Too many people are getting comfortable in their feelings and in swirling the story instead of figuring out how to really move forward.

Too many people are getting comfortable in their feelings and in swirling the story instead of figuring out how to really move forward.

Wow, welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Wow, welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

If you've ever felt like you're stuck in your head, overthinking, second guessing, and feeling weighted down by your emotions, it's good to know that you're not alone. Today I'm talking with Nicki Eisenhower, who's a psychotherapist, a coach, and the host of Emotional Badass. She believes that emotional sensitivity isn't a weakness, it's a strength. We'll explore why so many people struggle to change, how overthinking keeps us trapped, and what it really takes to break free from our old patterns. As we talked, I realize how much of my own journey has been about learning when to listen to my emotions and when to challenge them, because, as Nicky says, our feelings aren't always telling the truth. By the end of this episode, you'll have a better understanding of how to quiet the inner chatter, take real action in your life, and step into your own strength without getting stuck in your story. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Nikki, Welcome to the show.

If you've ever felt like you're stuck in your head, overthinking, second guessing, and feeling weighted down by your emotions, it's good to know that you're not alone. Today I'm talking with Nicki Eisenhower, who's a psychotherapist, a coach, and the host of Emotional Badass. She believes that emotional sensitivity isn't a weakness, it's a strength. We'll explore why so many people struggle to change, how overthinking keeps us trapped, and what it really takes to break free from our old patterns. As we talked, I realize how much of my own journey has been about learning when to listen to my emotions and when to challenge them, because, as Nicky says, our feelings aren't always telling the truth. By the end of this episode, you'll have a better understanding of how to quiet the inner chatter, take real action in your life, and step into your own strength without getting stuck in your story. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Nikki, Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you for having me.

I am excited to have you on and talk about all kinds of different things. You have quite an interesting background as a psychotherapist, as a coach, as a podcast host, and you cover all kinds of topics, so it'll be really interesting to see where we end up. But we'll start in the place that we always do with the Parable. And in the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their 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 is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and think about it for a second, and they look up their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

I am excited to have you on and talk about all kinds of different things. You have quite an interesting background as a psychotherapist, as a coach, as a podcast host, and you cover all kinds of topics, so it'll be really interesting to see where we end up. But we'll start in the place that we always do with the Parable. And in the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their 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 is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and think about it for a second, and they look up their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

It means so much. I used to teach a group with that parable, well before I even knew what a podcast was. It hits me in a lot of ways. I think we have so much power to feed the good, to feed what serves us, and I think the confusion is that sometimes we don't know what we're feeding, or we don't know that we have that power to feed different beasts inside of us, if you will. And so to me, that parable is all about the empowerment of that choice and being mindful and intentional so that we're feeding what we really want to feed, so that we're growing in a direction of lightness, of ease, of peace, of joy, of really experiencing what is good in this one precious life and letting go of the rest.

It means so much. I used to teach a group with that parable, well before I even knew what a podcast was. It hits me in a lot of ways. I think we have so much power to feed the good, to feed what serves us, and I think the confusion is that sometimes we don't know what we're feeding, or we don't know that we have that power to feed different beasts inside of us, if you will. And so to me, that parable is all about the empowerment of that choice and being mindful and intentional so that we're feeding what we really want to feed, so that we're growing in a direction of lightness, of ease, of peace, of joy, of really experiencing what is good in this one precious life and letting go of the rest.

Yeah. You know, as I was listening to a couple recent episodes of Yours, they were what seventeen years of working with my clients has taught me? And there's lots of interesting lessons in there, But I kind of want to pivot a slightly different direction off of that, which is that seventeen years of working with clients is a long time. You've worked with a lot of people, and in that time you have seen people grow and prosper and change and just beautiful stories. And you've seen tragedy and heartbreak. You've seen people who don't change, people who die, all the negative outcomes we could think of. And I'm curious if you have any wisdom about what it is that allows some people to change and others not, because any of us that are in this field for very long, or even if you're not in it directly, if you observe people in your own life, it is a mystery, right Like why was Bob able to moderate his weight and his health and his cholesterol and become healthy where Sam is now a Type two diabetic and only gets out twice a week, Like we see it all around us, And I'm just curious if you have some thoughts on what are some of the key factors in people's ability to make change.

Yeah. You know, as I was listening to a couple recent episodes of Yours, they were what seventeen years of working with my clients has taught me? And there's lots of interesting lessons in there, But I kind of want to pivot a slightly different direction off of that, which is that seventeen years of working with clients is a long time. You've worked with a lot of people, and in that time you have seen people grow and prosper and change and just beautiful stories. And you've seen tragedy and heartbreak. You've seen people who don't change, people who die, all the negative outcomes we could think of. And I'm curious if you have any wisdom about what it is that allows some people to change and others not, because any of us that are in this field for very long, or even if you're not in it directly, if you observe people in your own life, it is a mystery, right Like why was Bob able to moderate his weight and his health and his cholesterol and become healthy where Sam is now a Type two diabetic and only gets out twice a week, Like we see it all around us, And I'm just curious if you have some thoughts on what are some of the key factors in people's ability to make change.

That's a great question. I think the main thing that is so hard to put our finger on or name about that difference. It is so easy to see because you can really see it, especially when you do this work over and over again. It's like, what is that stuff that one person has that motivates them towards this change? And what is this stuff that this other person is missing that doesn't seem to be able to do that work or to let go of what isn't serving them. To me, that stuff is insight, and insight is one of those things that we can't really teach and we don't really know why. This is something that I had professors in my counseling program when I was in my master's program teach and what they taught brand new green therapists was that we were really going to try to hammer in insight to people that just didn't have it, and their intelligence level would make it seem like they should be able to connect these dots and make these changes and go forward, and that that very thing that seems to motivate change is in sight, and it's sight and just like our eyeballs. Like if you and I are standing next to each other looking out at a landscape. I live in the mountains and see the mountains right now as we're talking outside of my window. If you and I are standing there looking at those mountains, we know very well that you're going to have a different site ability. I'm gonna have different site. Maybe one of us has glasses, but when it comes to things like our intuition or our insight, we can't really measure it like we can to get prescription glasses. So I think it's harder for us to really understand that other human beings have different parts of them. And it's part sensory, maybe it's part spiritual. Maybe it's the different karmas that we're living out why some of us are born with insight and some of us aren't. I tend to work with very high insight people that come from family systems where most of the players seem to suffer from and really suffer, whether they know it or not, from low insight. And that's just our ability to look inward, our ability to observe ourselves, our ability to see our own patterns, our own inclinations, our own motivations, our own desires, and question them. That if we can't see those things, then it's not going to be easy to question those things or to change them. So I think the stuff that you're talking about is insight. And you and your work, I'm sure of it, and me and mine we do insight oriented therapies or coaching, or we're helping people who already have insight connected and many of them are hurt in the world by people that just don't seem to have that insight and likely never will, which we don't like. Right Like, I'm all about hope and change, and so one of the things I teach in my Boundaries course every October is that we also have a dysfunctional hope. You know, we're kind of supposed to give second chances, not infinity chances. So I think there's a lot that plays there about that ability, that willingness, that seekers spirit, that drives us to change.

