And so do you think that people and that we really need to hit an extreme kind of low or, or point in our lives to create a change? Um, and how would you advise the person listening to create meaningful change even when their life isn't quote like falling apart necessarily?

Well, there is that that is a slight challenge, right? Because the reason we change is because something isn't working well, right? I mean, that that is it, you don't change things that you're like, this is great.

Yeah, those aren't ever the things we want to change.

And so there is the there is something in the idea that the worse it is, the more you want to change it.

Right? But we don't want to rely on that as the only way to get to change.

So I mentioned, I went back out a second time, eight years after I got sober from heroin.

And you know, when I got sober from heroin, my life was a wreck, right? I mean, I was looking at going to jail for 50 years.

What are some traits, maybe the top two or three traits that we should look for in toxic versus in positive people for our lives and relationships?

W- why did this time stick, as it were? Like, what was different this time that finally ended this sort of m- multi-year rollercoaster?

I mean, I'd love to point it down to, like, one thing.

Certainly, my consequences were worse than they had been, right? I was getting worse as time went on.

We get to this point where we really don't wanna give it up, because who wants to give up the thing that basically is the most important thing in your life? But then there's another part of you that is-- recognizes that it's necessary, and that's part of what we need to learn and negotiate.

Now, in my case, that felt like my soul being torn apart, because one part of me is screaming that I have to get high, and another part of me is screaming, "You cannot do it." And that internal tension and turmoil was really awful.

I went into a detox center, which I'd done multiple times, basically 'cause I didn't know what to do.

So I went to detox.

Hmm.

don't know that I went out the second time because of pain.

It's a little bit of a long story, but some things happened that really made the mechanism that I had gotten sober in 12-step meetings unattractive to me.

I mean, essentially my wife left me for a friend of ours in AA.

And this seems to be a pattern in my life now that I'm saying it.

And I knew it was ridiculous to be mad at a 12-step program because that's silly, but I did have this resentment.

And I think I also had a very fragile sort of spiritual perspective that when I really, you know, I had something really terrible happen.

I had a two and a half year old son.

is causing the biggest source of discomfort? I mean, our modern world,

Mm-hmm.

That meant obviously I made less money because I was hiring people to help me with things.

There were conscious choices all through here for sort of lifestyle design.

I wanted to build a business that served my life, not the other way around.

And I was fortunate enough to be able to get there.

So I was able to say like, okay, I can step away from these various things.

A lot of it honestly in my case was – when I really paid attention to what I was doing in some of those chunks of work time, I couldn't really say what value they were.

Uh-huh.

Yeah

... it's not good.

So addiction is often, for many people, it's a solution, right? Whether it's pleasure seeking or not, it's a solution, and it works very well for whatever that problem is.

It worked very well for me for a while, but then again, it, it, it starts to bring on consequences, and most people, if they're in this cycle, as the consequences occur, they begin to recalculate the value, and they go, "You know what? That's not worth it.

You know, that hangover is not, is not worth sacrificing Saturday and half a Sunday to get hammered on Friday night.

So I'm not gonna do that," or wh- whatever your consequences are, right? But it seems like in the addict, that doesn't happen.

I've ...

Mm-hmm.

We don't realize that in and of itself is a moment we can change.

Yes.

A lot of times it does.

We're not even aware of the choice moment or we don't know what happened, right? A common example that I use, and I think most people could relate to is all of a sudden I have this thing, my phone in my hand, and I'm checking my email.

I don't recall making a conscious decision to do that.

I don't recall deciding it just happened.

right and that's the way a lot of this stuff is i call it the autopilot pitfall which means the decision is happening outside of consciousness so the step there is how do i slow that process down it's why we say things like if you are an addict or you know if you're an alcoholic don't have liquor in the house It's why I have a little program on here that when I click on my email, it pops up this other program, and it causes me to take a deep breath, and then do you really want to do it? In that time, I go, oh, no, I don't really want to do it.

In the end of your book, you end in a certain chapter here which is allowing everything to be exactly as it is right this is where you end it but when sometimes that seems so contradictory right yeah acceptance and change can you talk a little bit about that because i think that aligns to what you just said also is like you've got to figure what is meaningful to you you got to figure out your values but you have to be present

Let's, let's work through the S-P-A-R there.

Yeah.

So the S stands for specificity.

When we're trying to do a new behavior, we need to be really specific about what we're doing.

What's the exercise? When am I doing it? How am I doing it? Where am I doing it? All that specificity is important because ambiguity is really often our enemy.

Because what happens is we're trying to figure out what to do and do it at the same time.

The best example I can give you is that like in my day-to-day work.

And then the last one?

Oh.

So, yeah.

Sorry, Eric.

Feeling you.

Feeling you.

Yeah.

So...

Yeah.

So how does that help people make better decisions in those tough moments?

Well, I think the first is to c- to bring that question to mind, because even when you hear that question, you get it a little bit.

You go, "Oh, I see." Because mostly what we think is, "I want the, the ice cream.

I want the ice cream.

I want the ice cream.

I want the ice cream."It's, but what we also need to bring to mind is, "Oh, I also want this other thing that's important to me and that matters." So that's the first step.

That question makes it.

I mean, how do the stories that we actually tell ourselves shape our reality? And then of course, I wanna know a c- a few simple questions that we can maybe ask to shift perspective and, of course, reduce suffering.

[laughs]

... little acronyms for their little process, right? So I'm no different.

