67. Why Things Feel F*cked Right Now & What We Can Do About It
What happens when you realise the life you’ve built no longer fits?
In this episode, Andrew Sloan shares the story behind his book Why Things Feel F*cked and the personal reinvention that followed.
From ending a long-term relationship to taking his work on the road, Andrew explores why so many of us feel stretched, stuck or overwhelmed and why better conversations might be the way through.
We talk about nervous systems, leadership, perfectionism and the quiet power of human connection.
Overview
After publishing his book, Andrew made a series of significant life changes, choosing freedom and possibility over stability. That shift becomes the gateway into a wider discussion: why do so many of us feel under pressure, even when life looks “fine” on paper?
Andrew unpacks the modern productivity trap and the way digital life keeps our nervous systems in a constant state of activation. He explains why chaos isn’t new, but our relationship with it has changed; and how the smallest shifts, from elongating the exhale to reconnecting with nature, can begin to restore calm.
Andrew shares why most performance issues at work are really conversation issues. High performance and wellbeing are not opposing forces, but deeply connected.
This is a thought provoking, grounding episode about curiosity, courage and the human need for meaningful connection.
Key takeaways
- Modern life keeps our nervous systems activated through constant digital input
- Many workplace performance problems are actually conversation problems
- Calm hasn’t disappeared. It’s simply covered over by protective patterns
- The practical shifts that can help us reset
Guest
Andrew Sloan is an integrated psychotherapist and leadership coach who works with individuals from all walks of life, as well as CEOs and executive teams navigating performance and culture challenges.
His work sits at the intersection of wellbeing and high performance, with a focus on self-leadership, nervous system awareness and meaningful conversations. He is the author of Why Things Feel F*cked and speaks nationally on leadership, resilience and connection.
Andrew Sloan www.andrewsloan.com.au
Follow on Instagram @hello_andrewsloan
Warning: This episode contains strong language. With quite a few F-bombs.
Transcript
Welcome to the Really Good Conversations podcast. Today I am joined by Andrew Sloan, an integrated psychotherapist, leadership coach, and author of “Why Things Feel F*cked”. Andrew works with individuals from all walks of life through his private practice, as well as CEOs and executive teams at the intersection of wellbeing and high performance. Whether it's in his one-to-one sessions or inside leadership rooms, his focus is on what's really going on beneath the surface and when things aren't working. At the heart of his work is one simple but powerful idea. Better human relationships start with better conversations. In today's episode, we're going to explore reinvention, why so many of us feel stuck right now, and what actually helps when life feels a little off.
Welcome to the podcast, Andrew.
Andrew (01:25)
Thank you for having me, very, very much.
Amy (01:28)
Even just reading in your intro totally just aligns with the world that we are in with really good conversations when you highlight that better human relationships start with better conversations. And I felt it was great to get you as a guest on the podcast. You have launched a book in the last year and we are going to get on to that. But the last year has been quite a big year for you. And there's been changes and adventures. So can you give us a little bit of an insight to your own life of what has shifted and what made you realise something needed to change?
Andrew (02:02)
Well, I think the last 10 years has been a pretty massive adventure, all sort of crescendoing in the last 12 months where I started to write a book. 2024, I started in June and then as I was writing the book, I realised that there were some really hard conversations I needed to have with the people that I loved. And so as I published the book in November last year, I ended a 13 year relationship and you know, that was because I think it wasn't set up for common connection in the world as I wanted it. And for him, after 13 years, it didn't feel free enough. And so we came to the decision to separate after so long. All whilst I am publishing a book into the world. I wrote about the breakup in the book as well in chapter nine at the beginning. I start to talk about, you know, the critical and really meaningful conversations we needed to have, to make a change possible. And then I just couldn't see my life being anchored to a mortgage or even a lease again. All of those options in front of me were a no towards that sort of being tied down to something. And it just felt energetically in my body, like a big fat no.
