Speaker 1: We live in a culture where people want to hear
Speaker 1: Oh it's easy, you know, pay ten bucks and you
Speaker 1: can get a pill and you'll be fine, or you
Speaker 1: know it, just take this seminar one weekend and everything
Speaker 1: will be okay for the rest of your life. You know,
Speaker 1: And that's not really the case.
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 think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our guest on this episode is Matthew Quick, an American
Speaker 2: writer of adult and young adult fiction. You may know
Speaker 2: his name from his debut novel, The Silver Linings, playbook,
Speaker 2: which became a huge New York Times bestseller and was
Speaker 2: adapted into a twenty twelve movie of the same name.
Speaker 2: He's penned many books since, and was a finalist for
Speaker 2: the two thousand and nine Penn Hemingway Award. His work
Speaker 2: has been translated into I think over thirty languages. Today,
Speaker 2: Eric and Matthew discuss various things, including his well known
Speaker 2: substack that Eric insists as the greatest one ever. It's
Speaker 2: called there Will be Mistakes.
Speaker 3: Hi, Matthew, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey, Eric, it's great to be back. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: I don't know how many times this is, maybe four,
Speaker 3: possibly five.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I should check this, because I have a suspicion you
Speaker 3: are the most frequent guest ever, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: I could be wrong about that, but I think that's
Speaker 3: a factor of having talked to you a long, long
Speaker 3: time ago for the first time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've been talking, having this conversation for I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's probably getting close to ten years now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, getting there. Yeah, Giny and I were reflecting
Speaker 3: recently on a trip to Cleveland that we took, and
Speaker 3: in that trip to Cleveland, you were there for a
Speaker 3: book event and we came by your hotel room, and
Speaker 3: I remember that trip fondly, so welcome back. We'll start, though,
Speaker 3: like we always do, with the parable. And in the Parable,
Speaker 3: this's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there's two wolves inside of us that are
Speaker 3: always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents
Speaker 3: things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's
Speaker 3: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 3: and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about
Speaker 3: it for a second, and they look up at their
Speaker 3: grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the
Speaker 3: grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 3: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 3: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Well. I've been thinking about this parable for quite some time,
Speaker 1: you know, over the ten years of conversation that we've had.
Speaker 1: And I really appreciate the show because it's give me
Speaker 1: a chance to allow my thoughts to evolve on this.
Speaker 1: And lately I've been thinking a lot about how we
Speaker 1: co create experiences with other people, and so like what
Speaker 1: we bring to the world ends up shaping the world
Speaker 1: for us, you know, so if we're angry all the time,
Speaker 1: we're probably going to make people around us angry. If
Speaker 1: we're laughing, the people around us are more likely to laugh.
Speaker 1: And so in the work that I've been doing lately,
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about what am I bringing to the world,
Speaker 1: and thinking about this kind of good bad wolf parable
Speaker 1: taking place inside of me but also taking place outside
Speaker 1: of me as well, And so what am I feeding
Speaker 1: other people? What am I allowing to escape my psyche?
Speaker 1: You know, what am I putting into the world? And
Speaker 1: how is that creating the world that I'm experiencing and
Speaker 1: other people are experiencing when they're with me. So I
Speaker 1: think when I first started listening to the show, I
Speaker 1: was really kind of focused on, you know, heavily, what's
Speaker 1: going on with me? What's going on with me? And
Speaker 1: I'm still very focused on that, But I think lately,
Speaker 1: and particularly recently, I've been thinking more about how am
Speaker 1: I creating the world around me by letting out of
Speaker 1: me what's going on in my psyche? And so I
Speaker 1: think that's another way to frame like this idea of
Speaker 1: good wolf bad wolf. What are we creating? You know,
Speaker 1: what's the product of that and how is that quote
Speaker 1: good or bad?
Speaker 3: So, something I'm going to be doing a little more
Speaker 3: often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what
Speaker 3: you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but
Speaker 3: only if combined with action and integration. So before we
Speaker 3: move on, I'd like to ask you what's coming up
Speaker 3: for you as you listen to this. Are there any
Speaker 3: things you're currently doing the are feeding your bad wolf
Speaker 3: that might make sense to remove, or any things you
Speaker 3: could do to feed your good wolf that you're not
Speaker 3: currently doing. So, if you have the headspace for it,
Speaker 3: I'd love if you could just pause for a second
Speaker 3: and ask yourself, what's one thing I could do today
Speaker 3: or tonight to feed my good wolf? Whatever your thing is.
Speaker 3: A really useful strategy can be having something external, a
Speaker 3: prompt or a friend, or a tool that regularly nudges
Speaker 3: you back towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year,
Speaker 3: I've been sending little good Wolf reminders to some of
Speaker 3: my friends and community members, just quick, little SMS messages
Speaker 3: two times per week that give them a little bit
Speaker 3: of wisdom and remind them to pause for a second
Speaker 3: and come off autopilot. If you want, I can send
Speaker 3: them to you too. I do it totally for free,
Speaker 3: and people seem to really love them. Just drop your
Speaker 3: information at oneufeed, dot net, slash sms and I can
Speaker 3: send them to you. It's totally free, and if you
Speaker 3: end up not liking the little reminders, you can easily
Speaker 3: opt out. That's one you feed dot nets slash sms.
Speaker 3: And now back to the episode. That's interesting because there
Speaker 3: were two themes that I was interested in talking about
Speaker 3: to you. One was community in general, and the second
Speaker 3: was in the world of young yan analysis, which I
Speaker 3: think we'll spend a fair amount of time on. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a couple of ideas that I wanted to explore,
Speaker 3: and one is really around individuation, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: talk about how individuation affects and interacts with the world
Speaker 3: around us. And I also wanted to talk about an
Speaker 3: idea that I think is a young idea of submitting
Speaker 3: to your fate, and I wanted to discuss what does
Speaker 3: that mean. I've been thinking a lot lately. I've been
Speaker 3: reading existentialists because I'm a cheerful guy, and but you know,
Speaker 3: there's an idea in existentialism that resonates so strongly with
Speaker 3: me and just has more over the years, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, they reject sort of this idea of essentialism,
Speaker 3: meaning that there's some essence of me that is fixed
Speaker 3: or that is determined, or that is in any way
Speaker 3: exclusively mine, and that it is sort of co created.
