Speaker 1: Hey everybody, it's Eric from the One You Feed podcast
Speaker 1: and I am doing another mini episode. I got some
Speaker 1: pretty good comments back on the last one, so thank
Speaker 1: you for everybody who got in touch to share what
Speaker 1: you thought of that. I'd like to start off by
Speaker 1: just thanking everybody for listening to the show. Chris and
Speaker 1: I are thrilled with the reception we've got. The download
Speaker 1: numbers are really are really surprising, and more and more
Speaker 1: of you are starting to reach out to us via email,
Speaker 1: which I genuinely enjoy. Love to hear from you, love
Speaker 1: to hear your suggestions on the show. Um, see what
Speaker 1: you're getting out of it. I'm open to guest suggestions, so, uh,
Speaker 1: feel free to get in touch. I' me met Eric
Speaker 1: at one you Feed dot net. The other thing I
Speaker 1: would ask is, if you get a chance, if you
Speaker 1: could leave us in iTunes review. Uh, that's really value
Speaker 1: well to us and and helps out a lot, So
Speaker 1: I would be very appreciative of that. And if you're
Speaker 1: in there and you want to share it with somebody,
Speaker 1: that's helpful too. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: today was the theme of the One You Feed because
Speaker 1: we've gotten a lot of people who who come on
Speaker 1: and say, well, I don't really believe in good and
Speaker 1: bad and I don't believe in a in a dualistic
Speaker 1: sense of things, and and I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: that because frankly, neither do I. And I'm not really
Speaker 1: thrilled with the terms good wolf and bad wolf because
Speaker 1: I think they have some baggage to them. Um As
Speaker 1: I've joked about on the show before. Though, if we
Speaker 1: were to call it a skillful and unskillful wolf, the
Speaker 1: parable wouldn't really retain its bite. So but skillful and
Speaker 1: unskillful is really a good way to think of when
Speaker 1: I when I do the introduction, I'm saying things like,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got the bad wolf, which is things
Speaker 1: like hate, tread, and greed and fear, and I think
Speaker 1: we can all recognize those are not things that are
Speaker 1: particularly pleasant to think about. They're not conducive to us
Speaker 1: living a better life. They stand in our way. And
Speaker 1: then on the other hand, you've got the good wolf,
Speaker 1: who's got things like kindness and love and bravery and
Speaker 1: these things that are helpful to us in in living
Speaker 1: a life that's worth living. So I don't mean it
Speaker 1: in good and bad moralistic terms. I'm not interested in
Speaker 1: judging anybody. I think we all do the best we
Speaker 1: can for the most part, with what we have at
Speaker 1: the time, and the question is how can we do better?
Speaker 1: And I think that the purpose of the podcast for
Speaker 1: me is to remember that there's a choice there. And
Speaker 1: I think that's the biggest problem in any level of
Speaker 1: personal change a lot of times is remembering because life
Speaker 1: is very habitual. I have become very habitual. I think
Speaker 1: we all have. There's so much stimulus, things are moving
Speaker 1: so fast, we've become very habitual, and very often we
Speaker 1: don't even realize the choices we're making. And so I
Speaker 1: think that this this idea of which wolf am I
Speaker 1: feeding is about this idea to be conscious of I
Speaker 1: am feeding one of these wolves, although I suppose there's
Speaker 1: probably just a neutral wolf. Maybe he's sleeping. I'm not sure. Um,
Speaker 1: we're feeding one of these wolves, so so what are
Speaker 1: we feeding it? And this gets back to the idea
Speaker 1: that's pretty popular about positive thinking. And our second episode
Speaker 1: we had Oliver Berkman on who has a book called
Speaker 1: The Antidote Happiness for People who Hate Positive Thinking, And
Speaker 1: in that book he's sort of rebelling against this idea
Speaker 1: that if we just think positive all the time, everything
Speaker 1: will be fine, and I tend to agree with that.
Speaker 1: I think it goes way too far. But at the
Speaker 1: heart of it, realizing that what work thinking about is
Speaker 1: a large part of the life we're having is an
Speaker 1: important skill. And to be able to recognize that we're
Speaker 1: having those thoughts and be able to question them and
Speaker 1: get some distance from them really is important. And I
Speaker 1: know Oliver agrees with that idea. I think where I
Speaker 1: run into trouble with the positive thinking is the idea
Speaker 1: that if I just think positively, uh, great things are
Speaker 1: going to happen to me. The the idea of the
Speaker 1: secret that I'm going to attract all these things to
Speaker 1: me by thinking positively, which I don't really believe in. Now.
Speaker 1: I do believe that thinking positive can make me a
Speaker 1: more attractive person, It can make me a person who
Speaker 1: puts more good out into the world, has better relationships,
Speaker 1: and those things do lead to better outcomes. But it's
Speaker 1: not that I am, my opinion, attracting these things through
Speaker 1: some magical formula. So I wanted to, just like I said,
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what the parable is and
Speaker 1: why why we did it, So you know, we did
Speaker 1: it because we wanted to. I wanted to be more
Speaker 1: conscious of the choices I was making in my life.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk with a lot of cool people
Speaker 1: who are trying to do the same thing. Another big
Speaker 1: motivation for me is I wanted to spend time with
Speaker 1: my friend Chris, who is the audio guy and he
Speaker 1: does the voiceovers and occasionally he's mumbling in the background. Um.
Speaker 1: This was just a way for us to spend a
Speaker 1: lot more time together and that has been wonderful and
Speaker 1: has been happening. We've seen each other more over the
Speaker 1: last several months, then we had a year, so that's
Speaker 1: excellent and ideally be able to help some people who
Speaker 1: are wrestling with these same issues of how to live
Speaker 1: a good life. So again, thank you so much everybody
Speaker 1: for listening to the show. We're thrilled to have you
Speaker 1: if we love to hear from you, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: to you in the next episode. Thanks