And I had to have a really considerate conversation with myself about what that meant to kind of shirk that security. And I bought a motor home and I am traveling around Australia for at least 12 months. The way it's going right now, Amy, it's like, it's really cool. I'm like, is there an end date? I don't know. But one of the big adventures that I'm on right now is to take the “why things feel f*cked” idea and continue to have that conversation in different communities. And I've already been starting to do that, but also learn what's beyond what feels f*cked. I definitely talk about that in the book, but I think I'm on a journey towards learning at a higher fidelity. What does real great living look like beyond us recognising and knowing this isn't it? What is on the other side of that? Is it more a connection to nature, more diverse people? Is it being a bit more nomadic? And that is what I'm currently discovering. And it's f*cking cool.
Amy (04:37)
That is amazing. And even just going back to your own personal experience of writing the book, the majority of people, yeah, the vast majority of people don't perhaps get an opportunity to do that full self discovery. So it's almost, as you said, through that process of writing the book and the context and the content you were writing about, actually showed a mirror into your own world.
And then as you said, you're now getting out there beyond what was your usual world where you were obviously living at the time and then meeting completely different new people, new communities, new locations and you're just living out your own experiment in some way.
Andrew (05:17)
Yeah, it's different vantage points, right? Of the same thing called this human experience. And I will never forget the day I had the printed out manuscript and I was working through it to work on an edit. And I was like, I don't have this in my relationship right now. I can't have that meaningful conversation right now in this relationship. And it was as I was flicking through it, I was like, f*ck.
I need to make some significant changes here. And, yeah, it's, it's been a wild, wild ride and it continues to be one. And it's a beautifully profound moment when I can kind of lay down those things that keep us safe, like the mortgage and the house and literally pick up a mobile home, a beautiful one at that and drive around and go, I can actually live a bit more simply than I was.
I can live way more connected to myself and nature than I ever have been. And, look, there's also some really great conversations to have on the road as well.
Amy (06:23)
Because we're sold the more, more, more, you know, the work for more, the get the bigger, whether it's the bigger job or the bigger thing to always be reaching the apartment, then the house, then the bigger house. It's always that more, more,
Andrew (06:34)
And the job, right? That supports it all because without that job, we can't pay the mortgage at the level we are. And we can't meet the cost of living pressures that we find ourselves in. And so, yeah, we are stuck in a little bit of a trap. And I talk about this in the book as the productivity trap and it is the more, more, more mindset. And it's a myriad of different things that kind of put us into that mode. I'm not sitting here saying, well, they all should be destroyed and broken down. No, I'm not suggesting that. I don't think everyone should go on a motor home because I probably wouldn't have a campsite left if you all joined me. But we do need to orientate ourselves in that so we can make better choices. And the first step is to acclimate ourselves to that and go, oh, I am in that more, more, more. And it is kind of fueling something in my life that is hindering presence, calm, wellbeing, better connection with the people around us. So yeah, it's important we're having this conversation about the more, more. And I think people are starting to realise, yeah, this isn't working and I feel like I'm trapped by it.
Amy (07:47)
Just on the treadmill. What for you was the point that you thought, I want to write a book, I need to write a book and actually it's going to really highlight, you know, obviously a title that gets attention for sure, “Why Things Feel F*cked”. Where did that drive for you come from in the first place?
Andrew (08:03)
It's so multi-layered. And I think if we begin where we were just in our conversation, it was with clients coming to me and saying, I'm really stuck and I have no f*cking idea why I'm in the dark to why I feel like I am so stuck. And this experience of the sort of curtain is closed to why we feel so f*cked and why we then feel so stuck in that.
We're following all the rules and we don't know why joy and happiness and peace is impossible in our lives. That was the beginning of, wow, how do I compile something that will tangibly and practically help not be like a self-help book that just gives you the surface treatment or gives you a couple of the moves, but without the robustness that I think we need in a world that is kind of keeping us in place.
But the other answer to that question is my lifespan, right? So the, the, the, things feel f*cked for me from 13, 21, 35 to 41. Now that I sit here and talk to you, there's been layers of why things have felt f*cked and these mimic and echo what I hear from clients. Right. And I hear from clients in my private practice where I'm meeting one to one with people, but also when I sit in executive teams and go, wow, we're all a bunch of babies sitting at this table reacting to the world from how we were brought up, but we're bringing it to the boardroom and creating really ineffective, harmful conversations with each other. And so I see it on both ends of the spectrum. I'm like, this is all the same shit. It's all the same thing. It's a nervous system inside of your and my body that has been shaped by the world, to the point where it's playing out in pretty destructive ways, fear-based ways. We start to try to attempt to take power over each other.
