Spiritual Habits That Skyrocket Confidence with Eric Zimmer

Welcome to Shrink for the shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself second, and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Welcome to today's episode of Shrink for the shy Guy. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, and I am very excited for this interview. I know I say that a lot about interviews, but not to diminish those other ones, but I'm truly very excited about this one. It's with Eric Zimmer, and Eric is a behavior coach, a writer, a podcast host, and an interfaith spiritual director. He's the host of the popular the one you feed podcast, which has over 600 episodes and over 30 million downloads. So if you haven't checked that podcast out, definitely listen to that. And that show is about conversations with experts across many fields to look at how we can approach life with less suffering, more fulfillment and meaning, and something that I know that you, Eric, have had a. Not just an intellectual interest in, but a very personal journey with as well that we can tap into. But thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me on. I'm. I'm happy to be talking with you again. When you were a guest on our show, I really, really enjoyed it. So I'm happy we're getting to talk again.

Right on. Right on. Well, what I really want to get into today is that how do we live with less suffering and more happiness? And I know a lot of people listening to this show have a particular form of suffering, which is self criticism, social anxiety, worrying too much about other people's thoughts, perceptions, judgments. So that's one flavor. But, you know, there's. So there's no end to how we can suffer. We can worry about the future. We can judge the past. We can, you know, so we're going to focus on that, but not stay, you know, limited within that. Um, and you have some really interesting principles and ways about talking. Those principles I really want to dive into. Before we do, though. I mean, your. Your personal story is fascinating in that, you know, there was a certain time in your Life when you were in sort of the. Probably the depths of suffering with addiction. And. And I'm wondering if that was kind of the seed that. That sprouted into this and the work that you teach now, but if you could share a little bit about that, I think that'd be really great.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, at 24, I was a homeless heroin addict. I weighed 100 pounds. I had hepatitis C. I was facing multiple felonies that were looking at sending me to jail for a long time. So, yeah, I was pretty deep in the depths of suffering. And I think it's even worth recognizing that to get to that point, you're in the depths of suffering before you even follow a road there. Right. Like, addiction is a response very often to. To something. To some sort of pain. And so, yeah, I. But I was fortunate enough at that point after. And I had tried multiple times to get clean, but I was able to. And we can talk about how I did that if we want to. And then I stayed sober about eight years, and then I went back out again, and I. I drank again. And. And I was smoking pot. I never went back to the heroin. And my life on the outside was fine. I was living in a really nice house. I was driving a really nice car. I just got promoted to the best job I ever had. And yet inside, I knew I was just as sick as I was when I was a homeless heroin addict. And so I. I had to get sober again. And that was 15 years ago. So I've spent the vast majority, with the exception of that couple year break of my adult life, in recovery. And it absolutely is the seed for everything that. That comes after, I think, in. I think experiences that. That are that intense, pervasive, and require that much to recover from. There's no way that they don't change you in a fundamental way, and that everything that grows out of you after that is a reflection of that. Now. It took me, you know, took me five years after that second time of getting sober, before I launched this podcast and I moved into this kind of work, like, full time. Well, it actually was five years even after that before I could do it full time. But I was always invested from. From, you know, when I got SOBER Back in 1995, I had to be invested in what does it. How do we. How do we live inside ourselves in a way that is comfortable enough that I don't go pick up that. That next drink?

Yes.

And it really is. It's about all the ways that we live. It impacts everything. And so, yeah, I was sort of driven to, to try and figure out these questions and answer them for myself. Really. Under, at certain times, you know, under extreme duress, you know, it felt like life and death. You know, I mean, I think it was really close there for a while. Yeah, we know with, you know, everything that's happening today. You know, being an opiate, an intravenous opiate addict is dangerous. It's extraordinarily dangerous. It's more dangerous today than it was back then. I'm thankful that I did it then and not today, but it's still, even then, you know, lost friends to overdose. Overdosed myself a couple times. I mean, it was, it was dangerous. So. So I feel like I was kind of just driven to these things, which turns out to be a real blessing.

Yeah, yeah. And so there is, there's something interesting you mentioned about addiction. It kind of is. Comes out of pain, right. There's something there and this is a response to something and then it, and then it takes a life of its own. Right. Then there's the pain around the addiction and the substance and the, and the withdrawal and all that. All the experiences that might surround the drug and getting and using and who you're around and all that stuff. But I feel like that's something that is there for everyone. Whether or not they say I have a severe drug addiction or alcohol addiction. They're. We're doing things all the time to try to deal with whether people call it pain, they, it. It's discomfort, it's agitation, it's restlessness, and it's. I think that's at its peak and it will probably continue to rise. Right. Of the ways we have to try to get away from suffering. And so we definitely want to get to the what's underneath. Like how do we work with the suffering. But let's start with that outer layer of addiction. Maybe people don't use the word addiction for themselves. Distraction, compulsion. My people will say, I'm addicted to my phone. Maybe it's food, maybe it is alcohol and pot, but you got it.

Okay.

Managed. You're doing, oh, you know, all this stuff. How do you, how do we start with that? Because it feels like that is the, the layer to, to begin with, to address.

