# The Age of Being Seen: How Social Media Is Reshaping Identity | Patricia Martin (Bonus Episode)

An episode of [Minimalist Moms Podcast | Purposeful Life & Parenting Tips](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1159498258), 2 Jul 2026, 38 min.

Audio: https://prefix.up.audio/s/pdst.fm/e/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/mgln.ai/e/35/audio2.redcircle.com/episodes/0a79deaf-e932-495e-815b-38f9b4316310/stream.mp3

We've heard countless conversations about how technology affects our attention spans, productivity, and relationships - but what if the greatest cost of our digital lives is much deeper? In this episode, Diane sits down with Patricia Martin, author of Will the Future Like You?, to explore how constant connectivity, social media, and the pressure to continually reinvent ourselves are reshaping our identities. Together, they discuss what it means to know ourselves in an age where external validation is always within reach and why cultivating a grounded sense of self has become more important than ever. Links Discussed in This Episode | • Checkout the podcast storefront for recommendations from Diane. • Subscribe to the Minimalist Moms Youtube Channel • Connect with Patricia • Website • Instagram • Book: Will the Future Like You? Reflections on the Age of Hyper-Reinvention • Jung in the World podcast About Patricia | Patricia Martin is a cultural analyst, researcher, and speaker. Her work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Huffington Post, The New York Times, Slate and Psyche Magazine. Author of four books, she holds an MFA in nonfiction from Bennington College, with post-graduate certifications from Duke University in medical narrative, and Jungian theory at the C. G. Jung Institute of Chicago where she teaches writing and hosts the psychology podcast, Jung in the World. Episode Sponsors | The Minimalist Moms Podcast would not be possible without the support of weekly sponsors. Choosing brands that I believe in is important to me. I only want to recommend brands that I believe may help you in your daily life. As always, never feel pressured into buying anything. Remember: if you don't need it, it's not a good deal! Enjoy the Podcast? Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning into this podcast, then do not hesitate to write a review. You can also share this with your fellow mothers so that they can be inspired to think more and do with less. Order (or review) my book, Minimalist Moms: Living & Parenting With Simplicity. You can contact me through my website, find me on Instagram, Pinterest or like The Minimalist Moms Page on Facebook. Our Sponsors: * Check out BetterHelp and use my code betterhelp.com for a great deal: https://www.betterhelp.com * Check out Cure Hydration and use my code MINIMALIST for a great deal: https://www.curehydration.com * Check out DeleteMe and use my code joindeleteme.com/MINIMALIST for a great deal: https://joindeleteme.com * Check out Wayfair: https://www.wayfair.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

## Transcript

[0:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: For those of you that are new around here, I released bonus episodes that serve a niche part of my audience, so if this content is something that doesn't fit what you're looking for, check out the other episodes that drop this week or join me back here next week for episodes that you don't want to miss.
[0:14] \[SPEAKER_01\]: If you enter this age of hyper-reinvention and all you're doing is whopping out wardrobe pieces of these false selves and there's nothing to access internally.
[0:27] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I'm flipping that on its head and saying, no, indeed, there is a core self.
[0:33] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And it is starting to give people psychological symptoms to tell them that they have a
[0:42] \[SPEAKER_01\]: from that course self.
[0:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is Diane Bowden and you're listening to the minimalist mom's podcast.
[0:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We've heard countless conversations about how technology affects our attention spans, productivity and relationships, but what if the greatest cost of our digital lives is much deeper?
[0:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In today's episode I sit down with Patricia Martin, author of the new book Will The Future Like You.
[1:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: To explore how constant connectivity, social media and the pressure to continually reinvent ourselves are reshaping our identities.
[1:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Together we discuss what it means to know ourselves in an age where external validation is always within reach and why cultivating a grounded sense of self has become more important than ever.
[1:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But before we get into the conversation, I just wanted to quickly remind you to make sure that you're subscribed to the minimalist mom's podcast so that you never miss an episode.
[1:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And if you've been here for a while now and are enjoying the content, hit five stars or leave a review letting me know who your favorite guest has been, what your favorite topics have been on the show.
[1:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thank you so much for taking the time to listen today and for showing up week after week.
[1:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And with that, let's get into this conversation with Patricia Martin.
[1:53] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Well, because I think you seem to have hit a balance with your material and I'm guessing that that is driven by your insight into your audience.
