Navigating the Messy Parts of Life: Embracing Imperfection and Growth with Josh Radnor

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You can almost recognize truth by its simplicity. If something
is almost like overly complicated around systems or around you know, minutia,
it's obscuring something. I think the reason fairy tales are
so powerful, and certain children's stories are so powerful is
because if it's wise and true, perennially true, we get
it intuitively. We don't have to do any calculations, you know,

(00:22):
to get it. It's just evident.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to the one you feed.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Throughout time, great tinkers 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 have instead of what we do.

(00:56):
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. This podcast is about how other people keep
themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
good wolf.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
We often imagine that once we have it all the
inner struggles will disappear. But, as Josh Radner reminds us today,
even outward success, fame, acclaim creative fulfillment isn't enough to
quiet the deeper battles within. In this conversation, Josh shares
how real freedom comes not from achieving perfection, but from

(01:38):
making peace with the messy, unfinished parts of ourselves. From
navigating identity and public image to sitting in deep discomfort,
Josh offers a powerful reminder that a meaningful life isn't
built on external measures. It's shaped from the inside out.
I'm Eric Zimmer and this is the one you've feed. Hi, Josh,

(02:01):
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
I am really excited to have you on and talk
with you about your new podcast, sub Stack. Your life
is a musician, and obviously your life is an actor.
But before we get to that, we'll start like we
always do, with the Parable. And in the Parable, there's
a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
in life, there are two wolves inside of us that

(02:23):
are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
and hatred and fear, and the grandchild stops, they think
about it for a second, they look up at their grandparent,
they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
the one you feed. So I'd like to start off

(02:45):
by asking you what that parable means to you in
your life and in the work that you do.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, it's one of the greats.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
I mean, it's a you built the entire show around it,
and I understand why. I think it's about free will
at some core level. But I also am very suspicious
of people who say they're all good, and I'm also
suspicious of people who say someone is all bad. I
think that we have worlds inside us, we have the

(03:14):
whole world inside us, and so I just think it's
an honoring of the fact that there is that dark wolf.
But it's also an acknowledgment that where we put our
attention is what we grow. So I sometimes think about
it like I have like fifty one percent of like
the light wolf in me and forty nine percent, like
there is a slight majority of the wolf of kindness

(03:35):
and virtue and all that, but there's this other part
of me, and I think we're in a shadow denying society.
That's why there's so much blame and shame and accusation
and finger pointing and scapegoating. So I think it's a
sign of great mental health to acknowledge the dark wolf
inside you, to at least say it's there, and then
you might be much less trigger happy at pointing the

(03:57):
finger at other people.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:58):
In one of your s is on Substeck, you actually
talk a little bit about this. You talk about internal
family systems and Richard Schwartz. We've had Richard on the
show to talk about eternal family systems. And I think
the thing when I hear the parable today, right, I've
been reading it for a decade now, is that like,
there's not two wolves inside me, there's a whole bunch
of them, right, I Mean, there's a lot going on

(04:22):
in there when I pay close attention. And but I
think ultimately you sort of put your finger on it
when you said it's about where do I put my attention?
And I think putting our loving attention on the parts
of ourselves that might seem like the dark wolf, that's
the way you do.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
It, right, you know, right, right? Right?

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, I think Richard Schwartz really cracked something there. This
kind of search for some sort of solitary identity feels
like folly. Yes, Like you just have to kind of
acknowledge that there's like a chorus of voices, wounded parts
of ourselves, even you know, ancestors are you know, higher
kind of voices that are wiser than our maybe our itself,
Like those are all in there too, and they're all accessible,

(05:03):
I think if we get quiet enough or skilled enough
at kind of just asking to be contacted with them.

Speaker 4 (05:08):
Yep, you've got a new podcast out which is a
rewatching of the show that I guess we would say
made you famous, which is called How I Met Your Mother. Yeah,
And in that show there's the character who's I don't know,
in his late twenties early thirties, and there's also the
character as a fifty year old sort of the narrating.

(05:29):
And I think what you just said there sort of
ties to this idea that we can access wiser parts
of ourselves. And one of the ways to do that, actually,
I think, and lots of different traditions have talked about
this is to imagine your fifty year old self, or
your seventy year old self, or your eighty year old self.
So the show Way Back When was kind of onto

(05:51):
an idea that I see recur in psychology and various
indigenous traditions about trying to contact that part of you
that's act already wise.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, yeah, it's true, and it is something we're unpacking
on how we made Your Mother, the podcast that Craig
Thompins and I are doing. My wife is a clinical
psychologist and one of the things she will sometimes ask
patients to do that she's told me that I think
is so wonderful is if they're tied in knots about
something and really confused about an issue, she'll say, without thinking,

(06:21):
what does your eighty five year old self say?

Speaker 2 (06:23):
You know?

