What is a Good Life? #81
A Journey To The Heart with Patrick McAndrew
On the 81st episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Patrick McAndrew. Patrick, a global thought leader on productivity and performance, empowers professionals to escape the "Productivity Paradox" - the illusion that being busy equals progress. As the founder of HARA, an inner circle for exceptional entrepreneurs and leaders, Patrick equips individuals with practical tools to reclaim focus, boost productivity, and achieve extraordinary results in a world of constant distractions. He provides teams with tools to tame distractions, prioritise what matters most, and develop resilience.
In this beautiful conversation, Patrick takes us on his exploration of various cognitive and biological functions to what is now a journey to the heart, moving from fragmentation and mechanistic approaches to life towards greater alignment, embodiment, and a sense of being. He shares beautiful anecdotes and wisdom observed from his mother in her final months and his experience of caring for her, as well as the realisations he has made from his own closely examined life. He touches on various modalities he has explored to live a more connected life, as well as tools and perspectives he shares with his clients to allow greater acceptance and connection to flourish in their own lives.
This episode has a lot to offer. Whether you are seeking greater clarity in life, have implemented many processes for “optimising” your life and still feel something is missing, or knowing that something intangible is within your reach but you feel lost in that process, this episode offers multiple insights for your own contemplation.
The weekly clip from the podcast (6 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (68 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
In the clip above, Patrick described a stage in his journey where, after consuming vast amounts of information, he felt “like a mechanic who knew how the car operated very well but didn't know how to drive the car.”
To me, this captures the idea that although we focus heavily on the equations and numbers of life, the actual experience of life—the emotions, the unknowns, and the uncertainties—is better translated into poetry than numbers. Lived experience seems better suited to paradox, metaphor, and ambiguity than to neat equations and fixed expectations of ourselves.
Last night, I was walking my dog when a man from my neighbourhood, sitting outside a closed coffee shop, waved me over. He is an older man who has faced many difficulties in his life and was lamenting what he perceived as an extra layer we place on top of the direct experience of life.
He described this extra layer as a performative space, akin to a giant show or the Olympics. Given some of his struggles in life, while he neither broke down nor cried, his voice wobbled at times as he spoke of the lack of vulnerability within this added layer, recalling notions from his childhood like "boys don’t cry." He suggested that, despite our performances, people are much more sensitive than we think.
Hearing him made me think of Patrick's words. It made me reflect on how mental this added layer feels. It is where we identify all the ways we should and ought to be, creating ideal forms of behaviour to which we compare ourselves.
Obviously, aspiring to better things is not inherently bad. Problems arise, however, when we continually punish ourselves for not living up to mental standards and theories. The trouble begins when we consider this mental construct as “normal” and assume most people experience life as they present it, rather than what they actually feel. Problems arise when we pretend to be where we are not and cannot face the reality of ourselves or our actions, let alone share or acknowledge these in the presence of others.
I have heard the sentiment quite a few times recently that a quarrel with a loved one “ruined the whole day.” While I previously knew this experience all too well, based on my present experience of life, this is becoming increasingly foreign to me—the idea that one moment or event could paint the colour of my whole day.
I wonder how fragile our world is becoming when lived predominantly through this mental layer, where conflict, emotions, and reactions cannot coexist with the rest of our lives. It seems that for it to be a good day, everything must go right, and if one thing goes wrong, the whole day is ruined.
This reminds me of when I viewed life more mechanistically, as Patrick puts it. If I meditated, worked out, read a book—good act after good act—then ate junk food or binge-watched Netflix in the evening, I felt I had ruined the whole day. It's hard to find peace or contentment this way.
When life is experienced mainly through this mental layer, it deceives itself into thinking it is fully in control. This is why any slip is not tolerated. These “slips” in behaviour reveal that the mind is not as in control as it believes. We regularly and flagrantly do things that might not be in our best interests, prompting our minds to scold us like a demanding parent trying to live vicariously through their children. However, this scolding rarely results in change. Ultimately, the parents are no more in control of those kids than our minds are of life.
Change is generally a naturally occurring phenomenon, much like life and the world around us. I often feel that residing in this mental layer and attempting to force change is what inhibits its natural occurrence. I always think of Newton’s third law in relation to our efforts: for every action (force) in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
What allows change to flow more naturally is embracing the lived experience of life. Acknowledging as much of the felt experience and its impact on others as you can, and holding it in awareness. The more we sit with the experience of life, the more it will naturally change us.
While my wife is a lunatic in some ways, and I am in many other ways, one thing I appreciate about us is that whenever we have an argument, like yesterday morning, it rarely, if ever, spills over into the whole day.
This wasn’t some laboured process we adopted from elsewhere. Our approach seems to be that we argue, then almost immediately sit down, get a sense of how the other is feeling in life generally, and then feeling in response to whatever was done or not done. We sit with how our actions affected each other, then acknowledge and take accountability for that. No promises or strategies are drawn up; we just acknowledge and feel what was and is, leaning into the felt experience of life.
I am convinced there is an intelligence within us that goes way beyond the mind’s capabilities. This intelligence thrives on the unfiltered experience of life and, with this data, naturally orients us towards something preferable. What disturbs the flow is an overreliance on theory, shoulds, and ought-tos, which ignore the emotional, spontaneous, unknowable truth of existence. This overreliance then leads to bitterness and anger towards what is just another human trying their best to live their own good life.
3. Full Episode - A Journey To The Heart with Patrick McAndrew - What is a Good Life? #81
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4. This week’s Questions
To what extent does your heart influence or shape your life?
What daily process do you still undertake that you have lost connection to or resonance with? What is it time to let go of?
About Me
I am a coach and writer 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 around 200 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 to explore your own lines of self-inquiry, experiences I create to stimulate more meaningful group conversations, trust, and connection, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.