[2:03] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And that is that you know, you're talking to people who are looking to sort of
[2:09] \[SPEAKER_01\]: carry with them a few core principles as mothers and not be overwhelmed.
[2:14] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And that plays out in everything they do, what they buy, how they live their lives, how they set up their homes.
[2:21] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So, you know, I think we are like minded and that we see how people have been burdened by a lot of heavy thinking around motherhood that probably isn't serving them.
[2:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Absolutely.
[2:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, and I think even outside of knowing my audience,
[2:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: find balance, politically, religiously, like having friends with different opinions, being around different types of parents and the way that they're parenting.
[2:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I think for me, it's like I want to talk to a variety of people, kind of,
[2:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Taking what I want in leaving the rest and I want to do that with every guest that I have it's like not everything my guests say might be for you, but there might be some little things that you can pick up and take into your own experience crafting who you are I think that that's my most favorite thing about getting to do this podcast is just.
[3:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: the insight into myself of what I really like and what I want to take and leave.
[3:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I don't know if that makes sense.
[3:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It does.
[3:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, yeah.
[3:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, Patricia, we're already recording.
[3:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I'm just going to keep letting it go.
[3:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You have a new book.
[3:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's called Will the Future Like You Reflections on the Age of Hyper-Riondension.
[3:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think this topic is going to be so fascinating to discuss today.
[3:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Quickly before we get into it though, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to the listeners?
[3:37] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So I am what you would call a cultural analyst.
[3:42] \[SPEAKER_01\]: This is someone who studies the culture as if it were an analytic patient.
[3:47] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So I have an eclectic set of disciplines that I draw from, psychology, study digital culture, study traditional culture, such as history, mythology, and sociology, and the arts.
[4:06] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I draw this all together by way of
[4:10] \[SPEAKER_01\]: analyzing sort of what's happening in the collective.
[4:13] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And when I'm seeing spikes, you know, when these things converge and they begin to tell a story about where we're at as a civilization, that's when I get involved, start researching and write about it.
[4:25] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And the reason I wrote this book is that I've been involved
[4:29] \[SPEAKER_01\]: In one way or another with the internet since the very beginning, like I had the opportunity, I was just young, I was in the right place at the right time.
[4:40] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I got a chance to work with Al Gore's office on early internet policy.
[4:46] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I got to work on a project with Mint and Surf, who was the father, people widely think he's the father of the internet.
[4:53] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And I got to work with
[4:55] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Bill Gates on his very first philanthropy before he even established a formal philanthropy, which was the Bill of Melinda Gates Foundation.
[5:04] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And he still uses that model that I built for him.
[5:08] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I mean, I tend to watch it every now and then and say, oh, there it is.
[5:12] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so I just had this young career in sort of seeing how the culture was going to be influenced by technology.
[5:20] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And then following that, and then about 10 years ago, I started really getting serious about studying the impact of the internet on the human psyche.
[5:32] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And then I had a series of events happen to me personally, and woke up one morning after within a two-year span my mother died, so I lost my primal anchor, my husband and I am a completely divorced, but that meant that I shed a lot of roles like wife and a neighbor who was also in a couple, you know, you get on a couple like that and it really does change who you are.
[5:59] \[SPEAKER_01\]: or how you're seen at least, and I moved three times in those two years and I had a big project, I have my own research agency, and I lost a huge project, and this was after they had decided to not only fund it again, but to expand the investment.
[6:23] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And then two months later, because a new person entered their firm, they canceled the project entirely.
[6:29] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And I had to lay off my staff and shut out, you know, like it, it was my bad in that I was overconfident.
[6:39] \[SPEAKER_01\]: in the in this client opportunity.
[6:42] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But anyway, here I was.
[6:43] \[SPEAKER_01\]: One day I was an entrepreneur.
[6:45] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And the next day I was hiring high school kids to help me pack boxes and clean out my office and exchange for pizza and some cash.
[6:57] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Anyway, I woke up one morning.
[7:00] \[SPEAKER_01\]: asking myself the primal question, you know, like the question that has haunted people since forever, and that is who am I?
[7:09] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so I took a really different approach to this research.
[7:12] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It became a personal project as much as a professional one.
[7:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, absolutely.
[7:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I love it.
[7:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's part memoir, cultural criticism, psychology, like you're giving us all this research here.
[7:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It has been a based on a 10 year study that you had been doing.
[7:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let's start here.
[7:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Hyper-reinvention, your reflections on the age of hyper-reinvention.
