What is a Good Life? #24
The Paradox Of Life with Robbie Stamp
On the 24th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am joined by Robbie Stamp, who is the CEO of BIOSS International, a Senior Fellow at the Resilience and Sustainable Development Programme at Cambridge University, Chairman of HappenedHere, and was an Executive Producer on the Hitchhikers’s Guide to the Galaxy feature film.
In this episode, we discuss the quality and significance of paying attention, becoming ok with not knowing, appreciating all phenomenological and conscious experiences, the mirror AI holds up to us and the limitations AI will have in accounting for all human experience, and how there will always be a tension between creative and destructive behaviour, both internally and collectively.
This episode will help you appreciate the messiness of being human, feel more comfortable with the uncertainty and paradoxes of life, exhibit more compassion for us all while striving to improve (see clip below 🎬), and to cultivate some humility around the limitations of your own knowledge and perspective.
The weekly clip from the podcast (6 mins), my weekly reflection (2 mins), the full podcast (63 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
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After interviewing 150+ people around the question of, “what is a good life?”, I’ve created the following offerings based on this research:
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2. My weekly reflection
In this interview, Robbie marvels at his ability to react like a teenager to a given trigger when he has witnessed the loop many times before. He is aware of what triggered him and has explored the source of that trigger. And yet, in his seventh decade of an examined life, he can still react in this way.
I see this in myself, and I see this in others too, and I simultaneously find it frustrating and wonderful! It's frustrating in the moments I realise I have not evolved as much as I would like to think, or that I make life more difficult for myself or others. It's wonderful in that I can see the limitations of my humanity - the ways in which we can change so much in some areas of life and so little in others - and to have some compassion for that.
To reflect on myself as a human who is genuinely trying to explore so much about themselves through various processes and prioritising my self-inquiry over most other things in my life, and to still see myself getting caught in the same ways, is a truly humbling experience.
However, in the last couple of years, I've noticed the importance of not resisting the reality of these limitations in my behaviour or making up stories to compensate for my flaws, and simply accepting them as they are. By doing this, while some of my patterns of behaviour remain the same, my reaction to them has changed significantly.
Instead of getting angry with my anger or harshly judging my judgments, I can show compassion to myself and these experiences. I am a human with flaws, like everyone else, and it allows me to exit the loop far earlier than before. It also allows me to account for my actions or reconcile with someone with far more grace and quickness than before, and it allows me to make similar allowances for someone else's behaviour.
While in some ways I may remain very much the same person, my reaction to and relationship with certain behaviours is very different. That in itself can have a profound impact on our lives.
3. Full Episode - The Paradox Of Life with Robbie Stamp - What is a Good Life? Ep. #24
Click here for Apple and Google.
4. This week’s Questions
What do you feel are your most creative and destructive habits?
Where in your life could you benefit from showing yourself more compassion and where could you benefit from being a little tougher on yourself?
About Me
I am a Coach based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I left behind a 15-year career in Capital Markets after I became extremely curious around answering some of the bigger questions in life. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 150 people, to provide people with the space to reflect on their own lives and to create content that would spark people’s own inquiry into this question. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience, beyond the facades we typically project.
If you would like to work with me, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.
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