Speaker 1: Everything we do is in negotiation with the world. It's
Speaker 1: a call and response and a conversation.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: Transformation. Rarely with a clean line or a tidy plan.
Speaker 3: It comes instead in the messy middle, the space between
Speaker 3: who we've been and who we're becoming. Laura Mcowan calls
Speaker 3: this the threshold where everything feels uncertain, uncomfortable, and even
Speaker 3: sometimes unbearable. In this conversation, we talk about what it
Speaker 3: means to stand in that in between place, why change
Speaker 3: isn't the end of pain, but the beginning of healing,
Speaker 3: and how we can start to build a life that
Speaker 3: can actually hold us because the truth is giving up
Speaker 3: the thing that numbed us, whether it was alcohol, control, work,
Speaker 3: or anything else, isn't enough. We have to become someone new.
Speaker 3: I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Laura,
Speaker 3: welcome back.
Speaker 4: Hi, thank you for having me again.
Speaker 3: Yes, I am so excited to talk to you again.
Speaker 3: I loved our first conversation and I'm excited for this one.
Speaker 3: But we will start like we always do, with the parable,
Speaker 3: and I'll give you another chance to answer it because
Speaker 3: your first answer was unsatisfactory.
Speaker 5: Oh probably, I have no idea what. I have no
Speaker 5: idea what you said.
Speaker 4: I was trying to remember, and I have no doubt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would imagine few of our listeners would remember,
Speaker 3: although I know a bunch of them loved it. And
Speaker 3: I often recommend your book to people early in sobriety,
Speaker 3: particularly people who love good writing. I think it's such
Speaker 3: a great book about sobriety, but you're also such a
Speaker 3: good writer, and people who appreciate literature appreciate your book.
Speaker 3: So yeah, in the parable, there is a grandparent talking
Speaker 3: with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are
Speaker 3: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 3: One it is a good wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 3: kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second and
Speaker 3: looks up at their grandparents says, well.
Speaker 5: Which one wins?
Speaker 3: And the grandparent says that the one you feed. So
Speaker 3: I'd like to start off by asking you what that
Speaker 3: parable means to you in your life and in the work.
Speaker 5: That you do.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: So, I couldn't remember how I answered it the first time.
Speaker 1: I almost went to look it up, and then I thought,
Speaker 1: don't bother, but what it means to me right now
Speaker 1: in my life and my work. The battle exists in
Speaker 1: having the courage to say the truth, speak the truth
Speaker 1: even when it is going to disappoint and possibly piss
Speaker 1: off and possibly make people really hate me, and knowing
Speaker 1: that that's not personal.
Speaker 4: I guess another way.
Speaker 1: Of saying it is the bad wolf is playing it safe,
Speaker 1: or thinking that there is such a thing as safety
Speaker 1: when you have a public voice and desiring that and
Speaker 1: the good wolf is wanting to be free and doing
Speaker 1: whatever that means in the moment, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to telling the truth.
Speaker 4: I had no problem.
Speaker 1: Well it's not that I had no problem, but I've
Speaker 1: been talking about hard things for a while, and I
Speaker 1: had no problem really doing that in talking about sobriety
Speaker 1: because it was saving my life.
Speaker 4: But I feel like.
Speaker 1: I've reached this point where now there are other things
Speaker 1: that I really want to talk about, but I've got
Speaker 1: a bigger platform, there's more people listening, there's more people watching,
Speaker 1: and I get afraid that's a good wolf bad wolf
Speaker 1: thing in my life right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it's a really interesting point because I think
Speaker 3: there's two things that start to happen, at least this
Speaker 3: has been my experience.
Speaker 1: Thing.
Speaker 3: One is just a genuine fear like I don't want
Speaker 3: people to not like me, et cetera. The other is
Speaker 3: I don't want to drive people away from what I
Speaker 3: feel is like really important content or messaging, Like for
Speaker 3: you, you're talking about people about getting sober, it's life and death,
Speaker 3: and feeling like I don't want to drive people away
Speaker 3: from that by sort of moving quote unquote off topic
Speaker 3: in a way that starts to drive certain people away.
Speaker 3: And so for me it's been this balance, particularly as
Speaker 3: I've begun not begun to as I've thought more about
Speaker 3: how do I bring issues that are beyond personal development
Speaker 3: that I care about too. There are things I want
Speaker 3: to talk about, there's things I want to advocate for.
Speaker 3: There's all that, and so how do I do that
Speaker 3: in a way that is helpful and useful. But I
Speaker 3: also don't want to drive people away who can be
Speaker 3: getting something valuable out of what I'm doing. I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously there's the like not wanting to drive away people
Speaker 3: because you don't want your numbers to go down, But
Speaker 3: then there's a genuine there's a genuineness.
Speaker 5: So I find both those I find both.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm battling a variety of factors when I
Speaker 3: start thinking about those things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all of those things are true for me too.
Speaker 1: I think twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, we're traumatizing,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, that's an understatement for everybody. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that I experienced was being a
Speaker 1: person with a public place. It can be really nasty
Speaker 1: in the online spaces and less so in the real world,
Speaker 1: but a lot of what I do is trying to
Speaker 1: present to still and present information in an online space,
Speaker 1: and I'm choosing to do that. So it's like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be light and fluffy and easy and
Speaker 1: always be safe, right. I actually don't want that at all.
Speaker 1: But I find myself challenged to, as you said, bring
Speaker 1: in other topics and not get sucked into the.
Speaker 4: Dark side of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's tough.
Speaker 1: To put out what I put out with integrity and
Speaker 1: then let whatever's going to happen happen.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 3: And I think I've always sort of been like, well,
Speaker 3: we're not a political show, right, Like that's not what
Speaker 3: we do, right, And then you hit these points at
Speaker 3: least I did where I went, is this a political issue?
Speaker 3: This feels like it's an issue about basic values, But
Speaker 3: even conversations about basic values seem to be political these days,
Speaker 3: and it's challenging.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, everything's political now. So I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a whole rabbit hole. But everything is political now,
Speaker 1: you know, up to a vaccine being entirely political.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: So that's just the world we're operating. And so I'm
Speaker 1: learning how to have courage in that space. And it's
Speaker 1: honestly for me, it's really humiliating and like that brings
Speaker 1: up a lot of my old junk around people pleasing
Speaker 1: and that made me really sick, you know. It was
Speaker 1: dishonesty at the end of the day, and really feeling
Speaker 1: like I lacked a center that was not a good
Speaker 1: place for me.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's a line that you said in a blog post
Speaker 3: not too long ago. You said, there are some things
Speaker 3: that still undo me. The worst feeling like someone I
Speaker 3: care about is mad at me, and I completely resonate
Speaker 3: with that. I think that is my biggest achilles heel
Speaker 3: is that very thing is like, when someone is mad
Speaker 3: at me that I care about, it's really difficult.
Speaker 4: Really difficult.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's a small circle of people that can
Speaker 1: undo me like that. It's the people that like m
Speaker 1: that I actually care about. But it's so easy for
Speaker 1: me to snap into.
Speaker 2: Just my.
Speaker 1: Therapist said, one of my defense mechanisms is called categorically wrong.
Speaker 1: I just go, you're right, I'm wrong, everything I'm everything
Speaker 1: I do is wrong.
Speaker 4: Yeah, everything I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: And it's like this really dark shame spiral not helpful.