Absolutely. Addiction is just an extreme, overstated version of something we all are always doing, which is trying to move away from pain and towards pleasure. It's just inbuilt as a human response, you know. Now there are ways in which that is biological and even a single celled organism will do that. So there's ways in which it's biological, but then there are ways in which we over engage in that process. Right. And you know, the, the twinge of boredom, of discomfort, you know, is it, you know, moves us towards something else. And sometimes, and I think that's natural and, and sometimes it moves us towards things that are healthy and connecting and positive. And sometimes our, our coping mechanisms are not so good. In the, in the Buddhist tradition, there's an idea I love and they talk about taking refuge. It's like, you know, and refuge is like, where would, where do you go when the storm is blowing? I mean, that's what refuge is. Right. And so the question becomes, where do we go when our internal storms are blowing, whether they're very mild or whether they're very intense. And I like to think of that as like, there's true and false refuges, right. Like addiction. Drugs were a false refuge. They were a refuge at a point. They worked until they didn't and until they made the problem worse. And so I think for all of us, the starting point is to recognize that basic mo. That basic movement. Okay, Feeling something I don't like, can I recognize that I'm feeling it? Can I allow it maybe just to have a little bit of space without immediately disconnecting from it and then what's a wise way to respond, you know, and, and again, that goes from whether it's you're overeating more than you want, whether it's you're spending more time on your phone, would you rather be spending more time with your children or you're mainlining heroin into your veins. Right. They're just degree, there's just degrees on a, on a spectrum of just how destructive your coping mechanisms are and how little tolerance you have for the discomfort. And as you mentioned with addiction, the problem is, the reason it's such a destructive spiral is that you suddenly shame is in, is built into addiction. You know, you shouldn't be acting that way. So you get high and maybe you do things while you're high that you don't feel good about. You do things to get the drugs you don't feel good about whatever it is. And then when that's over, you feel worse.

Yeah.

And so what do you do? The only way you know how to deal with feeling worse is to do it again.

Yeah.

And feel worse. And it's this downward spiral. But I think that that mechanism works in many different things that we do. You know, the more we engage in a certain behavior, the more likely it becomes we will engage in that behavior both positively and negatively.

Yeah.

And so I think the core point for all humans is recognizing that, okay, I am uncomfortable. I don't like it. Before I just react, can I notice what's happening? Can I just not immediately react? And then can I think about, like, what is a wise response to what I'm feeling?

Yeah, it's. So you said two things I want to touch on that were very interesting. One is our tolerance for discomfort. Yeah, well, we'll put a pin in that and come back to that. But to do what you're describing, I think that people need a certain level of presence already. Right. Because if there's. If there's a. If they're just kind of one thing to the next. We grabbed the phone, we didn't even know that we're uncomfortable underneath.

Yes.

Right. So. And people hear the word presence a lot and maybe like, oh, yeah, I should be more presence, or that's a good thing. But I think, you know, you really have a good way of breaking that down. And what. What are some ideas you might have? So there's. There's having enough presence to even be able to be aware that we're trying to get away from discomfort and choosing on purpose, maybe a better tool. And then there's also, you know, building this even probably endless capacity to really be with what's happening and be aware. So how. What are some ideas on how we can build that capacity?

Well, you know, I developed a program called Spiritual Habits. And you could call it psychological habits, you could call it philosophical habits. It doesn't matter. They're just principles that I think are endemic to living a good life. But the habit part of it is important because what I recognized is that we all know this thing. I mean, I didn't just say anything that people are like, oh, my God, I never thought of that. Like, of course, of course. Right. It's that we don't remember. So a fundamental part of any change, any. Any behavioral change or even thinking change is that you remember that you're trying to change it. Right. And so one of the things that I focus a lot in the Spiritual Habits program is like, how can we use triggers or reminders? You know, we use. We often use trigger in a negative sense. Right. I'm triggered by my mother, so I. I overeat. Right. But triggers can be positive, too. Right. It's just a stim. It's something that. That, you know, pushes us towards a stimulus. So how can we weave in lots of little triggers that remind us so for presence, for example, Right. We all know we should do more of it. And you're like, all right, I'm going to be present, and then you're there for half a second and then you're lost again.

Right.

It's just the way it is. The power of now. You know, Eckhart Tolle. I mean, I read all that stuff, but. Okay. But I have no ability to do that. And so what we can do is take a trigger and I'll just. I'll just give, like, one example. So for. For example, I could use a trigger that says every time I go to the bathroom, I'm going to just do a simple grounding in my senses exercise, where I'm going to think of, like, what are five things I can see right now? What are four things I can hear? Right. What are three things I can feel in my body? It takes a minute if. If that, but it gives my brain enough to do that. It actually sticks around the present moment and investigates a little bit. And the going to the bathroom is the trigger because you do it a lot if you do that. Right. Let's say. I mean, I don't. You know, depending on how much water you drink and all. Let's say you go to the bathroom five times a day. Six times a day. At six times a day that you've been working on coming back and being present. That makes it way more likely that in a moment that you need to do what you and I were just talking about, which is recognizing, oh, I'm uncomfortable. What's going on. You're way more likely to do that because you've just been doing it. You've been stitching it into the architecture of your days.

Yeah.

Actually more effective than sitting for 30 minutes in meditation in the morning. I'm not saying sitting in meditation isn't a great idea, because of course it is. It's. It develops that muscle in a big way. But. But if all you do is do that, then you've got presence built into this little window of your life. And what you need is presence permeating more of your life. So that's just an example of a way to do it. But it's like, how can we use triggers to architect into our days moments of reflection or presence? Maybe it's not presence you're working on. Maybe it's patience. Right. And you just. Multiple times a day you go, have I been being patient? Am I patient right now? Am I impatient? Right. Again, if you. It. Let's say you come home from work and you go to the bathroom and then you sit down and you have a moment where you reflect on patience and you sit down with your kids for dinner. You're more likely to be patient with your children then, because you were just reflecting on it than some vague idea that you've talked about, like, well, I should really be more patient with my children. And you think about it every third day for, you know, five seconds. Right. It's really about how do we infuse the moments of our lives with more of these things? Because that's how we actually change.

Yeah, I love that. Otherwise, it's a. A desire in the moment. Like, I want to be in better shape. Right. But then there it. The. The actual change of anything physically, psychologically is going to require persistence over time to really be able to choose differently. And I found that, you know, you're talking about the triggers during the day, and I know Jon Kabat Zinn has this idea of formal and informal practice. Right. Informal can be throughout the day. You can, you can work it in, in moments, which is very important. And I found that there's something about having a formal practice that really brings a lot of impact for the informal stuff. It makes it way easier to do, way more effective. And so I think, I think this is a really interesting one because probably by. In this day and age, everyone has come across mindfulness and like, it's probably on. Most people should, like, eating vegetables, like, I should probably meditate and then they try it and. Or maybe they, you know, have a run with it. And I certainly have had periods where I'm doing it regularly. And I, I know that one of the things you do is help people find a way to do it that is more sustainable. Because sometimes I think we have this very rigid idea of meditation is this one thing. And, and if that, if it's hard, that's how it's supposed to be, and do it and. Yeah. Zen. And I'm curious your thoughts on. On that. Let's say someone is open to the idea, has had a hard time kind of sustainably doing any sort of formal meditation. How do you help people with that?

