Life Changing Questions to Transform Your Mindset and Actions with Rachel Hollis

In this episode, Rachel Hollis offers a unique approach to changing your life by asking life changing questions to transform your mindset and actions. She shares her journey of overcoming anxious thoughts and the importance of learning to interrupt negative thought patterns. Rachel also emphasizes the need to move beyond seeking more information and instead focus on applying what we already know.

Struggling to stick to your goals? In the upcoming 6 Saboteurs of Self-Control Workshop, we’ll uncover the six hidden obstacles that sabotage your progress and teach you how to overcome them. From breaking free of autopilot habits to tackling self-doubt and emotional escapism, this live session offers practical tools and strategies to help you make better choices and stay aligned with your values. Join us on Sunday, January 12 at 12pm ET and take the first step toward lasting change.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover practical actions to manage anxiety and take control of your well-being
• Uncover the impact of parental anxiety on children and how it shapes their emotional growth
• Explore the transformative benefits of therapy for overcoming PTSD and anxiety.
• Learn effective strategies to interrupt and reframe negative thought patterns for a more positive mindset.
• Elevate your personal growth by understanding the importance of setting higher standards for yourself.

For full show notes, click here!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm so grateful for the wisdom that I have lived through.
I'm so grateful for the knowledge that I have from
the things that I've read or the podcast I listened to.
But I don't think something can truly be wisdom until
you've lived through it and you've applied it in your
real life.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't

(00:45):
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. Cast
is about how other people keep themselves moving in the
right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for

(01:20):
joining us. Our guest on this episode is Rachel Hollis,
a multi time New York Times bestselling author, host of
the Rachel Hollis Podcast, and a well known keynote speaker Today,
Rachel and Eric discuss her new book, what If You
Are the Answer and twenty six other Questions that just
might change your life.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Hi, Rachel, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Oh thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
You have such a professional setup. I mean, the video
looks great. I mean everything about it. It's just it's
really good.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
I have nothing to do with it. Justinclaire, this is
all Jack. We give all love to Jack who produced
their good work.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Jack, good work. He gets a shout out. We're going
to be discussing your latest book, which I love the
title of what If You Are the Answer and twenty
six other Questions that Might Change your life. But before
we do, we'll start the way we always do, which is.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
With the parable.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with
a grandchild and they say, in life, there are two
wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which
represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They

(02:34):
look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which
one wins, and the grandparent says the one you feed.
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you in your life and in
the work that you do.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, I remember the first time I saw that. I
saw it as a meme or something that came across
social media years ago, and that stopped me in my
tracks because it's such a good reminder that what we
focus on we create more of what we focus on
we give energy to. And for me, that could jope

(03:07):
in a lot of different ways. But I hear it
again with you, or if I see it again out
in the world, it always will come back to my
anxious thoughts versus my more focused, intentional reach for the
more positive things. I can very easily swirl into an
anxious mindset that will lead me nowhere good, and so

(03:31):
I have to really be thoughtful about how I focus
my thought process to not fall into old bad patterns.
So what it makes me think of is wanting to
feed the wolf of the good stuff and the positive
stuff and the stuff that I know is going to
help me versus the stuff that is going to produce

(03:53):
circular thinking in my mind and kind of lead me
back to the same place over and over.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Can you share a little bit about, like what today's
greatest hits of anxious thoughts are like for you? I mean,
I think they change for us in some different ways
depending on where we are at a particular time in life.
I'm just kind of curious what circulating lately. Well.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
To be honest, if I really boil it down, the
anxious thoughts are old news. It's always about the past.
It's never about what is happening in my presence, definitely
nothing associated with my future. It's a fear that perhaps
bad things that have happened before are going to happen again.
Having been through quite a lot of trauma in my life,

(04:33):
I will tend to gravitate back to Yeah, it feels
really good right now, but what happens if it all
goes wrong? Yeah? You know, well, what are you going
to do if this happens? What are you going to
do if that happens? And I honestly think that this
is gonna sound so terrible but also as real, and
I feel like maybe listeners will be like, yeah, that's
me too. I would have one tenth of the anxious

(04:56):
thoughts that I have if I didn't have children, if
I didn't have worry or concern for the kids, or
am I doing a good job as a parent for them?
Am I leading them in the right way? Are they
going to be hurt? I mean, just every time they
get a little bit older, there's something else, and it
can be really easy for me to just add that
to the pile of worry. And it serves nothing, serves nobody,

(05:20):
It does not help them. It certainly doesn't help me
as a parent. But that is where my brain tends
to go back to. The anxiety is around the stuff
that I care about most and wanting to protect or
take care of those things that I love the most,
and feeling like it might all go awry, it might
all be taken away. And that's the response from PTSD.

(05:42):
And I've done a lot of therapy about it, but
that really is what it always throws back to.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, there's a phrase. I don't know if I'll quite
get it right, but it's basically that our vulnerabilities show
us about our values. Right, The things that really matter
to us are the things that we often feel most
vulnerable around, and obviously, you know, children are that thing.
And it's good that they're that important, and as you said,
that the anxiety doesn't really help us be a better parent.

(06:08):
So you know, what's your process of Okay, anxiety has arisen,
I'm in anxiety. What's your process of working with it? Today?

Speaker 1 (06:16):
I absolutely have to interrupt the pattern. It took me
a really long time to learn this because I love
getting deep. I get real deep in my feelings. I
love just like, oh, let's just marinate in this. And
I think that I believe for a very long time

(06:36):
that if I could just keep going deeper and deeper
and peeling more of the layers away, that I would
get to the root cause and then it would never
bother me again. And I feel like this is a trap,
and it's a trap I've only really understood in the
last few years that I have to interrupt my thought
pattern because my thought pattern it becomes repetitive. And I

(07:00):
I didn't know that that's what I was doing, this
sort of obsessive thinking of just circling back around to
the same idea over and over, and the more that
I would try and unpack that, the more I'm circling back.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
So I think at this point I've tried every which
way you can think of, and what works best for
me is like we're obsessing over something we cannot affect.
I mean that's the first thing to notice. Can I
actually affect this thing that I'm thinking of right now?

Speaker 3 (07:26):
No?

