Why Lasting Change Happens One Small Choice at a Time | Eric Zimmer - EP 772

In this episode of Passion Struck, John R. Miles sits down with Eric Zimmer, behavioral coach, author, and host of the award-winning podcast The One You Feed, to discuss why so many people struggle to maintain consistent habits, the hidden psychological exhaustion of constant self-reinvention, and the science behind his upcoming book, How a Little Becomes a Lot. We live in a culture obsessed with radical life overhauls and hyper-optimization, yet this big-bang approach to personal growth often triggers burnout, friction, and an endless cycle of starting over. Through his extensive work in behavioral psychology, Eric reveals a truth that changes how we approach self-improvement: lasting transformation occurs through low-resistance actions consistently taken in the same direction over time. This conversation explores how to navigate the dry stretch of the long middle, neutralize the emotional drama of a setback using the renew framework, and shift away from a harsh internal critic toward a neuroscience-backed habit of self-compassion. In this episode, you’ll learn:Why massive self-improvement overhauls often lead to burnout and failureHow to design low-resistance actions that bypass your brain's natural frictionThe psychology of the long middle and how to maintain momentum when progress feels invisibleHow to distinguish between habits of behavior and automated habits of thoughtThe five steps of the renew framework to recover quickly from any routine disruptionWhy neutralizing emotional drama after a setback is the key to rebuilding self-trustThe biological reason why self-criticism paralyzes growth while self-compassion accelerates itHow to cultivate still points throughout your day to manage modern anxiety and uncertaintyThe danger of weaponizing your suffering and confusing control with true emotional freedomPractical ways to stop treating your worth like a daily performance scoreboardIf you’ve ever struggled with optimization fatigue, perfectionism, self-sabotage, a loud internal critic, or the frustrating cycle of constantly restarting your routines, this episode offers a practical, human-centered roadmap toward sustainable growth and genuine self-trust. Passion Struck is the #1 alternative health and personal growth podcast dedicated to helping people live intentionally, unlock human potential, and create lives filled with meaning, purpose, and mattering. Limited Time Offer FODZYME: 30% off your first order when you go to I Can Eat Again dot com slash PASSIONSTRUCK. Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at SHOPIFY DOT COM SLASH passionstruckFull Show Notes: https://passionstruck.com/small-changes-create-lasting-transformation/Get the Companion Workbook: https://www.theignitedlife.net/p/why-so-many-people-keep-startingLearn More About Eric: https://www.oneyoufeed.netConnect with John Pre-Order The Mattering Effect: https://matteringeffect.com/Book John to Speak: https://johnrmiles.com/speaking/Keynotes,...

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

  And so, how do we live in uncertainty? And so, I think the message I would have given my 28-year-old self, and I would give my son also, is to a certain degree is, how do you relax into being where you are? How do you learn to trust in your ability to navigate? How do you learn to say, okay, I will figure this out. I have skills, I have strengths, I have internal resolve, I will be okay, and I will figure it out. That's what I think it would be really valuable to cultivate. I think it's worth cultivating.

• 0:37John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter.

• 1:25John R. Miles?

  Hey, friends. Welcome back to episode 772 of Passion Struck. Today, we're entering the final week of our May series called Forged in Adversity. And over the course of this month, we've explored what it means to endure hardship, recover from pain, transform adversity into growth, and ultimately turn our struggles into something that contributes to the lives of others. In case you missed it, last Tuesday, I sat down with Amy Purdy, one of the most inspiring, adaptive athletes in the world, whose journey after losing both legs to bacterial meningitis became a powerful conversation about resilience, reinvention, and how adversity can become a catalyst for both meaning and purpose. Then last Thursday, I spoke with Blake

• 2:10John R. Miles?

  Mike Micoski, the entrepreneur behind TOMS and the global one-for-one movement about the hidden emotional cost of achievement, burnout, mental health, and why external success can never fully heal the feeling of never being enough. And in many ways, those conversations lead directly into today's episode, because once we begin rebuilding our lives, another question naturally emerges: How do we actually sustain change once life moves forward again? Because most people don't struggle with insight, they struggle with consistency. They know what matters. They know what needs to change. They know the habits, relationships, thought patterns, or behaviors that are quietly holding them back. The real challenge is learning how to create meaningful transformations in a

• 2:54John R. Miles?

  way that lasts. And honestly, that's why I wanted to bring back my friend Eric Zimmer onto the show. Eric is the host of the acclaimed podcast, The One You Feed, someone I deeply respect and one of the most thoughtful voices I know when it comes to behavioral change, self-awareness, and personal growth. In today's conversation, we discuss his powerful new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot, which explores why lasting transformation rarely happens through dramatic reinvention and almost always happens through small, repeated choices over time. What I appreciated most about our conversation is that Eric doesn't approach change from the perspective optimization culture or self-improvement performance.

• 3:35John R. Miles?

  He approaches it from the perspective of being human. We talk about why so many people abandon change in the long middle after the initial excitement fades. We explore self-compassion, rebuilding trust with yourself after setbacks, learning how to stay present in uncertainty, and why tiny, daily behaviors quietly shape the trajectory of our lives far more than dramatic moments ever do. There's also a deeper emotional layer to this conversation that I think many listeners will connect with, because underneath habits and behavior change is often a much more personal question. Can I learn to become someone who believes I'm capable of change without constantly attacking myself in the process? Eric speaks about that with remarkable honesty. Before we dive in,

• 4:20John R. Miles?

  One quick note, if this show has ever made a difference in your life, please share it with someone who may need it. Leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and subscribe on YouTube for full conversations and weekly clips. Lastly, and if you want the workbook that goes along with this episode, please subscribe to my Substack at theignitedlife.net. Now let's dive into this conversation with Eric Zimmer. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now let that journey begin.

