Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Instead of a mini episode, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do something a little bit different and present you with
Speaker 1: a copy of an interview that was done by Gregory
Speaker 1: Berg in his excellent podcast Life on Purpose, and it's
Speaker 1: an interview of me. Many of you've asked to hear
Speaker 1: more from me, and so this is a chance for
Speaker 1: you to hear me talk a little bit more if
Speaker 1: that's really your thing, so if it is, listen on
Speaker 1: and enjoy. Also, I wanted to let you know that
Speaker 1: the one you Feed coaching program has opened back up
Speaker 1: for one week, so between now and Saturday August, if
Speaker 1: you're interested, go to one you feed dot net slash
Speaker 1: coaching program and you can get more information there, and
Speaker 1: the window does close again in a week. The last
Speaker 1: program sold out in about four days, so if it's
Speaker 1: something your interest did in, I jump on it now. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: I hope you have a great week and we'll have
Speaker 1: another episode on Tuesday. Thanks as always for listening. Bye,
Speaker 1: Hi everybody, welcome to Life on Purpose. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Greg Berg, and I'm very happy to have you with
Speaker 1: us today. A quick show note. If you like what
Speaker 1: you're hearing here, please check out the Life on Purpose
Speaker 1: website at Life on Purpose show dot com, where you
Speaker 1: can find episode summaries, information about the show, links to
Speaker 1: past episodes, and much much more. And if you could
Speaker 1: pop over to iTunes, we love a review there as
Speaker 1: that helps the show reach many more people who were
Speaker 1: interested in living their own lives on Purpose Now my
Speaker 1: guest today. He's the host of a weekly podcast called
Speaker 1: The One You Feed, conversations about creating a life worth living.
Speaker 1: It's based on the parable of the two Wolves. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk all about what that is today, What that
Speaker 1: means when You Feed was recently named one of the
Speaker 1: best podcast by iTunes. It was also named one of
Speaker 1: the best health podcast of all time by The Huffington's Post,
Speaker 1: and it's been the number one ranked podcast in the health, Philosophy,
Speaker 1: and spirituality categories, respectively. He's also been helping to build
Speaker 1: companies for the past fifteen years and has been involved
Speaker 1: in technology for longer than that. He's led major software
Speaker 1: programs for a Fortune twenty company, and he started a
Speaker 1: solar energy company called Tipping Point. He's also a musician,
Speaker 1: a passionate learner, and he loves to meet new people.
Speaker 1: Will talk about all of that today and much much more.
Speaker 1: Joining the via Skype from Columbus, Ohio. It's Eric Zimmer. Eric,
Speaker 1: welcome back to Life on Purpose. Hi Greg, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me back. Yes, very happy. We have a nice,
Speaker 1: crisp clear Skype connection. We we tried this before a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago and we just, uh, the technology
Speaker 1: wasn't working. Our Skype wasn't working for us. So here
Speaker 1: we are again, and uh, everything sounds great and crystal clear,
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm very happy about that. But I want
Speaker 1: to tell the listeners. I always like to give them
Speaker 1: a little information up front, some context. And Eric was
Speaker 1: one of my very first guest here on Life on
Speaker 1: Purpose when I launched the show at the begin ending
Speaker 1: of In fact, an episode that we taped last November,
Speaker 1: it was a round table that we did, the first
Speaker 1: ever Life on Purpose round table with Christopher Carter and
Speaker 1: Amelia and Eric. We're guest, and we did this really cool,
Speaker 1: fun little we just sort of riffed and went around
Speaker 1: in a in a circle, if you will, a sort
Speaker 1: of virtual online circle, and it was a great conversation.
Speaker 1: And um, I met Eric at Camp Good Life Project
Speaker 1: back in and uh, we're fellow musicians and we're fellow podcasters,
Speaker 1: and we have a lot in common. So I'm really
Speaker 1: looking forward to diving deeper into your story. Eric. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to talk with you again. Cool. So this
Speaker 1: is gonna be We're gonna we're gonna set the table
Speaker 1: right up front. Eric, We're gonna kind of knock a
Speaker 1: big one right out of the park here. But the
Speaker 1: subtitle of your show, it's called creating a Life Worth Living.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a heavy subtitle. How on earth do
Speaker 1: people go about doing that in a in a very
Speaker 1: uh well, we'll get into sort of specifics, but in
Speaker 1: a very general sense, how do you live a life
Speaker 1: worth living? Eric? Well, I think your your show title
Speaker 1: is is pretty close, right. It's about I think it's
Speaker 1: about doing things on purpose. It's about understanding what works
Speaker 1: for you, what makes you tick, what drives satisfaction in
Speaker 1: your own life, and then purposely doing those sort of
Speaker 1: things and not being on autopilot all the time, which
Speaker 1: is the default state, certainly for me a lot of
Speaker 1: the time, and I think for a lot of people
Speaker 1: I know, is it's very easy for time to get
Speaker 1: away from us and realize that we're not really living
Speaker 1: the life that we want to be living. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: read different studies, you know, I don't know if anyone
Speaker 1: has a definitive answer for this, but different studies have
Speaker 1: cited the fact that we were on a sort of autopilot,
Speaker 1: as you say, are living unconsciously or on a tape
Speaker 1: loop or however you want to put it, somewhere between
Speaker 1: eighty and nine pc of our lives just out of
Speaker 1: out of necessity, because I guess the way that humans evolved,
Speaker 1: in the way that our lives are set up, we
Speaker 1: just sort of let things run on this tape loop
Speaker 1: that go again and again and again. And it really
Speaker 1: does take conscious effort to be able to break out
Speaker 1: of that tape loop and to live purposefully. And so
Speaker 1: the first part that you mentioned, though, Eric, is really
Speaker 1: so crucial, and that's the self awareness part, is really
Speaker 1: being aware of how you live your life and the
Speaker 1: tendencies and the habits that you have. And I'd love
Speaker 1: to know right off the bat, what are some things
Speaker 1: that you do to be more self aware in your
Speaker 1: own life? Um, I think that, I mean the doing
Speaker 1: the podcast for me is one of them, because I
Speaker 1: am every week I'm talking to somebody about topics of
Speaker 1: this nature, and I'm usually preparing all week for the guests,
Speaker 1: and so my head is sort of in this space
Speaker 1: a lot, which which is helpful. Um. So I think
Speaker 1: that's one. Meditation is another thing that I have found
Speaker 1: to be enormously helpful to me. And then some form
Speaker 1: of self reflection, whether that be journaling, whether that just
Speaker 1: be habit of kind of consistently looking back over your
Speaker 1: day or over your experiences and going okay, what was that.
Speaker 1: And then the other one that I use probably not
Speaker 1: as often as I should, but I sit down and
Speaker 1: I look at all the roles in my life that
Speaker 1: I play, you know, father, podcast host, e commerce consultant,
Speaker 1: brother son. You know, I look at all the roles
Speaker 1: that I play, and I try and look at am
Speaker 1: I am I devoting enough time to each of those things,
Speaker 1: and some of them all look at and I go, yep,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much that's going great. Oh I've been neglecting that,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I haven't been um, maybe I haven't
Speaker 1: been a great son lately. So then what I'll do
Speaker 1: is I'll put into some of my daily planning or
Speaker 1: the things that I try and do, you know, very regularly,
Speaker 1: maybe insert one of those things. So when I you know,
Speaker 1: there's been periods of life where I do that every week,
Speaker 1: and that is a really powerful practice. I would not
Speaker 1: say that I do it that often now, but I
Speaker 1: still do it semi regularly, and I think it's kind
Speaker 1: of a it's kind of a thing that's sunk into
Speaker 1: my head to some degree. A lot of these practices,
Speaker 1: if we do them consistently long enough, often enough, they
Speaker 1: start out very tedious and feeling very laborious and very forced,
Speaker 1: and eventually it just works its way into your system
Speaker 1: or into my system. Yeah. I love that concept of
Speaker 1: sort of looking at all the roles that you play. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a great way to check in with yourself and
Speaker 1: a great way to take stock of where your life
Speaker 1: is and where you wanted to go. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're not if you're not there in those places,
Speaker 1: you're spending too much time or energy in one particular
Speaker 1: area of your life. And so what do you do then, Eric,
Speaker 1: If you're you're you're taking stock of these things, you're
Speaker 1: looking at those roles, and you find that you're out
Speaker 1: of balance. Um, I think that I then look at
Speaker 1: how can I change the balance of that in my life? UM,
Speaker 1: moving forward. And so I I use I use an
Speaker 1: application called coach dot me that tracks like things that
Speaker 1: I think are important for me to do. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: I track whether I'm meditating every day, A track whether
Speaker 1: I'm exercising every day. I have UM things in there
Speaker 1: about doing gratitude, about connecting with friends, about UM. I
Speaker 1: used to have something in there about reading something inspiring,
Speaker 1: which is not a problem anymore. UM, you have quite
Speaker 1: the really extensive reading list. Yes, it's and it's just
Speaker 1: it's a it's a lot. Yeah, I mean because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm very diligent about about preparation and so it's just
Speaker 1: takes a lot of time. But so I use that
Speaker 1: app app to just sort of track things daily. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if I had said that one of the things,
Speaker 1: if I looked at one of the roles and said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not being a good son and I need to
Speaker 1: spend more time talking to my mom, I would put,
Speaker 1: you know, talking to my mom on that list, and
Speaker 1: then every day when I look at that list, I
Speaker 1: would see it. Now that's not saying I'm going to
Speaker 1: do it every day, but it gives me a mechanism
Speaker 1: to sort of see am I doing things. I have
Speaker 1: found once I started actually tracking things like that using
Speaker 1: you know, you can use a calendar, you can use
Speaker 1: a piece of paper, you can use an app like
Speaker 1: Coached at Me. There's another one out there, very simple
Speaker 1: called Joe's Goals that I love. But once I started
Speaker 1: tracking that, it was very That was one of the
Speaker 1: things for me that made being consistent with these things
Speaker 1: a lot better and also allowed me to be off
Speaker 1: of autopilot a little bit more. And I think the
Speaker 1: last piece and I'm kind of going on a long
Speaker 1: spell here would be just to spend time thinking about
Speaker 1: how I spend my time. Yeah, that's that's very meta. Yes,
Speaker 1: spend time thinking about how you spend time. I like
Speaker 1: that exactly. But just thinking back and looking at okay,
Speaker 1: over the last you know week, what where? Where? You know?