Speaker 3: I like that you use that word. It is co
Speaker 3: created by the choices I make, the people I interact
Speaker 3: with the world that's around me. It is a completely
Speaker 3: evolving thing. And so I kind of wanted to ask
Speaker 3: a question from the perspective of Youngian analysis, what is
Speaker 3: your understanding of the psyche or the self, because that's
Speaker 3: a key idea in youngin analysis, and I kind of
Speaker 3: wanted to just see if you could describe what that
Speaker 3: is a little bit for a second.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'll start by saying I've been in analysis
Speaker 1: for coming up on four years, and I've been interested
Speaker 1: in young but I'm not an expert on young by
Speaker 1: any stretch of the imagining. I'm still very much a learner,
Speaker 1: but based on what I've learned in analysis and front reading,
Speaker 1: the psyche is kind of your soul, like everything that
Speaker 1: goes on inside of you, whereas the self in Young
Speaker 1: in terms. The way I understand it is almost what
Speaker 1: you might think of as God or like higher power.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be specific to you know, any
Speaker 1: one denomination, but this, this idea that's something larger than you,
Speaker 1: is taking an interest in you and trying to help
Speaker 1: you not get to some you know, good place in life,
Speaker 1: but to get you to be the truest manifestation of
Speaker 1: who you are, which goes to Young's idea of individuation, which,
Speaker 1: as I understand it is exactly that, like bringing out
Speaker 1: the truest manifestation of who you are and trusting that
Speaker 1: there's a purpose for you to be that way. It
Speaker 1: gets tricky because you know, as times change, the idea
Speaker 1: of morality changes, like what is good? What is bad?
Speaker 1: Like that's ever shifting. And you know, the way that
Speaker 1: I understand the Young in Journey is that it's not
Speaker 1: really interested in those types of questions. Analyst is constantly
Speaker 1: saying to me, take the morality out of it. You know.
Speaker 1: So if I say to him, like I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do, is this the right thing or the
Speaker 1: wrong thing? He'll often say, like, what's the thing that
Speaker 1: your psyche is calling you to do? What are you
Speaker 1: program to do, and this idea of trusting that there's
Speaker 1: a reason for you to want to be that way.
Speaker 1: It gets tricky because, of course, if you're programmed to
Speaker 1: do awful things what some people are, it brings up
Speaker 1: hard questions, you know, like is there a purpose for
Speaker 1: somebody to do something that you think of as immoral
Speaker 1: or you know, flat out wrong. But I think one
Speaker 1: of the things I'm learning with my youngin journey is
Speaker 1: to relegate ego, and ego wants to for me anyway,
Speaker 1: Like my conscious attitude, it's very concerned with knowing the
Speaker 1: truth or knowing what's wrong, right or wrong, because I
Speaker 1: don't want to look bad in front of other people.
Speaker 1: And so when I relegate that and say I'm never
Speaker 1: going to figure out all of the mysteries of the universe,
Speaker 1: I'm never going to know all of the answers. The
Speaker 1: only thing I can do is get in touch with
Speaker 1: who I am as a person and who I was
Speaker 1: meant to be before I accrude all all of the
Speaker 1: hits and all of the damage of childhood and the
Speaker 1: letdowns and everything else in life. If I could get
Speaker 1: back to that place where I go back to the original,
Speaker 1: you know kind of DNA or seed information of who
Speaker 1: I am. I have to trust that there was a
Speaker 1: purpose that I was supposed to be that way, and
Speaker 1: that if I follow that path, I will manifest that
Speaker 1: into the world. Now that might not be exactly what
Speaker 1: my conscious attitude or my ego might want, but the
Speaker 1: idea is that there is some higher calling or some
Speaker 1: higher truth that you're serving by letting go of your
Speaker 1: conscious attitude EO, and you need to follow that. The
Speaker 1: other idea, too, is that in the psyche there's the
Speaker 1: conscious and the unconscious. You know, so Young is very
Speaker 1: famous for talking about the collective unconscious, and in Young analysis,
Speaker 1: we're always trying to raise the unconscious to consciousness. So
Speaker 1: one of the ways that we do this is by
Speaker 1: keeping a dream diary and writing down dreams and looking
Speaker 1: at those dreams almost like we would analyze a novel
Speaker 1: or a fairy tale or a myth, and you're looking
Speaker 1: at what unconscious is trying to show you that you're
Speaker 1: not aware of. So in the dream analysis, if you
Speaker 1: think you know what the dream is about, you probably don't. Like.
Speaker 1: That's a Young in response. So when I write down
Speaker 1: my dreams and I bring it to my analyst. We
Speaker 1: talk about what they symbolically mean to me in a
Speaker 1: way that we're trying to raise information that I haven't
Speaker 1: consciously been thinking about through symbolism, through narratives, so that
Speaker 1: I can get in touch with all of the stuff
Speaker 1: that I've repressed, so that I can integrate it and
Speaker 1: be fully me. I throw a lot out there.
Speaker 3: No, it's great, it's funny. I'm as you know, and
Speaker 3: I guess some listeners have heard at this point. I'm
Speaker 3: at work on a book and I was writing part
Speaker 3: of a chapter yesterday where I was exploring this idea.
Speaker 3: I'm working on sort of values and desires and how
Speaker 3: they are different and the same. And when you hear
Speaker 3: people talk about values, you know, there's this sense of
Speaker 3: sort of what you said, who you're meant to be,
Speaker 3: or what you believe most deeply. And what's interesting is that,
Speaker 3: you know, there's an original encoding we had from DNA,
Speaker 3: but from the second we were conceived, we began to
Speaker 3: have experiences which began to shape who we are. And
Speaker 3: so I guess that's kind of the question I always
Speaker 3: get hung up on. It's like, well, who's the truest me?
Speaker 3: Is there such a thing right? Or is there simply
Speaker 3: the me that has evolved through every single experience and
Speaker 3: moment that I've had. And at what point do you
Speaker 3: go back far enough where you're like, okay, there's the
Speaker 3: essence right, or there's me before it was corrupted by
Speaker 3: the world, before it was influenced by the world. I
Speaker 3: think you'd have to go back to before you were conceived,
Speaker 3: almost to be at a point where you were not
Speaker 3: shaped by experience. But at some point you do have
Speaker 3: to be able to say, like, as near as I
Speaker 3: can tell, this is the version of me that is
Speaker 3: most closely aligned to what feels like who I am,
Speaker 3: even though that who I am is a constantly evolving process.
Speaker 3: But the line of inquiry that I just took us
Speaker 3: down is not a particularly fruitful one because it leaves
Speaker 3: you paralyzed, like, well, okay, then what do I do
Speaker 3: with that?
Speaker 1: I think most people come to young analysis, or at
Speaker 1: least I did anyway, because you are paralyzed. Young in
Speaker 1: thought is something that most people get to in mid life.