• 4:57John R. Miles?

  I am so excited today to welcome back my friend and one of the best podcast hosts there is out there, Eric Zimmer. Welcome back, Eric.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Hey, John. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really happy to be here and I always love to talk with you.

• 5:10John R. Miles?

  Since I mentioned your podcast, why don't we just start there? Because if people are not familiar with the one you feed, it's definitely a top recommendation for me. And you've been doing it now for a decade, right?

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Longer than that, 12 years, which is insane to me. I've never done anything for 12 years. I guess I've been breathing for longer than 12 years, but for a career or a work type situation, that is unprecedented.

• 5:38John R. Miles?

  Man, I can't believe we're at five years now. And it's just to think about doing it for another seven years with how much effort there is to doing a podcast that people don't realize is it's a lot of work.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, luckily, it seems to be the right fit for me in many ways, right? I still there are things you do anything for 12 years. There's parts of it, I think you get tired of. But I still, when we hit record and I'm in a conversation with someone like you that I enjoy and respect, I'm just always happy in that space. I just always love that part of it. And so that's what keeps it going.

• 6:19John R. Miles?

  Last time, for the listeners who might have tuned into our last episode, which was actually, it's about 200 episodes from when this one will air, but it's really only been about 18, 19 months. I'd encourage you to go back to episode 569, if you want to pick up our last conversation. But since then, you have written this amazing new book, which came out at the end of March. It's called How a Little Becomes a Lot, and it's all about the art of small changes and how they create a meaningful life. And you and I are both huge fans of behavior science. And I remember I was interviewing,

• 7:01John R. Miles?

  I'm not sure if you've ever had her on your show, Michelle Seeger from University of Michigan?

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Sure, I've had Michelle on a couple of times, and I actually think I quote her in the book at one point. So yes, Michelle's amazing.

• 7:13John R. Miles?

  She gets so excited when she talks about her work. And I remember she was talking about microchoices. John, if you don't remember, if you don't remember anything else, remember microchoices. And this whole concept of microchoices and your concept that a little by little, a little becomes a lot are very tied to each other. Why do you believe that it's these little things like you both bring up that really drive how change works?

• 7:45Speaker 01

  I think if we look at just people who change in any meaningful and lasting way, you just see that it is a series of things repeated again and again. So on one hand, it's entirely obvious. That's how it happens, right? A little bit, and little means different things for different people, but that you keep doing what you can do. And over time, you're like, wow, look at what that became. Look at what that did in my life. So it's a very obvious factor in change. The reason that I choose to talk about it is that in my experience of working with, I've had hundreds of coaching clients around the world. I've led

• 8:28Speaker 01

  thousands of people through workshops. I've been in recovery for 30 years. As I watched and paid attention, I noticed that most people reject this as an actual approach.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  And so I wanted to really talk about here's why it works, how it works.

• 8:52John R. Miles?

  So why do you think it is that so many people reject this as an approach? Because to me, it it makes a whole lot of sense.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:03John R. Miles?

  If you think about your own life and for those who are listening and you want to make a change. When we try to go big bang.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:16John R. Miles?

  Like 95% of the time, the big bang collapses after a period of time.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:22John R. Miles?

  Which is exactly why New Year's resolutions fail for so many people. But we think that doing these little things is going to be so difficult to maintain. The exact opposite. Why do you think there's such a big gap?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Well, there are challenges to a little by little approach. And a couple of them are.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  In the beginning, you may not see results as fast as a big bang approach. And then the second is there's a well-known thing when people are trying to hit goals, which is often referred to as the long middle. You start out with a lot of enthusiasm. If you're trying to hit an actual goal, there's often a lot of enthusiasm right at the end. But in between, things can get kind of dry.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  And so one of the things with the little by little approach is how do I maintain

• 10:21Speaker 01

  that desire and drive in the middle? And that largely comes down to seeing and feeling success each time you do the thing that you want to do. Because there is a good feeling inside of us. When we say we're going to do something, we do it. There is an internal good feeling. It's subtle. We often don't pay any attention to it. But one of the things that I try and do is every single time I do the thing that I said I was going to do.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  I try and have a little internal good job and I noticed, oh, that felt good. I did it. Okay. That's part of how we combat that long middle.

• 11:07John R. Miles?

  I remember interviewing Robin Sharma and we talked about that middle phase a lot in the interview and it's something that I know for myself throughout many arcs of my life, I have stumbled because I think that's exactly where our intrinsic motivation tends to fail when we start hitting setbacks and things like that. What have you found enables you, when you hit moments like that, to be able to persevere and push forward?

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a little framework in the book. It's a little interlude and it's about how do we handle getting off track? Because if we're trying to make some sort of change that again is lasting, there are going to be times that we do that really well and there are going to be times that we don't do it so well. There are going to be times that life gets in the way. And a big problem is that for a lot of us, particularly the sort of people that read a book like this, or people that hire someone like me to be a coach, is they've tried to make changes a lot of times and it hasn't worked. So there's this internal belief that I can't

• 12:18Speaker 01

  really do it. So what happens is we're going along, things are going well, and then life gets in the way. Let's say your kids get sick, or work gets really intense for a little while, or you go on vacation, whatever it is, and your routine kind of falls apart.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  What happens then for many people is we start to go, see, I knew I couldn't do it. I don't know, I just, I'm the kind of person that doesn't stick with anything. And that, of course, becomes a self-perpetuating problem. Because motivation goes up when we feel good about ourselves and our chances of success, and it goes down when we feel bad about ourselves and our chances of success. So that moment of how we respond to setbacks is really important. So I have a framework in the book that I could walk you through if you, if we want to continue to go down this.