Speaker 1 (07:26):
I cannot. Then we to do something right now in
this moment to change my thought pattern, which usually for
me looks like moving my body, like go on a walk,
see the dogs in the neighborhood. I can put on
some music, i can dance around, I can go talk
to someone. I got a house full of kids, I
have an incredible partner. I can reach out and just

(07:46):
have a conversation about literally anything the groceries that you
need to grab, or something funny I saw on the internet,
but just anything to change the thought pattern. It really
does dissipate that quickly. For me, it's by continuing to
think about it is when I kind of feel trapped
by it and I can't get out, breaking that pattern

(08:07):
is really helpful.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
I love what you said there, and I've thought a
lot about this, and I've even had conversations recently with
people about this. Because there are different schools of thought
on how to approach this sort of thing right, and
one of them is it's sort of a depth psychology
type approach. When those are happening, it's information, it's telling
us something and we should figure out what it is.

(08:30):
And I agree with that some of the time, but
I also agree with you a lot of the time
that to me, they feel like just habitual patterns that
run and I don't know why they run. Well, actually,
I do know why they started running, right, I have
a pretty good idea of why they started running, But
I don't exactly believe them when I think about them.

(08:53):
But they go and if I'm not careful, I just
go along with them, And like you said, I'm not
certain that going deeper into them provides any value at
this point. You know, there's a big movement also around
like feeling your feelings, and I get it, like we
don't want to avoid how we feel, but it's a
slippery slope between avoiding what you feel and allowing yourself

(09:16):
to remain mired in thought patterns that, like you said,
aren't going to go anywhere.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yes, And I think for me, it's about are these
new feelings, Are these feelings that are happening because of
something that has occurred in my real life? Because I
would say ninety nine percent of the time my anxious
thoughts are about old stuff. It's like, remember that time
in third grade you said that thing that was really embarrassing, Like, okay,

(09:44):
well what did you say in high school that was embarrassing?
And have you ever said something as an adult that
was embarrassed? Like it? Really? I guess it's a balance.
And the only way you can know is this a
feeling I need to feel, is this a thought I
need to be thinking, or is this just a habit
that I'm inside of. Is to know yourself and to
know what's going to be most helpful for you. And

(10:06):
there are times where Okay, this situation's hurting me, and
I really just want to have a good cry and
I want to have a good wallow in the way
that I'm feeling, and I'll wake up tomorrow and it'll
be better because I've allowed myself to process that. And
then other times, especially when it's something I've thought over
and over and over again, as soon as it shows up,

(10:27):
I'm just like, no, we do not have time for that.
That is not helpful. And by being that like quick
with it, I really can redirect and move on with
my life as opposed to an older way of thinking
for me, which was like, oh gosh, you know, no,
I really need to sit in this and it just

(10:48):
wasn't helping me to get better.

Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yeah, your book is all about questions, and I'm a
big fan of questions, and a question that I use
in that situation really is is this useful? Is this
thought useful? Because it may be telling me something that
I need to do. You know, there is something that
needs to be done, there's a situation that needs to
be remedied, there's something going on that I am like, Oh,
I didn't realize that was important. You know, is it

(11:13):
useful or to your point, is it useful in like
processing some sort of emotion. But a lot of time,
the answer is like no, there's no new information coming out,
there's no new strategies, there's no there's just nothing. And
in that point, I'm like, if it's not useful, okay,
let's move on. And like you said, I love this idea.
I sometimes just have to set a fairly hard boundary like.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
No, correct right, Yeah, that was doing this? Yeah, And
I don't think I knew I was allowed to tell
my brain that when I was younger, I love all
of these conversations now around like you don't have to
believe the thoughts that you think, yes, because growing up
I thought, well, if it shows up in my head,
it must be true. And now I realize no, our gosh,

(11:57):
our mind is so bombarded with so much information taken
in from so many different sources. You have beliefs that
were put into you as a kid that maybe you
weren't even aware. We're being programmed into your subconscious So
if you don't understand that and kind of take the
guidance of it a bit and take control of where
you're focusing, you will unintentionally allow a bunch of stuff

(12:20):
into your mind that I don't think is super helpful
for you. And like I said, I've tried all kinds
of ways, and this is the one that I feel
like is most helpful, which is this a very loving way.
I don't get mad at myself. I don't judge myself
for feeling anxious, but I just am like, no, it's
literally like course correcting a puppy. Sometimes I think my

(12:42):
mind is a bit like a puppy, where I'm like, Nope,
we're not going to do that. We're going to look
over here, and we're going to move forward because that's
what's best for everybody.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yep, yeah, I agree.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
So let's turn towards the book and questions. I love
the idea of a book about questions, and I'm working
on a book and part of the core ideas about
creating wise habits. And I was thinking recently, like, well,
what's the ultimate wise habit, like, if you had one,
what would it be? And where I landed was it
would be to remember to ask the right question at.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
The right time.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
And I love that this is what your whole book
is oriented around. And so I thought maybe what we
could do is just explore some of the questions that
you offer and just kind of see where that takes us.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
Early on you say, I'm no longer looking for answers,
I'm looking for wisdom. What is wisdom to you? What
does that mean to you?

Speaker 1 (13:35):
Wisdom to me involves a lived experience, So you know,
I love information. I have been reading nonfiction books like
my life depended on it for fifteen years. I'm so
grateful for the wisdom that I have lived through. I'm
so grateful for the knowledge that I have from the

(13:56):
things that I've read or the podcast I've listened to.
But I don't think something can truly be wisdom until
you've lived through it and you've applied it in your
real life. I heard this quote, and I don't know
who said it, but I love it that any experience
you can live through and remember without negative emotion is

(14:18):
now wisdom that you possess.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Fascinating, isn't that interesting?

Speaker 1 (14:21):
It's as someone who can oftentimes be made anxious by
past memories that felt really powerful for me. Can I
live through something? Can I take the best parts and
pieces with me? Can I navigate that experience without feeling
triggered by it, without going to a certain kind of place.

(14:44):
Can it just be this knowledge that I possess that
I get to hold in my toolbox now, so you know,
I could have all kinds of knowledge that I acquire
and did as a woman. It was pregnant for the
very first time and excited about having my first son,
and that is very different than the wisdom I now possess.

(15:06):
He's about to turn eighteen next month, so I have
a lot of lived experience with Jackson that helps me
to make better decisions about his siblings. But then I'm
also living through a whole different experience with each one
of them. So for me, it's actually applying the knowledge
that you've gained and knowing what works and what doesn't.