Speaker 1 (06:24):
And the eighty five year old self is there, it's
ready to communicate. Most of the time it's this is
not a big deal, or don't let's not worry. Let's
not worry about that, you know. But I've asked Craig
and Carter, the other co creator, about this notion of
an older, wiser narrator character looking back on his life.
There's that great Curecreguard quote. Life can only be understood backward,
but it has to be lived forward. So you have

(06:46):
this narrator, wiser voice who's looking back and he can
be a little more lighthearted about things because he knows
how things worked out, whereas the character I was playing
was much more stumbling through one foot in front of
the other, you know. I asked them they were in
their late twenties early thirties when they were writing the show.
I mean it lasted for a decade, but like it
was a kind of chutzba you know, to say like,

(07:07):
oh no, here, we're going to write this older us voice,
this older wiser voice. But they were also the age
of the protagonists. Yeah, and they said it was almost
like a hope. It was like a hope that there
was some voice out there that could be guiding and benevolent.
I think ultimately it's a very sweet part of that
show that there's this narrator that knew that he landed

(07:29):
on his feet so he can tell all these embarrassing
stories about himself.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
Absolutely. Yeah, I think that again, that idea is that
wisdom is actually not that complicated, Like we can keep
reading about it. And I've been making podcasts for a
decade on the general ideas of what it means to
live a good life. They're not that complicated. The problem
is that A we forget them constantly and B we

(07:56):
don't know how to live them right right.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
I mean, I think that you can almost recognize truth
by its simplicity. If something is almost like overly complicated
around systems or around you know, minutia, it's obscuring something.
I think the reason fairy tales are so powerful, and
certain children's stories are so powerful is because if it's
wise and true, perennially true, we get it intuitively. We

(08:20):
don't have to do any calculations, you know, to get it.
It's just evident. Yeah, But I agree with you that
we have the kind of built in forgetter. I always
think of that movie Memento where he had to tattoo,
you know, he would have amnesia every day and he
had to remind himself what happened. I feel like wisdom
is like that, Like you have to look at the
word like change or like this too shall pass, like

(08:40):
like perennially wise sayings like yeah, sometimes when you're struggling
and a friend says, you know, it won't be like
this forever, it's like the simplest, most true thing you
could ever say. But sometimes it comes to you as
if it's like Moses on the mountaintop. You know, it's
like it's divine revelation, like, oh, I won't be feeling
this way forever. That's unbelievable. I know that intellectually, but

(09:01):
sometimes when we're going through it, it's tough to remember.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
Absolutely. I've talked about this on the show a bunch
of times, and I'm bringing it up because you reference
King Solomon in one of your substack posts. But there's
something known as Solomon's wisdom, and what it means is
that King Solomon was really wise when it came to
everybody else's life, but apparently his own life not so much.

(09:26):
And so it's called Solomon's paradox, right, And it means
that idea that I could be really wise about your
life or my friend's life, but when it's myself, I
have a hard time seeing it. It's just this paradox
of being human.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes people I'm not speaking
about my wife here, by the way, but sometimes I
think people in the helping professions often have a genius
for seeing other people's stuff. I don't know if it's easier,
but it's sometimes very difficult to apply your own guidance
to yourself. I mean, I've sometimes like a friend has
reached out for advice and I like you that when

(10:01):
I think that's one of the great things about friendship
is you're all kind of trading off being each other's
mentor and cheerleader and confidant. But when a friend comes
to me and they'll ask me some advice and I'll
I'll say something to them, and then I'll hear it
back and I'll go, I should do that, that's.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Really like, that's really good.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
You know, sometimes we have to displace the advice to
have it come back to us.

Speaker 4 (10:23):
Yeah, So let's talk a little bit about the idea
of well, actually you and I did not bond over
something that we should have bonded over first, which is
that I live in Columbus, Ohio. You live there now,
grew up there, I live there now. I'm in Denver today, Okay,
but I now live in Columbus, Ohio.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yes, wow, whereabouts? Where do you live?

Speaker 4 (10:42):
I'm near good Ale and three point fifteen, sort of
grand View Ish Okay.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, my sister lived in grand View for a years.
She's back in Bexley, where I lived.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Is that where you grew up?

Speaker 1 (10:50):
That's where I grew up. Yeah, okay, yeah, oh no,
she lived in Grandville. Oh that's different. But grand View, Yes,
I know Grandview very well.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah. Yeah. Oh how cool. And is that where you
grew up?

Speaker 4 (11:00):
It is, Yeah, I grew up in Worthington.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Oh, in Worthington, okay, cool. Yeah. I did a theater
with a lot of people from Worthington. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (11:06):
So I just when I saw that, I thought that
was cool and nice. Okay, back to what I wanted
to talk about next, which is identity. One of the
things that I think you've talked publicly about this, both
on the podcast and on your sub stack, is that
you got to be known really well and beloved by
a whole lot of people for a particular character. Right,

(11:28):
talk to me about that experience and how it has
been for you and how it has evolved over time.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
God, it's been twenty years of navigating that, right, So
I think it's like it would take me a long
time to unpack each phase. I guess no one prepares you,
certainly in drama school, for you're going to be playing
one role for nine years, Like that's not something they
think you're going to do a role for three months,
or like, you know, like do a check off play

(11:55):
for you know, four months. So I had to figure
it out on my own, and sometimes I did that
rather inelegantly, and other times I was able to have
some more grace around it. But I just found it
to be an incredibly strange disorienting thing. I mean, first
of all, your anonymity getting eroded and strangers knowing who
you are when you don't know who they are.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Is a very strange disorienting experience.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Anyway, famous strange being visible is strange people having ideas
about you, projections about you. They read a quote of
yours that was taken out of context, and then I
don't know, they don't like you, or you remind them
of someone like you feel a little bit in your
more vulnerable moments, like you got a dartboard on your chest.
You're just walking through the world and you feel like
people are kind of sizing you up or having opinions