Speaker 3: In that blog post, we hear about flight and freeze,
Speaker 3: and you mentioned that there's you know, something called fawning.
Speaker 3: Say more about that.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that was a big learning for me.
Speaker 1: That we know of the fear responses typically as the
Speaker 1: fight freeze of three f's, but that there's actually a fourth.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the psychologist that coined it, but it's
Speaker 1: called fawning, and it's in response to fear. We fawn
Speaker 1: over someone. We go towards them instead of running or freezing.
Speaker 1: We go towards them. We kiss their ass, we try
Speaker 1: to appease them. We abandon ourselves entirely and our needs entirely.
Speaker 4: And that's me.
Speaker 1: That was my primary coping mechanism is fawning, not always,
Speaker 1: but with a certain type of person, you know, And
Speaker 1: of course it mimics childhood stuff and everything like that.
Speaker 1: That was really helpful to me because it named something
Speaker 1: that I've experienced so.
Speaker 4: Acutely, and you know, when you're doing it, it doesn't
Speaker 4: make sense.
Speaker 1: It feels terrible, but it's all an appeal for safety,
Speaker 1: for keeping the attachment.
Speaker 4: It's like keep your enemies closer type of thing.
Speaker 1: If I just get closer to them, whatever I need
Speaker 1: to do to make myself okay in their eyes, and
Speaker 1: I'll be Okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels terrible, and so does staying sort of
Speaker 3: centered in myself and what I think and what I believe,
Speaker 3: which I think is the way when we try and
Speaker 3: change a lot of old patterns, sobriety being a great example.
Speaker 3: It's like early on in that change process, it's really difficult,
Speaker 3: like which of these feels worse? They both feel pretty bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 1: It's a true dilemma and the Greek tragedy sense of
Speaker 1: the word. You're not thinking between one nice, peaceful road
Speaker 1: and one, you know, terrible road.
Speaker 4: It's both both feel terrible.
Speaker 1: It's just which is gonna you know, good wolf, bad
Speaker 1: wolf type of thing.
Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, it does feel terrible.
Speaker 1: I mean for me, you know, I found it was
Speaker 1: intolerable to sit with myself discomfort if someone was mad
Speaker 1: at me. It was absolutely intolerable. So, you know, I
Speaker 1: have to give myself some credit that I don't do
Speaker 1: it so much anymore. But there of course still instances
Speaker 1: here and there where you know, one is where my
Speaker 1: partner and I got into a fight about three months ago,
Speaker 1: and we've been together for almost a couple of years
Speaker 1: at this point and have a really beautiful solid relationship
Speaker 1: and when we got into this fight and it wasn't
Speaker 1: like World War two, it wasn't even a big fight,
Speaker 1: but this is where we go right in conflict.
Speaker 4: For me, it felt like the relationship was on the line,
Speaker 4: and it took everything in me not to just try
Speaker 4: to fix it, just immediately fix it.
Speaker 1: And the couple days where the storm was brewing between
Speaker 1: us and just had to like wait for it to.
Speaker 4: Set we're really really difficult for me.
Speaker 1: And when I told him, you know, after we finally
Speaker 1: did talk, that it feels to me like the relationship
Speaker 1: is threatened, he was shocked. It's like, what do you
Speaker 1: really you know, we're just fighting like.
Speaker 5: This is settled down, Laura.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're just fighting like this is this is fine,
Speaker 1: But that's trauma's stuff kicking out.
Speaker 3: That's right, it doesn't feel fine. I think that with
Speaker 3: stuff like this, I think we often think that we'll
Speaker 3: get to a point where we'll do enough healing and
Speaker 3: enough inner work where we'll be able to do that
Speaker 3: sort of thing like I'm going to say something's not
Speaker 3: okay with me, and then I'm going to step back
Speaker 3: and I'm not gonna fawn. I heard this from somebody
Speaker 3: recently step into my power, and I was like, well, yes,
Speaker 3: you are stepping into your power, but it's really important
Speaker 3: that you recognize you're not going to feel powerful probably
Speaker 3: in that moment, you're gonna feel terrified. If you wait
Speaker 3: until you feel powerful to do it, there will be
Speaker 3: no doing it, you know. And so I think what
Speaker 3: you're saying is so important is like, yeah, I was
Speaker 3: able to do it, but boy, it didn't feel very good.
Speaker 1: Oh felt terrible, not sleeping, not eating, you know, the full,
Speaker 1: the full catastrophe.
Speaker 4: But you do it.
Speaker 1: And that's what it means to be in love with someone,
Speaker 1: whether it's a partner or sibling or a friend, if
Speaker 1: you feel comfortable one hundred percent of the time and
Speaker 1: you're never afraid, and you're never hurt, and you're never
Speaker 1: feeling the weight of loving them. My friend Jim Zartman,
Speaker 1: who's a coach and a pastor, says, you know, like
Speaker 1: get being married.
Speaker 4: This is quite gruesome.
Speaker 1: But it's like each of you has a revolver that
Speaker 1: you put your partner's finger on the trigger and you
Speaker 1: just trust that they don't point it at your head
Speaker 1: and you trust that they're not going to pull it
Speaker 1: you know, so that's just the way it is. If
Speaker 1: you're really open, you're gonna risk being shot.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I think that's an interesting idea. I've seen more and
Speaker 3: more of this. I feel like when I first got sober,
Speaker 3: which was like nineteen ninety four, but I think even
Speaker 3: probably around when when you got sober and when I
Speaker 3: got sober again the second time, you know, there was
Speaker 3: a lot of talk about codependency, and I think some
Speaker 3: of this I got from Buddhism, which can be interpreted
Speaker 3: this way if you're not careful. The sense was that
Speaker 3: the psychologically healthy person was this independent whatever you do
Speaker 3: doesn't affect me. I'm so secure that I don't get
Speaker 3: ruffled by anything. And what I've seen really change over
Speaker 3: the last really probably last four or five years, is
Speaker 3: more of an understanding that kind of like you're saying
Speaker 3: that healthy love means that we are vulnerable to someone
Speaker 3: and we can be hurt. So I think it's sorting
Speaker 3: that out, like what's trauma informed response, what's unhealthy response,
Speaker 3: and what's normal human Like my partner's upset with me,
Speaker 3: so of course it feels bad.
Speaker 1: God, Yeah, yes, absolutely, I'm so glad you brought that up.
Speaker 1: Codependency is real. You know, there is very dysfunctional codependency.
Speaker 1: But I think the truth is always somewhere in the middle,
Speaker 1: as we know, and healthy places in the middle and balance.
Speaker 1: It's murky. I've said to him many times, you could
Speaker 1: really hurt me.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of our relationship, it was like, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, you could really hurt me. And I hadn't
Speaker 1: really been in a partnership like quite like that before.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful because you're all in, and it's terrifying because
Speaker 1: you're all in and we do depend on each other.
Speaker 1: It is marky. I definitely don't have the answer to that.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know what when you feel it kind
Speaker 1: of but to give a point by point description of
Speaker 1: the difference is really difficult. I think even healthy relationships
Speaker 1: can have a small amount of codependency. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're an attuned person. I mean, I'm very attuned to
Speaker 1: other people's energy than my daughter too, and when they're.
Speaker 4: Upset, I feel upset. Is that does that make me unhealthy?
