Want to change your life? Start small! (w/ Eric Zimmer)

Eric Zimmer has learned the hard way that the path to big life changes starts with small everyday behaviors. Whether it’s kicking an addiction, building a business, or writing a book, Eric starts with habits and a clear focus on what he wants to do. The host of the podcast “The One You Feed” and the author of the new book “How a Little Becomes a Lot,” Eric joins Chris to discuss his recovery journey and why he values consistency over perfection. Featured guest Follow Eric Zimmer on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/one_you_feed/, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericzimmer/, and at oneyoufeed.net/ https://www.oneyoufeed.net/Buy How a Little Becomes a Lot https://www.amazon.com/dp/0063420805/ by Eric Zimmer Connect with the team Follow Chris on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/chrisiduffy/?hl=en and at chrisduffycomedy.com https://chrisduffycomedy.com/Buy Chris’ book, Humor Me https://t.ted.com/ZGuYfcL Watch How to Be a Better Human videos on YouTube at TEDAudioCollective https://www.youtube.com/TEDAudioCollectiveFollow TED on X https://x.com/TEDTalks, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ted, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TED, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences/, and TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoksFor the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at N R D C dot org slash human, and your gift will be matched five times.

• 1:19Chris Duffy?

  This is How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. And today, I wrote three pages in a journal, I exercised for seven minutes, and I just finished my second glass of water. Now, I mention those things because they're all habits that I'm trying to build. They're small ones, but I think they are remarkably difficult for me to actually do every day. And if I'm being honest, the only reason I did those habits today was because I knew that I was going to record this podcast, and I wanted to be able to talk about them. You know, I think a lot of habits are like that, right? Things that we try to force ourselves to do because they're the habits of the person that we want to be. And our hope is, if we do the habits enough, it'll stop feeling like something we have to force, and we'll just be closer to that ideal self. Well, our guest today on the show is Eric Zimmer.

• 2:04Chris Duffy?

  He's the host of the One You Feed podcast and he's the author of the new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life. I'm so excited to talk to Eric for a number of reasons, but two of the biggest are that Eric has been thinking for years about how the small actions we do every day add up to be the big, meaningful results of how we live our life. And I love that Eric is very honest about how hard it can be to change those small actions. Here is a clip from his 2016 talk at TEDx Columbus.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Making lasting changes in our behavior is a battle. It's difficult and most of us don't succeed at it for very long. And I host a podcast where I've talked to over 150 thought leaders and authors and psychologists and spiritual teachers, people like Andrew Solomon, Carol Dweck, Simon Sinek, Don Miguel Ruiz. And we talk about what it means to live a good life. And right at the heart of living a good life is being able to choose how we want to behave and actually follow through on that. Most of us think when it comes to creating new habits, that it's a matter of willpower or discipline and that we don't have enough of either.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  We might suspect inwardly that maybe we're just the kind of person who can't follow through on things. We think that making lasting change is something that only other people can do. One of the key ideas I'd like you to get today is that changing behavior is a skill. It's something that you can learn to do. You can get better at creating new habits.

• 3:44Chris Duffy?

  We're going to talk about how to create those habits and keep them with Eric right after this break.

• 3:55Chris Duffy?

  This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to environmental change.

• 4:39Chris Duffy?

  In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 4:48Speaker 03

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• 5:47Chris Duffy?

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• 6:28Chris Duffy?

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• 6:47Chris Duffy?

  Today, we're talking with Eric Zimmer about how small changes can make our lives much more meaningful.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  I'm Eric Zimmer. I'm the author of the new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life. And I am also the host of the award-winning podcast, The One You Feed.

• 7:04Chris Duffy?

  Many people who know you will know you from your fantastic podcast, The One You Feed. For people who have not listened, can you tell them how you start every episode of The One You Feed?

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I start by reading an old parable of unknown origin and it goes like this. There's a grandparent who's talking with a grandchild and they say, "In life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear." And the grandchild stops, they think about it for a second, they look up at their grandparent and they say, "Well, which one wins?" And the grandparent says, "The one you feed."

• 7:51Chris Duffy?

  So this is a very meaningful story to you, a very meaningful parable. You've had hundreds of conversations with people about what that means to them. Do you remember when you first heard it and why it stuck with you?

