Why We Spend Years Chasing Things We Don't Really Want | Alain de Botton

**Alain de Botton** (0:00)
I would say that I have been humbled by life. So I am humbled, I am really humbled, and it's made me very open, very, very open to everything really, and to pain particularly, and pain in others. I'm now sort of up for anything when it comes to to experience. I've been cracked open by the difficulties of making it through.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:25)
Welcome to The Midlife Chrysalis Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a crisis but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.

**Chip Conley** (0:40)
Welcome to The Midlife Chrysalis. This is Chip Conley. And there are certain people in life who you meet and you sort of feel like, I just want to get to know that person a little bit more. Along the way, I've gotten to know Alain de Botton a little bit.
But today in this episode, I got to know him a little bit more.
We're fellow writers. We both have started schools. His is called The School of Life. Mine is MEA. We both are fascinated by both philosophy and wisdom. And we both have had successful careers, but sometimes our romantic life can sometimes feel like we're a 17-year-old still learning. He is a profoundly curious person who loves learning new things. But most importantly, he's an author. His first book, I think his first book, Essays in Love, went on to sell more than 2 million copies.
He also wrote How Proust Can Change Your Life, Status Anxiety, which we talked a little bit about on this episode, The Architecture of Happiness. He's maybe one of the best known British authors. And what I love is he's just profound. It's the accent, but it's also his command of words. He's a spectacular speaker and it's fun to listen to him. So I think you're going to enjoy this episode and maybe we'll actually get him to come and teach a workshop here at MEA in Santa Fe, because he's a big Agnes Martin fan. She lived literally just four miles from our campus.

**Alain de Botton** (2:10)
All right.

**Chip Conley** (2:11)
We'll see at the end when I tell you my three key lessons.
Alain, welcome to The Midlife Chrysalis. Thank you sir. Great to have you here.

**Alain de Botton** (2:18)
Thank you.

**Chip Conley** (2:19)
You're one of those people I really admire. You're like five steps ahead of me. You started The School of Life, you started writing about philosophy, you've written 14 books. I'm just trying to keep up with you on all of these things. Some of your books have specifically been focused on travel, which is the industry I've been in most of my career. We got to know each other a little bit when you came and spoke, Brian Chesky and some of the leadership team at Airbnb. Let's just start with who are you?
For the people on this side of the pond, because you're in the UK, how would you describe yourself at this stage of your life?
You're solidly in midlife. Let's be clear about that.

**Alain de Botton** (2:57)
Absolutely. Well, I'm a writer, a philosopher, a psychotherapist, and somebody who is interested always in trying to name, trace, delineate certain key psychological dynamics related to our fulfillment or unfulfillment. I'm somebody who's interested in relationships, in meaning, purpose, friendship, connection. The whole set of concerns that go under sometimes the question of emotional maturity or indeed immaturity.

**Chip Conley** (3:27)
Which is part of the reason you started The School of Life as well. But your psychological, your therapist background, has that been true for your whole career or was that? Well, that's newer, right?

**Alain de Botton** (3:39)
That's late in life. I trained as a psychotherapist only three years ago.
I mean, I qualified three years ago. So I've been practicing since and it's a new development. I was always very interested in psychotherapy, but post 50, I thought I need a challenge. One of those challenges was to go and train to be a psychotherapist and go on the other side of that divide.

**Chip Conley** (4:00)
You'll see, for those of you who've gone to The School of Life website before, it has evolved over time and it has a much stronger focus on psychology and on therapy. But here's the question of the moment for me. Do we over-psychologize things or over-therapize things? Are we overly therapeutic and under-philosophizing things?
As someone who has had a long history of understanding and writing about philosophy, is there a Venn diagram where there's a beautiful in-between space of philosophy and psychology?

**Alain de Botton** (4:34)