Speaker 1: All the spiritual traditions are pointed us to being present,
Speaker 1: and honestly, if we want an experience of being connected
Speaker 1: to life, we actually have to kind of be around
Speaker 1: for it. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. If
Speaker 1: you've lost track of what's important to you, you're not alone.
Speaker 1: We often go through phases in life where we feel
Speaker 1: dissatisfied or disconnected, and when we get off track, it's
Speaker 1: easy to get stuck in unhelpful patterns like avoidance or perfectionism.
Speaker 1: It shows up as negative self talk. Breaking your own rules,
Speaker 1: procrastinating or struggling to let go of addictive or otherwise
Speaker 1: harmful behaviors to make space for healthy ones. I want
Speaker 1: you to know that all of these are struggles I've
Speaker 1: had too, and if I can turn things around with
Speaker 1: the challenges I faced deep and heroin addiction and clinical depression,
Speaker 1: so can you. What I've learned through experience is that
Speaker 1: what we know is not as important as what we
Speaker 1: do consistently, and bridging this gap is the key to
Speaker 1: feeling fulfilled at a deeper level. Bridging this gap is
Speaker 1: the foundation of the Spiritual Habits Program, a non religious
Speaker 1: mentorship and accountability experience to establish simple daily practices that
Speaker 1: help you to be more present, compassionate, and connected in
Speaker 1: your relationships in life. Over eight weeks together, you'll learn
Speaker 1: how to make small changes that have a big impact.
Speaker 1: No matter what life is serving up, you'll experience it
Speaker 1: in a more grounded, loving, strengthening, and creative way. If
Speaker 1: anything I've said is resonated with you, go to one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash Spiritual Habits to learn more
Speaker 1: and sign up. Enrollment for this year's program is open
Speaker 1: now through March thirteenth, and I love to meet you
Speaker 1: in it. That's One You Feed dot net slash Spiritual
Speaker 1: Habits to learn more and sign up. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: This is kind of a unique episode. It's actually Jenny
Speaker 1: interviewing Eric, and I don't want to be presumptuous and
Speaker 1: assume that every single person listening to this knows too
Speaker 1: much about The One You Feed, So I would like
Speaker 1: to introduce Jenny, who is our director of Munications and
Speaker 1: she is a certified mindfulness teacher through the Mindfulness Training
Speaker 1: Institute led by Mark Coleman and Martin Aylward. And if
Speaker 1: you've never heard our podcast, she is interviewing our normal
Speaker 1: host Eric Zimmer. In addition to his accomplishment of being
Speaker 1: one of my very best friends of my entire life,
Speaker 1: he also is a behavior coach and he currently hosts
Speaker 1: the award winning podcast The One You Feed. Eric's story
Speaker 1: and his work have been featured all over the media
Speaker 1: including ted X, Mind Body, Green Elephant Journal, the BBC,
Speaker 1: and Brain Pickings. So enjoy this episode with Jenny interviewing
Speaker 1: Eric about all sorts of topics, including his life, the
Speaker 1: origins of The One You Feed, spirituality and more. Hi, Eric,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Well Hello, that's so funny to say. So, listeners, Hello,
Speaker 1: this is Jenny and I am actually doing the interviewing
Speaker 1: today and I'm going to be interviewing your normal and
Speaker 1: customed and beloved host Eric, and we're going to be
Speaker 1: exploring some themes they're central to the show, but also
Speaker 1: more recently, some things that we've been hearing from listeners
Speaker 1: that continue to be points of real struggle in their lives.
Speaker 1: Things about feeling maybe disconnected inside. Perhaps life looks good
Speaker 1: on the outside, but on the inside, you know, connecting
Speaker 1: to or finding a purpose, connecting to or finding meaning,
Speaker 1: direction and connection. Those are things that remain really internal struggles.
Speaker 1: And these are struggles that Eric is no stranger too
Speaker 1: and has found his way back from. So I thought
Speaker 1: we would take an episode to just sort of explore that,
Speaker 1: and you can tell us a bit about your experience.
Speaker 1: But before we dive into that, like we always do,
Speaker 1: I thought I would read this parable to you and
Speaker 1: maybe you can share what it's meaning to you currently
Speaker 1: as it's evolved over the many years you've done this show.
Speaker 1: So there's a grandparent that's talking to their grandchild and
Speaker 1: they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: one is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second and looks up at their
Speaker 1: grandparent and says, well, which one wins, And the grandparent says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So, Eric, I'd like to ask
Speaker 1: you what that parable means to you in your life
Speaker 1: and in the work that you do, most recently lately,
Speaker 1: you would think that, perhaps, knowing this is the way
Speaker 1: the show always starts, I would have thought about this
Speaker 1: in advance, but I didn't. I mean, in some ways,
Speaker 1: what the parable means to me has not changed a
Speaker 1: ton over the years, right, because I think at its
Speaker 1: heart it is a simple statement that our choices matter, right,
Speaker 1: that the thing things we do, the things we choose
Speaker 1: to do, the things we think, the actions we take,
Speaker 1: they all have consequences, you know, they all lead us
Speaker 1: in a certain direction. And so I believe that as
Speaker 1: much now as I believed it then it does take conscious,
Speaker 1: consistent and creative effort. Right, we have to be on
Speaker 1: the lookout for what are the ways that we are
Speaker 1: perhaps feeding our bad wolf or not giving our good
Speaker 1: wolf enough food. The other thing I've liked about the
Speaker 1: Parable from the first time I heard it was this
Speaker 1: idea that you know, the grandparents says, we all have
Speaker 1: these things inside of us. So I think it normalizes
Speaker 1: the human condition and really says that, like, there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with you. That you have fear and that you
Speaker 1: have greed, and that you have hatred. That's part of
Speaker 1: being a human being. Everybody does, you know. All the
Speaker 1: religious traditions talk about this in a different way. They
Speaker 1: use different words for it. But if you sort of
Speaker 1: strip away some of the things that I find most
Speaker 1: unpalatable about the way sometimes packaged up, it does get
Speaker 1: to this point of, hey, your choices do matter. I
Speaker 1: think the thing where maybe I have changed with the
Speaker 1: Parable over the years more is a little bit more
Speaker 1: of a recognition that things like greed and hatred and
Speaker 1: fear and these other things that we talk about, that
Speaker 1: feeding the good wolf does not mean abandoning those emotions.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean shutting those emotions off right. It means
Speaker 1: learning to work with them skillfully. So it's not that
Speaker 1: anytime greed, hatred, fear any of those bad emotions show
Speaker 1: up that we should suddenly throw it in a cage
Speaker 1: or starve it. You know, we want to work with
Speaker 1: them skillfully, and I do think that is part of
Speaker 1: feeding our good wolf. Part of feeding our good wolf
Speaker 1: is indeed tending to these emotions that are difficult, that
Speaker 1: are challenging. And so I would say that's a nuance
Speaker 1: that I've gotten more and more clear on over the years.
Speaker 1: But I think at its heart that's kind of you know,
Speaker 1: still what the pable really means to me. Yeah, didn't
Speaker 1: you first hear it in early days of recovery. I did,
Speaker 1: probably in some lousy church basement on some crappy folding
Speaker 1: chair somewhere in Columbus, Ohio, and probably nineteen ninety five. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard it, and like most people who hear it,
Speaker 1: I immediately got it. And in my case at that
Speaker 1: point right being essentially very close to having died and
Speaker 1: looking at going to jail for a long time and
Speaker 1: all the things that came with my addiction, it was
Speaker 1: very much there's a Bob Dylan line, you know, it
Speaker 1: glowed like burning coals, right like it was so alive
Speaker 1: for me because I saw it so clearly I had
Speaker 1: just enough time in recovery that I was able to
Speaker 1: see very clearly, there is a path of recovery, and
Speaker 1: it looks like this, and these are the things you
Speaker 1: do on that path. And then there's a path that
Speaker 1: is not recovery, and here's what that path looks like.