(12:38):
about you, and some of them are often quite lovely,
but that also feels suspect, like you feel like these
people don't really know me, they know they have this
idea of me. I went through some crisis with it,
and I used various forms of kind of healing, and
I was just on the hunt for something that felt
more authentic in the midst of all that, and it

(12:59):
drove me much deeper on a spiritual path weirdly, I
mean maybe not weirdly, like as understandable. And then I
got off the show, and as an actor, I was
only looking for roles that felt very far from the
role that I had played. Anything that reminded me of
the DNA of the part I wouldn't do. But I
also became a musician and I've written in directed films,
and so I was really just trying to diversify. But

(13:21):
what I realized I was actually doing was running. I
was running away from it.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
You know.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
I said in that sub stect that you referenced that
this character I played Ted was a part of me,
like in the ifs sense, like he is a part
of me in that he was literally a part that
I played. But there's also I can feel I revealed
something to the world of myself through that character. I
got married a little over a year ago and my

(13:46):
wife had never seen the show, and she said, look,
I'm curious, And that was a good thing for us
for our relationship that she had never seen the show,
but she said, I'm curious about this time in your
life that I missed.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
I want to see it.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
So I decided it was time to re watch it,
and we just decided to formalize it. Craig and I
are doing this rewatch and we're having a great time
talking about it. But there's been something wonderful about having
much like this show itself, having this older, wiser perspective
on it rather than being the person inside of it,
but actually looking back on it and seeing, oh, I
wasn't half bad on that show, and the show itself

(14:20):
is delightful and I'm so much kinder to myself watching
it now. So I'm having like a very meta, very
interesting experience re engaging with the show. But in terms
of identity issues, it was both shattering and also opened
up all these avenues of my life for which I'm
incredibly grateful.

Speaker 4 (14:38):
I love how you talk about it in such a
nuanced way, and you referenced nuance in the beginning, right,
we're not all bad, We're not all good. I think
nuance is kind of the secret sauce to wisdom to
a certain degree, but you talk about it in the
sense like, imagine that you were in high school. We
were all in high school, and twenty years later, all
anybody ever wants to talk about is who you were

(15:00):
in high school, not anything you had done since all
of that, and how that might get to be tiresome
or confusing. And yet at the same time you're also
recognizing this profound gift that you got, right, I mean,
that changed the trajectory of your life in a positive way.
And I like seeing you kind of come back and
revisit it from a more holistic place. And I think

(15:22):
the lesson for all of us is around identity, and
that identity is ideally, in my mind, fluid, meaning I
can play this part of me, I can play this
part of me, I can see this, I can see that.
But we tend to get fixed in this idea of
who we are, you know, we just get locked into

(15:43):
I am this way, And as somebody who studies change
and has written a book that'll come out next year
about change, what I know is that we are all
capable of change. But if we believe we're not, we're
really stuck.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Right, And it kind of goes back to what we
were talking about before, Like I had an acting teacher
at NYU named Ron Van Lewin. One of the first
things he said to us was, you need to expand
your definition of yourself. You're here to expand your definition
of yourself. That you're not this thing, you're all these things.
And when you're more things, and when you know yourself

(16:18):
to be more things, you can play more things. Truthfully,
you can access more of yourself to play a wider
array of characters in a larger sense. Like my brother
in law, Gideon Jacobs. I saw him in this one
man show that he created last night, and it's this
blind preacher character and it was really fascinating. But he's
obsessed with the second commandment in the Torah, which says

(16:39):
thou shalt not make any graven images, right, and his
whole thing, you know, going back to the Garden of
Eden again, not speaking literally, but allegorically, this notion that
humanity in its primordial state was unself conscious and connected
to all that was, there was no separation, and then
there's this bite of this apple, this kind of primordial wound,

(17:02):
and suddenly it's oh my god, I'm naked, Oh my god,
you're separate.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
From me, Oh my god, God is elsewhere.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
It's actually like a horror story if you think about
it from an existential.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
Point of view. Totally right.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
And his thing is that the commandment against images is
actually quite profound, that what happened to Adam and Eve
allegorically in the garden was that they suddenly got a
self image, which is grievous to our psyche because we're
watching ourselves and now image is everything, and it's proliferated

(17:36):
to the point where I even think about like the iPhone,
you know, I mean one he points out the apple, right,
like we all have these devices in our in our
pockets that are these apples with a bite out of them,
and then the iPhone, the iMac, the iPad, the you know,
there's this kind of IIII and this recursive kind of
loop of images, images, self images. What does the say

(17:59):
about me? What does the say me? And I am
as hooked by this stuff as anyone. I'm not hovering
over this as some sort of like angry profit. I'm
in the midst of this negotiation, and as I think
we all are with image and identity, I think that
everyone is dealing with it on some level.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
It's not just famous people.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
Everyone has some persona or a yes, maybe a private self,
and then there's like a public self. I don't like
to create that much of a distinction between the two.
Like I don't want to have a persona even though
I'm going to be different with my wife than I
am on a post on Instagram or something. But yeah,
I also don't want to feel like I have this
jackal and height split in myself. But I think identity

(18:36):
is really tricky, and when you become famous, and you
become famous for a particular role, it just pours fertilizer
all over the many things that can be troubling about it.