That's a great question. I think the main thing that is so hard to put our finger on or name about that difference. It is so easy to see because you can really see it, especially when you do this work over and over again. It's like, what is that stuff that one person has that motivates them towards this change? And what is this stuff that this other person is missing that doesn't seem to be able to do that work or to let go of what isn't serving them. To me, that stuff is insight, and insight is one of those things that we can't really teach and we don't really know why. This is something that I had professors in my counseling program when I was in my master's program teach and what they taught brand new green therapists was that we were really going to try to hammer in insight to people that just didn't have it, and their intelligence level would make it seem like they should be able to connect these dots and make these changes and go forward, and that that very thing that seems to motivate change is in sight, and it's sight and just like our eyeballs. Like if you and I are standing next to each other looking out at a landscape. I live in the mountains and see the mountains right now as we're talking outside of my window. If you and I are standing there looking at those mountains, we know very well that you're going to have a different site ability. I'm gonna have different site. Maybe one of us has glasses, but when it comes to things like our intuition or our insight, we can't really measure it like we can to get prescription glasses. So I think it's harder for us to really understand that other human beings have different parts of them. And it's part sensory, maybe it's part spiritual. Maybe it's the different karmas that we're living out why some of us are born with insight and some of us aren't. I tend to work with very high insight people that come from family systems where most of the players seem to suffer from and really suffer, whether they know it or not, from low insight. And that's just our ability to look inward, our ability to observe ourselves, our ability to see our own patterns, our own inclinations, our own motivations, our own desires, and question them. That if we can't see those things, then it's not going to be easy to question those things or to change them. So I think the stuff that you're talking about is insight. And you and your work, I'm sure of it, and me and mine we do insight oriented therapies or coaching, or we're helping people who already have insight connected and many of them are hurt in the world by people that just don't seem to have that insight and likely never will, which we don't like. Right Like, I'm all about hope and change, and so one of the things I teach in my Boundaries course every October is that we also have a dysfunctional hope. You know, we're kind of supposed to give second chances, not infinity chances. So I think there's a lot that plays there about that ability, that willingness, that seekers spirit, that drives us to change.

I have a thousand follow on questions that So when we say insight, I think it's worth talking a little bit more about what that is because I'm certain that you see this and I've seen it I got into a recovery at twenty four years old, and I hate to say fifty two, right, And so I mean I've been watching some people change and other people not for a long long time, right. And what I have seen is people who show up and put in effort, who appear to have some degree of insight, because they wouldn't be there putting in the effort if they didn't have some insight, or they can pare it back some insight. Maybe what is it you think that they need to be seeing that Oftentimes people are not connecting or are not seen more deeply.

I have a thousand follow on questions that So when we say insight, I think it's worth talking a little bit more about what that is because I'm certain that you see this and I've seen it I got into a recovery at twenty four years old, and I hate to say fifty two, right, And so I mean I've been watching some people change and other people not for a long long time, right. And what I have seen is people who show up and put in effort, who appear to have some degree of insight, because they wouldn't be there putting in the effort if they didn't have some insight, or they can pare it back some insight. Maybe what is it you think that they need to be seeing that Oftentimes people are not connecting or are not seen more deeply.

Maybe it's how deep our personal responsibility really run. And I also think we're not so aware naturally of what are motivating factors. So I've worked in addiction where people live for residential treatment, and I did intensive outpatient That's where I started my career, and very often someone could speak the speak right, talk the talk, and the truth is, as a trained therapist, we want tangible, evidence based stuff to help people with and to speak from. What I learned as a human being going through that experience beyond a therapist going through that experience was that I had to decipher and it was a feel It's very hard to put into words. It's a feeling because two people can stand next to each other and utter the same thing, the same desire, But I can feel the difference between someone who is genuinely passionate and driven about going after the very behaviors and mindsets that will serve them, and someone else may say the exact same phrasing, but it feels empty, it feels hollow, and often the difference there is they're not really motive to do it for themselves. We don't understand motivation, and when we have lower insight, we also tend to have a lower empathy and a lower maturity. So often what I think is at play is a lower maturity, and we don't do a great job in mental health. I think even in spiritual circles, just as people. I don't think we talk about maturity in any kind of self development space, but we can see that. There was a philosopher that I very much identified with when I was going through my schooling. I think it was Ericson, But I'm not great at remembering the names and pairing them with the right information. That's not my strong suit. My strong suit is the how to heal, but in that one of those philosophers theorized that most people did not truly emotionally develop into adulthood, most stayed kind of stunted in adolescents. And for me that was a gobsmack moment to hear that information, because I could see in my own family system that was very dysfunctional, and in the family systems I was working with and learning about at the time that that was very, very true. That often there was a younger person who had been parentified, who seemed to be born an old soul, like just born with some kind of maturity. And we can really see that a lot of people have parents, a lot of people have family members. A lot of people themselves may really be operating emotionally like a twelve year old. They really may be operating like a sixteen year old. And some of that is temperament, some of that is experienced, some of that is nature, some of that is nurture, some of that is drug and alcohol use. Stunting emotional development, we certainly know about that, But I would also say growing up with chaos for certain personalities can stunt that development. So when we say trauma or dysfunction, those are overused they're overplayed. They're almost like the word good at this point, it's like we all know what it means, but it doesn't mean much of anything anymore. Things that would not try ammatize us today, that would just be annoying to us today, are truly traumatic. For a child, we need a certain amount of peace. So if we grow up with chaos, that may become traumatic in a way that today would just be annoying. But for the child we were was really unfortunate for the development of our own maturity, our own ability to communicate with more and more age and wisdom instead of reaction, being able to really respond with greater wisdom. And if we come from people that functionally didn't mature, I can very much say that's true in my family system. That is so confusing and frightening. And so if we have a portion of the population that isn't emotionally maturing, then of course that's going to affect how they grow and develop. Because an immature person is going to want to eat that whole bag of oreos. It takes a certain amount of maturity to go, wait a minute, even though part of me wants to just stuff my face with all those oreos, another part of me has to step in and now, hey, that'll make me sick. And we need to know that about all these more complex interactions and dynamics and motivations and desires. Who are we doing things for. We're pleasing the people in our family because they want us to get sober, you know, and we want them to quit riding our ass. So we learn to say the right things. Or are we really cultivating and innern drive towards expressing in this life to our highest potential? Is that our driving force? Are we just trying to get by and feel good in the moment? And if we're immature, I suspect we're more likely. I know that we're more likely to reach for those in the moment feel goods that really thwart our personal development and our security and our groundedness and even developing things like a certain amount of wealth and financial stabilities, because money is choice, and it's power, and it's comfort, it's so many things. So I think so much plays on what comes together to really a person towards seeking and working and it's work. And again, if you're immature, how do we convince somebody that the work is worth it? If their immature part is just like I don't want to do that uncomfortable stuff. I rather sit and watch TV. How do you motivate that if we're not really talking about maturity in these spaces too.