Speaker 4: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: It's I guess what I do in response to that,
Speaker 1: if I need them to be okay for me to
Speaker 1: be Okay, then we are drifting into unhealthy territory.
Speaker 4: But I think otherwise it's just loving.
Speaker 3: I think what you said is really important, Like how
Speaker 3: do I respond to them in a way that doesn't
Speaker 3: make it about me exactly, doesn't make them being upset,
Speaker 3: them being down into suddenly about me. And there are
Speaker 3: people I've had in my life before. Maybe I was
Speaker 3: one of these people at some point where no matter
Speaker 3: what it is, it immediately sort of flips into like
Speaker 3: they feel bad. You know, I no longer even feel
Speaker 3: comfortable feeling bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, now I have to rescue you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a responsibility thing, I think at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, but it's overlapping circles.
Speaker 4: You know, there's not.
Speaker 1: You exist here and I exist here, and we never
Speaker 1: cross we do, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you feel responsible for your own experience.
Speaker 5: Yep, you mentioned fight, flight, freeze, fawning. I heard another.
Speaker 3: Term recently for it, which was flopping.
Speaker 5: She made me laugh.
Speaker 3: I was like, that kind of just yeah, that sort
Speaker 3: of describes me.
Speaker 5: L freeze.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so none of those are flopping.
Speaker 3: You just just kind of collapse in on yourself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, go to sleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've I've flopped. The flopping and funning feel more
Speaker 1: true to me than the other three.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, me, me too, me too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we were talking about this a little bit beforehand,
Speaker 3: but maybe we could hit on this as a general topic.
Speaker 3: You recently published something on one of your social channels
Speaker 3: about some books that you've loved recently, and maybe before
Speaker 3: we go into what any of them are, the books
Speaker 3: you've talked about were fiction books. Talk to me about
Speaker 3: what fiction specifically gives you that feels so important and valuable.
Speaker 4: Okay, I love this topic, you know.
Speaker 1: I would say I'm traditionally much more of a nonfiction
Speaker 1: memoir lover, like that would be my first love. Maybe,
Speaker 1: But ironically, several of the books that have been instructive
Speaker 1: to me and helpful to me, I would say the
Speaker 1: top three or four of them are not memoir or nonfiction.
Speaker 1: There novels. And I'd have to say it's the mythology
Speaker 1: of it all. What we get to experience in fiction
Speaker 1: is some representation of a myth, So then it kind
Speaker 1: of widens the aperture of what's possible because real life
Speaker 1: is just real life. It can only get a strange
Speaker 1: as real life gets or whatever but fiction, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can include magical surrealism, you can include fantasy, you
Speaker 1: can include you know, historical fiction. You can include things
Speaker 1: that are true and not true, and any you know,
Speaker 1: and so you can use those tools to create a myth.
Speaker 1: And to me, the myths are what we're always after,
Speaker 1: this timeless stories, the archetypal stories that live within us.
Speaker 1: And so for example, one of the books that I
Speaker 1: posted was the Book of Longings, which you and I
Speaker 1: talked about, which is a fictional story about an alternate
Speaker 1: story of Jesus. Obviously as seumank Kid wrote it, obviously
Speaker 1: researched widely, and there was I mean, it was beautifully research.
Speaker 1: You could tell she abided by what we know to
Speaker 1: be true about the story of Jesus, but.
Speaker 4: Also how to add like all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: And there's something in that that made it feel more
Speaker 1: real and more true because she allowed her imagination to
Speaker 1: fill in the blanks. So yeah, I just also love
Speaker 1: the writing, the literature of fiction. You can see that
Speaker 1: sometimes in memoir, but in memoir, you know they're trying
Speaker 1: to tell the true story. So the writing tends to
Speaker 1: be different. I won't say always, but it tends to
Speaker 1: be different. Even if you look at writers who do
Speaker 1: both memoir and fiction writing, the fiction writing just has
Speaker 1: a different feel. It's you know, there's more pros, it's
Speaker 1: more lyrical often so it feels like you just can
Speaker 1: get immersed.
Speaker 4: In that world.
Speaker 3: Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask
Speaker 3: you something. What's one thing that has been holding you
Speaker 3: back lately? You know that it's there, You've tried to
Speaker 3: push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way.
Speaker 3: You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major
Speaker 3: saboteurs of self control, things like autopilot behavior, self doubt,
Speaker 3: emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's
Speaker 3: the good news. You can outsmart them. And I put
Speaker 3: together a free guide to help you spot these hidden
Speaker 3: obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can
Speaker 3: use to regain control. Download the free guide now at
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash e book and take the first
Speaker 3: step towards getting back on track. One of the things
Speaker 3: about doing the show that is hardest for me is
Speaker 3: I have so much reading to do for guests that
Speaker 3: I don't get to read as much fiction as I
Speaker 3: used to, but I still try and squeeze it in.
Speaker 5: There's something about.
Speaker 3: It that I deeply love that book of Longing's book,
Speaker 3: I found so fascinating to.
Speaker 5: See her describe somebody who is in relationship with Jesus, Like,
Speaker 5: what might it be like to be the.
Speaker 3: Intimate partner of somebody who's that single minded.
Speaker 1: Of Jesus Christ, of the like most meta Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and character is you know, it's not easy.
Speaker 3: You know, you think like, well, you know, but if
Speaker 3: you really think about, like, well, Jesus was kind of
Speaker 3: a not always an easy to get along with guy,
Speaker 3: like you know, like it's it's just it's it's amazing.
Speaker 3: But that's not all it is, because she is an
Speaker 3: amazing character in her own right.
Speaker 5: I know you've got a line from that book that
Speaker 5: you love, which I'll let you share in a second.
Speaker 3: My favorite line from it was I think it was
Speaker 3: a prayer she offers or something which was blessed the
Speaker 3: largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it.
Speaker 1: Oh, I just got goosebumps. Yes, that was also one
Speaker 1: of mine. Blessed the largeness in me.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love when I am dust seeing these words over
Speaker 1: my bones.
Speaker 4: She was a voice.
Speaker 3: That's so good. Yeah, I was going to interview her.
Speaker 3: I think I had read something of hers years before,
Speaker 3: but hadn't in a while. So I just kind of
Speaker 3: immersed myself in her world for like three weeks, and
Speaker 3: it was just lovely.
Speaker 5: You know. When Giny and I drove to Atlanta and.
Speaker 3: Back, we listened to some of the books on tape
Speaker 3: and I read that book and it was just, I
Speaker 3: guess they're not books on tape anymore.
Speaker 5: I guess it's not that's not really what it is.
Speaker 1: That's okay, I understand what you mean. I listened to
Speaker 1: books on tape too, okay, on an iPhone.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: She is an extraordinary, extraordinary writer and woman, and her
Speaker 1: female characters are some of the best that have been written.
Speaker 1: You know, her first book, The Secret Life of Bees,
Speaker 1: that was when I fell in love with her work,
Speaker 1: and I think when a lot of people did. He
Speaker 1: was her first novel, and the women in that book,
Speaker 1: and then you know, Anna in the Book of Longings
Speaker 1: was among the best I've ever read, too. And strong
Speaker 1: female characters, the divine feminine is what she really captures.
Speaker 3: Let's change directions a little bit and talk about you know,
Speaker 3: your book was called the Luckiest But you've created something
Speaker 3: called the Luckiest Club.
Speaker 5: Tell me a little bit about what that is and
Speaker 5: what's happening.