Speaker 1: Not I don't get to the point where I track
Speaker 1: every hour, but I try and look at it and go, okay,
Speaker 1: what what did the last week look like? What where
Speaker 1: did my time go? Where's my time? Generally going on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, And and that is as uh Anie
Speaker 1: Dillard said, you know, the way you the way you
Speaker 1: spend um a day is the way you spend your life.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't get that exactly right, but now
Speaker 1: what the point is there? Yeah, the basic idea is
Speaker 1: it's these you know, it's these little moments. It's the
Speaker 1: day by day how am I? What am I doing today?
Speaker 1: What am I doing tomorrow? That all adds up over time.
Speaker 1: And so if we take my experiences, if we take
Speaker 1: care of that, a lot of the bigger things work
Speaker 1: themselves out. Yeah. And you also mentioned something as you
Speaker 1: were talking about how you go about being more self
Speaker 1: aware in your own life that we we talked about
Speaker 1: on our run table last time, and which is such
Speaker 1: a big thing for both of us. It's meditation and
Speaker 1: for me, uh in talking about tracking devices, UM, I
Speaker 1: use it a fantastic app called inside Timer that our
Speaker 1: our friend Casey was also a guest on that round table,
Speaker 1: introduced me to nearly two years ago. And I just
Speaker 1: passed my five days using inside Timer, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a fun little you know. I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: brag or anything because like, look at me, I'm a
Speaker 1: meditation superstar, because I'm certainly not. But it's just been
Speaker 1: an invaluable tool for me because having this thing that
Speaker 1: that I can check in with every day, I log on,
Speaker 1: I start my meditation and and it's fun to see
Speaker 1: the statistics. It's fun to say, Okay, you know you've
Speaker 1: reached you know, thirty days in a row, or you've
Speaker 1: been using insight timer for five days or whatever. And
Speaker 1: I like having that as a barometer for me to
Speaker 1: be able to look back and say, Okay, I'm doing
Speaker 1: great or you know what, I'm off the wagon a
Speaker 1: little bit here. Um you know, I'd like to be
Speaker 1: more diligent there. I'd like to miss fewer days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love I love insight Timer. I think it's really great.
Speaker 1: My problem is that I don't always like I went
Speaker 1: through a period of time where I was using headspace,
Speaker 1: UM or some other meditation things, so I didn't always
Speaker 1: put everything in it. So coach dot me is the
Speaker 1: one where I track. But yeah, I love to go
Speaker 1: into you know, just an insight time or alone. There's
Speaker 1: something like you know, a hundred and fifty hours of meditation,
Speaker 1: which is just like wow, yeah, that's amazing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm just a believer in accountability. I think it's
Speaker 1: helpful and um self accountability can be helpful if you
Speaker 1: if you put some of those things in place. It
Speaker 1: just helps me to see it. Yeah, well, that's how excellent.
Speaker 1: So Eric, I know, I don't know if you've tried
Speaker 1: to discern this in your own show, UM, and how
Speaker 1: many episodes you've done on the one you feed, but
Speaker 1: you know, in the Life on Purpose in my previous show,
Speaker 1: Radio Enzo, I'm I'm in about a hundred eighty five episodes,
Speaker 1: I think, and over the course of that time four
Speaker 1: and a half years, I've tried to discern what are
Speaker 1: the commonalities of my guest because they're all over the place,
Speaker 1: you know, they're very wide swath topically of the different
Speaker 1: things that we talked about, and and it's always under
Speaker 1: the umbrella of purposeful living, UM, having a purposeful life,
Speaker 1: or my old show is about what I called conscious living.
Speaker 1: Very similar but people that did a lot of different
Speaker 1: things and they were on the show for a wide
Speaker 1: variety of reasons. And what I found interesting, and this
Speaker 1: is holding up now over time since I first made this, UM,
Speaker 1: since I was first able to discern this, and this
Speaker 1: sort of came to my consciousness, was that the two
Speaker 1: common threads, and almost every one of my guests was
Speaker 1: number one, travel had some important Uh, it was important
Speaker 1: in every one of my guest life in some way,
Speaker 1: shape or form as a motivator or is something that
Speaker 1: changed their life or broad in their perspective. And almost
Speaker 1: every one of them meditated in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: And I would have not predicted that, And yet that's
Speaker 1: been a common theme going on, and I'm always fascinated,
Speaker 1: especially and there are people that aren't obvious meditators. They
Speaker 1: don't talk about it publicly or they don't sort of like, hey,
Speaker 1: look at me, I meditate And have have you found
Speaker 1: anything similar? Have you? Have you thought about that? Um?
Speaker 1: I have? I think that um uh, certainly a lot
Speaker 1: of people that have been on the show have been
Speaker 1: have been meditators. I think one of the other key
Speaker 1: things I've seen in the people that are on this
Speaker 1: show is that they have the ability two not let
Speaker 1: their mood dictate all their behavior. I would say that
Speaker 1: might be one overriding feature I've seen in successful people
Speaker 1: is not that they don't have moods. Not that they
Speaker 1: don't often they're you know, they wrestle with depression or
Speaker 1: other things. Um not that they don't feel emotions and
Speaker 1: have a motions, but the emotions don't become the guiding um,
Speaker 1: the guiding a lot of their behavior. It seems like
Speaker 1: a lot of the people that I think I admire
Speaker 1: the most and the most successful, find someplace between indulging
Speaker 1: and repressing emotion. They find they find a sweet spot
Speaker 1: in there, so they're they're pausing before they react, they're
Speaker 1: not just reacting to the world as it happens around them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's certainly part of it.
Speaker 1: And I think they're also able to look at it
Speaker 1: and go, I feel like X or Y, but the
Speaker 1: right thing for me to do is Z And they
Speaker 1: have a way to then go and do Z um without,
Speaker 1: you know, because the opposite extreme is you just go
Speaker 1: into full on repression mode where it's like you just
Speaker 1: you don't ever, you know, the no emotion gets in
Speaker 1: and I don't you know, I'm just it's all logic,
Speaker 1: it's all just and that's not the healthy point either.
Speaker 1: It seems the people that certainly that I admire are
Speaker 1: the ones that find that middle ground where they're able
Speaker 1: to experience their emotions, but they're also their life isn't
Speaker 1: run by them, So how do they do that? Um, Well,
Speaker 1: that's a broad question. I know we probably have, you know,
Speaker 1: our long discussion on how that is. But you know,
Speaker 1: in your own life, how have you been able to
Speaker 1: do that or what are some things that you've been
Speaker 1: able to to discern from your guests to talk about that.
Speaker 1: I think there's you know, I think there's a few things.