Yeah, well, I think you're right. A formal meditation practice is a way of strengthening that muscle. Right. And it's like going to the gym. You're going to be in better shape, you're going to be stronger throughout the rest of your day. Right. And so absolutely valuable. And I think the part we were talking about that those little moments, right. Little by little, a little becomes a lot, is kind of like the catchphrase, right? And so. And the reason that I think that second part is so important is that there are some people that, given their lives and their priorities, they're not going to find the time to meditate every day. And that doesn't mean that you can't be developing better traits and characteristics and actually be changing. You can, but meditation will be an aid. And so with meditation, I think there's a bunch of different factors that go into it. The first is how long you do it for, right? Everybody has a different experience meditating. Some people find it, they enjoy it. And so sitting for them for 20 minutes is like, kind of enjoyable. They need to get the discipline of doing it and they need to figure out what things are getting in their way, but they actually like it when they do it. Many, many other people deplore it. Right? They don't like it. And sitting for 20 minutes feels agonizing. And so in that case, right, you got to find what works for you. And if we use that principle again of little by little, a little becomes a lot. You're way better if you're doing five minutes a day than if you're doing 20 minutes very intermittently. Right? And I was an on again, off again meditator for many years. This is back before the Internet and back before everybody said, start small. And. And I would pick up a book and I would read about the benefits, and I've really got to do that and be like, you sit down for 30 minutes. And I would do it for a day, a week, maybe a month, if I was really focused, inevitably I would fall off and then a period of time would go by, I'd end up with another book in my hands telling me, I need to do this. I would. I would try again. And I think there were some fundamental things that stood in my way and some changes I made that allowed me to get to it, you know, more as an everyday thing. The first was simply just to reduce the time to something that felt more manageable and I could do. The second was to completely reframe my relationship with what I was doing in meditation. Because almost all of us will. Our mind will wander from whatever our meditation object is, anywhere from every second to every four seconds, right? It's going to happen again and again and again. And if you think that that's a failure, you will develop an aversive relationship. Because who wants to do something that you fail at? Every four seconds you'll just be like, this sucks. I hate it. I'm no Good at this, right? So really reframing, like, oh, that. The point isn't not to think. The point is to catch. When I'm thinking, that's it. That's the whole game. And so instead of when I notice I've. My mind is wandered, saying, like, oh, damn it, I did it again. You got to try harder to actually go, like just a little moment of like, I caught it. Good job, right? I caught it. Good job. That just reframes the thing. So how do I make it enjoyable? Because if I don't make it enjoyable, I'm not going to keep doing it. I mean, the same thing is true with exercise, right? Like, if you pick the exercise that you hate the most to do, you're not going to do it very long. You've got a much better chance at least finding the one that's least aversive. Right. That you dislike the least. If that's. If you can't get any better than that. And then the other is to think about what type of meditation works for you. I try, I was just told over and over and over again, meditate on the breath. And there are very good reasons for that. And it's the basic, the basis of so many of the meditative traditions. The breath is always with you. There's a lot of benefit to it, right? But for me, it wasn't the right thing. What unlocked it for me was I just started going outside and I just listened to sound that was my object. So I would just think, what am I hearing? Bird, bird, car door, cricket, you know, honk, whatever, you know, car, drive by. And then my mind would wander. I'd start thinking about whatever I'm thinking about or worrying about, and I go, oh, okay. And I just open my awareness back up to what I could hear. That worked way better for me. I suddenly started to enjoy it a little bit. So you can do this. Like, I mean, another way. Like, I think of a. An on ramp is to say, like, pick a piece of instrumental music, one that doesn't have a real strong emotional connotation for you one way or the other, and pick an instrument and just follow it. I'm just going to listen for that highest violin, and when my mind wanders, I'm going to go, where? What's that violin doing? I'm just going to come back. And again, it's. The breath is freaking boring right now. Over time, you develop a refined sensitivity to it that it becomes less boring. But in the beginning, it's pretty boring. So you've got a Mind that has got 150 things to tell you because you finally sat down for the first time in a month. And the brain is like, I have been waiting to talk to you, right? So you've got this hyper.

Have you seen your to do list? Let me, let me highlight some things for you.

You've got this hyperactive brain and you've got this really boring thing you're trying to pay attention to. It's a, it's difficult. So how can we make the object a little bit more interesting? It's going to give us a little bit better chance. So those are kind of my three. My three things. You know, knowing when you're going to meditate is. And where you're going to meditate is really good. The problem is for many people, their lives are chaotic enough that that's really difficult, right?

Yeah.

You know, when we talk about habits, you know, people talk about building habits. It's all the rage, right? It's in the title of my thing. You know, James Clear sold a billion books on atomic habits, right? But the thing about habits that people don't tell you is that for a true habit to, to evolve, meaning one that happens almost without effort, you have to have a stable context, meaning the same thing has to happen at the time that habit supposed to happen. That's why it's easy to build a habit to brush your teeth. Because every night you go to bed, more or less. So it's pretty easy to be like, all right, just brush my teeth before bed because I go to bed every night. It's harder when you live a chaotic life, right? And by chaotic, I don't mean like you're a wild partier. I mean like you have three children and a job. Maybe you have sick parents, right? How often are you like, all right, I'm going to meditate at 8 this morning. And then, you know, you get a call from the school and you realize that you forgot to pack your daughter's lunch. I mean, we could, your, your dog is sick that morning, needs to go to the vet. We could make a list that goes on and on and on and on. And so we need sort of a rigidity that says, I'm going to do this every day. And if my life is sort of chaotic, I've got to have a flexibility. That plan didn't work. What am I going to do? When can I fit it in? Right? It's this curious mixture of sort of this stubbornness and this real flexibility in art, in today's world, for people to build And I would hate to even call it a habit because what it is is more like it's a. It's a routine that you're more likely to do because you have momentum.