Speaker 1: And it was a very stark choice for me. So
Speaker 1: it was really really important to me that day. But
Speaker 1: I think it spoke to fundamental wisdom that we all faced,
Speaker 1: whether we're dealing with a big addiction like that or
Speaker 1: we're dealing with the normal ups and downs of day
Speaker 1: to day life. Since we have a number of new
Speaker 1: listeners to the show, I actually would like to go
Speaker 1: back to that period of your life, the early days
Speaker 1: of recovery, and just sort of set the stage for
Speaker 1: what life looked like for you at that point. So
Speaker 1: could you just describe for us. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say rock bottom, because I know we both
Speaker 1: have issue with that term, but from a perspective of
Speaker 1: that really low point, what was happening in your life
Speaker 1: set the stage for us. Yeah, Well, without going into
Speaker 1: like a drunk alogue of like seven years of addiction
Speaker 1: history that led me to that point, you know, at
Speaker 1: the end, when I got sober the first time for
Speaker 1: any significant amount of time, I was essentially homeless. I
Speaker 1: was living in the back of a van that the
Speaker 1: restaurant I worked at owned. They didn't know I was
Speaker 1: living in it. I weighed a hundred pounds. I had
Speaker 1: hepatitis C. I didn't know that at the time. And
Speaker 1: then I got arrested for multiple felonies and was looking
Speaker 1: at potentially fifty years in jail. And so the combination
Speaker 1: of getting arrested, the combination of losing the job, which
Speaker 1: is where I made money and also stole money in
Speaker 1: order to feed you know what would today be a
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars a day heroin habit, losing what little
Speaker 1: home I had being that van. Nobody was willing to
Speaker 1: take me in. At that point, I wandered into a
Speaker 1: detox center because it was December in Columbus and I
Speaker 1: knew it was freezing. I knew I didn't have anywhere
Speaker 1: to go, and I knew that I was going to
Speaker 1: be really sick. Yeah. I didn't go in really with
Speaker 1: a big enthusiasm about changing my life. I just simply
Speaker 1: was like, I need a place to hang out for
Speaker 1: a few days where they'll give me some drugs so
Speaker 1: I don't feel so bad. And while I was there,
Speaker 1: they said, hey, we think you need to go to
Speaker 1: long term treatment, and I said, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: You know, I got this, really, I got this, really
Speaker 1: happen in life going on out here. You know, I
Speaker 1: can't stay in here. And it was an old tuberculosis hospital.
Speaker 1: It was not a great place to be. However, I
Speaker 1: had been living in a van, so who was I
Speaker 1: a judge? Not even a nice van right. Coincidentally, the
Speaker 1: van had a couch in it that I picked up
Speaker 1: at a dumpster that I saw one day when I
Speaker 1: was meeting the drug dealer for drugs, So that's about
Speaker 1: the level of home. Anyway. I went back to my
Speaker 1: room after having this conversation with them where I said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go into long term treatment. And
Speaker 1: I had, as we say in recovery, a moment of
Speaker 1: clarity where I went, oh, I'm going to die or
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to jail if I go back
Speaker 1: out there. It was just really clear. You know, I
Speaker 1: had no belief that I had any way of stopping myself.
Speaker 1: At that point. I had been through treatment a few times.
Speaker 1: I had tried everything under the sun to try and
Speaker 1: get my alcohol and drug problems, my heroin problems under control,
Speaker 1: and had failed again and again and again. So I
Speaker 1: had no illusion that if I went back out there,
Speaker 1: I would be sober. It was very clear. So I
Speaker 1: went back and said, Okay, I'll go to long term treatment.
Speaker 1: And that was a big turning point for me. That
Speaker 1: sort of stepped me into recovery. Do you have a
Speaker 1: sense of looking back how you got to that point,
Speaker 1: How you got to the point of such desperate circumstances.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think a very common human feeling is
Speaker 1: to feel hollow inside or disconnected or lonely or lost
Speaker 1: or detached, depressed. I mean, what were the things that
Speaker 1: you can PenPoint and your experience leading up to that
Speaker 1: day that got you to where you were? Well, when
Speaker 1: you were a blackout drinker to the extent I was
Speaker 1: you kind of do wake up one day and find
Speaker 1: yourself you don't remember much? Okay, what happened? Where did
Speaker 1: the last eight years go? I mean? Addiction is, as
Speaker 1: they would say in the scientific literature, a multivariant condition, right,
Speaker 1: meaning there are a ton of things that cause it.
Speaker 1: So for me to say this caused it, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I can say, you know, and things I
Speaker 1: can point to are that you know, by the time
Speaker 1: I was ten years old, I was a kleptomaniac, you know,
Speaker 1: And I think I stole because it made me feel alive.
Speaker 1: And I think that was the thing that drugs and
Speaker 1: alcohol did for me. They did two things. One was
Speaker 1: when I restarted them again at the age of eighteen,
Speaker 1: I had taken a couple of years off. We don't
Speaker 1: really need to go into all that. At this point
Speaker 1: I was in a lot of pain and the alcohol
Speaker 1: numbed the pain. But further as time went on, it
Speaker 1: was much more than that. It was that it brought
Speaker 1: life into color for me. It made life come alive.
Speaker 1: And you know, the reasons I had, I think deadened
Speaker 1: to myself inside largely have to do with I think
Speaker 1: it just wasn't safe to have any emotion in my household,
Speaker 1: and I was a very sensitive child. And so you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to talk about this now because listeners, when
Speaker 1: you hear this, it will be further down the road.
Speaker 1: But my dad passed the other day, and you know,
Speaker 1: so I look at my father, and my father was
Speaker 1: a very angry person. You know, kids in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: didn't want to come around around the house, and so
Speaker 1: you know, any sort of sensitivity I had had to
Speaker 1: be shoved down. So anyway, I think that for me,
Speaker 1: it was very much about alcohol and drugs made life
Speaker 1: come alive. Now, the problem with an addiction to something
Speaker 1: like alcohol or drugs is that what starts to happen
Speaker 1: is your system starts trying to take you in the
Speaker 1: other direction. Meaning, you know, if you're doing a lot
Speaker 1: of stimulants all the time, your body's trying to ramp
Speaker 1: you down. So if you stop taking those stimulants right,
Speaker 1: you crash hard. So over time, what happens with an
Speaker 1: addiction is that if I use it to come alive,
Speaker 1: then when I don't use it, I feel even less alive.
Speaker 1: And then over time shame starts to accrue around addiction,
Speaker 1: and so all of a sudden, it's the cycle you
Speaker 1: and I talk a lot about. We talk about upward
Speaker 1: and downward spirals. The downward spiral is I feel really
Speaker 1: bad that I got blackout drunk again last night, and
Speaker 1: I feel terrible. I feel terrible, I feel ter well.
Speaker 1: How do I respond to feeling terrible, I get blackout
Speaker 1: drunk again, and the cycle goes down. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I think in the beginning, alcohol and drugs were a
Speaker 1: way of coming to life, of connecting to the world,
Speaker 1: of having what felt like meaning and purpose because it
Speaker 1: made me very interested in the world. Over time, the
Speaker 1: addiction feeds on itself, and that addiction becomes about trying
Speaker 1: to repair the damage that the addiction is actually doing
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know, so it becomes very
Speaker 1: destructive in that way. Yeah, as you were talking through it,
Speaker 1: what I was thinking is how, in hindsight, what seems
Speaker 1: to be the case was that you were a very
Speaker 1: sensitive and are a very sensitive person, that a lot
Speaker 1: of your nerve endings are just right on the outside
Speaker 1: of you, and growing up in a household with an
Speaker 1: angry father and where big feelings weren't necessarily something you
Speaker 1: felt safe to express, you sort of deadened those nerve
Speaker 1: endings a bit. And then it sounds like drugs and
Speaker 1: alcohol were a way for you to re engage with
Speaker 1: the world and feel connected to your world into life,
Speaker 1: but in a way that felt somehow safer, and actually
Speaker 1: what you were doing was further disconnecting from life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: over time, for sure, further disconnection. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it felt safer. It just felt like the only way
Speaker 1: I knew. How Ah, that's a good distinction, right, And
Speaker 1: I think this is what makes certain people more likely
Speaker 1: to become an alcoholic or addict is because what it
Speaker 1: does for somebody who becomes an alcoholic an addict is
Speaker 1: different than what the drugs or alcohol do for somebody
Speaker 1: who doesn't. I mean, most people will enjoy them, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the vast majority of our culture
Speaker 1: likes a few drinks. They like that feeling, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But it's not transformational in the way that it was
Speaker 1: for me, where it was like, oh, this is what
Speaker 1: I've been looking for my whole life, you know, like
Speaker 1: Holy mackerel, someone has just showed me the magic Kingdom.