• 8:04Speaker 02

  It would have been in some church basement in Columbus, Ohio, probably somewhere around 30 years ago, when I was dealing with heroin addiction. And somebody in a meeting told that story and I immediately got it. I think we all do, right? It's a parable. The point of a parable is you hear it and you're like, oh, I know it. Okay. But it was really resonant to me at the time because my bad wolf was destroying me. I don't even know if I was feeding it so much as it was just eating me. But I was able to see really clearly at that point in my life. And luckily I had people helping me see this, like, there are certain ways of acting and thinking that lead me towards my recovery.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  And there are other ways of acting and thinking that lead me further down the death spiral that my addiction had become. And so it resonated really, really strongly with me. Now, it was a lot of years later when I started the podcast with the parable, but it still spoke to me. It just felt like an easy jumping off point to talk about the things that matter.

• 9:12Chris Duffy?

  This parable of the wolf is about like the biggest questions there are, right? What are the things that drive you? What's the good and what's the bad? What's the helpful, the harmful? What's the good and the evil? I'm curious to hear a little bit about how you think about the scale in your own life between big and small.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, if you were gonna film the movie of my life, you would start by seeing me in a dilapidated old tuberculosis hospital in Columbus, Ohio, in the winter that had been turned into a detox center. And you'd see me go in there and I was in bad shape. I was a homeless heroin addict. I weighed 100 pounds. My skin was yellow and jaundiced from hepatitis C. The prosecutor told me I was facing up to 50 years in prison. And you'd see me go into a counselor's office and they say, very reasonably, we think you need to go to long-term treatment. And me saying, no, thank you. And then I went back to my room and I saw with...

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Real clarity that I was gonna die or go to jail if I left that building. And it was gonna happen soon. So if we were filming the movie of my life, that would be the pivotal scene. That would be the big moment, right? We'd have the emotional strings in the background. That would be the whole thing. And sure, that's an important moment. But it's only important because of the thousands of little choices I made after that. All of the off-camera moments that add up. And I think that's sort of a way of tying the big and the small together. Is that, yes, there are big moments, there are big epiphanies. There are big questions to answer in our lives. But that's just part of it.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Because the rest of it is the how we live those things out. And that can really only be done, choice by choice, action by action, day by day.

• 11:07Chris Duffy?

  In those days after you made the decision, right? Like, I'm going to detox, I'm going to change my life. I'm not going to keep going down the path of heroin addiction. I think a lot of us, right, like, feel like that should be the moment. And then there's this weird thing that you have to actually then live your life every day after that. So can you tell me some of what like filled the time? Or what helped you to make those small choices as you were going?

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Well, I was in a position, whether fortunate or unfortunate, where staying in long-term treatment was both an option for me. I happened to just be poor enough that it could, it could happen. And highly incented by the courts to do the same thing. So my first days after were entirely consumed with recovery. I was in a treatment center. I went to 12-step meetings. We had groups. I was sent off to write assignments. I was, I did nothing but live recovery for a period of time. And so for me, in the beginning, it was easy. It was later, you know, when I got out that, of course, then you start asking that question of,

• 12:16Speaker 02

  of, you know, what do I do with the time? Now, I am luckily a person who tends to, by nature, be pretty interested in a lot of things. So filling time is usually not my challenge.

• 12:30Chris Duffy?

  So let me take it from the very serious to... A place where the stakes are a little bit lower, at least.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:38Chris Duffy?

  Which is, I'm curious about the meta level of writing a book and having it be about making small, meaningful choices. Because to me, when I wrote, this was my first book that I just wrote, I thought one of the most challenging parts was actually just getting myself to sit in front of the computer. Like, not even the writing, just being like, now is the time where I will do the writing. So, how did the lessons that you wanted to convey either help, or ironically, not help you as you were writing this book?

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Well, they helped completely. Because I did write the book little bit by little bit. As, as you, as the only way you can do it. You can't write the whole book now. I didn't know how to do it. I'd never done it. I love books. They mean so much to me. And I was like, I don't, I have no idea if I can write a good one. I really doubted that I could.

• 13:28Chris Duffy?

  Very relatable. I very much relate to that. Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, the only thing I really could do is, as you said, I set out times that I was gonna write. And the only thing I measured was, did I stay in front of the computer for the period of time that I said I was going to write? I'd do 30 minutes, then I would take a break, unless I was in a roll. But then I would take a break, and I would reset, and then I would be like, okay, 30 more minutes. And I would set a timer. I had a whole little routine. Set a timer, put on certain music, set up the little apps that, on my phone, that block everything.

• 14:02Chris Duffy?