And so when I saw those patterns, I'm not the sort of person that can look away from those patterns and do nothing. I see those patterns and I'm like, wow, this story needs to be threaded together and it needs to be told. And so that's why this book is set up in this way. It talks about, how do we get into this mess? What's the impact on our bodies? And the last two parts of the book are the pathway out personally, what choices, moves, frameworks and strategies might we need to use personally? And then how are we going to bring them to others? You know, how are we going to accept other people's support, but also how do we cultivate belonging and connection everywhere we go? And that was the primary driver to lay out this book in the way that I did, but also the driver to actually tell my personal story for the first time, because I've kept my personal story way out of my conversations with people because I wanted their story to be central. And that's an ethical responsibility, but also it keeps the pressure on the right thing. You, the client, not me, but I really needed to leverage my story. felt to propel this story along and keep people engaged and to speak to the right people. So, it was uncomfortable, but I did it anyway.
Amy (11:27)
And what a process, a journey, you know, and a growth experience and what you're now doing off the back of it. I mean, I bet when you embarked on this book, yes, you may have thought, oh, well, I'll do a bit of a book tour around Australia. But when you set out on it, you probably weren't thinking, oh, I will actually, separating from partner, getting a motor home and driving around Australia for over a year. I love it. It's just, you know, where these opportunities and things come from.
And you do talk about, know, it's not necessarily a new feeling in that, humans have always lived through chaos, you know, and there's various examples of chaos over the, over the different generations and wars and everything like that. But what feels different about how we're experiencing it now in this current time?
Andrew (12:15)
Chaos is the substrate of the human experience. Some models call it disorder is the known fabric of the universe and the human experience of it. And so yeah, we've always had chaos and strategies to quell that chaos, right? And throughout history, I think that's impinged upon us, that has hammered us. And yeah, we are certainly not in the worst version of that. We're just in a new version of that.
And I think the chaos right now for people, and this might be a really great stat for you being from the UK in the UK right now, nine out of 10 people are reporting high levels of pressure and stress right now. And we can see that from the cost of living crisis, the political landscape, the threat of AI, a whole bunch of different things, but I kind of distill it down to chaos being wrapped in a digital bubble wrap. You know, it's like we've digitified chaos in so many ways. And we pick up these phones, mine's plugged into the moment because I've been using it so much this morning, but we pick up these phones and they're our interface into the world. And they're also hijacking parts of our brains and our bodies to activated versions of themselves. So you add in smartphones to that mix and we've got a real big challenge where chaos is wrapped in that digital layer.
I don't think we started to talk about it in some of the studies around increasing experiences of anxiety and depression in young people when they're engaging with social media as an example. But I don't think we're talking about it enough, like the toxicity that actually happens through the lens of our phones and them actually keeping us from really good conversations, keeping us from the present moment inside of ourselves. And I am still in that loop as well. I get stuck doom scrolling, get stuck in thinking I need to be accessible by my phone than in the present moment with myself or another person all the time. And I'm thinking about strategies on how to quell that and to reduce that. One of the things I've just started and it's really easy in a motor home because the bed and the charger can be really separate.But I'm no longer plugging my phone in where I can access it in bed. Yeah. So that I can create a buffer of the beginning and the end of my day, which can be lo-fi and digital free. It's, it's not digital free because I have my, my tracker on, but it is feed free at the very least to really create a different experience in the beginning and the end of the day. And I wonder about its effect on my calm, but also my quality of sleep, right? Which we know is a huge part of feeling that stress, that anxiousness, that ramped up-ness in that digital chaos bubble. What does it do when we can kind of down that? I think it's important.
Amy (15:24)
Absolutely. And this, you know, totally resonates. And I know I'm guilty of especially, you know, having family in a different time zone. I'm going to bed quickly doing messages because, you know, it's their daytime. So therefore I'm ending that day on the phone, waking up and reaching for the phone to then if I do want to catch people or things or obviously, yes, you know, our businesses in the UK as well, then therefore you're just always, yeah, always on.
