What is a Good Life? #160
The Art Of Living With Coherence with João Sevilhano
Hello and welcome to What is a Good Life? A project to help you realise you are enough, by noticing and inhabiting life more fully.
This week I am reflecting on a beautiful conversation with psychologist, founder, and writer João Sevilhano. Together we explore coherence as something that goes beyond rigid moral ideals or plastic authenticity and is more a lived, imperfect practice. This episode is for anyone feeling the pull between who they are, how they live, and what the world is asking of them right now.
If this project resonates with you, thank you for being here — and if you’d like to support it, consider a paid subscription, sharing, or subscribing.
Take care, Mark
1. My Weekly Reflection
“The toughest task I ever had was just to be coherent. While having - and this is not to be rigid or not to change your mind - coincidence between your values, your ideas, your feelings and your actions. Especially when no one’s looking.”
The word authenticity and its adaptations gnaw at me. Whether that is using it as an excuse to say whatever you want without consideration for the other. Or the idea that there is a singular fixed authentic self that must be projected at all times. I have this image in my head of someone who is chatty defiantly defending their right to speak loudly in a library.
I much prefer the idea of an inner and outer coherence. This does not mean a wild disclosure of everything, more that whatever is displayed outside does not betray what is occurring inside and vice versa.
João suggests it is coupled with curiosity and flexibility, and warns against rigidity:
“It’s easy for some people to think about coherence as just to stick to your principles and that’s it. And that’s fairly easy. And that’s the path to arrogance or narcissism or dictatorship if you want.”
It is a psychic energy that you feel when it is present, more than another virtue to uphold.
A couple of years back, I cancelled on relatively short notice for a coffee I had arranged with a friend. I was just feeling some deeper discomfort and didn’t feel I had the energy to do much more than have an evening to myself.
I felt bad about not saying it earlier so I texted my friend to say a work call had unexpectedly emerged and could we postpone. No problem was the response I got.
A few hours later, after a long walk with my dog, and all seemed to have settled in my world again. It settled enough for me to notice the gnawing feeling of having bullshitted my friend. It didn’t come with a moralising or scathing criticism, if anything an energetic discomfort coupled with a curiosity.
I sent a message stating the fact of the matter and the text offered an instant relief.
It taught me how instantaneously we can feel coherent and incoherent, and it is not based on a virtuosity or a lifelong build up to a moment but a simple acknowledging of what is. My experiences continue to tell me that life is instantly redemptive if we strip away the interference from whatever we have just done to get in its way.
There will continue to be consequences to our actions, people can decide whatever you did is not ok and keep us at a distance or leave our lives, but this sense of coherence to me feels beyond the reach of others to affect.
When you get to witness the pain of incoherence and the ease (internally) of coherence, it tells me something significant is being missed in terms of our relationship with ourselves. Many of the accepted forms of manipulation and relating in the world today are costing us much more significantly than we think, regardless of whatever justifications we make.
While we may think we are defending ourselves, in reality we are creating a more fragile version of ourselves. A version that is afraid to see life and ourselves clearly. One that loathes and refuses to accept our humanity. The more we maintain these stances the more threatening life becomes.
The importance of this goes well beyond our inner sense of coherence.
The peace I get from sitting with people like João, and many others I know and have interviewed where I sense that coherence is strong, it feels like a remedy or antidote to much of the bullshit and bewilderment we can experience from what the world around us serves up.
It feels like it helps us regulate ourselves, to soothe our nervous systems. A break from the second guessing, figuring out, and wondering about what I am hearing.
A retreat.
2. This Week’s Questions
Can you describe what it feels like to experience coherence?
Is the world presently asking something of you that is interfering with your coherence?
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3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - The Art Of Living With Coherence with João Sevilhano - What is a Good Life? #160
Listen to the full conversation with João Sevilhano below.
About Me
I am a coach, facilitator, and podcast host, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 300 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you’re interested in exploring your own good life through one-on-one coaching contact me via email.