Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569

What if the key to unlocking your best life isn’t about control—but surrender? In this powerful episode, Eric Zimmer, renowned coach, podcast host, and behavioral change expert, shares why letting go is the ultimate catalyst for personal growth and transformation. We dive deep into the paradox of surrender—how embracing uncertainty, releasing resistance, and trusting the process can lead to greater clarity, resilience, and fulfillment. Eric opens up about his own journey, the science behind surrender, and practical strategies to apply it in your daily life. Whether you're facing a career crossroads, struggling with self-doubt, or seeking deeper meaning, this conversation will challenge you to rethink success and redefine strength. Tune in to discover how surrender can unlock new opportunities, reduce stress, and empower you to live with purpose and freedom. Link to the full show notes: https://passionstruck.com/eric-zimmer-surrender-is-the-secret-to-best-life/Sponsors:Rosetta Stone: Unlock 25 languages for life at “ROSETTASTONE.com/passionstruck.”Prolon: Reset your health with 15% off at “ProlonLife.com/passionstruck.”Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at “MINT MOBILE dot com slash PASSION.”Hims: Start your journey to regrowing hair with Hims. Visit hims.com/PASSIONSTRUCK for your free online visit. Quince: Discover luxury at affordable prices with Quince. Enjoy free shipping and 365-day returns at quince.com/PASSION. In this episode, you will learn:Feeding the Good Wolf: Eric Zimmer's Journey from Addiction to Intentional LivingThe Power of Surrender: How Eric Zimmer Overcame AddictionFrom Darkness to Light: Reclaiming Identity After AddictionNavigating Recovery: Practical Strategies for Feeding the Good WolfMoments of Clarity: Eric Zimmer's Path to SobrietyUnderstanding Mattering: The Connection Between Identity and AddictionThe Slow Unraveling: Eric Zimmer's Story of Addiction and RecoveryTransforming Pain into Purpose: Lessons from Eric Zimmer's JourneyThe Role of Sensitivity and Creativity in Addiction: A Conversation with Eric ZimmerBuilding a Life of Purpose: Eric Zimmer on Intentional Living After AddictionConnect with Eric Zimmer: www.oneyoufeed.netNext on Passion Struck:In the next episode of Passion Struck, Shige Oishi shares his incredible insights on how to build a life of resilience, clarity and intentional growth. It's an episode filled with actionable strategies for overcoming adversity, cultivating mental strength and unlocking your fullest potential. For more information on advertisers and promo codes, visit Passion Struck Deals. Join the Passion Struck Community! Sign up for the Live Intentionally newsletter, where I share exclusive content, actionable advice, and insights to help you ignite your purpose and live your most intentional life. Get access to practical exercises, inspiring stories, and tools designed to help you grow. Learn more and sign up here. Speaking Engagements & Workshops Are you looking to inspire your team, organization, or audience to take intentional action in their...

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  It took everything away from my identity that wasn't about being an addict. That was it in the last couple of years of my addiction. That was all I was and all I lived to do, and it consumed every waking moment of my life. How am I going to get the next fix? That's it. That was all there was. It took every part of my identity away, any part of me that was anything different. And ultimately, I think the thing about addiction that really becomes the thing is this belief that I can't do anything else. I'm never going to do anything useful or important or interesting because this thing owns all of me.

• 0:45John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck. Hey, Passion Struck fam.

• 1:29John R. Miles?

  Welcome back to episode 569. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for joining us. You have just joined a community that's all about igniting passion, living intentionally, and creating a life of purpose. Let me ask you, have you ever felt like your life is being pulled in 100 different directions, leaving you unable to focus on what truly matters? What if I told you? That the key to living a life of purpose and focus isn't about eliminating distractions, but understanding and managing them in a way that helps you take back control of your attention. That's exactly what today's guest is here to help us with. In this episode, I'm sitting down with Eric Zimmer, a behavioral coach, certified interfaith

• 2:10John R. Miles?

  spiritual director, and host of the award-winning podcast, One You Feed. Eric has an incredible story of overcoming addiction, rebuilding his life, and now helping others live intentionally by feeding the good wolf in their own lives. Eric's journey from facing personal challenges to becoming a source of inspiration for many offers a powerful reminder that no matter where we start, we can transform our lives through small intentional actions. In today's conversation, Eric shares his personal journey of overcoming addiction and rediscovering his purpose, the power of small deliberate actions in creating lasting change, how we can shift our mindset and cultivate habits that align with our values, practical

• 2:51John R. Miles?

  strategies for overcoming shame and finding resilience, and lastly, how to create a life of purpose even when the road feels overwhelming. Before we dive into today's episode, let me quickly recap some recent conversations. On Tuesday, I had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Ethan Cross, where we explored how to harness our emotions to create a more purposeful life. It was an episode you won't want to miss. And this past Friday, I shared a solo episode on the importance of fighting for your soul and staying aligned with your true purpose. Be sure to check it out if you missed it. If you love these conversations and want to dive deeper into topics like emotional resilience, self-awareness, and intentional living, make sure to explore our episode starter packs. They're available on Spotify or at passionstruck.com/starterpacks.

• 3:33John R. Miles?

  Don't forget to subscribe to my Live Intentionally newsletter at passionstruck.com for exclusive content, challenges, and tools to stay aligned with your goals every single week. Now, let's dive into episode 569 of the Passion Struck Podcast with Eric Zimmer. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your hosting guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

• 4:01John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely thrilled today to bring you Eric Zimmer. Welcome, Eric.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Thanks, John. I'm glad to be here.

• 4:09John R. Miles?

  As the conversation progresses, I'm going to ask you some questions about your podcast, but I just wanted to start out by paying you a compliment that I love the way that you interview, and I love what you do with your show. So, thank you for bringing it to the world.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Well, thank you, John. That's very kind.

• 4:29John R. Miles?

  Eric, my show centers on this idea that everyone matters and that we can rebuild our lives intentionally. To begin with, I'd love to hear, what does the idea of mattering mean to you personally?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  That's a really good question. I've never thought about that in that way. So, I would say that mattering means that everybody has, for each individual, we have an interior world that is really important to us. And we have a tendency to see our internal world as really important, and everyone else is not that important because we're not living it. But when we can invert that and think about the fact that everybody's internal world is as important to them, and their lives are as important to them as they, as mine is to

• 5:25Speaker 01

  me, we realize then there's no way that anyone doesn't matter, because it matters deeply to that person. And so, I think it's really a matter of seeing that everybody wants the same basic things. One of the things that has been really helpful for me over the years is to think about how every person wants some version of more enjoyable, good experiences, and less bad experiences. Or said differently, they want to experience more pleasure and have less pain. That's true for every single human. And that's a commonality that is underneath

• 6:07Speaker 01

  all of us, and that matters. Everything up from that ends up being strategies. It's the strategies that people employ to make the, bring those things about.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  And I think when we can see things that way, we're better able to connect with somebody at the most deep level, which is that to them and the people around them, they matter a lot.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  And so it's a way, by thinking about mattering both for ourselves, but also for others, we can de-center ourselves as the center of every single story.