Maybe it's how deep our personal responsibility really run. And I also think we're not so aware naturally of what are motivating factors. So I've worked in addiction where people live for residential treatment, and I did intensive outpatient That's where I started my career, and very often someone could speak the speak right, talk the talk, and the truth is, as a trained therapist, we want tangible, evidence based stuff to help people with and to speak from. What I learned as a human being going through that experience beyond a therapist going through that experience was that I had to decipher and it was a feel It's very hard to put into words. It's a feeling because two people can stand next to each other and utter the same thing, the same desire, But I can feel the difference between someone who is genuinely passionate and driven about going after the very behaviors and mindsets that will serve them, and someone else may say the exact same phrasing, but it feels empty, it feels hollow, and often the difference there is they're not really motive to do it for themselves. We don't understand motivation, and when we have lower insight, we also tend to have a lower empathy and a lower maturity. So often what I think is at play is a lower maturity, and we don't do a great job in mental health. I think even in spiritual circles, just as people. I don't think we talk about maturity in any kind of self development space, but we can see that. There was a philosopher that I very much identified with when I was going through my schooling. I think it was Ericson, But I'm not great at remembering the names and pairing them with the right information. That's not my strong suit. My strong suit is the how to heal, but in that one of those philosophers theorized that most people did not truly emotionally develop into adulthood, most stayed kind of stunted in adolescents. And for me that was a gobsmack moment to hear that information, because I could see in my own family system that was very dysfunctional, and in the family systems I was working with and learning about at the time that that was very, very true. That often there was a younger person who had been parentified, who seemed to be born an old soul, like just born with some kind of maturity. And we can really see that a lot of people have parents, a lot of people have family members. A lot of people themselves may really be operating emotionally like a twelve year old. They really may be operating like a sixteen year old. And some of that is temperament, some of that is experienced, some of that is nature, some of that is nurture, some of that is drug and alcohol use. Stunting emotional development, we certainly know about that, But I would also say growing up with chaos for certain personalities can stunt that development. So when we say trauma or dysfunction, those are overused they're overplayed. They're almost like the word good at this point, it's like we all know what it means, but it doesn't mean much of anything anymore. Things that would not try ammatize us today, that would just be annoying to us today, are truly traumatic. For a child, we need a certain amount of peace. So if we grow up with chaos, that may become traumatic in a way that today would just be annoying. But for the child we were was really unfortunate for the development of our own maturity, our own ability to communicate with more and more age and wisdom instead of reaction, being able to really respond with greater wisdom. And if we come from people that functionally didn't mature, I can very much say that's true in my family system. That is so confusing and frightening. And so if we have a portion of the population that isn't emotionally maturing, then of course that's going to affect how they grow and develop. Because an immature person is going to want to eat that whole bag of oreos. It takes a certain amount of maturity to go, wait a minute, even though part of me wants to just stuff my face with all those oreos, another part of me has to step in and now, hey, that'll make me sick. And we need to know that about all these more complex interactions and dynamics and motivations and desires. Who are we doing things for. We're pleasing the people in our family because they want us to get sober, you know, and we want them to quit riding our ass. So we learn to say the right things. Or are we really cultivating and innern drive towards expressing in this life to our highest potential? Is that our driving force? Are we just trying to get by and feel good in the moment? And if we're immature, I suspect we're more likely. I know that we're more likely to reach for those in the moment feel goods that really thwart our personal development and our security and our groundedness and even developing things like a certain amount of wealth and financial stabilities, because money is choice, and it's power, and it's comfort, it's so many things. So I think so much plays on what comes together to really a person towards seeking and working and it's work. And again, if you're immature, how do we convince somebody that the work is worth it? If their immature part is just like I don't want to do that uncomfortable stuff. I rather sit and watch TV. How do you motivate that if we're not really talking about maturity in these spaces too.

So I think there's a lot to be said for this idea of maturity. When you're talking. It made me think of Ken Wilber, who formulated that sort of we need to clean up, grow up, and wake up. Right, there's these three elements. Some people even include showing up in that. What I think is interesting though, is that by definition, so many of us arrive at the process of change very immature, though growing through immaturing is part of it. But is that the essential element because many of us don't have it when we get here. I know I didn't, right, you know, when I got sober, I'm a little bit grateful. You know, I got sober and kind of a hard ass aa environment and today's world it would not be smiled upon too much. Maybe there were some things about it that were not great, but there was a real strong focus on personal responsibility and growing up and being an adult and taking care of your business, and that was really good for me. I really needed to see that element of like all the different ways that I show up in life. But the other thing that that time really taught me that I think is interesting about thinking that insight is the stuff was you know, what I was really taught was sometimes we can't think our way into right action. We have to act our way into right thinking. And so my focus was always on like, let me just do what I'm being told to do. Let me just try and do the thing, even though my brain still feels like an angry four year old all the time.

So I think there's a lot to be said for this idea of maturity. When you're talking. It made me think of Ken Wilber, who formulated that sort of we need to clean up, grow up, and wake up. Right, there's these three elements. Some people even include showing up in that. What I think is interesting though, is that by definition, so many of us arrive at the process of change very immature, though growing through immaturing is part of it. But is that the essential element because many of us don't have it when we get here. I know I didn't, right, you know, when I got sober, I'm a little bit grateful. You know, I got sober and kind of a hard ass aa environment and today's world it would not be smiled upon too much. Maybe there were some things about it that were not great, but there was a real strong focus on personal responsibility and growing up and being an adult and taking care of your business, and that was really good for me. I really needed to see that element of like all the different ways that I show up in life. But the other thing that that time really taught me that I think is interesting about thinking that insight is the stuff was you know, what I was really taught was sometimes we can't think our way into right action. We have to act our way into right thinking. And so my focus was always on like, let me just do what I'm being told to do. Let me just try and do the thing, even though my brain still feels like an angry four year old all the time.

So I work with a lot of highly sensitive people, and often I think I shock them when I say, you cannot be so feeling driven. Our feelings are liars. Part of the time. We have to do hard work despite how we feel. We cannot let how we feel drive the bus of our life. Like I'm from New Orleans, it is the land of vices. We eat and we drink, we feed people, we hand people drinks. We almost don't know how to socially relate unless we're doing it through food and alcohol. So we have to be able to get real about the difference between what we want and what we need. When I'm talking to highly sensitive people, that is shocking, and it used to not be shocking. I've been doing this for seventeen years, and it used to not be shocking. And I think it's part of Frankly, where mental health has failed in the last two decades is becoming so soft and so listening of emotion that we've forgotten that we need a balance between. Yes, of course we need to listen to ourselves and each other, we need to pay attention to emotions and their inherent information to check those things out, But I believe we very much need to have that real world grounded basic. Hey, you are going to have to grow up. Hey, you can't give in to every feeling you have if you want to have a really good life. It is just that simple sometimes, and I believe sometimes therapists too get caught in over complicating what really is simple in this way. That's why AA has saying it's like, just do the next right thing, no matter how you feel. Stop paying attention to how you feel in that moment, and just do the next right thing. So as a profession I think mental health has gone way too far into holding space for emotion, dropping the ball of that personal responsibility, and I think that is why we are seeing skyrocketing depression, addiction, and suicide. We need to tell people that they must take responsibility for their lives. There's no getting around it. There are no people with white knights that will come and save us. I waited for one for a while. I hope for one. I fantasized about somebody coming and doing the work for me. That may be part of the grief process, the bargaining stage of grief. But to get real, deep down into the nitty gritty of my life comes down to me, no matter what happened to me in childhood, no matter what choices my own immaturity made, if I want a matured life, I have to actionably take myself towards that maturity, and as myself sees me do those actions, I will mature. I also think like in your story, yes, of course you came to it with immaturity, but whatever that stuff was, that insight that went, hey, this isn't right for us, this feels icky. There's got to be a different way that desire to want to mature, I believe is the insight.

