Speaker 1: I think no matter what lexicon you use around your addiction,
Speaker 1: whether you say that you're sober or clean, or alcohol
Speaker 1: free or teetotal or drug free, whatever.
Speaker 2: You want to use, the only thing that.
Speaker 1: Matters is remembering the darkness, the place you found yourself,
Speaker 1: and never wanting to go back there.
Speaker 3: Wow, welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great
Speaker 3: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 3: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 3: you think, ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 3: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. We
Speaker 3: hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for
Speaker 3: joining us. Our guest on this episode is Katherine Gray,
Speaker 3: who is one of very few guests to ever be
Speaker 3: on the show. Three times. Maybe she'll be the first
Speaker 3: to be on four times. We don't know what the
Speaker 3: future holds. But Catherine Gray is a writer and author
Speaker 3: who lives in the UK. Her first book, which we
Speaker 3: interviewed her about, was The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober,
Speaker 3: which is so great it became a bestseller. And then
Speaker 3: today Eric and Catherine discuss her new book, Sunshine Warm, Sober, Unexpected,
Speaker 3: Sober Joy That Lasts.
Speaker 4: Hi, Catherine, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hi Eric, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: I am so excited to have you back. We don't
Speaker 4: have a lot of three time guests, but I'm so
Speaker 4: happy to have you be one of them. We're gonna
Speaker 4: be talking about your latest book, Sunshine Warm, Sober, Unexpected,
Speaker 4: Sober Joy That Lasts. But before we do that, we'll start,
Speaker 4: like we always do, with the parable, which you will
Speaker 4: get a third try at here, so don't mess it
Speaker 4: up this time. You know how the parable goes. There's
Speaker 4: a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says,
Speaker 4: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 4: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 4: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and then
Speaker 4: there's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 4: hatred and fear, and the granddaughter stops. She thinks about
Speaker 4: it for a second. She looks up at her grandmother
Speaker 4: and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the
Speaker 4: grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 4: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 4: you and your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, well, I mean that has a daily resonance
Speaker 1: For me, I feel like inside me every day there's
Speaker 1: like this puppet show with the good and bad wolf
Speaker 1: like punching each other like sock puppets, and for me,
Speaker 1: it really boils down to so I have a very
Speaker 1: negatively biased brain, as most.
Speaker 2: Of us do. Study after study has.
Speaker 1: Shown that when bad things happen to us, we give
Speaker 1: it this profundity and significance in our brain, and when
Speaker 1: positive things happen to us, we just.
Speaker 2: Let it slide on by.
Speaker 1: It's like that famous quote about our brain being velcrow
Speaker 1: for the bad things and teflon for the good things.
Speaker 1: I can't remember who said it, and I apologize, but
Speaker 1: every single day I have to make sure I feed.
Speaker 2: My good wolf with the good things that.
Speaker 1: Are happening in my life and just hang on to
Speaker 1: them so that they don't slide away and starve my
Speaker 1: bad wolf who wants to throw all of the negative
Speaker 1: things that happen that day up onto a big screen.
Speaker 2: So that's how I think about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we're not going to talk a lot about
Speaker 4: the book you wrote before this one, but I did
Speaker 4: get something very valuable from that book about this very
Speaker 4: thing you're talking about, which is holding on to the
Speaker 4: good things and giving them a little bit more focus.
Speaker 4: And what I took from that book that after years
Speaker 4: of doing gratitude practices, I never really got until I
Speaker 4: saw the way you did it in that book is
Speaker 4: the specificity which I go into and think about the
Speaker 4: thing that occurred. I've only been doing it since I
Speaker 4: read that several days ago, but it just something in
Speaker 4: me sort of clicked, And just the last couple of days,
Speaker 4: as I've written out my gratitudes, they're just more alive
Speaker 4: with that specificity.
Speaker 1: Oh I love that. That makes me so happy. That
Speaker 1: means I've done my job. So I think when people
Speaker 1: do gratitude liss and this is something that I do
Speaker 1: every day, As I said, to help my good wilf Win,
Speaker 1: and it's something that people tend to do, and they
Speaker 1: tend to say things like I'm grateful for my car,
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for my flat, I'm grateful for my dog,
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for my partner. That kind of thing. They
Speaker 1: go too big and these things don't change from day
Speaker 1: to day. So what I discovered, because I fell into
Speaker 1: this trap myself when I started doing gratitudes eight years ago,
Speaker 1: was it if you funnel down to the specific I
Speaker 1: can't say that word, to the specifics of the gratitude,
Speaker 1: then that becomes so much more powerful, which is what
Speaker 1: you've discovered, which just makes me really happy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Listener,
Speaker 4: while you were listening to that, what resonated with you?
Speaker 4: What one thing to feed your good wolf comes to mind?
Speaker 4: If the thing that came to your mind was more
Speaker 4: time for stillness, or you've tried meditation before and you
Speaker 4: really haven't liked it, then I want to give you
Speaker 4: a quick tip that might make it better for you.
Speaker 4: And it's simply to stop expecting that you're not going
Speaker 4: to have thoughts. Nearly everyone has this expectation that they're
Speaker 4: going to sit down and meditate and they're going to
Speaker 4: stop having thoughts. And when they stop having thoughts, that
Speaker 4: means they're doing it well. But no one does that,
Speaker 4: and so we end up feeling like we're failing all
Speaker 4: of the time, every three seconds, failed again, failed again.
Speaker 4: We develop a relationship with meditation that is aversive. So
Speaker 4: if you want to stop dreading meditation and actually find
Speaker 4: it relaxing, check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf
Speaker 4: dot me slash calm. In it, I walk you through
Speaker 4: my process to engage with meditation in a new way,
Speaker 4: and a lot of people have found it really helpful.
Speaker 4: That's Goodwolf dot me slash calm. Let's talk about Sunshine,
Speaker 4: Warm and Sober. At the time of the writing of
Speaker 4: the book, you were eight years sober. I think, so,
Speaker 4: where does that track to where you are now?
Speaker 2: I'm still eight years safer.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm just a little way into so I'm like
Speaker 1: almost eight and a half years. I don't know whether
Speaker 1: you want me to go into this, but my first
Speaker 1: bit was the Unexpected Joy of being Sober, and I
Speaker 1: wrote that when I was four years sober, and I honestly.
Speaker 2: Thought that book was it.
