Want Real, Lasting Change? It’s Time to Try a Different Approach. | Eric Zimmer

0:00Jonathan Fields: Okay, so if you ask a hundred people if there's something meaningful that they really want to change about their lives, almost every single one will say yes. But if you ask those same people how many actually have tried and succeeded, the numbers get pretty discouraging pretty quickly. We tend to think that if we can't stick to a new routine, it's because we're lazy or unmotivated or just not wired for success. But my guest today, an old friend, Eric Zimmer, has a much kinder and more practical take. He argues that change is not a personality trait, it's a skill. And like any skill, it's something you can get better at with the right tools and practice.

0:39Jonathan Fields: Eric is the host of the One You Feed podcast and the author of the new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot. He's someone who has walked the path from the depths of addiction to helping thousands of people navigate their own transformations. And today we're breaking down a three-part framework for consistent progress and talking about a simple way to catch those self-sabotaging thoughts before they actually take over. We even get into why your values might be fighting each other and how to fix that. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

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3:52Jonathan Fields: And we have had so many conversations on the mic, off the mic a lot more about this thing called change. You know, most people genuinely want to change something, something in their lives whether it's a relationship their well-being their mental health their work you name it there's something in there i don't know if you took 100 people and you basically said is there anything meaningful that you want to change i would venture to say that very few people would answer no and yet so many of us want to change something meaningful um but so few of us succeed at the process of change. We fail. Even when the desire is real.

4:42Jonathan Fields: Take me into this. What's happening here? Well, I wish I could give you the one secret and be like, okay, just do this. And you know, you'll make change easy. I think change is a multifaceted thing. And we change and don't change for different reasons, but I think there are some principles that we can apply and some ways of approaching change, as well as some mindsets that can make it more likely that we will change. So what are, I want to go into those principles because I think they're, they're sensible and they make a real difference. But also I'm just really curious in your mind, Is there any one or two just big myths, big assumptions, big things that are the main barriers for us?

5:33I 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'm not motivated or I'm not the kind of person who can finish things or I just don't want it enough. 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, well, what is happening? You know, a big part of my story is an addiction story, and maybe we'll get into that, right? And there's a moment where it seems like the change takes.

6:27But 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. of this, you know, a lot of tinkering. And at one time, I looked at all of that as like I failed at changing. And in one sense, yes, I failed to get sober that time. But I was learning to the best of my ability. Now, I didn't learn as well as I could because I was an addict and I was shame driven. And so I wasn't really able to connect all the dots in the way that I would. But when I got to a place where somebody helped me turn down that character flaw narrative just enough, I was able to look back and go, oh, okay, I see.

7:18I can't do that. Or, you know what they said to do, you know, for me, it was a lot of like, they say to do A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, and I do A, and it doesn't work. And I'm like, all right, I come back, I'll do A and B, and it doesn't work, right? And eventually I did enough of the letters of the alphabet that it worked. So I think that change being a skill is one of the big things that we get wrong about it. And then I think the second one is, I covered it a little bit, is that idea that change should just happen. If we look at one of the most well-known models of change that the behavior scientists have studied and has held up, It's called the stages of change model or the very fancy trans theoretical model of change.

8:08And it has six stages. Only one of those stages is action. But that's the stage that we almost all jump right to. And then are wondering why it doesn't why it doesn't stick, because there's a lot. There's a lot that can come before that that makes it more likely. And then there are things that can come after that. So I would say those are a couple of the big things.

8:33Jonathan Fields: Yeah, I mean, that's so interesting. I want to dive into those a little bit more. The notion of your ability to change as almost like a character trait or a character flaw. You know, if you make the assumption, well, there are those that just have this magical ability to change big things, hard things, you know, and they seem to be able to just keep doing it over and over. You know, you want to get super fit? Boom. Six months later, you are. You want to lose weight? Boom. You are. You want to change careers? Boom. You do it. And you point to those people and say, wow, they're just different from me, aren't they?

9:07Jonathan Fields: They're wired. I mean, how many times have you heard the phrase, they're just wired differently? Yeah. Right? You would just assume you have it or you don't. And so I love the notion of you basically pointing that out and saying, well, no. this is actually a set of skills and it's something that's a learnable thing rather than you know you have it or you don't type of thing so there's no real you know the idea that you know it's a character flaw if you don't have it is a misnomer because it's not a trait to start with it's not i think that those people often have a couple of different things they may have advantages that the other that others of us don't have that make change easier you know a classic example as I look back on my early recovery is I was in a position I could go to a meeting every day I could go to two meetings a day if I wanted single mothers different story right so to say that like oh Eric was able to do it easily and they weren't is not exactly comparing things that are even And then the other component is that some people just know how to do it because either they intuited it or it was modeled for them.