[7:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What do
[7:42] \[SPEAKER_01\]: not only to the economic conditions that we are in and also, by the way, as we look at the horizon of AI, this is only going to accelerate and the impact of it will be felt even more intensely, which is many of the investments we have made in our identities around work,
[8:11] \[SPEAKER_01\]: force us into this hyper-reinvention, you know, just to economically survive.
[8:17] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And I don't think it's any secret that in America, we do invest a lot of identity into what we do.
[8:24] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And the destabilization economically that's coming will force that reinvention more and more.
[8:30] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I mean, you're probably reading about entire, there are forecasts that are saying
[8:40] \[SPEAKER_01\]: by AI.
[8:42] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So we're in that kind of reinvention.
[8:44] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And then there's something that I found that was even deeper.
[8:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It lived underneath all of that.
[8:50] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And that was this psychological impact that the internet is having on our sense of self.
[8:59] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So let me just quickly explain that, you know, our sense
[9:06] \[SPEAKER_01\]: is derived from three things.
[9:08] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It's kind of like a three-legged stool.
[9:10] \[SPEAKER_01\]: There's how we see ourselves, it's how other people see us, and then are well to shape who we are.
[9:17] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So we live in an age thanks to social media in that who we are to others, and how we see ourselves have become the same thing.
[9:31] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And then the third leg of the stool, which is our will to shape who we are, the information economy has been rigged.
[9:46] \[SPEAKER_01\]: to erode human will.
[9:49] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And that's not those aren't my words.
[9:52] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Those are the words from a Google strategist who is now an Oxford professor that he saw when he was a strategist at Google, how the codes were being built to disempower people.
[10:08] \[SPEAKER_01\]: to do things like create a sense of self, so, you know, the pillars that used to support how we know ourselves and who we are, you know, have been kicked out from under us.
[10:23] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so it's forcing us into these cycles of living externally, deriving meaning about who we are from the crowd, and empowering the algorithm to tell us how we should edit, which persona goes up and which persona comes down, whether or not that is tried to any,
[10:43] \[SPEAKER_01\]: real sense of the core, the interior, understanding who we are.
[10:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so this is put us in a cycle of hyper-reinvention, all of it collectively.
[10:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, well that's interesting because I always say the algorithm knows what I want before I even know what I want it knows what I like before I kind of know that I like it like I guess that points things out like it knows me so well at this point on Instagram I'm like oh my gosh, this is right up my alley and it seems to somewhat evolve with me as well because your work aligns a lot with what Carl Young says.
[11:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so I'm seeing a lot about the shadow self and things that he has said because I've been more interested in that recently.
[11:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So it is interesting.
[11:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's like, did I like what came first the chicken or the egg?
[11:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think that's something that we have to ask ourselves.
[11:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Did I inspire that or did that kind of push me into something deeper that I didn't know that I liked, but maybe I do, or maybe it's because other people do.
[11:36] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Is that what you're saying?
[11:37] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Well, I just want to respond to what you said about Carl Jung.
[11:42] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Carl Jung would say,
[11:46] \[SPEAKER_01\]: that the self knows what it's doing.
[11:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: He was a believer in a rooted core self that everyone is in doubt with.
[11:57] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And now I want you to understand, there were
[12:04] \[SPEAKER_01\]: philosophers and psychologists who have come later in the 20th century, who are more popular now, like Lacan, who is a Freudian, who would say, there is no course, self.
[12:19] \[SPEAKER_01\]: we are just a wardrobe of performative cells, which has been convenient for this age.
[12:28] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And there are people who really believe that I've been out talking about well the future like you.
[12:33] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And I encounter these podcasts who actually believe that.
[12:37] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And why that's convenient for the information age is because it leads you to believe there's nothing at stake.
[12:46] \[SPEAKER_01\]: If you enter this age of hyper-reinvention, and all you're doing is walking out wardrobe pieces of these false selves, and there's nothing to access internally.
[12:59] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I'm flipping that on its head and saying, no, indeed, there is a core self, and it is starting to give people psychological symptoms, to tell them that they have a strange themselves.
[13:14] \[SPEAKER_01\]: from that core self.
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[14:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So how does that constant exposure to other people's lives shape and change the way that we see ourselves?
[14:42] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Well, I think it gives us the false impression of intimacy that doesn't exist.
[14:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Those connections tend to be loose ties instead of communal ties.
[14:58] \[SPEAKER_01\]: disembeddedness.