Speaker 4: There the Luckiest Club.
Speaker 1: So TLC very nice, makes it easy to remember, and
Speaker 1: it's also kind of meaningful. So yeah, I created TLC.
Speaker 1: And well what happened is in around early March of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, when the world started to shut down. I
Speaker 1: remember sitting on my couch. School had already been canceled,
Speaker 1: so my daughter was home, and we were still in
Speaker 1: that stage of where is this really like, how okay
Speaker 1: it's going to be for a couple of weeks or
Speaker 1: you know, it's like it was all new. We weren't
Speaker 1: quite sure how big it was or how long it
Speaker 1: was going to last. And I remember sitting there working
Speaker 1: and thought Facebook post from the AA group in my
Speaker 1: local town saying we're not hosting live meetings from you
Speaker 1: know here on out, and we'll stay tuned, and I
Speaker 1: went okay. For some reason, it was that not school closing,
Speaker 1: or because that room had stayed open in every blizzard.
Speaker 1: I'd never seen it get shut down, so I thought,
Speaker 1: this is bad. People need that meeting, those meetings to
Speaker 1: be open and of course, it wasn't just my town.
Speaker 4: It was like everywhere. So I thought, I know how.
Speaker 1: To host meetings, not AA meetings, but I can host
Speaker 1: a meeting.
Speaker 4: And I put together this format. My experience in A
Speaker 4: helped me actually think of a format.
Speaker 1: But I included different readings of my own choosing. So
Speaker 1: I got to include poetry and literature and whatever I
Speaker 1: felt like reading, which was really fun to me, and
Speaker 1: I just kind of decided to do it. I didn't
Speaker 1: think through much. I posted something on my website. People
Speaker 1: could sign up. When they signed up, they came to
Speaker 1: a page that showed the schedule, and I just and
Speaker 1: I was hosting all of them. And I was hosting
Speaker 1: one or two a week, right, so seven meetings at
Speaker 1: least a week, a couple times a day. And you know,
Speaker 1: I did that for two months and it was awesome.
Speaker 1: It actually helped me so much in that time, and
Speaker 1: hundreds of people started to show up, and you know,
Speaker 1: when you just know something is happening, like something was happening.
Speaker 1: And so many of these people had never been to
Speaker 1: a meeting because they never did AA, or they weren't
Speaker 1: even sober yet, but they had been on my email
Speaker 1: list or followed me or whatever. So this was their
Speaker 1: first experience of community in sobriety, and that's life changing
Speaker 1: for people if you've never felt that, never experienced that,
Speaker 1: and they could do it, you know, especially with what
Speaker 1: was going on.
Speaker 4: It was really neat.
Speaker 1: But it got to be obviously like, Okay, I can't
Speaker 1: keep doing this because this is a lot. And so
Speaker 1: I thought I was like in real time in meetings
Speaker 1: talking to them like I don't know what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking about I'm trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1: And then I set a date. I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna and I'm going to stop them. At this point,
Speaker 1: it was like or four weeks out right, and people
Speaker 1: we are like, please don't stop them.
Speaker 4: We would pay money, do what you need to do,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: We hope these continue, and I over a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: put together a team, hired people to lead the meetings,
Speaker 1: came up with a format essentially, you know, rolled up
Speaker 1: a quick like business, and TLC was born. So we
Speaker 1: started with about ten meetings a week. I led one
Speaker 1: or two of them, but the rest were led by
Speaker 1: other people that I knew in sobriety, which was really
Speaker 1: neat because people that from all different traditions and backgrounds
Speaker 1: and demographics and experiences, and it was just really cool
Speaker 1: to see what was going on. So we started, you know,
Speaker 1: we had a private forum off of Facebook where people
Speaker 1: could talk, and then just the meetings. That's all it
Speaker 1: really was. There was nothing much to it. And then
Speaker 1: of course it evolved because it was really working, Like
Speaker 1: it was giving that core group that I started with,
Speaker 1: where like some of them had been in sobriety for
Speaker 1: twenty years and they were like, this is I needed this,
Speaker 1: Like this is revitalizing my own sobriety. And you know,
Speaker 1: we have a guy named Mike b who's in his
Speaker 1: early eighties who's a host and he has been sober
Speaker 1: for thirty five years and he's like.
Speaker 4: This is the best thing that's happened to me.
Speaker 1: And you know, we have younger people, older people. It's
Speaker 1: something that I knew was really special and we all
Speaker 1: felt that.
Speaker 4: So fast forward to.
Speaker 1: Now February twenty first, twenty twenty two, and we have
Speaker 1: thirty five meetings a week.
Speaker 4: We have newcomer meetings.
Speaker 1: And beyond one year meetings and BIPOC meetings and queer
Speaker 1: meetings and newcomer or do I say yet newcomer, and
Speaker 1: all kinds of other programming too, beyond just meetings. We
Speaker 1: have something that's called the Academy because as you know,
Speaker 1: like we get sober and then it's like okay, then
Speaker 1: what now what? So we have content to help people.
Speaker 1: The way we sort of look at it is like
Speaker 1: your life is a relationship, you know, with several different things,
Speaker 1: and in sobriety, you have to strengthen that relationship, go
Speaker 1: from unhealthy to more health if possible.
Speaker 4: In that relationship.
Speaker 1: So the relationship with self, the relationship with others, relationship
Speaker 1: to body, the relationship to money finances, and the relationship
Speaker 1: to work are the ones that we focus on right now.
Speaker 1: And it's been quite a ride, I bet. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's got its own culture, and I've seen people, you know,
Speaker 1: just like you do in AA, get sober miraculously and
Speaker 1: change and then go on to you know, start a
Speaker 1: subgroup in their own area or for their you know,
Speaker 1: like something that they're interested in. And this will be
Speaker 1: our two you know, I can't even remember what year
Speaker 1: we on twenty twenty, this will be our two year.
Speaker 4: Anniversary in May.
Speaker 1: It's wild to think that this didn't exist at some
Speaker 1: point because it's just this like almost fully formed child.
Speaker 1: Now I'd say it's like a teenager. I was saying
Speaker 1: before we got on that I didn't really expect to
Speaker 1: do it. But it's also like, of course it makes
Speaker 1: sense that this is what was going to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what was everything but sort of in preparation
Speaker 1: for that, And it's probably the most special thing that
Speaker 1: I've ever been a part of.
Speaker 3: You know, in AA, there are different aspects of what
Speaker 3: makeup AA. There's obviously the fellowship, the getting together, the
Speaker 3: meeting with people, and then there is the program, which
Speaker 3: is you follow the twelve steps. I'm kind of curious
Speaker 3: in the Luckiest Club is it primarily fellowship. I know
Speaker 3: you're starting to offer program related things, right, say a
Speaker 3: little bit about that, and what I think this raises
Speaker 3: the more interesting question is we see more and more
Speaker 3: recovery modalities starting to pop up, which I think is wonderful.
Speaker 5: You know, as I think about that, I'm like.
Speaker 3: Well, what is it that makes a modality more successful
Speaker 3: or less successful? And I'm kind of curious what your
Speaker 3: thoughts are on that. Having been through a bunch of
Speaker 3: the ones that already existed in now having two years
Speaker 3: of working on your own great question.
Speaker 4: So you know, we read a script. There's a few
Speaker 4: things we say at every meeting.