10:34It was modeled for them. It was encouraged for them. They were in environments that made change possible. And so then they internalized that and they went, oh, I can really change. Because that belief that I can or can't change is fundamental. If you don't believe you can, you sooner or later won't.

10:55Jonathan Fields: And I think that really does, the bigger myth here is that we all have different starting lines. We're all differently resourced. We're all different life circumstances. And when we point to somebody who is in a radically different place than us, and we try and make the direct comparison, then most times we're probably going to lose. We're just not them. We don't have their circumstances, their situation, their environment, their resources, their structural support. That second thing that you shared, though, is also really interesting. I want to tease out a little bit more. This notion that there is this existing model of change and it has six steps.

11:33Jonathan Fields: And only one of those steps is action. Because if you ask the typical person, what do I need to affect real change in life? Basically, they'd probably say, well, I just need the right plan. I need the right step. I need to know what are the steps to get me from where I am to that magical place that I want to be. If I have those steps and they're the right steps, quote right steps, well, then I'll just follow the steps. And you're saying even if those are the right steps, this is still one-sixth of what's going on. And maybe actually not even one-sixth. This is one of six, and it may not be equally weighted to the other five.

12:07And I think there's something else in there, too, because when I think I mean that the trans theoretical model is one one version of change. And like anything, it has its strengths. It has its weaknesses. I think the other thing that's really important to note, though, is that. A lot of the change advice that we get, I would say it's structural, right? Atomic Habits is largely a book about structural changes, and those are hugely important. we should make all the structural changes we can meaning we should know what we're doing we should know when we're doing it how we're doing it we should make it easy to use James' language we should make it attractive we should set up our environment we should have support we should do all of that and that does a lot of heavy lifting

12:59and even with that the moment comes where it's Tuesday morning and at Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. you're going to go for a run. Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. comes and you end up not doing it. And that is almost entirely, call it emotional, call it internal. It's something inside doesn't work. You are thinking or saying something to yourself that causes you to make the choice you wish you didn't make in that moment. And so people are often doing one of the they're doing one of two of those steps. They might be setting it up structurally, but not understanding how to work with themselves in the moment.

13:46Or they may be thinking it's all about the willpower that they bring to that moment. and i think without both it's pretty hard to change and again back to talking about people who just do it they have figured that out in their own way you know they've learned what to say to themselves in those moments when it's time to do it and you really just don't want to

14:11Jonathan Fields: so a core part of your philosophy you could even already sort of like your central thesis is this notion of little by little, a little becomes a lot. Deconstruct this for me. Take me into this. I'll start with a story. So 30 years ago, I stumbled into a detox center in Columbus, Ohio. I weighed 100 pounds. I was jaundiced from hepatitis C. I was homeless. I was a heroin addict. and the prosecutor was telling me I faced up to 50 years in prison. So I went in there and they said to me, you need to go to long-term treatment. To which I said, no thank you, and went back to my room. And in my room I had that moment we talk about oftentimes for recovery where I just saw clearly, like, if I leave this building, I am probably going to die or go to jail soon.

15:09So I went back and I said, okay, I'll go to treatment. if we were filming the movie in my life like that is the moment right like that's the thing is you know the the the strings will swell in the background the director will hang around a long time on that and sure it's an important moment but it's only important because i followed it with thousands of little off-camera moments where i chose to uh call my sponsor instead of my dealer or I took a different route home versus going past the bar or I decided to work out in the morning. And we prioritize this epiphany. We have prioritized this chain, these big moments.

15:55And it's not that they don't have value, but it's all the little moments that all accumulate. And most of us don't love that story because it's kind of boring. You know, it's kind of boring. And so little by little is an approach. And we all know it on some level. We all will say, well, Rome wasn't built in a day and you eat an elephant one bite at a time. And yet we don't really buy into it fully because when things don't change fast enough, we get discouraged. But little by little to me means something very specific. I mean low resistance actions done consistently over time in the same direction.

16:41Jonathan Fields: Let's tease out those three pieces. Yeah. So low resistance just means you can get yourself to do it. Okay. It's going to be different for different people, right? Like when I used to early on in my meditation career, it was really hard for me. It was like I'd sit down and it was like the dark circus rolled into town. And I knew other people who were like, I just feel so peaceful. It's like, what are you talking about? I've never really had that experience meditating, by the way. No, no. 15 years in, I'm waiting for it. But some people report like I like it. I did not like it. So for me to sit there for 15 minutes would be really high effort.