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I've learned all the stuff I'm
Speaker 1: going to learn pretty much about sobriety and non drinking
Speaker 1: and my drinking days and recovery and addiction and all that.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously there'll be updates with the news. But honestly,
Speaker 1: I thought that evolvement had mostly been done in those
Speaker 1: first four years, which just now I'm sure you can
Speaker 1: probably relate, seems quite absurd.
Speaker 2: It just seems preposterous because.
Speaker 1: I've done just as much learning in the last four
Speaker 1: years about how to be a sober adult. So I
Speaker 1: think when I wrote the first book, I was basically
Speaker 1: a sober teenager. I think you're like a newborn for
Speaker 1: the first year of sobriety, then you're a toddler, and
Speaker 1: then you're like an adolescent. So only now that I
Speaker 1: consider myself, what would be you know, a sober adult.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's what the second book is all about.
Speaker 1: It's a sequel.
Speaker 4: You said a bunch of things in there that I
Speaker 4: could reflect upon. But I think there is a line,
Speaker 4: It's a line that doesn't exist where we go from
Speaker 4: quote unquote being in recovery to just being a human
Speaker 4: being who goes through the same things that everybody in
Speaker 4: the world. Goes through and I think at a certain
Speaker 4: point that's what recovery starts to look like, is it
Speaker 4: just starts to be about living as a thoughtful, committed,
Speaker 4: good human being, which I think always takes effort, and
Speaker 4: there's always, hopefully if you're doing it right, always.
Speaker 1: Learning, absolutely, And I think when you're in the first
Speaker 1: few years of recovery, sorry, i've got a puppy and
Speaker 1: he's got a bone, I'm just going to try and
Speaker 1: get it often, because it's going to be very noisy, okay,
Speaker 1: in a very playful mood, which is great timing. I
Speaker 1: think something that's also very true is that we tend
Speaker 1: to in the first years of recovery, we set if
Speaker 1: we're anxious, or if we're excited, or if we feel
Speaker 1: any strong emotion, we sort of count that as being triggered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, think I'm being triggered drink. Whereas now I
Speaker 1: don't think of those emotions in that way. It's just
Speaker 1: a spectrum of emotions that everyone experiences. But I think
Speaker 1: of my addiction quite differently. I don't think of myself
Speaker 1: as you know, forever addicted. I think of it more
Speaker 1: in the neuroscientific way, which is that the addictive super
Speaker 1: highways fade over time. So just as I don't consider
Speaker 1: myself like still addicted to smoking, which I quit seven
Speaker 1: years ago, but if I really started smoking, I would
Speaker 1: become addicted to it again. Those two things coexist. So
Speaker 1: that's how I think about my former addiction. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily the norm, but it served me that
Speaker 1: way of thinking about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so much of what you write in this
Speaker 4: book is about that things are on a spectrum, or
Speaker 4: there's lots of shades of gray, or there's no this
Speaker 4: or that. Answer shows up through so many different things
Speaker 4: that we could talk about as far as what we
Speaker 4: know about addiction, what we think addiction is how we
Speaker 4: recover from addiction. And at the same time, there is
Speaker 4: that one fairly stark bright line that says, for most
Speaker 4: of us our experiences, if we drink or use again,
Speaker 4: we are going to end up in trouble again.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I think that's why a lot of people
Speaker 1: do feel safer. The majority of people feel safeer defining
Speaker 1: themselves as an addict or alcoholic for the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives because they see that, as you know, the
Speaker 1: daily reminder that they shouldn't drink or use right, because
Speaker 1: they will become re addicted. And the neuroscience supports that
Speaker 1: as well, because it doesn't matter how you know, I
Speaker 1: haven't drank for eight years, but those well worn pathways
Speaker 1: in my brain, even though they're cobwebbed and disused, they're
Speaker 1: still there, and they're almost like an overgrown highway, you know.
Speaker 1: It's not just a little country laying. It's a proper
Speaker 1: prominent like Route sixty six. So that's not to be tested.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, I think once you've become addicted to something,
Speaker 1: if you restart, you will more than likely become addicted again.
Speaker 2: Why take the risk.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, what's interesting is I was somewhere around where
Speaker 4: you are in sobriety, probably a little bit less. It
Speaker 4: might have been seven years my first time around, and
Speaker 4: I drank again.
Speaker 2: Oh really, Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think I've been back sober about fourteen years. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it'll be fifteen years in February. But yeah,
Speaker 4: it was around eight years, seven to eight that I
Speaker 4: went back out. And it's really it's really interesting because
Speaker 4: I did a lot of the healing that you are
Speaker 4: describing and talk about in the book, and yet I
Speaker 4: still drank again, And like you said, it's obviously I'm
Speaker 4: on a podcast where I talk about my recovery journey again,
Speaker 4: so we know how it turns out, right, it didn't.
Speaker 4: It didn't work out going back out. I thought I
Speaker 4: could handle it, and I didn't. I couldn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so my dad, he's unfortunately no longer with us,
Speaker 1: but he went back out at eight years as well,
Speaker 1: and again that was short lived, and then he came
Speaker 1: back and did twenty three years. So maybe there's some
Speaker 1: sort of seven year itch or something when it comes
Speaker 1: to recovery. But yeah, I mean, you're never immune, are you.
Speaker 1: And the book goes into these stats which are really fascinating.
Speaker 1: So once you've done one year of sobriety, you've got
Speaker 1: sixty six percent chance of sustaining it. Once you've gone
Speaker 1: two years, oh no, sorry, it's thirty six percent after
Speaker 1: one year. After two years, it's sixty six percent. After
Speaker 1: three years of sustained sobriety, it's eighty six percent. But
Speaker 1: that's not one hundred percent. There's still that fourteen percent
Speaker 1: full to rate, which means that you can always fall
Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole again. So I think for me,
Speaker 1: it's almost the two things living together. It wants coexisting
Speaker 1: that I don't want to be defined by my former addiction,
Speaker 1: but I also know it's still there, if that makes sense,
Speaker 1: and the possibility for it to resurface is always there.
Speaker 4: Yep, I agree, it's one hundred percent that way, And
Speaker 4: that's why I was saying, it's like there's a lot
Speaker 4: of gray area, and we'll get into some of these.
