Summary
In this episode, Lynn Beattie and Pete Matthew discuss the question of whether life gets easier as we age. They explore the definitions of aging and what it means for life to get easier. They also touch on the importance of self-regulation, developing frameworks for thinking, and the impact of social media on teenagers. The conversation highlights the subjective nature of life getting easier and the different challenges and opportunities that come with each life stage. The conversation covers various topics related to aging, mental health, technology, and wisdom. Pete Matthew discusses the impact of social media on mental health, particularly among young people, and emphasises the importance of carving out time for doing nothing and allowing the brain to process information. Lynn Beattie shares her perspective as a mother of boys and highlights the challenges of raising children in the digital age. They also discuss the pressure faced by women in their 30s and the liberation that comes with age, as well as the importance of compassion and wisdom in navigating life’s challenges.
keywords
aging, life stages, self-regulation, frameworks for thinking, social media, teenagers, aging, mental health, technology, wisdom, social media, parenting, compassion
Takeaways
- Life getting easier as we age is subjective and depends on individual circumstances and perspectives.
- As we age, we develop tools and coping mechanisms to navigate life’s challenges.
- Self-regulation and frameworks for thinking are important for navigating life’s ups and downs.
- The impact of social media on teenagers can be significant, leading to increased anxiety and pressure.
- Each life stage comes with its own challenges and opportunities. Carve out time for doing nothing and allow the brain to process information.
- Teach children how to use technology responsibly and set boundaries.
- The pressure faced by women in their 30s is different from previous generations, but societal expectations still exist.
- As we age, we tend to give less importance to what others think and focus on living in the present.
- Wisdom can be found in the experiences and perspectives of older generations, but it’s important to weigh and sift the information we receive.
Titles
- Does Life Get Easier as We Age?
- The Impact of Social Media on Teenagers The Value of Wisdom from Older Generations
- Teaching Children Responsible Technology Use
Sound Bites
- “Life getting easier as we age is subjective.”
- “Aging is passing more birthdays and gaining more experience.”
- “Our ability to self-regulate gets easier as we age.”
- “We are not wired to be permanently wired.”
- “Thank God that, you know, I’m bringing up my three boys to appreciate that it’s a load of misogynistic bullshit.”
- “In our 40s, we start to give less of a ****.”
Chapters
00:00Introduction and Shared Connection
03:02Defining Aging and Life Getting Easier
08:05The Importance of Self-Regulation and Frameworks for Thinking
19:17The Impact of Social Media on Teenagers
29:02Navigating Life’s Challenges at Different Life Stages
30:55The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health
34:36Teaching Responsible Technology Use
43:50Navigating the Pressure Faced by Women in Their 30s
49:07Living in the Present and Planning for the Future
52:23Wisdom from Older Generations
Full Transcript
Lynn Beattie (00:00.02)
everybody and welcome back to the latest episode of Mrs. Mummy Penny talks. The big questions. So season six is all about the amazing big questions and I have now got one of my favorite people in the world. I mean, that’s quite extreme to say that, but you are certainly.
Pete Matthew (00:15.321)
Well… It
Lynn Beattie (00:21.052)
my favorite person in the personal finance world. And we’ve got a lot of shared connections, Mr. Pete Matthew. But yeah, we’ve recorded so many podcasts together and YouTube videos, and I love coming on your show. And you’ve been on my show loads of times, so I had to get you back for season six. And thanks for joining me. Us.
Pete Matthew (00:39.109)
No worries, thanks for having me mate. Always good to see you and good to chew the fat together.
Lynn Beattie (00:42.708)
Always, always good, always good. Now, we are both from, well, I’m from Penzance in Cornwall and Pete lives in Penzance in Cornwall. So that’s our shared connection and Pete actually lives about 500 meters away from my sister’s house, which is so weird.
Pete Matthew (00:52.58)
I do.
Pete Matthew (01:00.803)
Yeah, it’s bizarre. The weirdest thing when I was walking the dog had bumped into you. Hi Lynn It’s really odd, rainy morning, wouldn’t it? Never mind.
Lynn Beattie (01:07.836)
Yes!
Lynn Beattie (01:12.112)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went home to Cornwall to see my sister for my birthday weekend. And I don’t know, I think I was going on a mammoth walk. I was walking from Heamoor to Newlyn to Mousehole, back to Newlyn to Penzance, then back to Heamoor, which is probably like, I don’t know, 12, 13 mile walk.
Pete Matthew (01:34.629)
I’m going to say I was, it’s at least 10. Yeah. So probably 12 miles. thought, yeah, decent
Lynn Beattie (01:37.854)
Yes!
Yeah, and I saw you on route and it was just so fortuitous. It was really cool. And we literally like exchanged lives in like 10 minutes. We talked really fast. Yeah, so yeah, Pete’s a very good friend. So yes, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. So we’re going to be talking about, that was such a long intro. We’re going to be talking about the big questions. And I did think, oh, should I ask Pete a financial question? Because obviously you’re a like financial planner and you talk
money for a living but then I threw some other questions at you and that took your fancy so we are talking about does life get easier as we age which I’m so excited about
Pete Matthew (02:24.204)
Such a big question,
Lynn Beattie (02:27.34)
It’s literally like, this podcast season is just gonna run and run and run because there’s so many big questions we can answer and I know so many wise people who have got incredible views on these questions. It’s just gonna go on forever and I absolutely adore it. yeah, thanks.
Pete Matthew (02:47.033)
It’s good. It’s nice to answer different questions, actually, isn’t it? And I’m sure, I’m sure finance will come into it given both of our backgrounds, but yeah, it’s good to chew the fat on something a bit more existential.
Lynn Beattie (02:59.96)
That’s a good word, that’s such a good word. Okay, so tell the watchers and listeners who you are and how you’ve come to this point of life.
Pete Matthew (03:11.653)
Cool. So I’m Pete, married to Jo for 27 years, two grown up girls, 24 and 21. Live in Penzance, as Lynn says, but I’m a Yorkshire native, but met my lovely Cornish maid at university and my fate was sealed. So I knew within a week of meeting her that I’d marry her and that I’d end up in Cornwall. But, my mum is Cornish. Do know that about me Lynn? Yeah. Yeah. My mum was raised in Hayle.
I kind of claim pretty thin Cornish blood, but, uh, born and raised in Yorkshire. am 26 year veteran, uh, financial planner. So I own and run a practice called Jackson’s, which has been in Penzance for a hundred years. I was fortunate to sort of buy into it. Yeah. But I bought into it 18 years ago. So I’ve done 20 years here in total and 18 of those as a director shareholder. We are 21 people. So eight advisors and 13 support and,
Lynn Beattie (03:50.961)
Wow.