And I think there's a lot of talk, even just phones being the example, you know, there's a lot of focus and conversation of children and their use of it. And, you know, some of the initiatives that have been talked about there, but it's for me, it's like, it's us adults actually as well. So in a professional sense, it's that full yet the world of LinkedIn in business, if you're not promoting it on somewhere, is it even happening? And then you're in this constant just engagement and feed. So absolutely I feel like that.
You did touch on nervous system and such, and for someone who's listening and does feel perhaps they're like constantly just on edge or feeling that high almost like angst, stress level. What is something like a practical shift or tip you think is a genuine good place to start?
Andrew (16:37)
Well, I'm going to start with a connective tissue between what we were just talking about in this question. Then I'm going to go to three things we could do today, Micro things. But the biggest misunderstood thing about calm is that the majority of it is what we're doing right now. Eyeball to eyeball, face to face, voice box to voice box connection is the biggest move we can make towards a calmer, more deactivated nervous system. And when we pick up our phone, we actually split that connective tissue. So we're at the dinner table. We're with our friends. And when we, all that typical person picks up the phone and it breaks connection, actually is severing our ability to feel calm and curious and connected with each other.
And this is biochemical through the vagus nerve, through the auditory nerve, and to our facial expressions and beyond into our voice boxes. And this is the stuff we had in small hunter gathering groups in plentiful supply. It's when really good conversations were never interrupted by our digital lives. So that's one thing. When I think about how we support people to more deactivation, away from angst, away from rage, away from anxiousness and into presence, it is mostly supported by human interaction, face-to-face connection. And then of course, when we don't have access to another human that feels safe, because a lot of human connection is judgmental or critical or narrows us or activates us. And so unfortunately, the world is in plentiful supply of those people. And so when we can't get that safe human, like the energy we are bringing each other, of openness and warmth and curiosity and reciprocity. We call it in the science, it's like this even flow between two people.
When we can't get that, yes, there's some body moves we might want to make.
The first one is to think about breath. Elongating our exhale is foundational to a deactivated nervous system. It is a beautiful way to become purposeful and present. And it massages all the bits and pieces of our nervous system that help us deactivate, even when things are still chaotic and messy in our lives. It's not as simple as just saying, the therapist is telling you to breathe, but it is like, is kind of that simple. And so elongating that exhale is the goal and we don't need any messy or complex breath work. We might want to go down that path. I'm just saying it's easy enough just to elongate that exhale.
The second thing is at times we might be really activated and this kind of has two forms and one of the things that I've picked up myself recently, because I'm privileged enough to be able to access a sauna and a cold plunge, we can simulate that ourselves. If we're really activated, go and splash cold water on your face, activate the nerve, the vagus nerve, and find a rebalance in your nervous system state. So when people are really overwhelmed, that's a really great hack to kind of step into.
And that cold water down-regulates our nervous system towards calm. The medium of that is if we're fortunate enough to live in spaces that have saunas and cold plunges, they actually mimic the fight and flight response and allow us to come back to a more regulated zone. And so this stretching of our nervous systems are really supportive at finding more calm in our everyday life, that chaos.
The third is, go find nature.When we gaze at bodies of water and there's this science around fractals, fractals are found in leaves, waves, anything natural really is a natural fractal. The opposite is the straight lines of this room that I'm sitting in, the manufactured spaces that we are often in, or even that, I don't know, that pattern behind you, that beautiful soundproofing.
Well, they're certainly not down regulating our nervous systems, but what we do know is, we know that built environments are not, but we know natural environments do. They down-regulate our nervous system. So there's, Dr. Jenny Brogdon in WA is talking about a prescription of nature every single day. And she's a GP. She goes, “I want to prescribe you” in her book -- I think it's “Nature's Great Advantage” -- but, “I want to prescribe you a prescription of access to nature every single day”. And that in the van, the living 360 degrees of my life in nature, the level of calm I have felt, I'm like, she's not joking. She's not joking. It's real. It's real. And it's profound. And we need to be thinking about it more and more as we move through the chaos.