Yeah. Yeah. I found personally that because I have two kids and beating them by waking up earlier is the. Is the key. Right. Because once the day is going, good luck. Right. Both outer circumstances and my own willpower. But, you know, I love all those tips. Just so, so helpful. And I think one thing that for me really tipped the scales into doing it regularly and sticking with it longer was I think if we link anything to this is going to make me feel good. This is. This is. This is pleasure. Even if it's uncomfortable during sometimes, if a long term, this is pleasure. And, you know, so if someone reads the list of benefits of mindfulness and it's kind of like, oh, yeah, that sounds like I should do it, I don't think that's enough. There has to be like an impersonal, emotional. Ooh. And so for me, you know, because I had this practice where I did it daily for a number of years, and then I probably for about four years was very sporadic. I would do it when I ran and walked, but it was. It was very sporadic and. And it was helpful. It was good. But there was something about. Wow.

That.

That daily practice did seem beneficial. And the tipping point was actually two things. One was that I was talking to a friend of mine who's very, I'd say, faith driven. Faith connected his life. He holds his life with a lot more faith than I think I, by default do. I think my default is a lot more like, something's gonna get me in the future and I gotta be ready. And he. He was asking me if I ever had a time in my life where I did feel a lot more like, guided and. And faith. And I said, you know, was when I was meditating every morning and all of a sudden I got, wow, that beautiful feeling of, like, things are okay either way. That feeling is so like, oh, I want more of that. And then the other thing that it linked to for me was just being not less reactive to my kids and more spacious and more kind of amused by their antics versus, like, I'm going to power battle you. And that just felt so bad that I realized, oh, when I do more meditation, I'm just more like, look at him, this little crazy one. And so those two things, those are both pleasurable experiences. To be amused and loving of my children and moments where I would have been irritated before and to Feel connected to God, to put it as simply as possible. And that was. The juice that I found was like, that'll get me up at five in the morning when I. When I want to sleep another hour instead. So I think finding that, that link, that rope is so important.

100%. 100%. And meditation is subtle, so you have to search a little bit, right. Like, exercise for me is easier because after I exercise, I feel good. It's. It is 100% correlation. Now, it may take me a little while before I feel good because I may have just, you know, crushed myself. Right. But eventually, not too far after, I'm gonna be like, God, I'm really glad I did that. Boy, that was super. Like, every time. 100%. I don't know why it's still. Sometimes it's hard to exercise. You'd think with a hundred percent correlation, it would just.

You gotta go through the discomfort.

Yeah. Yeah. So meditation for me is more subtle. So, you know, and that's why, you know, getting to the first part about how do I make it not aversive? How can I enjoy it as much as possible while I'm doing it? And then the second pleasure that you can get is the pleasure of doing something that you say you're going to do. There's a. There is an. It's not big, but there is an internal congruence that feels good.

Yeah.

When it's like I said I was going to do this and I did it. Okay, good job. Just a little internal celebration.

Yeah.

And then the last part of that. Right. Is exactly what you're saying. How can I then look at. What's the next pleasurable thing? What's the benefit of this that I can actually see and feel? And so you can use kind of all of those points of pleasure because you're right, the Stanford professor BJ Fogg said we change better by feeling good than feeling bad. And that is. I believe that is a hundred percent true. You can change by feeling bad a little bit sometimes, but it doesn't last. Changing by feeling good is sustainable and it works.

Yeah, I love that. And I found that. That. I love that what you're saying about the rigidity, the stubbornness and the flexibility. And what I found is, you know, at first it was, I'm going to sit here for an hour, you know, and then at some point I realized, well, what I really like, you know, there's a time. It's like, how many things can you fit in your day? Right. And I. And I do exercise too. During the day. So one thing I was never fitting in was any sort of mobility movement of my body in a non exercise kind of way. And I could feel it in my exercise, like, oh, it'd be good for me to do some stretching, but no time. And I was like, wait a minute, why don't I take 30 minutes of this just sitting and then 30 minutes of like sort of my own move however I want and such a. It compounded the benefits because now I'm benefiting my body for the whole day. Plus I'm getting that quiet time. And also when I'm sitting to meditate, I don't put a pressure on myself of like, I'm going to do a meditation practice. It's like, look, I'm just going to be with myself an hour every morning. And if it's scary or uncomfortable to be with myself, what's up with that? Like, that's a good place to start, you know, like, what am I running from? What is, am I attacking myself? Am I afraid? Am I what's going on? And it's, I feel like, you know, I realize with relationships, whether it's with my wife or friends or my kids, like if, if I get too busy and focused on other things and there's just not enough time, the relationship is impacted. It doesn't matter how loving I am in the time that I'm with them. If too much time goes by and there's not this regular we talk about in our family, we'll say like other kids, you know, mechanics will say like, oh, you know, kids are acting out in some way. It's like, oh, their, their daddy tank is low. Right. They want, you know, and yeah, so it's like having that time for yourself of like, hey, I'm gonna hang out with me. And if that freaks you out, that's a good thing to look at, I think.

Yeah, yeah. And you make a really good point. And it's partially why, you know, earlier I was talking about finding moments in the course of our day where we can do some of this stuff because at a certain point you just are tapped out on time, right?

Yeah.

And, and I think that's part of the thing that people need to, to do and, and look at is we think of these things in isolation. I need to, I should meditate, right? I should work out, I should do this. But you've got to kind of look at the whole picture and go, okay, I've only got so much time. What am I going to do in that time? What's the best way to spend it. And then anything else that shows up on my mental should list, I'm just gonna say no.

Yeah.