Speaker 4 (18:44):
Yeap, what you just shared about your brother in law
is fascinating. I had never heard that take on the
Second Commandment. I'm a longtime Zen practitioner, right, and one
of the things that we do in Zen is we're
trying to see through this usion that we are this
separate thing, right, right, So I've always seen the Garden
of Eden's story as like I've been able to see

(19:07):
the parallel there, right, that's separateness. But I never thought
about the Second Commandment in images that we create.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah, A friend recommended this book by a Sufi mystic
that's all about music, And in the first paragraph he
says music is the only form of art that's not
idolatry because there's no form. It's from a transcendent kind
of realnd you can't draw music, you know, you can't
capture it.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
You know.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
I love painting and dance in theater obviously. I mean,
I'm not an anti image person, but I think sometimes
when we have an image of ourselves and we are
constantly critiquing it and looking at it from all different angles,
it takes up a lot of time and energy, Yes,
but it's also psychically quite draining. When someone has a

(19:53):
peak experience. One of the ways that one defines that
is a loss of self absolutely right, that you go away, Yes,
And Jordana and my wife has pointed out that like
often after those peak experiences, as we say, I could
die now, right, like you're resolved enough to the point
where you feel like your life has achieved some sort
of meaning that you wouldn't be haunted by regret that

(20:14):
you've seen through it in a zen sense.

Speaker 4 (20:17):
Let's change directions a little bit. There was a line
that you used. I don't know if it's a line
you've used before, or if you just tossed it off,
and it's during the How I Made Your Mother podcast,
but you referred to how you view that show and
you know your relationship with that character, and you use
the phrase the mercy of time, and I just loved that.

(20:41):
Did you just kind of toss that off?

Speaker 1 (20:43):
I think maybe I've said that before. I don't know
if it's like a catch hraise of mind. Yeah, but
I do think that there is a merciful quality to time.
I mean, often we look at time as a bully
or a grim reaper kind of, you know, after us.
The same time, if you've aged, say, and you have
a different perspective on your life, if you have more

(21:06):
forgiveness for your life or people in your life, if
you find yourself less, self conscious less obsessed with the
opinion of other people, that's all time doing its work.
If you've ever had grief, if you've ever had loss,
relationships ending innumerable kinds of heartbreaks, to feel not the
same way you felt in the aftermath of that, in

(21:28):
the shrapnel of that, that is the mercy of time.
That time, it is a healer in some profound way.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
So I don't know.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
I'm glad I was able to say that, yes, you
can look at this as a goofy sitcom, but it
also had some quite deep existential things that was chewing
on at the same time.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
I think time is so interesting. I'm here in Denver
this week spending time with my mother, who's eighty who
I spent the last decade of my life with her
in Columbus with me, but we moved her out here
about a year ago to be near my sister, and
she's in a senior community. So I have been there
a lot this week. And you can't be around old
people that much without starting to think about time and

(22:21):
the obvious downsides to it, the decaying body and the
challenges that come with that. And I do think time
is a healer, and I also think it's necessary but
not sufficient for certain types of healing, right Like I
do think time will take the sting out of a
lot of things, but I don't think time necessarily gives wisdom.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Right.

Speaker 4 (22:44):
But I often look at myself and I think about,
you know, I was a homeless heroin addict at twenty five.
I've been on a path of recovery since and all
this stuff I've done, and I look at myself and
kind of where I'm at, and I sometimes think to myself,
how much of how I feel now is all that
work that I've put in, and how much of it
is just the fact that I'm much older now, right,

(23:04):
and time has sort of done its thing to a
certain degree.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yeah, Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I also don't
think time confers wisdom. I mean, I think that you
have to accept wisdom. It's almost like it's on offer.
It's almost like the library is there. There's free books, yes,
with all the great wisdom, all the greatest stories, all
the greatest everything. You can go there. You can go there,

(23:28):
you can get a library card and you can read it.
And I feel like wisdom is kind of like that,
it's floating out there. I think you have to volunteer
for it. You have to kind of say I would
like to receive this, and then it almost like picks
your antenna up in a different way so you're more attuned.
We just met, But you strike me as someone like

(23:49):
me who loves a good quote, who's always on the
hunt for some new thing that you can kind of
throw in the wisdom backpack and kind of carry along
with you, right, It's always been really interesting to me.
I also think when we're younger and you're interested, or
when you get the sense, okay, I understand that I'm
not going to be young forever, like I'm going to age,

(24:11):
and you know, a lot of young people simply don't
believe this, and it's again, maybe that's the mercy of youth,
is that you you don't know that you're going to age.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
You think you'll be the.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Center of culture forever, and it's like, no, you won't.
There'll be another generation come along and your slang's not
going to work anymore. It's going to be like okay, boomer,
everyone gets okay boomered.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
You know.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
But I think if you're looking, because I was always
scared of aging, but I always was like, well, how
do you do it well? Like who are the people
that I think are doing it well? I love this
Franciscan priest, Richard Ror very much. Do you know Richard Ror?

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Sure?