Speaker 1: But in the early days of AA, Bill Wilson had
Speaker 1: a correspondence with Carl Jung. Bill Wilson's one of the
Speaker 1: founders of AA, and Carl Young made the point for
Speaker 1: Bill that indeed, you know, AA talked a lot about
Speaker 1: it being a spiritual program, and Carl Jung said, that
Speaker 1: makes total sense that a spiritual solution is what you
Speaker 1: arrive at because even the root of the word spirits,
Speaker 1: which we use to describe alcohol. They're pointing to this
Speaker 1: elevated state, they're pointing to grasping for something that is
Speaker 1: just beyond us, that is greater than us, that is
Speaker 1: bigger than us. And that's what I think I was
Speaker 1: certainly doing. And you get the moments of it. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: you get the moments of it where you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: there it is. You know, I chase those moments. To
Speaker 1: quote another a phrase from the Big Book, you know,
Speaker 1: the gates of insanity and death. Yeah, so when you
Speaker 1: are standing at the gates there you are in the
Speaker 1: tuberculosis hospital in Columbus. How did you begin to pull
Speaker 1: your life together? Like? How did you begin to find
Speaker 1: the meaning the connection in your life from a way
Speaker 1: that was more nourishing and sustaining than drugs. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean everybody's recovery looks different. There is something to be
Speaker 1: said for the way I recovered being in treatment. And
Speaker 1: then I went with a little bit of time being outside.
Speaker 1: I went to a halfway house, and the benefit there
Speaker 1: was I was completely immersed in recovery. And so in
Speaker 1: the beginning, all I really had to do is just
Speaker 1: do what they told me to do show up here,
Speaker 1: show up there, show up here, you know. But the
Speaker 1: other thing was that we were really digging into the
Speaker 1: things about emotions and feelings and meaning and connect I mean,
Speaker 1: we were talking about these things, and I was surrounded
Speaker 1: by people who were talking about these things, and so
Speaker 1: that was a big part of it, was that, you know,
Speaker 1: my meaning after a little while, became first about getting sober,
Speaker 1: and that took on a lot of meaning. That was
Speaker 1: what my life was about, because it became very clear
Speaker 1: to me that that was what my life depended on.
Speaker 1: So there's a phrase from acceptance and commitment therapy that
Speaker 1: our vulnerabilities will often show us our values, right and
Speaker 1: so in that case, my vulnerability was my addiction, and
Speaker 1: so my value very much became my sobriety. And then
Speaker 1: the thing that I loved about twelve step programs, AA
Speaker 1: had a number I think of really genius insights. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's the right thing for everybody, by
Speaker 1: any stretch of the imagination. It's not the right thing
Speaker 1: for everybody. One of its key insights. AA founded when
Speaker 1: Bill Wilson, the founder, a stockbroker from New York, a
Speaker 1: ruined stockbroker went on a business trip to Akron, Ohio
Speaker 1: and had been sober a little while, but knew he
Speaker 1: was going to drink. He was basically like at the
Speaker 1: edge of the hotel bar and so on a whim,
Speaker 1: he just went, all right, I need to try and
Speaker 1: help somebody, and so he started calling local churches until
Speaker 1: he found one, and he basically was was saying to
Speaker 1: them at the time, you know, this is going to
Speaker 1: sound a little bit strange, guys, but I'm a recovering alcoholic.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they didn't even have that word from New
Speaker 1: York City, and I'm looking to talk. Do you have
Speaker 1: a drunk anywhere I can talk to? And they connected
Speaker 1: with a guy named doctor Bob Smith, who was a
Speaker 1: proctologist from Akron, Ohio. I'm going to leave the proctology
Speaker 1: jokes alone out of respect for our listeners and any
Speaker 1: proctologists out there. It's an important role in important work. YEP.
Speaker 1: So the founding of AA is considered the moment that
Speaker 1: Bill and doctor Bob sat down and talked that night,
Speaker 1: and the insight was that, yes, Bill was there. Bill
Speaker 1: was sober and he was talking to doctor Bob, who
Speaker 1: was not about how to get sober. So Bill was
Speaker 1: helping Bob. But the great insight was that Bob was
Speaker 1: helping Bill every bit as much. That ability to help others,
Speaker 1: to connect with someone else, to do your best to
Speaker 1: help another person, it was a huge gift to yourself
Speaker 1: as well as the other person. And so right away,
Speaker 1: in a you know, we were very focused on this
Speaker 1: idea of help. You know, how can you help? And
Speaker 1: in the beginning, if you can't help by you've got
Speaker 1: a week sober and there's nobody you can really talk to.
Speaker 1: You're cleaning up ashtrays or I mean, nobody smokes and
Speaker 1: meetings anymore, but they did. Then you know, you're cleaning
Speaker 1: up the coffee pot. You're two weeks in the treatment
Speaker 1: center and somebody walks in who's brand new and they're
Speaker 1: scared to death, and you at least know where the
Speaker 1: lunch room is, and you know, I mean, and so
Speaker 1: you're helping others. And so that for me was where
Speaker 1: I found meaning then, and it tends to be where
Speaker 1: I mostly find it now is in how can I
Speaker 1: help other people? Yeah, that's so powerful to be in
Speaker 1: service of something other than slash and or greater than yourself.
Speaker 1: You learned that lesson in a very real way in
Speaker 1: those early days. If you then fast forward a number
Speaker 1: of years, you got sober, and then you drank again.
Speaker 1: I did and got sober a second time. Indeed, so
Speaker 1: can you contrast a little little bit and maybe compared
Speaker 1: to the circumstances you found yourself in the second time
Speaker 1: you got sober, with those circumstances so dire the first
Speaker 1: time you got sober. Yeah, it was a very different situation.
Speaker 1: I stayed sober about eight years. I had my son
Speaker 1: at that point, Jordan, who would have been I don't
Speaker 1: know how old he was when I started drinking again,
Speaker 1: maybe five. Anyway, when he was about two and a half,
Speaker 1: his mother and I split up. She came home one
Speaker 1: day said I'm in love with someone else. That someone
Speaker 1: else happened to be somebody in AA and I completely
Speaker 1: fell apart. Now, I'm not putting all the blame on her, right,
Speaker 1: there was a reason she was that unhappy in her marriage.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be like, oh, it was this
Speaker 1: terrible thing was done to me, although at the time
Speaker 1: that was exactly what I thought and how I felt,
Speaker 1: and I was devastated, and I didn't drink actually right away.
Speaker 1: After that, I stayed sober for a while, but it
Speaker 1: really sort of severed my connection to AA and it
Speaker 1: crushed the very infantile spiritual life I had built to
Speaker 1: that point. And over time then what began to happen
Speaker 1: was I became incredibly focused on me. Right am I happy?
Speaker 1: How am I feeling? You know? How am I doing?
Speaker 1: And as I did that, these other compulsive and impulsive
Speaker 1: behaviors started to arise. I started smoking cigarettes. And I
Speaker 1: had been a heroin addict, and at that time I'd
Speaker 1: be like, Nope, no way, I'm not smoking a cigarette
Speaker 1: right because my parents had been smokers, I really hated it.
Speaker 1: But then I was like, well, I'm not going to drink,
Speaker 1: but I just something, give me something, you know. I
Speaker 1: started engaging in sexual behaviors that were not ideal. I mean,
Speaker 1: my life became all about me. Even my recovery work
Speaker 1: became all about me. And I was in therapy, I
Speaker 1: was doing a lot of good work, but it only
Speaker 1: turned in word and so eventually I drank, and then yes,
Speaker 1: I had to get sober again. But when I got
Speaker 1: sober again, I was nowhere near consequence wise where I
Speaker 1: was the first time, I had the best job I'd
Speaker 1: ever had. I was making very good money. I lived
Speaker 1: in a house in a nice suburb. I had just
Speaker 1: gotten promoted. You know, on the outside, I was doing
Speaker 1: very well. Luckily, I had enough interior awareness to recognize
Speaker 1: that I was just as sick as I had been
Speaker 1: the first time. It's just that alcohol and marijuana didn't
Speaker 1: cause the sort of destruction that heroin did, and that's
Speaker 1: simply a consequence of laws and different things. But I
Speaker 1: was every bit as sick as I had been. How
Speaker 1: did you know that? What did you find inside of
Speaker 1: yourself that tasted so similar to what you found inside
Speaker 1: yourself many years before? I knew that I would choose
Speaker 1: getting a drink over anything else. I just knew that
Speaker 1: I was out of control, and I felt it, and
Speaker 1: I knew it got it, and so I would do
Speaker 1: things like dropped Jordan off at soccer practicing. Go I
Speaker 1: have a couple shots of whiskey, and I'd say to myself, well,
Speaker 1: it's only a couple of shots, you know, no big deal.
