Eric Zimmer is a behavior coach and host of the One You Feed podcast. Eric joins Sophia on the podcast to talk about how he went from struggling with a heroin addiction, alcoholism, and homelessness, to turning his life around, rebelling against masculinity, his spiritual habits program, and so much more!
Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Rabbit Grin Productions
Associate Producers: Samantha Skelton & Mica Sangiacomo
Editor: Josh Windisch
Artwork by the Hoodzpah Sisters
This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy
Hi everyone, It's Sophia and welcome back to Work in Progress. On today's episode, we are going to talk to someone who not only helps people overcome their greatest and most stabilitating obstacles, he's lived through some of his own. I'm joined today by Eric Simmer. Eric is a behavior coach and the host of the One You Feed podcast, which is one of my personal favorites and was also named one of the best health podcasts of all time by the Huffington Post. I was actually honored to be on it not long ago. Eric's story is an incredible one. He went from a heroin addiction, alcoholism, and homelessness to turning his life around piece by piece, and since then he's made it his life's work to help others affect positive changes in their own lives. I am so excited to learn more about how he got his start, how he helps get through to people who need help, and so much more so let's get started. Eric. It's so nice to speak with you again, especially so quickly after we got to chat on your show. How are you? I am doing very good and I am also very happy to be talking with you again. Where do I find you today? Well? Today I am in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is not normal home for me, but it's where I am for the last couple of weeks. My partner's sister is here and we're here helping with her niece. Very cool. Yeah. Is it interesting to be in a new place, you know, traveling in a moment like this one that we all find ourselves in or does it feel okay? It feels okay. It's it's definitely interesting being back in the world. You know. We we went we go back and forth every month from our home in Columbus, Ohio to Atlanta, Georgia. We do that every month. My partner's mom has Alzheimer's and we take care of her there. So we were used to going back and forth during the pandemic. But it was very you know, stopping at a gas station, you know, mask on, gloves on, you know, very very careful, you know, And it's a little bit different. Things are a little bit more at least here in Virginia are more opened up. Yeah. I find that, uh, being sort of out in the world is amazing and also feels a bit intimidating or scary. Yeah. I think at first I had a couple of times in Columbus, you know, over the last month, where I was out and about and I was just like, wow, this feels surreal to be around this many people. Is this okay? It says, I'm not sure, you know, I think it's that's an on going question yet to be too determined. As a vaccinated person, I feel pretty safe, but I still think what our responsibilities to each other are at this point remain confusing to me. Me too, It is, to your point, really making me think a lot about responsibility and and community. You know, what an important thing it is to to do to show up for your community. And to me, at least, this idea that anyone might refuse a vaccine or you know, be lied to. Uh, you know, all of this misinformation is really so scary and and and thus might be mistrustful and then risk you know, themselves or their community. It's it's a tough time and it's interesting because the this sort of battle, you know, truth and reality versus misinformation and and the people profiting off of it. It makes me think a lot about the parable that your show centers on. You know, this notion of of the one that you feed, would you tell the folks at home what we're referring to. Sure, my podcast is based on an old parable. We don't know where it comes from. Some people attribute it to Native Americans. Other people insist it's not of Native American origin. The jury seems to be out on that to me, so I can't really attribute it or not attribute it anywhere. But the parable goes like this. There's a grandparent talking with his grandchild, and in it, the grandparents says, there's 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 thinks about it and looks up, but it's grandparents says, well, which one wins? And the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I start each of my podcast episodes off you to answer that question. Recently, where I asked my guests you know what that question means to them in their life and in the work that they do. It's such a beautiful place to start, and I'm I'm wondering because I always like to go back with people, you know, I want to know how you the eric I know became the eric I know. Do you remember the first time that you heard the parable, the first time that story kind of came into your life vaguely and the way you remember things oftentimes twenty five years later. UM, I know. I would have been somewhere in Columbus, Ohio in the winter of It would have been in a twelve step meeting, probably in a church basement somewhere would have been where I first heard it, um. And at that time I would have been a few months sober from heroin. I was, you know, pretty low bottom, heroin addict, homeless, looking at going to jail for a long time, I had hepatitis C. It was really sick. And so I would have heard it somewhere around them. Would have been the first time I heard it, And at that moment it just really rang out so true in my life, and it was so clear to me that I had these choices in front of me, and there were a certain set of choices that we're going to lead me perhaps to a life of um certainly better than the one I was living. And there was another set of choices that were likely to end up in jail or institution or death, you know, and so it was very apparent to me and a very strong parable and at that point, you know, I I sometimes jokingly say, I don't think I was feeding the good Wolf anymore. I think he was eating me at that at that juncture of my life. Um, but it just really struck me in the way it does everybody when you hear it, you sort of immediately get it. And it just but was very stark to me and felt very life or death to me at that time. I think that's so beautiful. It strikes me that there's this thing in in my line of work, you know, and store of telling. When you're making films or television, you're figuring out how to become a character. And the thing that change the way I approach my work is this idea that the more specific, the more universal a story can be. And and what I love about the Parable and the way it changed your life and what you've chosen to do with it is that it's this incredibly specific story, but because it's so clear, you you immediately feel like it applies to you. And everyone has that experience when they hear it. And I think sometimes we need, um, we need a person a representation or or a metaphor to give us just enough of an outside perspective to realize that the thing we're looking at is also us. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what great storytelling does. You know, it really does it. I think it's a great storytelling. I think it's what great art of all sorts does, is it reflects back to us something that we knew to be true but we couldn't articulate. But we knew it. We already knew it was true, And when you hear it, you're like a you know, sometimes there's that sense of like I should have written that. I could have written that, I could have said that, you know, and you know, it's it's It's one of the things I love about, you know, art, is when I have that, when that moment of surprise comes on me or I'm like, yes, I knew that. Yeah. That is such a beautiful feeling, isn't it. When you hear something for the first time, but it it's almost like it rings an ancient bell in you somewhere inside of you. You have that strange aha moment of I've always known this, but this is the first time I've heard It's it's such an interesting kind of dichotomy, and and I think there's an incredible power in offering those kinds of moments to people. I think of it as a great kindness, And it's something that you do. In the ways that you talk about your life, your struggles with addiction. You're so forthright, and by giving yourself permission to be open and vulnerable, you give so many other people permission to do the same. I'm curious about your early life. I want to know how your story became your story, and obviously what you were going through in your early and mid twenties is something I think a lot of people have learned from Who was Eric? Even before? I wonder about your life, you know, growing up in in Columbus, Who was Eric? As a kid at you know, eight or ten years old? What were you interested in and and what was your circumstance. Yeah, it's such a fascinating question that I reflect on, and it it's a question that's challenging for me in a in a few different ways. One is I don't have a lot of memory, whatever reason I don't the early parts of my life. There's just very little memory there. So I know, um, sort of what I've patched together. I know what I've seen in pictures, I know what people have told me, but my own experience of those years feels very vacant. It's hard for me to really get in touch with And then the other thing I think is interesting about those years is well, I did not suffer traumatic abuse with a capital T like a lot of people did. Um. I think, for whatever reason the way that what what my little me needed uh maybe wasn't what it got. And so I wonder how much of me, at even at what age, was really me, and how much of it was already a response to and uh and a coping mechanism, you know, like by the time I was ten years old, I was a kleptomaniac. Like