Speaker 4 (24:48):
Yeah, I've had Richard on several times and visited him and.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, yeah, I listened to yours with Richard. I do
remember that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
So I've gotten to spend some time with Richard, and
I got to sit with Ramdas a few times and nice.
There are just these characters that I just say their
bodies are betraying them. Or Rondas is no longer with us,
but you know, he had a stroke that really immobilized
him in certain ways, and Richard's had his health challenges,
so the body stuff feels non negotiable. I mean, you
can try to keep the wheels on as long as

(25:14):
you can, but there is a kind of sparkle in
the eye of someone who knows something. They've gotten to
an age and they know something, and they're not bitter
about roads not taken and regrets, and they just seem
to have called a truce with the world.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
You know.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
I think Richard calls it like you know, I've heard
it said, like dropping the war with reality, right, Like
I'm no longer at war with reality. And I want
to be a person who ages with some grace. And
I don't just mean, you know, looking good, although that
would be terrific, but I really mean being the kind

(25:51):
of person that a young person would look at and
say they look like they know something, or they look
like they're doing it right, or I'd like to get
advice from that person.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
That person seems like they maybe know something.

Speaker 4 (26:01):
When I meet old people and interact with old people,
it's always instructive to me because I see like, Okay,
that's where I want to go, and I see like,
that's definitely where I don't want to go, right And
so like in the way that my partner's mother when
she had Alzheimer's, that was a huge wake up call

(26:22):
to us, like, okay, health, like we can't prevent it,
but there's a lot of stuff we can do that's
going to make it less likely that we get Alzheimer's
or other things. So I think about it in a
health sense. I think about it in a sort of
old people sort of start to fossilize, so like pushing
myself towards new experiences, which gets harder, I think as
you age. I just feel it already at fifty five.

(26:44):
And then also, like you said, I think about it
emotionally or spiritually in that way. Life is going to
get hard from here in some ways, like I know
what's coming, So I need to be training now to
the best of my ability so that I'm able to
be one of those people that is able to do
it with a certain degree of grace because I can

(27:04):
see how easy it would be to not do it gracefully.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, it's also like wisdom is on offer, but so
is cynicism. Yeah, you know that's also like an option.
You know, you there's again these are wolves, right, They're
all wolves. But I always thought it would be such
a tragedy to live one of these lives, which I
consider a gift. I mean, I'd rather say in one
of my songs, I'd rather be here than not be here.

(27:29):
I always thought it would be such a tragedy to
get to the end of it and be filled with
resentment and bitterness and grievance.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
And you know, like I want to get to.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
A place where I am more forgiving, more compassionate, more generous.
But you know, I also don't want to under sell
that life is tough. You know, it puts up a
real fight. You can make a very strong and compelling
argument that the world is meaningless and that bad people

(28:02):
triumph and good people suffer, and you could compile a
lot of data around that. You could make as equally
a compelling case about the opposite. Right, again, well, these
are all wolves, But I always thought it's so much
more heartening and it makes the universe for me so
much more inhabitable. To choose the latter, Yeah, to say,

(28:23):
I believe there's meaning. I believe there's a purpose to
this thing. I believe that what undergirds this is something benevolent.
You know, that doesn't mean that death isn't real, It
doesn't mean pain isn't real, it doesn't mean that. You know,
we're not going to struggle in myriad ways. But I
just have to get my mind sharpened. And it's a
daily practice because I have the forgetter, you know, I

(28:44):
have that thing that forgets.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
But you know, conversations like this help.

Speaker 4 (28:47):
Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask
you something. What's one thing that has been holding you
back lately? You know that it's there, You've tried to
push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way.
You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major
saboteurs of self control, things like autopilot behavior, self doubt,

(29:09):
emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's
the good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put
together a free guide to help you spot these hidden
obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can
use to regain control. Download the free guide now at
oneufeed dot net slash ebook and take the first step

(29:32):
towards getting back on track. I'm a little bit more
existentially turned in that I'm not a believer in any
sort of ultimate meaning. But I don't think that makes
life meaningless. I just think it means we need to
discover our own meaning and imbue it into our life.

(29:52):
But I agree with you one hundred percent about there
are different ways to view the world. I mean, you know,
the old way of calling it was op and pessimism,
and that's an oversimplification. Those are binaries. But there is
a view that orients towards the goodness that is in
the world, the kindness that is in the world, the
beauty that is in the world, the connectivity that is
in the world. And if both are true, which I

(30:15):
think they are, and we're making it up, we're making
up the meaning we want to give it, because that
is what I think we are largely doing. Then a
really a good question is like, which is the most
useful view?

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Right?

Speaker 4 (30:28):
Which view is going to be better for me and
the people around me in this world, and for me,
it's the view that is not cynical. It's not pollyannish either,
And that's where I'd kind of like to take the conversation,
because you have a great article on Substack that I
really loved, because you got into perhaps my most pressing
question that I think about these days, and it's this

(30:50):
idea that, as you said earlier, dropping the war with
reality makes a lot of sense, right because reality wins,
and we also have a view of ourselves and the
world that could be better, and those things sometimes are
at odds with each other. And I think a lot
about how do you know which of those levers to

(31:14):
pull the I should change this lever, I should accept
this lever. And I'd just love to hear you think
through that question.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Okay, So I have written quite a bit about this
in terms of we want to accept there's a negotiation
that has to take place between acceptance and action. Yes, right,
exactly what I'm talking Okay, Okay, yeah, so yeah, I
mean the way I think through this is if I
throw a temper tantrum about something in my life or
something happening in politics or the world, do you know,