Pete Matthew (04:09.893)
privilege to serve many local families for multiple generations and multiple decades. So, and then the other thing that I can, I guess you kind of need to know is that in 2010, I started messing around with a video camera and started making YouTube videos. And I thought, what do I want to talk about? And I thought I’d talk about what I know, which is personal finance. And that project was called meaningful money. And it’s become a bit of a monster, turned into a podcast, which was really the thing that worked best for
Um, but now you have YouTube channel 116 ,000 subscribers. Uh, podcast is approaching 8 million total downloads and it kind of changed my life.
Lynn Beattie (04:50.438)
That is just you gloss over those numbers Pete that is such an achievement like
Pete Matthew (04:55.173)
a lot of people. Yeah, thank you. It is. And it’s I’m having a blast doing it still. I’m nearly 15 years in next April will be 15 years. So I’m still having an absolute riot doing it. And it’s changed my life in many ways. And it’s changed Jackson’s because 85 % of the business now comes from meaningful money. So Jackson’s is the practice. so, yeah, it’s it completely changed my life in ways I never expected to do. I was literally doing it as a hobby to start with. And it’s just become a monster
Lynn Beattie (05:01.664)
Yeah. This is crazy.
Lynn Beattie (05:13.808)
Wow.
Pete Matthew (05:23.877)
I sometimes wonder if I’m actually in control of, but there we go.
Lynn Beattie (05:28.924)
Yeah, I guess there’s an element of we wing things and like there’s always I’ve always got a rough plan. I sort of know what I’m doing for the rest of this year. But the thing is curve balls come in and change what you’re doing. So I love that. Like we literally I mean, you’ve got I suppose you’ve got two hats, haven’t you? Financial planning hat and then your meaningful money hat.
Pete Matthew (05:32.614)
everybody does. Nobody knows what they’re doing.
Pete Matthew (05:42.245)
always.
Lynn Beattie (05:53.584)
I love what we do. Like it’s the best job in the world because literally we’re helping and I know a lot of what you do with Jackson’s as well as meaningful money is all about sort of holistic happiness as well. Like yeah, of course we talk about personal finance, but you also have to talk about mental health and you also have to talk about physical health and we’ll touch on a lot of that because it is very relevant to the subject of aging. But also you’ve got
Pete Matthew (05:55.353)
Yeah, me too.
Lynn Beattie (06:23.43)
book out which is the meaningful money handbook which came out god like 2019 2018 and you’re doing a follow -up aren’t you
Pete Matthew (06:28.601)
Handbook, yep.
Pete Matthew (06:32.933)
September 2018. Yeah, amazingly.
Pete Matthew (06:39.717)
Yeah, the next one’s out will be next spring 2025. So basically the first book was everything you need to know and do about personal finance up until retirement. So the logical one was to kind of close the circle really in the next one is about the sort of run up and the transition into retirement and then all the later life stuff we have to do as well. So yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about getting older and you know, the financial implications of that, but also the physical and emotional, spiritual elements of it as well. Funny, it just as you get older, you think about stuff more don’t you?
So, quite pertinent.
Lynn Beattie (07:10.748)
Well, yeah, yeah. So, right, the big question is, does life get easier as we age? So firstly, I’d like us to define what aging is, number one, and then can we define what getting easier means? Because there’s different definitions to both of them.
Pete Matthew (07:34.501)
course. Yeah, Simon obviously, it’s simply his form. Getting older simply just means passing more birthdays, doesn’t it? And, you know, when people ask how old we are, we get more and more offended by it, perhaps. But, you know, just that sort of, it’s just a number. But of course, that’s not the case. Because every year that goes by, we’re a year more experienced, have a perhaps a wider understanding of the world and how it works.
while at the same time, hopefully anyway, we also have an increasing understand of how little we know. Certainly that’s the case for me. You think you have some things kind of sorted out in your mind and then you realize actually it’s a huge world and a very complicated world. you know, there’s actually much, much more that we don’t know than what we do. So, so aging is a number, but the whole other stuff comes with
Lynn Beattie (08:11.346)
Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Matthew (08:32.933)
I think in terms of life getting easier, that’s very subjective. But there’s also, so it’s our perception of whether life is easier or not. So when I got to young adult children, 24 and 21, right, both girls, and I perceive that in many ways life is harder for them than it is for me now. Obviously they…
Lynn Beattie (08:38.483)
Yeah.
Lynn Beattie (08:45.02)
Yes.
Lynn Beattie (09:01.906)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (09:03.449)
don’t have the financial means that I do, because if they did, they wouldn’t be asking me to help them out so much. But you know, that’s what you do, isn’t it? I think there is more pressure on them, more social pressure on them than there is for me now, or there was for me when I was their age. So I think the world is changing in that regard. I also think there’s more opportunities for them.
now than there was for us putting us in roughly the same bracket there then. You know, when we were in our early 20s. So I think for me now, I feel life is a lot easier. You know, my girls will say something like, you know, when I spent the morning cleaning out the gutters on my house, they’ll say, God, is that what adulting is like? You know, you get up on a Saturday and you do like a really mundane, you
Lynn Beattie (09:38.012)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (09:59.717)
work around job around the house, whereas they’re off, you know, having brunch and doing all the things that you can do when you’ve got absolutely no responsibilities. And I say, yeah, that is what adulting is like, but actually it’s great. And I am happier now, I think than I’ve ever been. Which is so for me, certainly life is easier. I have more means now. I totally understand. That’s not the case for everybody. I’m 49, by the
Lynn Beattie (10:04.947)
Yeah.
You
Lynn Beattie (10:17.682)
Right, yeah.
Pete Matthew (10:27.685)
I know I look about 10 years older, but I’m still the right side of 50 for about another six months. So, you know, I think life is, is easier for me. have greater means I am more widely read than I’ve ever been. Cause I’ve read more books at this point than I had any previous. And that gives me, think a worldview, which is more chill, actually more tolerant, less dogmatic, more open.
Lynn Beattie (10:28.424)
Hmm.
Lynn Beattie (10:43.731)
Yeah.
Lynn Beattie (10:51.432)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (10:57.539)
And I think a lot of these things give me the perception that life is easier. Easier also is a relative term. That’s not to say it’s easy, but perhaps easier than it was. Your question is, does life get easier as we age? The answer is going to be yes and no. I think it is in a lot of ways and in other ways it’s harder. I know it’s a lot harder for me to like get up after squatting down to put the lead on the dog. So in that way.
It’s not so easy as it used to be, right? So I think in many ways it’s easier and a lot of ways it’s not as well.
Lynn Beattie (11:33.532)
Yeah, well I think that’s a really valid point because so I put the question out to my Instagram community and one of my friends Kate who I’m going on holiday with in like four days, she came back and said that
She challenged back, like, what does easier actually mean? Because when you’re older, you, you most, a lot of these comments were saying are sort of generalised, but when you’re older, you have a bit more control over the pace of your life.