Speaker 4: How different is an alcoholic from a normal person? Is
Speaker 4: that even the right word to use? You know? How
Speaker 4: do we define ourselves? Which I think there's room for
Speaker 4: a lot more nuance, except up to the point of,
Speaker 4: at least in my case, the moderation line, because you
Speaker 4: said in the book, you know the question that most
Speaker 4: people have at some point is maybe I can moderate now?
Speaker 4: And you said, yeah, wager, yeah, you'd wager that most
Speaker 4: of slips or relapses, whatever you want to call them,
Speaker 4: are down to them maybe it will be different thing.
Speaker 4: And that was absolutely what mine was, and mine used
Speaker 4: my heel against me. It's very fascinating because it went, Look,
Speaker 4: you did all these years in AA, you worked the
Speaker 4: steps a bunch of times, you've been to therapy, you
Speaker 4: did all this inner child childhood repair work, you've been
Speaker 4: to counselate, you've done all these things. You're a healthy,
Speaker 4: reasonable human being now and you're fixed. Yeah, and you
Speaker 4: were just young at that age, and you know you
Speaker 4: were doing heroin, which of course is a bad idea,
Speaker 4: you shouldn't do that. But a couple of drinks aren't
Speaker 4: going to be a problem. You know, you make good
Speaker 4: decisions in other areas of life. And it didn't, like
Speaker 4: I said, didn't turn out. What's interesting, it wasn't an
Speaker 4: immediate disaster. You know. In AA, we were always so strident,
Speaker 4: like if I go back out, I'll be a prostitute
Speaker 4: and selling my body for drugs in the next eight minutes.
Speaker 4: Like we're so dramatic about it. And that was not
Speaker 4: my case at all. I started off and I had
Speaker 4: a drink and I had nothing bad happened. I had
Speaker 4: a couple more, nothing bad happened. But over a period
Speaker 4: of years it just slid back into the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it always does.
Speaker 1: And I've seen it with all of my friends pretty
Speaker 1: much that I've gone back out, that maybe it'll.
Speaker 2: Be different this time. Voice is one they've.
Speaker 1: Always found the same. There's a few months or six months,
Speaker 1: or even a year of where it looks like it's
Speaker 1: going to work out, and then it doesn't. It just
Speaker 1: slides back into that darkness.
Speaker 2: Like you said, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Just think once you've been to that dark place, you're
Speaker 1: always going to be taken back to it if you
Speaker 1: pick up again. So I mean, for me, it's not
Speaker 1: something that I in any way nurse a notion of
Speaker 1: wanting or being able to do again, anymore than I
Speaker 1: would nurse the notion that I can outrun lions.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a bad idea for me.
Speaker 1: So yeah, But then people when I explained to them
Speaker 1: that I no longer call myself an alcoholic I've stopped
Speaker 1: defining myself that way when I was about four or
Speaker 1: five years sober. I did it secretly at first because
Speaker 1: I was very scared of offloading the word. I've been
Speaker 1: told that if you offload the word addicts or alcoholic,
Speaker 1: then you may as well have pressed a button on
Speaker 1: the relapse machine.
Speaker 2: You know you're heading for a relapse. You're cruising for
Speaker 2: a bruising.
Speaker 1: So I did it secretly at first, and then nothing happened,
Speaker 1: and I just started feeling actually safer in my sobriety.
Speaker 1: But then that's my story that's not the right way
Speaker 1: for everyone.
Speaker 2: It certainly isn't.
Speaker 1: If one of the words makes them feel safe, they
Speaker 1: should keep it. But I think no matter what lexicon
Speaker 1: you use around your addiction, whether you say that you're
Speaker 1: sober or clean, or alcohol free or teetotal or drug free,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to use, and it's alcoholic, the only
Speaker 1: thing that matters is remembering the darkness, the place you
Speaker 1: found yourself and never wanting to go back there.
Speaker 4: Yep, yep. I want to hit a bunch of points
Speaker 4: in there. But let's circle back fairly early on in
Speaker 4: the book where you talk about the definition of addiction,
Speaker 4: and you've got some different experts who weigh in throughout
Speaker 4: the book who are awesome, but I wanted to talk
Speaker 4: about you know, what do we think addiction is? If
Speaker 4: even that's the right word to use anymore?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I absolutely use the word addiction, but
Speaker 1: I just use it as more of an experience than
Speaker 1: an identity. So the person with an addiction rather than
Speaker 1: an addict, yeah kind of thing. Yeah, But for me,
Speaker 1: the definition of it would be you start out intending
Speaker 1: to consume or do a thing and then the reality
Speaker 1: is different. So, say, for instance, if I sit down
Speaker 1: in front of a cheesecake intending to eat one slice,
Speaker 1: and then I eat three sides of it. Then that's
Speaker 1: a bit of a cheesecake problem because I never, you know,
Speaker 1: go on a night out intending to drink one soft
Speaker 1: drink and then have eight, which is what I used
Speaker 1: to do when I was drinking. So it's that difference
Speaker 1: no matter whether it's spending or gambling or what have you.
Speaker 1: It's the difference between what you intend to do and
Speaker 1: what you actually do.
Speaker 2: But a lot of my experts pointed out that the.
Speaker 1: Most recent clinical understanding of it is that it's more
Speaker 1: of a not a learning disorder, because that's outdated now,
Speaker 1: but it's more of a disordered learning. So it's your
Speaker 1: brain learning that this thing helps, whether it's a drug
Speaker 1: or a drink or a shopping website, you know, this
Speaker 1: thing soothed you, and so it comes back to it
Speaker 1: again and again and again and again. So it's more
Speaker 1: that your brain has just learned that something that is
Speaker 1: bad for you is good for you, and so it repeated.
Speaker 4: Right, right, It's interesting that, you know, the learning disorder
Speaker 4: theory came up and disappeared fairly quickly, and I think
Speaker 4: the problem might be with that that term, but I
Speaker 4: do think it points to, Yeah, your brain learned something
Speaker 4: really really well and then got stuck on that setting exactly.