Speaker 1: I think that And this is why you know, meditation
Speaker 1: features into this. It's a way of getting better at
Speaker 1: doing this, but being able to get some separation from
Speaker 1: thoughts and emotions and to recognize that I am not
Speaker 1: the thought and I am not the emotion. They might
Speaker 1: be very strong, they might be there, I'm feeling them,
Speaker 1: but that's not the only thing. And to be able
Speaker 1: to get just enough distance from that, UM, I think
Speaker 1: helps an awful lot with with that. UM. And then
Speaker 1: I think another one for me is to be able
Speaker 1: to reference back to what's what's really important and and
Speaker 1: call on that in the moments where things are difficult.
Speaker 1: So I'll give you, you know, an example would be, UM,
Speaker 1: I decide that I want an exercise program. It's really
Speaker 1: important to me, and you know, it's something I think
Speaker 1: about and I plan and and you know, kind of
Speaker 1: the higher me thinks that's a great idea. The wise
Speaker 1: me thinks that's a good idea. But now it's Thursday
Speaker 1: afternoon and I'm sitting on the couch and um, I
Speaker 1: don't feel like exercising. And that distinction for me is
Speaker 1: a big one, because a lot of times will say
Speaker 1: I don't want to do it. I don't want to
Speaker 1: do it, I don't want to do this, And the
Speaker 1: reality is that there was a part of us that
Speaker 1: does want to do it. It's that part of us
Speaker 1: that says I do want to exercise this, this higher self,
Speaker 1: this wiser part of me said I want to do this.
Speaker 1: It's that I don't feel like it right now. And
Speaker 1: then I'm like, well, that's just a mood, and moods
Speaker 1: pass and I and and then going back to what
Speaker 1: did the what did the wiser part of me think? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I think a lot of that is simple learning
Speaker 1: to give yourself sort of you know this for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word of command, and then follow through
Speaker 1: on it. I think that's a muscle to a certain degree.
Speaker 1: I think the ability to say I'm gonna do X
Speaker 1: and then do it is is sort of a I
Speaker 1: compare it to to a muscle, And so for a
Speaker 1: lot of us, we don't. That muscle is very very weak,
Speaker 1: and so the way to build that muscle is to
Speaker 1: start very small and slowly, but surely, you know, make
Speaker 1: commitments to yourself and keep them. And as as that progresses,
Speaker 1: we start to get some momentum, we start to believe
Speaker 1: in ourselves again, we start to there's a feeling of
Speaker 1: inner congruence, inner rightness. I think between when we say
Speaker 1: I want to do X and then we do it.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's building that muscle, and the
Speaker 1: people that I know that are successful, that muscle is
Speaker 1: pretty well developed. Yeah. Absolutely, it's the old uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the the neurons that fired together, wired together. A bit
Speaker 1: of of cliche, but true. Yeah, it is absolutely true.
Speaker 1: And I totally believe it's a trainable thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was at one point a you know, destitute heroin addict. Um,
Speaker 1: so you you can't have much less self control than
Speaker 1: I've had it a couple of points in my life.
Speaker 1: So I do believe that these are skills that you
Speaker 1: can learn and practice. And I think that a lot
Speaker 1: of us get hung up on things like well, I'm
Speaker 1: just the kind of person that doesn't I'm the kind
Speaker 1: of person that doesn't follow through on things, or I'm
Speaker 1: the kind of person that just isn't disciplined or and
Speaker 1: I don't think that's really true. I think those are
Speaker 1: skills and things that we can learn. I don't think
Speaker 1: their personality um or character defects necessarily as if we
Speaker 1: were hardwired one way or the other. Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: And there are stories that we tell ourselves based on
Speaker 1: our past experience, our past conditions, our past emotions, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think that I think we talked about this
Speaker 1: in the round table, these stories that that present themselves
Speaker 1: at times and we can either attach to the story
Speaker 1: or we could recognize, hey, you know, that's a story,
Speaker 1: and uh, I can get beyond that story, or I
Speaker 1: can rewrite the story, or I can change the story,
Speaker 1: and right, yeah, yeah, And I think that story element
Speaker 1: is really crucial, just having that recognition and be cognizant
Speaker 1: of the fact that it is indeed a story and
Speaker 1: it's not just it's it's not a it's not something
Speaker 1: that's hard word. Yeah. We're making a lot of it up.
Speaker 1: A lot of our interpretation the world. Some people would
Speaker 1: say all of our interpretation is coming through some sort
Speaker 1: of filter or frame or lens. And so if the
Speaker 1: when we can learn to work with that filter or lens,
Speaker 1: then life really you know, that's such a critical skill.
Speaker 1: I think in you know, we want to talk about
Speaker 1: living a life that's worth living. That is one of
Speaker 1: the hugest ones is to be able to learn to
Speaker 1: work with that filter. Um, yeah, and adjusted to inadjusted
Speaker 1: in ways that that serve us. Well, yeah, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's another getting back to some of the science part
Speaker 1: of it, referencing what we talked to about earlier, you know,
Speaker 1: living on an autopilot a certain percentage of the time.
Speaker 1: Scientists also believe that we filter out somewhere between of
Speaker 1: all stimuli. We have to by necessity, we can't. Our
Speaker 1: brains simply can't handle all the stimuli. And so, as
Speaker 1: you said, if we've got this filter, we can change
Speaker 1: the filter. We can adjust the filter. We can move
Speaker 1: the filter. So if we're only pulling in you know,
Speaker 1: two or three five over here, we can shift the
Speaker 1: filter to be pulling in a different percentage. We can
Speaker 1: we can from an intentional standpoint, we can put our
Speaker 1: attention elsewhere and it's going to bring different results, and
Speaker 1: it's gonna in the end, it's gonna build a different
Speaker 1: life for us. It's going to create a different life
Speaker 1: for us. Yeah, I've been reading a guy, a Buddhist teacher.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk to him here in the near future.
Speaker 1: And he said, you know, he's talking about Buddhist psychology,
Speaker 1: and in certain schools of Buddhist psychology, thought is considered
Speaker 1: a sixth sense. It's a it's a sense that you
Speaker 1: either can that you learn to either pay attention to
Speaker 1: or not pay attention to the same thing with sort
Speaker 1: of sound or site. Right you you might folk gus
Speaker 1: on seeing and that comes very clearly into awareness, and
Speaker 1: then you might turn your awareness to hearing and so
Speaker 1: now you're hearing things more. Or put your awareness in
Speaker 1: your you know, in your right foot, and now you
Speaker 1: notice what's happening with your right foot. It's that ability
Speaker 1: to move that awareness around that I think is is
Speaker 1: so helpful. And you know, that whole that whole story
Speaker 1: based narrative, all the things that are going on in
Speaker 1: our head that we tell ourselves, that is about all
Speaker 1: we're aware of most of the time, at least me.
Speaker 1: You know, when I'm not being careful, I am there's
Speaker 1: just a constant inner monologue that is like hooked up
Speaker 1: to like Eric thermostat, like how's it going, how's Eric doing?
Speaker 1: Is it warm enough? Is it cold enough? Do I
Speaker 1: feel this? If you know? It's just this? And and
Speaker 1: learning to unhook from that, that's the term this guy uses.
Speaker 1: Learning to unhook from that and and move your attention
Speaker 1: to other parts other things is a really powerful skill.
Speaker 1: I love that. I've never heard it framed quite like
Speaker 1: that before that. It's the thought being a sixth sense
Speaker 1: and something you can either choose to pay attention two
Speaker 1: or not. That's fantastic. Yeah, it's not easy, right, I
Speaker 1: mean obviously certainly, but we've got lots of years of
Speaker 1: listening to that to believe in that voice. But it
Speaker 1: is possible. Yeah, And for me, what made all of
Speaker 1: this makes sense for me at some level, And it's
Speaker 1: still a great mystery, and I'll never you know, spend
Speaker 1: the rest of my life never really quite figuring it out.
Speaker 1: But it's I remember hearing a number of years back
Speaker 1: that Okay, you've got a thought, and you're noticing that
Speaker 1: you've got a thought. Who's the one doing the noticing? Right?