• 13:17John R. Miles?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Okay, I just call it RENEW. It's like everybody comes up with fancy little acronyms for their little process, right? So I'm no different. RENEW.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  The R stands for recognize it's normal to get off track. It just happens. It happens to everyone that's trying to do anything long term. The second is to embrace your why. Go back to like, why was I doing this in the first place? Because often that starts to get lost.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  N stands for neutralize the emotional drama. This is the important one, right? They're all important, but this one in particular, don't make it mean anything other than I was doing this thing, now I'm not doing it. I'm going to get back to doing it. That's about as much story as we need. We do not need all the bad stories we tell ourselves.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  The E stands for extract the lesson. There might be a reason we got off track. So let's take the vacation one again. I see this all the time. People are doing really well with some behavior they're trying to do. They go on vacation, their routine changes, everything comes off the rails. And then when they get back, they have a hard time re-engaging.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  So that's a lesson. The lesson for me is if I go on vacation and I decide for a week, I'm not, I don't care about any of that stuff. If I work out, great, I'll do it maybe. If I eat like crap, I'm probably going to, all fine. But when I get home, I need to now reset back into doing this thing. Instead of coasting in and the next thing I know, it just fades away. So we need to extract the lesson.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  And then the last piece is just to walk forward with action. Just do some version of the thing as soon as you can do it.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Get some, get back into it in some way, some momentum. So if I try and be a daily meditator and over the years, there's times where I'm incredibly consistent with that. And there are times that it's spottier. And so often if it gets spottier and I fall off for a little while, the thought of coming back and meditating for 20 or 30 minutes just feels overwhelming to me. And so I'll go, you know what? For the first week back, I'll just do five minutes. Let me just get back into it. Let me get the consistency going and then I can build.

• 15:52John R. Miles?

  For me, meditation has always been difficult when I'm in a stationary position. I find that I need to do something that's fluid.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:01John R. Miles?

  So the, the thing that works the best for me that I do every day is I go out first thing in the morning, very early in the morning. I love it pitch dark. And for the first 20, 25 minutes, I use that period of my walk to meditate and just

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:17John R. Miles?

  allow myself to feel the presence because it kind of sets up the way I want to live out that day.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:23John R. Miles?

  And for me, that works because when I start getting off track for my meditation, I start zoning in again on my five senses and

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:34John R. Miles?

  and start using that to, to get myself back into the zone.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think everybody has to find what works for them for sure. And for a lot of people, sitting meditation is not the right thing. And for, and there's a lot of different ways to quote unquote meditate.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  I, for years, I started trying to meditate a long time ago.

• 16:57John R. Miles?

  Yeah.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  And I lived in Columbus, Ohio, and there was no internet. So all I had were books and some weird guy who taught TM in, in Columbus, Ohio in the late eighties. Right? And I just, I kept reading these books and they just kept talking about breath meditation.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  And they also talked about meditating like 30 minutes to an hour a day. And that was way too long for me because when I sat down, it was just like, it was like a pandemonium in my mind, not a good kind either. Just was, it's like my brain was like, I've been waiting for you to sit down because I've got a lot we need to talk about. So that was really hard and breath meditation is not my thing.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Finally, over time, I decided I would meditate for a much shorter period of time, but I also discovered sound meditation. I discovered going out and just sitting on a bench and just paying attention of the sounds. And all of a sudden I was like, oh, I see why people like this.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  I see why this can be soothing. I see why this can be calming. And now I can do breath meditation, but it's because I found another way in. And so I think your point is a really important one is we have to experiment to find the things that work for us. And same thing in the with like my book, if you're the kind of person that can do the big bang change,

• 18:30Speaker 01

  go ahead and do it. Nothing is the right answer for everyone.

• 18:36John R. Miles?

  Before we continue, I want to thank all of you who continue supporting Passion Struck and sharing these conversations with others. One of the biggest themes in today's conversation is that transformation rarely happens through massive breakthroughs. More often, it happens through small, repeated choices that slowly reshape how we think, act, and live. That idea connects deeply to the work I explore in my upcoming book, The Mattering Effect. And it's also why we create companion workbooks and weekly reflections through the Ignited Life newsletter. If you want tools to help you apply these conversations more intentionally in your own life, you can explore everything at theignitedlife.net. Now, a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

• 19:26John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck Network. Now, back to my conversation with Eric Zimmer. Something that you just said about the sound meditation is true for me, too. My favorite time of day is daybreak, 35, 40 minutes before the sun comes up, because the world just starts becoming alive and you start hearing all the creatures do their thing. To me, it's just a magical time to experience.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Yes, I wish I got up. Well, let me say that differently. There are aspects of getting up even earlier like you do that I enjoy, and it doesn't seem to be my chronotype exactly.

• 20:09John R. Miles?

  Eric, I want to go to chapter six in the book. One of my favorite things that I like to talk about is something I wrote in my first book, Passion Struck, which is becoming a perspective harnesser. And I think so many of us live in this world where we don't see the world as it is. We see it as we are, which is really what that chapter to me captured.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:36John R. Miles?

  And part of the way I rationalize this is so many of us, especially in the Western world, tend to live our lives as either or, and we have these huge extremes. And to me, a lot of this gets into both and thinking. But how does this idea of perspective show up in everyday life that a lot of people don't understand?

• 21:01Speaker 01

  I think our natural reaction is that when we look at any situation, we just assume we're seeing the truth of that situation.

• 21:11John R. Miles?

  Yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  And that is rarely true, or it's partially true, is a better way to say it. And I think if I could imbue one skill, if I could gift one skill to people, if they want to live a more calm and equanimous life, is this one, is just because I'm thinking it, or just because it appears that way, doesn't mean that it is true.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  We are meaning-making creatures. People have referred to humans as meaning-making machines. It is simply something you cannot turn off.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  It happens automatically. We find ourselves in a situation and we create a story around what it means. It happens instantaneously and transparently.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  So learning to go, okay, there might be other ways to see this is one of the best skills in life. I give an example in the book that I think is a useful one for this sort of thing. Imagine you've just moved into a new neighborhood, just moved, but you're a little nervous about it. You're like, well, God, is this the right neighborhood? We just bought a house. I don't know for sure. Maybe you're like, well, God, a lot of the neighbors' houses are nicer than mine. Am I in the right place? You're just normal anxiety that you would have moving into a new place. And you walk out one morning and you go outside, you see your neighbor and you wave and they don't wave back.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  A lot of us are going to instantaneously have some version of, oh, A, what a jerk, and B, maybe I better call the movers because I knew it. I knew I wasn't going to get along with my neighbors here. And all of a sudden, I'm spinning. But if we ask ourselves, okay, what am I making this mean? Is such a powerful question because we catch it in the act. I go, oh, I'm making my neighbor not waving back mean that they don't like me and I'm not going to fit in here. Well, what else could it mean? Is the next question that I encourage people to use. And what else could it mean? It could mean that they didn't see me. It could mean they waved before I saw them. Yeah.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  It could mean that they're having a really difficult morning and they're just zoned out. It could mean a lot of things. And I don't know which. I simply do not know which of those are true. And then the final question is also really critical. Which meaning is most useful to me?

• 23:52Speaker 01

  A meaning where I go, well, I don't know what happened. I don't know why they didn't wave, is a much more useful meaning for my ability to integrate into this neighborhood and build the community that I want than the meaning that says, that person's a jerk and I don't fit here. Because all of a sudden now you've created a story that is going to shape the way you see all the experiences where you live. Another example I give or that I think about with this a lot is after writing a book, there were days that I would write.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  And it was just brutally painful and nothing got accomplished at all. Or what got accomplished was just, I would look at it, be like, that is terrible writing. So my brain could say, see, you're not a writer.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  You knew you weren't good enough to do this.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  You have all these amazing writers on your show. You're not one of them. So that's one meaning. Another meaning I could give is, you just had an off day. Everybody has off days, right? You just keep putting in the work and something good is going to come out of it. Which of those is true? I don't know.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  But we can clearly see which one is useful, right? The one that says, oh, you just had an off day, keep working, is much more likely to lead me to a good book than the other. So yeah, I think this is imminently practical and we deal with it all of the time in life.

• 25:29John R. Miles?

  Yeah, man, I can't tell you how many drafts of chapters I end up throwing out.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, boy, I don't know about you. I have not, the writing of this book brought up self doubt I have not faced in decades. My, just feeling like I can't do it. And luckily, the only thing I can say is the luck part for me is that I've talked to enough people who have written great books to know that everyone feels that way part of the time. Even great writers, the five New York Times bestsellers, I'll talk to them and they're like, I just, I don't think I could do it this time. This book, I'm just, what I'm writing is just crap. It's not any good. And they're right that at the stage it's at, it's not great.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  But there are a lot of stages it goes through and then you get to the end. And for me, I'm like, wow, what I, what I wrote, I feel great about. I feel like it's really good. But if you had pinged me any more, any minute in that process and been like, how's the writing? I probably would have been like, not good enough. That was a big lesson for me too, just in recognizing the way something unfolds. And it goes back to what we talked about before. With little by little.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Any one day of writing was inconsequential.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  But added together, over and over, suddenly, wow, here's this thing, there's this book. Right. And that's little by little. I did that. I wrote the book 30 minutes at a time. I would sit down and say, okay. What I would sit and set a timer 30 minutes, right? And when the timer was went off, I could reset the timer and just keep going. Or I could stop and go do something else. That was the way it was the only way I could get myself to do it because it was so hard. It was so hard. And so I might be, it might be Monday and I'm like, okay, I have all Monday afternoon carved out for writing. But if I thought about sitting down and writing all afternoon, I would feel so overwhelmed.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  But I could usually talk myself into 30 minutes. Or sometimes start talk myself into five minutes, which then turned into 30 minutes.

• 27:48John R. Miles?

  Yeah, I've recently been trying to get ahold of Angela Duckworth. Basically to try to get her permission to include parts of her interview in this new book. And it's been impossible to get in touch with her. And where I'm going with this is her assistant said, well, she's in a writing dungeon. And she's working on her next book.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Dungeon.

• 28:10John R. Miles?

  If you ask my wife, that's what she would say. She hates when I work on books because if I get in the flow state, which takes me a little bit to get into as I'm writing, but if I am there, man, I hours can go by. And to me, it feels like it's five minutes. It is crazy. Well, when you were talking about these bestselling authors, one that you and I both know is Susan Cain, and you were lucky enough to even be on her podcast. When I think of her book Quiet. Which sold something like 20 million plus copies. Having to follow that up with another book that then outperforms the first one. Or I think of James Clear, if he would ever write a second book.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:56John R. Miles?

  The amount of pressure that you would put yourself, put on yourself to try to duplicate the past performance has got to be just immense.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  I'm sure, yeah, I would imagine it is. I'm sure Susan's second book did not sell nearly as well as her first book. Her second book is outstanding. I actually prefer it as a book. I love it. And if I had to guess, there's no way it sold like Quiet did. I don't think it's possible. Quiet was on the New York Times bestseller list for most of my adult life, it feels like.