So I work with a lot of highly sensitive people, and often I think I shock them when I say, you cannot be so feeling driven. Our feelings are liars. Part of the time. We have to do hard work despite how we feel. We cannot let how we feel drive the bus of our life. Like I'm from New Orleans, it is the land of vices. We eat and we drink, we feed people, we hand people drinks. We almost don't know how to socially relate unless we're doing it through food and alcohol. So we have to be able to get real about the difference between what we want and what we need. When I'm talking to highly sensitive people, that is shocking, and it used to not be shocking. I've been doing this for seventeen years, and it used to not be shocking. And I think it's part of Frankly, where mental health has failed in the last two decades is becoming so soft and so listening of emotion that we've forgotten that we need a balance between. Yes, of course we need to listen to ourselves and each other, we need to pay attention to emotions and their inherent information to check those things out, But I believe we very much need to have that real world grounded basic. Hey, you are going to have to grow up. Hey, you can't give in to every feeling you have if you want to have a really good life. It is just that simple sometimes, and I believe sometimes therapists too get caught in over complicating what really is simple in this way. That's why AA has saying it's like, just do the next right thing, no matter how you feel. Stop paying attention to how you feel in that moment, and just do the next right thing. So as a profession I think mental health has gone way too far into holding space for emotion, dropping the ball of that personal responsibility, and I think that is why we are seeing skyrocketing depression, addiction, and suicide. We need to tell people that they must take responsibility for their lives. There's no getting around it. There are no people with white knights that will come and save us. I waited for one for a while. I hope for one. I fantasized about somebody coming and doing the work for me. That may be part of the grief process, the bargaining stage of grief. But to get real, deep down into the nitty gritty of my life comes down to me, no matter what happened to me in childhood, no matter what choices my own immaturity made, if I want a matured life, I have to actionably take myself towards that maturity, and as myself sees me do those actions, I will mature. I also think like in your story, yes, of course you came to it with immaturity, but whatever that stuff was, that insight that went, hey, this isn't right for us, this feels icky. There's got to be a different way that desire to want to mature, I believe is the insight.

Yeah, there's a few different things there. I tend to agree with you. You know, I've been doing this podcast about nine years, I feel like even just in this nine years, I have seen a shift where I mean, I can see even in the answering of the wolf parable, right, Because on one level, the wolf parable is a simple parable about choice, right. Our actions and our thoughts and our behaviors, they all matter and we have a choice in them. Right. So on one level, it's a very straightforward and simple parable, And once upon a time that was how most people would answer it. More and more now the answers are about how we need to embrace and love our bad wolf, and I think that's an insight that's important and useful. I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing that. I do think we need to listen to our feelings. I do think we need to hold space for emotion all that stuff. But I agree with you, I feel like the pendulum has just swung a little bit too far in the direction of being a victim, of being traumatized, of not being able to do something, away from empowerment. I mean, I don't think we want to go back to something that's very extreme. And I don't think my early days in AA were great, right. I had to actually move out of that for a period of time where I was like, you know what, they just keep saying, it doesn't matter what happened to you, just act like a certain person. I was like, well, okay, but at a certain point, certain level of healing, I'm going to have to deal with what did happen to me. I have to deal with the trauma. I do have to deal with the ways in which I didn't develop. So it does feel like the pendulum is a little over too far, and I'm waiting to see it sort of start to swing back because I feel like it will.

Yeah, there's a few different things there. I tend to agree with you. You know, I've been doing this podcast about nine years, I feel like even just in this nine years, I have seen a shift where I mean, I can see even in the answering of the wolf parable, right, Because on one level, the wolf parable is a simple parable about choice, right. Our actions and our thoughts and our behaviors, they all matter and we have a choice in them. Right. So on one level, it's a very straightforward and simple parable, And once upon a time that was how most people would answer it. More and more now the answers are about how we need to embrace and love our bad wolf, and I think that's an insight that's important and useful. I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing that. I do think we need to listen to our feelings. I do think we need to hold space for emotion all that stuff. But I agree with you, I feel like the pendulum has just swung a little bit too far in the direction of being a victim, of being traumatized, of not being able to do something, away from empowerment. I mean, I don't think we want to go back to something that's very extreme. And I don't think my early days in AA were great, right. I had to actually move out of that for a period of time where I was like, you know what, they just keep saying, it doesn't matter what happened to you, just act like a certain person. I was like, well, okay, but at a certain point, certain level of healing, I'm going to have to deal with what did happen to me. I have to deal with the trauma. I do have to deal with the ways in which I didn't develop. So it does feel like the pendulum is a little over too far, and I'm waiting to see it sort of start to swing back because I feel like it will.

I think it has to.

I think it has to.

I just hope it doesn't snap back right. So I think it's, you know, let's kind of come back in the middle, because I think that actually the answer is it really is in the middle, right. It is a case of like, yes, we'd need a really strong sense of personal responsibility and accountability and a real focus on like here's the right thing to do, here's the right action, and we need to be compassionate and kind to ourselves and others about the challenges that we faced and the ways that we haven't developed. I think your work actually strikes a pretty good balance between those two things, which is partially why I wanted to talk to you.

I just hope it doesn't snap back right. So I think it's, you know, let's kind of come back in the middle, because I think that actually the answer is it really is in the middle, right. It is a case of like, yes, we'd need a really strong sense of personal responsibility and accountability and a real focus on like here's the right thing to do, here's the right action, and we need to be compassionate and kind to ourselves and others about the challenges that we faced and the ways that we haven't developed. I think your work actually strikes a pretty good balance between those two things, which is partially why I wanted to talk to you.