Speaker 1: But like that's terrible behave. I mean, like I'm not
Speaker 1: proud of that. I was either high or drunk around
Speaker 1: the clock, I mean, I you know, I would go
Speaker 1: to my job every day just baked out of my gourd,
Speaker 1: you know, like, and so I just for a while,
Speaker 1: I could just tell now there still were a couple
Speaker 1: things that were consequence related that drove me back into AA,
Speaker 1: but they were very minor compared to the sort of
Speaker 1: consequences I'd had before. So I think that was the thing.
Speaker 1: I just could feel it inside. I knew that I
Speaker 1: hadn't had to do lots of terrible things in order
Speaker 1: to get high. If suddenly they made alcohol illegal the
Speaker 1: next day, or I couldn't find marijuana, or it suddenly
Speaker 1: cost five hundred dollars, like, I would start engaging in
Speaker 1: the same sorts of behaviors I had done before. You
Speaker 1: referenced your spiritual life. What did that look like when
Speaker 1: you talk about your spiritual life, I mean, were you religious?
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that word? And what did
Speaker 1: that look like in your life? Well, AA is considered
Speaker 1: a spiritual program. It describes itself that way. There are
Speaker 1: a number of steps that talk about God and a
Speaker 1: higher power, and so those can be interpreted lots of
Speaker 1: different ways, and they are interpreted far more liberally and
Speaker 1: widely today than they were in Columbus, Ohio in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four. Right in Columbus, Ohio in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: God kind of meant God. It tended to mean a
Speaker 1: guy up in the sky who kind of came down
Speaker 1: and controlled things. You know, maybe not everybody attached Jesus
Speaker 1: to it, but a lot of people did. And I
Speaker 1: was so desperate to be sober that when I heard,
Speaker 1: well you just have to believe in God, I just
Speaker 1: did to the best of my ability. But it didn't
Speaker 1: really fully completely. I formed this very like I said,
Speaker 1: I called it infantile spiritual belief, which was that if
Speaker 1: I just do good things, good things will happen to me.
Speaker 1: Now I look at and I think it's absurd, but
Speaker 1: I had some form of that belief. You know, when
Speaker 1: my wife left I should say I left the house actually,
Speaker 1: but when we split and I felt so aggrieved, you know,
Speaker 1: there was this part of me that was, like, God,
Speaker 1: this isn't fair. Like I've been sponsoring all these people.
Speaker 1: I go to a meeting every day like and so
Speaker 1: that was my spiritual life. It wasn't founded on something
Speaker 1: that I really understood or had a real relationship with it.
Speaker 1: Was me trying to believe something, and sometimes I believed it.
Speaker 1: I believed it enough that I got sober, But when
Speaker 1: the ground fell out from under me, it wasn't a
Speaker 1: spiritual life that I felt could support me through the
Speaker 1: most difficult times, and which I now feel like I
Speaker 1: do have today. So what spiritual means means very different
Speaker 1: things to different people. Well, so what does it mean
Speaker 1: to you now? I mean, that's interesting you say that
Speaker 1: a was spiritual, and it really meant the traditional sense
Speaker 1: of the word spiritual, that there was a God involved.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a certain specific way to do things,
Speaker 1: a right way to do things, and a wrong way
Speaker 1: to do things. It was just a very narrow definition
Speaker 1: and a very narrow experience that one could have if
Speaker 1: one was quote spiritual. What does it mean to you today?
Speaker 1: And do you think you have a spiritual life today? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I first feel like I need to give a just
Speaker 1: a quick defense here, because you know, there's a line
Speaker 1: at the end of the third step, and the third
Speaker 1: step says made a decision to turn our will in
Speaker 1: our lives over to the care of God as we
Speaker 1: understood him. And that line as we understood Him, I
Speaker 1: think has saved millions of lives. And there was a
Speaker 1: lot of debate in the early days of AA. A
Speaker 1: lot of people did not want that line in there.
Speaker 1: This is nineteen thirty nine. These are Christian men largely right,
Speaker 1: and there's some women, but largely Christian men, and so
Speaker 1: some members fought very hard for that line, and that
Speaker 1: line saved a lot of people's lives. And people would say, well,
Speaker 1: your higher power can be whatever you want it to be.
Speaker 1: It can be that doorknob, which I always went, well,
Speaker 1: but that's stupid, like what like, how's a door knob
Speaker 1: going to help me be sober? Right? But there's atheist
Speaker 1: meetings now, there's Buddhist meetings, there's all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: It's a very different world now. So anyway back to
Speaker 1: your question about spiritual life. When I came back the
Speaker 1: second time, and I came back to AA, because still
Speaker 1: sixteen years ago, still were not many options, you know,
Speaker 1: there wasn't the whole recovery infrastructure that there is online today.
Speaker 1: And I knew what I knew, and that was to
Speaker 1: go to AA, and I did. But it became clear
Speaker 1: to me very quickly, like if I'm going to work
Speaker 1: these steps which reference God and a higher power. I've
Speaker 1: got to find a way, like what does this mean
Speaker 1: to me? Like what actually will work? And what I
Speaker 1: landed on and has only developed over the years, was
Speaker 1: I landed on the idea that there were certain we
Speaker 1: could call them spiritual principles, that's what I refer to
Speaker 1: them as spiritual principles, that if I lived by them
Speaker 1: to the best of my ability, I could stay sober
Speaker 1: and I handle whatever life brought me. And so I
Speaker 1: started kind of looking at like, well, what were those?
Speaker 1: What are those? And that's largely kind of where the
Speaker 1: Spiritual Habits program came from a lot of years later, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the spiritual program happened thirteen years later or something,
Speaker 1: but the gist of it was right in there, and
Speaker 1: so spiritual to me means, you know, it's about what matters.
Speaker 1: It's about connection to myself, to other people, to the
Speaker 1: world around me, or connection to whatever matters to me.
Speaker 1: It's about asking myself the questions about what matters to
Speaker 1: me and trying to live my life that way to
Speaker 1: the best of my ability. So I think that's what
Speaker 1: spiritual is about for me today. You know, I was
Speaker 1: able to cobble enough of that together sixteen years ago
Speaker 1: to find a path through recovery that worked for me.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing AA had these acronyms for
Speaker 1: people who didn't believe in God. Clever people had come
Speaker 1: up with a couple of things. One of them was
Speaker 1: group of drunks. You know, God stands for a group
Speaker 1: of drunks, meaning the group can help you. And I
Speaker 1: really and truly believe that, and I believe for anybody
Speaker 1: dealing with any sort of addiction doesn't have to be AA,
Speaker 1: doesn't even have to be a formal group, but the
Speaker 1: support of other people is essential. But the other thing
Speaker 1: they said was that God could stand for good orderly direction.
Speaker 1: And that was the one that I went, Oh, that
Speaker 1: makes sense to me, and from there I inferred it
Speaker 1: out to spiritual principles. Oh, good orderly direction is spiritual principles.
Speaker 1: I was very influenced by Stephen Covey at the time.
Speaker 1: He wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and he
Speaker 1: talked a lot about living a principle centered life, and
Speaker 1: so I went, oh, okay, I believe if I live
Speaker 1: by these principles, things like being kind, being honest, being generous,
Speaker 1: doing my best to recognize the things I can change
Speaker 1: and can't change, and the things that I can't let
Speaker 1: them go in very basic things, but they were enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So spirituality does not necessitate nor exclude a deity. For you,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily that there is a God involved. It's
Speaker 1: more a way of orienting and living that feels purposeful,
Speaker 1: you know, connected to both yourself and then the life
Speaker 1: that is around you and within you, and that it
Speaker 1: is infused with meaning, guided by these principles that are
Speaker 1: known to be wise by more than just one tradition. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is exactly it. Now over time that has deepened
Speaker 1: into something that I would say is a little bit
Speaker 1: more the word used as mystical. But mystical doesn't mean
Speaker 1: weird in the scholarly usage of it. It means simply
Speaker 1: about having a direct experience of something bigger, greater than you.
