The chapter that I found trickiest was probably the one on families because I hated the thought that I might unwittingly offend or hurt my parents. It felt so good to be getting all this stuff down on the page in exactly the way I wanted it to exist. The ones that flowed were also, in some respects, the hardest to write because they were emotional for me – so writing the chapters on babies and anger meant I had to revisit some difficult times in my life, but the end result was this overwhelming feeling of liberation and catharsis. Was it difficult to write the more personal chapters? “There were chapters that flowed and some which didn't.

Equally moving and funny, and ultimately uplifting, the book touches on light-hearted memories as well as taking a searingly honest look into very private moments of Elizabeth’s life in chapters that run the gamut of modern experiences from How to Fail at Relationships to How to Fail at Being Gwyneth Paltrow. That insight and the others she’s learned from her podcast interviewees have been threaded through Elizabeth’s own life story in the book version of How to Fail, creating something which is part memoir, part self-help guide. That has been a really helpful thing to learn.” “You can choose instead to tell yourself something different: that failure just is a fact, and that how you respond depends on the emotions you choose to attach to it. That just because your internal critic is telling you when you fail that you're rubbish and a total failure as a person, you don't have to believe it,” Elizabeth says. “I’ve grown to understand that we exist separately from our thoughts. Through talking to her guests about their own personal failures, and how they perceive them, her view of the topic has been refined.

A belief that has led to her highly successful podcast, and now book, How to Fail.Įlizabeth has interviewed an array of amazing and interesting people on the podcast, from writers such as Dolly Alderton and Sebastian Faulks, to actor and screenwriter Phoebe Waller-Bridge and singer Lily Allen. It’s a witty gift from her publisher which neatly captures the belief that the journalist and novelist has learnt more from periods of failure in her life than from times when everything went according to plan. On a beautiful April afternoon in north London, the sunlight pouring into Elizabeth Day’s flat illuminates the words engraved on a small trophy proudly placed on her desk: ‘Elizabeth Day, Notable Failure …and finest of authors’.

Elizabeth day how to fail