• 29:33John R. Miles?

  Well, I think one thing she does exceptionally well is Susan does a ton of research before she does anything, and I think she internalizes a lot of it. So she is very good at picking out cultural moments where big things people are feeling that aren't being explored. And at least for me, Quiet was a wake up call because I was this introvert in Fortune 500 companies in a very extrovert world. And I kept wondering when I got home, why I was so fricking exhausted all the time. And her book kind of showed me that because you're putting on a complete mask, that's

• 30:16John R. Miles?

  different than what your whole biology is. And I think that's what her books do is they're very introspective.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:23John R. Miles?

  Helping people see a side of them they don't see. And same thing with our big feelings.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Yes, 100%. Yep.

• 30:31John R. Miles?

  Well, one of the things that I found when I was going through that process is I wasn't very kind to myself at times. And one of the things that you talk about in the book is our need to becoming a friend to ourself.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:48John R. Miles?

  What does that actually look like from your perspective beyond just being nice to yourself?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  I think, I say in the book that I think self compassion, which is a term Kristin Neff, the, I don't know if she coined it, but she's the one who's associated with it, a University of Texas researcher and professor. I think that self compassion is the midpoint between self acceptance and self improvement.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Right? We are all faced at any given time with this, I want to do better. I want what I do to be good. I, I'm striving. And yet, we also, I think it's important that we allow ourselves to be who we are. There's a tension there. And so I'm trying to find, self compassion is finding that middle place. I think what it looks like in practice is beginning to recognize the ways in which I am not kind to myself. I am not a friend to myself. I am not on my own side. And then thinking about what would it look like to be a friend to myself in these moments? And then practicing it about 20,000 times over the years.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  What I can say today for me is that I don't have a really harsh internal critic anymore.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  That doesn't mean that I can't be critical.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  But I do it in a different way. So I was perfectly capable of looking at what I was writing and going, that's not good.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Without saying, that's not good, you idiot. What's wrong with you? Why can't you do better?

• 32:31Speaker 01

  And that, I think that just happened from lots and lots of reps, right? I was a homeless heroin addict 30 years ago. And addicts carry an enormous amount of shame. It's part of what drives the whole addiction engine.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  So for me to go from that incredibly harsh inner voice that just said the worst things to myself, to a place that doesn't happen anymore feels like really significant to me. And so again, it's for me, it's about the tone in which I talk to myself. I use an example in the book of two students. You've got Bobby and you've got Sally. And Bobby is in class one day and his teacher says, Bobby, what's four plus three? And Bobby says eight. And his teacher says, Bobby, you are an idiot. What is the matter with you? We've covered this 10 times. Are you never going to learn it? You might as well,

• 33:28Speaker 01

  I would rule out college because you're probably not going to get out of grade school. Bobby's going to struggle with math. Sally, on the other hand, is a different teacher. And that teacher says, Sally, what's four plus three? Sally says eight. The teacher does not go, good job, Sally. You did great. The teacher says, Sally, no, four plus three is seven. And here's why. Let me explain it to you. And you know what? Why don't you, if you want to stop by after class, I'll spend a couple extra minutes with you. And I know you can do this. Sally is going to learn math. It's not that we're not being,

• 34:09Speaker 01

  holding ourselves accountable to some standard. It's the way it's done. And so for me, beside, the biggest upgrade I've ever given myself, besides burning my life to the ground with drugs, was to learn this, to be kinder to myself. And it's also really important in change. Because when we are in that, you idiot, you suck, you piece of shit, whatever it is, we're not learning. And that's what change is. Change is a learning process. We have to be able to go, okay, I was trying to do this or not do that. And I did or didn't do it. And so why? What happened?

• 34:51Speaker 01

  What got in the way? What could I do different? What? All that is how we learn to change. But when we're caught up in all the shame and internal recrimination, we just don't learn. So it's incredibly valuable and it takes a lot of reps. It just takes a lot of, oh, there I'm doing it again. What would I? Okay. What would be a way to respond to myself like I would respond to a friend? And, oh, and it takes a while for that to, you start to feel it. But it can be done.

• 35:23John R. Miles?

  Eric, I didn't want to rehash your whole journey because we went through that in detail in the first episode. So that's something people can go back and listen to. But something I did want to talk about is I have two kids. My older one is about to turn 28 in May, which I'm dumbfounded about.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  It's amazing. My oldest one is going to turn 28 in May.

• 35:46John R. Miles?

  Well, isn't it crazy how fast life goes?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Oh, it's preposterous. Yeah. It's just, it doesn't make any sense.

• 35:54John R. Miles?

  Well, he is very interested in a career in music and he also has a degree in business. But I think a ton of kids this age, yours is probably telling you the same thing is it feels really out of whack right now because of all the digital disruptions that are hitting them. But I was hoping you might go back to your 28 year old self, the one who somehow got into one of the first internet companies. And when you think about change and how you embrace that, or how you need to think about life, like what advice do you give to kids that are this age? Or I should say adults that are this age?

• 36:38Speaker 01

  The first would be, I recognize this on a walk with my son about a year ago. And I was like, for the first time since he's been born, I feel like I have no idea exactly how to advise him moving forward.

• 36:54John R. Miles?

  Yeah.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  It's not that I in the past, I would have been like, I know what you should do. And here's what, but I would be like, I have a way of thinking through this. I have some general principles I might give. Here's how I would think about it. And a year ago, I was like, F it if I know. What on earth is the world going to look like in three years for you?