• 6:45John R. Miles?

  Well, Eric, that was really profound and you were one of the first people I've ever had on the podcast who gets my vision of mattering. So I love that you brought our sense of self-mattering and its impact on helping others feel they matter and the reciprocal nature that it has. So what a profound way of describing it. Couldn't have said it better myself.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. It took me a few minutes to get there, but hopefully it made sense.

• 7:12John R. Miles?

  Absolutely. I always in these interviews, love to give the audience some backdrop of who you are so they understand where we're going. And I think you do the same thing in your interviews. Looking back as a child, you struggled with kleptomania and were really acting out.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:33John R. Miles?

  Looking back, tying to this concept of mattering, do you think those behaviors were connected to a deeper sense as a child to feel seen and to feel that you mattered?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Probably yes. I think more than anything, it was a way for me of feeling alive. And what I mean by that is I think that the way that I was raised, and it's not unusual to a lot of people of our generation or before, is that there's only certain ways that you can be seen and that are okay. If you're different than that, then what often we do is we will mute those parts of ourselves so that we are acceptable to the people who love us or should love us. And my experience is if you do that long enough, you push down,

• 8:26Speaker 01

  in my case, you numb and deaden everything in order to be acceptable and be okay. And then the problem with that, though, is that feeling numbed and deadened is a really awful feeling. It feels terrible. So then you're seeking some way to then feel alive.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  And so I think for me, that's stealing made me feel alive. It had an energy to it and it had a, the danger had some adrenaline. So I think that's a lot of it. But yeah, I probably some of it also was simply trying to say, yeah, I matter. Or in a strange way, finding what is the thing

• 9:05Speaker 01

  that I could be, that I could be really good at? Like I, I was athletic, but not great athletic. I was never going to be a star. I was really good in school, but not, again, not exceptional. It seemed like in some way, this was this thing that made me different or special. Not a great different or special, I now recognize, but I don't think I knew that at the time.

• 9:29John R. Miles?

  Okay. And I think we all have these upbringings that shape who we are today. And my parents, when I look back, were extremely different in their styles. My father really grew up with a father who was an alcoholic and who was removed. And so he tended to more lash out in anger. And my mom was more perfectionist, to say. And in your case, you had two parents who had different manifestations of depression. Your father's anger and your mom's withdraw, if my research is correct.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  You've done good research. I'm impressed.

• 10:12John R. Miles?

  How did they impact your emotional development and your coping mechanisms?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  We know from a whole lot of study and experience at this point that our early years shape a lot of who we are, both in our personality development, but also just in how our brains are actually formed and wired. So it's really important. And I always find this an interesting topic because on one hand,

• 10:41Speaker 01

  there's a lot of studies that really show if you've had difficult early experiences, you may have a difficult later life. And I think that's helpful to know so that we understand who we are and maybe why we are some of the ways we are. But ultimately, that is not a very empowering mindset either.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  And so it's how do I hold both those things? I had these early experiences that shaped me, caused me to be the way they, the way I am in certain ways and are still acting upon me. And I have some degree of agency to be different. So I think that wasn't an answer to your question. I was setting up the, the, the answer. I think it certainly shaped me in lots of ways.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  I have my theories of in what ways it shaped me and they align with the current psychological theories of what would be. And if we know anything about science is that 20 years from now, we'll look at a lot of these things and be like, well, they thought it was this, but it's really that. And we'll realize it wasn't exactly the way that we thought it was. But I think in general, what I got from both of my parents was a stay unseen. Don't be upset. Don't ask for too much. Don't make any sort of mistake. My dad's anger was I would try and do something and if I didn't do it well, he would get angry. Whether that was we're throwing the, the baseball together or playing golf, or he's trying to teach me how to hammer in a nail, whatever it is.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  And I think for my dad, he was just trying to make me better. Right? And I don't think he knew really how to relate. So I got that from my dad, which was like, don't make any mistake. Be very careful. Don't, and still to this day, if I do anything wrong, I'm looking around me like who's going to be mad for really silly things. And then for my mom, I think I spent my whole life up until my early twenties being focused on not being my dad. Because my dad was very, his depression came out as irritability and anger. And it was way out there. It was very obvious. It was easy to see.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  What I didn't see was the other iceberg I didn't want to hit, which was my mother. And my mother's was much more just a very pessimistic way of looking at things. Her depression took the, the shape of.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Deep withdrawal from the world. I have one memory of my mom before about 18 and it's her sitting at a table playing solitaire for hours. That gives you a sense. So I think the ways that shaped me are, don't make a mistake, don't have needs that are going to be difficult for somebody to meet because then they're not going to like you. And then just this withdrawing nature of my depression. And my depression, when it shows up, it actually gets both those. I get the irritation and I get the sort of deadening.

• 13:45John R. Miles?

  Yeah, thank you for being vulnerable and going into that. It sounds like your parents' struggles added such a layer of complexity to your upbringing and really impacted your sense of self and your ability to be seen and navigate your life as a young person. So I think that backdrop really builds on where I want to go next. And I've heard you mention in other conversations, listening to you, that addiction doesn't always stem from when dealing with trauma, but can result from chronic stress or a sense of, as we've been just talking about, disconnection. What do you think contributed most to your own path toward addiction?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  This is again where I think we're speculating, right? Addiction is a very complicated thing. Why is anybody addicted? We know some things. We know, for example, as you said, that trauma or adverse childhood experiences make you way more likely to become an addict, right? That's just, it's a pretty well documented fact. But we know lots of people who had terrible childhood experiences, far worse than I ever had and did not become addicts. And we know lots of people who seem to have had a pretty good childhood and end up being an addict. So there's, it's the, it's really multifactorial in the different things that causes it. So

• 15:07Speaker 01

  when I say why I think I became an addict, I'm stating a working hypothesis because we just don't know for sure. But I do think for me, it comes back to that sense of feeling alive. When I first really started getting into drugs and alcohol.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Some of it was probably pain escape, but a lot of it was that the world came alive for me in a way that it wasn't normally. There's an old movie called Days of Wine and Roses, and it's about an alcoholic couple. And the husband gets sober, and at one point, he's trying to get his wife sober, and she's not, and he's talking to her about it, and she says something along the lines of, "Life is normally in black and white for me, but when I drink, all the colors come on." And that's, for me, the best description of what the early journey into addiction was. It turned all the colors on.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Now, the problem with alcohol, or problem with addiction, is as you go, you start behaving in ways that you don't feel good about, which then means that the only way you know how to deal with an uncomfortable emotion is to drink or get high. Then you do that again, you do something you feel bad about, you're worse than you were, and you're in a descending cycle. So, over time, my addiction became about avoiding the shame of being an addict, right? That becomes a driver, becomes the main driver of addiction at a certain point, I think, is it gets a life of its own. But early on, for me, I think it was really about life coming alive to me, the world

• 16:48Speaker 01

  feeling like it was interesting, and I wanted to connect to it. And that's the opposite of what my depression generally is, where I can tell when I'm in depressive slump. I don't get depressed in the way that I used to. I always remain functional, and I can do the things I need to do, but I'll just notice, I'll walk into a bookstore, and I won't find anything I really want to read, which is unusual for me, because my normal state is I walk into a bookstore, I could walk out with 30 different books I'm interested in. So, that anhedonia, I think, is such an unpleasant feeling, that inability to derive pleasure from things that normally bring you pleasure, is what drove me early on to addiction, because it, like I said, it turned the colors on.