I'm passionate about that balance. I mean, for years my clients would probably tell you that balance was the word that came out of my mouth the most. And we're complicated, and it's something that I've had to work on accepting in myself. I think most highly sensitive people walk the world like, Hey, when are you going to accept me? And then tell me that I'm okay? And it doesn't work that way. If it did, I wouldn't be uttering these things out of my mouth. What works is to work on accepting who we are. So I had to do a lot of work on hey, I'm an intensely feeling person. Hey, I have had a lot happen to me in my history. I have survived the abandonment of one parent. I have survived the sexual abuse of another parent. I have survived a mother that is a sociopath and an ice queen and not warm with me. Those are things that need to be considered in who I am, how I developed, how those shaped me, what I want to let go of, what I don't want to take forward. There's a lot there, but there's also a point at which I just have to do the next right thing. In this present moment, So talk therapy sometimes gets people lost. I see people sometimes partnering, like you said, embracing our inner dark parts or our inner dysfunction. I see people more in the last three to five years partnering with their depression instead of seeing it, acknowledging it, and then fighting their depression. So there's nuance there that I think gets missed. You know, like the Internet connected you and I. You know, there's so much power in this technological contraption. We're all using way too much. But there's also downside. And so as much as these messages get celebrated and shared more, they also get watered down. The nuance gets lost, and you have to be really real with yourself. Therapists have to be real with themselves. Are they enabling people to just keep circling their story? Are they helping them really connect the dots and move forward? And as a patient or a client of a cult or a therapist, are are you asking that person to challenge you to help you get unstuck? Are you helping them just kind of circle and circle and circle, Like everybody has to take responsibility for their part and their role. And I'm passionate about If we do that, we really are healing the world, one person at a time, as corny as that might sound, and that is our job. It is your one precious life. You're responsible for it. If you keep trying to farm that out, I think you'll just be resentful later for the time wasted not taking responsibility. I don't live with a lot of regret, but if I could go back in time, I would tell myself stop thinking so hard, do some of these healthy things, and move forward. You're gonna have a chance to process. But move Yeah, like with trauma. Yeah you have to move slowly sometimes, but you got to move. And too many people are getting comfortable in their feelings and the swirling the story instead of figuring out how to really move forward.

I'm passionate about that balance. I mean, for years my clients would probably tell you that balance was the word that came out of my mouth the most. And we're complicated, and it's something that I've had to work on accepting in myself. I think most highly sensitive people walk the world like, Hey, when are you going to accept me? And then tell me that I'm okay? And it doesn't work that way. If it did, I wouldn't be uttering these things out of my mouth. What works is to work on accepting who we are. So I had to do a lot of work on hey, I'm an intensely feeling person. Hey, I have had a lot happen to me in my history. I have survived the abandonment of one parent. I have survived the sexual abuse of another parent. I have survived a mother that is a sociopath and an ice queen and not warm with me. Those are things that need to be considered in who I am, how I developed, how those shaped me, what I want to let go of, what I don't want to take forward. There's a lot there, but there's also a point at which I just have to do the next right thing. In this present moment, So talk therapy sometimes gets people lost. I see people sometimes partnering, like you said, embracing our inner dark parts or our inner dysfunction. I see people more in the last three to five years partnering with their depression instead of seeing it, acknowledging it, and then fighting their depression. So there's nuance there that I think gets missed. You know, like the Internet connected you and I. You know, there's so much power in this technological contraption. We're all using way too much. But there's also downside. And so as much as these messages get celebrated and shared more, they also get watered down. The nuance gets lost, and you have to be really real with yourself. Therapists have to be real with themselves. Are they enabling people to just keep circling their story? Are they helping them really connect the dots and move forward? And as a patient or a client of a cult or a therapist, are are you asking that person to challenge you to help you get unstuck? Are you helping them just kind of circle and circle and circle, Like everybody has to take responsibility for their part and their role. And I'm passionate about If we do that, we really are healing the world, one person at a time, as corny as that might sound, and that is our job. It is your one precious life. You're responsible for it. If you keep trying to farm that out, I think you'll just be resentful later for the time wasted not taking responsibility. I don't live with a lot of regret, but if I could go back in time, I would tell myself stop thinking so hard, do some of these healthy things, and move forward. You're gonna have a chance to process. But move Yeah, like with trauma. Yeah you have to move slowly sometimes, but you got to move. And too many people are getting comfortable in their feelings and the swirling the story instead of figuring out how to really move forward.

It makes me think of one of my favorite, you know, tropes about depression, which is depression hates a moving target, because that's just been my experience is I just have to move, you know, whether that be physically emotional, I mean movement in all the different ways you can think of it. Now, one of the cruel paradoxes of depression is it sucks the energy out of you, and you don't have much energy to move and so I think sometimes we have to recognize what is the next right thing for me and my actual real capabilities right, So the next right thing for me, I may be able to take a bigger next right step than the next person.

It makes me think of one of my favorite, you know, tropes about depression, which is depression hates a moving target, because that's just been my experience is I just have to move, you know, whether that be physically emotional, I mean movement in all the different ways you can think of it. Now, one of the cruel paradoxes of depression is it sucks the energy out of you, and you don't have much energy to move and so I think sometimes we have to recognize what is the next right thing for me and my actual real capabilities right, So the next right thing for me, I may be able to take a bigger next right step than the next person.

Or vice versa.

Or vice versa.

Right, but I do strongly believe there are always positive steps to take, even if they're really really small, and we need to be taking them. And one of the other things you're talking about made me think of is I interviewed a guy named Ethan Cross. He's a University of Michigan researcher, and he wrote a book called Chatter, which is all about kind of the internal chatter. But he references a study in there that has really stuck with me because the question was, when somebody comes to you with a problem, what is more helpful. Is it more helpful for you to listen and empathize, or is it more helpful for you to offer solutions and advice or to give them a gentle nudge. And what this study found was surprise, surprise, it's both right that what's actually most helpful is both. You have to start, at least my experience has always been you have to start with the listening and the understanding and letting someone know they've really been heard. That is essential. If that step is skipped, the next one simply won't work. But then there is a point where sometimes we need a nudge from the people who care about us.

Right, but I do strongly believe there are always positive steps to take, even if they're really really small, and we need to be taking them. And one of the other things you're talking about made me think of is I interviewed a guy named Ethan Cross. He's a University of Michigan researcher, and he wrote a book called Chatter, which is all about kind of the internal chatter. But he references a study in there that has really stuck with me because the question was, when somebody comes to you with a problem, what is more helpful. Is it more helpful for you to listen and empathize, or is it more helpful for you to offer solutions and advice or to give them a gentle nudge. And what this study found was surprise, surprise, it's both right that what's actually most helpful is both. You have to start, at least my experience has always been you have to start with the listening and the understanding and letting someone know they've really been heard. That is essential. If that step is skipped, the next one simply won't work. But then there is a point where sometimes we need a nudge from the people who care about us.

Yes, it's interesting to hear you use that language that is almost verbat on the language I use with individual clients. I will often at the beginning of a session a couple of minutes and say, what do you need today? Do you need to vent? Do you need to talk this through? Do you need some strategies, do you need some tips? What do you want? What do you need? And the interesting thing about me leading with that question frequently is that I can see and people will tell me, huh, They basically don't realize that those are the two options. So a lot of people, I think, get caught in that story or that venting as a mode. When I ask that question, it's also a teaching of Hey, you have the empowerment to decide, and you need to be mindful about what you're doing there, because there needs to be a time to be done with the venting, at least in this day and this season. Sure, we might revisit it if it's impactful for something that's happening in our future. But there's a point at which is that enough. So that's another question I will ask someone, is hey, have you vented about that enough? And watching the wheels turn of have I, and sitting with that question, have I does that ego? Want to just complain about this some more because you can start to feel it if you're paying attention to it. There's a point of diminishing return for all things, right. Yes, So I want my people, I want anybody listening to me to know that you have the power inside of you to start sensing is this useful for me and helpful? Have I said enough? Then let me be done with that venting part and move on. And that's the kind of nuanced skill that sounds so freaking simple when I say it out loud, but it's the very thing that somebody doesn't ever intentionally teach us as a kid, unless you're doing this kind of process with me and then you pass it on to your child. Most of us did not organically come to that kind of nuanced emotional education about sensing yourself.