• 37:17Speaker 01

  So what I would say to a, to my 28 year old self would not be anything like, here's what I think you should do to be relevant in the world, in the career world moving forward. I think I would talk more about. Life seems very uncertain right now, more uncertain than it has seemed. And the rate of change is really insane. So uncertainty, I believe now is a fundamental state of being human. It always has been, but it's, it's more pronounced right now.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  So the question becomes, how do you live in uncertainty? Because we do not like it as people. It is, it is not enjoyable. And so how do we live in uncertainty? And so I think the message I would have given my 28 year old self, and I would give my son also, is to a certain degree is, how do you relax into being where you are? How do you learn to trust in your ability to navigate? How do you learn to say, okay, I will figure this out. I have the, I have this, I have skills, I have strengths, I have internal resolve. I will be okay and I will figure it out. That's what I think it's worth cultivating.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Now I look at my mother entered hospice recently. And I would say it's the same thing. How do you learn to be where, right where you are, what stage you're in life? We don't know, are you a week away? Are you a year away from passing? What do you do with that uncertainty? And how do you trust in mom? How do you trust in your ability to navigate this? So I think that would be what I would tell my 28 year old is it's okay. Settle in, we don't know what's coming. That's okay. You will figure it out. You don't have to solve it right now. And don't let uncertainty about the future steal all the joy and pleasure and enjoyment of what's here right now.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Because that's what we do. And so I think I would give myself the same advice, right? I'd teach myself the same thing. I, I keep having to learn that. But it is one of the most powerful things for me is that I do. I just say to myself, you'll figure this out. You know how to navigate. I believe in you. I trust in your ability. Yes, we don't know what's coming. It feels insane, but I know who I am.

• 39:47John R. Miles?

  Yeah, as you were talking about that, for some reason, my mind went to Garth Brooks. And I'm thinking about the music video where the Challenger accident is playing in the background. And sometimes would you really want to know the future? You would live your life completely differently.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And the future is almost always some version of the Buddhist saying that I use all the time. The 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows. Every life has those.

• 40:18John R. Miles?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Often both are happening at the same time. Right? Right now I'm in the middle of a book launch. It's a great season. It's really fun. There's a lot of joy. My mom just entered hospice. One of my best friend's sons died a month ago in a skiing accident, like the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows. Another friend is battling cancer, right? It's all, it's both. It's here.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  And so how do we live in the midst of that in a way that is useful, skillful, and makes us just better able to enjoy our lives, but also better able to help other people?

• 40:58John R. Miles?

  One of the things, Eric, I wanted to make sure we covered was the third part of your book. And you move into something that you call the gift of being. What does the gift of being mean for a listener in practical terms?

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Well, the reason that I end the book, there's a three-part structure, which is beginning, becoming, and being. And the reason I end up with, back at the end with being is that idea we talked about earlier. Not everything in life should be changed. And we don't want to be in a position of relating to life through only the lens of change. And that is me if I'm not careful. One of my best qualities is that I am like, we can make this better.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  We can improve this, we can fix this, we can solve this. It's part of who I am and I'm really good at it. And

• 42:01Speaker 01

  like most things in our life, our greatest strength can often then turn around and become our greatest weakness. And so for me, the greatest weakness version of that is that I'm not content with where I'm at and how things are.

• 42:15John R. Miles?

  Yeah.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  And I want to be because I think that's really important. So we talk about this idea of presence as the way to do that. How can I move out of always future seeking into being more present? You gave one of the best examples of it that I know to do. When you talked about the walking meditation. Because our senses are the portal to now, right? That's how we become present. It's through our senses. And so by just going, what am I seeing? What am I feeling? What am I hearing? What can I touch? What can I taste? What can I? That brings us here.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  And practicing that is really important. I give an example in the book and it's still true today. I will show up somewhere lovely. Let's say I'm, we're headed off to a beach vacation and all day I'm like, once I get to the beach, I just gotta get to the beach. Once I get there, then I'll relax, then I'll, and I get there and I, we check into the hotel and I step out and I look and it's just gorgeous.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  And I'm like, oh, that's so good. And then about five seconds later, my brain goes, I wonder how much a house would cost to buy so I could live here all the time? Or why do I live in Ohio when I could live by the beach? Gone, a whole ocean ruined.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  So then for me, it's the catching, oh, there it is again. That mind, come back. What am I seeing? What will the waves sound like? How does the air feel? Brings me back and we can train this ability to be more present.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  When I am much more disciplined about my meditation and spiritual practice, I am just more present. The last three months, I've been focused on book launch to the exclusion of most other things. I've just been like, okay, this is a season. And for this season, this thing is going to be the number one focus, which means that other things get less focused. And I can tell you, it's harder for me to be present right now.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Because there's so much going on and I'm so focused on the book and how's it gonna do? And this is, I'm gonna, I'm downshifting kinda as we speak and I will go back to, all right, how do I be more in my life as it is? So, yeah, that's why I end the book that way because if I'm not careful, change is the only lens I see the world through.

• 44:49John R. Miles?

  So I wanted to go into this state of being because one of the things, especially when I'm in the dungeon of writing a book and that stress is I tend to not be as present as I should be with those who are, who are most meaningful in my life. And I wanted to go back to your renew formula. So I think so many of us are drifting away from connection more and more. So if you want to renew those connections in your life, how do you renew that state of being using your formula? What would be the steps?

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, first I would recognize it's normal to get off track. It's normal that we are, get distracted by the world and the things in the world and our responsibilities and whatever else it is that distracts us and pulls us away from what we think is most important.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  So I would recognize that. Then I would go back to the why, why does that matter to me? Let me feel it again. Why is being present to my wife important to me? What matters about that?