• 17:35John R. Miles?

  So I want to tell you this story. I used to volunteer in a cold weather shelter, which is ironic here in Florida because it doesn't get cold that much, but when it does, it certainly, you can tell the difference because we're used to it being so hot. But I remember one of the most rewarding aspects of this volunteer work that I did was a lot of people would volunteer and they would try to avoid the homeless. And instead, I would try to connect with them and, and try to understand their stories. And I once met this gentleman who used to be a cardiologist. He was one of the top cardiologists in Tampa Bay. And

• 18:17John R. Miles?

  he had so much stress in his job and he was having some problems in his relationships with his wife that he started to go down this path of using drugs and one drug led to another drug, which led to another drug, which led to a full-blown addiction. And then he started stealing painkillers from his practice and other things, got caught and he lost it all. His wife left him, his kids wouldn't talk to him. He lost his medical license and he was just telling me that you see these people like me who are homeless and you think it can't happen to you. And he goes, you don't realize how close any of us potentially are to this happening to them.

• 19:00John R. Miles?

  And he described to me that addiction often feels like a slow unraveling. Did it feel that way to you as well?

• 19:10Speaker 01

  For sure. I do think it felt like a, a slow unraveling, although my addiction took off really fast. I, I had started to drink a little bit early in high school and, and I drank strangely, but I can look back and see, okay, that's not normal behavior. But then I founded this tutoring program for disadvantaged children. And I saw what alcohol and drugs were doing to their family lives. I saw the chaos that their parents' alcohol and drug use put into their lives. And I just was like, I'm not going to do any of that. And I just became completely no drugs, no alcohol, not because like today I need to, but because I just didn't want any part of that in my life.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  But then when I did later on start drinking, it was like I was, I feel like I was shot out of a cannon. It wasn't like I slowly build up. It was like I was suddenly drinking every night in excess and then other drugs added. But yes, it was certainly an unraveling over time where it went from something that I'm doing. You know, drinking, which is what a lot of people at the age of 18 or 19 are doing to ending up at the age of 25 being homeless heroin addicts. It was an unraveling and it was somewhat slow unraveling, but in some ways it was a fast unraveling for me. Which I'm actually really grateful for. I'm grateful for the fact that when I start using and I stayed sober eight years and I started using again.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  And when I do, it gets bad really fast and I'm grateful for that because it's unsustainable. I can't keep doing it. And I know a lot of people who are stuck, sort of what I would call in the middle. Which is that their drug and alcohol use isn't causing their life to burn to the ground. But it's also not a net positive either in their ability to move their life forward. It's not bad enough to do anything about really, or it doesn't seem to them that it's bad enough to do anything about. But it's also a real limiter on their growth and ultimately their happiness.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  And they stay stuck in that space. And I've seen people stay stuck in there for a long time. So I'm grateful that my unraveling ultimately is a little faster than the average.

• 21:28John R. Miles?

  I can completely understand where you're, what you were just talking about because I think that's what happened to me in my own life. I have been sober now for about, I don't know, going on 18 months and

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Congratulations.

• 21:43John R. Miles?

  Yeah, I didn't really ever look at it like I had a problem. I just didn't feel like I.

• 21:51John R. Miles?

  Was performing at my best and that I was looking at the alcohol to like you were describing early on, bring out areas of me that I thought brought out different dimensions. And the more I have focused on my own self-worth and doing the inner things to really know me, the less I have felt over time, the need to drink to bring out a part of me that I'm already happy with the person I am. But one of the things that was really interesting to me, because this isn't the first time I've stopped drinking, I've done it before, is when you go out just to see how

• 22:33John R. Miles?

  much of a norm it is in society, it is the norm. Not drinking is not the norm.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 22:42John R. Miles?

  And it has really been impactful on more than I even suspected it might, on some of the relationships, both seeing from my perspective, how much of my activities surrounded around drinking is the common element, but also how many people have pulled away from me now that I've stopped who still partake. So have you seen any of these things in your own life?

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. I mean, alcohol is everywhere in life. And now more and more marijuana is starting to be that way also. And the vast majority of people don't have any problem with it. So they're able to enjoy something that I think ultimately is enjoyable. If I had the choice, could I occasionally use drugs or alcohol? Would I? Probably because they're enjoyable. But I can't with any kind of reasonableness, but it is everywhere. And learning to navigate that, where right now, we are staying with my partner Ginny's, some of her friends. And they are the sort of people that have a couple of drinks every night, at least the nights we've been there. I don't know what their pattern is outside of that. And they keep asking me,

• 23:53Speaker 01

  do you hear, do you want a glass of wine? Do you want a cocktail? And I keep saying, no, of course. And in my mind, just the other, just yesterday, I was thinking to myself, at what point do I say to them that I don't drink? Not because I need to give a reason, but because at a certain point, I worry that it starts to seem antisocial.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  And I would experience this back when I was in the workforce, when I was in the software business, people would keep inviting me to happy hour. We're going out after work. We're gonna have a couple of drinks. We're going out after work. We're gonna have a couple of drinks. And I'd say, no, because I don't want to make a big production out of it. Oh, I'm an alcoholic. I mean, I don't want to do that. And yet, at a certain point, I found with people, if I liked them, I had to say, hey, here's why I'm not going out with you afterwards. It's not because I don't want to spend time with you, or not because I don't like you guys, because I do. It's just that's not really my scene, going out and having a couple of drinks. So yeah, learning to navigate that is interesting. And I'm probably not, I think, being around drinking situations where drinking

• 24:58Speaker 01

  is the primary focus are things that I tend to avoid because, A, I don't think I'm as fun at them as other people are, and B, I don't enjoy them in the way that other people are. Now, I don't avoid where alcohol is, or I'd have to lock myself in a closet. But I do tend to avoid things where drinking is the main activity.

• 25:20John R. Miles?