(31:46):
Anne LaMotte, Yeah, I think she has some great salty
kind of wisdom, and I just I really like her
quite a bit. But she says, there's three types of
problems in the world. There's me problems, you problems, and
God problems. She calls God problems, wars, hurricanes, you know,
natural disasters, things that are so outside of her ability

(32:09):
to actually control an influence. And then you problems are
obviously you problems, and me problems are me problems. And
she says she gets into suffering when she tries to
fix God problems and you problems. Right, So that makes
a lot of sense to me. That just clarifies things
for me. It's a bit of a serenity prayer kind
of breakdown. You know, what can I control? What can

(32:30):
I not control? I try to avoid having temper tantrums
around things as they are, because, like you said, reality wins.
But I think we have a much better chance of
at least getting called on to participate if we start
with acceptance, like just a blanket acceptance like this is

(32:50):
how it is right now, and then we look at
what we might be able to change in effect and
what we can't. And sometimes you're gonna, you know, try
to twist them nons and it's not going to work.
And other times something will move the needle. But I
think starting with like a kind of radical acceptance, it
takes me out of some pain, right because the pain

(33:11):
is in the resistance. It shouldn't be this way. And
then you're you're really at war with reality and you're
really in a losing position. You're just this spec shouting
in the Grand Canyon or something for something to be different.

Speaker 4 (33:25):
I love what you said there, the negotiation between acceptance
and action. That's really good because that's what I think
it is. I think often about One of the first
guests on the show is a gentleman named Andrew Solomon,
and he wrote a book called The Noonday Deal. Oh.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
I read The Noon Day Demon. He's very brilliant, Andrew Solomon,
He's brilliant.

Speaker 4 (33:44):
He wrote another book called Far from the Tree.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
I read that too.

Speaker 4 (33:48):
Yeah, Yeah, an amazing book. But what stuck with me
through all the years, and this is a decade ago
that we first talked about this was he was talking
about parents whose children are artistic. Yeah, he talked about
how hard it is for them because there are some
group of people saying you can change this, you can
fix this. Some of that might be snake oil, some

(34:09):
of it might be real some of it, but you
can do something. And then there's you can't do anything
about this, right, and you accept it. And if you
accept your child for the way they are, maybe that's
just an all around easier case. And what I love
that he said is if you know you can't change something,
it's easy to go about the business of accepting it.

(34:29):
If you know you can change something, it's easy to
go about the business of changing it. And most of
us live in this very difficult middle part. But I
think the way you just said it is a really elegant,
almost poetic way of saying. It's the negotiation between acceptance
and action, and that that negotiation, in certain situations never

(34:51):
gets settled. It's not like you all reach an agreement
and it's done. You live in the negotiation.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
I think so, and live in the question. But also
I think nature is useful to kind of pay attention to.
I mean, I lived in California where it was less visible,
but I'm back on the East Coast and just watching
the seasons happen and watching you know, the flowers bloom
and then fade away in the fall, and the leaves

(35:18):
fall off the trees, and then the barren and the
snow and the and you know, a farmer knows that
there's a time to sew and a time to reap.
I think in America, especially or in the West, we
have this idea that we should always.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Be growing, growing, growing, doing, doing doing.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
It's almost like disobeying the laws of nature in some
fundamental way, because there is a time for rest, I
mean true rest, you know, really gathering another round of information,
not more energy. And I try to remember that this
might not be a season of change, This might be

(35:53):
a season of acceptance.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
You know this.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
I didn't grow up Christian, but a lot of my
friends who grew up like in more evangelical circles, they
always say, you know, I'm in a real season of doubt,
or this is a real season of abundance, you know.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
And I always liked that language.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
I always thought it was like useful language because it
implies that it's not forever.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
And again that's a mercy.

Speaker 4 (36:30):
We've referenced suffering a little bit, and you talk about discomfort.
Is the doorway as the name of one of your
substack posts, And in it you did something where you
put a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. And I was struck
by that because I've taught this program for years called
Wise Habits, and I use a lot of Calvin and
hobbstrips to teach because I just think there's so much

(36:53):
wisdom in them. Are you also a fan?

Speaker 2 (36:55):
A casual fan.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
I had stumbled across that happiness isn't enough for me
man euphoria. I think that was the exactly that was
the one. Yeah, I stumbled across it, and I just
pulled it and I had it in a file of
things that kind of delighted me. It's also something you know,
my friend Hal says about addicts. He says, the only
emotional acceptable to an addict is euphoria. He says, you know,
it's two pm on a Tuesday. Where's my euphoria?

Speaker 4 (37:20):
Yes, I'm a lot of years sober. And I still
laugh because I relate with that. And I love that
Calvin cartoon because where it starts is him enjoying a
nice day.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
Ah huh.

Speaker 4 (37:31):
He's like, here, I am enjoying this nice day, you know,
And then he thinks, but I'm not euphoric, right, And
then the last frame says I can't remember whether he
said I need to stop my mind while I'm still ahead,
or my mind's out to get me, or something along
those lines of, like he's able to see knowing what
I know about you and your taste from reading your

(37:51):
substack and looking at a lot of the things you reference.
Calvin and Hobbes, I think is a deeply, deeply wise
strip across the board, and I think it's one of
the more brilliant works of art in humanity?