Speaker 1: My analysts recently said, you know, it's not really four children,
Speaker 1: and one of the reasons is is that you have
Speaker 1: to build up kind of your false self for the
Speaker 1: first half of your life and then the second half
Speaker 1: of your life, and young in terms, is for finding
Speaker 1: out who you really are. And so how do we
Speaker 1: build up the false self? Well, you know, when we're kids,
Speaker 1: if we're lucky, we have people around us that narcissistically
Speaker 1: mirror us in a proper way. It's like when my
Speaker 1: five year old nephew or my seven year old niece
Speaker 1: brings me a picture that they have just created, I
Speaker 1: don't give them my real opinion about the quality of
Speaker 1: the art. I say, oh, that's wonderful, Like that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Look how pretty that flower is. What's that over there?
Speaker 1: Oh that's a house. That's wonder that's so great. And
Speaker 1: so I narcissistically mirror them. And what I'm telling them
Speaker 1: is I'm saying, like, you are okay, exactly as you are.
Speaker 1: But for a lot of us, you know, particularly in
Speaker 1: the recovery community, I'm coming up on six years sober.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately a lot of people don't get that narcissistic mirroring.
Speaker 1: When you're a kid, you know, you're told what is
Speaker 1: that stupid picture you just made? Or don't do this,
Speaker 1: or you know your natural expression is wrong and then
Speaker 1: you spend the next you know, twenty thirty years trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to make people who don't like
Speaker 1: who you are okay around you by creating a persona. Yep.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of times people use the word
Speaker 1: persona pejoratively. You know they'll use it in a negative way.
Speaker 1: But in young you have thought like, the persona is
Speaker 1: just the mask you wear to get through your day.
Speaker 1: If that's working well and you're aware that you have
Speaker 1: a mask on, there's no problem. The problem is that
Speaker 1: when you create this mask and you don't know it's
Speaker 1: a false self, that's when it's the problem. And so
Speaker 1: for me, particularly as a young man, and especially when
Speaker 1: I was drinking heavily, I was just trying to stay afloat,
Speaker 1: like I was just trying to stay alive. I wasn't
Speaker 1: consciously thinking about what I was doing and why I
Speaker 1: was doing it. I was just doing whatever made me
Speaker 1: feel okay or made me feel safe in the moment.
Speaker 1: And then it wasn't until in my early forties but
Speaker 1: woke up and started to think, you know, why am
Speaker 1: I doing all these things? And why do I feel
Speaker 1: like something screaming inside of me? You know that also
Speaker 1: coincided with getting sober as well, so you know, you
Speaker 1: had to drink to kind of calm down that screaming
Speaker 1: voice inside of you so you can keep doing the act.
Speaker 1: But then once I stopped drinking, I couldn't do the
Speaker 1: act anymore. And then it was well why am I
Speaker 1: doing this act? And all of these questions you know
Speaker 1: that we're getting into. So again, it's not that these
Speaker 1: things are wrong. You know, we hear this term narcissist
Speaker 1: all the time, and people throw it around at everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh, that's a narcissist. Let's like get
Speaker 1: away from that person. They're evil, or they're bad, or
Speaker 1: they're paria because they're a narcissist. But a narcissist, you know,
Speaker 1: as damaging as it can be to be around. You know,
Speaker 1: somebody who's am a league at narcissists. That's just a
Speaker 1: little kid that was never reinforced. That was just a
Speaker 1: little kid that was abused a long time ago and
Speaker 1: never got to go through this process of correcting that.
Speaker 1: And so it's interesting lately too, is particularly the Internet,
Speaker 1: how you see all these psychological terms weaponized. And I
Speaker 1: think that's particularly damaging because what we're doing is we're
Speaker 1: othering those people, and we're projecting all the things that
Speaker 1: we don't want to see about ourselves onto a target
Speaker 1: so that no one will look at those things that
Speaker 1: are in us, and we never look inside. And so
Speaker 1: the path to health is, you know, not to be saying,
Speaker 1: look at that narcissist over there who's so awful, but
Speaker 1: to say, where is the narcissism in me? Because every
Speaker 1: single person on the planet has some degree of narcissism,
Speaker 1: Like you need narcissism to be healthy. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a spectrum. So where are those things in me? Where
Speaker 1: am I the person that's letting people down? How am
Speaker 1: I creating these situations that I find so uncomfortable. So
Speaker 1: one of the things that's difficult about the young Uian
Speaker 1: analysis is that you're never really looking at the world
Speaker 1: out there. You're constantly turning the camera back on you,
Speaker 1: and you're doing the work inside of you so that
Speaker 1: you can go out in the world and co create
Speaker 1: a better world for not everyone else, but also so
Speaker 1: that you are experiencing this relief so that I can
Speaker 1: walk out into the world without being drunk and survive.
Speaker 1: But all of that work is inside. And I think
Speaker 1: that's really been kind of a second half of life
Speaker 1: as well, because I think when you're young, you just
Speaker 1: don't know, and we're constantly projecting our worst fears out
Speaker 1: into the coulture, and we're constantly scapegoating people and targeting people.
Speaker 1: And I think it takes a maturity to come back
Speaker 1: around and say, oh no, no, it's not all of
Speaker 1: those people out there, it's us.
Speaker 3: I think that's such an interesting thing to sort out
Speaker 3: in any situation. What about this situation is completely internal
Speaker 3: and the work that needs to be done is completely internal?
Speaker 3: And when is it external? So, I mean, take narcissism
Speaker 3: for example. Actually narcissism is maybe an extreme example. A
Speaker 3: simpler example is I have a boss I don't particularly like.
Speaker 3: So the question that becomes, well, do I stay in
Speaker 3: a job with a boss that I don't particularly like
Speaker 3: and work on my own reactions to that boss to
Speaker 3: get to a point where maybe I have a different
Speaker 3: relationship with them it's internal, Or do I go life's
Speaker 3: too short to be in a working relationship with somebody
Speaker 3: who you really don't like. And that's always such an
Speaker 3: interesting distinction. But I think that regardless, there is always
Speaker 3: the need to do that internal looking before you make
Speaker 3: the outside.
Speaker 2: World the problem.
Speaker 3: At least that's been my experience. And you know, I
Speaker 3: was fortunate to burn my life to the ground through
Speaker 3: substances far earlier than you did. And so in twelve
Speaker 3: step programs we were taught this idea right away. And
Speaker 3: it was this idea that resentments were. They called them
Speaker 3: the number one offender. The thing that would get you
Speaker 3: drunk faster than anything else was a resentment. And it
Speaker 3: was this constant saying, the problem's out there, the problems
Speaker 3: out there, the problems out there, instead of going, okay,
Speaker 3: what ways have HI contributed to this situation, to this problem?
Speaker 3: And that way of thinking, I think just has, luckily
Speaker 3: from you, gotten sort of baked in over time so
Speaker 3: that it's where I start. Yeah, I start from that place,
Speaker 3: and then you know, proceed to is the problem out there?