  I want to go into something, because I loved when I was doing my research, that you were a software developer, and you got into that, because much of my career was spent in information technology. I started on the network side, information security. I've been a developer myself, and then ended up taking on more management roles, over it, eventually becoming a CIO. I understand the development world well. Here's where I wanted to go with it. Oftentimes, I found developers to be some of the most creative people I knew. I also found them oftentimes to be sensitive. And do you think there's

• 26:03John R. Miles?

  any connection between sensitivity and creativity and the vulnerability to addiction?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  First, I'll say I'm not a software developer. I was just around software development for my whole career. Software startup companies, then leading large software products and then doing being product manager. So everywhere around development. So to clarify that, the second part of the question, though, about sensitivity and creativity and vulnerability to addiction.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  I think the answer seems to be yes. I wish the answer was no. I wish that there was no linkage there, but there does seem to be. And so I think that people who are more sensitive are likely to be more creative. And I think being more sensitive means you might be more likely to succumb to drugs and alcohol. And then there's the fact that the scene, particularly when you're young, the scene around creativity is has alcohol and drugs often baked into it. My thing was rock music, right? And of course, I mean, sex, drugs and rock and roll, right? It's all embedded into one package. And but I think you see that with writers.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  I know a number of fiction writers who've done very well, had New York Times bestsellers. And they talk about, and a couple of them have gotten sober and they've talked about how hard it is to disentangle that notion of the creative writer who's also a drunk, right? Hemingway sort of set the archetype for this among modern writers. So I think it's a combination of yes, those personality traits make you a little bit more likely. And I also think that the creativity world, even more than a lot of parts of the world, do have, there's a romanticization of substances that can be very problematic.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  And then I'll just end that by saying my experience is also you can be creative. If you're somebody who's felt like your creativity is comes from drugs and alcohol, you can be creative without them. It's a transition. My experience is it's a transition and the way of creativity changes a little bit, right? I think I got more ideas when I was still like drinking or smoking marijuana. I think more ideas just came out of me. But so many of them were terrible. They were terrible ideas, right? And so now it's a little bit different. And then I think there's also something about

• 28:41Speaker 01

  the prolificness of young artists compared to older artists, particularly in the music and writing space.

• 28:49John R. Miles?

  I mean, you have to go back and wonder, would the Beatles have ever become the Beatles, or the Rolling Stones ever become the Rolling Stones, or Guns N' Roses?

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Or Yep.

• 28:58John R. Miles?

  Or Metallica? I mean, there's so many of them where drugs played an overwhelming portion of their exploration and what they produced. David Bowie, others, you could go on and on.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, absolutely. It does seem to be baked in there. But I think that for people who I think we could argue with a lot of bands, a lot of those people. There's the flip side. There's Kurt Cobain, there's the Janis Joplin, there's the Jimi Hendrix. There's all the great artists that we lost because of their addiction. And what might they have gone on to do? What work could they have done? You look at someone like Bob Dylan, who doesn't seem to have battled those demons in the same way. The guy is still making great music in his seventies, or is he, he might even be eighty, I don't know. The guy's still making great music. And yes, that creativity can be fueled in the short term.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  But it's really a long-term play that an artist, I think, wants to be about. I think I've heard you say something to this degree, or write something about how the goal isn't to just be able to do this for today or tomorrow. The goal is, how do I sustain this over the long term? And so in that way, I don't think drugs and alcohol are actually useful to creativity over the long term. I think you have to find a different fuel source. That may have been a fuel source early on for people. But ultimately, I think there needs to be a different fuel source if you're going to do it long term.

• 30:30John R. Miles?

  Yes, and I just wanted to pick up on a couple of things you said because I know for me when I was younger and I've always been a creative person. In fact, my mind sometimes would never shut down and that's part of the reason I would drink was to try to quiet it down because I couldn't sleep and do other things. And the other portion of me is I've always been an introvert. So in social settings, it helped give me the courage to speak out and be a different version of myself. So it was very advantageous for those things. Now, I want to ask you, have you ever seen the documentary where they created We Are The World, that song?

• 31:11Speaker 01

  It's funny that you should say that because, no, I did not see it. But I'm on a group chat with a few of my old friends and they're right now discussing the documentary of the making of Do They Know It's Christmas? Strangely enough, like just today, they're texting all about that. I've not seen either of them, though.

• 31:30John R. Miles?

  Well, it was really interesting and I'm just going to talk about Bob Dylan for a second because Bob Dylan ends up showing up to this. And you have Stevie Wonder there and obviously Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and everyone else. But out of all of them, Bob Dylan might have been the biggest name there. And yet, in this film, Stevie Wonder, them almost having to manage him because Stevie Wonder wanted to make the song his own and Michael and Lionel had already written it when they invited him into it. But Bob Dylan shows up and the song they end up producing is way out of his vocal range for a lot of it.

• 32:12John R. Miles?

  And instead of asking them to do anything else or trying to sing parts that were out of his vocal range, you watch him on camera and there are many elements where he's participating, but he just doesn't sing. Like he's encouraging the others and it was very striking to me that he had so much understanding of himself and confidence that He knew his place. He wanted to be there to support it, but he didn't make it about him. And it was just an interesting thing that I thought I would share.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's awesome. I think I would enjoy that. And I think when you get all those egos of that size together, it's gotta be interesting. It's gotta be a fascinating thing to watch.

• 32:56John R. Miles?

  Well, and the whole filming of this happened after they went to an award ceremony. So it's already happening from like midnight to five o'clock in the morning and they keep bringing more and more alcohol and drugs and other things to it. So yes, I could only imagine. So I want to go back to your journey and I often talk about this concept of defining moments. And I think we all have defining moments who shape who we become. Was there a moment or realization for you that led you to finally seek help and be and begin your recovery journey?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  I think this is a really interesting question because I agree with you about defining moments. And I also know that I agree with you from, I was preparing for, to talk to you on my show. And I also know that you believe in that it's the small decisions we make over and over again that really shape who we are. And I'm at work on a book and the book really starts off with what my defining, if you're going to make a movie of my life about addiction, this would be the key moment, right? And I am 24, yeah, 24 or so. It's winter and I get arrested for multiple felonies and I lose the job that I'm in.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  The job that I was in had a van. I was sleeping in that van. I lost that. And I went to treatment because I was going to be really dope sick. I was a heroin addict. And I went to treatment because I just needed a couple of days to have somebody help me detox a little bit. While I figured out what the hell am I get, where, where am I going to get the money to keep doing what I'm doing? And I went there and at one point they did the intake and they sat me down and they said, look, you really need our 28 day treatment program. And I said, I don't think so. I don't think that's a good idea. Now, why I would, what I possibly thought was so important, I had to leave for, cracks me up today. But I went back to my room

• 34:59Speaker 01

  and we, I had what we call in sobriety, a moment of clarity. I had a moment where I realized, if I go, if I don't, if I don't do something different, if I go back out there, I'm either going to go to jail for a long time, right? I've already got potentially 50 years of jail sentences hanging over my head and I'm going to go back and start stealing more again, because it's the way I'm going to get drugs. So I'm either going to jail or I'm going to die. I weighed 105 pounds. I had hepatitis C, like I was dying. And I had that moment of clarity where I thought, okay, I'm gonna go. And I went back and I said, okay, I will go to treatment. So that is the defining moment. If we were to film my life, it's a defining moment. What I think is interesting

• 35:43Speaker 01

  about it is A, that moment wouldn't have meant anything if it weren't followed by thousands of tiny choices that actually allowed that moment to stand out there. And there were all sorts of other things that led to that moment. Me trying to going into a different detox for a couple of days and that not working and me trying Narcotics Anonymous and that not working and me trying to move to another state. So I don't buy drugs and that not really working, like all these other little things that we go through. So I think we can pull out defining moments. But I think that if we isolate them from what comes before and after, we miss part of the bigger picture, right? We miss part of the fact that those moments are

• 36:27Speaker 01

  created out of something and they only stand out because of what comes next.