As you say, you understand a lot more about life. So yes, it becomes easier, but then you have this added layer of particular. So I’m 47 and they’re a couple of years younger than you and my kids are 16, 14 and 11. So considerably younger than yours. And when you look at the complexity of life for me in my forties as a single mom with three testosterone filled boys,
it’s probably my most complicated, challenging decade but what goes with that is I mean control okay the only thing you can ever control is your
Lynn Beattie (13:01.012)
Control is a really difficult concept actually because the only actual thing you can control is the drink, the water you drink or the food you consume or the exercise you choose to do. You can’t control your thoughts. Well, with a… Yeah, it’s…
Pete Matthew (13:15.919)
to a point maybe, but no, that’s a lot harder than controlling your physical self.
Lynn Beattie (13:21.66)
It’s really hard and you certainly cannot control any other people because you can barely control yourself. So I’m not sure that when my friend says that it comes with more control, I’m not sure that that’s relative. I’m not sure that’s really true, but that’s just my view.
Pete Matthew (13:26.457)
Now, a new one
Pete Matthew (13:37.231)
I think, I mean, this is sort of, it’s like the stoic message, isn’t it? So I’ve read a lot of stoic stuff in the last few years as well, which has definitely shaped my kind of worldview. And essentially,
Lynn Beattie (13:47.196)
Yeah. What does, can you just explain what stoic actually means?
Pete Matthew (13:52.323)
Yeah, so stoic is a school of philosophy. You know, ancient Greek philosophy is really where it started. Various sort of proponents of it, perhaps the most famous is Marcus Aurelius, was emperor, Roman emperor, but who was unbelievably self aware for somebody in basically the most powerful position in the world, and very humble, self -effacing.
aware of his own failures or tendencies towards
Yeah, failings. so self -awareness, I think, is a superpower. And that’s something that, generally speaking, as a species, we’re not very good at. But if you want to kind of distill the story philosophy, it’s basically there’s a whole ton of stuff you can’t control. Most things, 99 .9 % of things that happen to you that go on in the world, you can’t control. But the one thing you can control is your response to them. It’s not easy, mind. So it’s not to say that…
Lynn Beattie (14:53.111)
Yeah…
Pete Matthew (14:54.969)
You know, it’s a walk in the park to do that. But for instance, you know, if, God forbid, I am diagnosed with something hideous tomorrow, you know, my response can be, you know, right, that’s it, I’m done, I’m giving up. you know, woe is me. The world has dealt me a rough hand and all that sort of stuff. Or I can say, well, you know, I have no guaranteed right to a healthy future. You know, the universe is full of random
And turns out this is the hand I’ve been dealt. And so I have to deal with it. That’s not to say that, you know, I sort of swan through life with a hideous cancer diagnosis or whatever, just putting on a brave face, but it’s how I choose to respond to anything. that, I mean, you know, it’s up in like Barnsley last couple of days, you know, this family’s essentially been wiped out, mom and dad and two daughters, and there’s another daughter who wasn’t killed. I mean, that’s
unthinkable tragedy that the universe has dealt to this 11 year old girl who’s left now without mom and dad and without her two sisters. Now she has no way of kind of computing that 11 years old, but you know, for everything like that, there’s somebody else who gets, you know, who’s born into a billionaire family and never wants for anything and lives to 90 with really good health. So the universe is random and a lot of the time it’s a bit crap, but the stoic thing
Lynn Beattie (16:00.345)
my gosh.
Lynn Beattie (16:15.43)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (16:23.247)
how we will respond to it. And I think my kind of definition of trying to build the best self as I get older is being careful about how I respond to stuff, being really careful about how I judge others and really trying not to judge others as difficult as that is at times. so, yeah, control I think is important, but really the only thing we can control is ourself, but it’s really ****** difficult to do
Lynn Beattie (16:51.026)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, gosh, that’s, that’s quite a to think about in that discussion. my God. The thought that came to me, because I was, so my youngest,
Pete Matthew (16:56.037)
Where do you want to go from that Lin?
Lynn Beattie (17:04.404)
is 11 and he finishes primary school today. So after I speak to you, I’m going to go down to the school where they have this massive water fight and there’s an ice cream van with free ice cream. It’s a tradition. so I was and it was this prom yesterday. So I was again down at the school and I was talking to one of my like favorite teachers who’s the like school counselor basically. And I was telling her about my
Pete Matthew (17:08.057)
Wow, big day.
Pete Matthew (17:15.497)
Awesome.
Lynn Beattie (17:34.41)
because there’s been, I mean I’ll tell you about it offline, but there’s been a really big change with my children where I’ve got all my boys, all three of my boys back with me all the time now and it’s quite, you know what’s been happening the last five years so to get that back is ******* massive.
Pete Matthew (17:57.221)
Huge. Yeah.
Lynn Beattie (17:59.856)
And so yeah, I was talking to this teacher about what happened and she was so, happy. And I was talking about my anger related to the situation because I’m just really angry
what’s happened the last five years. And she was like, well, this is what I say to the kids. So we’ve got words that we can say out loud, and then we’ve got words that we keep inside and we call them. She had a phrase for it, but, and that’s the language they use with primary school kids. And I was like, ****** hell, that’s so right. She’s like, those angry words, you just can’t let them out when you’re in a meeting with.
your ex or whatever. So it’s the same kind of thing, isn’t it? Your reaction.
Pete Matthew (18:49.207)
You mentioned it is. It is. And you said, you you live in a house with three testosterone fuel boys. And I mean, that’s absolutely right. I mean, I live in a house filled with estrogen, right? Even my, even my two dogs are girls. So, you know, I, I think one of the things about getting older is it’s, it’s definitely easier, I think, to self -regulate, you know, the hormones eventually settle down, don’t they? So when we’re in our teens and perhaps early twenties,
Lynn Beattie (19:00.445)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (19:16.857)
You know, the chemical mix washing around our veins is potent to say the least, and is inevitably going to impact the way we respond to things. I see that in my girls now, very quick to respond, very visceral in the way that they might respond to something that offends them or brings them joy or whatever. The response is usually very quick and very unguarded. And that’s fine for the most part. You know, I mean, we’re living in civilized society, so sometimes we have to kind
Lynn Beattie (19:30.684)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (19:46.981)
guard our responses, but I think that gets easier. And I speak as somebody with a hormone deficiency, right, which is medicated. But it is unbelievable how much the chemicals in our body affect our responses to things. I this is now known, right? But we’re essentially in an unbelievably finely balanced chemical concoction. And if anything goes off, well, that’s where depression and anxiety and so many things come off
Lynn Beattie (20:02.006)
my god, yeah.
Pete Matthew (20:16.997)
I think part of getting older is understanding that more and rather than saying, well, that person just needs to step out of it because they’re behaving badly. So maybe there’s a whole lot of **** going on and maybe that there is, you know, they need some medicinal help or some counseling or whatever and just actually caring and thinking, well, look, life is hard. And so maybe we just need to sort of support each other in however ways we do
Lynn Beattie (20:26.382)
Pete Matthew (20:45.945)
I think the ability to self -regulate gets easier. It’s never easy.