Speaker 3: But it's always such an interesting thing. And I love
Speaker 3: the word you used earlier, which is co creation. Usually
Speaker 3: in any situation, it's not like all the other person's
Speaker 3: fault or all our fault. We have co created something together.
Speaker 3: I have a big role in that, and my role
Speaker 3: is the only thing that I can change. I can't
Speaker 3: change their role. By turning internal. In that way, we
Speaker 3: put the sort of locus of control back inside us.
Speaker 3: I think so that was a long response.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think you know, the stricky thing in
Speaker 1: terms of the Jongian work I do is becoming conscious
Speaker 1: of all the unconscious ways that we affect people. And
Speaker 1: so my analyst is always saying, you know that boss
Speaker 1: that you don't like. When you walk into the room
Speaker 1: with that boss that you don't like, if you don't
Speaker 1: like that boss like expression on your face, it's going
Speaker 1: to be saying to the boss, I don't like you.
Speaker 1: And you might be signed at something he does, or
Speaker 1: you might be tapping your foot or your body language
Speaker 1: might be a certain way. And so if you're going
Speaker 1: into a room and your attitude is I don't like
Speaker 1: you and I hate working for you, how is your
Speaker 1: boss going to react? It's a dance that you're co
Speaker 1: creating exactly. And so the other question is why don't
Speaker 1: you like the boss? You know? And your boss could
Speaker 1: be objectively horrible, but it's easy enough for most people
Speaker 1: to like you said, to get another job, So why
Speaker 1: are you staying there? Is a question? And also what
Speaker 1: is the hook in your boss that really gets you,
Speaker 1: you know, so and young is when we talk about projection,
Speaker 1: we talk about hooks. So there might be a little
Speaker 1: thing on somebody that there's like a nice little hook
Speaker 1: for you to hang, like all of that stuff that
Speaker 1: you don't want to admit about yourself. So I'm not
Speaker 1: bossing with my coworkers. My boss is the one that's
Speaker 1: bossing everybody around, or you know, whatever the thing is,
Speaker 1: I'm not treating people fairly. It's my boss that I'm
Speaker 1: not being judgmental. You know, it's my boss that is
Speaker 1: judging everyone. So whatever that hook is, the work is,
Speaker 1: you know, becoming aware of that and also you know,
Speaker 1: thinking long and hard if you hate your boss, like well,
Speaker 1: why haven't I put that resume out there? Why haven't
Speaker 1: I gone to get it? Is there's some part of
Speaker 1: me that wants to be in a relationship with somebody
Speaker 1: that I hate, and like asking those questions are uncomfortable
Speaker 1: because it takes your boss off of the hot seat
Speaker 1: and puts you onto the.
Speaker 3: Hot seat precisely, and that's where.
Speaker 1: You always have control over it. It's not a fun experience.
Speaker 1: You know, I can say firsthand that I'm conscious looking
Speaker 1: at all of the things that you don't want to
Speaker 1: admit about yourself. It's it's not fun work, but it
Speaker 1: is important work, and it's hard work, and it takes
Speaker 1: a long time.
Speaker 3: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder.
Speaker 3: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 3: and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
Speaker 3: to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
Speaker 3: detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
Speaker 3: and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and
Speaker 3: how can you put it into practice in your life. Seriously,
Speaker 3: just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
Speaker 3: can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
Speaker 3: and be present, can't it. If you want to keep
Speaker 3: this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
Speaker 3: i'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
Speaker 3: SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with
Speaker 3: insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a
Speaker 3: nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life,
Speaker 3: and they're a helpful way to not get lost in
Speaker 3: the busyness and forget what is important. You can join
Speaker 3: at oneufeed dot net slash sms and if you don't
Speaker 3: like them, you can get off the list really easily.
Speaker 3: So far, there are over one and seventy two others
Speaker 3: from the one you feed community on the list, and
Speaker 3: we'd love to welcome you as well, So head on
Speaker 3: over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's feed
Speaker 3: our good wolves together. I'd like to pivot a little bit,
Speaker 3: but it's going to take back into the same territory again,
Speaker 3: which is talking about something you've been pretty open about.
Speaker 3: I think your most recent substack talks about it, but
Speaker 3: you've shared this in different ways over the years since
Speaker 3: you got sober, which is that you're having a very
Speaker 3: difficult time writing fiction. You were really blocked for a
Speaker 3: long time and then you managed to sort of overcome
Speaker 3: that and get out. We are the light, and at
Speaker 3: least in conversations you and I've had, you continue to
Speaker 3: remain pretty stuck on writing fiction. And something you wrote
Speaker 3: in the most recent substack, and I highly recommend your
Speaker 3: substack it's a great one, is that you were talking
Speaker 3: about how not being able to write fiction fills you
Speaker 3: with this degree of shame, and you use a line
Speaker 3: that I love, which is it basically sucks the light
Speaker 3: out of you, so you're unable to interact with people
Speaker 3: at the end of the day. That's happening. And yet
Speaker 3: at the same time, you're also saying to your analysts
Speaker 3: and recognizing, like, but my life is objectively great.
Speaker 1: I have a great life, you know, I.
Speaker 3: Live in a beautiful place. You know, I'm doing the
Speaker 3: sort of work. You know, even if I'm not being
Speaker 3: successful at it, my career has been in something I love, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, there's so many good things in your life.
Speaker 3: And so before we go into maybe some of the
Speaker 3: reasons why you might be blocked, I just love to
Speaker 3: hear you talk a little bit about how you're balancing
Speaker 3: or how you're working with those two energies, the one
Speaker 3: that says, oh, this is killing me, and the other
Speaker 3: that says, but my life is really good in every
Speaker 3: other way.
Speaker 1: Well, the first thing that comes to mind I talk
Speaker 1: with my analysts about this a lot is sense of
Speaker 1: mission or purpose. And I think it's easy to quiet
Speaker 1: that voice. What is my purpose? When is my mission?
Speaker 1: When you know your career is going well, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're publishing regularly, when you know money is coming in.
Speaker 1: When you're being recognized and people are saying really kind
Speaker 1: things about you in public, it's kind of easy to
Speaker 1: outsource the inner motivation. Oh, look at all this affirmation
Speaker 1: I'm getting. Might be doing something really important. I think
Speaker 1: the harder work is when you're psyche or you know,
Speaker 1: the self or higher power or whatever you know, starts
Speaker 1: asking you to do work that might not be as
Speaker 1: readily praised, or you know, might be work that is
Speaker 1: difficult for you to do, you know, might make you
Speaker 1: face things that you don't want to admit that you're
Speaker 1: not sure that you want to put into the world.