• 36:35John R. Miles?

  I think that's a fabulous answer. And you ended up going into the 12 step program, which has a whole underlying philosophy of service.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:47John R. Miles?

  My question around this is one of surrendering. How did surrendering, both to the process and more importantly, to the need for help, become a critical part of your recovery?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  This is a really interesting thing to talk about because the first step of a 12-step program is, like you said, we admit we are powerless over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable. There are, this seems to be an idea that works for certain people. And it seems to be an idea that for other people feels profoundly dispowering, unempowering, right? I'm powerless. For me, the surrender really became about, for that period of time, me saying, if I reengage in a battle with drugs and alcohol, as in, I try to use them successfully, which is the obsession of every great alcoholic or drug addict, is that I will figure this

• 37:46Speaker 01

  out in such a way that I can continue to use or drink. That's our great obsession. We keep trying to figure that out. So surrendering to the idea that, like, that's not ever going to work. I'm never going to figure that out. If I climb into the ring with drugs or alcohol, I am going to lose. Surrendering to that idea and then surrendering also to the idea that I have no idea how to live without drugs and alcohol. Because I've been trying in different ways for a long time to figure that puzzle out. And I've been completely unsuccessful. For me, the surrender was, I can't keep doing this, I'm going to lose, and I don't know how to do this.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  So I'm going to, for a period of time, listen to what people who seem to have figured this out think. Now, I think that what gets interesting is over time, people tend to, I think, take this powerlessness thing too far. They'll say, I'm powerless over people, places, and things. And on one level, yes, we are. We cannot make people do a certain thing, but we have influence, right? We have lots of influence. And so, powerlessness is this interesting thing. And I think it's at the heart of one of what I think is the most interesting questions that show up in anybody's life over and over, which is the serenity prayer, right?

• 39:14Speaker 01

  I think we keep getting presented with, is this something that I should change, or is this something that I should accept? And knowing how to figure that out, I think, is really one of the biggest pieces of wisdom that any person can have. So I think that's a little bit of a mixed answer, in that the powerlessness was really helpful for me as a concept in the beginning. But I also think that it was important for me, as I became, as I continued to get sober, to realize that I wasn't powerless in all areas. And I think the other thing is that 12-step programs, you admit powerlessness because you believe, you then go on to turn things over to a higher power, which means that you believe, on

• 39:57Speaker 01

  some level, that there's something out there that is going to intervene on your behalf. And that's not actually something that I believe in anymore. And so then that becomes interesting. If I'm admitting powerlessness, or I'm turning things over, who am I turning it over to, or what am I turning it over to? And we can pursue that further if you want, but I think that's the, powerlessness doesn't make sense without that second piece, right? You wouldn't just admit powerlessness or surrender if you didn't believe that you were then bringing in some other power to help. And I think that is how we get over addiction, is we bring in different sources of strength, support, and help. That's the

• 40:40Speaker 01

  key, I think. If there was one thing I would say to anybody who's trying to get over an addiction, whether you go to 12-step programs, whether you do it on your own, whatever way you choose, and there's lots of ways to do it, I do think it's a matter of what resources can I marshal that are going to help me to do this, because I can't do it on my own.

• 41:04John R. Miles?

  So you gave me a great tee up for where I wanted to go anyhow. You were the host. I brought it up before, but I didn't give the name of the one you feed, which is based on a parable, and I'll let you describe it. But at a high level, I've heard you mention that feeding the good wolf was a key part of your journey. What were some of the practical ways you had to begin to starve the bad wolf?

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, the parable is, I'll just give it to people. If they don't know, most people probably have heard it in some form at this point. It's the basic idea that we have two wolves inside of us. They're always at battle. One is a good wolf, things like that 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, you know, which one of those wolves is going to win? And the answer is the one that you feed. And so one of the things I like about that parable is it doesn't actually have say that I have to starve the bad wolf. I like it because it points to that there are positive choices that I can make. And my experience is starving, if you have a negative behavior of some sort that

• 42:15Speaker 01

  you want to do away with, whether it's a full blown addiction or something relatively minor, if you just try and stop that behavior without thinking about what's going to replace it, or how are you going to meet the need that behavior was filling in your life, you're probably not going to be very successful. Or you're going to be successful, but it's going to be a painful kind of successful, right? I always wish I could do that, but I can't, which leads to feeling deprived and not being very happy. So in all cases, it's about what is the good part of me that I can feed? What are the positive parts of me that I can feed? And so early on for me, that I heard that that parable the first

• 42:56Speaker 01

  time somewhere in Columbus, Ohio, in the winter of 1995. And I heard it and it just made all the sense in the world to me, right? I was like, oh, yeah, clearly, there's this bad wolf that is devouring everything and I keep feeding it. And the good news about 12 step programs for me and the place that I was, they gave me very specific instructions. Do these things and we think you'll make it. So I knew I had, I knew what feeding the good wolf looked like. At least then I had a sense of, okay, these are the things that I can do that are positive. And if I put my energy and effort into doing those things, people who I trust and seem to have

• 43:40Speaker 01

  gotten over what I've gotten over, tell me that I've got a good chance of making it. How do I just do those things? There's a simplicity often to early recovery that I miss sometimes because it was really very simple for me. It was like, keep going to meetings, call your sponsor, pray, read this book, do this thing. And it was very simple. Life is, as you go on in life and your life in general is more complex than that. It's not, okay, here's the three things I need to do and then everything is taken care of. Our lives tend to be more complex than that. I miss some of that early simplicity and knowing exactly what things to do.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  But I also think that into, in our day to day lives, we also know some of the things that lead to us being happier and healthier and better people. And so the, the parable ultimately is about the fact that we have a choice, right? We have a choice about what, where we're going to put our energy and that choice matters.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Back to your earlier thing about matter.

• 44:42John R. Miles?

  Absolutely does. And I just wanted to bring in the story of someone I mentioned from time to time on the podcast. Not sure if you ever interviewed him, but his name is Nate Dukes. And

• 44:54Speaker 01

  I know the name sounds familiar though, but I don't think I've ever interviewed him and I'm not, I don't know his story.

• 45:00John R. Miles?

  I interviewed him early on in this podcast and Nate has a similar in some way story to you. He ends up going from college to a startup. Things are going well. He has more money than he's ever had in his life and he starts partying and that partying leads to more partying and more drug addictions and everything else. And ends up at the height of all this success that he has, thinking it's a good idea to steal a car and driving it across many states. And he ends up falling asleep at the wheel, gets awakened by police two or three states over. He's also from Ohio and he ends up going to jail and. After his time in jail, everyone keeps telling him, you can't change.

• 45:45John R. Miles?