Lynn Beattie (20:51.846)
No, and as we age as well, we build a toolkit, don’t we, of healthy coping mechanisms. So I talk a lot, lot, lot about unhealthy and healthy coping mechanisms, because I’ve got both. But as I think, so I saw you in March and
After March, I had a massive issue with my hormones and where my estrogen just massively crashed.
And then I got, as you allude to, like insomnia, and then that leads to anxiety and depression and paranoia and anger and all kinds of stuff. it’s been a journey from like May when I was really rock bottom, June, I did a lot of self care and tried to recover and the estrogen, you know, started to pump estrogen into my body from May. And now I feel like I’ve really literally feel balanced
from the anger but you know what anger’s an emotion like love, like happiness, like sadness so it’s fine to feel it it’s just the responses but I’m so I’m in therapy at the moment and I’ve always been in therapy my entire life like I ain’t scared to say that and yeah my therapist now who’s a lady I’ve had for like four years and I dip in and out of it I saw her yesterday and
Pete Matthew (22:15.812)
I know.
Lynn Beattie (22:26.934)
She, every time I talked to her, she gives me like a couple new tools. So one of the recent ones she taught me was, and I’ve been taught it before, but it’s that 7 -11 breathing. So when you’re feeling that anger and the anxiety that goes with the anger and the uncontrolled, you know, the fight, flight, thorn, freeze response, which is your sort of frontal cortex of your brain kicking into action and just goes, fight!
run away or freeze. It’s like caveman days. Then, so yeah, you do seven, count seven in and then count to 11 out and you repeat that three times. And she’s like, by the end of that cycle, your anger and your anxiety will be dispelled. And it’s so simple, but it’s really effective.
Pete Matthew (22:54.717)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (23:16.397)
Yeah. Even that’s probably, you know, regulating oxygen and sort of carbon dioxide, nitrogen levels, all that sort of stuff. It’s bound to have a chemical, you know, just regulating our breathing. So, you know, I think our ability to, yeah, as you say, we have more tools and stuff to kind of avoid the extremes. I subject to the chemicals being right, because I mean, I take two injections every morning as well for my own sort of
Lynn Beattie (23:27.132)
Yes.
Pete Matthew (23:44.217)
chemical imbalances and like you use the word balance and you feel it’s like things are now as they should be. So notwithstanding any medical reasons why things might be off the scale. Yeah, you’re right. We definitely build up tools to help cope and kind of frameworks, I think as well to how we see the world and see other people and how we deal with them. I mean, I was raised in evangelical Christian circles.
Lynn Beattie (23:50.813)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (24:11.811)
And so that was the framework by which I kind of viewed the world for a lot of years. Now much more rounded, I’d like to think. I kind of hold that stuff fairly lightly these days and take the best stuff from it and ignore an awful lot of the bigoted judgmental crap. And, you know, I’ve in my own way been quite sort of angry
Lynn Beattie (24:27.059)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (24:38.127)
how that impacted decisions I made. You know, we didn’t move to Cornwall for five years because, you know, the pastor of the church didn’t think it was a good idea as if he had any right to dictate what I did with my life. But back then that was a big deal for me, right? So, you know, I’ve had to kind of deal with that and so has Joe. And so your frameworks change as well, the tools you have to cope in the moment, but also your frameworks, the way you think about things. And I think actually that’s one of the highest…
Lynn Beattie (24:41.031)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (25:06.629)
callings we can do is to kind of proactively develop our thought processes. I really wish we taught this to kids in school, sort of frameworks for thinking, you know, rather than being rather than telling them what to think and giving them, you know, just this is how you should think this is how you should do A, B and C. That’s the giving them frameworks for thinking.
Lynn Beattie (25:18.684)
god, yeah.
Pete Matthew (25:35.365)
Absolutely brilliant book, the way, two great books on this one is Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish. Shane is the mind behind Farnham Street, which is Fs .blog, which is my favorite site on the internet just for people who want to think clearly. And the book is called Clear Thinking. It’s absolutely brilliant. The other one is called Loser Think by Scott Adams, who created the Dilbert comic comics. But he’s a political commentator in the US as well, but also
Lynn Beattie (25:58.661)
yeah, yeah, yeah.
Pete Matthew (26:03.445)
the whole concept of thinking like a loser and trying to avoid that and having so those are just brilliant, brilliant books for thinking intelligently, thinking like a proper human and elevating ourselves above kind of visceral fight or flight responses. You can never completely overcome that. There’s no doubt about that. We are animals ultimately, but we are elevated higher animals. And we, think pursuing sharper thinking.
Lynn Beattie (26:08.361)
interesting.
Lynn Beattie (26:22.312)
Yeah. No.
Pete Matthew (26:33.175)
as well as control of our emotions and framework for this stuff is a really high calling. It’s like I consider it one of the most important things that I do trying to expand my worldview and to do so proactively and intentionally.
Lynn Beattie (26:49.308)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, that’s amazing. Right. So can we talk about life stages? Because you sort of touched on it with your daughters as well. But I think we’ll take it back to my kids as well. So if we if we sort of go through it decade by decade, and obviously there’s more decades, there’s some decades we’re going to focus a little bit more on, which is probably like 40s. But also, I want to touch on we’re just we’re still in our 40s. are. But also the
Pete Matthew (27:13.861)
What’s
Pete Matthew (27:19.054)
Yeah.
Lynn Beattie (27:21.784)
between men and women because I think you will be able to give because I’m a feminist and I’m going to be very passionate about you know sticking up for gender equality but it’ll be interesting to get your point of view as well as a a a balancer. yeah knowing what I know about what my boys go through at school I would say it’s ******* hard to be a teenager at the moment.
And so I grew up where you live and things are different in Cornwall. They really are. It’s a more chilled out place. It’s beautiful. Like, okay, everyone’s, there’s no money down there. It’s the poorest county in England, isn’t it? Probably the UK.
Pete Matthew (27:59.653)
Yeah, no doubt.
Pete Matthew (28:06.041)
No.