Speaker 1: That's when it gets hard. And I think the past
Speaker 1: couple of years, you know, particularly without alcohol, since I
Speaker 1: stopped drinking. You know, the creative act is I think
Speaker 1: the way that some artists do it. There's creating you know,
Speaker 1: genre or you know, if you're writing a spy mystery
Speaker 1: or something, there's kind of like a pattern that you
Speaker 1: do it in. But if you're just writing from the heart,
Speaker 1: if you're just writing from the soul, if you're just
Speaker 1: creating something that comes from your own psychic material, putting
Speaker 1: that into the world can be a terrifying thing because
Speaker 1: you don't know what's coming back, and to take it
Speaker 1: back to an earlier conversation, it can really put you
Speaker 1: in a young place where you're the five year old
Speaker 1: kid drawing the picture and you're holding it up to
Speaker 1: the world and you don't know what the reactions would be.
Speaker 1: Are you going to get the Uncle Matthew reaction? Er
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, that's a great photo, a good job, like,
Speaker 1: you know you should keep doing this or are you
Speaker 1: going to get somebody on good read? She says, this
Speaker 1: book sucks one star. You know, I hate you. You
Speaker 1: know it's a funny way to look at it, but
Speaker 1: I think subconsciously that five year old kid is always
Speaker 1: in you, and I think for a long time, my
Speaker 1: response was, we'll just get the five year old kid
Speaker 1: drunk and he'll be knocked offline inside and I won't
Speaker 1: have to worry about that response. So when I would
Speaker 1: drink a lot of alcohol, you know, I would write
Speaker 1: all day and I wouldn't be drinking, but I would
Speaker 1: start to write something, I would think, well, anyone like this,
Speaker 1: or is this good? Or do I have talent? And
Speaker 1: then I would say, well, just get drunk and you
Speaker 1: will stop thinking about all of those questions and all
Speaker 1: of those needs will just be muted. And that's what
Speaker 1: I did. Wake up the next morning and I would
Speaker 1: go right into my work and I wouldn't think, and
Speaker 1: I would just, you know, just channel whatever needed to
Speaker 1: come out of me quite nicely. And at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, when I said, what is this thing
Speaker 1: that I've created? Is anyone going to love me for it?
Speaker 1: Is am I gonna make? I would just start drinking
Speaker 1: and that the alcohol would just wipe all of that away.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, it was something that worked for me,
Speaker 1: and it works for a lot of creative people, but
Speaker 1: sitting here, I don't recommend it. The consequences were too high.
Speaker 1: And so now I'm doing this creative act, you know,
Speaker 1: over the last I don't know, six years, in a
Speaker 1: way that is infinitely harder because they don't have the
Speaker 1: magic juice that takes away all of those complicated feelings.
Speaker 1: And I have to do the art and then sit
Speaker 1: with those complicated feelings and make sense of them and
Speaker 1: talk to the inner little boy inside of me and
Speaker 1: negotiate these strange conversations with the younger inner me saying
Speaker 1: you need to make the picture, even though if you
Speaker 1: put it out, and I'm going to put it out
Speaker 1: into the world, and there might be hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of people that tell you we shouldn't have made the picture,
Speaker 1: but we have to do that anyway. But having those
Speaker 1: conversations and allowing that inner child to mature and for
Speaker 1: me to mature into a healthy person who isn't dependent
Speaker 1: on all of those outer reactions, it's tough work, you know,
Speaker 1: That's work that should have happened a long time ago.
Speaker 1: For me, It's required a lot of courage, and it's
Speaker 1: also taken up a lot of bandwidth that I suddenly
Speaker 1: needed to manage my analysis and all of this mental
Speaker 1: health stuff that I wasn't using when I was just
Speaker 1: writing novels and getting drunk. At the end of the night.
Speaker 1: All of my bandwidth was going to the creative act
Speaker 1: and that was pretty much it, and then the rest
Speaker 1: of me was just getting obliterated and going offline until
Speaker 1: the next time it was to have the creative act. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I know, I'm not really selling sobriety or
Speaker 1: young analysis, which is kind of funny, but I also
Speaker 1: think that's part of the problem, you know, because we
Speaker 1: live in a culture where people want to hear, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's easy, you know, May ten bucks and you can
Speaker 1: get a pill and you'll be fine, or you know,
Speaker 1: just take this seminar one weekend and everything will be
Speaker 1: okay for the rest of your life, you know, And
Speaker 1: that's not really the case. You know. Most of the
Speaker 1: voices that I hear that I trust and feel honest
Speaker 1: to me are voices that are saying, this is going
Speaker 1: to be the hardest thing you ever do, but you
Speaker 1: need to do it anyway, and you're going to be
Speaker 1: better off in the long run for it. And I
Speaker 1: think that has given me a sense of purpose and
Speaker 1: mission personally, you know, to get sober, to start being healthy,
Speaker 1: to start psychologically taking care of myself and interacting with
Speaker 1: other people in a way that I can respect. But
Speaker 1: I think the next step for me is, you know,
Speaker 1: all of this personal integrity and all this work I'm
Speaker 1: doing alone in analysis or alone in a room, I
Speaker 1: think the next step is taking that out into the
Speaker 1: world and having conversations like the one we're having here
Speaker 1: and allowing that to blossom in new ways. Because for
Speaker 1: the last six years, you know, beside the one book
Speaker 1: to where I was on, it's just really been me
Speaker 1: my analysts and a couple very close friends that I
Speaker 1: talk with. My world has gotten really small, and so
Speaker 1: now the goal is to start taking that out into
Speaker 1: branch out into the world new ways. And I don't
Speaker 1: know what will happen when that goes down. And just
Speaker 1: like with the work I'm doing now, in the writing
Speaker 1: i'm doing, I think sometimes I get stuck because it
Speaker 1: feels unfamiliar and it doesn't feel safe, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen when I write in these
Speaker 1: new ways and I explore these new avenues that my
Speaker 1: psychea has wanted to explore the whole time. And I'm
Speaker 1: saying yes to those things without the guarantee of money
Speaker 1: or fame or you know, anything that you hope for,
Speaker 1: but just doing it because it's going to be psychologically
Speaker 1: healthy for me. That's new, you know, that second half
Speaker 1: of life'stle and it's certainly not what I was taught
Speaker 1: as a young man.
Speaker 3: I want to come back around to alcohol in its
Speaker 3: place and all this in a moment. But it's interesting
Speaker 3: because you are writing and putting it out into the world,
Speaker 3: so that is happening. Just doing it in the way
Speaker 3: that you're doing it by writing and putting it out
Speaker 3: on substack feels safer in some way than fiction.