  Absolutely.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Because one of the things that we know about motivation from, from behavioral science, is that we become more motivated when we believe in ourselves and our abilities to do the thing. We become less motivated when we doubt ourselves, and we don't think we can do it. So, for me, if I had been trying to compare it against the big thing, I would have felt constantly deflated. But when I compared it to, did I do my 30 minutes? Not, did I write anything useful in that 30 minutes? Just, did I do it? Then I could go, yes, I did. Okay, good. I feel, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Which made me more motivated. Which made the next 30 minutes easier. And lots of days, yes, just like you, the trick was...

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Just sit down in front of the computer and start the timer. Not even 30 minutes, even that felt like too much. And that's a surprisingly effective trick that I use in all aspects of my life, way, way more than I think I should have to.

• 15:02Chris Duffy?

  I think it's really interesting, and I love that yours was 30 minutes, because I think that actually feels really manageable, right? Like, you could just sit and stare at the wall for 30 minutes. I think people would really struggle to stare at the wall for two hours.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  I have been trying to be a meditator since I was 18 years old. This is a long time ago, right? And way before there was the internet, way before there was anything. All there were were books on Buddhism. But I resonated with them a lot. And they all talked about meditation. And they would say, "You need to meditate for 30 or 45 minutes." I would sit down to meditate, and it was like the dark circus rolled into town in my head, right? Like, sitting there was really, really hard for me. It was unpleasant. I didn't like it. And so I might do 30 minutes for a day, a week, maybe a month, as long as I kept my motivation sky-high.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  But when that motivation came down, which it inevitably does, I would quit. And this pattern repeated itself for decades. This is where little by little comes in. And by little by little, I actually mean something fairly specific.

• 16:11Chris Duffy?

  Please tell us.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  I mean, low-resistance actions done consistently over time in the same direction. Now, what low resistance means will be different per person. There are people out there who sit down to meditate and immediately will tell you, "I found it so peaceful." I'm like, "Okay." I've never felt, found it peaceful. Now, that's not true now, but back then I never did. So for that person, 30 minutes might be low resistance. But for me, 30 minutes was way too hard. So, low resistance just means it's something that we will do. Done consistently over time means we keep doing it and in the same direction. You know, we're sort of, just doing a bunch of little things in all scattered directions doesn't lead to a lot.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  It just leads to a bunch of little things scattered all over the place. And so, by doing this, by focusing on...

• 17:05Speaker 02

  What we can succeed at, that's how we build confidence. Now, I've coached a lot of people over the years. I used to describe myself as a behavioral coach. Maybe I still would, I don't know. But people come to me, when you hire a coach to help you change a behavior, let's just say it's safe to say you failed at that thing a whole bunch of times before you're willing to spend money for someone to teach you how to make a change. So the people coming to me do not believe in themselves. One of my core beliefs is that change is a skill, but we take it as a state of our character. I'm lazy, I'm undisciplined, I don't have enough motivation. And when we believe that and buy into it, you're right,

• 17:48Speaker 02

  our motivation, our motivation is down and we, we almost bring the thing into reality. At the same time, we can't BS ourselves. I can't say like, when I was writing my book, I couldn't be like, "Keep going Eric, you're like the next Hemingway. This is one of the best nonfiction books ever written." Right, like, my brain was mostly going like, "Has anyone written a more boring sentence since an accounting textbook?" Right, like, so I can't BS myself. So, we can't believe that we're capable of achieving great things, but what we, at first, but what we can do is start from where we are, not where we wish we were, but start from where we are

• 18:32Speaker 02

  and measure success in ways that are reasonable and allow that to accumulate.

• 18:41Chris Duffy?

  So, I want to just drill in a little bit more to that like low resistance piece, because I think a lot of us have this high resistance piece in our head that is the, the first step, like I have to have this giant thing. So how can we take that and like, make it into something smaller?

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're very perceptive in that because little by little, I mean, one thing is you just pick, like, you make the thing really small. But another way of applying little by little is you break something up into smaller pieces. So for me, I have the same issue on my task list. And when something on my task list keeps getting moved, it looks something more like this. "Get video done for X project." That's the task. That is not a task, that is about eight different steps. I have to decide what am I talking about? Then I have to build the talk. Then I have to practice delivering it, right? Then I have to work on memorizing it.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  And so when I look at my task list, very often what I have on there are sort of mini projects. Even something like get taxes done is a multi-step thing. I gotta gather all the, it's this, that time of year, I've got 1099s and all that stuff, you know, all kinds of different places in my house. I gotta get them all gathered up, right? I need to package it up. I need to get the books tied up and I gotta send them to my account. I mean, there's a bunch of steps in it, but I call it get taxes done. And I see this in people all the time. And so, yeah, a way of doing little by little is to, is to break it down. What is the literal first action in this process? We are strange creatures, right?