(15:27):
And I think that's a really important distinction to make,
particularly for my audience, and I'm guessing maybe similarly for yours,
is that she often is looking for what's the next thing,
what's the next book, what's the next conference, what's the
next course, What's she wants the next thing, the next thing,
And you don't need one more piece of information. You

(15:49):
need to apply what you already know works for you.
I think that we constantly look for more info because
we're hoping there's an easier path.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
Yes, that's we want a hack.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yes, and there's not a hack. There's just like the
stuff you know you should be doing and are not doing.
That's the stuff that you need to focus on. So
for me, wisdom is about experience.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
I love that, and I couldn't agree more. I think
that the going to the seminar, the listening to the
next podcast, the reading the next book, it serves a
useful purpose in reminding us of things that we know,
because we need to be reminded yes, and like you're saying,
I think, yeah, we keep thinking there's an easier answer

(16:37):
than the answer that is presented to us, which is
that life is challenging, it's hard, you're going to do
your best to get through it. And if you're going
to make a change, it's probably going to happen as
a result of a lot of small actions taken again
and again and again and again. Yes, And when you're
at the beginning of that process, we often doubt that

(16:58):
it actually works because you do a couple of those
small actions and not much changes, right, and so you go,
that's not going to work, so you don't do it right.
Whereas if we kept doing it so many of these
things they accumulate so slowly. There's a certain amount of
I think, buying into that method and that understanding of
how change works that allows us to perhaps then recognize

(17:21):
we do know everything we need to know. Like you said,
how do we apply it?

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (17:26):
I think probably after the first fifteen podcasts I did,
and I've done I don't know how many, seven hundred,
I mean, so many of them at this point, probably
after the first fifteen, if there was some soul who
was capable of applying all the knowledge and wisdom in
those first fifteen would be light years ahead of somebody
who had listened to all seven hundred of them and

(17:48):
only partially applied little bits of it. Right, It's more
fun and easier to listen to read. And I'm not
putting that down. I still do it. I love doing
it said, and how do we live it? And I
love that that's your definition for wisdom.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, there's a great expression, which might be John Maxwell.
I'm not sure who originated it, but you know the
old expression is knowledge is power, and he says, no,
knowledge is not power applied. Knowledge is power. Yes, if
you have all the knowledge in the world but you
don't actually take any action against it, you're going to

(18:25):
be in the same spot that you are next year.
And you hit the nail on the head because it
is fun. It's so fun to want to start your
first podcast, or begin a business, or make a change
in your life and go get together with like minded people,
go have coffee with your friends, go talk about the thing,

(18:46):
and if you're not careful, six months go by, nine
months go by, six years go by, and you're still
talking about the thing you want to do. Because it
feels like you're making traction, and it feels like you're
making change in life because you're talking about it. Because
talking about its way funner and way easier than actually
doing the things you need to do. So, like you said,

(19:07):
you're writing your book right now. You know, we could
talk about it all day. I could share ideas and
advice and it would be exciting. And at the end
of the day, if you want to publish book, you
have to sit down and stack a bunch of words
on top of each other, which is a slog and
it's hard and nobody. I've done this so many times.

(19:28):
It never gets easier. Yeah, it would be way funner
to go talk about writing a book than actually writing
a book. Though, if you don't do the hard stuff,
you don't get to experience the joy of getting to
the other side of your dream.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Absolutely, So let's go to a question that I really like,
which is what big thing is actually little? Tell me
about that question? What's important about that to you?

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Yeah? I mean this question came about because I kept
seeing so many people in my community, the friends of mine,
and I'm going to make sweeping generalizations that this I'm
sure happens to dudes as well, But a lot of
women just make a really big deal about something that,
as my teenagers would say, like it's it's not that deep.

(20:16):
Momb like, it's not that deep. So I was on
a podcast tour like a year and a half ago,
and I played this game with the audience where I
would say, let's play a game of never have I ever?
Are you familiar with never have I ever? Sort of,
but it's like a camp game, but you would start
with ten fingers and you see who you can get
out first. But you would say like, never have I

(20:36):
ever climbed a mountain? And then if you have done
that thing, you put a finger down. So I played
this game with the audience. But the intention is that
I am naming things that people really want to do
but don't do because they're afraid to or don't do
because they think, quote, I'm not that kind of person.

(20:57):
So it would be things like never have I ever
gotten a tattoo, Never have I ever walked up to
a stranger at the bar and introduced myself, Never have
I ever applied for a job I was mostly qualified
for but not fully qualified for. So it's just all
these things that people especially women, think of as something

(21:20):
for someone else. That's for a different kind of person.
That's for my big sister, that's for the cool girls
in middle school, that's for someone other than me. And
I was so flabbergasted by how many people were not
doing things that in my mind were so simple. So
like in most audiences, two thirds of the room has

(21:45):
always wanted to get a tattoo, but doesn't get a
tattoo because they're like, well, I could never I'm not
that kind of person. I'm like, y'all could literally leave
this room and change that tonight within an hour. You
could go get tattoo. I'm not saying you should, but
you could go get a tattoo, and for the rest
of your life you see yourself as a completely different

(22:07):
kind of person. And I think that those kind of moments,
like those before and after moments, where all of a
sudden you are someone else based on a decision that.

Speaker 4 (22:17):
You made, is really powerful, especially for people who there's
a lot of care that they give to others, with
a lot of taking care of other people, and you
begin to identify yourself through the lens of others.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
It's really powerful to do something. I mean it's so ridiculous.
Cut bang, shave your head, get a tattoo, like just
go on vacation by yourself. Go just It sounds so simple,
but I was shocked at Albny. Women were really sort
of frozen in fear over doing these things that were

(22:50):
pretty little. And if you're frozen in fear over doing
something that little, you're never gonna make a move against
something that can actually change your life in a big way.
So I wanted to have a conversation about what are
the little things that you're not doing because you're making
a mountain out of a molehill, and if you can

(23:10):
start to take on some of those littler things. The
example I give in the book is going to a
concert by yourself. I love music. I'm a massive fan,
and I love concerts, and I'm really blessed in that
my fiance also loves music, so he's super happy to
go see shows with me. But I wished earlier on
in my life I would have just gone to see

(23:32):
my favorite bands by myself instead of begging people to
come along so I didn't have to go alone and
then sitting next to someone who doesn't care about this artist,
and then my experience is ruined because I'm trying to
you know, I just wish I had figured that out sooner.
So that's what it means to me.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
Some of the music that means the most to me,
I almost prefer to be by myself, even if I
know somebody who likes that music.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
I don't want my experience diluted at all, Yeah, I guess.
Or maybe it's fear of showing that much emotion, although
I mean I cry all the time, so I don't
really think that it's that. But I understand what you're saying.
There's something that you know, I don't want to dilute
the power of that moment with any sort of distraction. Yeah,
I think that also. You know, when I read that question,