Amy (21:50)
Absolutely. And we touched on this just before as we started. If you are traveling in and out of cities or perhaps offices, you know, you're just commuting in, in, out. There's all of the different things you're just seeing on a daily basis or traffic or lights or sounds, all the stimulus that you just go through without really a second thought. But then as you say, you maybe go sit in an office all day and then come home and do it again. There's not that getting into the nature part.
Andrew (22:17)
And on Sunday, I went to nature with two mates and we had a meaningful conversation together about identity and life and navigating the world as it is. And it was a beautiful thing because I could mix both, you know, nature with great conversations coming together. And this might be a good idea for another pack. What if that was a whole pack of yours and it could include nature, right? In the dialogue.
Amy (22:45)
Where you're making me think, could I do this podcast on the move in nature? Because what I have actually been doing is more recently also having like, walking meetings with people. So especially if they're relatively local, could get to the rather than just saying, well, let's meet at this cafe for a coffee and have a seated meeting is like actually let's meet so and so which then we're getting, you know, it's flowing conversation, but it's both getting a bit of exercise at the same time. But yeah, you do, you find the conversation flows in different directions.
Andrew (23:16)
It's a different quality of conversation, isn’t it? Profoundly different. It's because we're having a conversation in the setting closer related to where our neurobiology and chemistry grew up and it evolved. It evolved in natural spaces. This isn't like a new idea. This isn't like woo woo thinking. This is -- no, our neurons and our nervous system grew up in natural spaces.Let's re-dose ourselves with those natural spaces because we know we need it. Yeah.
Amy (23:46)
Absolutely. And we'll touch on before we go, you know, to some of the question cards from our packs, but you do do a lot of work in the corporate and leadership space. And when do you realize what looks like a performance issue is actually a conversation issue?
Andrew (24:02)
Well, 26% of us, only 26% of us are in workplaces that are fit for human consumption. Where the psychosocial hazards or the toxicity of really bad conversations aren't hammering us. That relegates at least 74 % of us are in workplaces which are toxic to human connections.
70% of us getting into the wellbeing space of work where high performance and wellbeing merges together, 70% is the meaningful conversations we have with our direct manager. And so every workplace challenge and issue, at least 70% of it is about better conversations with our leaders, better human relationships with our leaders. And 30% is the pay, the facilities, systems, the processes, all the other stuff. And that is what I take to senior leaders and their teams is like, yeah, you could, you can out-bot the bots. You can try to get ahead through AI and digitification, but your market leadership, your leadership of a highly profitable and high-performing team is actually the dimensionality of your human to human relationships inside of this business. And what are you doing around that?
Yes, tend to AI, get ahead of the curve. Absolutely. Don't ignore it. Because that would be quite foolish. But at least 70% of your time and your energy should be about great conversations with your people. And so the science is really clear. The number one driver of well-being in high performance is care. And Graham Cowan is writing a book, publishing it this year, another great guest for you, called “The Manager That Cares”.
And we know that care is the central driver, but the care is all about meaningful conversations at work. And Gallup, who is the large polling organization in the States, says half an hour often. And often in different settings means different things for different setups. It could be monthly, fortnightly or weekly. And it's half an hour conversations that are deeply meaningful that orientate people to what excellence looks like, frees them up to do their best work by the systems and the information, the processes, deeply cares about the person, but also helps them learn, and stretch. And this is what most workplace performance issues are because of and solved by.
Amy (26:43)
It's wild listening to you talk about this specific point because what you're making me think is we are having as humans to almost re-educate ourselves on just the basics of human interaction because we've had so much technology. Learn the technology, learn the tools.
Andrew (27:00)
It's not even the technological change of the last 15 years. It's how we were brought up by those humans who were well-meaning and caring and very loving. I'm not saying they weren't, but they did not teach us how to have great conversations, don't know about you, but they also didn't teach us how to regulate our emotions and our nervous systems so that we could get out of our own way and have a present conversation with someone. So this is layers of history that have gone in the way of the basics of the human experience. They are basics around breath, connect meaningfully and go and touch grass and see sea today. You know, like they are basic, but we have overcomplicated it so much that we have to kind of delay the complexity to get back to that simple human rhythm.