• 20:24Speaker 02

  In that our motivation and our ability to do things is, I wish it was better than it was. But for example, if I have to, if I've got call doctor, literally, there are times that I have to say, the first step I have to write down is find doctor's phone number. Uh huh. Right? I feel like an idiot. I'm like a behavior coach. I teach this to people. Surely I don't need to do that, but sometimes I do. You know, I shouldn't, it doesn't seem like I should have to trick myself into getting on the exercise bike by saying, just put on your bike shoes. It seems like I should just go get on the bike. I've done it thousands of times.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Every single time I've done it, I've been like, that was a great idea. Never once was I like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. You'd think it would be easy. You'd think with everything I know, and yet there are lots of days where that's exactly what it is. Go put on your bike shoes.

• 21:22Chris Duffy?

  We're gonna take a quick break and then we will be right back.

• 21:34Chris Duffy?

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• 22:18Speaker 00

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• 23:00Speaker 00

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• 23:18Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. Okay, can I give you one that's on my to-do list?

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Please.

• 23:21Chris Duffy?

  And you'll help me figure it out? This is a real one. You know, there's the famous saying is like, when's the best time to plant a tree, right?

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 23:28Chris Duffy?

  20 years ago, but the second best time is today.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 23:31Chris Duffy?

  On my to-do list for several weeks now, I have had, "plant a tree."

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 23:36Chris Duffy?

  And I get that this is, I'm like, this is the quintessential example of like, I should have already done this. And if I'm, if not, I should do it today. But I keep putting it off. Because this is really genuinely has been on my to-do list for almost two months now.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  One of the things that I often say is that ambiguity is the mother of procrastination.

• 23:54Chris Duffy?

  Hmm.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Right. So immediately when you say plant a tree, I have a bunch of questions that maybe you know the answer to, but if you don't are standing in the way.

• 24:02Chris Duffy?

  Yeah.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  What kind of tree?

• 24:03Chris Duffy?

  I don't know. That's the first part that's stubborn.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Where are you going to plant it?

• 24:07Chris Duffy?

  Yep, not positive.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  What are the tools you will need to plant it?

• 24:10Chris Duffy?

  Uh huh.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  So where can I go plant a tree? Or even what kind of tree do I want to plant? But I even think where that's the bigger question, right? Because I mean, I more or less know I can get a tree from a nursery. I more or less know how to plant a tree. I can pick the tree, the variety itself, once I know the spot, because the spot's going to dictate like what kind of tree will grow well there.

• 24:35Chris Duffy?

  I genuinely think that even just the way you ask the questions of like, what tree, where do you want it, what tools? That is answering those questions is it's making me realize that having a task that's actually a project is not a task, right? Like it's a, this is a series of tasks.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  The other thing about that though, and you, you, you have a sense of humor about it and that's all good. But oftentimes we don't, we see that thing that sits there and we think, what, what is wrong with me? Why can I not get this done? Like this is ridiculous. This should be an easy thing. Why am I not doing it? Which is, we don't feel good about ourselves, makes us less motivated, less capable.

• 25:16Chris Duffy?

  So I'm, I'm really glad that you brought that up. I've been pushing you on some of the, you know, practical, actionable ways to make small changes and have those add up. Cause I think those are really interesting and I think anyone who's listening can, can apply those. The thing that I think is actually really special and different about your book is that it's not just about making changes, right? It is about how those changes are meaningful. It's about meaning in your life and purpose and identity. For people who haven't read the book yet, can you tell people a little bit about how those tie together into the meaning piece?

• 25:46Speaker 02

  There are two components we have to figure out. The first is what I would call structural. It's the things we've been talking about. What am I doing? Where am I doing it? How am I doing it? But there's a second component that's really important, which means even when I know what to do, when to do it, let's just say we got it all figured out. And you are going to go plant a tree tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. You've already got the tree, everything. 10 a.m. comes in, you just sit there. And you go, I should plant the tree, but you don't do anything. You're just scrolling on your phone. 11 o'clock comes by, why haven't I planted the tree? Right? You just don't do it. You have all the plans, you have all the structural things lined up and you don't do it. Why?