  And I remember in our conversation is, you said, the great thing about hitting rock bottom is that you get to build your life back brick by brick and you get to do it in an intentional way. And you were just talking about some of the things around the 12 steps that are part of their formula. But as you began to rebuild your life, what were some of the first intentional changes you made, even if they seemed really small at the time?

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's helpful to give a little bit more context about where I was and what I was doing. So I went into this 30 day treatment program, which extended to 45 days for me. And then I was out for a little bit and then I made a decision to go into a six month halfway house. So my life, I had nothing to do during that, most of that window, except focus on getting sober. So I had hit rock bottom, right? And I had nothing. I could rebuild life completely. In the beginning, all that rebuilding was laying the foundation for a way to remain sober. That was all that I focused on and I had the luxury to do that time. I mentioned that I got sober for eight years and I went back and drank and maybe we'll talk about that too.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  But at that time, all I had to do was lay the foundation for my sobriety. Then, once I got out, then I started having to do the things that everybody generally has to do, which is I have to figure out a way to make a living and I have to figure out a way to feed myself. And I mean, all of these things that I just hadn't really had to do that much before, which is a real, I was given a real gift to be able to do that. I suppose, again, to your friend's point, when you tear everything down, there is a certain freedom in what, where you choose to go.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  I think then it became about what are the things?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  That and they're very similar things now 16, no, I guess that was 25 years ago. 25 years ago, they're similar things, right? Which was what things do I need to do that take care of my inner world? Right? Basically, my thoughts and my emotions, what, how am I tending to those things? Then how am I tending to my physical needs? Both eat for me, that comes down to eating well, sleeping and exercising. And for somebody, I found that getting those things reasonably on point makes the biggest difference in my mental health. Right? So they're all related. And then what, what things do I need to do is build a, a, a career or a way of making a living in the world?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  What's my contribution going to look like? And I think for all of us, we're trying to figure those things out. And, and then there's always relationships also. I'm not sure that's a really good answer, but.

• 48:37John R. Miles?

  Well, I have a follow up.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:39John R. Miles?

  It created this thought in my head. What did addiction take away from your sense of identity? And how did you begin to reclaim it?

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, it took everything away from my identity that wasn't about being an addict. I mean, that was it in the last couple of years of my addiction. That was all I was and all I lived to do. And it consumed every waking moment of my life. How am I going to get the next fix? That's it. That was all there was. And so that's not a, I would try and read books like The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll or Junkie by William Burroughs to try and make being an addict something romantic. But underneath all that, it doesn't feel that way. Right? And so it, it took every part of my identity away, any part of me that was anything different.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  And ultimately, I think the thing about addiction that.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Really becomes the thing is this belief that you can't, at least for me, I can't do anything else. I'm never going to do anything useful or important or interesting because this thing owns all of me. People often talk about addiction in a sense of like slavery and it is that way, right? If you're a, if you're a, if you were a slave, you got to just only do what the master told you to do. And that's where addiction was, right? I got to only do what I needed to do to feed the addiction. And then early in recovery, my identity was as a person who's recovering.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  If you bumped into me in those days, it wouldn't have been 10 minutes, it wouldn't have been five minutes before I was telling you that I was a heroin addict, right? Because it's all I, it was the only identity I had at that point. Over time, as I began to, yes, I'm a recovering alcoholic and addict, but I'm also, I do this kind of work and I'm in a band doing this and I like to read this. And my identity started to become more multifaceted and I began to be more of a person who was, and so my identity then began to reflect it. But I would say, the short answer is it took every identity I had, except just being an addict,

• 51:03Speaker 01

  which ultimately means I'm going to die or I'm stuck here, which is a terrible feeling.

• 51:12John R. Miles?

  Thank you for that. And I now want to talk about self compassion. And I want to do this from two different lenses. What role self compassion played in your recovery? But also what role did self compassion play when you?

• 51:30John R. Miles?

  Had that relapse where you went back after eight years and started drinking again, because I'm sure as you got into that, you went through another period where you were probably not very happy with yourself.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  I think self compassion is critically important in the role of us being able to change things. I think it's unintuitive. We tend to think that if we're really hard on ourselves, that will drive us to change. And I'm not going to say that never works, because it does sometimes. But change is really, to me, ultimately about learning to do something in a different way. And we don't learn well when we are in shame, because it's a very activating state. And when we are extremely emotionally activated,

• 52:25Speaker 01

  we tend to not be thinking very clearly. And thinking clearly is what we need in order to learn. So self compassion becomes, A, it just feels better to be self compassionate, right? It's one of the biggest changes I think we can make, is to live in a brain that actually likes itself, right? That when that's not the case, it's very close company with someone who's very negative, right? So it's A, the one of the biggest changes we can make just for a simple quality of life, but it's also critically important to our ability to change. And I think one of the great things that I got in 12 step programs, was that I got to see lots and lots of other people, who I could look at

• 53:09Speaker 01

  now and see that they were good people, that they lived a life that was valuable, they did good things, but yet they could describe being just like I was. The other element is the 12 steps, from an addiction perspective, is based on something called the disease model of addiction. And it basically says, you have a disease, and it's not your fault. Now, we could spend, I, we could, and I have spent a lot of time talking about the ways in which I think that's a helpful and a not helpful frame. But early on, it's a very helpful frame, because it takes it out of moral failing. I'm an addict because addiction is a condition and I got it.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  And you know what? Once you have it, you're not gonna just think your way out of it. And so that was really helpful in self compassion also was to be able to do that. At the same time, that is married with responsibility. So it's not your fault that you're an addict, but it's absolutely your responsibility to figure out how to not be one, right? You are responsible, but you're not at fault. And so that was the beginning of self compassion. As to your second question, when I went back out after about eight years and started drinking again, in the beginning, I just, I didn't think it was a problem again. It was fine. I was enjoying it.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  And but the fact that I had to go back and get sober again, we can shorten that story to it didn't end well. And going back was really difficult. It was really hard because 12 step programs, there is certainly a lot of importance given to the length of time that you're sober. Probably an importance over that maybe overstates what it really needs to be, although it's important. So I went from being somebody with eight years who had sponsored hundreds of people who was very involved and chairing meetings. I'm kind of Mr. In a way. And now I'm back with zero days and that was really difficult. And I don't think there was anything for me to do except just recognize, okay, I did.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  What happened to me is what happens to addicts. And you just deal with those very uncomfortable feelings of coming back and being essentially at the beginning again. Now, the reality was I was not at the beginning again. I did not lose what I'd learned in those eight years, right? I started from a place where I had a lot of knowledge and tools that allowed me to move forward. So even though on the AA day counting chart, I lost my eight year coin and went to a 24 hour coin. It's not like I had lost all those things. And but self compassion, I think, is really important. It's a balancing of recognizing the forces and the factors that cause you to do the way,

• 56:05Speaker 01

  do the things that you do that you may not feel good about, along with the responsibility of saying, I'm gonna change those things.

• 56:13John R. Miles?

  Thanks for sharing that. And yesterday I was talking to my friend Bob Sutton, who wrote the book on closing the gap between knowing and doing. And as someone who's lived through it and also coaches others, I think you've seen how behavior change is so difficult for most people, even when they know that they really need to do it.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 56:38John R. Miles?