Pete Matthew (28:11.371)
It’s certainly yeah, mean, Penwith where you know, you were born, which is basically the far west of the county. I think the last time I saw it was the fourth poorest district in the country, which you wouldn’t really think, but it is. Part of that’s the disparity between earnings and house prices and sort of seasonality of earnings and stuff like
Lynn Beattie (28:21.212)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and…
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, very much so. But I was privileged when I grew up because like, you know, my dad was in the army and then the MOD. So he earned a good salary because he was in public service his entire life and, you know, worked at Cold Rose, the RAF base until he was 60. But it’s, yeah, so I think teenage life for me was quite easy. And then of course, my mum died when I was 16 and then it all completely went to ****. But I didn’t
social media and it almost like it’s the same as people in their 20s as well like the pressures my god the pressures of social media and I I would my god just imagine like the parties we used to go to as like teenagers and if that got onto social media which it does now
Pete Matthew (29:12.236)
It’s insane. Yeah. And
Pete Matthew (29:20.805)
Can you imagine? Well, it does now. And part of the problem is that you can never get away from it. So I mean, when you and I were at school or a college, you you left all your mates at like 3 .15 and you didn’t see them again until nine o ‘clock the following morning. And you basically had some peace and quiet in the afternoon, evening, you know, obviously depending on what your home life was like, but it, you know, home, if it’s a refuge, you know, that’s, that’s what we always tried to provide for our girls, but very difficult when, know, while you’re walking home from school, there’s this barrage of messages
You can never really get away from it. It’s very well documented. Obviously the impact of sort of being always on this great book called the digital minimalism by Cal Newport. And he tells a story in there about, you know, in American universities, they have counselors, they call them. So basically the people responsible for looking after the mental health of the students. And there was like this real angst going on because, you know, there’s always, there was always kind of a baseline level
anxiety, depression, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts and stuff, always kind of, you know, cause we’re just humans, right? So, and then suddenly it didn’t just sort of gradually rise literally from one year to the next, there was this huge increase and it stayed that high, right? And there was, you know, they were having symposiums and like trying to sort of decide why is this the case? Why is it of all these symptoms suddenly gone through the roof, vastly more anxiety, hugely more eating disorders. And somebody posited that actually
The kids that were then at university, these were the kids who were like 13 when the iPhone was announced. And, you know, that was 2007. And of course, couple of years after that, these teenagers are now having iPhones. They’re on Facebook. They’re on, obviously, by then, Snapchat and all the others. it, I mean, it’s a direct correlation between the all -consuming prevalence of these devices and…
Lynn Beattie (30:53.348)
Jesus Christ.
Pete Matthew (31:14.393)
the apps, know, the social media platforms and this rapid decline in mental health. And the other thing that’s in that book actually is that there is a portion of the brain called the default network, which basically lights up when we’re doing nothing else. And they put it down to the fact that we, you know, we kind of have to compute our place in the world. So when we spend all day interacting, and if we take this back to sort of prehistoric terms, you know, we spend our days interacting with folks in the cave.
And we go out and we do our hunting or whatever, and we, we have a fight with somebody or an argument with a, with a spouse or whatever. then things quiet and down and our subconscious brain kind of processes that. But there’s been studies done about if you don’t allow that default network to light up, in other words, if you are always continually stimulated, then your ability to process the world is just massively compromised.
Lynn Beattie (31:44.552)
Yep. Yep.
Pete Matthew (32:12.227)
And so this whole piece in this book says that it kind of culminates with this line. says, we are not wired to be permanently wired. In other words, we must carve out time to essentially do nothing, to have no inputs, to just allow the default network of our brain to process what is an increasingly complicated world. And our kids just don’t know how to do
Lynn Beattie (32:12.486)
Wow.
Pete Matthew (32:40.473)
and they don’t get time. mean, if they’re on their phones in bed, literally the second they wake up in the morning till the second they go to sleep, it’s properly unhealthy for our psychology. So, you we got to do something about it. I don’t actually blame the device and I do blame a little bit the social media platforms because they are essentially designed to keep us watching. But I think we need to teach our kids how to use them, but not in a kind of judgy way.
Lynn Beattie (32:54.334)
gods.
Pete Matthew (33:10.757)
It’s hard though. And I think it’s harder. you know, I’m kind of eight to 10 years past this, you know, with the girls at 24 and 21. Um, but yeah, do you know, I mean, you said you’re a feminist Lynne, I am too, I’m a, you know, a father to two girls and I see the, um, headwinds that they face compared to, you know, the, the sort of Confederates, but,
Lynn Beattie (33:33.993)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (33:39.981)
I think it’s getting better, but we’ve got a long way to go. And I think there’s a lot of pressure on women. Jesus.
Lynn Beattie (33:47.494)
It’s really interesting that you are a dad of girls and I’m a mum of boys. So we can literally see the whole picture. what I see, because my boys share everything with me, we’ve got a really open, honest relationship. We talk about emotions, we talk about sex, we talk about all of it.
What they are bombarded with on social media is just atrocious. Like the reform Faraj stuff they saw on TikTok before the election was disgusting. The Andrew Tate stuff that they are constantly bombarded with, the Ed Matthews stuff is absolutely shocking. And…
Pete Matthew (34:29.029)
Terrific.
Lynn Beattie (34:34.782)
Thank God that, you know, I’m bringing up my three boys to appreciate that it’s a load of misogynistic bullshit, but we’re in the minority understanding technology and understanding our children’s technology. Most parents, they don’t give a ****. It’s not that they don’t give a ****. No, there is a huge proportion of people that really don’t care and they let their kids do whatever.
Pete Matthew (34:41.551)
Yeah
Pete Matthew (34:52.932)
No, no.
Lynn Beattie (35:00.692)
Yeah, have to like the boys, so the boys all go to the same school from September and they’ve got this like phone vaults device thing that attaches to your phone. So you can’t actually it blocks your phone for the whole day. So the kids phones will be blocked from you know, 830 until 330, which I think is a brilliant idea.
Pete Matthew (35:15.717)
Nice.
Pete Matthew (35:21.859)
Yeah, it is. Yeah. I mean, you know, we had a period where, you know, we all put our phones down at eight o ‘clock in the evening, including me and Joe. And it’s like, no, and we play game or do something together or just read, or, know, we might be in separate rooms, but we weren’t on our phones. And the girls now kind of think back to that quite fondly because it kind of forced them. I just said to them, look, blame your horrible dad.
Lynn Beattie (35:37.254)
Yeah
Lynn Beattie (35:41.652)
That’s really good.
Pete Matthew (35:50.477)
If you may say, why aren’t you responding? Hey, Chloe, say my dad’s a twine and he won’t let me have my phone. I don’t care. I don’t care what your friends think of me. So, you know, which we’ll probably get on to giving less of a **** about things as you get older. But, you know, but I’m saying, giving you the space, I’m giving you the sort of downtime. and just the space just to be and take a breather before you face, face the world tomorrow. You know, it’s important. think we need to do that. I’m worried that there’s a whole generation.
Lynn Beattie (36:13.362)
Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Matthew (36:18.553)
who will kind of have to learn this stuff themselves and either they will or they won’t. They’ll either become hand -rotates or they’ll realize just what a toxic influence that is. And then hopefully the generation coming, our kids’ will hopefully be, because they are raised by digital natives, hopefully they’ll be better equipped. But I worry about our kids’ about the damage that’s being done. Yeah.