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Well, that's almost always some sort of emotional or mental process gone wrong. You're feeling or thinking something at that moment that is stopping you from doing it. And so that's the second really important component of change is how do we work with that moment? There is an emotional element of all this also that we cannot discount. We are not robots. So the first half of the book kind of covers all that. The second half of the book are about things that I would say are mindsets that make change more meaningful, easier to do, and are actually valuable in and of themselves.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  So an example would be self-compassion. Besides stopping doing drugs, self-compassion, being kinder to myself inside is probably the biggest upgrade I've ever given myself. I spend a lot of time with myself, as do you with yourself, and not cohabitating with a jerk is a really big upgrade. But also, self-compassion turns out to be the way that we are much better able to make change. But I think the thing that I will say is, I am very much a realist. Or as Hans Rosling would say, actually, I'm a possibilist. But nonetheless, we could talk about that later another time. I still have voices that pop into my head that are shockingly negative.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  My point being, that's some pattern that's wired somewhere into some synapses in my brain that just fires off. So I can't stop it from showing up. We can't often stop the first thing that arises in us because it's just conditioned. It's just, it's, it's, it's cause and effect.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  What I can do though is what I do now, which is I hear it and I go, "Hang on a second." Like, you know, and I kinda laugh at it now. Because again, it's ridiculous to me. Because I'm not really feeling that, it's just something that happens. I think with self-compassion, we wanna learn to relate to it in a similar way. Which is that it's gonna come back up. None of us are gonna get to the point where, when we make mistakes, that we don't have some critical voice. We don't wanna lose all ability to reflect on our actions. So for me, what happens when that sorta comes up and it's really strong, is that I just go, "Oh, look, this thing is here again."

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Thirty years I've been doing some form of recovery, inner work, all that stuff, long time. Yeah. A couple of years ago, I had something happen that thoroughly destabilized me. Where I was like, I was really, really shook up and I just couldn't shake it off. And part of me was going, "What is, what, I thought I did all this work. I thought I already covered all this. I thought we've already been through this. Like, what is it doing back here again?" And a therapist I was talking to said something that I thought was valuable. And he just basically said, "You know what you've done? Is you've expanded the range of things that you can handle without that happening."

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Hmm. Right? That used to happen to you, you know, every three weeks, and now it happens to you every 20 years. Hmm. And so, an analogy that I often think about with growth, is it's like a spiral staircase. And if you imagine going up a spiral staircase where there are things on the wall, there are pictures on the wall, you keep coming back around to those same pictures. But ideally, you come around to them at a slightly higher level.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  You come around with a slightly different perspective. Maybe you have a little bit better light as you get higher up. Doesn't mean that if you've got a history of being really mean to yourself inside, that that just goes away. But for you, the next time it comes up, you can relate to it and go, oh, here I am again. All right, this is what, this is what my brain does. I, okay, I don't like it. And I know how to talk to myself now in a way that I didn't know then. And I'm just gonna do my best with it. And we do make progress, but it's not linear. It's, it's much more, as I'm describing, like a spiral like that.

• 30:52Chris Duffy?

  I think maybe this is also a reason why the parable of the wolves speaks to you. But I'll just say maybe why it speaks to, to everyone is that the solution has to do with how you treat the wolves, not with banishing the wolves completely.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:05Chris Duffy?

  It's not like, it's not like, oh, what, what I'm trying to do is get rid of these wolves inside me. That's what I need to do. I'm gonna be wolf free. Instead, it's no, which one do you nurture?

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, grandfather's not like, well, what you do is you pull out a rifle.

• 31:19Chris Duffy?

  What do you mean, just get a bear? Cause the bear scares away both wolves and now you just have one bear.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 31:24Chris Duffy?

  That's not how it works.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:26Chris Duffy?

  These things are always with us. It's which do we, we give the attention and the energy to?

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's one of the things I love about the parable is it says we all have these things inside of us.

• 31:37Chris Duffy?

  The other thing that I think is interesting for me is I, I have meditated before, but it's not a daily thing for me. It's not, it's not a practice that I probably should do. I'm sure it would be helpful, but I, I haven't done it.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 31:47Chris Duffy?