Speaker 1: That's it? That changed everything for me hearing that and
Speaker 1: and sort of grasping that, even in a very small level,
Speaker 1: it's like, wow, okay, well there's the thought. Who's noticing
Speaker 1: the thought that just that? That was a huge shift
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, And it's one of those things that's
Speaker 1: an exercise that we can do often, you know, the
Speaker 1: more you know, one of the things that I try
Speaker 1: to talk about living like you know, life on purpose
Speaker 1: and all that and and not beyond autopilot as I
Speaker 1: try and stop as often as I can remember to
Speaker 1: and sort of ask myself like where am I, what
Speaker 1: am I doing? And why? Like what you know, just
Speaker 1: that sort of like come right back into the moment
Speaker 1: where am I. I'm sitting at my desk in front
Speaker 1: of a computer and I'm talking to Greg. You know
Speaker 1: what am I? You know what? Where am I? What
Speaker 1: am I doing? And why? And that's a great way
Speaker 1: to a practice mindfulness and practice being in the moment
Speaker 1: as well as think about am I using my time
Speaker 1: in the way I want? Why am I doing what
Speaker 1: I mean doing? Wow? Eric, that would make a fantastic
Speaker 1: app by the way, I would that would I would
Speaker 1: have that on my iPhone or buy like an Apple
Speaker 1: Watch and and have that pop up, you know, every
Speaker 1: so often, so that I have that reminder, Like, that's
Speaker 1: a great idea. Maybe I should do that. I just
Speaker 1: want a small cut, all right, if you make your
Speaker 1: fortune through that app, I just you know, I'd like
Speaker 1: a Finder's fear or something. No, that's a brilliant idea.
Speaker 1: I love that. So, Eric, you mentioned a while that,
Speaker 1: well you didn't tell me a time frame, but I
Speaker 1: know from your biography that you know, twenty years ago
Speaker 1: your life is radically different than what it is now.
Speaker 1: That you were on drugs, you were homeless, you were
Speaker 1: in a very different place in your life. And I'd
Speaker 1: love to go back in the way back machine, um,
Speaker 1: starting even before that, and find out how you got
Speaker 1: to that point. So where were we born? Where did
Speaker 1: you grow up? I was born here in Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 1: and I grew up here. Um. I was gone for
Speaker 1: a few years, uh, you know, in my early you know,
Speaker 1: late teens, early twenties. But most of my life has
Speaker 1: been right here. And did you have a happy childhood?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Um, why is that? I don't
Speaker 1: you know? I I could certainly look at um, you
Speaker 1: know my you know, my parents and their parenting style.
Speaker 1: And you know my mother has wrestled with depression all
Speaker 1: her life. Um, so I come by it, you know
Speaker 1: a little bit naturally. Yeah, that's that's not an insignificant point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, my wife struggles with anxiety and different things,
Speaker 1: and you know, and biologically, as she would say that,
Speaker 1: you know, some of that comes from her mother. You know,
Speaker 1: when she was in the one, her mother was struggling
Speaker 1: with the same things. And that at a at a
Speaker 1: neurochemical level, that's transmitted from a mother to a fetus.
Speaker 1: It's traveled, you know, transmitted to an unborn child. You know,
Speaker 1: the mental, psychological, and chemical state of your biological mother. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: I absolutely, you know I think that came through. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, my parents were not happy together. I mean,
Speaker 1: so that a lot of the the usual things I
Speaker 1: I um, I've examined all that stuff in great detail.
Speaker 1: Not really, you know, I don't have any blame towards them.
Speaker 1: I think they were doing the very best they can.
Speaker 1: And my son will probably look back at me someday
Speaker 1: and go, well, he was doing the best he could.
Speaker 1: And you know we could all say that, yeah, what way,
Speaker 1: I'm screwing him up? Right now. I don't know, um,
Speaker 1: but I know that from a very early age as
Speaker 1: a child that I was UM, I was just an
Speaker 1: odd kid. I used to sit and pick at the
Speaker 1: wallpaper at the wall for hours and just like UM,
Speaker 1: I was a kleptomaniac, like hardcore thief by the time
Speaker 1: I was like nine years old. UM, I was just
Speaker 1: always in trouble. I couldn't even tell you why or
Speaker 1: looking back on it, I don't have a ton of
Speaker 1: memories from it. But I was not a well adjusted child.
Speaker 1: So UM, I did not have I think, a very
Speaker 1: happy childhood. Well what did a young Eric want to
Speaker 1: do when you grew up? I don't know. Did you
Speaker 1: do any sense to? Okay, as I grow older, this
Speaker 1: is something that interests me. This is what I want
Speaker 1: to do with my life. Did you know where you
Speaker 1: were heading, Let's say, when you were in you know,
Speaker 1: high school for instance, No, Um, nope. UM. High school
Speaker 1: was a interesting adventure for me. It's kind of the
Speaker 1: tale of two two lives. The first couple of years
Speaker 1: of high school were a disaster. UM. I just my
Speaker 1: I just never went to class. I never wanted to
Speaker 1: go to class, and so I was always in trouble,
Speaker 1: and I was always trying to find a way to
Speaker 1: be excused from class. And after my sophomore year, my
Speaker 1: guidance counsel said, like, we're not I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go through another year of this. You can either go
Speaker 1: to this thing we have called the Alternative Program, or
Speaker 1: I'm going to just expel you, but I'm not going
Speaker 1: to chase you for another whole year. And so I
Speaker 1: very grudgingly went to this thing called the Alternative Program,
Speaker 1: which was a informal learning environment, very small school, about
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty students. That completely changed my life. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I think that the informal learning style is really very
Speaker 1: much like, let's find out what the individual finds interesting
Speaker 1: and then let's use that to educate them. Let's, you know,
Speaker 1: let's do that, Let's work on critical thinking, let's work
Speaker 1: on how you think. Let's it's just a very different
Speaker 1: approach to education than the the usual I'm going to
Speaker 1: lecture at you until you take this thing in And
Speaker 1: and so after a few months of being there, I
Speaker 1: ended up starting a nonprofit tutoring program for inner city children.
Speaker 1: UM I started a scholarship fund for them. So I
Speaker 1: just my last two years of high school, I completely flourished.
Speaker 1: UM I was doing. You know, it was certainly one
Speaker 1: of the best points, certainly the best point, um of
Speaker 1: my life up to then. I mean, I think it
Speaker 1: was the couple of years where I was really pretty
Speaker 1: happy and content, and I think I learned a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, I learned a lot about myself. I
Speaker 1: didn't recognize it until later, but I think I learned
Speaker 1: a lot about what makes me happy and content during
Speaker 1: that time. I think I found a formula that that
Speaker 1: had that worked to some degree during that point. UM.
Speaker 1: But then the wheels kind of came off the train
Speaker 1: I had. UM. As I was doing that, I noticed
Speaker 1: what alcohol and drugs were doing to all these kids lives.
Speaker 1: I mean, their lives were ruined by the by the
Speaker 1: alcoholism and drug addiction and their families and so UM,
Speaker 1: I pretty much said no more, I'm not doing any drugs.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing any alcohol. UM. And I did that
Speaker 1: through certainly the last two years of high school very much.
Speaker 1: UM Anti that and UM. After my senior year in
Speaker 1: high school, I went traveling for a while. I spent
Speaker 1: a summer uh in l A. I spent several months
Speaker 1: off the coast of Seattle. I just kind of took
Speaker 1: a train across the country, just kind of went out
Speaker 1: and there there there's the travel part alright, I can
Speaker 1: check that one off of this episode now travel meditation
Speaker 1: check check yep. Now, I haven't done as much of
Speaker 1: it as I would I would like, but maybe everybody
Speaker 1: would say that. Um. But I came back from that
Speaker 1: time and my girlfriend was dating my best friend UM
Speaker 1: who both were also involved in this organization with me,
Speaker 1: and I just had no skills to cope with that
Speaker 1: at all. And somebody one day said, do you want
Speaker 1: to take a drink? And I was just at the
Speaker 1: point where I was like, I don't, I don't care.
Speaker 1: And I took a drink and kind of everything changed
Speaker 1: in that moment. I think I was, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I was primed for what happened when I took that drink,
Speaker 1: because I was very rarely not under the effect of
Speaker 1: some chemical or other, you know, twenty four hours a
Speaker 1: day for the next you know, seven years. I kind
Speaker 1: of just was off. I found it. I immediately was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I feel like me, um, And so I was off
Speaker 1: to the races. And that went from alcohol to you know,
Speaker 1: to marijuana to other drugs and eventually landed me as
Speaker 1: a heroin addict. Um twenty four years old. As you said,
Speaker 1: I was homeless. I was living, I had I was
Speaker 1: living in the back of a van. Um that the
Speaker 1: the restaurant owner that I worked at, let me sleep in. UM.
Speaker 1: He didn't know I was sleeping in it. Um. But
Speaker 1: I had acces, you know, I had access to the keys,
Speaker 1: and and I you know, had gotten I just had
Speaker 1: been arrested. I had a lot of jail time potentially
Speaker 1: hanging over my head, and UM ended up walking into
Speaker 1: treatment and getting sober. So Eric, And the point of
Speaker 1: your life was there a low sort of low point,
Speaker 1: the lowest of the low was was your life ever
Speaker 1: in danger? Oh? I think my life was in danger
Speaker 1: a lot. Um. I mean from a health perspective, it
Speaker 1: was in danger. I I weighed about a hundred and
Speaker 1: ten pounds. I had hepatitis c Um. I mean I
Speaker 1: was really sick. Um. My life was in danger a
Speaker 1: lot because I was you know, traveling. You know, I
Speaker 1: lived on the East Coast for a while. I made it.