Speaker 1: But in my case, no, for me, it is not
Speaker 1: a deity. I do not believe in a deity that
Speaker 1: creates things and controls things. Now I could be wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm an agnostic in the truest sense of the word,
Speaker 1: meaning I really don't know. I really don't know how
Speaker 1: the heck all this works. What I do know is
Speaker 1: that I have had experiences of unity, of connection, of
Speaker 1: oneness that have deepened my spirituality over time, that have
Speaker 1: caused it to be a little bit less dry than
Speaker 1: just these principles that I live my life by. But
Speaker 1: these principles living my life by those I mean transformed
Speaker 1: my life in huge and meaningful way. So I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to say like, oh, I'm past that now. It's
Speaker 1: still the core of everything. And these principles are principles
Speaker 1: that you, over the course of the last sixteen years,
Speaker 1: have identified or are discovered that are really core to
Speaker 1: a life that both feels good and does good, a
Speaker 1: life that is full of meaning and connection. Tell me
Speaker 1: about these principles. Well, I'm not the first person who
Speaker 1: had the insight that if you look at all the
Speaker 1: major religious traditions out there, there's an awful lot of
Speaker 1: commonality among them. There's differences, there's different ways of saying things,
Speaker 1: but they're talking about a lot of very similar things.
Speaker 1: So I did not come up with that idea. I
Speaker 1: don't know who did. The most recent person that we
Speaker 1: know of a guy named Aldus Huxley, who also wrote
Speaker 1: The Door as a perception about his use of mescaline
Speaker 1: English intellectual. He called it the perennial philosophy. But it's
Speaker 1: this idea that, yeah, at the heart of all these
Speaker 1: religious traditions, and I would say most philosophical traditions, there
Speaker 1: are some key underlying ideas. Now, for my life, I
Speaker 1: had a few, and then for the Spiritual Habits program,
Speaker 1: I went through and sort of said, like, I think
Speaker 1: these are going to be the ones. There are more
Speaker 1: than these, and but for me it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this covers an orientation to life that has worked for me.
Speaker 1: So in no way, shape or form want to claim
Speaker 1: like these are the right spiritual principles, right, It's just
Speaker 1: those are the ones that I've consistently returned and used
Speaker 1: again and again in my journey. That also do a
Speaker 1: line when I look at, you know, sort of this
Speaker 1: perennial philosophy. They're everywhere, you know, they are everywhere. What
Speaker 1: are those principles? You want the fullest, the fullest? The
Speaker 1: first is it's kind of two principles rolled into one.
Speaker 1: It's a bonus principle. It's intention and attention, and what
Speaker 1: it means is thinking very often about what matters to me,
Speaker 1: what is important to me? You know, not just once
Speaker 1: in a great while, not just once on like a
Speaker 1: corporate retreat every five years or something, but very regularly.
Speaker 1: You know, what matters to me, what matters to me today,
Speaker 1: what matters to me about this dinner, what matters to
Speaker 1: me about the way I raise my children. That's intention.
Speaker 1: And then attention is simply where our mind is at
Speaker 1: what we're paying attention to. And William James, he's the
Speaker 1: founder of modern psychology, said, my experience is what I
Speaker 1: agree to attend to. So there's no thing that I
Speaker 1: can think of that has more to do with the
Speaker 1: quality of our experience than what we're paying attention to.
Speaker 1: But the reason they're combined is that we want to
Speaker 1: be able to say, what matters to me, what's my intention,
Speaker 1: and that is my attention aligned with that. So let's
Speaker 1: just say my intention is to feel more connected to life.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, when I check in regularly, where is
Speaker 1: my attention? Oh, it's on the latest news story or
Speaker 1: it's on prints. I don't even know which one wrote
Speaker 1: the book recently, Right, I'm just calling out things. It
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't matter, right, But we'll look at that
Speaker 1: and go, oh, does that make me feel more connected
Speaker 1: to life. No, okay, so what might now bring my
Speaker 1: attention back to where my intention is? So a little
Speaker 1: bit of word soup there. Yeah. The second one is
Speaker 1: self compassion. It took me a long time to really
Speaker 1: get this one. Besides, you know where our attention is.
Speaker 1: I think there are a few other things that improve
Speaker 1: the quality of our lives more than being in our
Speaker 1: brain with a kind person. Right, we are stuck with
Speaker 1: ourselves all of the time, and if that person we
Speaker 1: are stuck with is awful to us, it's a miserable experience. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like being in a bad marriage, but worse. And
Speaker 1: so for that reason it's really important. And then the
Speaker 1: second reason is change. I believe happens by learning. When
Speaker 1: we are hypercritical of ourselves, we don't learn, we can't learn.
Speaker 1: We shut down. Yeah, we shut down the learning parts
Speaker 1: of our brain. So for real transformation to happen, we
Speaker 1: have to find a way to be kinder to ourselves.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean AA did this in its own
Speaker 1: way right by simply saying you were a sick alcoholic.
Speaker 1: You're responsible for what you did, You're responsible for what
Speaker 1: you do now, but you're not a bad person. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty foundational shift. Yeah, but I just became more
Speaker 1: convinced of self compassion over time. The next one is
Speaker 1: similar to attention a little bit, but it's a type
Speaker 1: of attention and it's about being present. You know. Ecartole
Speaker 1: had a book called The Power Now that sold a
Speaker 1: bajillion copies, right, And I read it and thought it
Speaker 1: was really good, and my Buddhist training told me, you know,
Speaker 1: be here now, you know. I guess that's Rohm Dassie
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly a Buddhist, but the idea is there. All
Speaker 1: the spiritual traditions are pointed us to being present, and honestly,
Speaker 1: if we want an experience of being connected to life,
Speaker 1: we actually have to kind of be around for it.
Speaker 1: Can I pause you there and ask a question? Because
Speaker 1: I feel like we hear from listeners of the show
Speaker 1: that have questions around the general theme of like, well,
Speaker 1: what if I don't like my circumstances, Like what if
Speaker 1: I don't want to be present to this life that
Speaker 1: I see in front of me? If what I want
Speaker 1: to do is escape it? So I think that there
Speaker 1: are situations that it's worth trying to escape from, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're just art. I mean, there are horrible
Speaker 1: traumas that we go through, you know, it's worth trying
Speaker 1: to escape from. Most of the time, though, the moment
Speaker 1: itself isn't that bad looked at from a particular perspective.
Speaker 1: So the moment might feel bad because I'm telling myself
Speaker 1: that what I'm doing is really boring. But is there
Speaker 1: a way to make it less boring? You know a
Speaker 1: lot of people it's very hard to be present to
Speaker 1: the moment because of indeed lots of trauma, right, And
Speaker 1: so I'm not suggesting like we'll just suck it up
Speaker 1: and be present to that. You may need help in
Speaker 1: doing that, right, You may need to do a lot
Speaker 1: of healing and recovery to get to the point where
Speaker 1: you feel safe enough in the moment. But for most
Speaker 1: of us, most of the time, the current moment isn't
Speaker 1: so bad. It's what we think about the current moment.
Speaker 1: It's our beliefs about the current moment. It's the thoughts
Speaker 1: that we're having that are color in the current moment
Speaker 1: in a bad way, the emotions that are present. It's
Speaker 1: not the moment itself. Yeah, I think about through the
Speaker 1: lens of mindfulness that we have the object of our attention,
Speaker 1: and then we have our relationship to that object. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, there are times that we can absolutely have
Speaker 1: control or have an impact on what the object is,
Speaker 1: and then there's the impact and control we have on
Speaker 1: how we are in relationship to it, how we interact
Speaker 1: with it. So I think what you're pointing to is
Speaker 1: coming into a wise relationship with what's there, which has
Speaker 1: all the impact in the world on how we're experiencing
Speaker 1: our life. Absolutely, I think you said that better than
Speaker 1: I could. It really is about everybody has things they
Speaker 1: have to do that just they don't enjoy right. Every job,
Speaker 1: every life has them right, and we can change our
Speaker 1: relationship with it to be a little bit different. And
Speaker 1: one of the spiritual principles here in a few minutes,
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about that. I was
Speaker 1: going to say, why don't we go right into that yet,
Speaker 1: and now I'm jumping out of order, but okay, I will.
Speaker 1: Another key principle is allow everything to be exactly the
Speaker 1: way it is. Now. This is a radical kind of statement.