RENEW.

The R stands for recognize it's normal to get off track.

It just happens.

It happens to everyone that's trying to do anything long-term.

The second is to embrace your why.

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

What, what I do is whenever I feel anything that I think I might not want to feel, I just pause and look inside and ask a question, "What knows this experience? In what does this appear?" And to quote Rupert Spira, "Awareness accepts what the mind rejects." And then I just identify with awareness, and I find that, that, that for me-

me-Brings about a kind of a peace and equanimity, actually a kind of a giddy joy that seems to bubble up.

And it's not an idea that I'm going to get something in the future, like enlightenment.

Mm.

It is right now, and it's always there, always available.

I don't know if that answers your question, but that's, uh...

Well, it does.

Great.

Mm-hmm.

And the God that was on offer was the standard traditional Christian God.

That's just what was there then.

And I did my best to believe in that really hard, really hard.

And it worked 'cause I got sober.

But about seven years into my recovery...

No, less than that.

So talk about this, what, what is meant by this kind of radical acceptance.

[laughs]

"Hello, old friend," right? So I'm doing both.

And so part of the reason I end where I do is that there's a certain type of person, and I would say I probably fall into this camp, you might also, and I would suspect a lot of the people that follow you or follow me fall into this camp, which is we s- we turn life into a constant self-improvement project.

Hope to see you again soon.

Thank you so much, Martha.

[gentle music]

How would you advise someone who's new to recovery?

Everybody's a little bit different.

And so whether a 12-step program is the right thing for you or exercise is the right thing for you, I think that what is helpful, though, some generalizations I could make are who supports you in this? Right.

That's really important because addiction is a matter of, I think, power.

You know, 12 step programs talk about, you know, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol or drugs.

Now, you may not like that statement and maybe powerless is the wrong word.

But what it but what we see is we don't have enough power to stop doing this thing by ourselves.

How can people get better at practicing self-compassion when they are coming to terms with the fact that they have made some really bad choices?

Yeah.

So one of the things that I will do is I often will afterwards replay the situation and imagine myself speaking up, and very importantly, I would imagine exactly what I would say.

Because part of the problem is in those situations-To, to massively oversimplify complex neurological processes, I am very much in my limbic system.

I am stressed, I'm afraid, and the part of my brain that can make up c- it can come up with, like, good judgment and good ideas and good words and all that is not very active.

It's kind of shut down.

So I need to know the words.

I can give you a very practical example in my own life.

Mm-hmm.

Can you walk us through a little bit about your history with addiction and then which of the practices that appear in your book you were able to use in that extreme case to, to work your way out?

Sure.

The, the short version is by the time I was twenty-four, I was a homeless heroin addict.

I weighed a hundred pounds.

I had hepatitis C. I was yellow and jaundiced, and the prosecutor said I was looking at up to fifty years in prison.

So I had a pretty low bottom at, at that age.

And so-- And the previous eight years of my life or so had been in varying forms of addiction, just kind of terminating and ending there.

Hmm.

Here is a clip from his 2016 talk at TEDxColumbus.

Making lasting changes in our behavior is a battle.

It's difficult, and most of us don't succeed at it for very long.

And I host a podcast where I've talked to over 150 thought leaders and authors and psychologists and spiritual teachers, people like Andrew Solomon, Carol Dweck, Simon Sinek, Don Miguel Ruiz, and we talk about what it means to live a good life.

And right at the heart of living a good life is being able to choose how we wanna behave and actually follow through on that.

Most of us think when it comes to creating new habits that it's a matter, it's a matter of willpower or discipline and that we don't have enough of either.

We might suspect inwardly that maybe we're just the kind of person who can't follow through on things.

Hmm.

Can you break down what SPAR means, and can you apply it to an example related to communication so that we can maybe use it directly and help ourselves?

So I want to start by saying I think that there are two competencies we have to get in order to change something.

The first I will call structural.

This is what SPAR focuses on.

It's really about planning.

The second is an inner component.

So the inner component is you might know exactly what to do, you might remember to do it, and then you don't do it in the moment, and that is usually some sort of inner emotional type thing.

Curious, how do we get that motivation?

Yeah

...

there are reasons for that that have to do with the frequent repetition of cigarettes, but one of the big things is that those people, when they tried to stop doing heroin, they got a lot of help.

They were around people.

They were in community.

They were supported.

But when they stop smoking, it's just, "I'm gonna stop smoking," and you're on your own out there doing it.

Mm.

In your mind, is there any one or two just big myths, big assumptions, big things that are the main barriers for us?

I think there's a couple things.

One is I really believe that change is a skill.

I really believe that we can learn how to make change.

But most of us tend to treat it as a character flaw problem, tend to treat it as I'm lazy, or I don't, I'm not motivated, or I'm not the kind of person who can finish things, or I just don't want it enough.

And so, and when we do that, we then don't do what we really need to do in order to change, which is to learn, to say, like, "Well, what is happening?" You know, a big part of my story is, is an addiction story, and maybe we'll get into that, right? And, and there's a moment where it seems like the change takes.

But there was a whole lot that came before that that was all really important, all the things that I tried that didn't work, that taught me something like, "Oh, okay, well, I can do that, but I better not do that or this," you know, a lot of tinkering.

We are, you know, just endlessly unkind to ourselves when it comes to us dropping into a change process and not just blinking and seeing it, it happen.