Speaker 1: We do have a culture, but I wouldn't say yet
Speaker 1: that we have a program.
Speaker 4: We don't have.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's the steps that you work or here's what
Speaker 1: you go through, and that's being developed right now. That's
Speaker 1: actually the book that I'm writing. What I wanted actually
Speaker 1: was not to have that in the beginning. And what
Speaker 1: we say is we respect all paths to recovery. We
Speaker 1: don't do dogma. We lead with compassion, We welcome you
Speaker 1: as you are. That's who TLC is today, and I
Speaker 1: don't I don't ever want to do dogma, right, But
Speaker 1: I have also seen the need for something for people
Speaker 1: to work against, to apply themselves against. Kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: a program, actual program.
Speaker 5: Say what you mean by the word against, Like.
Speaker 4: We need we need a program.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I've seen people go, Okay, I love going to these
Speaker 1: meetings because right now it is I would say ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent fellowship. It's community. It's not that we just
Speaker 1: get on the meetings. It's very intentional. The meetings are
Speaker 1: very structured. We have speaker meetings and topic meetings, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot that goes into those, so it's not
Speaker 1: like this free for all, but it's mostly community fellowship
Speaker 1: and that's great and it's a big part of it.
Speaker 1: But people want something to work. They want to be
Speaker 1: able to do the work of sobriety against a program,
Speaker 1: And of course I would say what we have as
Speaker 1: far as a program goes right now, which isn't really
Speaker 1: a program, it's more like a mission statement or a
Speaker 1: credo or something. Is at the beginning of Why we
Speaker 1: Are the Luckiest Book. The epigraph is actually a list
Speaker 1: of nine things and says, one, it is not your fault.
Speaker 1: It is your responsibility. Three, it is unfair that this
Speaker 1: is your thing. Four, this is your thing. Five this
Speaker 1: will never stop being your thing until you face it.
Speaker 1: Six you can't do it alone. Seven only you can
Speaker 1: do it. Eight you are loved. And nine we will
Speaker 1: never stop reminding you of these things. And that is
Speaker 1: what we say at the end of every meeting. And
Speaker 1: that's what my new book is built on, is those
Speaker 1: nine things. So to answer your question, it's been largely
Speaker 1: fellowship up until this point, and then we've started to
Speaker 1: add in programming. And the reason I think that's interesting
Speaker 1: is because I think there's this idea that modalities show
Speaker 1: up fully.
Speaker 4: Formed, you know, but the best ones are built in community.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, they're built as a response to a
Speaker 1: community need, not dictated from on high. Even doctor Bob
Speaker 1: and Bill Wilson did that, you know, they weren't. They
Speaker 1: wrote the book, They wrote the big book, and I
Speaker 1: think one of the places where it's unfortunately fallen short
Speaker 1: is that they haven't updated that literature to be conclusive
Speaker 1: of modern times. And every spiritual tradition that is the
Speaker 1: marker of whether something stays relevant or not, and it's
Speaker 1: usually done as an oral tradition, you know, it gets
Speaker 1: modernized and relevant to the context of the times. But
Speaker 1: that is what we're doing with TLC, what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do. You know, it's imperfect. Also, as soon as
Speaker 1: you something down, you're saying what you think is important, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're excluding other things, right, you can't do all
Speaker 1: the things. No program can be all the things. And
Speaker 1: that's something I've had to come to terms with. Like that,
Speaker 1: I just have to say this is what we're about
Speaker 1: and make it as expansive and open as possible and
Speaker 1: open to interpretation, but also be clear.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, there's a little bit of that idea like
Speaker 3: if you stand for everything, you stand for nothing kind
Speaker 3: of thing, right, Like, if you get a certain point,
Speaker 3: you have to start to say, well there is something
Speaker 3: here that works. But I think you're right that these
Speaker 3: things emerge over time, and AA emerged over time. I
Speaker 3: mean Bill Wilson didn't suddenly sit down one day and
Speaker 3: be like, oh, I've got AA figured out, Like it
Speaker 3: happened by meeting you know, doctor Bob and these things happen.
Speaker 1: And Carl Jung and all these other people, right yep,
Speaker 1: that we don't hear about, but it was very much
Speaker 1: a project of many minds.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the thing I've heard also, just to tag onto that,
Speaker 3: is that there were some people in AA who really
Speaker 3: pushed on that line. At the end, God as we
Speaker 3: understand him, that they pushed for that. Whoever the few
Speaker 3: people were who pushed for that saved millions of lives.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Well, it's like founding father language. You know, it's
Speaker 1: you kind of look back and you go, how how
Speaker 1: did that decision get made? And it was very prescient
Speaker 1: at the time, you know, Yeah, that did save millions
Speaker 1: of lives God as we understand him.
Speaker 4: It's been really interesting. You know.
Speaker 1: For example, a lot of people said, well, what about
Speaker 1: like moderation and what about harm reduction and why can't
Speaker 1: that be part of this or California sober you know,
Speaker 1: what's your stance on marijuana? And it's like, I know,
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: I'm not close enough to the recovery community that I
Speaker 3: hear that term very often.
Speaker 5: So every time I hear it makes me laugh.
Speaker 1: Me too, we do, but it's like, no, we're not
Speaker 1: about moderation management. We're not a harm reduction we're abstinence
Speaker 1: based community.
Speaker 4: And that's okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you don't stand for something, you fall for
Speaker 1: an anything, or try to say everything, you say nothing,
Speaker 1: all those things. It's a good check for me because,
Speaker 1: as you know, we get pretty self righteous about certain things.
Speaker 1: And I've had my mind changed about a lot being
Speaker 1: in community. And that's why, as my friend Jim says,
Speaker 1: there's sanity in community. Yeah, right, that's why we have it.
Speaker 1: Because one person doesn't.
Speaker 5: Know that is a great line. There's sanity in community.
Speaker 3: Makes me think back earlier in this conversation we were talking
Speaker 3: about like how do you know when you know something
Speaker 3: is like sort of healthy love or dependence. And the
Speaker 3: word that came to my mind was, well, it's really
Speaker 3: about discernment. And one of the things that I certainly
Speaker 3: have come to believe. I think I believed it a
Speaker 3: lot earlier in my recovery, and then maybe I lost
Speaker 3: it a little bit, and I've really picked that threat
Speaker 3: up much more strongly. Is that, like, well, discernment happens
Speaker 3: in community. It happens with other people. If you're trying
Speaker 3: to discern all by yourself. It's not to say that
Speaker 3: none of it's possible, but you know, for me, I
Speaker 3: almost feel like true discernment needs a community, even if
Speaker 3: that community is one or two other people.
Speaker 1: Percent That's why we talk about relationships. We're always in
Speaker 1: relationship to things. We're not islands. As much as we
Speaker 1: like to think we do things.
Speaker 4: Alone, we don't not.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, ultimately, it is a relationship, and discernment
Speaker 1: happens in community, and everything we do is a negotiation
Speaker 1: with the world. It's a call and response and a
Speaker 1: conversation that we have, right. I think when something gets
Speaker 1: to be unhealthy and cults like is when there is
Speaker 1: no conversation when there's only rules, when there's only one way. Again,
Speaker 1: it's that middle way, ye, that fine balance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And some people might say a is a cult,
Speaker 3: but I think the fact that the traditions were created
Speaker 3: is what sort of to me stopped it from becoming
Speaker 3: truly cult like because nobody had the power.