Lynn Beattie (36:39.45)
Yeah,
Lynn Beattie (36:48.34)
Yeah, and when you look at the level of mental health illness in secondary schools at the moment, as a result of lockdown and the digital impact as well, I don’t know the exact stat and I only know it for my local schools, but we’re talking about 50 % of kids have got mental health issues. And we’re talking about eating disorders, OCD, anxiety, agoraphobia, depression.
you know, this is not little stuff. This is big, big stuff that we, as people in our 40s, we do have it easier because we are intelligent and we understand what those mental health illnesses are. And we know that you need to go see a therapist if you can afford it, another privileged thing, or you sit on a waiting list for a year, or you take some medication or whatever, but you don’t know that kind of stuff when
Pete Matthew (37:19.514)
No.
Pete Matthew (37:35.973)
Yeah.
Lynn Beattie (37:46.422)
you’re a teenager. It’s just like, yeah. And to be honest, don’t even, you don’t really know it in your twenties either. I mean, I suppose I do, I’ve got a lot of friends in their twenties and I’ve interviewed a few for earlier episodes of the podcast. So I interviewed like Kia Commodore and Ola, I can’t say her surname, that’s so embarrassing, but it’s, very long and she’s, Ola is all things money. And
Pete Matthew (37:48.043)
No, it’s all consuming.
Lynn Beattie (38:13.972)
they are like 25, 26 women and they’re black women. So that adds another dimension because they’ve got the racial tension and racism issues in this country to deal with. but it’s just such pressure on, similarly, I felt immense pressure when I was in my mid to late twenties to get married and have kids. These girls still feel that pressure because, but the pressure comes from other places. So the
Pete Matthew (38:18.543)
Yeah, of course.
Pete Matthew (38:37.934)
Ha, yeah.
Wow.
Lynn Beattie (38:44.079)
for me to be like that was just societal pressure. I guess it’s the same for them, it’s just it comes from social media.
Pete Matthew (38:53.1)
Yeah, I mean, it’s I quite often say to my girls that like, it’s quite interesting is that, know, girl, boyfriends now come on the scene, right. And, you know, they might sort of like, know, he hasn’t done this or he hasn’t done that. And I just say like, boys, I didn’t I was consider myself an adult until I was 30, at least. Right. So I’m kind of somewhat sympathetic to these lads who are trying to navigate their way through relationships and stuff.
It’s like I was an idiot for the first five years of my marriage. you know, just kind of go with it and and understand that boys are all everybody’s kind of a work in progress, but it really takes until your 30s. I think before you’ve got enough miles under the tires really to which I hope people don’t feel patronized by that. But being a long way the other side of that, I can look back and see that that was the case for me. I thought I was smart in my 20s and in some ways I was.
Lynn Beattie (39:44.22)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (39:49.285)
but experience is important. it’s so easy when you’re younger and I did it myself, right. To kind of despise the older generation. So, yeah, they don’t really know what we’re talking about. They, you know, their experience of the world, it doesn’t really apply now. I think to an extent that’s true, but human beings, human nature doesn’t really change. I think that’s kind of hardwired. So despite the external pressures changing, I think we.
We are the same creatures underneath and we’re just continually having to evolve how we react to a messed up world really in a changing world. So I think it really takes until your thirties until there’s enough of a kind of context. You know, by then you’ve met some people
Lynn Beattie (40:23.997)
Yeah.
Lynn Beattie (40:36.434)
Yeah, but then, but then, like, I mean, the same for you as me, like, I, my 30s were a blur because I was pregnant, or I was breastfeeding, or I had like little kids. Like, for my entire decade, and I could not function because I was working full time as well as bringing up these three babies. I do not know how on earth I did it.
Pete Matthew (40:47.109)
Young kids, yeah.
Pete Matthew (41:04.727)
No, I don’t know. No.
Lynn Beattie (41:06.928)
And this is where I’ll get onto the sort of debate between men and women. It’s still the case, and this is not going to change, that women do the lion’s share of the caring responsibilities. that for, I mean, obviously we’ve got to carry the babies, which is very difficult being pregnant, can I just say. Some people love it, I don’t understand those people. And then you’ve got the sleepless nights and these babies attached to your boobs if you
breastfeed or constant washing of bottles if you bottle feed and it’s just and like if you are breastfeeding that you know that the dad can’t do that. mean they can change nappies but you’re not you haven’t got a baby attached to your boob for an hour at a time and it’s just it’s just constant so I pretty much spent my 30s as a zombie.
Pete Matthew (41:52.547)
No, it’s true.
Pete Matthew (42:01.955)
Yeah. I’d say that’s fairly normal. mean, obviously I can’t possibly speak to the, experience of being a mom. and we were very fortunate in that we were, we made a conscious decision. The Joe didn’t work throughout. was a couple of reasons for that. First, it was an intentional decision. Secondly, I she was a nurse and a very, very capable nurse in pediatric intensive care, but she also suffered her own mental health issues. So she really struggled with anxiety for a long time.
and essentially got to the point where she couldn’t work. And in the end, we just said, look, fortunately, was earning, you I was hard, mind, you we didn’t have all of these for most of our thirties. And because we just couldn’t afford to do it and raise two kids, you know, and with a huge mortgage when we moved to Cornwall. So, but we were fortunate. We could have had all those things had Joe been able to work or had we decided that, you know, she wanted to work.
Lynn Beattie (42:42.354)
Yeah.
Lynn Beattie (42:50.003)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (42:59.269)
But yeah, I the 30s are hard. If you’ve got kids, man, the 30s are hard. Of more and more people are putting that back to their late 30s. And so the sort of, when your kids are five to 15, you’re in your, well in your 40s, if not into your 50s. So that’s changing as well. Which I think is an interesting dynamic. I was a child bride mine, but I’d have my kids by 28, so.
Lynn Beattie (43:12.732)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lynn Beattie (43:18.484)
Well, yeah, my best friend Becky from Penzance as well. She’s to she’s my age, 47, and she’s got like a seven and a five year old. So she’s 10 years behind me in effect. And so her 40s are the equivalent of my 30s. And it is really hard. Just, you know. Exactly, exactly. But what I will get on to is in our 40s.
Pete Matthew (43:34.137)
Yeah, it must be hard. You have a lot less energy in your 40s.
Lynn Beattie (43:48.572)
you do start to give less of a ****. You really do?
Pete Matthew (43:52.069)
Yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it? I can’t wonder why, but that’s definitely true for me. You just stop caring what people think.
Lynn Beattie (44:03.695)
No, I literally do not care what people think.
Pete Matthew (44:06.757)
It’s incredibly liberating though, isn’t
Lynn Beattie (44:10.478)
my God, it’s amazing. And the point when you get to, there’s a lot of men and women will be nodding their heads with this, but the point when you get to where you’re like, you can always look at your body and think, well, it is what it is. So it’s got me to this point in life. So I’m gonna love it. That is mind blowing when you can finally accept your body.