Speaker 1: Now it really doesn't. Okay, okay, in some ways it
Speaker 1: feels even more intense. It's fiction. You always have the
Speaker 1: mask of fiction, you know, you always have like this
Speaker 1: isn't really me, this is some character I've made up.
Speaker 1: The stuff I'm doing on substack, you know, there's nowhere
Speaker 1: to hide. I'm writing about myself and writing about my life.
Speaker 1: It's non fiction. It's been exciting, but it's also been
Speaker 1: something that I've had to kind of dare myself to
Speaker 1: do it, will myself to do it, and I enjoy it.
Speaker 1: I've made some friends on some stack, I've met some
Speaker 1: other writers and sort of having phone conversations with people
Speaker 1: that I've met on which has been fantastic. It really
Speaker 1: has been healthy for me. But it's still, you know,
Speaker 1: there's still this part of me that wants to just
Speaker 1: take the substack down and go hide, you know, and
Speaker 1: maybe you know, get metaphorically drunk, just take myself off line,
Speaker 1: remove myself from the world. And that's the thing that
Speaker 1: I'm always battling. You know that if I do this,
Speaker 1: it's going to lead to something that will be worth it,
Speaker 1: even if it's only engaging with other people, you know,
Speaker 1: with the writer's block. I wrote a novel two years
Speaker 1: ago that I finished and then I just put it
Speaker 1: in a drawer and I was like, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's good, you know, I don't know that I want
Speaker 1: to work on this. And recently my analyst has challenged
Speaker 1: me to go back in and look at that book
Speaker 1: and not look at it with eyes of you know,
Speaker 1: going to make a lot of money, or is this
Speaker 1: going to be made into an Oscar winning film, but
Speaker 1: just looking at it the way we would look at
Speaker 1: a dream, looking at it for psychic information, and asking
Speaker 1: the question, why did your soul want to write this novel?
Speaker 1: And what are the gifts in there for me? And
Speaker 1: what can I do with those things that they might
Speaker 1: be useful or beneficial to someone else, you know, getting
Speaker 1: back to that resentment question, I think there's a part
Speaker 1: of every artist. You know, this is a universal battle,
Speaker 1: and I've seen this taken many of my friends offline.
Speaker 1: Your mind, the best of your soul, like you go
Speaker 1: in deep and you really dig, and you put the
Speaker 1: best of your soul out there into a song or
Speaker 1: a book, dance, or a poem or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and then you put it out into the world and
Speaker 1: the world goes, ah, you know, I don't really care
Speaker 1: about that, and then you're crushed because you're like, that's
Speaker 1: that's the best I had to offer. But I think
Speaker 1: one of the things my analyst is always teaching me
Speaker 1: is why does the psyche want to write that? What
Speaker 1: is it trying to express? And to whom is it
Speaker 1: trying to express? To write something that's going to make
Speaker 1: a lot of money or be made into an oscar
Speaker 1: when you film or you know, be a hit song
Speaker 1: on the radio, you have to write something that's kind
Speaker 1: of universal enough so that it speaks to everybody. And
Speaker 1: sometimes by speaking to everybody, you're really kind of speaking
Speaker 1: to nobody, which I mean is you're you're saying something
Speaker 1: so general or universal that people just kind of hum
Speaker 1: along when they listen to the song and they don't
Speaker 1: really think about it, or they watch it mindlessly on Netflix.
Speaker 1: But sometimes when you really kind of drill down, they
Speaker 1: get into the specifics. You're writing something that's very specific
Speaker 1: but might be meaningful to just a small amount of people,
Speaker 1: and then the question becomes, well, isn't it meaningful to
Speaker 1: touch only even one or two people in like a
Speaker 1: really beautiful way, like can that be enough? And I
Speaker 1: think that's where you've got to, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: check in with yourself. You know, you've got to have
Speaker 1: that balance of ego, which you know, ego for me
Speaker 1: is always saying, well, if it's not going to be
Speaker 1: some huge thing, then why do it. But Psyche is
Speaker 1: always saying, you know, like if I drill down and
Speaker 1: like get to the bottom of it, it's always saying,
Speaker 1: you have something that's worth saying. And if you can
Speaker 1: connect with one human being that gets something meaningful to that,
Speaker 1: Like if you can make it a beautiful connection with
Speaker 1: one person or just a few people, wasn't that worth doing,
Speaker 1: you know, because that makes you feel alive. And to
Speaker 1: get back to that drinking thing, I think you get
Speaker 1: into this resentment. I mind the best of my soul
Speaker 1: and only ten people read my novel, or you know
Speaker 1: it only sold X amount of books, or I didn't
Speaker 1: get that movie contract, Well, then f you, I'm offline.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna mind my soul anymore. And so I
Speaker 1: think the struggle for every creative is to really be
Speaker 1: in touch with the truest part of yourself and then
Speaker 1: trusting that there's a reason for you to be in
Speaker 1: touch with that and putting that out and just seeing
Speaker 1: where it leads. And oftentimes that leads us places that
Speaker 1: are unexpected, and then the job is to be appreciative
Speaker 1: and find the beauty and those unexpected places. And that's
Speaker 1: the work, you know, That's what I'm working on now,
Speaker 1: and I still struggle. You know, every book I've ever
Speaker 1: put out into the world, I've had fantasies of you know,
Speaker 1: grandeur and all kinds of wonderful things happening. In every
Speaker 1: single book I've put into the world, wonderful things have
Speaker 1: happened in various different degrees. But there's this part of
Speaker 1: me that always says, but something more should have happened,
Speaker 1: or you know, this particular thing didn't happen, and that's
Speaker 1: where you get into the resentment park. And I agree,
Speaker 1: like the resentment is always the poison that just takes
Speaker 1: me offline and makes me just want to get small
Speaker 1: and hide. That's what I'm working on. But it's a dance,
Speaker 1: you know. And my analysts would say, we don't know
Speaker 1: why Psyche shut you down. We don't know why you
Speaker 1: haven't published the book in two years. Maybe if you
Speaker 1: had published the book last year, you would add a
Speaker 1: mental breakdown and started drinking again. We don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: So thinking about that and saying, maybe there is a
Speaker 1: reason that I needed to take some time after we
Speaker 1: are the way and maybe that served me and being
Speaker 1: appreciative of that. That's the work, and that's hard, and
Speaker 1: I'm not always there every day, but that's kind of
Speaker 1: where I'm always aiming to be.
Speaker 3: There's so much that you said there that's so important.
Speaker 3: And I think you know, when we talk about creation
Speaker 3: or really doing anything, psychology talks a lot about intrinsic
Speaker 3: and extrinsic motivation.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: The intrinsic motivation is essentially, you're doing the thing because
Speaker 3: you want to do it, because it matters to you,
Speaker 3: because it's important. The extrinsic motivation is I'm doing it
Speaker 3: to be famous or make a lot of money or
Speaker 3: whatever it is. And that's all well and good, except
Speaker 3: that oftentimes, particularly if we've had any degree of success,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, intrinsic and externsic start getting mixed together.