(24:43):
it made me also think about, like, what things in
life are we making a big deal out of as
real problems that maybe aren't you know. I love that
idea of making mountains out of molehills, right, And the
way you do that is you just get really myopic.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Right.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
If you crawl up do a little thing on the
ground and you put it two inches away from your eyes,
it looks really big, absolutely, And I think that's a
question like that, and it's inverse that you use, which
is what big thing am I thinking is little? But yeah,
those are just quick ways of changing perspective, and ultimately
that's what we want from a question, right, we want
it to cause us to look differently at something.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, I think again, it's sort of circling back to
what we talked about at the beginning, of what we
focus on. And even as you were talking, I was
thinking about moments in my day where I will be
distracted by something and I will turn that into this
big thing and it's really not worth my time or

(25:45):
energy to start obsessing. It's so easy for me to
do that because, especially in a season like this one,
where so much is going on and I'm trying to
accomplish a lot in a given day, I can get
really sort of obsessively focused on something. I'm like, oh
my gosh, here's a perfect example. I have a really
full day, I'm doing this conversation with you, and then

(26:07):
I have a bunch of personal projects that I'm trying
to get done. All of these things going against launching
a book, which is just a lot of work and
a lot of energy. If I want to do it well,
and I do really want to do a good job
for my readers in my community. And I got a
request from my publisher. They had an idea for something
they wanted to do, and can you also write this

(26:32):
piece for us and then we're going to push it out.
And I just immediately like I got so anxious because
I'm like, I don't wait, I don't have time, and
I'm already so overwhelm and can I write something? I'd
know I don't I've time to write anything. And I
really was sort of spinning before I got on this
conversation with you, and an older version of me would

(26:53):
just completely go off the rails with that. I would
give incredible meaning to I have too much and I
don't have enough time, and I'm not supported, and like
just all these stories I might tell myself, and then
it just popped in like, oh no, you just tell
me don't time. It's that easy, Like this is actually
you need to not make this such a big deal.

(27:16):
You're allowed to just say no, thank you and move
on with your life. That truly would have taken me
a whole day, if not hours, in the past, and
it ended up taking eleven minutes took me eleven minutes
to figure out that I was allowed to say no
and to move on, and it really just wasn't that
big of a deal. I love the reminder that the

(27:38):
meaning that we give to things is a big determining
factor in how we're able to navigate life. Yeah. So
if you're giving this big meaning to something that's actually
quite small, it's going to make everything seem way more
serious than it actually is.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yep. Yeah, That's another favorite question of mine, which is like,
what am I making this mean? And what else might
it mean? We are creating meaning all the time. You
can't not do it. The brain simply will do it
no matter what. But recognizing that there is a construction
process going on in there and that just that which
we just generally don't do, right, we think that the

(28:20):
meaning is what we think it means. You believe it
so thoroughly. Y I watched this with my partner, Ginny's
mother when she had Alzheimer's, and I watched her like
arrive at conclusions that were preposterous that she believed absolutely.
When someone's brain is not working that well, you sort

(28:43):
of get to see the process that we all go through.
It's just so exaggerated that you can see the little
bits of it a little bit better. And I could
see that in her. It would just the brain wouldn't
be like, well, I don't know, it doesn't do that.
It's like, oh, it just fills in a meaning and
then you buy it one hundred Yes, it's amazing.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
And I think an expression I heard someone say this
years ago. I don't remember who, but they said, the
very first thought your brain has is what you're programming
tells you is true, And the second thought your brain
has is who you actually are. And the example that
I always think of this is seeing another woman walking

(29:24):
down the street and she could be in maybe her
outfit's really sexy, or maybe her outfit's like crazy, or
maybe it doesn't even matter what it is. But before
I can think anything else, my brain will supply a judgment,
a judgment of her outfit, a judgment of who she is,
a judgment, and then immediately I'm like, oh, gross, no, man, like,

(29:48):
we are not that person, Like we don't judge, and
who cares what she's wearing? And maybe she feels fabulous
and like that color looks great on her. And the
second thought I have I think is who I really am,
and that first thought is just the subconscious programming that
tells me that I should judge another woman because that
is something I saw modeled a lot growing up.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yeap.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
So I think it's okay what your brain supplies as
meaning if you can catch it, if you.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
Can notice the thought precisely because you can't stop it. Yes,
I don't think meditation is for everyone by any stretch
of the imagination. I think everybody should try it, though,
and the reason is because you will realize very quickly
like you are not the author of the thoughts that
are coming up. They just come up whether you want
them to or not, and you're not really even controlling

(30:39):
what they are. It's happening on its own.

Speaker 4 (30:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
And I think that's really good for us to be
able to do what you say, which is let the
first thought come recognize its condition. I'm not bad because
I have it, it's just what the brain does. But
is that who I want to be? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (30:55):
And I think again, going back to this idea of
training our thoughts to catch it and redirect it in
the same way that I would do with my children.
I watch my kids say something or see something or
focus on something, and I know that the thing that
they're thinking is like, maybe it's my daughter and she
says something rude to her brother, and then they're you know,

(31:17):
I want to redirect or I want to give her
information about how that might feel to the person who's
receiving it, even if he is your big brother, and
even if he did bug you. And you know, it
shows up a lot with my kids of trying to
make their siblings human in their mind, because in their
mind like, oh, that's my brother and he's the worst,
but to oh, how would that feel if someone said

(31:40):
that to you? And how you know, would that hurt
your heart? And you know, just I think it's the
same thing that we need to do with ourselves. Parents especially,
I think are really we're so much more compassionate to
our children. We're so much more graceful with our children
than we would ever be with our internal monologue. So
if you can begin to think through that lens of like, oh, yeah, okay,

(32:01):
we did think that, but here's what we actually want
to think. Or I think a really good example of
this is if you catch yourself, let's say you see
someone who's in your industry, whatever that is, whether it's
another mama like you say, oh mama, or it's someone
who does what you do. You see them and you
judge what they're doing, or you think something unkind about them,

(32:23):
And if you're really honest with yourself, that judgment or
that criticism is coming from a place of jealousy, like
when you see that kind of oh, that's what I'm doing.
And it's really hard to admit because none of us
want to admit that we're that person. But if you
can notice that and actually I have taught myself to

(32:44):
do this and it's so annoying, but it really does work.
Is to stop the unkind thought or to stop the
judgmental thought and force myself to say a prayer for
more success for that person. Man, she is an example
that success is possible, and look at what she's getting
to do and like, wouldn't that be so amazing? Number one,

(33:07):
to pray for more success for the person that you
are judging, for the person that you're if you're being honest,
a bit jealous of. And number two, to see that
jealousy as a clue for things that you wish you had.
So so often I think like the internet is filled
with people who are actually jealous of the people they're judging,

(33:28):
but they don't realize that's what it is. I think
that that signal it's manifesting maybe in unkind ways, you know,
trolls tearing apart people in the comment section. But I
think what's really there, don't I don't think it's like
an evil person who's like waving their pitchfork. I think
it's someone who like has some untapped potential, some untapped desires,

(33:48):
and they're not even in touch with themselves enough to
know that that jealousy is a signal like, well maybe
I could write a book. Well maybe I could learn
to play guitar. Maybe I can try and do that thing.
So just understand that the jealousy, again, if you can
look at your own foibles without judgment, is a really

(34:10):
good indicator of maybe something that you want to make
change on in your life.

Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah, You've got a question later in the book around
the same idea, which is why do you believe what
you believe? And I think, you know, kind of going
back to the jealousy thing and other things. You know,
I think it's good to always question your thoughts. You know,
why do I think this way? Why do I feel
this way? And we've talked about like not believing your
first thought. I think there's a corollary of that to me,

(34:35):
which is the more strongly I feel it, the more
suspicious I know I am of it.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
Oh that's good.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
Right, Like the more it's just because it feels even
more certain. Yeah, and I go, wait, hang on a second,
Like sometimes it's it's spot on, but sometimes that's a
real sign to me that like I'm going off the
rails on something because it's that emotionally weighted.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, that's such a good one too, because the emotional
piece is when I feel something that strongly, it is
my emotion. It is not like my smart brain talking.
It is not the rational part of me. It is
usually my most emotional self. And she never makes good decisions.

(35:24):
She really does not. She makes decisions out of fear.
She makes decisions and anger. She does a lot of
things that end up hurting me and that I then
need to clean up later. So a great thing I've
learned over the last ten years especially, and I think
this just comes with getting older, is to sit, to

(35:44):
sit and not make a move, to not do anything,
to wait and see if this very strong and intense
feeling I am having dissipates because then it's not sort
of rational thinking, it's just my emotional side wanting to
show up and have an opinion. Yeah, yep.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
I sometimes think I'm too good at that, meaning that
I'm so good at like Okay, just let the emotional
energy settle before you do anything, which is really good generally,
but I think that what it can turn into for
me is that it's hard for me to broach difficult
things with people, and sometimes I need that emotional energy

(36:24):
to do it. And if I let the emotional energy settle,
what ends up happening is my brain comes in and goes,
that's not really important, that's you know, Oh, it's just
it talks it away and then you know it's a
big thing that actually does need addressed. That I talk
myself into making it a little thing.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
And I think that's.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
Why with all this stuff, it's so helpful to know,
like you said it very early on, to know yourself. Yeah,
and it's why advice is not a one size fits
all thing, and you talk about that early in the
book also, that like if you think someone else can
give you all the answers, you're going to be disappointed.
I used to coach people a lot, and you'd end

(37:04):
up giving people completely different advice because they were different
people they needed different things, you know. And so I
think that these questions are it's good to know your
tendencies and yourself so that you can go, oh, okay,
you know what. Maybe I'm the person who swallows it
all the time, so instead I need to actually use

(37:24):
the emotional energy, where on the other hand, you might be,
like you're describing, I end up saying stuff all the
time that I should not have said, right, Like, I'm
always getting myself in trouble. Maybe I need to, you know,
pause a beat. And I think we all have some
of both in there.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, that's a really good one. The understanding and knowing myself.
I mean, I think it's a lifelong journey for all
of us, but it really is something that I've only
leaned into in the last decade. And I think that's
because I was raised in an environment. I was raised
a really religious home and a religious community, and so

(38:04):
there really wasn't a lot of concern about knowing yourself.
It was just about knowing the rules of our church community,
and it was about you know, doing things that would
make God happy, and not making mistakes and not being
a sinner, and just like this whole litany of rules,
and it was really just how can I be the
best at following these rules and very little awareness of

(38:28):
like who am I and what do I like and
what am I interested in? And so it's only in
the last decade that I've understood that that's a very
important piece of being a human being, is knowing who
you are, and that it's not something that you're just
going to snap your fingers and immediately figure out. It
is a journey inward. And questions for me have always

(38:49):
been this great way to find answers, and I thought
if I could just share some of those answers with
anyone who might read the book, that it could be
helpful for them, and it didn't require me to know
what was best for someone else, which obviously we can't do.
I used to think that I could learn enough that

(39:11):
I would know what was best for everybody, And now
I understand, Oh, gosh, how ridiculous that you know. I
can only speak from my perspective, my worldview. But I
love that there are questions, and gosh, there's twenty six
in the book, but probably a million in life that
we would all come to with completely different perspectives and

(39:32):
completely different opinions. And my dream, my hope is that
anybody who does read the book actually does not read
what I wrote about the question before they consider the question,
because it's very possible you hear the question and you
didn't equate it to you know, family boundaries at all.
Like maybe it took you in a completely different direction,

(39:55):
but I see it through the lens of dealing within laws, right,
So that's a the beauty of a great question is
that it might take you in a completely different direction
than it takes me.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
I think that's a great aspiration for the book. And
back to what we talked about earlier, this idea of
applying versus learning, answering the question ourselves as honestly as
we can as the application of the knowledge. And I
know myself that I tend to go through books like
that and it'll be like contemplate X, Y and Z

(40:27):
or write this, and I'm like, okay, well just.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
Keep reading, right, yes, keep reading.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
Yeah, I know exercises are good, but now some of
that As a profession, I get through these books in
order to do interviews on them. If I sat and
answered every reflection question, I'd never get anywhere right. But
I do think it's a tendency of all of us
in general, because it is easier to just keep reading
than it is to actually ask ourselves a difficult question

(40:54):
that causes us to go uh, I don't.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
Know, yeah for sure, because it's a going back to
this idea of you could just get a bunch of
ideas and not actually have to hold a mirror up
to yourself. I am such a huge fan of journaling.
It is a massive part of my life and has
been for decades and decades, and I think because that
was my first form of therapy, Like writing in a

(41:18):
diary as a little girl was how I got things out.
And in my diary I was allowed to say that
this was hard and that this thing happened and I
don't feel safe, and like I was allowed to say
all those things I couldn't say to my parents. So
I still carry that with me today, And sometimes I
don't like what is coming up when in journaling. You know,

(41:41):
sometimes I'm like, well that's a bummer, like or god,
I were still in this thought pattern, or dang it
that's not who I want to be. That's not the
kind of attitude I want to have around things. But
for me, that journal is it's my mirror. It's like,
this is what is really going on. And I love, love,
love journaling every day. But I know that's not for everybody.