Speaker 1: Just like your brain classifies food and water and shelter
Speaker 1: as essential for survival, once you're addicted to something, it
Speaker 1: classifies that thing, yes, as essential for survival too, So
Speaker 1: you really do think that you need that thing in
Speaker 1: order to live, which is why it's so hard to overcome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and when you put it in those terms, I
Speaker 4: just had that visceral moment of that is exactly what
Speaker 4: it feels like, you know, when you're trying to get
Speaker 4: over an addiction and you don't have that substance, it
Speaker 4: does feel like you don't have something that is essential
Speaker 4: to life. And it's why I often talk about like
Speaker 4: one of the things that keeps me sober is never
Speaker 4: wanting to be in the place again where on one
Speaker 4: part of my brain knows very clearly that to consume
Speaker 4: this substance will be the end of me, so I
Speaker 4: will not survive if I do it, and the other
Speaker 4: part of my brain is screaming, you're not going to
Speaker 4: survive if you don't do it, and that internal tension
Speaker 4: is just a nightmare.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. A neuroscientist
Speaker 1: would probably say, although this is vastly oversimplified, that that
Speaker 1: is a fight in your brain between you're a migdala
Speaker 1: and your prefrontal cortex, which is basically the child and
Speaker 1: the adult of your brain. If you're going to boil
Speaker 1: it down really simply because it's you're a migdala, that's
Speaker 1: generally where the seat of addiction is, and it really
Speaker 1: believes that the drink is like oxygen. I mean that's
Speaker 1: how I felt. I really did feel that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so did you. But it's very difficult to explain
Speaker 1: this to people who haven't experienced it themselves.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and then it may be a migdala to
Speaker 4: prefernal cortex, but it's almost for some of us, particularly
Speaker 4: if we've tried to get sober a bunch and haven't
Speaker 4: been able to. It's like the fear of drinking is
Speaker 4: so strong too. It's just like these two terrors that
Speaker 4: are like trying to outbid each other. So when we
Speaker 4: talk about addiction, the other thing that I think is
Speaker 4: a more modern understanding is that there isn't like some
Speaker 4: line where it's like, well, up to this point, you
Speaker 4: do not have an addiction, and then a minute you
Speaker 4: go past this, you suddenly do have an addiction. That
Speaker 4: there's a lot more gray area or scale on this.
Speaker 4: Some people would say we're all addicts to something in
Speaker 4: some way. How do you think about that now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think of addiction as a spectrum,
Speaker 1: and even though I was a seven or eight, or
Speaker 1: maybe even a nine at my worst, I'm actually seeing
Speaker 1: more and more that people are quitting when they're lower
Speaker 1: down on the spectrum, when they're five.
Speaker 2: Or six, because we're living in a.
Speaker 1: World that's much more I'm sorry, might properly keeps taking
Speaker 1: presents from under the tree and trying to rip them off.
Speaker 4: Hallo, we should put him on the video.
Speaker 1: Honestly, it's been really good all day and that just
Speaker 1: now it's just become an absolute terror. Anyway, I've just
Speaker 1: taken everything away from him that he can do harm to,
Speaker 1: so that will be fine.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you a funny story about dogs real quick.
Speaker 4: To this note, Ginny and I'm my partner. We've got
Speaker 4: this program called Spiritual Habits. There's a second version of
Speaker 4: it that we lead and at the beginning of every
Speaker 4: session we do a guided meditation. Our dogs have decided
Speaker 4: like that at that moment they're going to go to
Speaker 4: their worst behavior. So like I'm guiding to meditation, and
Speaker 4: inevitably one of them is like in behind me, or
Speaker 4: I'm like what are you? What are you doing? You
Speaker 4: don't even ever do this normally, Like it is just
Speaker 4: it's just unbelievable.
Speaker 2: It's like they can sense it.
Speaker 1: I mean, he literally just got his metal collar dog
Speaker 1: tag off his collar somehow and was trying to eat
Speaker 1: it while I was trying to answer a question of neuros.
Speaker 1: So I was like using chicken to get it. Oh, no,
Speaker 1: he's destroying his bed. Were just going to ignore him,
Speaker 1: all right, Yeah, makes sense that you're doing something important.
Speaker 1: I think, just like children, that's when they act up
Speaker 1: right totally. Loss has rid of what we were talking about.
Speaker 4: What was we were talking about things being on a spectrum,
Speaker 4: and you were saying people people who are lowered down
Speaker 4: like a five, are starting to quit.
Speaker 1: Definitely, yeah, because I mean I think it's probably the
Speaker 1: same in the States that here in the UK. Everyone
Speaker 1: is so much more sober positive and if you're at
Speaker 1: a party now and you say that you're not drinking.
Speaker 1: You don't get heckled like you used to, which is
Speaker 1: just amazing. Things are beginning to shift, and I just
Speaker 1: meet sober people all over the place now, like it
Speaker 1: used to be that you couldn't find them unless you
Speaker 1: went to a meeting, and now I'll bump into them
Speaker 1: at my coworking space or at yoga or whatever. And
Speaker 1: it just feels like so many people don't drink now,
Speaker 1: not that there's a right way and the wrong way,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't believe that. I think it's nuanced
Speaker 1: and people should do what worked for them. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's definitely a spectrum. It's not a black and white thing,
Speaker 1: as we've been led to believe.
Speaker 4: You were the first person I heard this from, and
Speaker 4: I think it's such an important idea, which is, before
Speaker 4: this idea became more known, you were always looking like,
Speaker 4: am I an alcoholic? Let me look at the numbers.
Speaker 4: If I am, then okay, I have a problem and
Speaker 4: I should probably work on quitting. But if I'm not, eh,
Speaker 4: no big deal, right, And at least, again, you were
Speaker 4: the first person I heard put forth this idea, like,
Speaker 4: if your life is better without drinking, that's it. That's
Speaker 4: as simple as that. You don't have to get into this,
Speaker 4: Am I an alcoholic? How bad am I? Have I
Speaker 4: hit bottom? All these other questions. It's just would my
Speaker 4: life be better if this wasn't in it?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? And I think.
Speaker 1: I mean, I spent so many lonely nights of the
Speaker 1: soul googling am I an alcoholic? And doing quizzes and
Speaker 1: fudging my answers. And you know, I did that for
Speaker 1: years before I actually quit drinking. And it was only
Speaker 1: once I was convinced that I was that I quit drinking.
Speaker 1: And that's the other thing that's a problematic about the
Speaker 1: black and white, you know, normal versus alcoholic dialogue, is
Speaker 1: that sometimes people think that they need to be really
Speaker 1: bad in order to quit. It would be a bit
Speaker 1: like if we said to smokers, oh, just no, don't
Speaker 1: quit until you're smoking forty a day, okay, right, until
Speaker 1: then you're a normal smoker. That then you've tipped over
Speaker 1: into smokaholic and you should quit. Yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 1: how we approach alcohol. And it's just weird. You know,
Speaker 1: people are like, if you've still got a job, if
Speaker 1: you're not drinking in the morning, if you're not drinking spirits,
Speaker 1: then you're fine and you can carry on drinking. You
Speaker 1: just need to wait until everything is slipping out of
Speaker 1: your grasp and you know you're about to end up
Speaker 1: on the streets.