I stole obsessively. I don't know that that's me. So so it was a response to something at a very early age. But what some things that I do know about me, uh, that I think have been consistent throughout the years. I've always loved to learn and read, So learning reading, being exposed to new things always sort of lit me up. Um. I think I always love to move my body. I think that was always an important part of my life. Um. And it's not. I wouldn't consider myself athletic, but I think I've recognized over the years that movement just feel like I have the I have a physiology that needs movement to some degree. What did that mean? You were always or I guess thinking about where you do and don't have memory. Do you recall being an active kid running around a lot? I think I was pretty active. I mean I think I was. I read a lot, but I was also very active. I you know, I grew up in the seventies and one of those suburban neighborhoods that you could just go out at nine in the morning and rome till ten at night, you know, and your parents were just like, Okay, go have fun, you know it just and everybody, Yeah, everybody felt safe. And so yeah, I think there was a lot of just running around and riding bikes and playing a lot of baseball and just you know, playing games. Is there something that marks a shift for you because you you talk about the years you know, um, and you've spoken really openly about the fact that by the time you were twenty four, UM, you were experiencing homelessness. What was sort of the the thing that went off kilter for you was that in your teens? Kind of It's interesting because, um, by the time I was sixteen, I was about to be expelled from high school simply for not basically for not going. I just used every possible tool at my creativity to avoid ever going to school. And I feel like me and the guidance counselors at high school were locked in a pitched battle who could be more creative. I think at one juncture, I stumbled on the fact that if I got a excuse slip from the Department of Public Health, essentially where people went to get tested for venereal disease. I got one of their slips, and I made copies of it, and I turned it in high school, and I realized nobody could check because the public Health department is bound by secrecy, they could never prove it wasn't that I didn't, and I started selling those permission slips around school. I think our I think our school administration might have thought we had a serious venereal disease problem at our high school. Um. But anyway, so that that was the kind of shenanigans I was into by sixteen, and my guidance counsel at the end of my sophomore year, said all right, we're not doing this again. There's an alternative program down the road. If you want to go to that, give it a try, or I'm going to expel you. But I'm I'm just not going through another year of this with you. And I think he saw in me that I just needed an outlet. And I went to this alternative program and my life changed. I was suddenly interested. I founded a tutoring program for disadvantaged youth, started scholarship programs I mean, and I spent two incredible years really engaged in what I now know is important service and helping others and creating a community and serving that community. And I went from a troubled teenager to a straight a student that was living my best life. And in that process, I made a decision that I was going to be straight edge because the children, the kids that I was working with, I could see what drugs and alcohol were doing to their families and their lives. And I said, I'm not I don't want any part of that. And I had drank a little bit, I had smoked, you know, I had experiment with drugs a little bit, and I just said no to all that and so I had two really incredible years where like my life turned around, and then I went away for after my after graduated from high school, I went away firs summer. I came back and my best friend was dating my girlfriend, and I just simply didn't have the tools to cope. And one day somebody said, here, you would have a drink, and I said, I don't care anymore. I took a drink, and it was at that point it was like a six year race to the bottom for me. It literally was like a switch flipped and I just was drunk or high probably nearly every day for the next six years, in a descending fashion, down into where I ended up with with heroin addiction. So it's this really interesting sort of tale of two youths like lost found lost again. Something that really strikes me about what you're saying and where I think there is such a disservice done two boys and young men in particular, is the lack of tools around vulnerability and emotion. You know, it's not lost on me that really the thing that's very reinforced in our culture as the only except doble expression of feeling for boys and for young men is anger. You know, the the idea that when a when a young man is emotional, people will say, well, don't be a bit about it, or you're crying like a girl. You know, all of these things, And and with sports and the sort of outward expression of rage and violence, especially in things like football, which you know, look at the landscape of Middle American high schools and there's the charming, Friday night Friday night lights nature of it. And then there's this other reality when when I talk to young people and I realize that boys are only given the permission to be angry and girls are never supposed to be angry, and and it hurts both groups. And when I look at UM, at least in traditionally identifying groups, when you look at the instances of violence that people experience, and the fact that most girls, you know, one in four women by the age of twenty two has been assaulted. Uh and and those statistics refer to as as being having been assaulted or sexually assaulted by men, I just think, like, why do we do this to kids? Look look at the pain by not giving kids the tools to deal with pain, by not having any kind of UM empathy based education, you know, our sex said is crap in America anyway, right like our our our sex said classes are kind of a joke. But what we really I think, in terms of fixing the way we talk to people about their bodies is we should also talk to them about their emotions. And it makes me so sad to think about you going through this moment of incredible pain as an eighteen year old boy and having no outlet, no one giving you any semblance of guidance as to how to deal with it, how to sit and have a really you know, open conversation with your former best friend and your and your former partner, and and the damage that you know, the self inflicted violence if you will, that that can create. I just it kills me. I wish we I really wish we could wake up to figuring out how to give our kids better tool kits. Yeah, because it's interesting my tool kit. I rebelled very early in high school against that toxic masculinity, that macho that so I was, you know, a cure fan, you know, like you know, I love this song boys Don't Cry, right, you know, So I I embrace that whole emotional aspect. But I felt like, in reflecting what you're saying, it felt like there were almost two two places to be. One was this toxic masculinity and the other was almost this helplessness. And I think what children need, and what kids teenagers need is we need to learn to inhabit what I talk a lot about on the podcast and in the in the work that I do with people, sort of emotional regulation, which is like, Okay, we have thoughts and emotions, how do we work with them skillfully, you know, so that we're not either completely denying them or we're not completely overwhelmed by them. You know, I was in the completely overwhelmed by them camp. I wasn't going to deny them, but I didn't have the skills to work with them. So I was the opposite, which was morose. You know. It was like, you know, it was melodramatic and over dramatic and and I just don't think I ever saw a healthy middle ground modeled. Yeah, because what I'm what I'm hearing you say, The imagery I'm getting is that the spectrum really almost runs from completely avoidant, which can be toxic, to you know, feeling like you're emotionally drowning. Both of these things are so terrible. Those are terrible realities to to feel like you are emotionally stuck in. And it doesn't surprise me that finding a numbing agent would feel like a great way to get unstuck, or perhaps get out of the feeling of emotional drowning and get closer to what felt like avoidance, what felt like escapism. Right when when did it turn for you? Do you remember when it went from the early stages of alcoholism to drug use, because six years, I mean, that's a long time to struggle with addiction. But also when you talk about the level of bottom that you hit, you know, yeah, it feels kind of fast too, Yeah, it was. It's interesting because I can look back in it and see from the beginning I was using if we want to use the term addictively or alcoholically, like I was right out of the gate, just in trouble. It appears to me, I feel like so much of all the stealing I did when I was younger, the avoiding school, the trouble I was always in, and then the complete switch from that to like I'm a I'm I'm helping other people, I'm running this, this this tutoring organization. You know, those were my attempts to cope with whatever it was that was going on with me, um, whatever troubles I had. And so I feel like when I started with alcohol, it was like I was, I felt like I was already down some path some ways, I think, like anybody. I mean, my alcohol, you know, started with alcohol, and then there was marijuana, and then there was occasional psychedelics, and just over time, as I got I was I was a musician. As I got deeper into the Columbus music scene, I started playing with the band and eventually I you know, those band members were using heroin, and um, I started using