Amy (27:52)
And what question do you wish more people ask themselves when life does start to feel off?
Andrew (27:58)
Wow. That's such a beautiful question. And like inside of me, I've got like 50 questions wanting to step forward. Maybe what would be a more curious response to this? Because sometimes I think what all of that we've just described, it invites us and has invited us towards certainty, having to know the answer, having to be in a black and white position, a yes or no position.
So I wonder in those circumstances, could the question be to ask, could I get more curious? Could I be more open? Could I be more flexible? Could I be more vulnerable and not knowing? And then what would happen? Then what would take shape next?
Amy (28:44)
I'll be asking you our three questions from our conversation packs in a moment, but the question I'll ask you before we do do them is, has there ever been a conversation that has profoundly shaped you or changed your direction in life?
Andrew (28:58)
Again, I could talk to you about 90. I have the fortune, the good fortune of being able to speak with about probably 30 to 35 people every fortnight to month. Each one of those very generous humans that trust me to have really great conversations with them changes me every single day week. It's such an honor to be a psychotherapist and coach, leadership coach, that they are all very profound. But what's one conversation that I could tell you about that changed things profoundly? I'll never forget sitting with a therapist who for the very first time challenged my dominant logic about what was normal and if normal was really real.
And we were talking about this before we connected and started to hit record that I think we're convinced that there is a normal out there we should subscribe to. And she was the first person to put me in a position to really second guess that. And she kind of helped me fracture it. That there is no such thing as a normal, a homogenous way of living, a dominant logic on what's right and what's wrong.
And it was the most powerful conversation. And I remember where I was sitting. remember the light coming through this window on the left. I remember the floorboards. I remember her face. And I remember that fracture and going, well, what is normal? Which actually changed the course of the trajectory of the next 20 years of my life to really never put my normal onto someone else. Really bad conversations happen in teams, workplaces and marriages.When we expect our normal to be someone else's normal or another way of saying that is my version of this, the thinking, the feeling and the doing is the same as your version of the thinking and the feeling of the doing. And the conflict that that creates actually divides us and separates us. And so that conversation, that profound conversation that questioned normal and what normality was. I think if we were writing the memoir, which we're not, that would be the pivotal point of like, Whoa. And then cracked open there and set me on the course that I clearly am on now, you know, after 20 years from that conversation, I'm here.
Amy (31:29)
Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that fantastic answer. Right, so whistle stop three questions from our packs of cards.
Question number one. If you came with a warning label, what would it say?
Andrew (31:46)
At times brash, confident and clear, but please understand, very soft and very vulnerable on the inside.
Amy (31:57)
Oh, lovely. And more people could do with taking that kind of thinking to when they're working with their colleagues and things, you know.
Andrew (32:04)
The most direct of us, the most demanding of us, the most dictatorial of us are at times the most vulnerable and soft. And I think you're right. When we go and navigate the world and we've got that brashness from others, it often is a lot of insecurity underneath that. That's when it's in its extreme form. Yeah. I'm offering it to you, you know, hopefully more integrated, more present, more aware, of course, by the value of my work, but also how I've moved through the world. But yeah, sometimes that brashness in others is a lot of insecurity and fear.
Amy (32:43)
Yes, I can imagine, definitely.
Question number two. What is one piece of wisdom you want to pass on to future generations?
Andrew (32:51)
Well, I've written a book that I hope to gift to everyone. It's probably got too much in it, right? It's a maximalist... I've gone for depth of framework and change than simplicity. But one of the things in the book I talk about is the manhandling of our nervous systems in how they've been shaped by our past relationships and the world as it is.
but the many layers of systems that have brought us up in the world and continue to shape our lives. The one thing I want them to know is that that calm, connected, curious nervous system is never evaporated in us. It is never extinguished in us. It is forever present, but it can get covered up by parts of our personality that are keeping us safe. And so the one thing I want to hand down to younger generations is just because it feels like it's extinguished, that calm, that peace, it's not.
And it is just being occluded or covered up by impulses in us that are trying to keep us safe in a chaotic world. Trust that it's there and find your way back through small changes often back to that. And it might be you, Amy, standing on the shoreline this afternoon with your feet in the sand just before you jump in the water. And hopefully there's a sharknet there. And it might be those micro moments that happen more times than they don't to get back to that part of our nervous systems that have always been there and will always be there and we can revisit them in these small ways. That is what I would love to pass down.