Speaker 1: I don't mean always allow everything to be exactly the
Speaker 1: way it is right, but there is a truth. I
Speaker 1: heard it from the spiritual teacher Shinzen Young. In the
Speaker 1: minute I heard it, I glommed onto it and have
Speaker 1: used it ever since. And it is this idea that
Speaker 1: our suffering equals pain times resistance. So what does that mean? Well,
Speaker 1: our suffering, we could think of, is just the total
Speaker 1: experience we have. How awful is this overall experience? You know?
Speaker 1: And then the pain, I would say, is as you
Speaker 1: said earlier, it's the object of our attention. It's a
Speaker 1: thing that we're seeing that we don't like. And then
Speaker 1: our resistance is are wanting it not to be that way.
Speaker 1: And resistance takes a thousand different forms. But the reason
Speaker 1: I love that equation suffering equals pain times resistance is
Speaker 1: imagine that we just put all three of those on
Speaker 1: a scale of one to ten. And I'll just use
Speaker 1: back pain because it's an easy example. And my back
Speaker 1: hurts at a level of a three. Now let's make
Speaker 1: it a little more. Let's say it's a five. The
Speaker 1: actual physical sensations of my back are at a pain
Speaker 1: level of five, but my resistance is also at a
Speaker 1: level of five. And what do I mean by resistance?
Speaker 1: I mean just all the ways I keep saying I
Speaker 1: don't want it. I don't like it. I don't want
Speaker 1: it to be this way. The stories I start to
Speaker 1: tell myself, like, oh my back hurts as much at fifty,
Speaker 1: what am I going to be like at eighty? You know,
Speaker 1: am I really ever going to be able to go
Speaker 1: surfing again? I'm probably never going to surf again. You know,
Speaker 1: there's all this stuff that comes with it, right, that's
Speaker 1: the resistance. So if I were able to turn that
Speaker 1: resistance down just a little bit, let's say from a
Speaker 1: five to a three. So right now, I've got five
Speaker 1: points of pain, five points of resistance, total suffering twenty
Speaker 1: five if I turn my resistance down just two points.
Speaker 1: Because it's very hard to completely not resist things. If
Speaker 1: you can completely not resist things, when I haven't been
Speaker 1: able to do that, which is only a couple times
Speaker 1: in my life, I have had freedom beyond measure in
Speaker 1: my heart and my spirit, but it's it's very hard
Speaker 1: to do. So let's just be realistic, and so I
Speaker 1: can reduce my resistance by two Now, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I've got five points of pain, three points of resistance,
Speaker 1: fifteen total points of suffering. I've reduced my suffering by
Speaker 1: ten points. And I did not have to change the
Speaker 1: situation one bit. And that's great news because very often
Speaker 1: we simply cannot change the situation. If we can in
Speaker 1: a wise way, we should, but a lot of life
Speaker 1: it just doesn't work that way. Either we can't or
Speaker 1: we're not going to. And what I mean by not
Speaker 1: going to is I'm not going to quit this job.
Speaker 1: I've thought about it from my best, wisest, truest self,
Speaker 1: and I've realized that right now for me, this is
Speaker 1: the right place to be. Maybe I wish there were
Speaker 1: other options. There aren't, but given whatever, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to change it. So okay, if I'm not going to
Speaker 1: change it, then what I want to work on is
Speaker 1: my relationship to my job. So that's the principle of
Speaker 1: allowing everything to be the way it is. And again,
Speaker 1: as I said, the times that I've been able to
Speaker 1: get all away to this have been moments of what
Speaker 1: the mystical tradition sort of talk about is like a
Speaker 1: mystical experience, a unit of experience. What I was searching
Speaker 1: for with all my drugs. I believe the way I
Speaker 1: got there was I somehow totally let go. So that's
Speaker 1: that principle, and it goes kind of back to that
Speaker 1: point of people saying, well, my current experience I don't
Speaker 1: like it, I don't want to be here. Well, can
Speaker 1: you change that? And if so, we should wisely, But
Speaker 1: if not, then we do have to learn to relate
Speaker 1: to it differently. It's the only game in town, right exactly?
Speaker 1: That would lead us into what's the next spiritual principle.
Speaker 1: It's a phrase I believe it was originally said by
Speaker 1: anis Nin. Is that how you say that? I say, Ann,
Speaker 1: you're probably right. When it comes to pronunciation. Nine times
Speaker 1: out of ten you have it right. I butcher things
Speaker 1: you should hear me on teaching song and a poem,
Speaker 1: trying to read the name of men, any of these poets.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's a crime. It's a crime. But she said,
Speaker 1: we don't see the world as it is. We see
Speaker 1: it as we are. And so the idea there is
Speaker 1: that there is not an objective perspective. Everything that we
Speaker 1: see we see through lenses of conditioning and conditioning simply,
Speaker 1: it's a term that's used in psychology, it's used in Buddhism,
Speaker 1: and it means that all the experiences I've had up
Speaker 1: till now, plus my genetics and my brain chemistry and
Speaker 1: how well I slept and all that stuff. You could
Speaker 1: think of it as it creates a lens. It's a
Speaker 1: lens that we see the world through, and we all
Speaker 1: do and you can't really not do it again. We
Speaker 1: might say that certain forms of enlightenment are where you
Speaker 1: shave as much of that a way as you can,
Speaker 1: right but by and large, as humans, it's just the
Speaker 1: way our brains work. As humans, we are also meaning
Speaker 1: making machines. We are always interpreting what happened, good, bad,
Speaker 1: why it happened, whether it should have happened, whether it
Speaker 1: shouldn't have happened. It's all happening, So that's just a truth.
Speaker 1: And knowing that for most of us we're not going
Speaker 1: to turn it off. We can't, then it becomes a
Speaker 1: matter of seeing that clearly and going okay, So the
Speaker 1: way I'm seeing the world right now has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with the way I am, and so can
Speaker 1: I be more flexible in how I see the world?
Speaker 1: Acceptance and commitment therapy as a term that I love
Speaker 1: called psychological flexibility. That's the goal, and I think that
Speaker 1: speaks to this piece very much. It's to be flexible
Speaker 1: and go huh. You know, one of my favorite questions
Speaker 1: is what am I making this mean? And what else
Speaker 1: can it mean? Because we're always making it mean something?
Speaker 1: What am I making it mean? And could it maybe
Speaker 1: mean something else? Yeah? Yeah, because then if we're not
Speaker 1: so rigidly grasping onto that one perspective, if it could
Speaker 1: mean something else. I don't know, just because it's a
Speaker 1: chance to go oh okay and relax our grip a little,
Speaker 1: to not be so identified with that perspective so much. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know how else say it, but I just
Speaker 1: I'm thinking through my own experience of that and realizing
Speaker 1: that it could mean something else just makes me side
Speaker 1: just a little bit inside. Yeah. And along with that
Speaker 1: is truly what is the perspective I'm taking? And can
Speaker 1: I take a bigger perspective? Right? Can I look at
Speaker 1: a perspective like the Buddha has on in permanence? Nothing
Speaker 1: is permanent? Okay? Can I take that perspective? Because I'm
Speaker 1: on hold right now with the credit card company and
Speaker 1: it feels like this is never going to end, and
Speaker 1: I'm really irritated, and so a question like well will
Speaker 1: this bother me in five hours? I go, oh, Okay,
Speaker 1: I probably won't, right, So that principle is about being
Speaker 1: able to take different perspectives. Now we have to be
Speaker 1: careful with this one because we can completely intellectualize our
Speaker 1: experience and we can say something like, well, in perspective
Speaker 1: compared to people in Ukraine, right now, I got nothing
Speaker 1: to be feeling bad about. And now we start feeling
Speaker 1: bad about ourselves because we feel bad because you know.
Speaker 1: So that's the use of perspective. It's not helpful, so
Speaker 1: we have to learn to balance it. But it's a
Speaker 1: very helpful tool. You said the word balance. I was
Speaker 1: going to say, this takes us to potentially your favorite principle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I teed that up subconsciously because the next
Speaker 1: principle I call the middle way, and it just means
Speaker 1: that in most cases, the extremes don't serve as well. Now,
Speaker 1: as a alcoholic in an addict, the middle way it
Speaker 1: certainly had no appeal to me for much of my life,
Speaker 1: and when it comes to alcohol and drugs, I actually don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have a middle way. I have to be
Speaker 1: no for that. But there are so many other ways
Speaker 1: in life that a middle way perspective can be really
Speaker 1: really valuable between positive and negative thinking. Right, we often
Speaker 1: ask like, well, how should I respond to these thoughts?