Like I'm not gonna feel bad that I'm not doing it because there is no place to do it. Now I can ask myself, should this replace, you know, should I switch 30 minutes of meditation for 30 minutes of mobility? Right. You might find at some point you're like, oh, you know what I need? I, I'm just making stuff up. I'm experiencing cognitive decline because I'm getting older. And now I need to take 15 minutes of mobility and be doing crossword puzzles for 15 minutes. Right. But you can't just keep adding, which is what we do. We just keep adding, yeah, do this. Then we feel bad about ourselves.

Yeah.

Which drives down our motivation.

And the irony is we're adding because we think it's going to make us feel better. Right. Oh, I saw that person. They said to do that every day. Okay, I'm going to do that because then I'm going to feel better. And sometimes it's like, oh, the practice is going to make me feel better. And sometimes it's like, oh, well, if I'm the kind of person that can do that every day, then I'll feel good about myself because then I'm good, you know, and it's ironic because then we end up beating ourselves 100.

We've got to look at all this stuff in context. When I, you know, I used to do a lot of one on one coaching work with people and a lot of times I feel like one of the biggest benefits I gave people was that we jettisoned 90 of what they thought they had.

The external, like, authority that's like, you can, you know, you can put that down.

You're not going to do that. Like, are you gonna. Do you want to take more time away from your family to do that? Do you, can you work less? Can you do. I mean, like, you got to ask. We got to recognize this ambivalence because it is an ambivalence.

Yeah.

And say, okay, that would be nice to do, but these are the five things I can do within reason. So that's where my attention is going to go. And I'm going to do those and I'm going to feel good about doing them. And the rest of it, I'm just going to let it go by because for right now, this season, this time in my life, it doesn't fit. Right. My life is very different than your life. My, my children are grown. They're gone. Right. So my. My demands are different. I can do more than you can do, and you can do more than a single mother of four people who's working two jobs. Right. Like, yeah, everybody's gonna have their own thing. But when we just feel like we just keep taking on all these shoulds, that just leads to feeling bad about ourselves, which then often means that we don't do what we actually can because we feel bad about ourselves. And so, you know, everything sort of has to fit in context.

Yeah. And that reminds me of something that you talk about in the. About balance around balance of these different ways of being. And one is like, perfectionism. Do it all or nothing.

Yeah.

And, you know, neither one serves us right. And so there's that. And I love. There's a. It was 10 happier. I forget the name of the author of the book, but it was a book about meditation.

Yeah.

Yeah. He's like a news anchor that got him. But I remember he said, like, I meditate, you know, two hours a day. And I just assumed he's sitting there an hour morning, an hour night, and he talks about how he does it. He's like, I got 10 minutes in a cab. I got five minutes here. And you just see, like, oh, when we have this, it's all. It's just like this. Oh, I didn't meditate in the morning. Well, I guess I can't do it all day. And that. That's not. That's just a story we're telling ourselves. It's. It's actually probably a form of resistance to them, to the meditating. Right. Because you don't want to do it in the cab for 10 minutes or the Uber or whatever. Why not? And underneath, it's like, well, I don't want to be with myself. It's boring. It's uncomfortable. It's.

Nyah.

So I want to get into that because you had some really interesting stuff about resistance. Yeah. And the formula you were sharing, which people may have heard. I've heard it before, which is suffering equals pain times resistance.

Yeah.

So I want to Just kind of. For people maybe aren't familiar with that, we'll talk about that. But then you shared another formula that I'd never seen before, which I really like, which was about happiness. But before we get to that one, for someone who maybe is not familiar with that idea, suffering equals pain times resistance. Can you explain a little bit more about what that is?

Sure. I mean, I think it's the. It's a meditation teacher, Shinzen Young, who Who coined that to. To give proper attribution. But it. You know, the first thing is you got to make making a distinction between pain and suffering, right? And the simplest way to do it is. Is to think of something like physical pain, because it's just the easiest to understand. So my back hurts from time to time, right? And so there is the physical sensation of pain. Then there's everything that I do with that mentally, which is usually some version of this shouldn't be happening. I do yoga. Why is this happening? That's not fair. If it hurts this much now, then how. What's. What's it going to be like in 20 years? You know, what if it gets worse and I can't. I can't play, I can't get on the peloton bike anymore, and then I can't exercise and my depression comes back or an amplification. Oh. You know what I notice is when my back hurts a little bit, this is what my brain is saying to me when I'm not conscious, my back is killing me.

Yeah.

I can't take it.

My back, danger, danger.

It's not. When I stop and I check, I'm like, okay, all right. I don't really like that sensation, but it sure isn't killing me. Right. You know, extreme words can cause extreme emotion. And so all that other stuff beyond the pure sensation of pain is suffering, right? So if we go back to the formula, you know, suffering equals pain times resistance, I'm going to just put all that other. All that. Like, it shouldn't be this way. All the fear around it, all the stories I'm telling myself, those are the resistance part, right? And so let's just pretend that we can put these things on a scale and we can say, all right, my pain is going to be on a scale of 1 to 10. And let's just say it's at a 4. And let's say my resistance is it like a 5. I've just got a lot of emotional energy churning around that, right? All right. I've got 20 total points of suffering at that. At that point, right? If I can turn that resistance down to a three, now I have 12 points of total suffering. And I didn't have to fix the actual pain, because sometimes you can't. Sometimes you can't. So if I can resist what's happening a little bit less, and, I mean, there are. You know, we could talk about what happens when you can totally stop resisting everything, which is complete freedom, but that's out of reach for most of us. The vast majority of the time. But if I can just turn that resistance down a little bit, if I can manage it a little bit better, if I can just say, okay, this is what's happening, it's my back, you know, then my overall experience of suffering goes way down. And again, the great part about that is you don't have to fix the thing that's causing pain. Now if you can fix the thing that's causing pain, of course you should, but there are times we can't. Our child is struggling. That's pain. I don't know how to fix it. I'm doing everything I can, but I can't seem to fix it. They're an addict right now and I can't control that. Right. So that I can't change, but I can change how I'm relating to it and how I'm resisting and how I'm. Yeah, so. So that, that core idea is really fundamental, I think, in the way I look at reducing suffering overall.