Speaker 1: I made an attempt to get away from doing drugs
Speaker 1: by moving to a small ocean town in Connecticut. But
Speaker 1: it didn't take me very long to find a car
Speaker 1: and then find a row, you know, get into the
Speaker 1: inner city. And I was just going into really bad
Speaker 1: neighborhoods where a skinny white kid like me should probably
Speaker 1: just not be hanging out. Um. You know, there were
Speaker 1: lots of situations where I went into houses and I
Speaker 1: just a lot of stuff I look back on, I'm like,
Speaker 1: what on earth could I have been thinking? Um? So,
Speaker 1: I think I I spent a lot of time in
Speaker 1: in danger. I don't know if there's a particular low.
Speaker 1: I mean I think well, I mean yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's accumulative low what you're describing. I mean, you know
Speaker 1: it sounds like over time. That just doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: a very I mean, it's not a sustainable existence. Oh
Speaker 1: it's no, it's not. And it's you know. The thing
Speaker 1: that I have said before is it's amazing to me
Speaker 1: how hard I clung to such a shitty life, you know,
Speaker 1: Like how hard I just kept trying to to make
Speaker 1: that work. And when I finally went into treatment to
Speaker 1: get sober, it wasn't. Um, it wasn't like I decided
Speaker 1: I wanted I was going to get my life together.
Speaker 1: I just was out of ideas. I did not I
Speaker 1: knew I was going to be incredibly dope sick. I
Speaker 1: you know, the van that i'd been living in was gone.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I had just suddenly I was
Speaker 1: you know, had a court date coming out. I mean
Speaker 1: just everything fell apart, and a life that was already
Speaker 1: pretty well fallen apart, and I was just too tired
Speaker 1: to sort it out. So I said, I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: I can go to treatment. I had gone once before
Speaker 1: and it didn't work, but you know, this time it
Speaker 1: was for it. And so what worked for you? What
Speaker 1: was what were the steps that you started taking to
Speaker 1: get your life back on track? Um? I went to
Speaker 1: treatment and I stayed in treatment for a long time. UM.
Speaker 1: Every time they said we think you should do X,
Speaker 1: I just said, okay. Originally, I remember I was in
Speaker 1: in detox. You know detox is like you know, five
Speaker 1: day type thing, and uh, it's it's what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: It's simply to get you past that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: coming off the chemical period. And they said, we think
Speaker 1: you should go into our day treatment program. And I said, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a good idea. And um, and
Speaker 1: then I went back to my room and I just
Speaker 1: had one of those you know, in recovery they call
Speaker 1: him a moment of clarity, um, where I just realized, like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to die if I go back out there,
Speaker 1: Like I just knew that it wouldn't work. So I
Speaker 1: said to them, Okay, I'll go, you know, and I
Speaker 1: went to the twenty day treatment and then they said,
Speaker 1: we think you should go to six month treatment after
Speaker 1: to this, and I said, okay, um, I didn't want to.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot, I mean, I could, you know,
Speaker 1: go into great detail about all these things, but the
Speaker 1: essence of it was, I think that I just sort
Speaker 1: of gave in and started doing what I was told
Speaker 1: would help me to get sober, and I just did it,
Speaker 1: um with with a real intensity. I think that once
Speaker 1: I got a little bit of clean time under my belt,
Speaker 1: just even in treatment, and once I started to come
Speaker 1: out of the fog just a hair and I was
Speaker 1: involved in twelve step recovery, and I just started seeing
Speaker 1: people who's who would talk about living in life just
Speaker 1: like mine, and I would see them and they would
Speaker 1: be living a life that was very different. And I
Speaker 1: gave me just enough, like okay, and they were like,
Speaker 1: if you do what I did, you can get here.
Speaker 1: And and um, I think that part of me, that
Speaker 1: part of me that you know, formed a tutoring program
Speaker 1: for inner city kids or the harder to wake up
Speaker 1: again and say wait a minute, like I want out.
Speaker 1: It's not like I didn't want out, you know, periodically
Speaker 1: over that whole seven year period. I mean, when you
Speaker 1: get to the point I get to, all all all
Speaker 1: junkies do is get high and talk about how they're
Speaker 1: gonna stop getting high until you're not high anymore than
Speaker 1: you get high again, and then you talk about what
Speaker 1: a crappy life it is and how you're gonna stop.
Speaker 1: And so I mean it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When
Speaker 1: you're you know, on the pyramid, you're the part where
Speaker 1: where you know, food and shelter are your prime directives. Um,
Speaker 1: it's tough to even think about anything else. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's what our inner cities, students you know, from poverty
Speaker 1: environments deal with, you know, when when they don't know
Speaker 1: where lunch is gonna come from, where dinner is going
Speaker 1: to come from that night, if the heat is gonna
Speaker 1: be on when they get home, you know, test scores
Speaker 1: aren't really a priority for them. Yeah, it's very hard yep,
Speaker 1: and so that was what you know, that was what happened.
Speaker 1: I um, you know, basically, I think it was twelve
Speaker 1: step recovery that that worked for me. Um. I did
Speaker 1: drink again after about eight years sober. I went out
Speaker 1: and drank for a couple of years, and I've been
Speaker 1: back about eight and a half years. Congratulations. And So
Speaker 1: at some point, Eric, was there this notion in did
Speaker 1: you think at some point like, wow, you know what,
Speaker 1: I've been able to pull myself from this point way
Speaker 1: down here to where I am now, maybe you know,
Speaker 1: getting back to those roots that you planted in high school,
Speaker 1: those seeds that you planted. Um, I can help other
Speaker 1: people do the same in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, I think a big part of
Speaker 1: of recovery and a twelve step program is really the
Speaker 1: idea that there's a um that there is both a
Speaker 1: responsibility and a real um enjoyment for helping other people
Speaker 1: get through what you've gone through. UM. You know, it's
Speaker 1: that working with other people who have the same problem
Speaker 1: that actually I think contributes to contented sobriety about as
Speaker 1: much as anything. It's one of the big things is
Speaker 1: that idea of helping other people. I do it a
Speaker 1: little bit differently now, um, it's more through the show
Speaker 1: and stuff. But yeah, that's a definite And that's why
Speaker 1: I was gonna say. One of the things I think
Speaker 1: I learned about myself in that period in high school
Speaker 1: was that I am really happy when I am building something,
Speaker 1: you know, when I'm I'm creating something. I'm really happy
Speaker 1: when that that whole process of And I was in
Speaker 1: startup companies for years after I got my life together
Speaker 1: because I love that whole process and I and I
Speaker 1: love so I love that process and I love when
Speaker 1: it matters, like when what you're doing with it actually matters.
Speaker 1: And when I have both of those things, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm in you know, I'm in a pretty good spot
Speaker 1: for myself. And I think many of us go through
Speaker 1: a period when the building something is the priority and
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter what we're building. We sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, we're energized, we're we're excited by this building thing.
Speaker 1: And it can be it can be you know, space loo, sprockets,
Speaker 1: it can be whatever we're building something. Um and then
Speaker 1: at some point in our life, oftentimes around our middle age,
Speaker 1: we hit a point where it's gotta matter, It's gonna
Speaker 1: mean something. You know, I can't just build anything. I
Speaker 1: can't make a widget for somebody and get paid for
Speaker 1: it and be content for that anymore. And so um.
Speaker 1: You know, Wayne Dyer famously wrote about that and made
Speaker 1: a movie about it, From Ambition to Meaning, um. And
Speaker 1: and so was was there a similar shift for you?
Speaker 1: Were you making things that maybe at the time you
Speaker 1: were satisfied with and then looking back, you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that was cool. I made those things, But what
Speaker 1: does it really matter? I think to some degree. I
Speaker 1: mean I had meaning in my life all through that
Speaker 1: time because I was very involved in recovery and helping
Speaker 1: other people. And you know, I probably sponsored a hundred
Speaker 1: people over the years, so I spent a lot. I
Speaker 1: had that meaning, And then there was the work side
Speaker 1: of it. But yeah, when I started a solar company
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, and I think that that
Speaker 1: was my first attempt to really bring the two things together,
Speaker 1: bring my work together with um, the things that were
Speaker 1: important to me in life. Now, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons why I didn't quite get that right. But that
Speaker 1: was my first attempt at it. And I think the
Speaker 1: show now is the and the associated things that have
Speaker 1: been flowing out of it is that is that second
Speaker 1: iteration of where I really locked into, like, here's the
Speaker 1: thing that I love doing, here's the thing I'm naturally
Speaker 1: interested in, here's the thing that I think is important,
Speaker 1: and here's the and I see how I can build
Speaker 1: it into something. And so I think that's been a
Speaker 1: progression for me. Yeah. Yeah, it all sort of dovetailed together.