  What do you think are the most critical conditions that need to be met for someone to make lasting changes in their behavior?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  I've thought a lot about this, and I think that there are two sort of core competencies that people need in order to make a change, right? And to me, they come down to, these aren't exact terms, but I'll use them. I'll call them structural and emotional. Structural change is things like, if you're trying to do something positive, it comes down to having a really good and clear plan of what you're going to do and when you're going to do it, and what are you going to do when you try and do it and it doesn't work out? And what are you going to do when you get off track? Because you know you're going to get off track. And how can you set up your environment in such a way that you are more likely to do this thing? And it's all these things that we know about behavior change science that we've learned over the years that is structural.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  And you just, it's all about a plan, a really good and clear plan.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  And those are really important. And oftentimes, if someone gets those things, it's enough for them to make the change they need to make, and they're on their way. And there's a whole nother element of it, which is emotional. And it comes down to, what do I do? If I've done everything I can to set myself up for success, there's still going to be the moment where it's me and the decision, whether that decision is, do I pick up a drug or drink? Or do I go to the gym? Or do I put down my phone and go to bed on time? There's still that, there's still that choice point, that moment.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  And so I think that's the second piece is to learn what's going on inside of me at that choice point when I make the wrong choice. What was I thinking and what was I feeling? And then thinking, okay, what could I try and say to myself or do differently at that moment that's going to get me to go the other direction? And so if you only do that second half, I think you're going to lose again and again because you're relying on self-control, which is a limited resource. If you gathered 30 of the leading behavior change scientists in the world in a room and asked them to agree on one thing, I think the thing they would

• 58:58Speaker 01

  agree on is that the extent that you rely on self-control is problematic because it just isn't a really robust thing. You have to have it, but what you want to do is make sure that you need it as little as possible, but you still need to know in that moment, how can I ultimately choose the thing that I want to choose?

• 59:22John R. Miles?

  It reminds me, speaking of behavior scientists, of this concept from behavior science called choice bracketing. Not sure if you're familiar with it or not, but it's really about a way of thinking about decisions that involves considering, do you evaluate your choices separate or together? And most of us practice narrow bracketing where we're thinking too much about just an individual decision. We're broad bracketing, really, you take a step above it and you look at the consequences, series of choices together.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. We used to, in 12-step programs, call that playing the tape all the way through, right? You're focused on how the chocolate chip cookie is going to taste right now, or you're focused on how good it would feel to be drunk right now, or whatever. But you've got to keep going. Okay, well, what's after that? And then what's after that? And I think also, like you said, I think it's really important that we consider choices and decisions in a broad concept, in the whole context of our lives. I see this a lot with people who are constantly on the self-improvement loop.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  And what I mean is they listen to podcasts like yours or mine and they, somebody comes on and says, you really should be doing X. And they go, oh, God, okay, great. I need to do X. That sounds good. Right. But X now has added to a list of X, Y, Z, Q, T, S, and B that they're trying to do. And if you look at that thing individually, you might go, yes, that's a good thing to do. But when you look at your life as a whole, when you look at it, you go, wait, there, there's no way that I'm going to do all these things. I have, let's say, I've, I'm a busy professional with children and my parents are aging and I have to take care of them. And I've managed to carve out 30 minutes in the morning for myself to take care of myself. That's an accomplishment.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  But they don't, and they then use that 30 minutes to exercise, say, for example. That's great. But a lot of those same people are going to be feeling bad about themselves over and over again because they're not also meditating and they're not also journaling and they're not also, right? When you look at things in, in the whole context, you go, I can't, well, I can't do all those things. I oftentimes, when I coached people, one of the, when I, one of the things I thought was the biggest victory was the number of things I can, the number of things we arrived at that they weren't going to do, which might feel like a, might feel defeatist, but it's not. Because there's no point in feeling bad about the fact that you don't have time to meditate

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  every day. If you don't have time to meditate every day, you're better off just going, okay, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to feel bad about not doing it. And it's the same thing with people who find themselves in a situation of saying yes to too many things. Because we evaluate it based on the things. Somebody comes to me and says, Eric, would you like to go to Oklahoma City and talk to a group of legislators about opium, or opium, it, policy? Yes, absolutely. I want to do that. 100% I want to do that.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  But the problem is, I need a little bit more information. Well, when is that going to be? And, right? Because now, so I need to not just consider whether I want to do it. I need to consider how does it fit into the whole context? And so, that's, that, I think what you're saying in general with choice bracketing, right? It's, it's a bigger view of what's happening. How does this thing fit into the big context of who I want to be?

• 1:03:02John R. Miles?

  So I want to end our discussion by going to Zen teachings because you're along your journey, you ended up becoming a big fan of Zen and it seems to be, as I can see, a real counterbalance to your earlier approach to life. Zen really emphasizes direct experiences over conceptual thinking.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:26John R. Miles?

  How do you think that aspect of it, as we've been talking about behavior change, etc., helps people bridge the gap and become more present in their lives?

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  That thing at the end that you said there is it is a training in being present. It is a training in what's here right now and learning to see things that you don't normally see. It's a means of turning what seems very ordinary into something that is extraordinary because you're giving it more love and attention. And that's its main, I think that's its main purpose. And so it's a good remedy for somebody like me who is super conceptual and always somewhere else and always can think of a way that things could be better than they are.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Any situation, yeah, it's a beautiful day, it's sunny degrees, the sun's out, but I wish the wind, can we just turn the wind down like two miles per hour? Or, yeah, it's a beautiful sunny day, the wind's not blowing, it's a blue sky, but boy, it sure would be good if my left knee wasn't a little bit tight, right? This is constant fiddling with the controls of existence. And Zen is a counterbalance to that. It says, stop doing that, just be okay with what is here and look at it more closely. So in those ways, I think that's why Zen has been really helpful for me. It does not push concept, it pushes presence and attention.

• 1:05:05John R. Miles?

  Yeah, and I always love looking back at Phil Jackson's career and how he used Zen to really influence the way he was coaching these players who each had mega personalities and even realizing when it comes to Dennis Rodman, that sometimes you gotta let him go and do his own thing to bring him back into the fold of what you want him to do.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, Phil Jackson is pretty much a certified genius, I think, and certainly drew a lot from Buddhism in really interesting ways.

• 1:05:37John R. Miles?

  And I want to end on this. You and I have both interviewed a ton of interesting guests along the way. What has surprised you most about hosting the podcast? Is there something that's profoundly changed your perspective?