Yeah. And you can make the case that even if you can do something about it, that if you are coming with a lot of resistance, all that emotional turmoil, you're less effective and more likely to bring about. You know, so the parent who goes in there, their kids having a problem and they're just like, get out. I'm going to fix. You know, they end up versus the parents, like, okay, I'm going to do something, but let's let me drop the resistance of this shouldn't be happening and I'm a bad parent and they're a bad kid and all that, you know, it's backfires on.

You've got a better. You've got a better chance of responding wisely when you are not as emotionally agitated. And so what all that resistance does is it tends to up the emotional agitation, which makes our responses less. As you. Exactly. As you said, they're less effective. Not only do I suffer more, I tend to respond in ways that aren't real helpful. If I can turn that down a little bit. And one of the ways to turn it down is my resistance. And I put under resistance all the stories we tell ourselves about what's happening, about what's going to happen, about, you know, like, to me, that all falls into that resistance category. You know, what am I making all this mean?

What do you think it is about resistance? That when it's going, there's the resistance is resistant to being softened. So we tell ourselves a story that's like, you know, this is going to happen and we might say you know, that's. Maybe that's kind of extreme, you know, and it's like, no, it's gonna. It gets almost. And then if something. God forbid, someone else tries to soften you, you want to fight them, you're like, no, I'm gonna. I'm gonna take this story to the grave. And I've been fascinated in that myself. It's got. It's like a. It's like a survival instinct in the resistance.

It's really interesting. I've got something happening in my personal life that has thrown me into more turmoil than I've been in. In probably 15 years. And. And it's unearthed traumas that I thought were more fully healed than they've been. But. But what I recognize. I recognize what you were just saying, which is that I am painting a story of doom and gloom, and I don't let go of that story very easily. And I don't. I don't fully know. You know, it's a really good question. Why do I. Why do I cling to that version of events? I try not to. Right. I try and recognize that I'm doing that. Why am I picking that story over all the other stories where things turn out okay? Why am I doing that? And I've seen this in different people. Sometimes we get identified with our pain. We become identified with it, and to. To become unidentified with it is. Is hard because it somehow seems like it's part of us. I think sometimes if we think we let go of that. That we are out of control, which you actually are anyway, you know, so there's. There's that element. Right. There is some belief, I think, that if we resist less, we're giving approval of it, which we don't necessarily have to do. We don't have to be like, I approve that this is happening. And then sometimes we really need other people to see and acknowledge that we're hurting. And by. If we lessen that, we feel like maybe they won't see or acknowledge it or even slightly more perniciously. We're using that pain in that story as a way of subtly manipulating other people into giving us what we think we want, which, again, is never a good strategy. I mean, it just never works. It never turns out well. But I can. In myself, I can see kind of all of those things.

Yeah.

You know, and. And. And. And just feeling like if I just say, well, it's okay. I'm okay, then. Then people might be like, well, then just get on with your life then, dude. Yeah, enough. And I'm like, but. But I'm really hurting.

Yeah.

You know, I need to. I need to see that and have that acknowledged. And so I think there's. It can be a lot of different things that are all kind of interwoven. But you're absolutely right. I mean, it is. You can see it in other people far easier than you see it in yourself. And you're like, you are arguing for your limitations and your pain. Like, you are fighting to keep them. Like. Yeah. That can't be serving you. And yet we do. And. Yeah.

Yeah. That's where it gets. You know, you just see how much there's. There's our conscious, what we're aware of, and then there's what's below the iceberg. That slowly, over time, maybe we see some of. If we're dedicated and.

Yeah.

And that. Humbling. I've had that of like, I've resolved this over and done. Put it away, you know, and then it's like, oh, man, there's more there to.

I have been. I have been shocked by the emotional upheaval that has happened in my. In my life. And, you know, I. It all makes sense. I think it's core trauma stuff and that I did do a lot of really good work on. And like, you know, when you. You know, the closer you get to the core of you, the more it gets triggered. And so I've got the tools to work with it, and I am working with it, and I respond way differently than I would have five years ago, 10 years ago. Like, all the work I've done has been really beneficial.

Yeah.

And it's. It's points. It's really painful. And. And I've been. And I think when you are in a position like you or I. Where you are. I don't know if you want to say, giving advice for a living, but helping others.

Oh, yeah. Tell. I love telling people what to do.

Yeah. It becomes. I get caught in this. I should be better. I should be better. You know, and that I. Is another form of resistance. Right. It's just another.

Yeah.

I just have to go. Yeah. And you're human.

Yeah. And almost.

How much personal work you do, life still hurts. It can still really hurt. There is no getting away from that. I think you hit that at the very top. Right. Like, sometimes, no matter what you do, there's no place where things are always good. Yeah. Well.

And that's where. So to. I love it. It's almost like to summarize. Resistance. It's no. And then you can have a lot of reasons why. No, no, I should be better. No, I should be over this. No, that per. That shouldn't happen in life. I'm going to take this up with.

Yeah.

The big guy and be like, hey, listen, I. Did you hear my. Did you get my memo? This shouldn't happen to me. Right. And regardless, it's a. It's a no. And so, and I, I've. You mentioned reduce. Reducing resistance and you know, getting it to zero. Obviously if it's a multi multiplication equation, would. Would. In theory, there'd be no suffering even if there was pain. And maybe we've all. Maybe not everyone, but I think a lot of people have experienced little moments like that where there's kind of like it hurts, but everything's okay. And, and what I found, and this is the cleverness of resistance, is I. There's been periods in my life where I'm like, oh, I get this formula. So the secret to feeling great all the time and no pain in life is to have no resistance. And then I'm using that to try to get rid of resistance so that I'm resisting the resistance and I'm suffering still. But now I'm suffering, you know, three levels removed from reality in my own head.