[15:00] \[SPEAKER_01\]: That's a really, that's a $50 word.
[15:05] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But this started in the 20th century with modernism, where we became unruided from traditions.
[15:13] \[SPEAKER_01\]: We stopped doing what our fathers or mothers did for a living.
[15:17] \[SPEAKER_01\]: We rejected that and sought something else.
[15:21] \[SPEAKER_01\]: We became very mobile.
[15:22] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So we could move seven to ten times to completely different communities within a lifetime.
[15:29] \[SPEAKER_01\]: we did all of the institutions that we might surround ourselves with that would tell us we have intimate connection to others and that shapes who we are, those started to wane, you know, people started to do less of that.
[15:45] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so we have become now, we have access to peering into other people's lives.
[15:54] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It is a couple stages removed from true human intimacy, the kind that would help you anchor yourself and build a stronger sense of self.
[16:05] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so here again, it's sort of been marginalized and externalized, rather than held close, so that it can be a resource.
[16:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Mm-hmm.
[16:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No, such a good point.
[16:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I know that this is, I hope this is not to intellectual or deep for listeners.
[16:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I hope that they're following logs.
[16:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I find this completely fascinating.
[16:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And overwhelming, as well, that we,
[16:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, that we feel the need to reinvent for others and really just being so disconnected with the self because of tech.
[16:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, I find that really overwhelming specifically for teenagers and children, really, who have access to these things without being fully formed and developed themselves.
[16:50] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Yeah, and this is a really rich territory.
[16:54] \[SPEAKER_01\]: This business of teens and children with
[17:00] \[SPEAKER_01\]: just really outside access to screens.
[17:05] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It is even encouraged in schools and I'm not anti-tack.
[17:09] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I think these are tools that we have to live with, then the question is how can we live with them consciously?
[17:14] \[SPEAKER_01\]: How do we parent with them consciously?
[17:16] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And there are other people who talk about this who have really looked into that particular relationship, parent child, intact,
[17:24] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But I would say a couple things, and because you raised Carl Jung, and I'm also a Jungian, part of what I had to do for this research is anchor myself in a school of psychology.
[17:39] \[SPEAKER_01\]: There are two founders of
[17:41] \[SPEAKER_01\]: the profession of psychology, one was Carl Jung, and the other was Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung advocated for the existence of a soul in everyone.
[17:51] \[SPEAKER_01\]: That innate sense of a life force, and so it was a no-brainer that I would study.
[17:56] \[SPEAKER_01\]: His canon.
[17:59] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But getting back to like what that relationship is, that parenting relationship is in this time, and how do we consciously help our kids create a stronger sense of self?
[18:14] \[SPEAKER_01\]: in these times theater like what can we do about this because it is overwhelming.
[18:18] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so I want to start with really kind of understanding this idea of persona fog.
[18:26] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So so what the internet has invited us to do is to lead with the part of the human psyche that is the least resilient.
[18:40] \[SPEAKER_01\]: the least strong, the least has the least capacity, and it has put all the emphasis there.
[18:49] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So everything faces outward.
[18:52] \[SPEAKER_01\]: We are kind of neglecting any sense of inner life.
[18:57] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And it's making people fragile.
[19:00] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So, you know, some of the things that I get asked about is, well, what can parents do about this?
[19:08] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And one of the things I think is really important to understand is this life of screens has helped children see themselves as an extension of it.
[19:22] \[SPEAKER_01\]: and to start to define themselves through it.
[19:26] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so the counterweight to that is actually quite physical.
[19:32] \[SPEAKER_01\]: In that this is very disembodying.
[19:35] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I mean, I'm sure you've seen that, right?
[19:38] \[SPEAKER_01\]: If you pick up teenagers or pre-adolescence at school and they're like walking, looking at their phones and they're walking into the cross in the street and they're not even paying attention like they're totally disembodied.
[19:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[19:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh my gosh.
[19:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[19:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I saw a kid doing that the other day.
[19:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He was like crossing it in an angle, too.
[19:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What are you totally gay walking?
[19:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, right?
[20:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[20:00] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So it's it's just like one little visual cue of how disembodied kids are.
[20:06] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so the more you can actually get kids.
[20:11] \[SPEAKER_01\]: in their bodies again.
[20:13] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Playing outside, free play, anything physicalizing, working with their hands again, doing crafts, handwriting, which exercises a different part of the brain than the technology does.