Speaker 5: I mean, in.
Speaker 3: Cults, very few people have all the power as brilliant
Speaker 3: as I think maybe the steps are in some ways
Speaker 3: or what they did. I think the true conditions are
Speaker 3: the thing that most blow my mind that I'm like.
Speaker 5: How did they see that coming?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 5: How on earth did they design a decentralized organization like
Speaker 5: that in like nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: I think there's God in that, you know, not God
Speaker 1: as a creator person, but Christ consciousness, God consciousness. It
Speaker 1: makes so much sense. Your mortals did not create that.
Speaker 1: We're not that good at that stuff.
Speaker 4: You know, our egos get in the way.
Speaker 3: They were certainly working from a deeply inspired place, Yes,
Speaker 3: regardless of how you want to quantify that they were
Speaker 3: working somehow from a non egoic place.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, yes.
Speaker 3: So I want to go to the nine things that
Speaker 3: you read at the end of the meeting, which were the.
Speaker 5: Epigraph of your book.
Speaker 3: We covered some of these in our first conversation, but
Speaker 3: given the fact that you read them in every meeting
Speaker 3: means you, like I probably believe you can't really hear
Speaker 3: these things too often. And I love it that at
Speaker 3: least some of them are just pairs. They're paradoxes, right,
Speaker 3: that you sort of put in there. And I'd love
Speaker 3: to talk about it's not your fault, but it is
Speaker 3: your responsibility, because I think this is such a critical
Speaker 3: piece of recovery, regardless of what it is we might
Speaker 3: be trying to recover from, you know, whether it be
Speaker 3: alcoholism or addiction, or trauma or any number of different things.
Speaker 3: But this idea that you know, it's not your fault,
Speaker 3: but it is your responsibility, and share a little bit
Speaker 3: about why that's so important, and maybe share what happens
Speaker 3: if you get stuck on either side of that.
Speaker 1: I agree, this isn't specific to recovery, even this is
Speaker 1: just life. This is I think what delineates the difference
Speaker 1: between like what Carl Jung called the morning of life
Speaker 1: versus the afternoon of life, or what Richard Rohrer called
Speaker 1: the first half of life versus the second half of life.
Speaker 1: You know, in the first half of life, you're usually
Speaker 1: very entrenched in one or the other of those things,
Speaker 1: and in the second half of life you hold them both.
Speaker 1: So what they meant to me and why I wrote
Speaker 1: them that way, I think people tend to fall well,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I know from talking to lots of
Speaker 1: different psychologists in the research for this book, that our
Speaker 1: tendency is to blame.
Speaker 4: It's sort of our innate.
Speaker 1: Reaction as kids and even as adults is to not
Speaker 1: take responsibility because we're not really taught how you know,
Speaker 1: it's something you have to learn.
Speaker 4: And so a lot of.
Speaker 1: What we do going throughout life is either take on
Speaker 1: all the blame or put all the blame somewhere else,
Speaker 1: and or we mistake responsibility for things like duty and obligation.
Speaker 1: So we think we're being responsible, but we're not. We're
Speaker 1: doing something out of obligation. And especially do this like
Speaker 1: I am being responsible to my family. Let's say I
Speaker 1: do everything they ask me to do. I show up everywhere,
Speaker 1: I am at the mercy of everyone else's needs. No,
Speaker 1: that's not actually responsibility because you're not in there. You're
Speaker 1: not taking responsibility for your experience. You are excellent a
Speaker 1: duty and obligation. But that's like below the line of
Speaker 1: responsibility is Christopher Avery developed it's called the responsibility process,
Speaker 1: and he was really helpful at.
Speaker 4: Explaining these things to me.
Speaker 1: So when we enter into recovery or when we're mired
Speaker 1: in addiction, our self blame or other blame, blame on
Speaker 1: others is very thick. It's a world that we're living
Speaker 1: in tons of shame. Not only is this terrible, but
Speaker 1: I'm terrible and nothing happens there. We can't get anywhere
Speaker 1: with just it's my fault. It's just all my fault.
Speaker 1: And obviously, for cultural reasons, do believe it is our fault.
Speaker 1: You know, we still very much live in a world
Speaker 1: that doesn't understand addiction, that where addiction is a moral issue,
Speaker 1: where people who get addicted or just need to make
Speaker 1: better choices, they lack control, will power, all those things.
Speaker 1: It's getting better, but unfortunately that's still very very true,
Speaker 1: and so we feel, you know, like peace is a crap.
Speaker 1: So when people first hear it's not my fault, it
Speaker 1: gives them permission to breathe, essentially, and then when you say,
Speaker 1: but it is your responsibility, that also actually gives them
Speaker 1: permission to breathe, because people actually really want to take responsibility.
Speaker 4: They might not think they do, but we we actually
Speaker 4: really do, but we just have it confused.
Speaker 1: Like the reason we want to take responsibility is because
Speaker 1: that is actually where our freedom is, that's where our
Speaker 1: power is, that's where we can actually effectuate change, that's
Speaker 1: where we can have peace.
Speaker 4: For me, I thought everything was my fault. I never was.
Speaker 1: It's that person in this person, and you know, the
Speaker 1: world's against me.
Speaker 4: I was never that.
Speaker 1: I was like very much the opposite, which is equally
Speaker 1: as damaging, right, because it's not true, and they are
Speaker 1: two sides of the same coin.
Speaker 4: As long as I'm blaming myself.
Speaker 1: Or other people, I am unable to be effective right now, right,
Speaker 1: it's just a bad story.
Speaker 3: I think what you just said there really caught my attention,
Speaker 3: which was when I say it's not my fault, I
Speaker 3: can breathe, right, because up to that moment, even if
Speaker 3: I do think it is my fault, there is still
Speaker 3: I'm trying to defend and justify myself.
Speaker 5: To some degree.
Speaker 3: Of course, if I think it's all my fault, I'm
Speaker 3: sort of in a battle. Whereas if I can go, oh,
Speaker 3: it's not my fault. Like you said, I can drop
Speaker 3: blame for a second, I can stop fighting something for
Speaker 3: a second and then yeah, oh it is my responsibility
Speaker 3: opens that up.
Speaker 5: I want to go back to.
Speaker 3: Something you said a minute ago, though, because I'd love
Speaker 3: to get your thoughts on this. You talked about due
Speaker 3: to your obligation, And I'm really interested in values.
Speaker 5: What are our values?
Speaker 3: Living out of our value, but living out of our
Speaker 3: values and duty and obligation are very close cousins, right, Like,
Speaker 3: if I go, well.
Speaker 5: My value is that I have a value.
Speaker 3: That caring for family members is important. Okay, there's a
Speaker 3: value that very quickly can bleed into duty and obligation
Speaker 3: right in feeling.
Speaker 5: And so I'm kind of curious for you. How do
Speaker 5: you keep those apart? Do you think?
Speaker 1: Yeah, great question. I've fought a lot about this because
Speaker 1: it's complicated. If you're truly operating out of your values,
Speaker 1: that means you're living in choice. And if you're living
Speaker 1: in choice, then you are taking responsibility. But a lot
Speaker 1: of times people their actions and the way they're running
Speaker 1: their lives, they're actually not in line with their values.
Speaker 1: They're in line with someone else's values, with society's values.