Speaker 1: You know? Should I be positive all the time? You know? No, right,
Speaker 1: that would be the term now these days's toxic positivity, right,
Speaker 1: and it's a problem. And also, if you have a
Speaker 1: brain like mine, it doesn't do good to just let
Speaker 1: it run wild. There are times where I do need
Speaker 1: to correct for the natural negativity that shows up all
Speaker 1: the time. So in between those two a middle way
Speaker 1: between either having to do something perfectly or not at all. Gosh,
Speaker 1: that one trips me up all the time, I mean,
Speaker 1: because perfect is just the enemy of doing really anything anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or I'm trying to build these new habits. How accountable
Speaker 1: should I be? Like? If I don't do it, should
Speaker 1: I be really hard on myself? That's one option? The
Speaker 1: others I'm just really easy on myself. I know, a
Speaker 1: big deal whatever? Who cares? Right, Yeah, there's a middle
Speaker 1: ground that allows us to hold a line with ourselves,
Speaker 1: but do it in a kind and compassionate way. I
Speaker 1: could give thirty more examples on the middle way, but
Speaker 1: just learning to watch for that. The next principle is
Speaker 1: one of generosity, right, generosity is going back to kind
Speaker 1: of that insight that Bill Wilson and doctor Bob had
Speaker 1: when they founded AA, was that giving, to use a
Speaker 1: terrible business cliche, is that true win win situation, right,
Speaker 1: because ferocity benefits the giver and the receiver done right.
Speaker 1: And it's a way of taking our spiritual life and
Speaker 1: making sure that what happened to me as I was
Speaker 1: saying when I started drinking again after being sober eight years,
Speaker 1: was I was doing a lot of inner work, but
Speaker 1: that was it. It was only inward. And generosity is
Speaker 1: a way of taking all this transformation that's hopefully happening
Speaker 1: within us, but redirecting it outwards. Yeah, and so those
Speaker 1: are the core ones. There's a couple others, but those
Speaker 1: are the ones that are in the core spiritual habits program.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned a couple of times like Buddhist principles,
Speaker 1: but in general it is not a Buddhist program, right, No, No,
Speaker 1: it's not a Buddhist program. I mean I have been
Speaker 1: informed very heavily by that, but I literally for any
Speaker 1: of those principles, I could quote you examples from all
Speaker 1: the major religions, you know, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, many
Speaker 1: of the minor ones, Taoism, you know, a ton of
Speaker 1: the Greek philosophers. They show up over and over again everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. So, No, it is not a Buddhist program.
Speaker 1: It is not a Christian program. But you could be
Speaker 1: Buddhist or Christian people take it. Who are all those things?
Speaker 1: I mean the core of it is learning to focus
Speaker 1: on less stuff because we are overwhelmed. I mean I'm
Speaker 1: an overwhelmer right in that I put up two podcast
Speaker 1: episodes a week. Right, we are overwhelmed by knowledge. How
Speaker 1: do we implement that knowledge into our lives in a
Speaker 1: way that matters? So the Spiritual Habits program sort of
Speaker 1: shrinks that knowledge down to a core number of principles.
Speaker 1: But then it also takes another discipline that I'm very
Speaker 1: fond of, which is behavior change science, and it says,
Speaker 1: how do we actually start to live these things or
Speaker 1: when we refer to it, you know, bridge the gap
Speaker 1: between what we know and what we do. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: your transformation out of addiction, you're healing your recovery. You
Speaker 1: didn't think your way out of it. You didn't just
Speaker 1: contemplate these bits of wisdom and then found yourself sober.
Speaker 1: It was the practice, it was the living them. And
Speaker 1: so talk a little bit about that, about the necessity
Speaker 1: of making it part of your behavior, the way you act.
Speaker 1: Pick the principles I just talked about. Let's pick the
Speaker 1: one of perspective. Right, we don't see the world as
Speaker 1: it is. We see it as we are. Right. It's
Speaker 1: great to read about that and hear about it. But
Speaker 1: what we need is that we need in the moment
Speaker 1: where our perspective is causing us to suffer, that's when
Speaker 1: we need that reflection. Right, So how do we do that?
Speaker 1: So even people who get to the point of having
Speaker 1: something like a morning reading practice or a morning reading
Speaker 1: and a meditation practice still will say, yeah, it's good.
Speaker 1: I like it, it feels good. But I'm still reacting
Speaker 1: the same way to my children. And so, yeah, what
Speaker 1: we're looking to do is bring these moments into our lives.
Speaker 1: And I think that happens a couple different ways. And
Speaker 1: I can go back to AA to draw some examples.
Speaker 1: I Mean, one of the things was in AA, we
Speaker 1: didn't explore all kinds of different stuff. We had twelve
Speaker 1: steps and we had one hundred and sixty four pages
Speaker 1: of a book by and large, and we went through
Speaker 1: that crap over and over and over, to the point
Speaker 1: where there were days I thought, if I have to
Speaker 1: hear these steps again, I am literally going to hang
Speaker 1: myself right like I can't stand it anymore. But it
Speaker 1: was good because that repetition breeds results. Hearing it again
Speaker 1: and again, it filters in, it seeps in it, we
Speaker 1: marinate in it. The other thing that AA did was
Speaker 1: the tenth step is basically we continue to take personal
Speaker 1: inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. What
Speaker 1: it means is we keep looking inside ourselves for how
Speaker 1: we're doing. And one of the ways of doing that
Speaker 1: was you did a tenth step at inventory at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, you know, and there were just
Speaker 1: there was a little list, here's the things. How did
Speaker 1: I do against these things today? But that checking in
Speaker 1: on that every night, over time, you start to get more. Now,
Speaker 1: behavior change science has come along and say, hey, triggers
Speaker 1: are really important. Trigger being a reminder to do something,
Speaker 1: you know, or an impetus to do something, and so
Speaker 1: triggers are really important. So we can start to then
Speaker 1: use triggers to remind us to do these things more
Speaker 1: and more often, and then ultimately what we're after what
Speaker 1: I call awareness based triggers, meaning I'm able to monitor
Speaker 1: my internal state frequently enough that I can then notice, Okay,
Speaker 1: my trigger is my internal state. What am I going
Speaker 1: to do with that? Yeah? If I kind of touch
Speaker 1: on here what we started off talking about in this conversation,
Speaker 1: which is like, when you find yourself in a place
Speaker 1: in life where inside you're feeling like you're lacking connection,
Speaker 1: you are lacking direction, lacking meaning, lacking purpose, lacking motivation,
Speaker 1: struggle with feelings of hollowness or loneliness to these internal
Speaker 1: states that I think are universal. You know, maybe they
Speaker 1: don't happen to all of us all at once, but
Speaker 1: all of us are going to experience these at different
Speaker 1: points in our lives. Right that these are things that
Speaker 1: you knew very well through really dire circumstances at different
Speaker 1: points in your life. And what I think is the
Speaker 1: most empowering message out of all of this is that meaning, purpose, connection, direction,
Speaker 1: those are something we make. We play an active role
Speaker 1: in creating those things, rather than something that we find
Speaker 1: or that happen upon us. Right. And so, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that the message of hope in the message of
Speaker 1: help I hear out of this is that there actually
Speaker 1: are roadmaps and this that you're talking about is one
Speaker 1: of those to play an active role in creating those
Speaker 1: things in your life. I don't know, I just thought
Speaker 1: i'd touched back on that at starting point. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think there's a couple of things that are important to
Speaker 1: note there, and I think you said it very well.
Speaker 1: But one of those is everybody is going to feel
Speaker 1: moments of disconnection, of emptiness, of hollowness, of not feeling
Speaker 1: like life has meaning, and trying to make that never
Speaker 1: be the case is how you end up being a
Speaker 1: heroin addict right because you're sit I can't tolerate this feeling. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So some of it is just going like okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm a human being. I didn't sleep well
Speaker 1: last night. Everything looks like crap today. Hang on, let
Speaker 1: me get some sleep. Tomorrow will be different. That said,
Speaker 1: there are ways of giving ourselves an opportunity to feel
Speaker 1: those sort of things, meaning, purpose, connection, all that stuff
Speaker 1: more often, and to even when the feeling isn't there,
Speaker 1: to know at a deeper level that, okay, it is there.