(42:04):
And I think that even if all you do is
sit down when the mood strikes you, maybe it's once
a week ideally, or even once a month, and just
give yourself a time limit, say I'm going to write,
no matter what, for fifteen minutes without stopping. Give yourself
a prompt, like the things I want to improve this

(42:25):
year are or something I'm really struggling with is, And
just promise yourself that you will not stop writing until
the timer goes off, and you don't even think about it,
don't question it. Just like free form, just everything that
comes out, and then go back through and read what
you wrote. You will surprise yourself. It's where your inner

(42:46):
thoughts sort of bubble up from. It's where intuition will
show up. It's where the truth will come out. Because
we're really good at putting layers in and muting things
and numbing things and not facing the truth. But if
you just let yourself sort of get it out, some
really incredible truths emerge and you can't unsee them once

(43:08):
you've seen them. I always say, you don't have to change,
you don't have to take a step, you don't have
to do anything. But once you have the knowledge, you
can't unknow it. Yeah, and even if all you do
is kind of sit with the knowledge for a while,
I think that's a fantastic first step to understanding that
change needs to happen.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
I agree. And if you look at the scientific study
of change and the theories of change, one of the
most prominent is called the trance theoretical model, which we
call the stages of change model, but it talks about
different stages that everybody's probably heard of this on some level, right.
But the first phase is called pre contemplation. It just
means that you're just starting to have the slightest awareness

(43:53):
that something needs to change. You're not ready to change,
you don't actually think you should change, You're just starting
to have a whisper. And then comes the contemplation where
you start to think about and contemplate the change. And
then there's a planning stage, and you know, the action
stage is way down there, and I think there are

(44:14):
times where the answer is like, just do it. It's simple.
You don't need to give it a lot of thought,
like you were talking about some of these things that
were making a big deal out of but sometimes certain
changes they need time to percolate. And what you're describing
is the ability to just you start to see it.
I mean, I know my journey as an addict was
a long one. I mean there were initial whispers early

(44:36):
in my drinking and drugging career. You know, by the
time I got sober at twenty four, listeners will know this,
I was a homeless heroin addict. And it's easy to
point to like the moment that I went into treatment
that last time and got sober, But there were so
many moments before that where I just got a glimpse
of the truth for a minute and it made me uncomfortable,

(44:57):
and I got another glimpse of the truth.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Was it a moment of awareness of oh this is serious?
What did those glimpses look like for you?

Speaker 3 (45:07):
They could range from just a general like, h something's
not right about this. And when I say this, I
mean my use to you know, full awareness, like you're
out of control. You can't stop. This is killing you.
They were just different ones, but it took a certain
amount of them, and it took a certain amount of
attempts at change that failed to get to the moment

(45:28):
where you know, if you were going to film the movie,
you'd see me walking into this treatment center in December,
cue the triumphant music. But that moment in reality, you
can't separate it from all the moments before that led
to that moment that were me thinking about and learning
and feeling uncomfortable and trying, nor all the moments after

(45:50):
where I made the right choice again and again and again.
That moment would be meaningless without both of those things.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
That's so good, and I feel like such a good
reminder for people that we think the change is the
instantaneous light bulb moment, like you said in the movie,
it's making that decision, everything goes right from here, But
it actually is sometimes the stacking of a thousand bits

(46:20):
of awareness that finally got us to the moment where
we could change everything. You know, Like I know you're
into personal development too, and you read all of these books,
so I'm sure you've had this moment which I've definitely
had where you have heard an expression or a quote
or a line a thousand times and just for some reason,

(46:44):
I just got chilled. I don't even have a quote
in mind, but just for some reason, on one random day,
you hear a line, you hear a scripture, you hear
a poem, you hear something you've heard a million times before,
but on this day, that fast, it just reorients the
that you see the world. Yep, it's not because everything
changed in that instant. It's because everything has been stacking

(47:07):
to lead you to the moment where everything could change
in a mist it.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
That's a beautiful way to say it. And I think
it's that belief in understanding that also makes anything that say,
you know, you just wrote a book, I'm working on
a book. To believe that there's any point in saying
these things that have been said a thousand times before, right,
is to just have that hope that the way that
I'll say it will appeal to this particular person on

(47:33):
this particular day, for this particular like right now. Yeah,
I think if you're trying to be like, well, I'm
not saying anything new, nobody's gonna say anything.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yes, yeah, right, for sure, I definitely, I am not
saying anything new. Oh my gosh, I don't think anybody
who is in this space is saying anything new, because
the Stoics had this that we're just all repeating the
things that they said so long ago. But I have
personally experienced those moments of rehearing something or I used

(48:08):
to go to a lot more conferences, personal development conferences
or business conferences, and sometimes I would go to one
more than once. And some of those conferences are very repetitive.
It's like, be for beat, They're saying the same thing,
but I have There's one in particular I'm thinking of
where I have my notebooks from each of the three

(48:29):
times I went, and it is the same content, but
my notes are completely different because two years removed from
the first experience, I am a different person, and so
the information I'm taking in is for who I am today.
And I really just don't think we can undervalue how
long it may take us to get to the point

(48:50):
where we can hear what we need to hear. And simultaneously,
for anyone who is doing work where you're trying to
teach or lead conversations or help other people, you maybe
will have to say the same thing five hundred times
to get to the one moment where it sinks in
for somebody. But it happens again and again and again.

(49:12):
I experience it as someone who consumes the books or
the content, so I know that it must also happen
for the people who consume the things that we create.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
Hey, friends, it's Eric. Let's talk about something hard. How
many times have you made a promise to yourself and
broken it. You said you'd go to bed earlier, start exercising,
or stop reaching for that late night snack, but when
the moment of choice came, something pulled you in the
wrong direction. Those those choice points are where everything happens,

(50:04):
and when we keep failing at them, it doesn't just
derail our goals. It chips away at something deeper, our
trust in ourselves. But it doesn't have to stay that way.
In my upcoming free workshop, the Six Saboteurs of Self Control,
we'll explore what happens at these choice points, why they're
so hard to navigate, and most importantly, how to approach

(50:26):
them differently. This isn't about willpower or trying harder. It's
about understanding the hidden forces that lead to making the
wrong choices and learning the tools to rebuild your confidence
one choice at a time. Imagine trusting yourself again, knowing
that when you say you'll do something, you actually follow through.