Speaker 2: That's when you quit.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It just doesn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 1: But thankfully that is really beginning to shift and change,
Speaker 1: and it's needed to for a really long time.
Speaker 4: I agree one hundred percent. I think it has needed
Speaker 4: to change, you know, And I think it comes back
Speaker 4: to this question then, of and I get this from
Speaker 4: clients a lot, right, which is they've got a bad habit,
Speaker 4: which is the way we might refer to it. I've
Speaker 4: got a bad habit. Yeah, I'm eating emotionally, I'm procrastinating,
Speaker 4: I am spending money in a bad way. I am
Speaker 4: I am doing these things. And the question is always, well,
Speaker 4: is it an addiction or not? And I'm sort of
Speaker 4: less concerned earned with that, because again, I don't think
Speaker 4: you can say, well, yep, it is. You are now
Speaker 4: officially an addict. It's like, well, you're not happy with it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's not serving you in your life, causing you distress,
Speaker 4: That's right, And the way that we're going to deal
Speaker 4: with it is going to be very similar. Whether we
Speaker 4: call it an addiction or whether we call it a
Speaker 4: bad habit, or whatever we want to call it. Some
Speaker 4: people are very quick to call it an addiction. Other
Speaker 4: people don't want to hear that word. Again, it's describing
Speaker 4: behaviors on a spectrum, and you're enough on the spectrum
Speaker 4: that this is problematic for you, whatever we want to
Speaker 4: call it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And like you said earlier, am I addicted
Speaker 1: to it?
Speaker 2: Is the wrong question?
Speaker 1: Really, the right question is would my life be better
Speaker 1: without it if I stop this behavior or this compulsion
Speaker 1: or this consumption of this substance. That is the question.
Speaker 1: And so it doesn't really matter if you're addicted to
Speaker 1: it or dependent on it, or whatever language you want
Speaker 1: to use. It's about whether it's blighting your life. And
Speaker 1: if you are coming to the point where you're even
Speaker 1: asking that question, then the answer is yes, it is.
Speaker 1: It is lighting your life, because why else would you
Speaker 1: be researching that. Yeah, yeah, you know people are who
Speaker 1: easily moderate a substance or shopping or gambling whatever. They
Speaker 1: don't sit there at three am in the blue light
Speaker 1: of the laptop googling an addict. They just don't so
Speaker 1: just labels aren't necessary in order to tackle the real problems.
Speaker 1: That would be the core message I would want to
Speaker 1: leave people with. But they're not wrong either. You know,
Speaker 1: it's whatever helps you.
Speaker 4: You talked about this in the book, about this idea
Speaker 4: of you know, do we use those terms alcoholic addict?
Speaker 4: And you know you described how you've chosen to not
Speaker 4: use that term. I don't think about it very much.
Speaker 4: I would say, yeah, I am an addict or an alcoholic,
Speaker 4: or is the word I would use, but only because
Speaker 4: I don't think about it very much. And I love
Speaker 4: you quoted. I think it was test Recovery who says
Speaker 4: addiction and is an experience, not an identity, and that
Speaker 4: that totally I was like, yes, that's the wording I
Speaker 4: was looking for. And I don't really go to AA anymore.
Speaker 4: I think the thing that sort of pushed me out
Speaker 4: of AA was what you talk about here. Wasn't that
Speaker 4: word defining myself as an alcoholic? The word I'm like, okay,
Speaker 4: it doesn't. The word doesn't mean anything to me. But
Speaker 4: what it was, And you talk about this in several
Speaker 4: different ways in the book, talking about people describing people
Speaker 4: outside the room as normies. You talk about describing us
Speaker 4: as having an addictive personality, you talk about describing ourselves
Speaker 4: as like, well, I'm just an addict, so that's why
Speaker 4: I do that. What eventually got to me was like,
Speaker 4: I just went, I don't think I'm that different than
Speaker 4: the rest of the world, except I cannot moderate drinking. Okay,
Speaker 4: so in that way, that's an experience. But I just
Speaker 4: got so tired of seeing myself as defined by the
Speaker 4: tropes of what an addict is, Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I couldn't identify with that more, as
Speaker 1: you know. And I'm definitely of the school of thought
Speaker 1: where I think most people are addicted to something. It's
Speaker 1: just that the experience of being addicted to alcohol and
Speaker 1: other drugs, because we say alcohol and drugs, but alcohols
Speaker 1: are drug is one that can savage your life and
Speaker 1: become a very visible and humiliating experience once you really
Speaker 1: get dependent on it. So and other addictions like phone addiction,
Speaker 1: work addiction, they're very socially supported. You know, making money
Speaker 1: addiction is that work addiction, You know, just that more
Speaker 1: and more and more addiction that is one hundred percent
Speaker 1: encouraged by our capitalist societies, and you know, different addictions.
Speaker 1: They can still have though that detrimental effect on you,
Speaker 1: but they're just socially endorsed or reviled. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: something that I didn't want to be defined by for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life either. But everyone's individual and
Speaker 1: they see it differently.
Speaker 4: Yep, it's so interesting talking about that, like what is
Speaker 4: socially acceptable what is not? You know, I got sober
Speaker 4: that second time, and the first time I was a
Speaker 4: homeless heroin addict who was looking at going to jail
Speaker 4: for a long time. The second time, I was a
Speaker 4: drinker who smoked marijuana, who also had the best job
Speaker 4: he'd ever had, was driving a very very nice car,
Speaker 4: living in a beautiful part of town, in a nice house. Inside,
Speaker 4: I was just the same. It's just that alcohol was
Speaker 4: legal and heroin was not. I mean, it was that basic. Otherwise,
Speaker 4: there was no difference in how sick I was, and
Speaker 4: I just didn't have to do the things as an
Speaker 4: alcoholic that I had to do to get heroin, absolutely
Speaker 4: because I could walk through any store I drove by,
Speaker 4: and I could walk in and get my drug at
Speaker 4: a very affordable, reasonable price. And so it does speak
Speaker 4: to that idea of the way we define the substance
Speaker 4: has a lot to do with it. I also do
Speaker 4: think that drugs are a little bit different than say, gambling,
Speaker 4: or phone or sex addiction or and the way they're
Speaker 4: different is both types of addictions change the brain by
Speaker 4: what your brain is learning and by the neurochemicals that
Speaker 4: you're generating. They both do that, but drugs and alcohol,
Speaker 4: in addition to the way that sort of happens in
Speaker 4: the mechanism of addiction, drugs and alcohol actually then are
Speaker 4: chemically on top of that changing the brain even more
Speaker 4: because that's what they are. Cately, they're brain changing chemicals, right,
Speaker 4: So it's almost like you've got the double dose of
Speaker 4: it in that case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for pointing that out.