Yes, it's interesting to hear you use that language that is almost verbat on the language I use with individual clients. I will often at the beginning of a session a couple of minutes and say, what do you need today? Do you need to vent? Do you need to talk this through? Do you need some strategies, do you need some tips? What do you want? What do you need? And the interesting thing about me leading with that question frequently is that I can see and people will tell me, huh, They basically don't realize that those are the two options. So a lot of people, I think, get caught in that story or that venting as a mode. When I ask that question, it's also a teaching of Hey, you have the empowerment to decide, and you need to be mindful about what you're doing there, because there needs to be a time to be done with the venting, at least in this day and this season. Sure, we might revisit it if it's impactful for something that's happening in our future. But there's a point at which is that enough. So that's another question I will ask someone, is hey, have you vented about that enough? And watching the wheels turn of have I, and sitting with that question, have I does that ego? Want to just complain about this some more because you can start to feel it if you're paying attention to it. There's a point of diminishing return for all things, right. Yes, So I want my people, I want anybody listening to me to know that you have the power inside of you to start sensing is this useful for me and helpful? Have I said enough? Then let me be done with that venting part and move on. And that's the kind of nuanced skill that sounds so freaking simple when I say it out loud, but it's the very thing that somebody doesn't ever intentionally teach us as a kid, unless you're doing this kind of process with me and then you pass it on to your child. Most of us did not organically come to that kind of nuanced emotional education about sensing yourself.

Yeah, And what's interesting is that it does seem that people by default fall to one side or the other of that more naturally, one side is the stereotypical man who just doesn't think about process or emotion at all. It's just here's what we need to do, cuts right to it, right. And then the other would be the person, as you're describing, the classic ruminative person right, who gets completely stuck in their head and it just spins and it spins and it spins. And what we're looking for, at least for me, is sort of like you said, it's that middle ground, that middle way between those two things where we're able to do it. And I agree one hundred percent there is a point where the thought processes has diminishing returns. And you use one of my favorite phrases in there, which is useful, right with thoughts? Is this useful? Because there are some very difficult, negative thoughts that are very useful at times, they are very helpful. They have a lot to teach us. You know, we can be very uncomfortable, and then there's a point where they are no longer useful, and you know, knowing that point can be really helpful. I mean, for me, I'm kind of looking at like, am I covering the same ground again and again? With no new back to your word earlier insight, like nothing new is popping up. Like the first five times I thought about the conversation I have with my partner, Each time I went through it, I saw something slightly different. So I went back through it and oh, I saw this, and ah, God, that makes me cringe. But at least I know, you know. But now the last five times that my mind has circled it, it's circled it in the exact same way at which point diminishing returns, and now it's moving into Okay, this thought now is becoming not useful, even possibly destructive and harmful. Now how do I move out of that?

Yeah, And what's interesting is that it does seem that people by default fall to one side or the other of that more naturally, one side is the stereotypical man who just doesn't think about process or emotion at all. It's just here's what we need to do, cuts right to it, right. And then the other would be the person, as you're describing, the classic ruminative person right, who gets completely stuck in their head and it just spins and it spins and it spins. And what we're looking for, at least for me, is sort of like you said, it's that middle ground, that middle way between those two things where we're able to do it. And I agree one hundred percent there is a point where the thought processes has diminishing returns. And you use one of my favorite phrases in there, which is useful, right with thoughts? Is this useful? Because there are some very difficult, negative thoughts that are very useful at times, they are very helpful. They have a lot to teach us. You know, we can be very uncomfortable, and then there's a point where they are no longer useful, and you know, knowing that point can be really helpful. I mean, for me, I'm kind of looking at like, am I covering the same ground again and again? With no new back to your word earlier insight, like nothing new is popping up. Like the first five times I thought about the conversation I have with my partner, Each time I went through it, I saw something slightly different. So I went back through it and oh, I saw this, and ah, God, that makes me cringe. But at least I know, you know. But now the last five times that my mind has circled it, it's circled it in the exact same way at which point diminishing returns, and now it's moving into Okay, this thought now is becoming not useful, even possibly destructive and harmful. Now how do I move out of that?

I am passionate about helping people understand that if they're overthinkers, likely they're very smart, and likely they started overthinking as a kid in my own life, because I didn't have a lot of emotional nurture, urrence or understanding of what I was going through that could help me understand what I was going through. I believe I had a lot of intuitions that I couldn't do anything with because my intuition would say, Hey, your mom's real scary right now, maybe you're about to be hit and as a child, I couldn't do anything with that intuition. I couldn't get in my car and drive off. You know, I couldn't handle the situation any better than just taking it because I was a kid, or trying to mouth off and rebel against it. But I was a pretty good girl growing up in the South, too good good Southern girl like you just don't fight back. So if we really understand that concept, if we grew up with a lot of stress, if we grew up with a lot of unsafe parenting or immature inadequate parenting, and you're really smart, your energy had to go somewhere. So I think it leaves the intuition and goes to the head and we start overthinking in those moments where we can't escape with our bodies. So when we start to understand that I can help people manage their own in our child and be able to say in that moment to themselves when they catch that cloud of overthinking that starts or oh this isn't useful. I've already thought this from the beginning to the end and through ten different times. I don't need to think about this again. That it is your job and it's a gift. It's a gratitude that it gets to be your grown up job to do for your own inner psyche, your own inner child, what your parents or your childhood situation didn't know how to do for you. You get to step in now and go oh sweet boy or oh sweet girl in there. This is a time where grown up me says, we don't need to overthink this. We've thought about this enough and learning how to internalize enoughness with the overthinking that so many of us do when we have a lot of emotion, a lot of passion, a lot of intensity with who we are, and we're really smart. The way I say it a lot is you gotta be smarter than your smarts because your critical voice and the overthinking part are going to be just as smart as you are. Yeah, so we've got to outthink your thinking parts so that you stay sort of in the integrity of using your intelligence for your own greater good and not letting your critical voice or that overthink or grab your intelligence and dig a hole into the ground with it.