• 46:05Speaker 01

  And then I would again neutralize the emotional drama. I would get away from the oh God, I keep screwing this up. I'm not a good husband. I'm whatever it is, whatever the stories we start to tell ourselves. Or another one for me with this is I, why have I not been in better contact with my family over the last 10 years? I just get lost in the regret. So I try and neutralize that. Embrace the lesson. What's the lesson here? Oh, the lesson is that when I become singularly focused on one thing, everything else recedes and I don't even see it. So maybe

• 46:43Speaker 01

  how do I structure things so that I see them? So I'll give you an example in my own life. There are certain people in my life that I feel like I should be checking in with nearly daily because of the challenges they're facing. I will, I will not remember to do that. So I have an alarm on my phone that goes off that reminds me to do it because it's not that I don't care about them. It's that I get going with what's happening. Nothing else exists to me. Except here's what I gotta do now. Here's what I gotta do next. This is what I gotta do next. The rest of the world

• 47:22Speaker 01

  disappears. So I have to, I have to make, I have to have ways. So embracing the lesson from renew is that I need to give myself, I have to structure it. Maybe if it's in on a deep writing season, I'm going to make sure that two nights a week, my wife and I actually go out to dinner and I'm going to consciously not talk about the book, or I'm going to bring 10 questions that I pull off the internet that would be good discussion points that generate conversation. And we're going to do that because if I don't, all I'm going to do is talk about the book, right? Because

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Let's extract the lesson and then walk forward with action, right? Okay, you know what? Right this very second, I'm going to walk into the other room and I'm gonna have a say to my wife. I'm you're so valuable to me. You're so important to me. Sometimes I know when I'm writing, I get a little distracted, but I want to make a commitment to you that to stay more connected. So that's how I would embrace that. Now, if we wanted to apply that to a different kind of presence, we would just do the same thing. What's the lesson? Oh, the lesson is that I am not present at all. So what I need to do is do two more five minute walks where I do my little senses practice.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Or I need to, I have a concept in the book called still points, which are these little moments that happen throughout the day

• 48:45Speaker 01

  that are triggered by something. So we built an app to do this. It'll just go off randomly. You say, I want it to go off how many times a day? Five times a day and I want it to display a message. So randomly, my phone goes off five times a day. When it does, I look down, it says how ground yourself in your senses. And I just pause for a second. I go, all right, what are five things I can hear right now? I listen. I do. So now I'm doing that four or five times a day for 30 seconds.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  And I'm now able to be more present.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  So that's, that was a great question, John. Actually, that was a really good question. Like, how do we take that framework and put it in?

• 49:26John R. Miles?

  Well, I think you did a great job explaining it. And Eric, I wanted to, as we get close to closing, we've talked a lot about many different topics from the book today. But when I think about the arc of what we went through, we talked about the importance of small actions. We talked about self-awareness, self-compassion, kind of forgiveness, renewal. As someone goes through this whole framework that's in the book, what's the first real shift that that a listener would notice if they started applying this in their life?

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Well, that's a difficult question because what people are going to come to the book that they're trying to change could be very different things.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  What I would hope that what if you're trying to change your behavior, what I would hope one of the first shifts would be is that you are having success at whatever it is you're trying to do, where you're having more success.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  That would be one little shift that I would think, but the shift that we're aiming at ultimately is one where we are able to make and keep promises to ourselves and we begin to trust ourselves more.

• 50:43John R. Miles?

  Yeah.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  The book starts out, the first half of the book, I would say is a manual for how you change.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Here are the mechanics of it. And then the second half of the book are more mindsets that help you change and that are also valuable just in the way you live, self compassion, presence. And I think people are going to come into this book, one of two ways. One might be, I have something very specific behaviorally that I want to change.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  And I talk about it in the book, I call them habits of behavior and habits of thought. And if it's a behavioral thing, then the shift is going to be you're starting to do the thing you want to do more, or the thing you don't want to do less. I don't want to say completely, because often it takes time to figure it out. And on the habits of thought, I think that's a slow one, right? That's the problem with that one. And it's why, when I talk in the book, I say, little by little, I mean something specific. Low resistance actions done consistently in the same, or low resistance actions done consistently over time in the same direction. Low resistance just means you can get yourself to do it consistently over time is obvious.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  In the same direction is important, because part of the problem that we face today, and you and I are part of the problem in a way, is that there is so much information on how to, what to change, right? I put out two episodes a week. I just keep, you just keep getting it. If we went on Instagram right now, if you have a feed like mine, you will come across 15 different things you should, you could change in the first hour. I should start cold plunging, I should start meditating, I need to be doing morning pages, I need to be time boxing, I need to be listing out my values, I need to be doing a gratitude list, it just goes on and on.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  And what happens for a lot of us is we're like, okay, great, I'm gonna do that. And we start doing it and nothing big changes. And we go, that doesn't work. I did gratitude for three days and my life is not totally different. That isn't valuable. And so we give it up and we go, what's the next cold plunges? Let's do that. And so part of it, particularly with the way we think is to recognize there's no shortcut there.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Rewiring embedded thought patterns, the good news is it's absolutely possible. The bad news is it's going to take some time. So learning to stay with something long enough for it to do it, do to have an effect is also part of the little by little idea. Cause we have to be a little more patient. We have to start to really see through the marketing promises that we are inundated with that are like, one I see a lot now is 20 years of therapy in one hour. And I'm like, what a crock of horse shit.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  That's not how it works.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  It's not that there are not a more effective and less effective ways to do something. I'm not saying that. And it's not even that method might not be very effective. It might be. But it's not going to live up to that promise.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  And as long as we continue to be seduced by those promises, which we are, I am. I know it's all nonsense and yet I see it and I'm like, maybe that is exactly what I need to do. Maybe if I just took L-theanine, I'd never be sad again.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  So I think that's, I think the shift is in that, that we start recognizing

• 54:42Speaker 01

  that change does take time. And we do need to be patient with ourselves and with the process. I don't know if that was an answer, John. That was a lot of running all over the place, but hopefully there was something in there for people that was useful.