Speaker 3: You've had enough success that writing is what you do.
Speaker 3: It's how you make a living. You know, it's the
Speaker 3: way that you put food on the table. So of
Speaker 3: course you have this intrinsic motivation, but there's also extrinsic
Speaker 3: motivation that starts to get mixed in, and I would
Speaker 3: argue for most people creating, there's a mix of those things.
Speaker 3: From very early on. You know, I think I started
Speaker 3: really getting into music and playing guitar because a it
Speaker 3: lit me up inside and I loved it. And I
Speaker 3: also hope that the chicks would think it was cool, right, Like,
Speaker 3: you know I'm talking about that's how the eighteen year
Speaker 3: old me would talk, not me today. Don't anybody get
Speaker 3: all bent out of show n nice clarification exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So when these things get tangled, it's hard to sort
Speaker 3: of tweeze them apart. And yet I find it an
Speaker 3: ongoing exercise that's important. Right. I started this podcast because
Speaker 3: I loved doing it and I still love doing it,
Speaker 3: and it's how I make a living, and it's how
Speaker 3: a couple other people make a living. And so there
Speaker 3: are extrinsic things that you're looking at also, and so
Speaker 3: for me, the key is not trying to deny that
Speaker 3: they're both there. It's just that if I can focus
Speaker 3: on the in intrinsic I tend to be more content
Speaker 3: with the work I'm doing, you know, I tend to
Speaker 3: get more out of it and feel less pressure. I
Speaker 3: have a coach for the business who often talks about
Speaker 3: this concept of finite and infinite games, right, And a
Speaker 3: finite game is a game you play. It's a game
Speaker 3: you play to win. An infinite game is a game
Speaker 3: you play so you can keep playing. And I think
Speaker 3: that speaks to this a lot of what you were
Speaker 3: talking about. Let's switch to alcohol for a second, though,
Speaker 3: because I think anybody who is creative who did a
Speaker 3: lot of their creating while they were consuming heavily is
Speaker 3: going to find an adjustment after getting sober. It's going
Speaker 3: to change that. And I would say that that is
Speaker 3: true for anybody who's giving up substances in general. Is
Speaker 3: those substances were playing a role in your life and
Speaker 3: now they're gone. I'm rewatching this series called Six Feet Under.
Speaker 3: It was around the early two thousands, I think, and
Speaker 3: there's a character in it who is a successful artist
Speaker 3: who's also a schizophrenic, and when he's off his meds,
Speaker 3: he is incredibly destructive. Like tries to basically carve his
Speaker 3: sister up at one point, right, like pretty bad stuff.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And so he finally stabilizes, gets on his meds, and
Speaker 3: everything in his life gets better. He has a better
Speaker 3: relationship with his family, he gets a job teaching. I mean,
Speaker 3: everything is but you know he's not insane all that stuff.
Speaker 3: And yet over time you see he was a photographer,
Speaker 3: but he's not taking pictures anymore, right, he's just teaching
Speaker 3: about talking pictures. And you know, there are sexual side
Speaker 3: effects from the medicines, and there are all these things
Speaker 3: that come along with it. And the place I am
Speaker 3: in the series now he has decided to stop taking
Speaker 3: the meds. And I think that the reverse of that
Speaker 3: often happens to people with alcohol. Right, you take away
Speaker 3: the alcohol or you take away the drug, and then
Speaker 3: many aspects of your life get better. But in a
Speaker 3: couple aspects that maybe very important to you, things don't
Speaker 3: seem better, and you're inclined to kind of go back.
Speaker 3: How do you work with that? Knowing that writing fiction
Speaker 3: is so important to you and so a part of
Speaker 3: who you've been, and knowing that you seem to be
Speaker 3: able to do it better while you were drinking. Now,
Speaker 3: that may not actually be correlated, but in your mind
Speaker 3: sometimes it's correlated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how do you talk to.
Speaker 3: Yourself so that you don't end up like this character
Speaker 3: and six feet under who decides like, well, you know what,
Speaker 3: this isn't working for me, Take the drink or quit
Speaker 3: the meds.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, hopefully I'll never get that extreme. That's quite
Speaker 1: comparison you be.
Speaker 2: For me.
Speaker 1: Internal and external motivation. You know, I used to talk
Speaker 1: a lot about that back when I was learning how
Speaker 1: to be a teacher, and I think that that's important.
Speaker 1: But I also think that we're not always conscious of
Speaker 1: our motivations, whether they're internal or external. I think you
Speaker 1: can have unconscious internal motivations and unconscious external motivations. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I'll bring it back to unconscious and consciously,
Speaker 1: which is very young. And you know, and in terms
Speaker 1: of drinking, I think when I used to drink, my
Speaker 1: conscious desire to drink, or what I would tell myself
Speaker 1: was that I need this drink in order to function socially.
Speaker 1: I need it because I will feel unwell without it.
Speaker 1: I'll feel anxious, I'll feel afraid of people, like I
Speaker 1: won't have courage. That was what I was consciously telling myself,
Speaker 1: I need this alcohol to function. But I think through
Speaker 1: the work I've been doing in analysis, what I've really
Speaker 1: learned is that unconsciously, what I wanted from the alcohol
Speaker 1: was to return to this very baby like state where
Speaker 1: I could have my bottle and I could be back
Speaker 1: in the womb. I would feel warm, I would feel fluid,
Speaker 1: I would feel loved, I would feel as though I
Speaker 1: didn't have any responsibilities. Like it was taking me back
Speaker 1: to this very childlike place that I was trying to
Speaker 1: get to. And I wasn't aware of that when I
Speaker 1: was drinking. But through analysis, I've really seen that I
Speaker 1: was trying to go back in time to this place
Speaker 1: and kind of get things that I didn't get when
Speaker 1: I was younger. And once I knew that, I started
Speaker 1: to look at you know, well, why am I writing
Speaker 1: my fiction writing? Why am I writing my novels? Like, well, consciously,
Speaker 1: I'm saying, oh, I have something important to say, and
Speaker 1: I think I have talent, and people in Hollywood were
Speaker 1: interested in me, and you know, people have given me
Speaker 1: awards and you know, this is what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 1: But I think through my analysis, you know, I started
Speaker 1: thinking about unconsciously, why am I writing my fiction? And
Speaker 1: I started to see, well, there are all these things
Speaker 1: happening inside of me, and I'm unconsciously trying to process them.