  I was, uh, I was really surprised the first time that I meditated to hear that the goal was, you know, they say like, clear your mind or, you know, focus on your breath and nothing else. I was shocked when I learned that the goal was not to have a completely blank experience the whole time, but instead to notice when I went away and went somewhere else and to try and come back.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:14Chris Duffy?

  That it was, it was actually about finding the places where I stopped meditating and brought myself back. That blew me away.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. You're never gonna have a completely quiet brain. It's not what brains Do I mean if you're if you're dead, you might have a quiet brain like completely quiet. And I'm not saying that meditation, you don't settle on different levels. But the brain is always doing something thoughts appear. It's not something we just turn off completely. And you're right, the the the heart of the process is just realizing, oh, I've gotten lost in thought again. Let me come back to where I am.

• 32:52Chris Duffy?

  The reason I bring that up is it feels like a lot of what we've talked about is.

• 32:57Chris Duffy?

  You have the desire to get to this place where you're trying to be. But in fact, the muscle or the work of doing the return, but not being there, but finding your way back. And maybe finding your way back more quickly or a little bit more easily or just finding your way back at all. That that is actually the point. It's not about getting to the perfect place.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  A hundred percent, and I have a whole section in the book where I talk about this where. Anything that we're going to do long term, which is most things that we think are important. If you're going to be healthier, if you're going to eat better, if you're going to meditate, if you're going to write a book, if you're. Any of these things, they are a matter of something you just keep doing. Now, maybe a book ends and then there's a little period of time, but you're probably then creating something else. I mean, I read your book recently, and I mean, you've got a thousand irons in the fire, right? You're it's not like you finish it and you're like done, you're like, OK, that's done, but I still I create, so I'm over here. It's part of why we're obsessed with habits. Because we want it to become easy, right?

• 34:01Speaker 02

  It's hard to keep making the right choices in life. It's effortful and we want that effort to go away. We would just like to program the robot to just do all the right things from here on out. But we are not robots.

• 34:18Chris Duffy?

  I think we have a culture that really pushes us to how can you get the most done in the least amount of time? And and that involves you cutting a lot of corners and getting places fast, which is actually maybe not the best for our. Growth and our learning and for meaning, which is, you know, yeah, again, this is what so much of the book is about.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're right. It it is hard to know what we really want.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  We are creatures who have a great deal of motivational complexity, which just means we want a whole lot of things all at the same time. There's a lot of stuff swirling inside us. There's like values, then there's our desires, and then maybe there's needs. And there's just all of this, I call it motivational complexity. And I think about it like a soup. It's hard to tell, like, why do I want this? Or why do I want that? And so all we can do is make our best guess at what's important to us. But the challenge that we often face is what do I want most versus what do I want now? Right?

• 35:25Speaker 02

  And that fundamental question is a real way of orienting back towards meaning again and again. What do I want most? Now, the challenge here is that that's a, that's sort of desire versus value conflict. We also run into values to values conflicts, and, and these are challenging. I really value my family and I really value my career. Those two things are going to be in tension. They, they pull in different directions. And so I don't have the answer for how you resolve it because I don't think you can.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  But I think that by reflecting regularly, what do I want most? We're able to try and make the best decision that we can. And it's also why little by little applies here. Because we don't just get, we just don't choose once. I value my family over my career. I mean, how many parents have said this? A gazillion. Me, probably a hundred, 200 times when my son was younger. I'm really going to prioritize my family. I'm giving too much energy to my career. Great, that's probably true. But it's the day-to-day moment where I'm making the decision.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Do I shut down the computer and walk out the door even though my boss is in the office next door and go to my son's football game?

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Or do I sit here? And sometimes the answer is you shut down the computer and you go out the door and you go to your son's football game. There are other times that the answer is you stay in your office because there's something really important happening. And when we try and solve these things with big decisions, they don't, they don't work because life is always changing. So little by little is a way of asking ourselves again and again, frequently and regularly, what does matter? What's the wise response to this situation? But like you said, we wish it would all be figured out. We wish it would be done, sorted, and, and that's, but that's just not the way life is.

• 37:43Chris Duffy?

  Yeah, I think this is, this is why I think your work is so powerful and interesting to me is because it really is in this way radical, right? Like we live in a society that really wants quick, definitive, once and done answers, right? Like we want the shake it and bake it, put it in the microwave, it's done for everything in our life.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  We love certainty. We, we love easy, quick answers. I mean, I do too. Like I believe very, so very deeply that they don't exist. And yet I'll read something and I'll be like, maybe it is that easy. Maybe if I just took that program, I could reprogram all of my subconscious beliefs in a week and it would all be, it would all be easy. Even, and I know that's nonsense. And yet I want it, you know? We, we can't help but want it.