[20:28] \[SPEAKER_01\]: These things tend to bring a child back into the physical selves, which has been also somewhat abandoned.
[20:36] \[SPEAKER_01\]: By, yes, and we have a generation of obese children who spent a lot of time on screens.
[20:44] \[SPEAKER_01\]: inactive.
[20:45] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And I'm not here to fat shame anyone.
[20:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: That's not the purpose of this.
[20:49] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But it's just another example of how we have neglected the sense of the human form.
[20:55] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And why Carl Jung would say this is essential is because what is our senseions, our ability, our senseate ability is part of what informs
[21:12] \[SPEAKER_01\]: to make a more whole picture of the world.
[21:16] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Mm-hmm, yeah, absolutely.
[21:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, I'm glad that you're speaking to some of this, because I was gonna ask you what a grounded identity looks like.
[21:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We just need to detach.
[21:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Not just our kids, we need to detach as well, because the news and podcasts, oh, there's just so much noise.
[21:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm writing a little bit about this right now.
[21:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Just being able to hear your own voice, and
[21:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: quieting everyone else is because again, if you're shaping your personal identity when it's too busy, yeah, it's kind of like, what do I actually think in beliefs?
[21:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Right.
[21:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Exactly.
[21:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And the other thing, like not all the news is bad about this, part of this has to do with consciousness.
[21:52] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So what you just described is a moment of consciousness when you said, you pulled back and you said, why am I listening to this?
[22:02] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I could be driving in silence right now.
[22:05] \[SPEAKER_01\]: with my own thoughts.
[22:07] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Those moments of clawing back your consciousness will be vital.
[22:11] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It will become I predict a super skill of the future in that especially when AI enters our lives, there's going to be this opportunity, this moment of compression I call it.
[22:30] \[SPEAKER_01\]: When a lot of the drudgery, a lot of the grunt work, a lot of the things you used to spend your time on, you know, that gets outsourced to the robot.
[22:40] \[SPEAKER_01\]: AI, and now you have time and space you didn't have before.
[22:44] \[SPEAKER_01\]: This is your moment to get conscious and decide what really matters to you.
[22:51] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And compress your life down.
[22:55] \[SPEAKER_01\]: into that because the alternative is to stay in your media habits and let the slop feel the boys.
[23:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And I think that that's a lot about what your show is about.
[23:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, absolutely.
[23:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, well, and I think that's a good place.
[23:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I my next question.
[23:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You're just answering the questions before I even asked them as my next one was, where do we begin to rebuild that internal clarity?
[23:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it is with fighting the noise.
[23:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It is with getting conscious tapping into that prefrontal cortex because it's just so easy to go offline and become zombie like so to speak.
[23:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like I said, that kid was walking across the street like a zombie.
[23:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He was not online.
[23:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He wasn't connected.
[23:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He was
[23:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: was connected to this device that was doing the thinking forum.
[23:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And again, he could have gotten killed because of it.
[23:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think it was just about in the middle of the street.
[23:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Absolutely.
[23:49] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so, you know, I don't want to oversimplify this.
[23:57] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Because some of this is profound.
[23:59] \[SPEAKER_01\]: However, there are some easy ways to kind of sense how close, you know, how coherent a self you have versus a fragmented self that has been
[24:14] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Your persona has overworked itself, and you are now losing touch, it's called self alienation.
[24:22] \[SPEAKER_01\]: You're getting alienated from the core self, and there are a lot of psychological problems that go with this.
[24:27] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So what are the ways to do this?
[24:31] \[SPEAKER_01\]: To kind of give yourself a self-test?
[24:36] \[SPEAKER_01\]: is to walk around your home, you can take pictures if you want.
[24:40] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Look at the items that you have on display.
[24:43] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Look at how you've decorated, even.
[24:46] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I'm actually somebody who, like the aesthetics of something matter to me.
[24:51] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So I'm saying this genuinely, I did this recently myself, so I know this is tested.
[24:59] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And I'd like to say,
[25:02] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I discovered that I was tending to walk into a place like home goods, not realizing I was shopping as one of my personas, and I was buying something and taking it home and then it didn't fit with the other stuff so much, and then I would buy more stuff to see if I could make that work.
[25:28] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And then it became clear to me that what I really needed to do was take a moment and tap into something deeper within myself and say, I am looking for something I need and feels true to me.
[25:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And I remember walking through the store and touching items and saying, nope, not true.
