How A Little By Little Becomes A Lot with Eric Zimmer

So I've been thinking about this, how a little becomes a lot as I've been reading your book.

You know, you kind of, as you prepare for these podcasts, you start applying all their principles to your own life.

And then I'm a clinician, so I'm applying them to my clients' lives and my kids' lives.

And I pulled out these seven kind of principles from your book, and a lot of them have to do with the chapters that you did.

And I thought it'd be nice for folks to hear them because right now is a time when a little feels about right.

I think people feel overwhelmed, like too much.

We are bombarded by a lot.

Maybe the place to start would be for you to share just a little bit about you and why why you wrote How a Little Becomes a Lot.

Well, a big part of my story is my recovery from addiction.

And so if you were looking at the movie of my life, you would see me in this treatment center at the age of 25.

And I was a homeless heroin addict.

And I weighed 100 pounds.

I was yellow and jaundiced from hepatitis C.

The prosecutor said I was going to jail for up to 50 years.

And I went in and they said, you need to go to long-term treatment.

And I said, no, thank you.

And then I went back to my room and I had this moment where I was like, I'm going to die or go to jail very soon if I leave here.

So I went back and I said,

okay,

I'll go to your treatment program.

And if we were filming the movie of my life, that would be the big scene, right? That's where the director would spend a lot of time and the music would swell emotionally in the background and But that moment only has significance because of the thousands of little moments, the off-camera moments that happen after it.

All the choices to do the thing that led me towards recovery versus addiction.

And so I think when we as a culture think about change, we want the quick fix.

We want the epiphany.

We want the lightning strike moment.