it too, And you know, it's a pretty addictive substance on top of an already addictive personality and behavior structure, and so it was just you know, it just but to me, it just looks like sort of a if you just looked at it. It was just one slow descent, you know, one over six years, um, which is kind of quick in a way. I mean, I often think how fortunate I was. I feel fortunate that I got exposed to heroin and I had such a low bottom so quickly, because I feel like I could have strung together drinking and smoking pot for a whole bunch more years before it became a crisis, which I would have postponed my life. I would have missed a lot of my life. I feel fortunate that at now I did not stay sober from twenty onward entirely. But the vast majority of my adult life, you know, I'm I'm fifty one now, so the vast majority of my adult life has been in some form of recovery, and I feel fortunate for that, you know. So I almost look at me encountering heroin at that age as a as a really good thing, because it really caused the bottom to fall out much more quickly. And that's largely because of the laws of our society more than anything else. I mean, I don't think it's right necessarily. I don't think that heroin is worse than alcohol. Now. It's more dangerous because of the way we choose to uh make some things legal and not, you know, and the nature of heroin being a street drug caused me to have to have way more money to afford it, I mean, which led to a whole raft of behaviors. I mean so, But but underneath it, to me, there wasn't a big difference between alcohol and heroin really in what I was doing and how I was using it. It was just that the external drug policy that we've chosen to have made one a whole lot more dangerous and destructive than the other, which is a whole another conversation. And that is really interesting too, because we look away at a lot of what I think you're referring to the dangerous and addictive behavior that so many people in our society really are showcasing with alcohol, and we go, yeah, but it's just a drink. Well, it's legal, and I think it can numb us to people's suffering and to what people are using a substance for to try to escape numb etcetera. And I think you're right because street drugs are unstable. I suppose you could say, you know, people O D they're they're incredibly dangerous and they require dangerous behavior to acquire. UM. We we much more quickly say that's bad. That person needs help, and and it's interesting that there's probably a lot more people who need help than than we acknowledge. I wonder you know at that time, because you talk about beginning to get sober at what was the experience like what's it like to be twenty four years old and to be experiencing homelessness? I mean, what what is the day to day reality for a young unhoused man. Are there things you wish people knew or or understood about? You know, what are unhoused communities are going through. I feel like a I'm a long way from that. Uh, you know, it's been a lot of years. Like I don't feel like I could speak to the reality of what it's like to be unhoused today, five years later. I also think that my version of unhoused was um different than a lot of people's. You know, once I decided to go into rehab, I suddenly had a place to stay. When I came out right, my parents were willing to take me back in. I had a safe place to go. So my my middle class upbringing, my white middle class upbringing, gave me enormous advantages in navigating all of that. So I would I would hesitate to speak to people. There's people is experience who did not have those advantages. Like I didn't go to jail because I was an upper middle class white kid. If I was not, I probably would have been in jail for a long time. That's just the reality of the situation. I was given options. Now, I wasn't let off Scott free. I was given a diversion program, and I was on probation for a lot of years, and I had to meet very strict criteria. So I mean, if I had screwed that up, I think I would have had consequences. But to even be given that opportunity speaks to the privilege that I had, and that privilege followed me from that initial arrest through through every part of getting sober. You know, it was I had advantages. You know, even to have been educated in the way I was at a high school just allowed me to come out of addiction and be somebody who knew how to go on a job interview, knew how to go in and talk to people, had a parent. I mean, I just had advantages. And so so that's why I would be hesitant to speak to that issue for people who don't have them. I really appreciate that, and I have to say, I'm so grateful for your willingness to share that part of your perspective because we are in this moment where we're trying to unpack privilege as it affects systems in our society, and you know you just said it. You said, I'm fifty one. You are a fifty one year old white man from Ohio, and you you are not suffering in any way by admitting your privilege. And I really appreciate you modeling that for other people, because there's been a lot of pushback on this notion of what privilege looks like, and I think it's so important for those of us who have it in whatever relative way we do, to say no, no, it's okay for me to admit this, and it doesn't make me a bad person, and it doesn't mean I haven't suffered. It simply means I've had an easier time navigating systems, whether they're of my own creation or not, in which I have suffered, been punished, succeeded then other people. That's all, so thank you for being willing to do that. Yeah. We had a gentleman on recently, Res Memerican, who writes a lot about racialized trauma. I wrote a great book called My Grandmother's Hands, and he uses a phrase that I almost liked better, and which is white advantage. And there's something about that that's just like yeah, I had advantages. You know, I nearly threw them all away. I did my best in some ways to throw them away, but they were waiting for me, you know, they were waiting for me when I wanted to pick them back up. You know, when you're a twenty four year old heroin attict, there's a lot you want street credit at that time. You know that the last thing you want is to be like a white middle class person. You want street cred, right, that's the world you're rolling in. So despite my best attempts to sort of throw off any of that advantage, it was sitting right at the door for me to pick up as soon as I needed it, you know. And and I just look at people I went through treatment with who got out, and they were like they had nowhere to go that wasn't back to a house that was filled with drugs. Their family, you know, they didn't have employment possibilities, they didn't have they had children, they didn't have child I mean, you know, it's just so to say, like, yeah, I mean everybody's got to get sober that you've got to do that work yourself. And I just feel like I had an easier road of it than a than a lot of people I saw. Was there a defining moment where you said, this is the one for me? I I have to get sober now. It's interesting. You know we talked about in the beginning about storytelling, right, and storytelling emphasis eyes as these dramatic moments, And so I have some dramatic moments, right. I mean, I'm I go to Detox after I've been arrested, just because I'm out of options. I don't know what to do. I'm I'm I'm lost. I go to Detox and they say you need to go into a longer term treatment program, and I said no, thank you, and I went back to my my room in Detox, and I had a sort of a moment of clarity where I went like, you're gonna die or go to jail, Like those are like that's what's happening. Because at that point I realized, like, oh, I have hepatitis C. I weighed thirty five pounds less than I weighed a day. I mean, I was really sick and I was facing potentially fifty years in jail. And so I had I had a moment of clarity, as we would refer to it, right, and so so there was that moment where I went back to him and said, Okay, I will go into treatment, longer term treatment. You know. There's another moment where I agreed to go into a halfway house for six months. Right. So those are big moments. But I think what's interesting is I often say there were thousands of little moments along the way where I chose again and again, sort of like the wolf parable, right where I just fed the good wolf a little bit. They're not real dramatic moments. Each meeting I went to, each time I chose to you know, read a piece of recovery literature, each time I chose to hang out with people in recovery. All these little moments that add up in addition to some some big moments, you know, where I can sort of see, like, you know, getting arrested, that's pretty transformative moment, but not always, you know. I think in recovery we focus a lot on bottoms, you know, we focus a lot on consequence, and I think that's a really important part, but it's been over emphasized. Where I think it, there's two things. I think there's For me, it was like a bottom and a consequence along with the appearance of really genuine hope. Those two things seemed to me to be a pretty fertile soil that my recovery could grow out of. If I didn't have either, If I only had one of those two, I don't I don't think it it have worked if I just had the despair. Plenty of people have despair, addicts have it over and over and over again, so clearly that's not enough. So it was for whatever reason, the conditions came together in such a way that I was able to see the futility of my current situation and believe that something else could happen. The little moments that add up really strike me, because that's that's the practice of a life, the choices that we make over and over again to be a bit better, to honor ourselves a bit more. And I know that you've spoken to and worked with so many people to help them change their own