[25:53] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Nope, not true.
[25:55] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I mean, I, you know, I was speaking to myself.
[25:58] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I was, you know, I was just, yeah, right.
[26:00] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So anyway, my point is this.
[26:04] \[SPEAKER_01\]: are are aesthetic some kind sometimes can give us a sense of where we're at, whether we're cohearing as a self or whether we're fragmenting.
[26:13] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And that's another really good reason to like declutter or to group things that might make sense to you and get get a resonance between
[26:34] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It's the container for the self.
[26:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think that I, I'll just be transparent here.
[26:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I guess challenging some of the things that weren't necessarily ever mine feels like,
[26:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Detaching from a part of my identity.
[26:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But again, that was never mine.
[26:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I don't know if I was speaking in really weird terms, but it just is when you start to process some of the stuff that you've always believed or you think you boys believe that was never really yours.
[27:16] \[SPEAKER_01\]: right because that is when you can become fully conscious and you can ask yourself a different set of questions so you can ask yourself things like what is it in me that I've let go of or repressed that wants to be expressed now and I think for women and especially women who have played motherhood roles a lot of the
[27:44] \[SPEAKER_01\]: feeling the tension, when I talk to them, comes from feeling that the container of motherhood got too small, that it didn't, that it only had room for enough things to go in there.
[28:04] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And now they're feeling like they've outgrown it, and they still love their children and
[28:12] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But now they're beginning to say, what's outside the container?
[28:16] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Or do I have to break the container to make it larger?
[28:19] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And this to me is an exciting time.
[28:23] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Then because it offers people, especially women, an opportunity to do something that
[28:34] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Donald Winnecott, who was a child psychiatrist who was originally a Freudian and then came over to being a Jungian, right?
[28:44] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Because, you know, he saw the uniqueness in people in children that was like a flame from within and the core self mattered to him in his work with mothers and children.
[28:57] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But
[28:58] \[SPEAKER_01\]: He talks about this idea of positive destruction, that when children, you know, when they destroy their toys or they, they rage against something and destroy something.
[29:15] \[SPEAKER_01\]: What they're really testing is, can the world stand up to me?
[29:20] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Is it all going to fall apart on me?
[29:23] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And when mothers adopt the role of being the good enough mother, which means that they're flawed, and they allow their children grow older, they allow them to see those flaws, as if to say some of this is on you, and you're able to do it, you know?
[29:44] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so,
[29:47] \[SPEAKER_01\]: That kind of collaborative understanding between mother and child is something I would ask women to also use on themselves to say if some of this breaks down, I can still take it.
[30:06] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I am bigger than the destruction, and then, and then, you know, because some people are going to have their lifestyles, upturned by AI, they're going to have their bank accounts up, you know, like their income, turned upside down.
[30:28] \[SPEAKER_01\]: When that destruction happens to make it a positive, coherent moment of identity is to do what when a cot said is to walk through and decide what still matters to you.
[30:45] \[SPEAKER_01\]: You now get to edit in a way that has meaning to you and not to other people, and that
[30:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[30:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Absolutely.
[30:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I know that there's a certain sense of obligation that we carry as adults at a respect or kindness, but I think when we
[31:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If we recognize that we're doing so much out of obligation or people pleasing or things that aren't necessarily aligned again with the true self but it's because we have to present this certain thing to people for whatever reason that we get our that our ego stroked and that's like we need that part of our identity yeah it is just going back to consciousness is so important and I'm curious your book title that says will the future like you.
[31:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I guess in somewhat wrapping up here, like how would you encourage listeners to interpret that and maybe do some work there if they don't like the answer at the outcome?
[31:48] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So, you know, this has come up a couple times in this interview, and I, and I, I just want to, I guess, put a crown on it, which is to say, you have dozens of choices every day where you can reclaim your consciousness.
[32:09] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Every, this is something that Carl Jung said.
[32:12] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Every victory for consciousness is a defeat of the negative ego, right?
[32:21] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So, you know, that's another thing that living out of our personas has done to us, is it has, it's egoic.
[32:29] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It persona is tied to the ego.
[32:32] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so, when we can halt ourselves long enough to say, why am I posting this?
[32:44] \[SPEAKER_01\]: That little moment of consciousness begins retraining the brain and retraining your habits and reclaiming your focus and one of the most profound interviews it was a two hour interview I had when doing this book the research was with Mike chick set me high who wrote the famous book flow peak performance has everything to do with consciousness.