Yeah. I mean, it's back to that thing we talked about earlier, which is I don't like the way I feel inside.

Yeah.

So how do I fix it? Right. Which is not. It's normal. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. But the greater. And you said you wanted to put a pin in it. Right. The greater our tolerance for discomfort just basically gives us way more choices.

Yeah.

Right. We have a whole lot more choice when we can. When we can tolerate more discomfort when we can. When our. When our window of tolerance for discomfort is really small, Our choices become very limited.

Yeah.

And addiction is, you know, like. Like a type of addiction I describe with me. It's like the. It's like the narrowest window. There's almost no choice.

Yeah.

Because the thing that's causing the discomfort is so huge. And my ability to tolerate discomfort is zero. And so I have to choose the most extreme reaction to try and make it go away. You know, I feel like a fundamental movement in the healing of addiction is this is to get to the point where you're like, all right, I don't know what's going to happen, but my. I can be in an enormous amount of pain and not have to go do that. That, you know, and so since I'm kind of there. Right. I'm. I'm able to wade into some of this trauma, work really deeply and really go to some heavy, dark places, because I know that my window to accommodate that is broad enough and that I'm not going to go pick up a drink.

Yeah.

I'm not going to say I'm not going to. Like, it couldn't happen. I do believe any of us, if we're in pain long enough. Pain long enough. Right. You. Something gives. Right. So. But. But for me, that ability to say, okay, I can be really uncomfortable and be with it. I don't. I don't like it. God, I hate it. But I can.

Yeah.

And that gives me choice. Right. It gives me the choice to say, I'm not going to bring up this thing with that other person because it's only going to make it worse. I'm going to choose to go to a therapist, and I'm going to choose to go and deep into what this. What the roots of this. And I'm going to face it, you know, I have all sorts of choices that I wouldn't have if my window of being uncomfortable was really small.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the. That's the hard sell. But it's the best medicine is on purpose allowing yourself or even going into situations where you can receive a. A medicinal dose of healthy discomfort. And so meditation practice could be that. Exercise, you know, could be that. I think one thing that I do is, is it used to be cold showers, and then about three months ago, we got a cold plunge, which is. Which is colder than a cold shower. It's really interesting.

Yeah.

Because the first couple months, I was just so juiced, like this greatest thing ever. And now it's been like three months. You know, the enthusiasm has worn off, and it's like going down there in the morning and it's dark, and I'm like, I really thought after three months, this would be easier. I thought I'd be like, oh, yeah, I do this all the time, every morning, and I don't want to do it. I just don't want to do it. And so, you know, linking it to kind of what's the rope? It's like, oh, well, hey, it'll increase my dopamine for the day. Yes. I don't care. And the one that gets me to do it is purposely going into discomfort is good for me.

Yeah.

It's just. It's gonna make your whole life better. And that. I'm like, all right, fine, I'll just do it. And that's usually the thing. That tips the scale for me on that one.

Yeah. I do the. I do the cold shower thing. Have for years for that exact reason. I mean, I don't actually know that it does any. That it has any benefit in my life. I don't know. Maybe it does. They say it fights depression. I don't know. I don't notice any big change on a day where I, like, take a shower and do a cold shower versus a day I don't shower at all. And I don't get it. I mean, I. But. But it is exactly what you said. For me, it is just an intentional saying. Okay. I'm going to expose myself to something that I actually don't want to experience for a little while because I just think that's good for me and I'm training a muscle and. And it's beneficial. I don't know if I would have the. I don't know if I. I don't know if I'd get in a cold plunge every day. I'd have to see. Because that's a different. It's a whole different.

Different animal. It's pretty similar. I mean, it's. You know, it's the same. I guess.

I guess it's the same thing. A cold shower unit. But you're right. I. I never turn it on. I'm like, that's great.

I'm just like, yeah, I guess it would. It would no longer provide that gift, though, if you did. If it no longer provided discomfort, then you have to go find something else.

You don't need to keep up in the ante.

Yeah, you gotta go. We're gonna. Like a glacier.

We're on. Naked and afraid, you know, out in the woods.

Yeah, yeah. That's. Those people, they gotta. They got a high tolerance. Okay, so we've got to get to this other formula, which I never heard before and I loved, which was. Okay, so if suffering is pain times resistance, happiness is, you know. Yeah. If you were to ask people, like, what's. What's gonna make you happy? And they'll say, like, wow. You know, the person would say yes to the date. I. I'd get the raise. I'd win the lottery. Things would go my way in life, basically. That's usually the thing I want. I get. That's what we think would give us happiness. And you said, happiness equals the way things are divided by our expectations.

Yeah.

So I'd love to hear more about that formula. And you see that?

Yeah, I mean, I. Look, it's a. It's a rough approximation of certain things in life. But. But it does seem to be somewhat true, right, that. That, you know, the higher we expect, you know, when we. When we have high expectations of things, we're very easily disappointed. I'm not even sure I would say if I. As I think more about it, I might say that, like, unhappiness is. Is the reverse of that, right? Because when you expect something to happen and it doesn't, you are very disappointed and very unhappy, you know, and so I think that. But we can't not have expectations, right? You just. It's human. There's no not having expectation. I mean, at least I can't not have them. I expect my car is going to start right? When it doesn't, I'm not very happy about it, right? And so. But. But I can look at that and say, like, what. Where am I setting myself up with constantly expecting things to be a certain way? And I think one of the things that we know about humans is that we are very bad at predicting how happy something will make us. It's not actually that we're wrong about what will make us happy, because we kind of like, you know, a nice dinner with my family is going to probably make me happy. Getting a $20,000 raise at work is probably going to make me happy, right? But we overestimate how happy, right? And then we're disappointed because we all have had the experience again and again and again of, I get the thing I thought I wanted, and maybe there's a momentary burst of pleasure, and then it could be a minute later, it could be two days later, it could be a week later. You're kind of like, well, I still kind of feel the same way I felt before, so I guess that's not the thing. And so we just pick the next thing instead of questioning the process itself, right? Instead of questioning the process itself and realizing, like, okay, yeah, those things in life, they do bring benefit, but. But we. We get overly attached to them as the thing and miss the process of actually being present, being content. And, you know, this has been my lifelong. I think some people may have this more than other people. I have it. You know, I think I have a strong bias towards it, which is like, I need that, and then I'll be happy. I mean, if you. If you told me 10 years ago when I started this podcast that I would get to talk with you about the work that I do and I would do it full time and I would make a decent enough living and that I would have a podcast that had been listened to 30 million times, I would have said, if that happens, I will be ecstatic every day of my life. I'm not. Right. I'm not. I'm grateful for all those things. Those are all really good things. But it's. They're, they're the, the, you know, the joy of living isn't all in those things, you know. And so I think it's, it's sort of both sides of that. You know, like, we expect something's going to make us really happy and then we get it and it doesn't. Or we expect something's going to happen and it doesn't happen, and then we're very disappointed about it and we do the same thing. Which is, like you said, if I just had that, I'd be happy. You know, it's a. It's. It's another of the sort of very common ways that we humans are sort of confused about. Well, being.