Speaker 1: With their parents' values, with someone else's script, and then
Speaker 1: they're just resentful, even if they won't say it. So
Speaker 1: it's not that when you live in responsibility that suddenly
Speaker 1: your life looks different and you're not doing anything you
Speaker 1: don't feel like doing. It's that you're choosing and you
Speaker 1: know why you're choosing. Even if it's things that are terrible,
Speaker 1: that feel terrible, I mean, or that aren't your preferences, necessarily,
Speaker 1: you can be in responsibility in them by making the
Speaker 1: choice and knowing why you're choosing it. It's when we
Speaker 1: follow a script that we either aren't aware because we've
Speaker 1: never actually thought of what our values are and for
Speaker 1: good reasons, like it didn't occur to us that we could,
Speaker 1: you know, we just took what was given, We did
Speaker 1: what we were supposed to do. We don't know why
Speaker 1: we're so miserable. And someone telling you, like, have you
Speaker 1: thought about what you want and what's really actually important
Speaker 1: to you? That can be a revelation and then letting
Speaker 1: that animate your choices is another revolution. And it might
Speaker 1: mean your life looks wildly different, or it might not
Speaker 1: mean that, but it's the energy of which you approach things.
Speaker 1: Are you just reacting to your life or are you
Speaker 1: consciously choosing the things that you're doing because they're based
Speaker 1: in your values? And look, this is a lifelong process.
Speaker 1: But that's the difference to me is that.
Speaker 3: I totally agree, and I think that the thing that's
Speaker 3: important in there also is to sometimes keep circling back
Speaker 3: to choice, right, Like, I think that we can get
Speaker 3: clear on what we value and what's important. This happens
Speaker 3: with me taking care of my mother, right, like, sorry, mom,
Speaker 3: if you're listening. But it starts from a place of
Speaker 3: like I care and I want to do it and
Speaker 3: it's a value.
Speaker 5: And then if I'm not.
Speaker 3: Careful, it starts to start to feel like duty and
Speaker 3: obligation because I.
Speaker 5: Forget that you're choosing. I forget that I'm choosing it.
Speaker 5: So then I have to go stop. Hang on, nobody's
Speaker 5: making me do any of this. Circle back what's my value?
Speaker 5: You know? So it feels like there's a loop that
Speaker 5: needs to be maintained, you know, which is like to
Speaker 5: value driving choices.
Speaker 3: Choices start to become habitual because we habituate, right, and
Speaker 3: then going all right, I don't want to be driven
Speaker 3: off habit back to choice. Oh, yep, still lines up, okay,
Speaker 3: you know. And it's this looping process.
Speaker 1: It's an active living process that we are in every day.
Speaker 1: It's not and your values change over time, you know.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's another thing people don't necessarily get or
Speaker 1: appreciate or feel they have permission to do. The things
Speaker 1: that were important to me ten years ago are not
Speaker 1: important to me really anymore. Part of that as I'm older.
Speaker 1: Part of that is sober we change, we evolve, and
Speaker 1: I would say, you're allowed.
Speaker 4: To change, You're allowed to change. This is such a
Speaker 4: fascinating topic to me.
Speaker 1: I am actually about to start on a two year
Speaker 1: program in existential psychology. It's very popular in Europe. It
Speaker 1: hasn't quite come to America. But it's this merging of
Speaker 1: philosophy which talks a lot about the concepts of freedom
Speaker 1: and choice and responsibility, but also psychother models.
Speaker 4: You know, how do you humanize that?
Speaker 1: So I spend a lot of time thinking about responsibility
Speaker 1: and the difference because it can get really murky for
Speaker 1: me and other people. It's probably one of the most
Speaker 1: worthwhile endeavors is to commit yourself to discerning the difference
Speaker 1: to that in your life and to finding a way,
Speaker 1: because look, the other thing is like we don't have
Speaker 1: control over so much, so it's always done through the
Speaker 1: lens of your own skills, your reality, your present circumstances,
Speaker 1: your values at the time. It's always very contextual, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are, of course many times in our lives where
Speaker 1: we're faced with things that we didn't choose.
Speaker 4: You know, you're taking care of your mother.
Speaker 1: She didn't choose that, and you didn't necessarily choose it either,
Speaker 1: but it's something that you're faced with making a decision
Speaker 1: about now. The way to not become resentful of that
Speaker 1: is to be in responsibility in that choice.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I think the other thing that's really difficult
Speaker 3: and I'd love to keep hearing from you about this
Speaker 3: as you go through this program and as you learn
Speaker 3: more and get your thoughts now, but like determining our
Speaker 3: values and which values are really ours and which values
Speaker 3: are the ones that we inherited, and recognizing that what's
Speaker 3: the way to say this? Everything about is this conditioned
Speaker 3: by the past? I get kind of not hung up,
Speaker 3: but I spend a lot of time thinking about like, well,
Speaker 3: what's my real value?
Speaker 5: Well, okay, what does that mean? Like how do I know?
Speaker 5: Because Yeah, like who am I?
Speaker 3: I'm a combination of the forces that have acted upon me,
Speaker 3: and so I don't.
Speaker 5: Want to be just that. And that's very real.
Speaker 3: And I think this idea of figuring out what we
Speaker 3: value is an easy phrase to say, but is extraordinarily
Speaker 3: difficult work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's some of the hardest work we do because
Speaker 1: it often means rejecting people and institutions that have many
Speaker 1: times well by us, you know, have sometimes even raised us.
Speaker 1: And you know, I read something amazing from Adam Grant
Speaker 1: the other day. I don't know if you're familiar with him,
Speaker 1: but I shared it. Actually, he said, too many people
Speaker 1: spend their lives being dutiful descendants instead of good ancestors.
Speaker 1: The responsibility of each generation is not to please their predecessors.
Speaker 1: It's to improve things for their offspring. It's more important
Speaker 1: to make your children proud than your parents proud.
Speaker 5: Amen to that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In the Spiritual Habits program that we do, we've got
Speaker 3: the main program, then there's a second program and intensive.
Speaker 3: And we were talking about legacy recently and the phrase
Speaker 3: legacy sort of being like a connective tissue between generations, right,
Speaker 3: Like I inherited a legacy and I'm passing one on
Speaker 3: and getting really clear on which parts of that, like, Yep,
Speaker 3: keep that flowing and nope, that stops here.
Speaker 4: You know, that's right. That's a beautiful way to put it.
Speaker 4: Like a river. You know, we're going to keep this
Speaker 4: part of it going and we're going to put a
Speaker 4: block up here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the word legacy, and I think that has
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount to do with values.
Speaker 4: It is the hardest work that will do.
Speaker 1: I mean, some of the values that my parents had
Speaker 1: are not mine, and some of them aren't mine because
Speaker 1: I just weren't part of my DNA, like written.
Speaker 4: It not literal DNA, but it's like not in my soul.
Speaker 1: I was born not valuing those things, and maybe I
Speaker 1: assimilated and tried to value them for the sake of
Speaker 1: pleasing my parents and just getting along.
Speaker 4: But then you grow up, you know.
Speaker 1: Carl Jung thought that the highest evolution of a person
Speaker 1: is individuation, and I think that has everything to do
Speaker 1: with values and.
Speaker 4: Being in touch with yourself. I mean, that's the prerequisite.
Speaker 1: Is you have to actually be in touch with yourself
Speaker 1: at any given point in time. And what does that mean?
