag to continue the conversation.

• Why being teammates is the most romantic kind of relationship
• How to deal with strong emotional reactions
• Are threesomes the gateway drug to open relationships?
• Erotic rage!
• 'You're mine' vs. 'I'm yours'
• Using the right language to discuss emotional issues

• Chris Ryan and Cacilda Jethá's landmark book, Sex at Dawn
• Esther Perel
• Aubrey Marcus's Open Relationship Field Guide and other resources – highly recommended