Pete Matthew (44:29.156)
There it is.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely is. It’s liberating. They just… I don’t know why that is, whether it’s just you kind of really, like you say, you’re 40 odd years in, you’re pretty secure in who you are, hopefully. And, you know, obviously there’s generalizations. A lot of people are not secure in who they are. But I think certainly for me, it’s like, okay. But again, I was kind of proactive about…
Lynn Beattie (44:49.008)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (45:00.689)
joining the dots in reverse, you think, yeah, okay, you know, even though I have this quite sort of strongly religious background, in many ways, tried to take the good stuff from that. Then in many ways, that’s made me who I am. And so I shouldn’t kind of despise that I should be grateful for it. And once you’re secure in who you are, actually think what anybody else think doesn’t matter. But then also, I think you come to the realization that actually I spend very little time thinking about other people.
So probably that’s the case that people not really thinking about me at all. They actually don’t care. They’re too concerned about themselves. And you think, actually, okay, so why have I spent like the last 25 years worrying about what people think about me when actually they’re not thinking about me at all? It’s weird, it?
Lynn Beattie (45:47.432)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And
But then medical stuff starts to kick in and that does make things harder as we get older. So we’ve both got hormonal issues, which mess everything up. And the care systems, the NHS is not set up to support people. It doesn’t have enough knowledge. All of my knowledge about perimenopause is stuff I’ve learned and, know, Piaf has spoken to it. Yeah, probably the same for you. And then…
Pete Matthew (46:15.055)
So yeah.
Lynn Beattie (46:21.458)
And then like, you know, cancer might come along or heart disease or Alzheimer’s or muscle degenerative diseases. And you know, there’s just, there’s a lot and I spend a proportionate amount of time worrying about stuff. So that’s why I’m, I am the healthiest probably I’ve ever been in my life and the fittest I’ve ever been in my life because like,
Pete Matthew (46:32.591)
Yeah, anything.
Lynn Beattie (46:48.916)
My mum died when she was 58 of a heart attack. Like, I am not, I am not letting that happen. I am absolutely not. And you know, because you know my sister, she had a heart attack when she was like 64. So, and my brothers had a heart attack and my dad died of a heart attack. So everyone, we don’t have cancer, but we have heart attacks, yay.
Pete Matthew (46:50.969)
Yeah, exactly. It focuses the mind.
No.
Pete Matthew (47:10.979)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. You’ve got to do your bit. Yeah. And the medical thing is definitely a factor. I don’t know about you, Lynn, but you know, it’s a sort of approach my fifties and I kind of get to live vicariously through the lives of my clients. So, mean, I’ve helped countless clients walk through their fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties over the decades that I’ve been doing my job. And kind of the overriding theme is I spend most of my life trying
Lynn Beattie (47:28.657)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (47:41.183)
make my clients spend more money and live more for today, which might seem counterintuitive, bear in mind that I’m a financial planner. So I’m trying to help people plan financially for the long term, but I’m absolutely unequivocal on the podcast, the YouTube channel. If it comes to a choice as to whether I spend money now or one day or in the future, the answer is always to spend it now because life is short. Tomorrow is not promised to us. And I think as I get older, you know, into fifties and sixties, that is more sort of, actually
Lynn Beattie (47:44.916)
You
Lynn Beattie (48:03.057)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (48:11.809)
I’m not immortal. You know, the medical stuff kind of reinforces that it’s kind of downhill from here. You don’t want to be too negative, but physically it certainly is. That’s just entropy. But if we can, you know, we get one life, depending on your worldview, but certainly that’s my mind. We get one life and so we should live it well. That’s not to say we throw all sort
Lynn Beattie (48:14.109)
No.
Lynn Beattie (48:35.688)
Mmm.
Pete Matthew (48:37.999)
caution to the wind and just say, well, tomorrow, look after itself. I might be dead tomorrow. I think that’s a very immature worldview. We need to balance today and one day, but if we have to tip it one way or the others, I would always say, look, you might not be here tomorrow. And so that means I pay heavily into my pensions. I’m overpaying my mortgage and it’s nearly gone. But also I’m like, actually, I’m going to stay in a nice hotel when I go on holiday.
I’ve got, I’m fortunate, I’ve got that option, right? And I’m gonna pay for private medical because it makes me feel better. I’m fortunate I can do that. But I just think man, I will spend money on today and I will live for today and encourage my kids to do that as well while also making sure tomorrow is sorted if I
Lynn Beattie (49:06.759)
my god yeah.
Lynn Beattie (49:27.676)
Yeah, and that’s coming from a financial planner. that’s, that’s really, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Pete Matthew (49:31.909)
It’s just obvious to me though, that, you know, I mean, too many financial advisors that are obsessed on getting people to invest for the future are only doing so because they get paid for money under management. So it’s like, oh, no, you don’t want to spend that because, you know, the advisor is only 1 % on that money. I just think, well, I mean, I’ve long since come to understand that if you do the right thing, the universe will generally look after you. So, you know, it’s just
Lynn Beattie (49:43.27)
Exactly!
Lynn Beattie (49:56.564)
course it will.
Pete Matthew (49:58.403)
that it would be very short term for me to say to clients, no, don’t give that to your kids because, you know, I will lose the fees on it. Ridiculous. So live for today. Do you know what mean? And I think that becomes more focused in your mind as you get into your 40s and
Lynn Beattie (50:09.286)
Yeah…
Lynn Beattie (50:15.954)
Yeah, and then because we’re running out of time. Have you got have you got another meeting? Okay, cool.
Pete Matthew (50:21.475)
I’m alright for half an hour.
Lynn Beattie (50:24.078)
I think we’ll go on for like another five minutes. Let’s keep it to that. Because I do want to touch on what happens when you get into your 60s and 70s and 80s because I have got some very wise people that surround me who are in their 60s, 70s, 80s. Mostly women, I have to admit, because there’s this, I call it like, crone energy, which is women who are beyond menopause. Okay, so their periods stopped a long time ago.
And they have freedom because their kids have flown the nest. They are generally quite well off because, you know, because of the way our society runs at the moment. People older are very well off because they have defined benefit pensions. They own their houses. Another way how life does get easier for older people. And know you’ll get, I’d get potentially people ranting back at me, what about all the pensioners living in poverty? But there’s a lot more children living in poverty proportionately than
Pete Matthew (51:09.411)
Yep.
Lynn Beattie (51:23.892)
as living in poverty.
Sorry, had to get that rant in. yeah, so I’ve got these elders who are just so wise. And I love, like my stepmom is 85. And I love talking to her because she’s my only connection to my parents, right? She’s got stories about my parents because they were all mates in the army, like in their 20s. And she ended up marrying my dad, which was all a bit…
Pete Matthew (51:45.773)
Yeah, sure.
Lynn Beattie (51:54.738)
weird after my mum died, but it’s fine. yeah, she just tells me these incredible stories of like, when mum got drunk and fell out of a taxi door when she’s trying to hold a bouquet of daffodils. And I’m like, this is the most amazing story in the world. And when she imparts knowledge onto me, so I was talking to her about my love life a couple of weeks ago, and she’s like, Lynn, stop chasing.