[33:13] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Right.
[33:13] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And so, so this is when you begin to re-empower yourself.
[33:19] \[SPEAKER_01\]: This is when you begin to claim back what the internet truthfully has programmed out of you, which is your ability to define who you are.
[33:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Hmm, so good, that's so good.
[33:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's just such an important message.
[33:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Again, combating everything that's going on right now, just the loss, yeah, the loss of self is really sad to me that we're seeing, again, especially among young people.
[33:50] \[SPEAKER_01\]: But like my 16-year-old case is 16-year-old Janet, who's a case study in the book.
[33:56] \[SPEAKER_01\]: You know, she,
[33:59] \[SPEAKER_01\]: got to be 19 and had to apply for college and realized even though she was super popular online.
[34:04] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Here she was like an influencer at like 17, 18 years old shit this huge audience.
[34:10] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And she felt empty inside.
[34:12] \[SPEAKER_01\]: She couldn't answer the questions in the college application and write an essay about herself.
[34:18] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And that was her wake-up call.
[34:20] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And she decided to just go through all, this was when she edited her wardrobe.
[34:25] \[SPEAKER_01\]: She went through all these personas and said, not me, not me.
[34:30] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And where she got trolled or where she got silence, if it was really who she was, she brought that back.
[34:39] \[SPEAKER_01\]: and reclaimed it, and she, well, she had a, of course she got into a very good school.
[34:45] \[SPEAKER_01\]: She wrote a very good essay, but she actually lived this for several months before it really kind of was able to assimil, you know, like gather within her.
[34:57] \[SPEAKER_01\]: and reclaim itself as this is who I am.
[35:00] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So she became the editor and chief of her own life.
[35:05] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And that's another positive message.
[35:07] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Like, you can become the editor and chief of who you are out there and in here.
[35:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, so good.
[35:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well Patricia, where can listeners follow you to hear more and grab a copy of your book if they want to do so?
[35:24] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Will the future like you as available?
[35:26] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Kindle and in print, over at Amazon, I am the host of the podcast, Young in the world where we look at contemporary topics and apply the Young Yen theory lens.
[35:40] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And then I'm on social media.
[35:42] \[SPEAKER_01\]: You can find me on Facebook and all the usual spots Instagram, Patricia Martin.
[35:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Perfect.
[35:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, as your up things up here, I'm going to ask you the final two questions I ask every guest and the first one is what has been a beneficial resource in your life that you want to share with the listeners.
[35:58] \[SPEAKER_01\]: When, when in doubt, I read poetry.
[36:00] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I keep books of poetry near my bed.
[36:04] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I'm a writer at heart.
[36:07] \[SPEAKER_01\]: And Robert Frost said poetry is a momentary stay against confusion.
[36:12] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So if my head is full of of noise, I'll read a short poem before falling asleep.
[36:18] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It has given me these like Florida beautiful dreams.
[36:22] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Hmm.
[36:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh, I love that.
[36:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, poetry is so lyrical and so in his sense, even though it's still, you're still taking something and it seems, it can be music to the soul.
[36:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah.
[36:33] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It's like a little, you know, it's like wiping the slate clean in a beautiful way right before you fall asleep, and it's a commitment of like one page.
[36:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, for sure.
[36:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yes, I love that as well.
[36:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: All right.
[36:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: My last question for you is what is something you can't stop talking about?
[36:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I cannot stop talking about this idea of compression.
[36:52] \[SPEAKER_01\]: that this is the future, that you, if, if we don't become conscious and take back the power to define who we are, it will not be pretty for you when AI really comes into your life.
[37:09] \[SPEAKER_01\]: So this is your moment.
[37:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thank you.
[37:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And, Mehra, this was so wonderful Patricia.
[37:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I think so much for joining you.
[37:15] \[SPEAKER_01\]: It was my pleasure.
[37:16] \[SPEAKER_01\]: Thank you.
[37:17] \[SPEAKER_01\]: I hope it was okay.
[37:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What did you think of the episode?
[37:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I hope you enjoyed the conversation.
[37:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: To learn more about today's guest, including links, resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at minimalismomspodcast.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as my book Minimalismoms Living and Parenting with Simplicity, or other ways to connect or work with me online.
[37:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, or YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and leave a rating or review of your favorite episode.
[37:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Lastly, sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends and social media is very helpful and will encourage others on their journey to think more and do with less.

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