behaviors. And you said a few moments ago that from to fifty one you didn't maintain, you know, snap of a finger, sobriety forever. So in those earlier days when relapses are common for people, and you run into your own version of that, how how do you get out of the despair. How do you get out of the shame spiral? You know what what got you through that? Because I would imagine there's someone or maybe many someone's who are listening to us have this conversation today who have struggled with this, or who loves someone who's struggling with this. And I feel like the the way to continue even when you slip is so important for people to hear about. And I'm I'm curious how you did that and found that kind of strength. Yeah, I think that is a big piece of recovery, and I think it's important in any of us who are trying to change our lives, even in small ways, you know what might feel like a small way in comparison to say addiction, because what happens with a lot of I mean, failure is part of it, you know. So you know when I described getting sober at that that time, that was what took that time, and it took for eight years, But there were a bunch of missteps before that, lots of times of picking up some book about recovery. I remember the first time I came across the Narcotics Anonymous book, I just read it and sobbed because I was like, I could not believe that, like the first time, kind of like we said very early on, somebody actually says something you know to be true that you could never put into words. That was my experience of it, Like, because what what any addict will tell you is, I don't know why I'm doing this. I don't understand what is happening to me, and and all of a sudden you get into recovering people articulated and you're like, oh my god, that's it. That's it. I feel like that, you know. So, so there were a bunch of times of me trying to get sober and not getting sober. I sometimes think my most dangerous time was the first time I went to rehab and got out and I stayed sober about thirty days, and then I used again. And that intervening window was a really dark time because I think in my mind, I went while I tried, I went to rehab, I tried, and now I guess, once an addict, always an addict, this is the way I'm going to die. And so it was a really dark period. You know, it was a lot of despair. And what I didn't know then was that that's very common you know, our attempts to recover are usually a little step forward to step back, a step forward to step back. It's why an A that I think the most important phrase that they use is keep coming back, no matter what, just keep coming back, you know. And so I think that that message is great for any sort of recovery from anything or even trying to change any behavior in our life, like keep trying, just keep coming back, you know. And what I know from working with people over a lot of years, working with a lot of people one on one um and my coaching practice and all that, is that two words are really important in this process. And they are They are kindness and curiosity. Kindness towards ourselves and curiosity about how to change. Because what happens, and you use the word the shame spiral, that's exactly it. That's that the downward spiral of addiction is I feel terrible about myself. So I feel so bad. The only thing I can do is use. So I use, and now I come back around and I feel worse about myself and the only thing I can do is use. And it's this terrible downward spiral and all that judgment. And so if we can flip it just a little bit and get curious, relate to ourselves kindly and curiously, like, okay, what can I you know, what can I learn? So what I learned from going to rehab that time was and again, this took me a while to work my way through. But what I learned was that wasn't enough. So I needed to do the next thing and the next thing. And so I think for people with particular recovery with addiction, it's often a step. It's a it's a process of like all right, well I thought I would try this, and well that didn't seem to work. So now I'll do the next thing, and eventually you do you find the level that works for you. Some people need what I needed, you know, forty five days in impatient treatment in a six month halfway house. Other people just you know, pick up a book and that's enough, right, Some people go, I mean, there's all places in between that. But the process is almost always, very rarely, I think, ever have I seen somebody show up like this is my very first a A meeting. I've never done anything else about this, and now I stayed sober permanently. I mean, that's pretty rare. It happens, but it's extraordinarily rare. Most people's journeys are a lot more fractured than that. And so I think, you know, if anybody's listening to, the thing I would give is keep coming back, you know, keep trying, keep there is a way out. You may have to keep looking for it. And the more kindness you can of yourself as you go through that, because that self judgment shuts down our ability to learn. We know this scientifically. We know that when we flood the limbic parts of our brain, the emotional parts of our brain, that that our learning centers are frontal cortex of the hippocampus, all those things, they get less energy, they get less attention, so we don't learn. And so what happens with the the shame spiral is that we just judge ourselves mercilessly. And what that does is it just fires up that emotional limbic part of our brain and we can't learn. So what I do with people really work a lot on is how do we turn that down? How do we stop um, you know, sort of shooting the second arrow. You know, it's a Buddhist parable of you know, a second arrow, which is basically feeling bad about feeling bad. You know, how do we interrupt that process anywhere along the way so that we can move into Let's just look really clearly, like what what works? What doesn't? What am I learning? I okay, I slipped up again? Okay, great? What what did you learn? What happened? What can we do differently next time? Like, let's because I think of whether it's an addiction problem or somebody who can't figure out how to exercise every day. I always think of this stuff as like a puzzle, and we've got to get the right pull, all the right levers, get the right pieces until the puzzle clicks together. But it feels to me, I know, when we're talking about somebody's life, to say it's a puzzle. I don't want to make it sound flippant, but I but I mean it in the sense that puzzles are solvable. Mm hmm. If you keep you know, if you keep trying to solve a puzzle, you will eventually solve it. If it's you know, if it's the kind of puzzle I'm thinking of anyway, And I found that that's the way it is with most people and whatever they're going through in life. I love that, and I really relate to that, because you know, we don't share the same addiction story, but I I know what it is to say, oh, I'm going to make this change in my life, and then I don't do it perfectly, and then I absolutely get stuck in that shame spiral. And and that's one of the things, even when we were speaking earlier about the escapism or or addictions that we judge versus the ones that we don't, many of these things are so much more close together on the spectrum than we like to admit. And and I'm I'm really I am curious about that. When did you realize that this was something you could do, that you could help other people change their behavior? When did When did that work? That coaching all of this stuff? When did you start? Well, it's interesting because in a a or in a twelve step program, you learn that right away. We start saying right away, like, help others, help others, help others. Nothing will keep you sober more than helping others. So you're encouraged right away. You know, if you're a week sober, there's a guy come and who's a day sober. If you're a year sober. There's a guy who's six months sober. So we always have the opportunity to be of help and service. So I learned that very early on, and at a year in a A I started sponsoring people and I realized I loved it. I just loved doing it. And then you know, uh, years go on and lots of long stories, but um, you know, I go back out, I use again, I come back, I get an a A but I get wrapped up in kids and career and and all that stuff, and you know, eventually found myself at how old would I have been. I don't know, forty five forty four. I had started a solar energy company that had started off with great promise and then the state of Ohio increasingly become just kept rolling back all the regulations that it's so wisely passed, which just kept vaporizing my company. And after about the third round of that, after losing millions of dollars of great solar projects, I just said I can't do this any or I gave up, and I just got the idea to start the podcast. It seems like it just sort of came to me, like I could start a podcast about I could ask people about that, and I could interview people whose books I'm reading anyway, and I could ask my best friend Chris because he's an audio guy, and we would spend more time together and it sounds fun, and we started the next week. Um wow. Yeah. It was that that sort of unplanned, unscripted, and then it kind of took off. I was like whoa. And so then a couple of years into that, people start asking me like, do you ever do work with people? And I initially demurred, and then I finally thought, well, you know, maybe okay, I could try some coaching, you know, maybe I would do that. And I feel like from the first session, I was like, oh, this is like sponsoring people and a I've done this hundreds of times for free, and so it just I just went like, I, you know, I feel like I really know how to do this and I really love to do it. So that's kind of how I arrived there. But it goes back a long time, you know, kind of back to very early, you know, in recovery for me, and and