I am passionate about helping people understand that if they're overthinkers, likely they're very smart, and likely they started overthinking as a kid in my own life, because I didn't have a lot of emotional nurture, urrence or understanding of what I was going through that could help me understand what I was going through. I believe I had a lot of intuitions that I couldn't do anything with because my intuition would say, Hey, your mom's real scary right now, maybe you're about to be hit and as a child, I couldn't do anything with that intuition. I couldn't get in my car and drive off. You know, I couldn't handle the situation any better than just taking it because I was a kid, or trying to mouth off and rebel against it. But I was a pretty good girl growing up in the South, too good good Southern girl like you just don't fight back. So if we really understand that concept, if we grew up with a lot of stress, if we grew up with a lot of unsafe parenting or immature inadequate parenting, and you're really smart, your energy had to go somewhere. So I think it leaves the intuition and goes to the head and we start overthinking in those moments where we can't escape with our bodies. So when we start to understand that I can help people manage their own in our child and be able to say in that moment to themselves when they catch that cloud of overthinking that starts or oh this isn't useful. I've already thought this from the beginning to the end and through ten different times. I don't need to think about this again. That it is your job and it's a gift. It's a gratitude that it gets to be your grown up job to do for your own inner psyche, your own inner child, what your parents or your childhood situation didn't know how to do for you. You get to step in now and go oh sweet boy or oh sweet girl in there. This is a time where grown up me says, we don't need to overthink this. We've thought about this enough and learning how to internalize enoughness with the overthinking that so many of us do when we have a lot of emotion, a lot of passion, a lot of intensity with who we are, and we're really smart. The way I say it a lot is you gotta be smarter than your smarts because your critical voice and the overthinking part are going to be just as smart as you are. Yeah, so we've got to outthink your thinking parts so that you stay sort of in the integrity of using your intelligence for your own greater good and not letting your critical voice or that overthink or grab your intelligence and dig a hole into the ground with it.

I wanted to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder. This one's about a habit change and a mistake I see people making, and that's really that we don't think about these new habits that we want to add in the context of our entire life. Right, habits don't happen in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life that we have. So when we just keep adding I should do this, I should do that, I should do this, we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what we're not going to do in order to make that happen. So it's really helpful for you to think about where is this going to fit and what in my life might I need to remove. If you want to step by step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. Oftentimes, I naturally go back to my sort of early recovery days, right, And there was a real sense there that like, being smart was a bad thing because of what you're describing, okay, right, because you would just overthink things. And this is not a time for overthinking, right, This is a time for taking the actions that will keep you sober. Right, It's time to stop the overthinking. But it sort of cast that thinking as a negative. It's one of the things that ultimately sort of pulled me away from that place. And I'm not saying all twelve step programs or AA or like this, By the way, I want to be extraordinarily clear, this was a particular group of people at a particular time in place in history, you know, twenty five, twenty six years ago. So don't think, listeners that all twelve step groups are like this at all. So I just feel like I always have to say that. But knowing that I was somewhat intelligent, you know, it ultimately sort of drove me away because I was like, wait a second. My goal here is not to dumb myself down, right. My goal here is not to cut out my thinking brain, right. So to your point, it's how do we do it? So let's say that we have realized, like, okay, too much enough, you know, I am past the point of usefulness in this thinking. What are some of the strategies that you recommend that people use to try and deal with that inner chatter? Because just because I've realized that I don't want to think about it anymore certainly does not mean that I have the skills to not think about it.

I wanted to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder. This one's about a habit change and a mistake I see people making, and that's really that we don't think about these new habits that we want to add in the context of our entire life. Right, habits don't happen in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life that we have. So when we just keep adding I should do this, I should do that, I should do this, we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what we're not going to do in order to make that happen. So it's really helpful for you to think about where is this going to fit and what in my life might I need to remove. If you want to step by step guide for how you can easily build new habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. Oftentimes, I naturally go back to my sort of early recovery days, right, And there was a real sense there that like, being smart was a bad thing because of what you're describing, okay, right, because you would just overthink things. And this is not a time for overthinking, right, This is a time for taking the actions that will keep you sober. Right, It's time to stop the overthinking. But it sort of cast that thinking as a negative. It's one of the things that ultimately sort of pulled me away from that place. And I'm not saying all twelve step programs or AA or like this, By the way, I want to be extraordinarily clear, this was a particular group of people at a particular time in place in history, you know, twenty five, twenty six years ago. So don't think, listeners that all twelve step groups are like this at all. So I just feel like I always have to say that. But knowing that I was somewhat intelligent, you know, it ultimately sort of drove me away because I was like, wait a second. My goal here is not to dumb myself down, right. My goal here is not to cut out my thinking brain, right. So to your point, it's how do we do it? So let's say that we have realized, like, okay, too much enough, you know, I am past the point of usefulness in this thinking. What are some of the strategies that you recommend that people use to try and deal with that inner chatter? Because just because I've realized that I don't want to think about it anymore certainly does not mean that I have the skills to not think about it.

So I could answer that for the next fourteen hundred hours. Okay, I don't think there's any one tool. I think it's actually about wrapping our minds around a lifestyle change, like this is how I live now. I think the world is also speeding up so much and requiring so much of us that no matter what our childhood state was, like, our addiction history was like, we are really being brought into realms of just ridiculous levels of expected franticness. For lack of a better way for me to say that, so I think, yes, there's healing childhood trauma. Yes there's healing and learning how to take care of yourself post addiction. But just being a human being right now in this time period I think requires very similar strategies. I try to live slowing down now, even if that means I'm doing a lot that day and I'm moving fast. I want to understand that. I don't want that sort of frantic go go go, rush, rush rush to be in my brain, in my mind, in the tissues of my body. Yes, so it's a lifestyle choice of practicing slowing down. I'm actually it might be releasing today as we're recording. Actually, I have a emotional strength training thirty days to peace course, because it takes repetition. I can tell by the things that you offer, you very much understand that it takes repetition of what it is to calm, to internalize peace, and to actually value stillness. In this world that gives stillness the finger, it doesn't value it, It dismisses it. Hustle, culture, work harder. I'll sleep when I'm dead. If you're trying to heal your nervous system too, that is a way to feel fried and burnt out. And how are you supposed to evolve and be your best self if you're living from a place of fried and burnt out. So just having a framework of I want to fold the laundry like a Buddhist monk eats. They sit down, They don't multitask, they sit down. They pay attention to everybodite going into their mouth. When you really think about that versus our American eyes. Eat while you're driving, while you're balancing your checkbook, I mean, you know, while you're doing a handstand. On one hand, I mean, we are expecting out of ourselves to do really a ridiculous amount of things. So that's kind of my framework for just let's in general, understand the forces at play, no matter what our history was, and we have to understand that we have to combat those forces or those forces are going to take a stand. We have to limit the scrolling. It's like a slot machine, you guys, and especially if you have addictive history. It's addictive to all of us, you know. We have to do simple things like that that our inner adolescent doesn't want to do. It doesn't want to put down the phone. But putting down the phone, stopping and taking a breath meditation. And when I say that on my show, I go, I hear the eye rolls, I feel the eye rolls, because every spiritual psychological teacher just says meditate, meditate, meditate. All forces out there are the opposite of meditative energy. But if we really understand that, then I think it can give us a permission. We need to counterbalance those forces in the present, and we need to do some counterbalancing of our historical forces also, So slowing down, I try to fold laundry like that Buddhist monk eats. I try to drive slow and calm and use each experience to be the practice of calm. Instead of giving yourself five different peace practice tasks, our mind quieting tasks to do, which is just adding more things to your to do list, which you know technically is correct and right, you can't find something wrong with. But in terms of the spirit of what I'm saying, adding to your to do list isn't it. You don't need ten more things to do.