• 54:57John R. Miles?

  Well, for the listener, what I really valued from Eric's book is a couple of your own story, you bring in a lot of the science from people that you've interviewed on the podcast, which is something I love to do in my own books. And then I loved how you brought in things like the ancient farmer's story and the perspective chapter and other stories to highlight the points. So I found this to be a really profound book that will help a ton of people. And I do love the framework that you put together because so many books I read will have a simple idea, but they don't really go into how do you put that idea really into practice in a big way?

• 55:41John R. Miles?

  And I thought your book did a good job of talking about the premises and then showing you how to implement it. So it's not just a book that sits on the table, but it's something that people actually take out and apply again and again, which to me is what makes a long tail book, which I think this one will become.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Yeah, there are so many exercises at the end of the book. Normally you put them end of chapter exercises, they're there. And I'm like, nobody does those. I'm just going to put them in the back so you can read it as a book and then dive into the exercises you want. But there is a lot in there because I think like you, I'm a big believer that knowledge is great, but it's the application of the knowledge. It's the living of it that makes it actually matter.

• 56:28John R. Miles?

  You probably know who Rory Vaden is. And I was talking to Rory one time. He goes, people don't pay for information. They pay for the application of the information.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:37John R. Miles?

  And I think there's so much truth to that, but it's so uncanny to me. How many people listen to my podcast and we put out a guide for every single episode that people could use as a workbook to put the episode into practice in their life. And we track these downloads and it, I am still waiting for the day that ratio starts to close.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think it will in general. I think there is something to, I've thought about this a lot because I've been like, well, if you're not applying the ideas in my podcast, why, what's the value? And I do believe that we would all do well, and I'm the same way, to continue to shift the ratio of consumption to application or creation, or even deep reflection. Like from where we are to more of that. Because if I listen to a podcast and I spend five minutes after just writing down, what was the one thing for me

• 57:44Speaker 01

  that mattered most? And then spend another five minutes coming up with that and then just writing it down a little bit. Well, how does that apply in my life? Even that

• 57:55Speaker 01

  makes a big difference.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  But there's also something I think that people get out of shows like yours and like mine, that is also really valuable, which is they feel encouraged. They feel often in my show, they feel comforted, they feel seen, they feel heard, and they have hope. And so that's valuable in and of itself, even if there's not a ton of application. And that's like walking into a beautiful banquet.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  And only eating off the appetizer table. It's valuable. The appetizers are really valuable and there's a lot more to be done there. And yeah, I always encourage, and it's why I always encourage people to try and do some of it. And it's why I, I do coaching work or I do these workshops or I have a community of practice where people can join where we all together are going, this month is what we are doing. This month is all about values and every week I'm going to give you a different short practice that you can do. Like, how do we do these things? Yeah, it's so important.

• 58:59John R. Miles?

  Absolutely. Eric, always such an honor to have you on the show. Huge fan of you and your work. Where can people learn the most about you?

• 59:08Speaker 01

  OneYouFeed.net, O-N-E-Y-O-U-F-E-E-D.net. You can find there, you can find the book, you can find the podcast, you can find how to book me for speaking or workshops, you can find the community. It's all there. OneYouFeed.net.

• 59:26John R. Miles?

  Awesome. Eric, thank you again for joining us and congrats again on this incredible new book.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Sean. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. You're one of the best at this, so thank you. I was really happy to get to do this.

• 59:39John R. Miles?

  That brings us to the end of today's conversation. And honestly, what stayed with me most is this. So many people believe transformation should be dramatic. They think change arrives through some singular breakthrough moment that permanently alters everything overnight. But real change is usually much quieter than that. It happens through repeated choices, repeated awareness, repeated moments of returning, returning after setbacks, returning after self doubt, returning after life inevitably knocks us off course. And one of the things I appreciated most about Eric's perspective is that he removes shame from the process of growth. He reminds us that falling off track is not failure. It's part of being human and what matters is learning how to return without turning

• 1:00:24John R. Miles?

  every setback into evidence that we are incapable of change. I also think this conversation speaks to something much larger happening culturally right now. Many people are exhausted from trying. Trying to completely reinvent themselves every few months. New systems, new routines, new identities, new forms of optimization. But sustainable transformation is often less about becoming someone entirely different than more about learning how to consistently move in the direction of the person you already want to become. Little by little, choice by choice, moment by moment. And maybe that's the deeper invitation inside this conversation. To build enough self-trust to keep returning to what matters. And next up in our forged in adversity series, I'll be joined by Walter Green for a powerful

• 1:01:08John R. Miles?

  conversation about legacy service and how adversity can ripple outward into the lives we impact. Because sometimes the deepest meaning we create from suffering comes through with what we choose to give forward.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  What if the whole world woke up this morning and said, I am going to reach out to at least one person or all those that are really important to me and be very specific with them. I just want you to know, John, how much you matter to me. When you did that, and that suggestion and that support was a really tough time in my life. And I'll never forget what impact it had on my life. And you're thinking to yourself, I don't remember it. You can't believe how many moments of mattering in people's lives, the people who provided it had no knowledge of it.

• 1:02:01John R. Miles?

  If today's episode resonated with you, sure, it was someone who may need it. Leave a five star rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and explore more at theignitedlife.net. Until next time, remember, transformation rarely happens all at once. More often, it happens through the small choices quietly shape who we become. From John Miles, you've been passion struck.