I just I think some people work with other people in recovery because that's what you have to do to stay sober. And I think some people love doing it, and I just always loved it. It just sort of lit me up to like, talk to somebody else, look at their life, their problems, help them see it differently, give them some support and encouragement. I just always, you know, that work always felt life given and meaningful to me. And it reminds me of the work you talked about doing from sixteen to eighteen. Totally. Yes, it's always the thing you loved. Yeah, And what's interesting is at that time I went from being really troubled and really lost. Two. Oh, I help others. I have a purpose, I have a community, I contribute. I don't feel lost anymore. And so yeah, for me, it's been very clear that that having purpose and meaning and helping others is in integral to to my well being mine too. Yeah. Absolutely. I wonder as you talk about this and finding your way, you know, whether it was the program you launched as a team, or being a sponsor in a a or or you know, getting into coaching in the podcast. I love that metaphor you use that that you know puzzles are solvable. Is there you know a person or or a story or a particular way that you were able to help someone solve a puzzle that that stands out to you that you might be able to share with us, obviously without their personal details. It's interesting. My mind went to places with that. One is somebody I've been working with on their addiction journey recently, and it's been so rewarding to see her emerge because she's so splendid, she's she's the kind of person that everybody who meets her like, oh, more of you for the world, and yet she can't she can't see it. She could not see it, you know, And and so she's been so that's been really rewarding. But she's just one of them. But I do believe she's the sort of person if she gets this and stays with it, will help a ton of people because she has a way with words, she has a way with story, she has a way of connecting with people that I feel like she'll really do something. And then the other one is really interesting because my mind went to the opposite extreme, and it's a friend of mine who is in the California or No Florida prison system and has been for plus years and he's still there, and I wouldn't consider him a amazing redemption story. He's been prisoned for twenty five years, and that's been really hard for him. And yet I feel like I've remained his friend and we've stayed close through all that, and we've had something to share with each other. And I originally answered him in a a is where I knew him and he was a heroin atic like me, and things did not work out for him. Again, I don't know of what he's been accused he did or didn't do. He insists he didn't do any of it. I don't know. There's no way to know. It's I don't even care. It's not important. But for whatever reason, those are the two that came to mind. He came to mind even though it's not this beautiful redemption story. And yet he's somebody who's sober in prison. There's no reason to be sober in prison, I mean, besides wanting to be sober. And so he's still done that and he's found a way to make his prison life as valuable as possible and he'll get out in a few years. I hope we're coming up on on a release date. So he comes to mind, just because it's been a lot of years of some sort of friendship, coaching, sponsorship. I don't know that that it has felt important to me, and I think it's really important to him for people who are on a journey, and and his is an extreme example, but also perhaps extreme is there word? Given that you know, the United States and cars rates more people than any other country on Earth by a multiplication of multiple factors. Um. But I think about the length of his stay thus far in the car's role system. And I think about how my friends who are sober talk about it being a lifelong journey. You know, it is a thing that doesn't end. You don't get sober and then you're done. So for people who have to take one day at a time, is there advice that you would share? You know? Again, I'm just thinking about the folks who might be on their commute, or or driving in their car or on the train listening to this conversation, who wish they could ask you a question about this? And and I think everyone, whether it's something enormous um like a prison sentence or sobriety, or or something small like you mentioned trying to convince yourself to actually move your body every day, I fall in that category, um that they might want to change. What would be that the first piece of advice that you would offer, Well, I think there's a couple of things in there. I mean, I think you were the beginning of that was, you know, this this idea of one day at a time, you know, And and the first thing I would say to somebody who is if you're on the sobriety journey and you're relatively early into your contemplating it, often we hear that and we're like, oh, this is something you'll live with the rest of your life. And you're like, forget it. I can't do it because that feels like too much. Because for for the addict or alcoholic, I can't think of anything worse than those early days of recovery, because it feels to me it felt like being torn apart, because one part of me is so convinced I can't do this, I have to stay sober for all these reasons, and the other part of me is screaming go use and it just feels like this internal it's awful. So the first message I would give is that that goes away for the vast majority of people when I say I, you know, I stay sober one day at a time. I don't think about drinking or using of the days I tell a story this blows my mind. But about I guess it's probably two years ago now. My mom fell and broke her hip, and um was on painkillers, and she sent me to go to the grocery for her the pharmacy to pick up her oxy codeon and I went and did this. And what's remarkable about this story is one that I was able to do it. I was able to go get opiates deliver them to my mother that I once would have robbed you for. You know, I would have robbed you for what was in my bag and I was delivering it to my mother. What's more incredible is I didn't even think about it until about two months into it, I went, wow, I'm carrying opiates around like it. That problem vanished so completely. So that is the first thing I would say is, yes, it's one day at a time. We're all living one day at a time. We have to do our best to deal with what life gives us one day at a time. But recovery does not have is not a It is not a chore and done right. My belief is for the vast majority of people, the problem disappears, which is incredible. So I think that's just important to to sort of note and to and to show like, yeah, I mean we really can really change now. As far as practical advice for making change in our life, you know, I think it depends on what it is, but moving away from recovery for a moment and moving to more basic things like I want to write a book, I want to exercise more, I want to meditate every day, what those sort of things. I think the there's a couple of pieces of really practical advice we can start with, which is the first is just to be specific. Decide what we're gonna do, when we're gonna do it, how we're going to do it. You know, the science is extraordinarily clear on this that when we go when we go from like I really should move my body more or I want to get in shape, when we go from that to uh, Monday, Wednesday and Friday at nine am, I am going to do the following program on my peloton bike. That level of specificity is really important and it really makes a big difference. So so that's that's the first is to get very specific, break it down. If you're trying to do a project that's more creative. Are you very clear on exactly what you're doing? You know, okay, Wednesday at nine th what what exactly? What's the first sentence I have to write? Because ambiguity is oftentimes the mother of procrastination. When we're un hurton, we just procrastinate. We just every other item in our to do list looks better. So that's one very practical, it's kind of you know. And then the second benefit of getting really specific is that we force ourselves to choice points, and if those choice points, we can do a couple of things. One is we can just turn all our attention to just starting. So like if I'm having resistance one morning to get in on the bike, I will be like, first, get on your bike clothes and your bike shoes. That's the first thing. Just do that. And I often can do that. But if I think about doing an hour long workout and I know how hard it's going to be, I'm like, are you kidding me? I can't do that? And so you know, I think our brain does this little calculation where it's like I'm sitting on the couch and I feel like I have one unit of energy and I need to go do this workout, and that takes ten units of energy. I only have one. Forget it. When I deconstructed to just put on your bike shoes, I'm like, that's one unit of energy. I've got unit of energy. Great, I can do it. And we often get motivation after we start. We think we get motivated then we start, but often after we move a little bit motivation comes along. So just getting unstuck. So now I know what I'm doing, push myself to start. Oftentimes that's just enough that just gets us off and going. If not, then what we need to do is look at what's happening at that moment of choice and what am I feeling and thinking. So I often say behavior change takes You've got to start with the very practical, tactical What am I doing, when am I doing it? How do I trick myself to get started, How do I set up my environment to make it easy? All these things that we can do. If we do all that and we're still stuck, then I would say it's a failure of emotional regulation. And what I basically mean by that is some feelings or thoughts come