#18 - John Wood - If You Don’t Feel Safe, You’ll Never Feel Free

So instead of an interview today, I thought I’d do something a little different.

There are already a million podcasts out there interviewing experts. And yeah, I’ll still do more of those. There’s value in them.

But there are some things I want to talk about — things I don’t always get to go deep into when I’ve got a guest on.

And today, I want to talk about something I think is fucking cool (but may not seem like it on the surface).

Something I keep circling back to:

Safety.

Not safety like helmets and seat belts.

I’m talking about the kind of safety your nervous system needs to stop spinning out.

Because here’s the deal:

You can meditate.

You can journal.

You can do your breathwork, your cold plunges, your cacao ceremonies, your gratitude lists — but if you don’t know how to actually create a felt sense of safety inside yourself, none of that other shit really lands.

You’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The loop — anxiety, rage, shame, freeze — it keeps spinning.

The real work is interrupting that loop...

...by learning how to feel, on a nervous-system level, safe.

I’ve written about this before, so it might not be brand new…

But it’s still the thing.

Hell, it's everything.

Because if you don’t have safety, nothing else sticks.

And if you do?

Everything changes.

So this is me riffing. No script. No guest. Just my perspective on what I think is the root issue in personal development, healing, growth — whatever you want to call it.

Let’s get into it.

In This Episode with John Wood, You'll Discover:

• Why your nervous system doesn’t give a shit about your positive mindset — and what it actually wants instead
• How to finally stop spiraling by creating real safety — inside your body, not just your brain
• What safety really means (hint: it’s not bubble baths or saying “I’m safe” a hundred times)
• WARNING: If you skip this one step, no amount of journaling or breathwork will ever fix you
• The terrifying truth about meditation: how it can actually keep you more stuck in survival mode
• Ever wonder why you still feel unsafe, even when your life looks totally fine on paper?
• The simple daily shift that starts telling your nervous system, “Hey, you’re safe now.”