Pete Matthew (52:07.013)
Eh.
Lynn Beattie (52:21.744)
That was all her work. She’s like, it’s gonna come to you. Just stop chasing. And I think when people can just say things like that in a couple of words, it stops you in your tracks and you’re like, ****, yeah, I need to stop chasing.
Pete Matthew (52:36.195)
Yeah. Anyway, you know, again, that’s just experience and sort of worldview and the sort of, the older you get, the more you realize that basically it’s the same **** different day sort of thing. And so you kind of, you kind of learn to sort of distill stuff, don’t you, into kind of pithy things like that. And what’s fascinating is that as my parents get older, so my dad, I mean, we’re fairly convinced my dad is somewhere on the spectrum.
Lynn Beattie (52:50.184)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (53:05.699)
although he’s never been diagnosed, but he’s sort of ridiculously disciplined, really generally quite bad with people. He’s taught himself to be better, but he said, we’re watching Great British Sewing Bee, right? There’s a lady called Susie on that who’s just been kicked out, I think, before the final tonight or tomorrow. And she wears, she’s a really quirky style. Lady Gaga is her fashion icon, right? And this girl can sew and she’s made tons of her own outfits and she properly stands
And my dad is watching So and B, they were around for coffee and mom watches it and he kind of like puts up with it. And he says, Susie, clearly she’s got deep psychological issues because of the clothes she wears. And I was like, dad, you can’t say that also. You don’t have a psychological qualification to your name. So you’re really not qualified to talk about that. But so I absolutely agree. We can get a lot of wisdom from the elders, but we also need to, think.
Lynn Beattie (54:01.328)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (54:03.033)
However, wherever we take stuff from, whether it comes from inside our own heads, whether it comes from our kids or whether it comes from our elders, we need to kind of weigh it. I mean, that was a very clear example of my dad talking absolute crap, right? And he just needs to shut up about stuff like that he doesn’t understand it. He’s being far too judgmental. Another conversation with a distant relative who weighed in on the trans debate, despite the fact that they’ve never probably
Lynn Beattie (54:28.326)
god.
Pete Matthew (54:30.873)
been within like three miles of a trans person and has no concept of what it’s like to struggle in a body that you don’t believe is yours and has no compassion. And I nearly killed him with my bare hands, for the purposes of family unity, I kind of just said, I really don’t know that you’re qualified to weigh in on that. So I have a coach who is a trans guy and
given me unbelievable insight onto, I can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be him and what all the crap that he’s had to deal with and continues to do so in a world which basically doesn’t want him to exist. And you know, so when I, I find myself getting properly rabid because I love that guy. And I, when I see people who should know
Lynn Beattie (55:10.366)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (55:27.063)
make comments about the world. It’s from their worldview and it’s from their experience. And I have to kind of try and remember that. But I also have to just weigh it and say, well, actually based on my perception of the world, what you just said is wrong, judgmental, uncompassionate. And I’m just going to ignore it. Whereas your stepmom saying, stop chasing. Then it’s going to come to you. That’s wisdom. And so I think we need to learn to perceive wisdom when it’s there.
but also we need to judge and weigh and sift what we hear, what we take in from the world, whatever source and try and be wise ourselves, accept our own failings, and our own limitations. That’s classic Marcus Aurelius. If we accept our own limitations and maybe, just maybe consider that I might be wrong about some stuff.
Lynn Beattie (56:08.072)
Yeah.
Lynn Beattie (56:16.435)
Yeah.
Pete Matthew (56:24.803)
that’s a really great place to come from because you can’t judge others if you know that basically you’re just winging it yourself. You know, we said that right at the start. We not always really know what we’re doing. We’re just trying to find our way through an increasingly complex world. And I think as we get older, for me, life getting easier as we get older is about learning to perceive the world in light of my own smallness.
and understand that the world is huge. It’s complicated. It’s massive. It’s ******* awesome, but it’s really hard for a lot of people. And all I know is my own perspective, which is one tiny fraction of the human condition. I think if we can keep stuff in its place, that is a very healthy way to age. that’s my soapbox. We need to learn to think and feel and have compassion.
Lynn Beattie (57:06.611)
Yeah.
Lynn Beattie (57:19.348)
Love it. Yeah.
Pete Matthew (57:22.787)
And if we start from the point of view of actually caring about other people instead of maintaining our own worldview, I think that’ll stand us in good stead. That’s why I wanted to answer this question.
Lynn Beattie (57:36.688)
Amen.
Pete Matthew (57:36.997)
Amen. Preach.
Lynn Beattie (57:43.027)
gosh, that was amazing. I think
Pete Matthew (57:45.337)
That was too long to get into a reel.
they say it shows what I know.
Lynn Beattie (57:49.532)
Reels are three minutes now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, my AI tool will snip that out and I will turn that into a reel. Do not worry.
that’s so cool. Right. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I went into Cornish there. Yes, it’s because I’m talking to someone from Pennsat. So yeah, let’s close it there because that was brilliant. So just tell people where to find you and we’re done.
Pete Matthew (58:20.323)
Yeah, look, everything’s at meaningful money. TV is the kind of homepage really, but just search either me, Pete Matthew or search meaningful money and you’ll you’ll find what I’m up to really all sorts of stuff going on far too much to mention. But yeah, I have an academy. I have a coaching service that we’re working on that isn’t quite live yet, but which is really exciting. Jackson’s everything you can find it all for meaningful money. TV.
Lynn Beattie (58:43.954)
Amazing. Cool. Thank you. Right. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. That’s like, I always love my chats with you. And do you know what? often listen back to them, particularly from like years ago, because you are, you are really wise. You are.
Pete Matthew (58:45.189)
Thanks for having me, mate.
Pete Matthew (58:56.028)
Really?
Pete Matthew (59:00.256)
bless you. I think about stuff. Which I guess is just the way I was raised.
Lynn Beattie (59:03.654)
Yeah, you’re, you’re well read. And yeah, you you are the least judgmental person I know. One one of Yeah.
Pete Matthew (59:12.589)
God, I hope so. I hate judgmental people. It’s one of my pet hates. So good. Thank you. I’ll take that praise for what is. Thank
Lynn Beattie (59:18.244)
It’s, yeah. Yeah, cool. And of course, thanks for looking after my sister, as I say to you so many times. So yeah, thank you ever so much. people listening.
Pete Matthew (59:27.248)
Absolute pleasure.
Lynn Beattie (59:34.12)
Please subscribe to the podcast because the numbers are building very nicely because I know I had a one year hiatus with a break. So yeah, it’s back. And if you’re watching, not many people watch my podcast, which is really annoying because it’s so much more engaging watching us in the body language and everything. But yeah, go watch it on YouTube. Right. Cool. Thank you very much. And I will press