Amy (34:23)
That is a beautiful reminder and yes, definitely a reminder for me as well.
Question number three, the last one. What is one of your pet hates?
Andrew (34:31)
Oversimplifying how we need to move forward when we think things feel f*cked. There's some theories, well-meaning theories out there right now around how we can live a better life. And they oversimplify a pretty complex experience that feels actually really messy. Though you and I have simplified a few key moves to make.
Finding presence enough in our days to have a face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball conversation is sometimes really hard for people. For some of my clients, finding that extra exhale is as challenging as climbing Everest because of their past experiences. So one of my pet hates is when we oversimplify our complex and very hard experience and we just make it simple and we put pressure on people that it should be easy to make it happen.
Another example of that is with leaders telling them one meaningful conversation often that for some leaders is really hard with the demands and the pressures of their workplace cultures. So oversimplifying things when they are messy and hard and stuck and not giving people just enough complexity so they can orientate themselves and then valuably know how to move forward, you know, with the steps, the moves, the different experiments that they might want to make because there isn't a one size fits all unfortunately.
Amy (35:59)
You literally just read the words out of my head. I was thinking exactly that. You read these lists or these tips and you're just like, yes, sometimes it feels like a bigger to do list to add to your day that you're trying to already do. They're all fantastic answers. So thank you for everything you've shared there and throughout this conversation.
The last question that I ask all of our guests is if you could ask someone a question dead or alive, who would it be and what would you ask them?
Andrew (36:25)
When I first was training to be a psychotherapist and you will, if you ever speak to an emerging therapist, we always talk about Carl Rogers. And if you or your listeners would ever love to hear and see an example of a great conversation, go and Google Carl Rogers in session. He's got actual sessions that he did. And I'm talking about like, I think this is like the 50s, 60s. It was like, a long time ago. I would sit down with Carl, who's one of my conversational heroes and the little guy in me would want to know, am I doing well? Am I doing okay, Carl? Am I making you proud of how to have great conversations? Because he was and is for many emerging therapists, the blueprint, the epitome that Mount Everest of great conversations and with such warmth and such care and I would just love to know if I was doing him proud.
Amy (37:30)
That's brilliant. And I'm sure from everything you have shared in your journey, I'm absolutely sure that you will be doing, you know, him proud.
Andrew (37:39)
I could cry. I could cry at that thought. That's a beautiful thing.
Amy (37:43)
Well, I think equally you've shared some really just great, you know, concepts, insights, information, but, know, practical kind of just thoughts that hopefully our listeners can resonate with and take away. And, you know, I think the journey you are currently on is so inspiring. We're talking about where you're at now and all the positives at it, but equally, I appreciate it. It probably hasn't been a totally easy journey as you have navigated through these changes, you know, as well.
Andrew (38:08)
Yes, it's so true. And that might be in the next book. But for now, go and buy the first one.
Amy (38:14)
Brilliant. And yes, as we wrap up, give a shout out to where people can, you know, find out more about you, check out the book and your other work as well.
Andrew (38:22)
The best place right now to find me as Instagram -- hello_andrewsloan, and no “e” at the end. You'll probably link it into the show. That's the best place to keep up to date with what's going on. There will be van content coming in the months ahead, but yeah, the book is really anywhere. There's a great audio version on audible, which is like having a conversation with me where you don't get a word in.
Amy (38:33)
Yeah, I'll add all the links in.
Andrew (38:50)
And it's just me speaking at you for six hours that has a digital resource connected to it where you can get the tools, the resources that I speak about in the audio book. But of course it's available on paperback, Kindle. If you go and Google “Why Things Feel F*cked”, you'll find everywhere that it lives. But, yeah, come follow me on Instagram, grab the book, join into the conversation and yeah, get ready for the next book that I'm writing now on the road.
Amy (39:15)
Brilliant. Thank you. Well, safe travels and I look forward to seeing where you end up next.
Andrew (39:21)
Thank you, Amy.