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Is that Bill Watterson?

Speaker 4 (38:05):
Waterson, Yeah, I think he's.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
A Kenyan grad. I think he went to my college
where I went.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
Okay, there was a lore, kind of Kenyan lore that
his senior year he drew.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Cartoons all over the wall. Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
He kind of did like his own Sistine chapel of
cartoons on the wall, and they painted over it. And
it's this kind of like lost masterpiece, like somewhere in
a dorm at Kenyon are all these early cartoons.

Speaker 4 (38:31):
That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
But I think he was a philosophy major and that's
why he called it. Calvin and Hobson. Yeah, yeah, I
don't know. It just really it really struck me. I
just thought it was a funny thing, you know, that
human thing, you know, if a little is good, more
is better.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah. Can I ask when did you get sober?

Speaker 4 (38:47):
Well? I got sober from Heroin in nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
I stayed sober about eight years. Then I started to
drink again, and I drank for about three years. Yeah,
and then I've been sober from that for like seventeen years.
So the vast majority of my adult life has been
in sobriety, which I'm very grateful for. In many ways,
I'm grateful that like when I start, I just kind
of burned the house down pretty quick. Yeah, it's pretty clear, like, Okay,

(39:13):
something needs to happen versus like the long goodbye kind
of thing.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Yep, yep, yep. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (39:19):
Speaking of Ohio and Bill Watterson, there's a big cartoon
library at OSU, and they have one of the biggest
collections of Bill Watterson cartoons in the world, and so
you can go visit a little bit of a shrine
for me. We talked a little bit about this idea
of negotiating acceptance and action, and I think that some

(39:39):
of the things I pulled for that came from a
post of yours about not minding what happens, which is
a Christiana Murdi quote. And I wanted to talk about
something in particular that you talk about in there, which
is you on of Apastna retreat. Was that just this
last December or was it the December before that?

Speaker 2 (40:01):
I know it was last December, like six months ago.

Speaker 4 (40:03):
Okay, so yeah, yeah, you opened a sort of sharing
your experience.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah, I mean it was a real challenge for me.
Like it, it was much more challenging. Have you ever
done of apossable?

Speaker 4 (40:14):
I have done long silent retreats, not a specific of
apostle unless you consider insight meditation society like Jack Cornfield.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
To yeah rock. How long are those like, e eight
days or nine days?

Speaker 4 (40:26):
Yeah, seven to eight. There's some weekend ones. Yeah, I've
mostly done Zenchines, which are eight days.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Okay. Yeah, and that's total silence.

Speaker 4 (40:35):
Total silence. And like you said, no books, you know, Yeah,
I'm like two days into it, and I'm like, I'll
give you one hundred dollars for a Cereal box to read.
I know, like give me a Cereal box to read.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
I know.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
They had these instructions in the room about how you
were supposed to clean your room when you left, and
I read those like it was the tall mode or
something like I was. I went so deep on this
thing in a fascinating way. It shows you what you're
addiction to in a broader sense, not just about in
chemicals or anything, but really about like I'm addicted to words,

(41:07):
I'm addicted to information, I'm addicted to the news, I'm
addicted to you know, and I'm also addicted to talking,
like truly just talking. It was a very fascinating experience
and an experiment. It was what it felt like on
my psyche, and largely I was in an enormous amount
of discomfort for the majority of the time.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
I would say, but I.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Felt incredibly unmored and kind of confused about even not
being able to say certain like pleasantries, like in the
line at the dining hall, like if you felt like
you cut someone off, you just want to say, oh, sorry,
were you here?

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Do you want to go?

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Like you couldn't do any of the like little signifiers
of we're in a society and we're sharing space.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
I just found it really challenging.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
I ended up having to talk to the teacher a
few times because I was one I was borderline almost
having a panic attack, and then I found I enjoyed
these talks and they were only about four or five
minutes long, but I enjoyed being witnessed. The basics of
like relational communication are very important to me, and when
I was supposed to exist in silence without them, I

(42:19):
felt deep grief. I can't, I don't know. It was
so much harder than I thought it would be. And
my meditation practice has been really wonky since.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
I got back.

Speaker 4 (42:30):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
My wife and I were at the Botanic Gardens this
morning and we meditated and it was so nice, and
I was like, I really want to get back into
a practice. But I think I had like a It
wasn't quite trauma, but it was definitely like something got provoked.
I had moments of fear. I had moments of grief.
I know, they say, you know, lots of stuff's going
to come up, but something about it I found very challenging.

(42:52):
That said, by the end of it, once you're allowed
to talk for the last day, like I felt like
I had been paroled, like I was. I was so excited,
you know, I do. I went on these long walks
up and down this road every single day. Like three
times a day. I just didn't know what to do
with myself. And I saw my monkey mind really really

(43:13):
in action. Yeah, and I saw how I'm in a society.
There's another Christian Murdy quote, it's no measure of health
to be well adapted to a profoundly six society.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
I don't know if you've come across that one.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
Yeah, And I am somewhat adapted to this society. I
mean it's the one I grew up in. It's like
I do fairly well navigating it. And then you take
me out of that society and I don't have my
whatever op eds to read, or my books to read,
or my music to listen to. And I realized, oh,
I'm a little bit insane actually, Like my mind is

(43:46):
so far from being quiet. Although I will say I
had a couple of meditations where I had no body,
no time, you know that I did. I did taste
that timeless realm, but the getting there it was rough.