Speaker 1: You know, be in touch with with what I think.
Speaker 1: There's a couple answers to that, and shit, I don't know.
Speaker 1: This is like well out of my depth. But this
Speaker 1: is how I understand. It is my unique blueprint, you know,
Speaker 1: my dharma in yoga, philosophy, my fingerprint, my soul, what
Speaker 1: I was said.
Speaker 4: Here to do.
Speaker 1: And I look at that as the part of me
Speaker 1: that is most connected to God. As I understand God,
Speaker 1: I feel we all have a role that we're here
Speaker 1: to play. I mean that quite literally. If you think
Speaker 1: of nature, everything is sort of by design, you know.
Speaker 1: And I don't look at this like there's a big
Speaker 1: creator and it's all, you know, pulling strings. It's bigger
Speaker 1: and more weird than that. But animals, for example, don't
Speaker 1: get confused about their dharma, you know, Like a cat
Speaker 1: is not trying to be the dog or the squirrel
Speaker 1: or the frog or whatever.
Speaker 4: In my yard.
Speaker 1: They're just freaking cat. And we're a lot more complicated
Speaker 1: than that. But I do believe that we have in
Speaker 1: us a blueprint of sorts, and this isn't something I
Speaker 1: made up, Like this is the story deals with archetypes,
Speaker 1: but it's also the story of like Arjanna and Krishna
Speaker 1: and the bag of Agita. You know, it's this idea
Speaker 1: of dharma, and I do believe that, and I think
Speaker 1: that ironically, when we do that, when we take on
Speaker 1: that mission fully, it actually destroys the ego and we
Speaker 1: become less us in the egoic sense and more in
Speaker 1: service of world.
Speaker 3: Boy, I could unpack that for about six hours, because
Speaker 3: I have so many questions in there and so many
Speaker 3: thoughts that we can't follow that down its deep rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: At some juncture, I would love to, because I'll just
Speaker 3: say this about it. As I've gotten deeper into my
Speaker 3: various spiritual awakenings, it's almost that the deeper I've gone,
Speaker 3: in some sense, it's been that the personality sort of dissolves.
Speaker 3: And so the question that I end up with is
Speaker 3: is there a particular nature of quote unquote eric that
Speaker 3: exists beyond the genetics that I came into this world
Speaker 3: with and things that have happened to me? Is that
Speaker 3: I just sort of brought that form into my source
Speaker 3: energy that came flowing in right or in, which just
Speaker 3: means that then okay, you know there are the elements,
Speaker 3: But at which point do I go, oh, that experience
Speaker 3: was part of my dharma. That experience is part of
Speaker 3: my conditioning that I don't want. You know, Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: very philosophical, very quickly.
Speaker 1: Well, I think one way that makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: This is why I really love the first half of
Speaker 1: life's second half of like idea. I'm rereading right now
Speaker 1: Richard Rhorer's book Falling Upward, so it's fresh in my mind,
Speaker 1: but that the first part of life is all about
Speaker 1: building the container we actually need the first part of life.
Speaker 1: It's not that it's less important or it's somehow stupid
Speaker 1: or like, it's not you know, we need ego. We
Speaker 1: need to have a healthy ego. It's like you need
Speaker 1: to learn all the rules so you know how to
Speaker 1: break them type of things. We need a healthy ego
Speaker 1: to establish ourselves in the world, to build that container
Speaker 1: and to begin the individuation process. And then the second
Speaker 1: of life it's deciding what to put in that container.
Speaker 1: And I think as we put the things in the container,
Speaker 1: we kind of disappear. At the end of my book,
Speaker 1: one of the last lines was what I've come to
Speaker 1: understand about sobriety is like this unfurling and over time
Speaker 1: it's become less me and more God. And I didn't
Speaker 1: even write that, like, I know that's true. I don't
Speaker 1: want to sound like this religious person because I'm really not.
Speaker 1: But I am becoming more and more spiritual as time
Speaker 1: goes on, and I'm I'm just drawn to those teachings
Speaker 1: because it's what feels the most true to me.
Speaker 3: Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this.
Speaker 3: Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices
Speaker 3: didn't quite match the person you wanted to be. Maybe
Speaker 3: it was autopilot mode or self doubt that made it
Speaker 3: harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why
Speaker 3: I created the Six Saboteurs of Self Control. It's a
Speaker 3: free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that
Speaker 3: hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to
Speaker 3: break through them. If you're ready to take back control
Speaker 3: and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at
Speaker 3: one you feed dot.
Speaker 5: Net slash ebook.
Speaker 3: Let's make those shifts happen starting today one you feed
Speaker 3: dot net slash ebook. There's a quote I used in
Speaker 3: this Spiritual Habits program yesterday that I love from Jack Cornfield.
Speaker 3: He said, there are two parallel tasks in spiritual life.
Speaker 3: One is to discover selflessness. The other is to develop
Speaker 3: a healthy sense of self. Both sides of that apparent
Speaker 3: paradox must be fulfilled for us to awaken.
Speaker 4: Ah. That's beautiful. I need to look at that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we're kind of doing these two different things
Speaker 3: in our desire to be like is it this or that?
Speaker 5: Right? You know, I've often been like which is it?
Speaker 3: Wisdom would say, well, of course you're doing both, you know,
Speaker 3: and whether you're doing them in parallel, whether you're doing
Speaker 3: one of them at one point in life another at
Speaker 3: another point in life. As you were talking about Dharma
Speaker 3: and Christian I was thinking about I think there's so
Speaker 3: much wism in some of the older Hindu teachings, and
Speaker 3: one that has always struck me has been that there
Speaker 3: are different things that you do at different stages of
Speaker 3: life that make sense, that are absolutely like they're all
Speaker 3: part of your spiritual path. Like there's a period where
Speaker 3: family and career are part of your spiritual development. It's
Speaker 3: not a distraction from it's part of it.
Speaker 5: You go through it.
Speaker 3: And I just love that instead of saying, like you
Speaker 3: just said that that early part of building the container
Speaker 3: is like it's only there so you can get to
Speaker 3: the later part. No, it's all important, and all part
Speaker 3: of it, it.
Speaker 1: All belongs, it's all important. Yeah, the second part wouldn't
Speaker 1: be meaningful if you did the first. What Richard Rohrer
Speaker 1: says and what Carl Junga said, is that most people
Speaker 1: don't get to that, they don't accept the mission of
Speaker 1: the second half.
Speaker 4: And I think that's absolutely true. That's why I get
Speaker 4: excited when I actually talk about sobriety. I've learned.
Speaker 1: That's what is most animating to me about it is because.
Speaker 4: I knew, even when I.
Speaker 1: Didn't want it, with every sell in my body, that
Speaker 1: it was my invitation.
Speaker 4: I knew it.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well we are out of time.
Speaker 3: Like I said, I feel like I could go down
Speaker 3: fifty different rabbit holes here and hopefully we'll get to
Speaker 3: do it again sometime. But thank you so much for
Speaker 3: coming on. You've got a new book coming that's really exciting.
Speaker 3: Got the luckiest community. We'll put links in the show
Speaker 3: notes where people can get access to your book to
Speaker 3: that community and another wonderful place for people to have
Speaker 3: a chance to work on recovery.
Speaker 5: So thank you so.
Speaker 4: Much, Laura, thank you. This is awesome.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
Speaker 3: you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I'd
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