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  I think I've been doing this a decade. Perspective change, I think it changed a lot in the early years and then over time has become, you hear very similar things again and again. That's not bad because we forget we need to be reminded, we need to understand it at a different and deeper level. The thing that comes off the top of my head when you ask that question right now is interviewing people who by all measures are pretty successful people. I tend to interview authors a lot. So these people who've written books and have been very successful at writing books, or they've been very successful in their academic career and then they went on to write a book. These people have written multiple times bestsellers, all this, that they all have, they

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  still have self doubt.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  They still, when they're in the midst of the thing, aren't sure they can do it.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  And that is a tremendous comfort to me.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Because when I am trying to do something, so I signed a book deal and I'm in the midst of the manuscripts due in a few months, and I know you've written a book and it's really hard. It is really hard because my standard is very high. I've been reading these type of books for a decade. I know what's good and I know what's not. And I really want to write a good book. So my standard is very high. So when I'm in the middle of it, it's really difficult. And what my brain says is the fact that it's difficult means that you're not good enough to do it.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Instead, I've been fortunate enough to talk to enough people to know, no, that's just how it feels when you're in the midst of trying to create something. There will be a period where you're like, I can't do it. I don't know enough. I'm not smart enough. Whatever it is, that will happen, no matter who you are. And I think that we often take that sort of doubt and difficulty as a sign that we can't do something or shouldn't be doing. We're not made to do it. And so it's great to talk to somebody who's written like three New York Times bestsellers. And they're like, I don't know if I can do it. And I'm like, well, of course you can do it. You wrote three New York Times bestsellers. And their brain will go, well, yeah, you did it before, but you can't do it now. And so I just think

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  that's a really great thing to know. That is going to come along for the ride. It's normal. It's not enjoyable, but it's normal. And that for everybody, no matter how they might look like they are succeeding or doing well, their life can feel hard to them. It's back to where we very started, right? Everybody's internal world is full of the things that they're worried about and concerned about and the doubts that they have. And along with lots of all kinds of great stuff in there, too. But that remains, in my experience, in nearly everybody I've ever had who's been open enough to share that.

• 1:08:53John R. Miles?

  Yeah, I was talking to Dan Pink one time, and he said the same thing. He said, I am only as good as my latest book.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:09:00John R. Miles?

  Which you think about his legacy, it's a pretty powerful statement.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. You and I are convinced Dan Pink can write a great book, right? But Dan, when he's in the hard part of it, is not. And that's good to know.

• 1:09:15John R. Miles?

  Yeah, well, you look at some people who are very prolific writers, and they pump out tons of product. And then you look at someone like Susan Cain, who comes up with books very seldomly, but when they do, they're masterpieces. And it's because knowing her, she pours so much into it to make sure she's getting to that quality level that that she believes it needs to be at.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Right, and she's allowing time for things to germinate and come about. There's another writer, Oliver Berkman, who's written a couple of really good books recently about the finiteness of life and how that affects time management and productivity. I was fortunate enough to interview Oliver. He was like our second guest ever, like a decade ago, and he had written a book called The Anecdote Happiness for People Who Hate Positive Thinking. And I think he was a column, yeah, I know, best title ever. He was a columnist for, I think, The Guardian. Anyway, I got to know him a little bit, and we met in New York and became friends a little bit. And I was able to see this period for him where

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  he had done that thing. And he had not yet done this thing, right, this next book. I can't remember the title of it. His latest one is called Meditations for Mortals, but I don't remember what the one right before it was. But there was this long period in between there. And I think that for anybody, when there's that long period, you doubt whether you've got it, you've got something, right? And, and then Oliver takes this amount of time where these ideas are germinating, and he doesn't quite have it. And then the book comes out, and it's, I think it is a masterpiece. And it's because there, I think he was willing to be in that uncomfortable space in between. And I think Susan has that ability also.

• 1:11:04John R. Miles?

  Well, I'll have to check out your episode with him, because I've got Oliver coming up for an interview in the next couple weeks.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  I think you'll find three or four episodes of Oliver. I've had him on multiple times. I think he's brilliant. Funny guy, too. Really nice. Yep. So tell him I said hello.

• 1:11:22John R. Miles?

  I will. Eric, it's been really a profound honor to have you on the show. For those who want to learn more about you, where's the best place for them to go?

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  You can find our podcast called The One You Feed in any of your podcast players, or you can go to oneyoufeed.net, O-N-E-Y-O-U-F-E-E-D dot net. You can get our newsletter. We send out weekly newsletters. I've got programs that I lead and teach, so you can find everything there.

• 1:11:47John R. Miles?

  Eric, it was surely a pleasure. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Thank you, John. I really enjoyed it and great preparation. Very good. Very good.

• 1:11:56John R. Miles?

  What an inspiring and thought provoking conversation that was with Eric Zimmer. His journey from addiction to intentional living reminds us that no matter how far we fall, we all have the power to rebuild. Eric's insights on feeding the good wolf, aligning with our values and embracing small deliberate steps towards change are lessons we can all apply to our own lives. One of the biggest takeaways from today's episode is the importance of intentionality, how making even the smallest deliberate choices can transform not just our careers, but our entire sense of self-worth and purpose. Eric's exploration of Zen behavioral change and the idea of mattering is a powerful reminder that we can create a life that truly resonates with who we are, no matter where we start. As we wrap up, take a moment to reflect on your own journey.

• 1:12:38John R. Miles?

  Are there areas where you might be feeding the wrong wolf or letting autopilot guide your decisions? What small intentional step can you take today to start moving toward the life you envision? Remember, the power lies in choosing your path rather than letting it choose you. If today's episode resonated with you, please take a moment to leave us a five star rating and review. Your feedback not only helps the show grow, but also empowers others to discover these life-changing insights. And if you know someone who could benefit from Eric's message, share this episode with them. It could be the spark they need to begin their own transformation. For links to everything we discussed today, including Eric's work and his podcast, The One You Feed, check out the show notes at passionstruck.com. You'll also find information on our sponsors at passionstruck.com/deals,

• 1:13:20John R. Miles?

  where you can take advantage of special offers that help fuel the show and bring you incredible content every week. Beyond the podcast, I'm passionate about sharing these messages through speaking engagements with organizations, conferences, and teams. If today's episode sparked something in you and you think these insights could inspire your organization, I'd love to explore how we can work together. Visit johnrmyles.com And don't forget to subscribe to our Live Intentionally newsletter for exclusive content and weekly challenges. And you can also watch today's conversation on YouTube. Check out the John R. Miles channel and the Passion Struck Clips channel for highlights and key takeaways. Before we go, here's a preview of what's coming up next on Passion Struck. Joining us is Shige Oishi, as he shares his incredible insights on how to build

• 1:14:02John R. Miles?

  a life of resilience, clarity, and intentional growth. It's an episode filled with actionable strategies for overcoming adversity, cultivating mental strength, and unlocking your fullest potential.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  There's nothing wrong with the William James equation. I mean, it's really brilliant. But two ways to maximize the self-esteem. One is maximize your success, then your self-esteem is higher. But the other approach is reduce your desires. If you want a lot, then the success has to be enormous in order to get equation, like a high outcome. But by reducing ambitions, even your success is a little. If the desire is small, then you could feel good about yourself.

• 1:14:47John R. Miles?

  Thank you, as always, for spending your time with us here on Passion Struck. If you found value in today's episode, the fee is simple. Share it with someone who could benefit from these powerful insights. And as always, do your best to apply what you learn here so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, live life, Passion Struck.