Speaker 1: That is an important distinction, and that's why those types
Speaker 1: of addictions could be all the more powerful and also destructive.
Speaker 1: And what you just said about the heroin addiction versus
Speaker 1: the alcohol dependence, and I bet the second time around,
Speaker 1: when you got sober, you encountered more resistance to your
Speaker 1: getting sober than you did the first time round, because
Speaker 1: you know, your life was so great and you were
Speaker 1: nailing everything and killing it at life, and you know
Speaker 1: that was very much my.
Speaker 2: Experience as well.
Speaker 1: When I came out and said, you know, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm an alcoholic, because I definitely embraced that word at first,
Speaker 1: and I need.
Speaker 2: To quit drinking.
Speaker 1: I nobody, apart from a few members of my family
Speaker 1: and my best friend who i'd lived with, was like,
Speaker 1: great decision, will to all one hundred percent with that,
Speaker 1: I got a widespread reaction of you're not that bad,
Speaker 1: just you know, just yeah, fine, take a break, but
Speaker 1: just do it for a month or so, or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe six months at most. You know, you're doing really
Speaker 1: well at life. It's just it's that relationship that's got
Speaker 1: you down, or it's just you're a bit depressed. You're
Speaker 1: drinking more than usual, and it's just such a strange
Speaker 1: social thing because you're doing this thing that is one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of positive lifestyle choice, and yet people resist it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't want to lose that drinking buddy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's legal, and it's socially celebrated and championed, and
Speaker 1: we're encouraged to grow up to be drinkers. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think in that way it is different to other drugs.
Speaker 4: All right, now, let's pause for a quick good warf reminder,
Speaker 4: and this one is on meditation. If while you're meditating
Speaker 4: your mind wanders, you probably, like most people, treat that
Speaker 4: as a moment of failure, like, ough, my mind wandered again.
Speaker 4: But let's flip that and instead treat that as a
Speaker 4: moment of celebration because in that moment, your mind actually
Speaker 4: woke up and you were mindful of the fact that
Speaker 4: your mind wandered. So it's a win. So if we
Speaker 4: can flip that right on its head and say, oh,
Speaker 4: good job, brain, we actually make it more likely that
Speaker 4: a our brain is going to do it more often
Speaker 4: because we're training it, and b that we're going to
Speaker 4: enjoy it more. And specifically, it's about how to make
Speaker 4: you not dread meditation so much and actually find it relaxing.
Speaker 4: Check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
Speaker 4: slash calm. I think some of it depends where you
Speaker 4: live and the culture that you're in. And but I
Speaker 4: mean I have I've had a couple clients who are
Speaker 4: in that boat where it's like everybody around them is
Speaker 4: just like, You're fine, what are you making such a
Speaker 4: big deal out of? And I mean, I just that's
Speaker 4: so hard I mean even at least, you know, when
Speaker 4: I got sober the second time, even though on the
Speaker 4: outside things looked good, the people who were closest enough
Speaker 4: to me were like, yeah, that's a good idea, Like
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I mean, I was a disaster area.
Speaker 4: I just on the outside was holding it together. The
Speaker 4: resistance the second time was internal because the first time
Speaker 4: I had just so so been beaten up by drugs
Speaker 4: and alcohol. The second time I had, but not as much,
Speaker 4: And so I had to keep saying to myself, like,
Speaker 4: do I really need to go any further with this?
Speaker 4: Like do you really need to ride the elevator down
Speaker 4: another floor? Do you need to get in a car
Speaker 4: accident with your son in the car because you've been drinking?
Speaker 4: Like is that what this really is going to take?
Speaker 4: That's the conversation I'd have with myself where I'd be like, Okay, no,
Speaker 4: I guess I don't. But it was a little bit harder.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting, that second sobriety, and so many people
Speaker 1: have a second sobriety. I mean, for me, it was relationships,
Speaker 1: as you.
Speaker 2: Know, I realized three.
Speaker 1: I can't remember how long it was into sobriety, but
Speaker 1: I realized that I was well and truly addicted to
Speaker 1: love and relationships and had to give those up, yeah,
Speaker 1: for a year in order to recalibrate.
Speaker 2: But yeah, a lot of people do have that kind.
Speaker 1: Of second sobriety where they realized there's another addiction lie
Speaker 1: beneath their priary addiction.
Speaker 4: That secondary addiction of love or sex, for me, was
Speaker 4: part of what dragged me back out into active drinking
Speaker 4: addiction again, is because that addiction was running enough of
Speaker 4: my life that the core focus of a big part
Speaker 4: of what recovery is, and we may get to this
Speaker 4: if we have time, is about, you know, getting outside
Speaker 4: of yourself and caring about other people and having their
Speaker 4: well being in mind. That had receded from my life,
Speaker 4: and all I was interested in was me, me, me,
Speaker 4: me again, and that was a big part I think
Speaker 4: of what was behind me going back out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: So we're going to take a brief detour here to
Speaker 4: talk about I know you must do this on purpose
Speaker 4: in your books because it's funny, but you come up
Speaker 4: with all these different ways of describing being drunk. I
Speaker 4: don't know if the English just are better at this,
Speaker 4: they just have more descriptive words. Whether you're searching them out,
Speaker 4: I don't know, but but I love reading. Just going
Speaker 4: to give a couple of them. One of them, you're
Speaker 4: describing being drunk, and you said I'm truly batfaced, which
Speaker 4: I don't even fully I don't even fully understand. Clattered, spangled, lashed, blitzed. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's another one says entices everyone to get their kit
Speaker 4: off and toast their tits.