up that we don't know how to work with and so we turn away. So now we just if nothing, if we've tried all that and it's not working, now we can zoom into that moment and say, Okay, what am I saying to myself? What am I feeling? What's going on here? You know? Oh, every time I think about writing, I just think to myself like, I can't do it. You know, I'm not any good. So now I can work to coach myself through that, and I can say to myself, well, you know, we don't know if you're good or not yet. If you don't do it, you'll never be good, you know, So so let's try, you know. So we we talk to ourselves, we support ourselves, we coach ourselves through it, or we find somebody who can do that for us. But that's what getting specific also does is allows us to then target specifically what's our resistance about. It's all of the understanding you've amassed for habit creation and curiosity and kindness. Did that come together to lead you to this spiritual habits program? I'm so curious about it? Yes, I think so? Yeah, I mean I think spiritual habits to me is a program we've created, And yeah, I think it brings together you know what I We've interviewed over four hundred people at this point, and it brings together, you know, the best of what I learned from all those people, my experience of twenty five years in recovery and everything that that's entailed. UM my own spiritual practice. My training is a to be a certified spiritual director, and just working with hundreds of people into kind of to me, what I think are like some core practices and core ways of really living our spiritual life. And spiritual life to me just means connecting to what matters, you know, connecting to what matters to us. And so the Spiritual Habits program is really trying to take what I would consider timeless spiritual principles, although some people would argue that you could call them psychological principles. You know, look at it one way, it looks this way, look at it another way, it looks that way, right, timeless principles that most everybody agree with, like yes, I should be more present, and then bringing that along with what we know about behavior change and the science of behavior change for how do we actually do it? So how do we go from going I do think mindfulness is good to actually being more mindful, and I think that's where in the spiritual landscape it's out there. I think there's a lot of people teaching you how as in like here's the mindsets to have, here's the here's how to meditate. But but then where most people are falling off is like, well, I know what I should do, but I'm not doing it. So this program is intended to sort of bring all of that together. And where do how long is it? Where do people find it? Can you give us some some of the insider info? Yeah, I mean if you go to to our website when you feed dot net. There's two ways to do the Spiritual Habits program. One is you can work with me one on one and we go through the whole program. It's like a very close one on one coaching relationship. And then a see year we run it as a group program. Um we're in the midst of running it right now with our sort of summer group, will run it again in the fall, and so both are great ways to do it. I think there are benefits to both. Doing one on one with me obviously a lot of personal attention and care, and the group program is beautiful because you meet people, and we structure the program in a way that we're really trying to help people find ongoing friends, people who support them in their in their journey. So they're both beautiful. But you can find out both at our website, which is when you feed dot net, you know, get on the mailing list or whatever. But those are those are the ways that to engage with it. And when you talk about the program, you you mentioned that you're certified as spiritual director and an interfaith spiritual director. What does that mean? It's a it's a great question. I'm not sure I can you know, I think I can answer it. Spiritual direction is a a term that came out of more of the modern church, actually comes out of the ancient church in a lot of ways, but it shows up in all traditions and they're people use different terms for it. People will use the term spiritual director, people will use the term spiritual supervisor. Other people will use the term spiritual companion, spiritual friend. Um. I think a a sponsorship provides a model for it. Right in a sponsorship, your sponsor is just somebody who's a little bit further down that particular journey you want to be on than you are knows a little bit of the landscape. So spiritual directors we are taught to help people hone in on what's important in their life, what's their spiritual life about, what do their practices that look like, what matters to them, what might their blocks be, what's showing up for them in their in their life related to spiritual matters. But again, I define spirito more broadly than maybe a lot of people would, because I think spirituality is about like, what really matters to us, what feels important, and how do we connect to that and live from that. So coming from the background that you do and having been through training programs and certification and all of it, in your opinion, what do you think is the relationship between one's spiritual and personal life? Do you believe they are the same. Do you believe they're closely related and intertwined? How how would you define those things. My primary spiritual practice these days is Zen Buddhism, and in Zen we would say they are absolutely one and the same. Your spiritual life is every aspect of your life. There is no separation between these things. But Zen would also say there's emptiness and form and and it's a little bit of a complicated question. In the spiritual direction world, they often say like, this is psychology, this is spiritual direction, and they they stand up these sort of straw men and they're like, spiritual direction is about you and God, your relationship with God, and psychology is all about you and your relationship with your mother. I'm like, okay, that's that's clever. The reality is, for most of us, it's just things are never that clean. Things are never that clean. You know, our psychological questions are our spiritual questions, our relationship challenges. That all melds into one messy soup. And so what do you What does a person need? What's the right thing for them at the time. There's a lot of different ways to look at it, you know, I mean I get into this with coach, with coaching work versus therapy, what's the difference? You know, there's a lot of crossover. But I think if you if you have trauma, right, traumas something that you're largely at least gonna start in a very psychological therapist meeting, there's a lot of there's a lot of benefit there. Right, we're really looking back at what happened and how did that affect you spiritual direction and coaching. On the other hand, we're we're going to be more talking about your your experience of the present moment and how do we work with whatever comes up and you moving forward. But even that, as I say it, I'm like, well, a lot of spiritual direction works some a lot of it with people I do is people who have been really badly burned by the church in different ways, and the whole idea is muddy and clouded and bad for them. So there is unpacking of that. So, like I say, people try and set these things apart, and there are times that it's worth setting them apart. But in the reality, I don't think we can separate a good spiritual life from our personal life, from our work life, from it. It's all. It's all connected. You talk so beautifully about that in a variety of different places, about the interconnection of everything. When you start to see that, you start to realize, like, well, yeah, I can't really set these things don't separate out cleanly. If I make divisions, that can be helpful sometimes for certain things, but really they're not separate. And I think for me, some of the most transformative experiences have not only been in learning how interconnected everything is. But in giving myself the permission to have simultaneous experiences, to find moments of joy while grieving, to be inspired, and also a little suspect to like we're we're told that you'll have off feeling, and I don't believe that that's true. You know, I can feel confident and supremely terrified at the same time. And the more I've given myself space to hold multiple things true at once, uh, the more grounded I feel as a person one in our spiritual habits. Course, we just the lesson I just gave yesterday was I call it the middle way. It's about the middle way. And one way of thinking of the middle way as I split the split the difference right, But another way of thinking about the middle way as I hold the opposites, you know, and so one very like an example of a practical spiritual habit is to look for all the times in your life that you're using the word or or but and just put an end in m. You know, I do some really great things in life, and I do a couple of things I don't feel great about. Both those things are true. You know, my work life is awesome and my relationship is not going as well as I would like, like we can have, you know, I feel, like you said, confident and terrified. When we learned to hold these multiple things, I think we start to better approximate the human condition, you know. And it's funny. It just leads us almost all the way back to the very early where we talked about like what we give our children, and I think that lesson that we don't give children is in an emotional nuance. I didn't have that as an eighteen year old. I was either, you know, my best friend's dating my girlfriend. The only thing I know to do is be completely devastated. But what else is there? Yeah there's that, But what else is there? I didn't. I didn't know, nobody