Yeah. And end up ultimately, you know, creating a lot of our own suffering, even regardless of the life circumstance. Obviously some circumstances can be very painful, but the amount. And sometimes though, they cannot be that painful. And we can be in a great deal of suffering around them. And I think that what you're highlighting is that, that we do habituate to circumstances, even great ones. And then, and then it comes back to me. I'm thinking about those that, that trigger multiple times a day when you go to the bathroom or go down the stairs or whatever. Because just like presence, feeling aware of the blessings in your life and grateful to them does not happen automatically.

No.

So having that, like, wait a minute, man. Ten years ago, this would have been a dream. And for me, dropping into that, to me, I feel like there's two things that I'll do in my meditation, usually during the mobility time that really are like a. Okay, this is. I. I need to like, actively do this every day to help internalize it. And one of those is some sort of like, okay, I'm not in charge. I surrender to the. And I'll actually be in like a prone, like, bowing position, stretching out as I do it. And the other one is like, thank you. Let me like, really think about a couple of these things that are amazing. That 10 years ago would have been a dream come true. And if I don't do that, then my tendency is going to be to fight life, to have expectations, which basically an expectation is it should go the way that I want versus sure, I have a preference. I would prefer if that. Now, obviously, that would be great. But. And I think the energy of preference versus expectation is one's way more fluid and flexible and realizing that I'm not in control and shouldn't be in control, but the expectation to me is loaded with a lot of should and some idea that I think we have in the background somehow that we should be in control. And I do know it's right and best and, and I'm pissed or I'm sad and. And also makes me think of, you know, you talk about, we get disappointed. It's like, what do we do with that disappointment? Because you can have a preference, it's not met and you're disappointed. But I think we, we don't want to feel that disappointment. So we harden around it and we get, we blame the people, we blame life and there's all this, this armoring that we can do.

Yeah. 100. And I think it's worth. You made a point in there that I think is important. Right. Which is that it's not that circumstances don't matter. It's not that circumstances don't contribute to our well being. Right. They do. Right. All things being equal, having, you know, more resources at your disposal is a good thing. Right? All things being equal, having a job you like is better than having a job you don't like. I mean, the circumstances matter, but they're not the whole story. And for most of us, we spend all our energy on the circumstances instead of saying, well, okay, of course I've got to tend to the stuff out there and I've got to, I've got to try and get the things that I would want and, and you know, skillfully do that. But that we, we spend some of the energy seeing through the game and going, okay, but at the same time, I've got to invest a fair amount inside too, because the inside matters too. And I think it's the same thing with resistance. Right. Like one of the things that, that I've grown. It's been harder to talk about resistance because what we have seen in some ways is very positive resistance. In the world, the world, the word resistance has often meant standing up to power.

That's.

I'm not, that's not what I'm saying that that's bad. It's not that. Right. There is a time and a place to stand up for what you believe in. There is a time and a place to go for what you want. There is a time and a place to invest in an outcome. It's more the internal processes that I'm talking about with, with resistance and expectation and all Those things, I think, you know, and so I always, you know, some people think it's all about the outside world, and then there are other people, particularly sort of the meditative traditions that say it's all, all about the inside world. And I actually think that's neither of those are correct. It's a co creation. Our life is a combination of both those things. And so we want to be working wisely in both realms, not one, not just one or the other. But the default for Western society is outside. If I can just get the outside world to line up and do what I want it to do, then I will be okay. And it doesn't work because either A, if you get it to line up, you won't be happy and B, you most likely won't get it all to line up. Right.

Because not for very long either. Like, how long are you going to sustain that?

All right. You know, because there's always something and if there isn't, you'll find, I mean, my experience is I'll find something, sure, right. You know, I'll find something to be unhappy about.

Yeah, yeah, we have that capacity. Wow, there's, there's so much here. And I know we're, we're still just scratching the surface, but thank you so much for, for sharing with us, Eric. And for people who are interested in really going deep with these. Can you share a little bit more about your Spiritual Habits program and maybe where people can learn more and find that?

Yeah, the Spiritual Habits program is a program, we run it once a year, so it's a ways away before we'll do it again. It'll be spring before we run it again, but you can get on a waiting list for it and all that stuff. And it's a, it's a cohort based program, meaning, you know, you build friendships and community and there's a, there's a big community element of it. And that's been. One of the things I'm most proud of are the friendships and the support groups that have evolved out of that work. But you can find out about our podcast about that, about everything else we do by going to oneyoufeed.net that's o n e y o u f e dash e dash net or look for the one you feed on your favorite podcast platform player.

Yeah, right on. I definitely do recommend that, that podcast. And then, you know, when, when it come, when it rolls around, if you're resonating with this, if you're curious about this, the, the one, the Spiritual Habits could be a great place to to go a lot deeper. Thank you so much Eric for sharing with us.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure talking with you and and I always enjoy.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the.

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