• 38:41Chris Duffy?

  Yeah. I mean, that's also what's funny about, like sometimes this, this, this show gets categorized as like a self-help or self-improvement podcast. And I'm not even saying that's wrong, but it's funny to me because I feel like the genre prides itself on like, these six tips will guarantee you sleep through the night, every night for the rest of your life. And I'm like, wow, I, I tried those and I still kind of woke up it too. So, so I must be broken. Like what, why is it not working 100% of the time?

• 39:09Speaker 02

  I, yeah, I think that's a really important point is.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  The problem with quick answers and easy solutions is, one, they don't, they don't work for us. But I think the bigger problem is often that when they don't work for us, we conclude that we are the problem. Hmm. Right? If you say it's six easy steps, and this person's been on 30 podcasts, and their podcast has 100 million downloads, and they say, "You just need to do those four things," and you do those four things, and you're not different, what do you conclude? Most of us don't conclude, "Oh, life's not that simple." Most of us don't conclude, "Oh, wait, I'm complicated. I might be different than the average." Like, we conclude, "There's something wrong with us."

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Hmm. And that's really problematic. Because the more that we think that something's wrong with us, the less we have the ability to hope in our ability to change, in our ability to live the life we want to live. And it's back to this idea that I believe in so strongly, is that change is a skill. We can learn to do it, but we are not all the same. Right? When I coached people, there were some people who were so hard on themselves that what I had to do was be like, "All right, we have got to lighten up. We've got to relax. You've got to give yourself a lot of grace and slack."

• 40:42Speaker 02

  There were other people who took no accountability for what they did. Those people, I needed to say, like, "We gotta, like, we need to be a little more firm with ourselves," right? Completely different advice. Hmm. But those were different people in a different place. And so, with all advice, I think we need to take it on board and go, "Okay, does this fit with me? Does this work? Does this, is this helping?" Instead of one-size-fits-all advice. I think there are principles that are useful. I've, I've attempted, in this book, to lay out what I think are a lot of principles. But if you look at my story, going to treatment, long-term treatment, is a pretty radical big step.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  But I was a homeless heroin addict. Like, I needed a radical big step. And even within that, it was the little, you know, each day that I chose not to walk out of the treatment center. But it's not to say, like, what's small for me might be, you might need a bigger change. It's, there's no rules, I guess, is the, is the point.

• 41:47Chris Duffy?

  Eric Zimmer, thank you so much for being on the show. Your book, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life is, is such a wonderful accomplishment. I really recommend people read it. And I think that we need a world where everyone has read this book. So I hope that as many people as possible do read it.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Chris. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. I really enjoy it.

• 42:14Chris Duffy?

  That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to our guest, Eric Zimmer. You can listen to his podcast, The One You Feed, and read his new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and my new book, Humor Me: How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected, and Happy, is out now, too. You can find out more about my live show dates and other projects at ChrisDuffyComedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team led by two wolves. One wolf works for TED and the other works for PRX. Reporting to the TED Wolf, we've got the Lupine, Daniela Balarezzo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohan, Nene Laney-Lott, Tansaka Sungmanivong, Antonio Le, and Joseph DeBryan. Ryan Lash hunted down this video, and this episode was fact-checked by Mateus

• 42:55Chris Duffy?

  Salas, who howls at anything that is less than the truth. On the PRX side, our pack of producers roaming the audio hillsides includes Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks to you for listening. Please do one small action for us and send this episode to someone who you think would enjoy it. We will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, take care.

• 43:25Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by PayPal. This holiday season, don't miss your chance to turn "just looking" into "just bought it." Make it easy for your customers to say yes on the spot. PayPal Checkout is a trusted conversion engine fueled by 400 million active PayPal and Venmo accounts. And when you add Pay Later, you can turn holiday shoppers into regulars. 96% of Pay Later shoppers are repeat users, so if you give them Pay Later flexibility now, it could help earn their loyalty all year long. PayPal is built for all business. Get started at paypal.com/business. PayPal data ate markets, March 2025 to February 2026.

• 44:05Chris Duffy?

  Repeat users defined as more than one Pay Later purchase in the past year. This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today.

• 44:50Chris Duffy?

  Donate at nrdc.org/human and your gift will be matched five times.

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