Speaker 4 (44:01):
Yeah, they can be rough. I actually do okay with
the silence in groups of people. I'm a little shy,
so I actually find it sort of enjoyable to be
in companionship and not have to figure out what to say.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
Yeah, my wife is the same way. She's done two
or three of a postumism. She always appreciates not having
to talk.

Speaker 4 (44:21):
Yeah, I like that part. And even when what I've
learned is when the silence ends, I've learned to take
myself away because it just is it's overwhelming to me
all of a sudden. But I do like being with
the people like that. I mean, it's not that I
want to be alone. I enjoy the community aspect, I
think for me. And you said in this post, I
think you said that boredom and discomfort are the two

(44:41):
emotions you most can't tolerate. And I think that's very
much me too. And it's the no reading that just
kills me. That's probably the hardest for me, because I
can entertain myself pretty well with a book. Yeah, I've
gone on a couple with the spiritual teacher Adi Ashanti.
I don't know if you're familiar with him.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Oh yeah, I know, I did chat. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
They do something interesting, which is they give you it
might be two or three paragraphs of his and that's
all you're allowed to read. So you do what you
did with the cleaning instructions on the wall, right, you're like,
I'm reading it, but for me, I descend deep into
it like a since it's so little to read and
I want to read so often, it becomes ultimately certainly

(45:25):
a contemplative act, if not a meditative act.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
I also hilariously like I would make my bed as
if it was going to be inspected by the military, like.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
I would just anything.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
You're trying to give yourself any activity. There were certain
days where I just unfolded and refolded all my clothes.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
I didn't even have that many clothes there, but I
just was looking.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
And it also showed me how addicted I am to
action and doing this. You know, I really I was
constantly looking for something to actually do. That's why these
walks outside just became like my lifeline.

Speaker 4 (45:59):
That's interesting. I was just thinking how funny it would
be if we segued into a commercial for VPASTAA retreats,
how mad they would be about like Josh Radner says that.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Well, also, I mean they're free. And I loved the
Gwenka talks at Night. You know, they have these pre
recorded talks from Gwenka who are I think they were
in the earlier mid nineties, these talks and they're fantastic
and they're really inspiring. And one of the things he
says is, we give you a taste of what it's
like to be a monk. For ten days, we take

(46:34):
away the world from you, We give you all your meals.
All you're here to do is be contemplative and sink
into this place. My wife tries to remind me. She says,
when you came home from that, you were euphoric, but
like two days later, I went into this like weird,
kind of down depressive state that didn't lift.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
For a while. So I've been struggling in some ways.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
I wrote that substack piece to try to work through
what that experience was for me, what it meant, and
maybe I'm still working through it as I talk even
I'm kind of like, oh yeah, I need to do
some more processing of that. You know, it was incredibly rewarding,
but it was also very hard. And when people say
would you go back, my answer right now is no.
You know, I hear wonderful things about like insight and

(47:17):
all that.

Speaker 4 (47:17):
But before we wrap up, I want you to think
about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like
your choices didn't quite match the person you wanted to be.
Maybe it was autopilot mode or self doubt that made
it harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly
why I created The Six Saboteurs of Self Control. It's

(47:38):
a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns
that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies
to break through them. If you're ready to take back
control and start making lasting changes, download your copy now
at oneufeed dot net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts
happen starting today one you feed net slash ebook. I

(48:02):
don't know if Audia Chanti is still doing retreats. It
turns out that those have been my favorite because they
don't feel like an endurance contest. You do have to
be quiet, you can only read this thing, but it
doesn't feel like meditation battle in like you're meditating for
like ten hours a day. You know, he gives a

(48:23):
couple talks, he actually does a guided meditation. There's just
a little bit more happening. You still meditate a lot,
don't get me wrong, but it just felt less arduous
in the bad way. Not that some difficulty isn't good,
but too much difficulty as you're reflecting can be too much. Well,
we are at the end of our time for this.

(48:44):
You and I are going to continue in a post
show conversation and we're going to talk about a substack
post that you wrote called locked Doors, but I'm going
to put a slightly different point on it. This conversation
is for any of you who wrestle with wanting what
you can't have, which feels like a story of my
life up to a certain point. Listeners, if you'd like

(49:04):
access to that post show conversation, ad free episodes, a
special episode I do, and to be a supporter of
the show, you can go to one ufeed dot net,
slash join And last thing I'll say, Josh, if you
want a way back into meditation that feels nice. A
friend of mine and one of the best meditation teachers
I know, Henry Shukman, has an app called The Way

(49:26):
and it's really good. It's just very nice. He's got
a great English accent. It's just very soothing and wonderful.
So anyway, thank you Josh for joining us. I really
appreciate it absolutely.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
It is such a pleasure to talk to you.

Speaker 4 (49:39):
Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I'd
love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing
from one person to another is the lifeblood of what
we do. We don't have a big budget and I'm
certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better,
and that's you. Just at the ship button on your

(50:00):
podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode
link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means
the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode
at a time. Thank you for being part of the
one You Feed community.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Eric Zimmer

Popular Podcasts

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Navigating the Messy Parts of Life: Embracing Imperfection and Growth with Josh Radnor