Speaker 1: So let's second way over to the show. Then, how
Speaker 1: did you get to the point in your life where
Speaker 1: you thought, you know what, I want to start a podcast? Well,
Speaker 1: how did that work for you? Um? It happened. So
Speaker 1: I started the Solar Energy Company and we had a
Speaker 1: few really good years and um, and then the political
Speaker 1: climate in Ohio changed on us. And solar energy is
Speaker 1: a very politically um it it depends on political support
Speaker 1: to a certain degree. It's getting better, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's still it's still slowly getting there. Um. And so
Speaker 1: after about five years of that, you know, I spent
Speaker 1: as you know, I ended up spending as much time
Speaker 1: testifying and Senate hearings as I did chasing customers, and
Speaker 1: I just eventually went like, this isn't it. Like I
Speaker 1: do think it's important. I think energy is an important issue,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's my issue. Um And so
Speaker 1: I finally said, well, okay, I don't think I want
Speaker 1: to keep doing this anymore. And what I started to do, though,
Speaker 1: is I thought, I'm just going to build an online
Speaker 1: course for developing solar energy projects. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: very complicated, um financial things, and it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: a lot more about the money and the deal structure
Speaker 1: and all that than it is about the solar. The
Speaker 1: solar is a pretty simple technology. So I decided I
Speaker 1: wanted to build an online course to do that. And um,
Speaker 1: so I started getting interested in how do you how
Speaker 1: do you have a business that's online? Because my you know,
Speaker 1: the solar company was the exact opposite. It was you
Speaker 1: need to raise huge amounts of capital. You know, the
Speaker 1: solar projects kind of take ten million dollars and so
Speaker 1: you got to bring investors in. And then if it
Speaker 1: was just it was a lot it was very very
Speaker 1: capital intensive. And so suddenly, once I started looking into
Speaker 1: that online course, the idea of the opposite that that
Speaker 1: suddenly really appealed to me, like, wait, I could just
Speaker 1: do this, like I don't need anything, I don't need
Speaker 1: another person, I don't need like I just I. That
Speaker 1: sort of appealed to me. And then as that went on,
Speaker 1: so I learned about podcasting, and I learned about blogging,
Speaker 1: and I learned about I just got more deep into
Speaker 1: that world, and at some point I decided I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do I didn't even want to build a
Speaker 1: course for the solar energy thing. It just it kind
Speaker 1: of fizzled out for me. And so I don't know
Speaker 1: where the idea came from. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: thought I'd like to do a podcast, and what's the
Speaker 1: idea gonna be, or what I remember is just getting
Speaker 1: this idea to start a podcast called the One You
Speaker 1: Feed and use that parable and do it with my
Speaker 1: best friend Chris Um because it would be fun to
Speaker 1: do and we could spend more time together and I
Speaker 1: needed help staying off of autopilot. And so I just
Speaker 1: remember the idea kind of coming and I called him
Speaker 1: and we met for dinner the next night and just
Speaker 1: sort of started. So there wasn't a lot of contemplation.
Speaker 1: There was no real planning about it. Um I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't quit doing um you know I do. I
Speaker 1: do some commerce or some e commerce consulting work. I
Speaker 1: didn't quit doing that. UM, I still do some of it.
Speaker 1: The balance changes how much of that I do versus
Speaker 1: how much of the show I do. But I didn't
Speaker 1: just you know, throw everything away. But as is my tendency,
Speaker 1: you know, I started a solar energy company kind of
Speaker 1: in the same way, like I think I want to
Speaker 1: do that, you know. And I started a nonprofit tutoring
Speaker 1: program in the same way, like I kind of want
Speaker 1: to do that. And I just started and um. And
Speaker 1: so that's kind of how this happened. It was an
Speaker 1: idea and I I thought, let's let's start, and we start,
Speaker 1: and and and as I started, and as we as
Speaker 1: we progressed, I went, oh, I think there is something here.
Speaker 1: I think I do want to do this. You know.
Speaker 1: I learned more about it, and the more I learned,
Speaker 1: the more I wanted to learn. Yeah, well, excellent. And
Speaker 1: so I'd love to know where you first came to
Speaker 1: hear the parable of the Two Wolves and tell people
Speaker 1: what that is, because there are listeners that I'm sure
Speaker 1: don't know the parable. Yes, so the parable is, Um,
Speaker 1: There's a grandfather is talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So that's
Speaker 1: the parable. Um. I first came across it in recovery
Speaker 1: and you know, looking at it from the perspective and
Speaker 1: addict or alcoholic, it's an incredibly um powerful parable. It
Speaker 1: makes a ton of sense, and it's very life or death.
Speaker 1: And your bad wolf is a real he's a real
Speaker 1: bad dude in those cases. Um. So that's where I
Speaker 1: came across it and just kind of always stuck with
Speaker 1: me and like a good parable does. I think it
Speaker 1: conveys a lot in you know, in a few short sentences,
Speaker 1: like you immediately get it and you're like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: And so it was very it was a very powerful
Speaker 1: thing for me when I heard it, and it kind
Speaker 1: of always stuck with me. And uh, like I said,
Speaker 1: I don't quite like most ideas. I don't really know
Speaker 1: where it came from to make a show about it.
Speaker 1: It just sort of showed up that way. Oh that's excellent.
Speaker 1: I love that it just bubbled up that way. And
Speaker 1: so I'm sure when you look back at your own life,
Speaker 1: you thought, well, you know, there were times in my
Speaker 1: own life where I fed the good wolf, and there
Speaker 1: are times in my own life when I fed the
Speaker 1: bed wolf. Oh yeah, and rather rather extremely in both
Speaker 1: cases voraciously probably, yes, yes, indeed and so yeah. And
Speaker 1: for me, you know, having a simple tagline, having something
Speaker 1: simple that can explain the sort of umbrella, if you will,
Speaker 1: under which your show operates is really crucial. It's why
Speaker 1: one of the main reasons why I rebranded my own show,
Speaker 1: because nobody knew what an Enzo was and it's like, Enzo,
Speaker 1: what what does that? What does that mean? And it
Speaker 1: was too long winded of an explanation, like Okay, life
Speaker 1: on purpose. People can figure people, people can figure that
Speaker 1: one out. That's pretty straightforward, it is. And so how
Speaker 1: does one go from this idea that oh I'm going
Speaker 1: to start a podcast. We're gonna give this a try. Okay, hey,
Speaker 1: this is pretty be good. I like this. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: learning from my guest um to Hey, we're the the
Speaker 1: number one ranked podcast in three different categories and iTunes
Speaker 1: and Huffington's Post calls you one of the best podcasts
Speaker 1: in the health category of all time. That's fantastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't, you know, I think some of it is luck. Um.
Speaker 1: I think some of it is Um. I say the
Speaker 1: luck thing, not not you know, not disingenuously. I think
Speaker 1: there are a lot of great shows out there, your
Speaker 1: show being an example of it. So bubbling up out
Speaker 1: of that and getting picked for some of those things
Speaker 1: is is certainly I think to a certain degree luck. Um.
Speaker 1: It's just that somebody happens to you know. In my case,
Speaker 1: it was somebody who worked at Apple in the podcast
Speaker 1: place for whatever reason, decided to listen to it and
Speaker 1: really liked it, and um, you know, they were a
Speaker 1: support to us, and and so, like I said, I'm
Speaker 1: not under the illusion that there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: other good shows, but have any good show as a prerequisite.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I think the thing that I think
Speaker 1: the success success like that in the external world being
Speaker 1: named this or named that is you know, you do
Speaker 1: your best with that and then kind of what happens happens.
Speaker 1: You can't control it much. What you can control is
Speaker 1: making a show that you feel good about. You can
Speaker 1: put everything you have into making something that is great.