Speaker 2: I think there's lastly, a British thing.
Speaker 1: We have so many different words are getting drunk because
Speaker 1: it is basically a national hobby.
Speaker 4: It's like the Eskimos who have so many words for
Speaker 4: ice kind of things.
Speaker 1: Or the Irish have you know, fifteen different words for rain.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why we have.
Speaker 1: So many of them, because we get drunk so often.
Speaker 1: So I think that can explain it. I think if
Speaker 1: you ask any British person to be able to rattle
Speaker 1: off at least fifteen different words for drunk.
Speaker 4: I think the US used to be better at it,
Speaker 4: because if you read the AA Big Book, which was
Speaker 4: written back in the late thirties, there's some great ones
Speaker 4: in there, like you know, boiled as an owl. You know,
Speaker 4: there's some good ones in there. I don't remember them all,
Speaker 4: but now I think America as a whole, we're just
Speaker 4: less literate, so our words have just gotten to be
Speaker 4: less fun. But I truly enjoyed that. Throughout the book,
Speaker 4: I just kept looking for it. We've hit on this
Speaker 4: a little bit. But let's talk about addictive personality and
Speaker 4: the correl it to it. In your book. You've got
Speaker 4: two sections I'm just going to time together. You asked
Speaker 4: the experts, can you have an addictive personality? And then
Speaker 4: you also talked about this narrative that some people have like, well,
Speaker 4: I'm just an addict, you know, like as they're binging
Speaker 4: on sugar or coffee or cigarettes, or I'm just an addict.
Speaker 4: So is there an addictive personality? And if we have it,
Speaker 4: are we more likely to become addicted?
Speaker 1: Well? I asked four experts, and I specifically and deliberately
Speaker 1: chose experts with very different ways of thinking, from the
Speaker 1: very traditional AA way of thinking right across to the
Speaker 1: more radical way of thinking, the more modern ways of thinking.
Speaker 1: And it was so interesting because three of the four said, no,
Speaker 1: there is no such thing as an addictive personality.
Speaker 2: What you can have.
Speaker 1: Is a predisposition to addiction. And these are things like anxiety,
Speaker 1: being somebody who's anxious, or being somebody who's introverted. But
Speaker 1: then the very opposite is also true, because people who
Speaker 1: are traverted or more prone to be impulsive and spontaneous
Speaker 1: are also more likely to be addicted. So this idea
Speaker 1: of this singular addictive personality that a person can have
Speaker 1: is just not true. It's not backed up, and most
Speaker 1: experts would say that it's not a thing. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say it's not true because that's that's too black
Speaker 1: and white, but most most experts, I think, would agree
Speaker 1: that there's no evidence for it. What you do have
Speaker 1: is certain characteristics in your personality that mean that you're predisposed,
Speaker 1: just like genetics or you know, a traumatic childhood predisposed
Speaker 1: you to addiction. And the other thing is sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: literally eating cotton wool.
Speaker 2: I hope he's still alive at the end of the scat.
Speaker 4: I hope to.
Speaker 1: Trying to kill himself through various means. No anyway, So
Speaker 1: and the once an adict or always an addict something
Speaker 1: that I hear so much and it just makes me
Speaker 1: feel really sad. This kind of I'm just an addict
Speaker 1: narrative that people tend to internalize and therefore think that
Speaker 1: they're just going to get addicted to everything. So once
Speaker 1: got very addicted to something, it's just not the case.
Speaker 1: I mean, for a start, if you've overcome a primary addiction,
Speaker 1: no matter what it was, too, you have beaten an addiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you may not have beaten it forever, you may go back,
Speaker 1: but you still have that toolbox that you use to
Speaker 1: beat that addiction, you know, whether you've been sober for
Speaker 1: four years or forty years. So it's something that I
Speaker 1: just don't really believe in. I think that once an addict,
Speaker 1: always an addict is quite a destructive way to think
Speaker 1: of it. I think all of us are prone to addiction,
Speaker 1: and all of us could fall into an addiction. So
Speaker 1: that's more the way that I think of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, And I think, you know, when we get
Speaker 4: sober from an addiction, there does appear to be more
Speaker 4: likelihood of falling into another one. And I don't think
Speaker 4: that's so much underlying personality so much as as you said,
Speaker 4: it is a series of risk factors that have added
Speaker 4: up to addiction, and we're still learning how to live
Speaker 4: without relying on some external thing to make us feel happy.
Speaker 4: But over time, I think that can change. It's funny,
Speaker 4: I've said this before. I answered that I was an
Speaker 4: impulsive person on personality tests up until a couple of
Speaker 4: years ago, and that is not the way any sort
Speaker 4: of description of me over the better part of the
Speaker 4: last twenty five years would be, except for, yeah, I
Speaker 4: did go back out and drink for a while, but
Speaker 4: I'm not an impulsive, rash person, and yet I had
Speaker 4: that I'm an addict. Thus I must be impulsive that
Speaker 4: I continue to answer those things that way. And I
Speaker 4: know you're a fan of doctor Rick Hanson. You've quoted
Speaker 4: him in a lot of books. And I was talking
Speaker 4: with him recently and he said something that just I
Speaker 4: was like, Yes, that's exactly it, although I think his
Speaker 4: measurement of time is off. He said, everybody's self conception
Speaker 4: is at least six months out of date, and I
Speaker 4: was like, that is brilliant, and for a lot of
Speaker 4: people it's way longer than that. It could be that
Speaker 4: for people who were addicted, you know, have an addiction
Speaker 4: and they've been sober ten or fifteen years, that personality,
Speaker 4: their self conception may still be stuck on some really
Speaker 4: defining things that aren't true anymore. I mean in AA
Speaker 4: people say this all the time around here, like well
Speaker 4: I'm still a liar, cheating, a thief, And I'm like,
Speaker 4: well are you, like, I mean, okay, maybe you are,
Speaker 4: but maybe you're not. So it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's allowing yourself that room and having the permission
Speaker 1: to evolve beyond what you were. And what you just
Speaker 1: said is perfect. I mean I used to For many, many,
Speaker 1: many many years I told myself and other people told
Speaker 1: me as well. It was an echo chamber, the story
Speaker 1: that I was dreadful with money, right, I'm terrible with money,
Speaker 1: I'll never buy a flat, I'll never be able to
Speaker 1: save money, I'll never get out of debt. And so
Speaker 1: obviously my reality reflected that. So we have to be
Speaker 1: careful what molds we pour our stories into, because that
Speaker 1: shapes our reality. Our perceptions of ourselves shape our reality.