17:26For someone else, it might be low effort. Conversely, if I'm trying to get in shape, for me, 45 minutes on a Peloton bike may not be too much effort. But for someone else, a 10-minute walk would be high effort. So that's going to be different. So we'll actually do it. And so then, since we'll actually do it, we keep doing it, right, consistently over time. And then in the same direction is an important part. You know, shows like ours provide some wonderful things to the world. And we also just inundate people with all different ways and ideas about how and what they should change. We're not alone.

18:04Instagram does. It's everywhere. And little by little only becomes a lot if it's more or less pointing in the same way. What I think a lot of us have is just a lot of little things that are scattered all over the place. and so picking a thing or two and and really letting that get sort of steady then we can think about okay what else might we add because at some point you just can't add anymore you will find a place where you're like okay i want to do this thing this thing this thing and this thing. A lot of people will know this experience. Well, I can seem to get two of those going at any time.

18:50They vary. Maybe I'm journaling and I'm meditating, but I'm not exercising or I'm exercising, but I can't seem to meditate. And it's a lot of times that's simply an ability problem. And by ability, I mean, you just run out of time. and so being able to narrow down and pick a direction for at least a period of time is also really valuable so those are the three three parts of it yeah small enough you'll do it yeah i don't mean necessarily tiny i mean now bj fogg wrote a great book called tiny habits i don't necessarily mean only floss one tooth you might be able to floss your whole mouth right it's going to depend on who you are, but keep doing it and do it in some sort of consistent direction.

19:37Jonathan Fields: Yeah. That last piece, I mean, I'm not alone with the first one. Totally makes sense. Consistently over time. Well, of course, you know, like it builds over time and it accumulates a little bits of progress and progress. And you're like, oh, wow, this is actually turning into something the in the same direction. That's the one where I think a lot of us stumble and we don't really think about it because we're kind of like, look, we wildly overestimate the amount of energy and bandwidth that we have available to us. And then we're like, well, I am capable of trying to push these five different paths of change forward in my life, trying to accomplish these five different meaningful things all at the same time.

20:16Jonathan Fields: Like I am, I can do it. You know, it doesn't take that much. And, you know, when you do that, you know, then you're, you become so fragmented with your effort and your energy that little by little becomes teensy, teensy, teensy, teensy, teensy bit by teensy, teensy, teensy, teensy bit. And you see no progress along any of those paths, even though you're theoretically devoting a little bit of time to all of them over time. And it just becomes demoralizing. You give up and say, this just doesn't work. A hundred percent. And I think that the word you use there, demoralizing, is really important because success builds upon itself in in the world of change if we go back to the fact that most of us when we aren't successful at making the changes that we want we take it as a character flaw and we get down on ourselves that drives down motivation we know motivation goes up when we feel good about ourselves when we feel good about our chances of success and it goes down when we feel bad about ourselves and so if you are like all right i'm going to do five things each day you know pick Take your morning routine guru out there who will give you the five things you should do in your morning routine.

21:30And you do three of them consistently. You're going to still feel like you're failing because you didn't do all five. We would be much better off doing one and feeling good about it. And getting it steady. Then adding two. too, because when I work with clients, I would much rather have somebody, like let's say they're trying to meditate. I would much rather have somebody meditate for five minutes and do it every day that they say they're going to do it. Let's say they say they're going to do it Monday through Friday versus do it twice a week for 30 minutes. Now you might say that's odd because the second scenario, they're going to get 60 minutes of meditation and you're suggesting that they get 25 but the reason is because if they say they're going to do the five minutes and they do it then we can feel good about ourselves and we can build but when we're failing and we are very harsh judges when we're failing we think i can't do it and we get back to, oh God, I mean, that guy does it all the time.

22:50Why can't I? Morning routine guru number seven somehow gets through all eight of these things every morning. And so that's another reason it's so important is like, let's pick what we can do, be successful and build.

23:10Jonathan Fields: And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

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24:49Jonathan Fields: One of the things that we tend to focus on also when we're looking at doing something bigger, making a meaningful change, is we look at the habits that we have or that we don't have or that we want to build to help us get there. And habits has become such a huge focus for so many people. Not that there's something wrong with actually examining your habits and building the structure around them, But you make an interesting argument that says, okay, so let's say habits matter. It's a part of the puzzle here. But before we build habits, we also have to look at values. We have to ask the question, what's worth wanting?