(50:46):
That's what this workshop is about. Join me and let's
turn your choice points into moments of strength. Go to
good Wolf dot me slash self control. That's good Wolf
dot me slash self control to register for this free workshop.
When I got sober, I got sober in AA and AA. Essentially,

(51:08):
they've got one main text called the Big Book, and
the first one hundred and sixty four pages of it
are like the instructional part. After that it's all stories.
So it's been the same since like nineteen thirty nine.
Nobody wants to change it, and I think there are
some good and bad things about that thing. But the
point here is that you go to meeting after meeting

(51:28):
after meeting, and you keep reading the same thing. It's
only one hundred and sixty four pagies, right, But if
you're engaged in the process for real, you are like,
wait a second, it said that, Yeah, it's something comes
alive because you're not the same as you were the
last time.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
You read it.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
The text is exactly the same, but we're not the same.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Yeah. Well, I also think sometimes I just need to
be reminded of truths I already know. I will re
listen to nonfiction books that I love again and again.
You know, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People one of
my favorite. Yeah, just phenomenal, And once a year I'll
just re listen to that audiobook because he's also his

(52:09):
voice is also very soothing, and I feel like my
Grandpa's giving me advice. But I'm like, thank you. They
I've got distracted, But you're right, that is the truth,
Like just being reminded again and again. It's all sort
of coming around to the same conversation today, which is
just focusing your thought process. And sometimes you can do

(52:29):
it yourself, and sometimes you need tools that other people
have created to help you focus on what you know
is true or what you need to be reminded of.
But as long as we're aware that we can just
keep coming back and try and again, try again. Okay,
we're gonna go again. We're gonna do these things again.
We're gonna see where we are. Instead of thinking that
we're supposed to all have it figured out and that

(52:49):
we're supposed to get it the first time, and that
we should be perfect or we should, you know, give up.
This is this journey of just like reorienting yourself, coming
back again and seeing where you are today.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
Yep. And life just keeps changing. I mean I've certainly
had this sense many times, like, don't I have this
figured it out yet? Yeah, you'd think by now some
of it is. Yes, I did have it figured out
for that version, but now my son's eighteen and he's
not twelve, and he's not four. Yeah, I'm using your example.
In my case, I would say my son's twenty six

(53:22):
and not eighteen. And I'm in my fifties, not my thirties.
My parents are aging and ill, and they weren't. Like
life never stops changing and presenting us with new challenges,
and there is a certain amount of this stuff. We
have to keep answering these questions again and again for
ourselves because the territory is not static.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I feel like even
some of those lessons that we learn ten years ago,
fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, maybe you haven't considered
them as a potential to help you with what you're
doing today or where you're at today. And then the
reminder you know, coming back, or oh wow, yeah, that's
a really great piece of advice, and I need to

(54:03):
remember that small, simple steps are going to add up
and six months from now things can look very different
than they do today. And just all that stuff again
and again. I don't know. I find it so helpful
to keep revisiting, and it's just so helpful, and it
calms down the anxious thoughts that tell me I should
have figured it all out by now.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (54:25):
So back to your questions. We've only gotten to a
few of them, and there's so many good ones. I
wanted to talk about one that says, what is your floor?
Tell me about that one. I was very intrigued when
I read this one.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Yeah, this is really for me, trying to find a
clever way to encourage readers to raise their standards. I
grew up believing that I was limited only by my imagination,
Like if I just had opportunity, if I could just
imagine something bigger and better and greater, then I could
work really hard and make this happen. And if I

(54:59):
look back on the last twenty years of my life,
especially the massive jumps that I've made that have helped
me to get closer and closer to the version of
myself that I want to be when I'm you know,
ninety five. Are not when I imagined a bigger future.
It's not when I elevated the ceiling. It's when I
raised the floor. It's when I put a line in

(55:21):
the sand and refuse to go backwards from here. It's
when I made decisions that are you know, from now on,
I will never do this thing again. From now on,
I am a person who does this. It's making those
changes that change who you are and the standards that

(55:42):
we have for every area of our life. The standards
we bring into romantic relationships, into our health, into the
way that we conduct business. Those standards are the quality
of our life. If you have low standards for yourself,
you're in a community of people who don't have any

(56:03):
standards at all. Your ability to like move up and
evolve and grow is going to be so freaking hard,
because even if you go through seasons of great opportunity
or great growth or something amazing happens, if you're like
floors all the way back down here and you can
backslide that far, you're going to at least that's my

(56:25):
experience in life. I can't say, oh, just one more time,
or oh it's just one X y Z, or it's
just this, or it's just that. That's just not how
I'm wired. Maybe other people can do it, it's not
how I'm wired. And for me, I really learned about
this through nutrition, which maybe sounds like such a silly

(56:46):
example to use, but I grew up just no idea,
like just abysmal abysmal nutrition. And you know, our parents
can't give us information that they don't have. Neither one
of my parents were raised in homes that were healthy
or understood you know that junk food and Cheetos and LEDs,

(57:08):
all of that stuff that doesn't Yeah, it doesn't just
affects us physically, it also affects us emotionally and like
our cognitive ability. And they just didn't have that info.
So I didn't have that info. And then I got older,
got into my teenage years, in my early twenties, I
sort of jumped headfirst into diet culture and trying to

(57:29):
do things to lose weight that were like super unhealthy,
and I just went on the seesaw this yo, yo,
this just all of this stuff, and it was a
really very it's gonna sound so stupid, but it really
was the first time in my life that I ever
made a from now on decision, and that was giving

(57:50):
up soda. So I used to drink diet coke like
it was my part time job. I drink it all
day every day. I love diet coke.

Speaker 5 (57:59):
I still would like to have a diet coke and
I have an ad one for like fifteen years. I understand,
but I just realized one day, and this was I
still was like not great nutrition, but I knew that
there were chemicals and diet coke that were not good
for my body.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
I just knew that, and so I thought, what does
it look like if I just never have a coke again? Ye,
And I had truly never made a decision that I
didn't fall back on, Like I would always start something
and then say, oh well it's Saturday, or oh well,
you know. So that was the first thing for me,
and I think that felt like a safe choice because

(58:33):
I also was like definitely drinking too much wine at
the time. I was definitely making decisions that were way
harsher for my body. But giving up soda was just
it was one thing I could do. It felt hard
but not impossible, and I thought it was going to
be this whole thing, and within a week I was like,
over it. Yeah I missed it. I still I really

(58:55):
would love a diet coke when I'm having Mexican food, especially,
But what I yeah, it's been fifteen years. I don't
put that into my body. And it was the first
decision that I made that I was like, WHOA, what
else could I remove? What else could I change? Where
else could I raise my standards? And I don't know.