could, Nobody taught me how to look for Well, yeah that's really bad, but look at all these other really good things that are still happening in your life. I feel like if I could have had some of that, I might not have had to self destruct. In the same way, A nuance is something that I love and crave, much like critical thinking, and I feel afraid at the a parent or seeming way that we as a society appear to be entering this phase where we can't understand nuance anymore. You know, it's it frightens me, and so I'm very grateful to all of the people holding space for the both and you included. You know, I think I'm not alone there. There's a reason that the one you feed affects your audience so profoundly. You know, you you mentioned you've done over four hundred interviews. Now, I mean, what a what an incredible experience. Are there any for you know, listeners of my podcast who might be new listeners of yours? Are there are there any episodes you would point to and say, listen to these three first? These are three that I'm deeply proud of. M I am so bad at answering that question. I feel like I should really should know the answer to that. And you know, if I had a marketing person, they'd be like, you have got know the answer to that question. I never can do it either. So if you don't want to answer it, you don't have to. Well, obviously, for listeners of your podcast, they could start by listening to, you know, the interview with you, because we we just released it and it's a it's a great conversation. Um you know, we've had a number of interviews over the last year that have been really formative for me, and interviewing people like rest Momentican, Ibram X, Kendy other people about the racial issues we're facing, you know, and me as a fifty year old white man trying to reckon with that and understand it as best I can, you know. So I feel like those are if that's your thing. We did one not too long ago with a guy named Scott stabil It's called practicing Self Love with Scott Stabile, and he is just a warm, generous, wonderful man. I don't think you could ever go wrong listening to him. And then we did another one with a guy named Rutger Bergman recently. He's he's a hopeful person about the state of things, and I think I like you. I think there's a lot of things that really concerned me, worry me, make me frightened, and holding the opposites. There's lots of ways that the human condition is getting better for lots and lots of people, and I feel like we have to hold both these and and we primarily get served the diet of everything that's wrong, and I think it's sometimes helpful for our own mental well being and our ability to go on helping the world and serving the world. To get a little diet of and what's what's working, what's happened, what progress have we made, because because we need that to go on, you know, um, and I think he's he's an eloquent spokesman for that. So those are a few of the recent ones that I think are are good. But I learned long ago that we have four of us that that participate in getting an episode fully out and done, and we can be like one of us can be like I thought it was okay. Another one could be like this is one of the best ones ever. Another person would be like I didn't even think it was good. So even amongst the four of us that are closest to it, we can't agree on what are the best ones. So I think it's what what speaks to people where they're at. You know, It's like some days Bob Dylan's great. In other days you want, you know, you want something else totally totally, and I love that. I think it's one of the great things about this medium is it enables us to open these spaces for so many people to get exactly the kinds of fulfillment that they're looking for to be able to explore curiosity. And what a cool time too. As you said, this is one of the great parts about being alive today is the whole ability to do something like this where you and I can sit on zoom and look at each other while you're across the country and we can have this beautiful conversation. You know, we couldn't have done this ten years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And I the other inspiring thing I think about all this is that I do think technology, in some ways though disconnecting us, helps people who can't find connections sometimes find it. You know, We've got a view of the world when we were all these small communities that like life was really good. It was good if you fit in that community, but if you didn't it was miserable. And now if you don't fit, you can find your people somewhere. I think that's one of the coolest things is that people are able to create new kinds of villages. M H. What do you think you know when we talk about holding that space, the both and the things we need to do work on as a society and and the places where we are making wonderful advancements, whether they be communities enabled by tech or life saving medical treatments like vaccines. What are the kinds of changes you hope to see in the country and and what do you think some of our societal responses this can be? Because it strikes me that you are a person who knows better than most. I would wager whether or not you might pay yourself the same compliment. I'll do it for you who who really knows what people need and how people can heal? So I wonder, as you look at this complex landscape, what what do you what do you hope is coming for us? Or what do you hope we can do, you know, as a society for each other. That is such a big question and one that that I is very easy to be overwhelmed with. And I think about something that you said, which was you don't have to I'm not going to get it right. But it was basically, you don't have to be in on everything, but you have to be all in on something right. And so if I look at the number of issues that beset us, they're overwhelming. I've chosen to focus my efforts and what I think I'm good at on healing individuals largely. It's interesting my son is a twenty three year old activist and has all the energy and fire and all out of a of a twenty three year old, and we believe the same things. But he's focused on structures and systems and I'm much more like working on a person. But I realized, I think we're both interested in how do we relieve suffering? That's what really matters. So I come at it from more of an individual perspective, although I think the individual is the collective. I think these things go hand in hand. As I said, like my opportunities for recovery, I had opportunities that other people didn't, and so you know, but I think we are facing as as we look at the opioid crisis, as we look at what we're coming out of COVID, and we're looking at like, okay, mental health seems to be getting worse. We've got to find some way to get people more help. M I don't know what that looks like exactly, Like I do coaching work with people, and that coaching work is only available to people who make user I mean, like, you know, in order for me to sustain a living, right I'm not affordable to everybody. So we work to have things like group programs. We work to give the podcast away for free. You know, We're always looking for ways to offer things at at at multiple levels. But I do think we haven't figured out how to get mental health to people at scale. Places like talk Space and Better Help. I mean talk Space is a sponsor on our show, and there's problems with their model. You know, it it up. It gives more people access to therapy, but it doesn't support therapists very well. So you're like, oh, well, okay, jeezus, we all right, that got a little bit better. But that, you know, And so I think these things are are tricky. What I'm really interested in, and what we've been trying to figure out all along, is how do we build communities that support each other. A A is a marvelous institution in a lot of ways. Twelve Step, I mean they the twelve Step world revolutionized things, and millions and millions of people are sober that would not have been if it were not for that, And there's plenty of problems with it. It's not for everybody. And so I'm interested in my little corner of the world of how do I build communities of people that can support each other that can afford to do it. So the Spiritual Habits Group program, when people do that, they get matched up with a small group of six other people, and that group is there's if they want it ongoing. Some of those groups still meet year year and a two years later. They've become a beautiful source of support for each other. So I'm interested in how do we do that? What are the ways that like minded people can support and care about each other? And then the other problem I'm really interested in figure out is we are so busy, we are so fragmented, we are so distracted, and it's challenging. It makes emotional and mental well being really difficult. And I don't know what the way back for that is. Again, so many of these things become questions of privilege and advantage. Maybe I can afford to say, well, I'm going to go in a weeklong silent retreat, but lots of for lots of people, that's just not a not a possibility. And so you know, how do we continue to offer? You know? So that's what I'm with the Spiritual Habits Program. The problem I'm trying to solve And I'm not saying I have it solved, but I think it's a question that we people in my world need to keep asking and solving. Is what interventions work for really busy people? What interventions help people when they can't step off the treadmill, Because a lot of people can't step off the treadmill, like literally can't. They've got four kids to support, like, and so a lot of us say we can't, but we could, but lots of people really genuinely can't. And so what are the interventions that work for those people? You know? How do we find ways that the mother of four children who has to work two or three part