25:22Jonathan Fields: Why do we need to start there? well i have a lot to say about habits and it's a term i've used in my own work on and off for years and i have a couple things one is we have we all have a lot of habits and a lot of them aren't really beneficial they may not be bad but they're not a habit is something that happens automatically right and so we're entranced by the idea of our good behaviors happening automatically. That would be lovely, wouldn't it? I just never would have to try. It wouldn't be hard ever again. I don't think that really happens generally, not with any behavior that's big enough to matter.

26:04But the other problem, the downside of habit is that we just repeat it without really thinking much about it, which means if you've thought about what's important to you and you've built your life around that, then some degree of momentum is really valuable. But if you've drifted off course to some degree, and you've just got these background patterns running, that's problematic. And that's why kind of going back to like, what really matters to me? What do I want? the second chapter in the book is about this idea of values and desires. And that chapter almost broke me. It was my second chapter.

26:50I didn't know what I was doing. I ended up writing something like 60 ,000 words before that chapter got anywhere useful. So you answered the question, right?

27:01Jonathan Fields: Like what's worth wanting? Because, yeah, like what? I just want to be done with this chapter. Yeah, exactly. I just because when you start looking around inside, there's a lot going on in here. You know, we are motivationally complex creatures. You know, I've done a podcast for years that say, like, we have two wolves inside of us, right? Feed the good one. But that is a radical oversimplification for what all happens inside of us. We want lots of things. Then you start you start working with psychologists. You start rolling in words like needs and and all. So I try to simplify it down. I try to say, okay, let's just kind of go to values and desires.

27:45Values are the things that we decide are worth wanting. Desires are what we just want. They just show up. And we end up now, then with that, we end up with two kind of clashes. the first is the common we all know desire you know i have a desire that's competing with a value i want to be healthy but i want to eat or you know i i want to be healthy but i also want to eat this donut right that's a value to desire clash and those are those take a lot of effort the question i pose in the book the thing i think that clarifies those and helps is what do i want most versus what do I want now? So the harder problem though is values to values clashes.

28:37This is where it gets tricky because you might value writing a work of fiction, while you might also value making a new table, while you might also value keeping the good life project going, right? Then it gets tricky because these are all things that are worth wanting. and we have to do some of the hard work of of being able to say like what what am i actually capable of doing you know what i in my coaching work one of the things i used to do with people that in the beginning i thought this is terrible like i'm i'm not doing a good job was that i ended up like we ended up i felt like i was killing half their dreams right but what we were doing was going like, okay, we can't do all of this.

29:30You can keep trying to do all of it, but it's not working. We have to pick.

29:38And we have to, and we also have to recognize that these conflicts, they exist, right? Almost anybody who's a parent has a little bit of a, I value my career and I value my family. And those things are off. There's a, there's a degree of opposition in those. and all we can do is be cognizant of them as,

30:04as, as attention that we're going to have to navigate and dance with.

30:09Jonathan Fields: We focus so much on habits, but you know, you make this argument that says we really actually, there's a step before that, which is really asking the question, what, what's worth wanting? Um, you know, and it's interesting because I do, I've seen values conflicts come up in my own life and I've had so many conversations with people about this over the years and one of the most common ones that I've seen is a value conflict between a value around financial stability and freedom of expression yeah you know so someone's like I want to provide for my family I want to have money in the bank I want to know I have a secure future.

30:47Jonathan Fields: And I just want to be an artist. I don't, I want the freedom to just do the work that I want to do. I want to paint. I want to write. I want to do all of these things. And yet in my mind, I know that very few people are ever able to actually support themselves, let alone a family doing this thing, right? These things to me are both worth wanting. They both make me feel a certain sense of aliveness and fullness and joy and meaning. yet they seem to be in conflict you know so so like and it's thorny like there's no easy well this is what you do to resolve that yeah i think you're right there is no easy answer to this it would be nice to not have to make a living at all not have to worry about it but that vanishingly few people have that at the same time vanishingly few people do so well that they just don't even have to care like they do so well at their art that they don't even have to care the vast majority of people were making trade-offs you know we're making trade-offs there's there's you know there's a lot of great artists over time if you really look who who continue to do who continue to work like a normal job and do their art.