Speaker 1: And so as somebody who you know addiction was one
Speaker 1: part of my story, But the other part of it
Speaker 1: is depression, right, and my depression manifests itself as an
Speaker 1: utter sense of just nothing matters, disconnection, totally dead. Things
Speaker 1: that interests me don't interest me. You know, I love music,
Speaker 1: and I when I'm in one of those states, there's
Speaker 1: not a single song I want to listen to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you do with that? Spiritual life
Speaker 1: or a spiritual program at least in my case, makes
Speaker 1: those less likely to occur, along with some other things
Speaker 1: like you know, exercising, and there are ways of managing that,
Speaker 1: but it still happens. But what I know is that
Speaker 1: despite the feeling, my life is pointed in the right direction,
Speaker 1: and that the things that I do, they may not
Speaker 1: in this moment feel meaningful, but they have been meaningful
Speaker 1: at other moments when I've reflected, when I've taken the
Speaker 1: time to reflect, and I've known those things matter. So
Speaker 1: I can't feel it right this minute. So okay, that's
Speaker 1: it's a feeling. It comes and goes again. If we
Speaker 1: feel this way all the time, it's problem, right, But
Speaker 1: I know it's there. It reminds me of I've told
Speaker 1: this story before, But you know, one of these sort
Speaker 1: of spiritual awakenings I had. It was so overwhelming in
Speaker 1: the peace and the joy and all that, but it
Speaker 1: was an experience, and over time that experience faded, and
Speaker 1: I remember going to the spiritual teacher Audio Shanti and
Speaker 1: talking to him about this, and he said something that
Speaker 1: I mean, it was really transformational for me, and he said,
Speaker 1: devote yourself to what remains of it. And so what
Speaker 1: that means to me is that even when I don't
Speaker 1: feel it, I got some glimpses of what I believe
Speaker 1: to be truth. So how can I now live my
Speaker 1: life that way? And so the same thing I've in
Speaker 1: moments reflected on what's important to me, what matters to
Speaker 1: me in life. I know what it is right now,
Speaker 1: I don't feel it. I devote myself by my actions
Speaker 1: to what I know a part of me that may
Speaker 1: not be online right now believes to be true and valuable.
Speaker 1: And that's why, you know, to your point, meaning is made.
Speaker 1: Victor Frankel said that, right, you know, coming out of
Speaker 1: the concentration camps, he said, look, he didn't believe there
Speaker 1: was a meaning out there that we found. He said,
Speaker 1: we construct it. And that's part of what the spiritual
Speaker 1: life is about is asking the questions so that we
Speaker 1: start to construct that meaning back to the very first
Speaker 1: one intention, right, what matters to us? Yeah, I find
Speaker 1: that so powerful. This is back to something you say often,
Speaker 1: which is sometimes we can't think our way into right action.
Speaker 1: We have to act our way into right thinking. And
Speaker 1: for me what that means as a reflect on it
Speaker 1: now is you know, there are times when like, oh,
Speaker 1: I just don't feel like doing any of the things
Speaker 1: that my highest, best, wisest, most evolved self would know
Speaker 1: and say are the things that will be supportive and
Speaker 1: nurturing and nourishing and helpful to me and also further
Speaker 1: me down the path of the kind of life I
Speaker 1: want to live that again feels good and does good. Right,
Speaker 1: there are times that I just do not feel like it,
Speaker 1: and if I wait to feel like it, that's going
Speaker 1: to lead me down paths that I don't know. What's
Speaker 1: the way I want to say this, like I'm going
Speaker 1: to veer off course in a way that feels like
Speaker 1: an unnecessary detour. And so if I can identify the things,
Speaker 1: like I've already said that these are things I want
Speaker 1: to do, this is the way I want to act,
Speaker 1: here's how I want to live my life. Then I
Speaker 1: can cling to that and do those things even when
Speaker 1: I don't feel like it and continue further down the
Speaker 1: path of the life that I've already said is the
Speaker 1: kind I want to live, right, Yep, yep. And that's
Speaker 1: really difficult to do, right, I mean, it is really
Speaker 1: difficult to do. And so that's where some knowledge of
Speaker 1: behavior change science comes in and helps. Right, It's where
Speaker 1: a community people who support you or a person who
Speaker 1: supports you. That's where that stuff really comes into play.
Speaker 1: Is because it's really easy to say, well, I just
Speaker 1: do it when I don't feel like it. Yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: But when you don't feel like it, that's a whole
Speaker 1: whole And I know that's not what you're saying at all.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that, like, oh, I'm agree with you.
Speaker 1: I'm sure. I'm sure a bunch of people are listening, going, well,
Speaker 1: that sounds great, but I can't do that, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a practice skill for sure, right. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: also something that you develop that muscle with repetition. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And there are more intelligent and less intelligent ways. One
Speaker 1: of the core principles that underlies really the entire spiritual
Speaker 1: habits program, and I don't want to keep going back
Speaker 1: to that is not a commercial right. But if we
Speaker 1: want to talk about how I live my life, right,
Speaker 1: that's my best distillation of it is that the core
Speaker 1: ideas little by little, a little becomes a lot, right,
Speaker 1: And so I don't have to do really big things
Speaker 1: all the time. I can't, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: for reasons of time, for all kinds of reasons. But
Speaker 1: a little bit by little bit it adds up in
Speaker 1: a really big way, both for good and bad. You
Speaker 1: know that it's a core principle. So that if I
Speaker 1: know the things that support me and I'm having trouble
Speaker 1: doing them, one way is to shrink them down to
Speaker 1: what I can do. Yeah, but to be very consistent.
Speaker 1: Little by little becomes a lot works. Little by every
Speaker 1: once in a while does not work, right, Little but
Speaker 1: frequent works, little but infrequent does not work. So it
Speaker 1: can be small, but consistency does need to become part
Speaker 1: of the equation. Yeah, it does. And some things are small,
Speaker 1: but they have a disproportion It impact on our feelings
Speaker 1: of well being and of purpose and meaning and connection. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons. I think when our
Speaker 1: lives first intersected and I started living in a way
Speaker 1: that was more supportive of my well being, one of
Speaker 1: the things I appreciated most was that the things that
Speaker 1: I had in front of me to do were not herculean, right,
Speaker 1: you know, they were not herculean, but they were meaningful,
Speaker 1: and doing those little things helped me make meaningful progress,
Speaker 1: you know, on the inside and the outside. Yep. But
Speaker 1: my story for another day, Our story for another day.
Speaker 1: Listeners can go back, though, because we do have part
Speaker 1: of your story because I interviewed you once, it's out there,
Speaker 1: so it is out there. Maybe someday, I mean, if
Speaker 1: anybody's interested. Probably not, No, I'm sure somebody out there's
Speaker 1: got to be. I mean, nobody's even listening now, like
Speaker 1: four minutes into this interview. Forget it. Who's a good guest?
Speaker 1: Stop it. That's not true. It's always really fun when
Speaker 1: you and I get to sit behind Mike's and talk
Speaker 1: to each other. Indeed, so thanks, thank you for kind
Speaker 1: of walking us through this and giving a glimpse into
Speaker 1: how you have struggled and how you have then gone
Speaker 1: on to build a meaningful and good feeling and good
Speaker 1: doing life. Yeah, and I always feel like I kind
Speaker 1: of have to caveat and I'll caveat that to say,
Speaker 1: like I don't always feel good like's not That's not
Speaker 1: what my life is, right, No, yeah, yeah, way better
Speaker 1: than I used to for sure. And I'm a human being,
Speaker 1: you know, we all have this stuff. So anyway, thank you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, how do we wrap this up? I think
Speaker 1: we say goodbye? No, I think I'm terrible at ending
Speaker 1: things like conversations. Okay, that sounds simple, that sounds reasonable.
Speaker 1: We'll just say goodbye. Well, Jenny, we've come to the
Speaker 1: end of our time today, and I really want to
Speaker 1: thank you for being on the show. It's really meant
Speaker 1: a lot to me. Is this how you do it? Okay?
Speaker 1: You wrap it up? Okay, all right? Yeah, so so
Speaker 1: thanks Eric. We've come to the end of our home
Speaker 1: together and it's meant a lot to me. Thanks so much,
Speaker 1: And listeners, thanks for your time and attention. Indeed, all right,
Speaker 1: take care, bye, goodbye. If what you just heard was
Speaker 1: helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to
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