So I could answer that for the next fourteen hundred hours. Okay, I don't think there's any one tool. I think it's actually about wrapping our minds around a lifestyle change, like this is how I live now. I think the world is also speeding up so much and requiring so much of us that no matter what our childhood state was, like, our addiction history was like, we are really being brought into realms of just ridiculous levels of expected franticness. For lack of a better way for me to say that, so I think, yes, there's healing childhood trauma. Yes there's healing and learning how to take care of yourself post addiction. But just being a human being right now in this time period I think requires very similar strategies. I try to live slowing down now, even if that means I'm doing a lot that day and I'm moving fast. I want to understand that. I don't want that sort of frantic go go go, rush, rush rush to be in my brain, in my mind, in the tissues of my body. Yes, so it's a lifestyle choice of practicing slowing down. I'm actually it might be releasing today as we're recording. Actually, I have a emotional strength training thirty days to peace course, because it takes repetition. I can tell by the things that you offer, you very much understand that it takes repetition of what it is to calm, to internalize peace, and to actually value stillness. In this world that gives stillness the finger, it doesn't value it, It dismisses it. Hustle, culture, work harder. I'll sleep when I'm dead. If you're trying to heal your nervous system too, that is a way to feel fried and burnt out. And how are you supposed to evolve and be your best self if you're living from a place of fried and burnt out. So just having a framework of I want to fold the laundry like a Buddhist monk eats. They sit down, They don't multitask, they sit down. They pay attention to everybodite going into their mouth. When you really think about that versus our American eyes. Eat while you're driving, while you're balancing your checkbook, I mean, you know, while you're doing a handstand. On one hand, I mean, we are expecting out of ourselves to do really a ridiculous amount of things. So that's kind of my framework for just let's in general, understand the forces at play, no matter what our history was, and we have to understand that we have to combat those forces or those forces are going to take a stand. We have to limit the scrolling. It's like a slot machine, you guys, and especially if you have addictive history. It's addictive to all of us, you know. We have to do simple things like that that our inner adolescent doesn't want to do. It doesn't want to put down the phone. But putting down the phone, stopping and taking a breath meditation. And when I say that on my show, I go, I hear the eye rolls, I feel the eye rolls, because every spiritual psychological teacher just says meditate, meditate, meditate. All forces out there are the opposite of meditative energy. But if we really understand that, then I think it can give us a permission. We need to counterbalance those forces in the present, and we need to do some counterbalancing of our historical forces also, So slowing down, I try to fold laundry like that Buddhist monk eats. I try to drive slow and calm and use each experience to be the practice of calm. Instead of giving yourself five different peace practice tasks, our mind quieting tasks to do, which is just adding more things to your to do list, which you know technically is correct and right, you can't find something wrong with. But in terms of the spirit of what I'm saying, adding to your to do list isn't it. You don't need ten more things to do.

That's right.

That's right.

I mean, that's the whole focus of the Spiritual Habits program that I created, which is, as we go about our day to day lives, how do we do some of these things that will allow us to access more peace without adding a lot to our to do list because there's just no more time. There just isn't. Yes, that's what the cause of a lot of stress is to be told. Well, now you need to in addition to eating, getting enough sleep, exercising, taking care of your children, having a career, now you need to meditate for an hour a day and journal for thirty minutes. It's just like you know, it just isn't going to happen. So there's got to be a way to integrate more of this. And as you said, there is something to some time in stillness I think being really beneficial. Whatever that way of stepping out into stillness is for you. It could be meditation, It could be sitting quietly, It could be listening to a piece of music you love, very focused and intently, but it is slowing down, nowhere to go, and some attempt to sort of put our attention on something and keep it there. I do think that is a foundational skill for humans, and one that is becoming even more important, as you said, as we become increasingly distracted and fraged.

I mean, that's the whole focus of the Spiritual Habits program that I created, which is, as we go about our day to day lives, how do we do some of these things that will allow us to access more peace without adding a lot to our to do list because there's just no more time. There just isn't. Yes, that's what the cause of a lot of stress is to be told. Well, now you need to in addition to eating, getting enough sleep, exercising, taking care of your children, having a career, now you need to meditate for an hour a day and journal for thirty minutes. It's just like you know, it just isn't going to happen. So there's got to be a way to integrate more of this. And as you said, there is something to some time in stillness I think being really beneficial. Whatever that way of stepping out into stillness is for you. It could be meditation, It could be sitting quietly, It could be listening to a piece of music you love, very focused and intently, but it is slowing down, nowhere to go, and some attempt to sort of put our attention on something and keep it there. I do think that is a foundational skill for humans, and one that is becoming even more important, as you said, as we become increasingly distracted and fraged.

Yes, I think people like you and I are doing the work to hold on to that art form so it doesn't become a lost art of knowing the value and stillness. So many of my clients at a point wind up laughing and going, Nikki, am I really paying you to teach me how to just be still and do less? And in some ways yes, yes, And it sounds so it sounds like the simplest thing we could possibly to ask ourselves with, But it really is something that I find we need help with. I mean, I didn't see anybody value stillness growing up, not one time, not for one minute. It was do do Do. I was raised by a German descent grandmother who if I got still, if I just stood still for a moment. She would say, what is the purpose of what you're doing? And as a child, I could not answer that. Today, if she was still alive, i'd go, aha, I finally know the answer to that question. I'm centering, I'm breathing, I'm giving my nervous system a chance to just ground its I'm being a human being instead of a human doing so. It's looking at those dynamics to understand. Oh oh, I was really taught that it was wrong and bad to have stillness. You take that old teaching on top of what's going on in modern life and my goodness, of course, I have to intentionally bring in stillness, and I have to talk to my inner child because I'm going to hear that critical voice. In some ways, I was raised by very critical people, so in some ways that's like my original language. I only speak English. But what we know that other speakers who speak multiple languages, they tend to think in their native language. I've accepted that in some ways, I may think in my native language of the critical voice, and so I have to know that when I get still, that critical voice might show up and go, really, again, you're being lazy, what are you doing? And I need to know about how that voice works, because in that moment, I'm being different, I'm being intentional. I'm doing something against my original programming and the programming that's going on right now. So of course that voice is going to show up and go ooh, nikkiya, I don't know if this is right. Bad bad, shame, shame on you. And I have to know how to feel that vibe wash over me or hear that voice so that I know exactly what my job is and how I can effectively combat those forces. And in that moment, if I'm on my game, I can turn to my own inner self and go, oh no, that would have worked before, but now I know the value in the stillness. That's what I'm doing, and we're going to be still. Grown up wise woman me decided that this is a smart, right practice for us, So we're going to do it. And the more I do that, the more that that voice lowers an intensity in frequency and kind of steps to the background, whereas it used to drive as the primary driver of my life.