Speaker 1: And and you know Jonathan Fields, who we you know,
Speaker 1: we met at the camp that he puts on, he
Speaker 1: has you know, a line along the lines of you know,
Speaker 1: there's no better marketing than making a kick ass product. Um.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely true. And so that's where you know,
Speaker 1: that was really my was and is my main focus
Speaker 1: was I want to make the show good. So if
Speaker 1: I have to make a decision between marketing and content,
Speaker 1: I'm going to focus on the content. Um And and
Speaker 1: the reason I did it was not too um become
Speaker 1: you know, named as one of the best of two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen podcasts on iTunes not iTunes. Not that I'm
Speaker 1: not thrilled by that, not that I don't love the
Speaker 1: success of the show, not that I didn't have some
Speaker 1: secret hope that maybe that would happen, But I was
Speaker 1: very aware that it was probably more likely than not
Speaker 1: that it would not that sort of thing would not happen,
Speaker 1: but that the thing that I was doing I wanted
Speaker 1: to do. I wanted to make this show. I wanted
Speaker 1: to spend time with Chris, I wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: these people. I wanted to read these books. Um and
Speaker 1: that I couldn't agree more that that's why I do
Speaker 1: my show. I feel like I should pay my guests,
Speaker 1: I should send them a check every week. And I I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm going to some sort of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's some sort of life class, life university or something.
Speaker 1: Each week. I'm learning something from every one of my guests.
Speaker 1: And and and you know, what I found is that
Speaker 1: this is a topic that's come up quite a bit
Speaker 1: of my show over time. Is that and I've really
Speaker 1: come to believe this axiom is that we do the work,
Speaker 1: we teach that thing that we most need to learn ourselves. Oh,
Speaker 1: I agree. We had a guest on as names Justin Sullivan.
Speaker 1: He's in a band called New Model Army, kind of
Speaker 1: a I love New Model Army. I have I have
Speaker 1: thunder and consolation, like saying right over here on myself
Speaker 1: one of the best records ever made. We have very
Speaker 1: similar musical tape. But yeah, in a later song, he
Speaker 1: has a line I don't remember what album it is,
Speaker 1: but he has a line that you know, it's uh,
Speaker 1: always the ones who need save to do most of
Speaker 1: the saving. And you know that's the same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: you teach what you need to learn. Yeah, I started
Speaker 1: the show because I needed it, you know, I needed
Speaker 1: um I needed to help feeding my good wolf and
Speaker 1: staying on the right track. And I still do. So
Speaker 1: what have when you look back at your show? I mean,
Speaker 1: have you thought about what have I learned from the show?
Speaker 1: What have I picked up from the guests? What do
Speaker 1: you learn from each person that comes on the show?
Speaker 1: You know? I learning is an interesting word because it's
Speaker 1: very rare that anybody comes on and says something that
Speaker 1: I don't kind of know. I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: this personal development spiritual stuff is not that complicated, right
Speaker 1: there are you know? There's some base principles to it.
Speaker 1: Um So, I think what I get is I just
Speaker 1: get reminded again and again to to work on this thing,
Speaker 1: or to focus on this thing or right here something
Speaker 1: in a slightly different way that drives it deeper into
Speaker 1: my you know, consciousness. Um So, I think that I
Speaker 1: there haven't been a ton of times where I've been
Speaker 1: like completely blown away, UM. But it's more of a
Speaker 1: gradual I keep keep trying to re you know, I
Speaker 1: keep trying to hear the same themes UM. I mean
Speaker 1: there's been a couple though. UM. We had a guy
Speaker 1: on named David K. Reynolds who wrote a book called
Speaker 1: Constructive Living UM. He took a lot of his philosophy
Speaker 1: from the Japanese psychologist Marita but he the book Constructive
Speaker 1: Living is about how do you live in in UM?
Speaker 1: You know, how do you live constructively? It's very similar
Speaker 1: to what we talked about earlier. You you have a feeling,
Speaker 1: you recognize you're having the feeling. UM, you come back
Speaker 1: to what your purposes. UM, you accept that feeling, You
Speaker 1: come to what your purpose is, you do the next
Speaker 1: right thing. It's very simple. But one of the things
Speaker 1: he said was that when you have your behavior in control,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be afraid of your feelings. And
Speaker 1: that really kind of blew me away, because for a
Speaker 1: lot of my life my behavior was not in control.
Speaker 1: You know, when we talked earlier, my behavior drove my
Speaker 1: or my moods drove my behavior. In a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: did that lead you at some point and then repress that,
Speaker 1: repress your behavior out of fear of what it would
Speaker 1: do if it came out. I think it led me
Speaker 1: to repress my moods. I was afraid of having certain
Speaker 1: feelings because those feelings would lead me into very destructive places. Um.
Speaker 1: And when he said that, it really hit me that,
Speaker 1: like as I have as, I now know myself much
Speaker 1: better and I'm not likely to go off on a
Speaker 1: bender next week because I'm in a bad mood. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not likely to not go to work for three
Speaker 1: days because I'm depressed. I'm I'm gonna I've got enough
Speaker 1: history at this point and enough internal fortitude for the
Speaker 1: most part that I kind of keep walking. And so
Speaker 1: now I don't have to be afraid of emotion. I
Speaker 1: can I can wander into that territory a little bit
Speaker 1: more comfortably than um, I think I used to because
Speaker 1: I was, you know, trying to maybe get rid of
Speaker 1: it via drugs or alcohol, um, you know, repressing it,
Speaker 1: working too hard, all those things. And I think that
Speaker 1: that was one thing that you know, really sticks out
Speaker 1: to me from the show where I where I kind
Speaker 1: of really went never thought of that. I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: a lot of others. They're just not coming to mind. No,
Speaker 1: So when you were saying reminding versus learning, I was
Speaker 1: like waving my hands wildly in the air. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to interrupt you, but I was just like, yes,
Speaker 1: that's it for me, as you said, it's not a
Speaker 1: new learning thing, you know, for me oftentimes, but it's remember, forget, remember, forget, remember,
Speaker 1: And that's the human condition. We remember and then we forget.
Speaker 1: And I need to be you know, I feel like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I haven't watched in years, but in the
Speaker 1: early years, I was a big Simpsons fan. I used
Speaker 1: to watch the Simpsons all the time, and in sort
Speaker 1: of late eighties, early nineties when it came on, I
Speaker 1: remember there was a Simpsons where Homer famously gets sort
Speaker 1: of hit over the head by a pot over again
Speaker 1: and very cartoonish three stooges these sort of a moment,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I'm Homer Simpson. I need to
Speaker 1: be sort of whacked over the head again and again
Speaker 1: and again, and to remember these things I'll forget. I remember,
Speaker 1: I forget, I remember, yeah, And I do not know
Speaker 1: why that is the case. But it sure seems to be.
Speaker 1: I think it's just so much of culturally that we
Speaker 1: are just surrounded by a very different world and mentality
Speaker 1: and approach and um, it's kind of swimming against the
Speaker 1: stream to a certain degree. I think, Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: very strong pull. It's almost like a magnet that's sort
Speaker 1: of pulling us in these directions, and you just sort
Speaker 1: of let yourself be pulled into those things, be sucked
Speaker 1: into the vortex. You're going to be unconscious. And so
Speaker 1: that's why I think. The other problem is that like
Speaker 1: this idea that is something out there that will satisfy
Speaker 1: is is I think patently false. The problem is that
Speaker 1: most of those things do for a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the key for a little bit, for a little bit,
Speaker 1: and so but for most of us, and myself included,
Speaker 1: sometimes I don't know how to do it any other way.
Speaker 1: So that's all I know to reach for, um, And
Speaker 1: that's the you know, that's the spiritual path for me,
Speaker 1: is learning to build that contentment inside where I don't
Speaker 1: have to reach for that thing outside, or when I
Speaker 1: reach for it, I'm reaching for it in a different way.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a very different it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the idea of being an artist because you're driven by
Speaker 1: pain versus being an artist because you love to create.