Speaker 1: So it would be like you pouring some jello into
Speaker 1: a mold and being like, oh, how strange it's now
Speaker 1: shaped like this mold.
Speaker 2: If you tell yourself that.
Speaker 1: You're terrible with money, or you're impulsive, or that you
Speaker 1: get addicted to everything, then you will then go and
Speaker 1: become that self fulfilling prophecy. So if you change how
Speaker 1: you think about yourself, then often that can trigger a
Speaker 1: change in yourself. Or if you just look at the
Speaker 1: actual evidence, like when's the last time I told a lie?
Speaker 1: Am I still a liar? Am I still a cheap?
Speaker 1: Am I still a thief? When's the last time I stole?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to let yourself evolve and become better
Speaker 1: and champion yourself when you become better. I think it's
Speaker 1: really important.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love it. You talk about that in the
Speaker 4: book Our stories can become self fulfilling prophecies, And you
Speaker 4: have a line I love the one you just used
Speaker 4: about pouring our stories into a mold. The other one
Speaker 4: that you said is it becomes like a coat hanger
Speaker 4: that you hang the rest of your life upon, which
Speaker 4: is another really good analogy. And I think this is
Speaker 4: interesting because again I see this sort of work working
Speaker 4: with clients, and the vast majority of my clients it's
Speaker 4: not alcoholism or addiction work, right, But what I see
Speaker 4: is this tendency to say, like I'm the kind of
Speaker 4: person who never follows through on things, And it's this
Speaker 4: interesting dance of And it's the same thing with alcoholism
Speaker 4: and addiction. You've got to say, well, yeah, there's a
Speaker 4: real problem here, right, I've got to look at the
Speaker 4: facts and go okay, yes, okay, up till now, I
Speaker 4: traditionally have not tended to follow through on things that
Speaker 4: I started. So okay, that's who I am today. But
Speaker 4: like you said, we've got to give ourselves the freedom
Speaker 4: to move forwards. And I'm always looking for like a word,
Speaker 4: like what's the right word, Like tendency is a word
Speaker 4: that I sort of like. I might say I have
Speaker 4: a tendency towards X. You know, which is true. You know,
Speaker 4: right now, I have a tendency towards X that can
Speaker 4: totally be changed and overridden. It's a very different thing.
Speaker 4: So it is a nuanced discussion. But I think the
Speaker 4: important part of it, as you're saying, is like, don't
Speaker 4: let it harden. You know, if it's useful, then learn
Speaker 4: what you can from it, but don't let it harden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we can and absolutely do change. I mean,
Speaker 1: what you've just touched upon is so important. Important to
Speaker 1: make yourself a person with the thing rather than the thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: So I used to be a late riser. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: a person who tends to get up early, but I
Speaker 1: allowed that identity as a late riser to just become
Speaker 1: the thing that I always did. And in order to
Speaker 1: change it, obviously you have. I mean, I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of atomic habits, James. Clear, Obviously you have to
Speaker 1: start changing the thing in order for the new thing
Speaker 1: to become the new tendency.
Speaker 2: You can't just say you're an early riser and then
Speaker 2: you are. That's not what I mean.
Speaker 1: But you should allow yourself the riggle room to evolve
Speaker 1: beyond that thing that you used to do, even if
Speaker 1: you did it for twenty one years like I drank
Speaker 1: for twenty one years. You know, it's just so important
Speaker 1: to allow yourselves that room.
Speaker 4: That's great. So listener and thinking about all of that
Speaker 4: and the other great wisdom from today's episode. If you
Speaker 4: were going to isolate just one top insight or thing
Speaker 4: to do that you're taking away, what would it be.
Speaker 4: Remember that, little by little, a little becomes a lot,
Speaker 4: and a habit for me that has accrude and benefit
Speaker 4: over time is meditation. However, one of the things that
Speaker 4: gets in our way of building a steady meditation practice.
Speaker 4: Is that very striving right. Of course, we're doing it
Speaker 4: because we want certain benefits, But in the moment of
Speaker 4: actually meditating, we need to let striving go and focus
Speaker 4: on just being there and experiencing it. No matter what's happening,
Speaker 4: it becomes not enjoyable because I'm trying to make something
Speaker 4: happen some special moment. We want to let go of that.
Speaker 4: So if you want to stop dreading meditation and actually
Speaker 4: find it enjoyable, check out my free meditation guide at
Speaker 4: Goodwolf dot me slash calm. Well, we are at the
Speaker 4: end of our time. I could talk to you all day.
Speaker 4: You and I are going to continue to talk for
Speaker 4: a little while. In the post show conversation, we're going
Speaker 4: to talk about two riveting things we're going to talk about.
Speaker 4: You've got a line we repeat what we don't repair.
Speaker 4: You say, I think that untangling your childhood therapy is
Speaker 4: one of the most important things to do, so we're
Speaker 4: going to talk about that. And we're also going to
Speaker 4: talk about a new hobby that we both have discovered,
Speaker 4: which is bouldering. So we're going to talk about that
Speaker 4: in the post show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access
Speaker 4: to that you can get access to all the post
Speaker 4: show conversations, AD free episodes, a special episode I do
Speaker 4: each week called a teaching, a song and a poem.
Speaker 4: You can go to one ufeed dot net slash join Catherine.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, always one of my favorite guests.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I've really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1: May I just point one thing out though, because I
Speaker 1: don't want to take credit for something that I didn't say,
Speaker 1: so we repeat what we don't repair was is a
Speaker 1: quote from a therapist called Christine something. I can't remember
Speaker 1: her full name. It wasn't my quote, but I did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I used it as a chapter heading, but then quoted
Speaker 1: her within it. So I don't want to take credit
Speaker 1: for that because it's such a good phrase.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, if she doesn't have it, if she doesn't
Speaker 4: have a last name, we don't need to credit her.
Speaker 4: I'm kidding. I know she does. I'm kidding, all right.
Speaker 4: The book is called Sunshine Warm, Sober Unexpected Sober Joy
Speaker 4: That lasts. You can find it where you get books.
Speaker 4: We'll have links off our show notes also to all
Speaker 4: of Catherine's stuff. Thank you, thank you, I've loved this.
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