time jobs to keep it all going, how do we how do we support her in a way so that her children can have some of what we've talked about, some of the learning about emotions and nuance. And so I hope that we continue to see what we're seeing, which is a lot more education in schools about emotions. I think if we we can fight about critical race theory, maybe about you know, which I think is an inflamed fake debate, but even stepping out of the political world, who could argue the fact that like the better able we are to deal with our emotions, the better able we are to handle everything in our life. Like that should be a completely nonpartisan issue. You know, even the people who say f your feelings are pretty lost in their feelings. You know, Like even that phrase F your feelings is a sure indication that you've got lots of feelings. So we all have them, you know, we all have them, And I think you're right. I think beginning to figure out how to best support our communities and how to create access and space, you know, I will say it's one of the things that really excites me about the current administration expanding the child tax credit. You know, they've worked for this for eighteen years. There have been congress persons fighting for this expansion to give much more money to families. And I think about that that mom, you're talking about this hypothetical. Mom, I know women like that. I've sat and met with folks like this. I got to talk to an incredible woman years ago when I was in Houston and I did some volunteering at the Houston Food Bank UM not long after Hurricane Harvey, and they talked about the ways that they supported the community, and one of the things they built into the Houston Food Bank is a growth restore, but it's a grocery store you come to and you you do your shopping at where everything is free. And they talked about what it means to a community to be able to come in and have, you know, a quote normal experience, and how empowering it is. And one of the ladies I met there, who was also volunteering there, said, you know, I used to be a recipient of the food Bank, and I used to walk through this grocery store and I would do my shopping and leave without a bill. And what it meant for me to do this once I found out I was eligible to you know, benefit from this program is that I could keep my full time job, but I could quit the part time job I had, which only enabled me to buy groceries. And when I quit that job, because I could come here and get food, I was able to go to night school. She said, Now I have a full time job that pays me three times what my crappy old full time job used to pay me. And all I needed was a little bit of help to get a little bit of space. And I think about what this is going to mean for so many families who will be able to afford childcare so that night school is an option. Who will be able to afford groceries so that they don't have to worry about where their kids next meals are coming from. Who will be able to afford dental care, whatever it is that a family needs. And that's a place where you know, as you reference your son, we're looking at a great systemic solution. And it's only the first it's the first piece of the puzzle that you referenced. But I'm excited that we're doing things like this, and my hope is that yes, we can also push for systemic changes and solutions that can enable space for mental health and access to mental health services for people, because everyone deserves them that they do. And even if you're a stone cold capitalist right like here, we can use me as an example. I it through a forty five day treatment program for free because I was indigent. I don't know if those exist anymore, but it did then. Thank god, I went through a six month halfway house that was free and I was on public assistance. I got welfare during that time to pay for the food for this place. I have repaid that investment in me. I don't. I couldn't even tell you how many times and tax dollars I have repaid that investment fiftyfold. You couldn't make a better investment, right. So so even if we're talking about if we even if you want to just be like, I'm a cap you know, I'm a capitalist, right, I don't believe in handouts. Right, even in that case, the person who goes back to night school is now contributing way more tax dollars than they did working three crappy part time jobs like this stuff. I mean it it works if we invest in the people. And so you know, I'm I'm That's an other example of me of you know, the things that that that formed me, But I was given opportunities. Those were opportunities now those were available to everybody in those days. Again, I don't know what it's like today, you know, I don't know what opportunities are there for the homeless heroine heddic today. I guess probably not as good, right, because I think we've eroded our mental health system, probably even worse than it was twenty five years ago. You know, But that's an example of you know, an investment in me paid off societally in so many ways, obviously financially, but hopefully in other ways. I should think so. And I think that that's it's a large scale example of what we've been talking about today, holding holding the both, and you know, people deserve to be supported, and it's a great return on investment for us as a society. Absolutely, it's it's moral and fiscal. It's it's both. And the possibility the safety, the companies that will be launched, in the small businesses that will be created if we just help people out, I feel really exciting to me. Yeah, it's it's what's made me pull my hair out about climate change for ever, since I started a solar business and before is just like, how are we not seeing? You know, we talked about it's going to cost so much, but there are huge opportunities here, you know, huge opportunities that are coming. And do we want to lead that? Do we want to do what's right for the planet and future generations and what makes financial sense and great jobs. It's just it's just made me want to bang my head against wall for a long time, you and me both, my friend, But I think about that. I think about how one of my favorite things that Dr King ever said was that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. And I think about how it's our responsibility not only to ensure that we are bending society toward more and more justice, but also more and more progress. We we have to create and promote and legislate for progress for us and for the planet. And it feels like a big task, but I think it's important. You know, the thing that I said that you referenced about, we've all got to be all in on something and and the things that you're talking about in terms of if we work on our own puzzles, if we if we create these pathways to progress for ourselves, we will assist I think society and doing the same when we when we take it out of this you know, big big goals for us moment we're having, and we do bring it back into our now I want to call it a personal puzzle. Now I'm now I'm obsessed with the alliteration that you've offered to me today. But when we bring it back into the personal what what for you is on your goal list for progress? What feels like your work in progress in in this moment? I think what feels to me like the biggest ongoing work for me is I find myself in a little bit of a crossroads, and it's hard to know what is causing what. Mm hmm. So fifty one years old is you know fifty let's call fifty a turning point in ways, right, I've had some really profound spiritual awakenings that really eroded a lot of my ego structure in in I'm not I don't mean like permanently, but but in very profound ways. Things that used to drive me just don't drive me. Some of that, I think is getting older. I think that wisdom gives you. The age gives you the opportunity for wisdom. It doesn't necessarily mean you will have it, but you have opportunity for it. You've had more time to get it. Um. So I've had these spiritual awakenings that have eroded some of the ego a structure. I'm getting older, and as people get older, they often tend to become less ambitious, right, it just sort of happens. I think there's a natural thing. So the combination of those things have led to me not being driven in the way that I used to be driven. Mm h and what that can turn towards occasionally is what I can just vaguely refer to as a lack of energy m hm. And so for me, the work in progress is what are those energy sources that propelled me forward? Given that the ones that we're so strong for so long seem to have st have vanished for me? So where does that energy come from? And then I think the other is the same thing that we all is everyone's work in progress, and it's some variation on how much of that do I just say that's the way it is, and how much of that is something that needs to be changed? And I think in all of our lives that is our all, everyone's work in progress. As you look at things and you go, well can I change that? Where do I accept that? And so you know, as I look at I go, well, I don't have the energy I had, it say, And so I I wonder about it at in the in the business I'm in, I would have worked myself like crazy too, you know, not just for my own well being, but also because the mission. I would have gone constantly. I don't do that in the same way now. And some of that is lovely, And then some of that I go well, and high energy is a good feeling. Lower energy states are different, but they're not bad. So again, so my work in progresses how much of that is just the way it is and I accept it and it's a good thing and there's contentment and there's ease and all those things, and how much of it do I go? Wait, I need a little more fire here. So that's my work in progress. I think I relate to it very much. So thank you, thank you for sharing, and thank you for today. This has just been so lovely, It really has