Speaker 1: Those are very different things, and they're both ways to
Speaker 1: make art. Yeah. No, that that's great. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think that another part of the equation is and you
Speaker 1: sort of reference. This is reframing things. Sometimes I'll have
Speaker 1: an idea or a concept in my head, but I
Speaker 1: haven't quite framed it or thought about it in a
Speaker 1: way that helps me really apply it to my life
Speaker 1: or sort of gives me this sense of like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that works for me, Like, yeah, I can understand. I've
Speaker 1: heard that before, but I never really thought, how is
Speaker 1: that relevant to me? And so now I have a
Speaker 1: tool or I have a way to frame something in
Speaker 1: a way that's now suddenly relevant to my own life. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's why I love great interviews. That's why I
Speaker 1: love this medium, because we're able to have these conversations
Speaker 1: where I'll hear you say something, oh yeah, okay, constructive living,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, and that's it's helping me frame something
Speaker 1: in a new way for me. So, so before we
Speaker 1: run on a time America in our hours flown flying
Speaker 1: by we're almost almost done here, but we have to
Speaker 1: talk music because we're both musicians and we you know,
Speaker 1: we sort of met in the garage, if you will,
Speaker 1: the garage band of Camp GLP, and you had your
Speaker 1: guitar and I was sitting at a keyboard and our
Speaker 1: our buddy Casey was there on base and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we had a few of his friends on additional instruments
Speaker 1: and we played some music together in the garage and
Speaker 1: then that was a blast. And I love that you're
Speaker 1: a guitar player. And then you have people that I'm
Speaker 1: big music fans on the show. You're a big water
Speaker 1: Boys fan, for instance, and I've seen the water Boys
Speaker 1: live a couple of times. I love Mike Scott and
Speaker 1: everything he's done Mike Scott solo and Mike Scott under
Speaker 1: the offices of the water Boys. And I love the
Speaker 1: fact that you're able to incorporate that element as something
Speaker 1: that you're passionate about and you're like you had just
Speaker 1: had Mike Peters of the Alarm Fan was a big
Speaker 1: fan of back in the eighties. So so, how does
Speaker 1: how does music fit into all of this? How does
Speaker 1: music fit into the one you feed? Well, I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I do think of the show
Speaker 1: sometimes as a UM it's a reflection of me to
Speaker 1: a certain degree, like what matters to me and what
Speaker 1: am I interested in? And music is one of the biggest,
Speaker 1: you know, forces in my life of I mean, I think,
Speaker 1: I think that music has as much healing power, as
Speaker 1: much consoling power as anything in the world, any spiritual
Speaker 1: practice or meditation. I mean, it's as big a part
Speaker 1: of what helps me you to live a life it's
Speaker 1: worth living as anything else. And so I've been able to,
Speaker 1: you know, it's been fun to bring that into the
Speaker 1: show in two ways. One is, um we try and
Speaker 1: make two music breaks during each show, and we Chris
Speaker 1: and I make all that music, and so that's been
Speaker 1: really fun to have a way to create music and
Speaker 1: do something with it. UM again, has been a great joy.
Speaker 1: And then the other one, as you've mentioned, is I
Speaker 1: get artists on who I feel like their music is
Speaker 1: particularly particularly helps me feed my good wolf. Not that
Speaker 1: I just like it, you know, it's not. It's not
Speaker 1: just that I like the music. It's like, can I
Speaker 1: find a way to tie that to the theme. Do
Speaker 1: I think that they're saying something about how to live
Speaker 1: a better life. And so the artist that I've had
Speaker 1: on are ones that I think do that. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know, I just sort of scrolling through your recent
Speaker 1: podcast and you said, uh, you know, you talked to
Speaker 1: Mike Peters about marching On in the Face of Difficulties.
Speaker 1: I played in the cover band in the mid eighties
Speaker 1: that covered marching On one of you one of the
Speaker 1: alarm songs that you know, we're big on sort of
Speaker 1: college radio alternative at the time, you know, and you
Speaker 1: mentioned New Model Army, you know, in fifty first State
Speaker 1: of America and Thunder and Consolation some of my favorite
Speaker 1: music from that era. It's it's stuff that still resonates
Speaker 1: with me today. So I wish we lived in the
Speaker 1: same town so we can claimed because I miss I.
Speaker 1: I mean that that I am, and I do have
Speaker 1: music back in my life by making it for the
Speaker 1: show and all that. But what I don't have and
Speaker 1: I miss is um just like we did in that garage,
Speaker 1: like you know, turning it up and playing with a
Speaker 1: band is there's nothing quite like it. No, It's a
Speaker 1: very visceral experience and and something you can't really repeat
Speaker 1: unless you're in that situation. So we'll have to find
Speaker 1: a way to make that happen in the future. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: and so, um, Eric, before we run out of time here.
Speaker 1: You also currently besides doing the podcast and you right
Speaker 1: at times, Um, you also do some coaching as well. Correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I started doing some coaching work. I got asked from
Speaker 1: a few people in the show, and I was a
Speaker 1: little bit like, I don't know if I should do that,
Speaker 1: and I finally decided to do it. And as soon
Speaker 1: as I started doing it, I went, oh, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this is very much like sponsoring somebody in a in
Speaker 1: a twelve step program. And I've done that, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, probably a hundred times. So I suddenly
Speaker 1: realized I was very comfortable doing it and really like
Speaker 1: doing it. And so far the feedback from clients has
Speaker 1: been really really strong. They really, I think, are getting
Speaker 1: a lot out of it. Excellent. And are you taking
Speaker 1: new people into the program right now? And how does
Speaker 1: that work? If so? Um? Yeah, I am we are.
Speaker 1: I've still got I've got a couple of spots open
Speaker 1: right now. A couple of clients just um, you know,
Speaker 1: ended their time and so if you go to one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash coaching, you can get the
Speaker 1: information there. Cool. You said something earlier, Eric that I
Speaker 1: just I'd love to sort of as one of my
Speaker 1: final questions here get an answer from you said you
Speaker 1: were talking about, Well, I don't know if that's my issue.
Speaker 1: And we're describing, you know, back doing businesses online and
Speaker 1: finding our way into the podcast. What is your issue
Speaker 1: these days? I think it's you know, how do we
Speaker 1: how do we live better lives as humans? How do
Speaker 1: we you know, how do we live a life that
Speaker 1: has as much meaning and purpose and contentment and um,
Speaker 1: you know, minimize the amount of suffering that we have
Speaker 1: in lives. I think that's what really matters to me.
Speaker 1: It's what I've always been interested in. Um So, I
Speaker 1: think that is my that is my issue? Well, and
Speaker 1: how do you do that? On a daily basis? I meditate,
Speaker 1: I talk to people when something's bothering me, and I
Speaker 1: stay close to ideas that remind me that it's not
Speaker 1: all out there, that what's happening inside of me is
Speaker 1: really the primary way that my life either has meaning
Speaker 1: or doesn't or has a has a has a feeling
Speaker 1: that that's what spiritual means to me. Just that I'm
Speaker 1: looking inside for things. So I try and do things
Speaker 1: that help me. Remember that that helped me wake up
Speaker 1: from that trance of Um, you know, it's all about
Speaker 1: you know, am I good looking enough to have a
Speaker 1: nice enough car? Do I have a nice enough money?
Speaker 1: Do I get to travel enough? You know? Waking up
Speaker 1: from that dream that that's where happiness lies. Yeah, that's excellent.
Speaker 1: Remember forget, remember forget Yep, it gets back to that.
Speaker 1: So what's in store for you? What is? What is? Uh?
Speaker 1: What's the next year hold for you? And hold for
Speaker 1: the show? What do you have planned? Um? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: first is just to keep doing the show because we
Speaker 1: love doing it. We're also starting to work on an
Speaker 1: online program that will bring some of the things that
Speaker 1: we're giving people through coaching to a broader audience. Not
Speaker 1: everybody can afford to hire a personal coach. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I'm extremely reasonably priced, but not everybody can
Speaker 1: do it. And so I think that I think there
Speaker 1: are real we talked earlier about there are real skills
Speaker 1: for how you become the kind of person that can
Speaker 1: can come up with an idea and follow through and execute.
Speaker 1: And I think that's very much a skill based thing.
Speaker 1: So I'm working on some training that will help people
Speaker 1: to do that. Excellent, and people can find out more
Speaker 1: about that as it develops. That at when you feed
Speaker 1: dot net, yep, exactly excellent, And you're on social media Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: where else can people find you? Yeah? Twitter at one
Speaker 1: you feed, and we're on Facebook. If you search for
Speaker 1: the one you feed, you would probably find us. We're
Speaker 1: not real active there, but Twitter is where we primarily are,
Speaker 1: and then you know the website. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: listening to the show is the main thing. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that's great, Eric, I really really enjoyed having a long,
Speaker 1: in depth conversation with you and getting to learn more
Speaker 1: about your life and the show and being able to
Speaker 1: flesh out some of the concepts that we touched on
Speaker 1: originally in our round table. And uh, this has been
Speaker 1: great and please keep in touch and hopefully we can
Speaker 1: do this again sometime. Yeah, thanks so much for having
Speaker 1: me on. It's it's great to talk with you. I
Speaker 1: love you know, I just love listening to You've got
Speaker 1: such a great radio presence that it's just very fun
Speaker 1: to to talk. Well, thank you very much. And folks,
Speaker 1: if you like what you're hearing here, would do this
Speaker 1: about once a week. It's called Life on Purpose, and
Speaker 1: you can find out more about the show or listen
Speaker 1: to additional episodes of via the Life on Purpose website
Speaker 1: at Life on Purpose show dot com. You can also
Speaker 1: find us on iTunes, the Stitcher radio app, or all
Speaker 1: around the web. Until next week, I'm your host, Greg Burg.
Speaker 1: Take care,