Speaker 1: I'm going through a psychological process. And I think I
Speaker 1: started writing when I was I don't know, twelve, not
Speaker 1: because I thought someday I was going to get a
Speaker 1: book contract, but because I just had all of this
Speaker 1: psychic information that I couldn't carry and I needed to
Speaker 1: put it down in metaphors and symbols because it was
Speaker 1: too much for me. And I also think too, when
Speaker 1: I was creating, there was a part of me that thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I was the little boy drawling the picture,
Speaker 1: and if I draw the picture correctly this time, will
Speaker 1: everybody love me? Then? You know, will everybody say that
Speaker 1: I'm a good boy and that like I did the picture.
Speaker 1: Will Uncle Matthew come around and say that's wonderful, good job.
Speaker 1: Give me a hug. You know, it sounds silly to
Speaker 1: say that, but I think that there was a very
Speaker 1: young part of me that just so needed that. And
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, after I was writing,
Speaker 1: alcohol came and said, oh, yeah, I'll give you a
Speaker 1: hug like I'll make you feel warm. I'll make you
Speaker 1: feel loved and cared for, and I'll take all of
Speaker 1: those worries away from you. And I had a few sketches.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was better than a hug from anyone
Speaker 1: I had ever had, you know. It was just this
Speaker 1: warm feeling, and it was just like alcohol always accepted you,
Speaker 1: always was like I'm here for you, you know, every day,
Speaker 1: whatever you do, I'm going to be there at the
Speaker 1: end of the day with that hug to make you
Speaker 1: feel good. And so I think, you know, realizing that
Speaker 1: the alcohol served the purpose. It wasn't that I was
Speaker 1: just immoral or I was just you know, a glutton,
Speaker 1: or you know, I was just doing this like stupid
Speaker 1: thing that I shouldn't have been able to do it.
Speaker 1: It had a psychological purpose that I was not fully
Speaker 1: conscious of, and that's why I was so chained to it,
Speaker 1: because if I was trying to get this sense of love,
Speaker 1: like who can live without love? But what I didn't realize,
Speaker 1: and when I'm realizing now through the analysis, and you know,
Speaker 1: raising unconscious to consciousness, is that there are better ways
Speaker 1: to get love. And I was not truly expiring love,
Speaker 1: but I was experiencing this sense of false you know,
Speaker 1: love that wasn't real, right, which is sad, you know,
Speaker 1: and ultimately that's why you just need more and more
Speaker 1: and more of it. And no matter how much you drink,
Speaker 1: you just start to feel worse and worse and worse
Speaker 1: about yourself. And so again it gets back to this
Speaker 1: idea of why are we doing the things that we're doing?
Speaker 1: You know, And whenever someone approaches me, you know, for
Speaker 1: writing advice, they usually ask things like how do I
Speaker 1: get an agent or how do I get a book contract?
Speaker 1: And there's a part of me inside that wants to
Speaker 1: say to them, why do you want those things? Have
Speaker 1: you even thought even once like do you know what's
Speaker 1: driving you to get that? Because until you know that
Speaker 1: part of it, everyone else is playing three D chess
Speaker 1: and you're playing checkers, you know, like you're not even
Speaker 1: aware of what's going on. And there are people that,
Speaker 1: if you have talent, will totally take advantage of that.
Speaker 1: Like I worked with Harvey Weinstein for years, Like he
Speaker 1: was the master of like psychologically analyzing you and pushing
Speaker 1: your buttons to get you to do things. So it's important,
Speaker 1: you know, to be aware so that when you're writing,
Speaker 1: or you're going to the marketplace and selling, or you're
Speaker 1: interacting with people, that you're conscious of why you're doing
Speaker 1: those things so that you can be masterful about them.
Speaker 1: So you're not just acting on these instincttional things that
Speaker 1: you don't understand, but you actually are showing up, fully
Speaker 1: present and making decisions about what you're saying and doing,
Speaker 1: so that you're fully there. That you're not drunk, either
Speaker 1: literally or metaphorically, but you are sober in the most
Speaker 1: literal sense of the word, that you can look at
Speaker 1: things without being inflated and make decisions that not only
Speaker 1: benefit you, but benefit the other people that are around you.
Speaker 3: So listener and thinking about all that and the other
Speaker 3: great wisdom from today's episode. If you're going to isolate
Speaker 3: just one top insight that you're taking away, what would
Speaker 3: it be, Not your top ten, not the top five,
Speaker 3: just one?
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 3: Think about it?
Speaker 1: Got it? Now?
Speaker 3: I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
Speaker 3: thing you can do today to put it in practice,
Speaker 3: or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember,
Speaker 3: little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change
Speaker 3: happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive
Speaker 3: heroic effort. If you're not already on our Good Wolf
Speaker 3: Reminder SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool
Speaker 3: you can leverage to remind you to take those vital
Speaker 3: baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed
Speaker 3: dot net slash sms. It's totally free, and once you're
Speaker 3: on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a
Speaker 3: week with little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently
Speaker 3: shared to give you an idea of the type of
Speaker 3: stuff I send. Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless.
Speaker 3: Don't strive for perfection, aim for consistency, and no matter what,
Speaker 3: keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem
Speaker 3: from recent guests Light Watkins. And if you're on the
Speaker 3: fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe.
Speaker 3: If you want to get in, I'd love to have
Speaker 3: you there. Just go to oneufeed dot net slash sms.
Speaker 1: All right back to it.
Speaker 3: Well, that is a beautiful place to wrap up. You
Speaker 3: and I are going to talk a little bit longer
Speaker 3: in the post show conversation because I had a ton
Speaker 3: of other things I want to talk about mainly your
Speaker 3: father is dealing with Alzheimer's. As you know, I lost
Speaker 3: my father about a year ago to Alzheimer's, and we
Speaker 3: also took care of Jenny's mom for years who had it.
Speaker 3: So we're going to talk about that in the post
Speaker 3: show conversation. Listeners, if you would like to get access
Speaker 3: to some of the best things we create here at
Speaker 3: the one you Feed, the post show conversations, the episode
Speaker 3: I do each week where I talk about a song
Speaker 3: that I love, a poem that I love, and I
Speaker 3: give a little teaching called teaching song and a poem,
Speaker 3: a monthly community meetings, and many other things. We'd love
Speaker 3: to have you as part of the community. You can
Speaker 3: go to oneufeed dot net slash join Matthew, thank you
Speaker 3: so much. It is always such a pleasure to talk
Speaker 3: with you. Whether we do it here on the air
Speaker 3: or we do it on the phone, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 3: So thank you so much for you know, sharing so
Speaker 3: openly about challenging things.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the time and it's always a pleasure speaking
Speaker 1: with you. Two are always happy to be here on
Speaker 1: the one Feed.
Speaker 2: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
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