(59:16):
I love stacking that kind of stuff, like one thing
on top of another, because if you say, okay, well
the new standard is, then I don't consume that I
don't take that into my body. What else does it change?
If you, for instance, if you're listening to this and
you're like, I really want to make positive change. I
really want to take in more information. I would love

(59:37):
to read more. It's something I get a lot from
people in my community. How do you read so many books?
I'd love to read. I'm like, I don't watch TV.
I don't And I know if it's like every once
in a while, there's something amazing, like I think the
Diplomat was fantastic. I loved the Diplomat. They're like, I
don't consume television. So every night for fifteen years, not

(59:59):
every night, say ninety eight percent of night for fifteen years,
you will find me in bed, probably on a eating
pad because it's my favorite reading nonfiction. And that is
how I'm able to read. That's how I'm able to
get ideas, that's how I'm able to like, Oh, let
me take this concept and see if I can rework it,
or maybe I can interview this person on the podcast.
But that's a standard that I set for myself. It's

(01:00:21):
what are you willing to give up and to never
touch again in order to have a life that feels
more like the life that you want to have. So
that's what it looks like for me. Is it's not
about can you give yourself more opportunity? It's can you
raise the bar for yourself so that you're not backsliding?

Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
Yeah, I've heard some version of that. That's a little
bit like what really matters is not who you are
on your best day, but who you are on your
worst day.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Oooh that's good, right, that's good.

Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
It's the same idea. And you know, I think this
idea of like drawing a line in the sand and
saying that is it can be really effective, and for
some people it's very problematic because they're not yet capable
of making that and I'm thinking about things like addiction,
and yeah, that like it's just black or it's white
can be problematic for those people because it is an

(01:01:14):
incremental process of improvement. But I do think there's a
lot to be said for this idea of you know,
like you said, it's not that I have to keep
aiming higher with everything. It's that I need to bring
up the parts of my life that are low. As
a friend of mine, Jonathan Fields, who has a podcast
called The Good Life Project, and he wrote a book

(01:01:35):
a few years ago and then I don't remember it,
but he basically talked about like we all have these
four different buckets in our life, like contribution and connection,
and his point was that the lowest one of those
buckets is the limiter on everything else.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
WHOA, that's so good, right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
So, like you say, you want to raise the floor.
You know, if your connection bucket is completely everything else
in your life is going to get dragged down around it.
So you've got to focus there on bringing that up,
and so when I read that floor piece it it
really resonated with me. And you know, certainly I do
think for certain things for me, there has had to

(01:02:16):
be a very clear line, like no mind altering substances. Yeah,
the answer is no. There's no debate, there's no question.
Of course it comes up, but the answer is always no.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
It took me some attempts till I could get there.
But now, like you say, it's pretty easy, isn't.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
It interesting too? When having made decisions like that and
I know that you've experienced this, something different occurs when
it's a forever choice and I don't even know how
to properly explain it, and I don't know how to
like do these three things and it'll be a forever choice,

(01:02:53):
but you feel it in your body. You're just like, oh,
that's done, okay, And I I don't know how to
explain that in the right way. But even giving up
like nutrition as I talked about, has been this evolution
for me over a long period of time, and even
getting to the place that I am now, I never
ever would think that this version of me, if I

(01:03:16):
went back fifteen years, that I could imagine a world
where like I can't even tell you the last time
I had fast food. I can't tell you the last
time I had junk food. These were not like side
dishes of my life. This was the main event. This
was all I all I lived off of. And now
it's not even I don't even think about it, but

(01:03:38):
I wish that I could bottle up whatever it is
that you hit a place where all of a sudden,
it's just done, and you know it in your spirit.
You're like, I don't have to worry about this anymore.
This is just not something that I care about.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Yeah, yeah, I think if any of us could come
up with that, you would cure addiction, and you'd be
the wealthiest person in the planet because you would solve
a completely intractable problem. These things that we know we
probably shouldn't do, but we still keep doing. You know,
they plague everyone to something. They plague everyone, but you
can make progress. I tell this story, listeners are probably like,

(01:04:15):
oh God, here he goes again, but I don't know
if probably not. I don't tell it that often. But
a few years ago my mom fell and broke her hip.
So I was a primary caregiver and every week I
would go to the pharmacy and I would pick up
her medicine, and I would get her groceries, and i'd
bring him back to her. And it was about a
month or a month and a half into that that
I realized I was carrying oxyconton from the pharmacy to

(01:04:39):
my mother, and not only had I not wanted it,
I hadn't even registered notice what it was. And I
would have probably robbed you at gunpoint for that in
nineteen ninety four. And again that's not a bragging. I
think that the point of that story for me is
something that seems so intractable today can become, as you said,

(01:05:05):
back to wisdom, can become an experience in my past
that has been drained of its emotional energy to a
certain degree. That's the hopeful story of change. And that's
a lot of years and a lot of effort to
get to that point, but it is possible.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Yeah. It also makes me think just vibrationally, because I
love the idea of energy and what vibration we're living
at vibrationally, like, do we just get to a place
that it doesn't even come into your awareness what you
had in your possession because you are not at the
vibrational frequency of that substance anymore, Like you're just you've

(01:05:46):
gone to a different level and so you can't even
feel that thing. I feel like it's like so beautiful
that we've kind of found our way here in this conversation,
this idea of like a million you know, chips up marble, Yeah,
to get to the place where you hit that moment
where it's just not something that affects you anymore. You know,

(01:06:07):
it's chipping things away, but it's also sort of climbing
your way up the ladder so that you're just at
a completely different level than you used to be, and
so the things that are at that lower level that
you used to be they can't even touch you up here.

Speaker 3 (01:06:20):
Yep, Yeah, I love that. I think that's a beautiful
place to end. And Rachel, thank you so much. I've
really enjoyed this conversation. I really enjoyed the book. I
loved all the questions you and I are going to
continue in the post show conversation where we're going to
explore a couple other questions, things like are you the problem?
And how old are you right now? Which is a

(01:06:42):
great one. So listeners, if you'd like access to the
post show conversation, ad free episodes, come to our monthly
community meetings, and all that other great stuff you get
as being part of our community. You can go to
one you Feed dot net slash join. Thanks again, Rachel, Yeah,
it's been such a pleasure. And we'll have links in
the show notes to where people can find you and
find your book and.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
All of that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
Yeah, thank you so much for the time.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
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