32:08I still, I've been doing the podcast full-time for six years, and I don't make remotely what I made as a software executive. Still, I make enough. Like, I live, I mean, I have a good, I mean, I'm not saying, like, I'm a starving artist. I'm not. and I was at that stage in my career where they just start giving you stupid money and I don't that that's not where I'm at and I have my moments where I think huh was that the right choice now it unquestionably was I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to do what I do full-time and the and the freedom that it gives me but there's a trade-off right I am valuing that freedom over financial success for sure you know it's definitely a trade-off and i

33:02Jonathan Fields: think sometimes we those it's it's a dynamic trade-off right so like those are the things where we have to keep revisiting them over time yes and saying do i still feel the way that i felt and is the trade-off is is the decision that i made six months ago a year ago three years ago five years ago, is it still working for me? Have the circumstances of my life changed? Has my inner life changed in a way where it's still letting me experience life the way that I want to experience? Or is it time to make some changes? Years ago, I interviewed a guy named Matthew Krosman. He's a professor at Yale. He teaches a class called, I think it's called The Life Worth Living.

33:42Jonathan Fields: And he said, this is basically the most frustrating class that these students will ever take because the entire class is questions with no answers. And probably the central question in the class was what's worth wanting. Yeah. And he's like, we rarely ever visit that question, you know, and the answer to it is going to change over time. We have a lot of people telling us what's worth wanting. And we often adopt what they tell us as the answer because it's just easier to accept that rather than to sit there and discern what actually for me in this moment in my life, what is worth wanting? And is it the same thing that I'm being told I should want?

34:26Jonathan Fields: And those are often very different answers. And we're so impressionable. I tell a story in the book one day of I was in Atlanta when I was driving. I would go to a library there to work and was driving through Buckhead in Atlanta. And there's a lot of trees in Buckhead, which is one notable thing about it. The other notable thing about it are there are enormous house after enormous house after. It just goes on and it goes on. And I'm talking like huge, huge houses to the point I'm like, how is this even possible? Like, who has this, you know, money? And so I find myself doing that drive. And that day I'm starting to get the.

35:11What's wrong with me that I don't have that? The envy is starting to kick in. And at that moment, I paused and I listened to what was coming through the radio. and it was a band called the Gaslight Anthem. And they're a band that you might say, they head towards like a punk ethos kind of thing. And, you know, I was really into punk rock as a kid. And, you know, if it has an ethos, it's about authenticity and about being yourself and doing what you want to do. And I just noticed that like, here within like 20 seconds of each other, I want this thing. And then I hear this that reminds me, I want this thing.

35:54And if I were to go work in a software startup company all the time, my desires and what I want would be shaped by that environment. We're impressionable creatures. So yeah, continuing to reflect on what do I want? It's really hard work. I love that idea. I love what that professor said. Like, there's no answers to this. I just got done doing a podcast with a guy before who kept sort of being like, well, what do you tell somebody? I'm like, I don't know what to tell. I have no answer. Like, you know, are they spending enough time with their family or are they spending too much time at work? How would I possibly answer that question for another human being?

36:35But it sure would be nice if somebody would.

36:38Jonathan Fields: Yeah, we'd all love somebody else to tell us what the appropriate answer is for us in our lives at this moment in time. A hundred percent. But it just doesn't work that way. No, it does not. We have to sit with it, and often we have to sit with it for a long time, and it changes over time. Which brings up another thing that's sort of like one of the key elements of your approach to change, which is the notion of self-compassion. It's this idea that so many of us, especially if we get an idea in our head where we want to become this thing or accomplish this thing or change into this, right? And we attach a sense of ego and identity to it.

37:17Jonathan Fields: Especially if we have actually had some level of success in different domains of life before. We've been able to do the thing or achieve, you know, get the golden ring, whatever it may be. And then we look at this one domain where we really want to experience change. It's not coming easily. And we are hard on ourselves. we are just endlessly unkind to ourselves when it comes to us dropping into a change process and not just blinking and seeing it happen yeah i mean besides stopping abusing drugs uh no change in my life has been more beneficial than learning to be kinder to myself i mean it is far and away the best upgrade to my life i've ever given myself just because right we spent who do i spend the most time with me, you know, and I'm glad, you know, it's nice to not have an asshole in there all the time.

38:14So it's just good to do on and of its in and of itself. But it's actually pretty critical to the change process also. Because, as I said earlier, change is about learning, particularly if you can't, if you're not figuring out how to make the change. It's because you haven't, something hasn't been figured out yet. You know, I always would say to coaching clients like we are going to treat this like a puzzle. Puzzles have solutions. It may take us a while to figure it out, but it's a puzzle. But we have to be able to learn. And when we are really hard on ourselves, we don't learn, right? We shut, we get, because being hard on ourselves revs up our emotional system, which just makes us not as capable of asking, well, what went wrong there?

39:08What could I have done differently? It's mostly like, oh God, what's wrong with me? I'll never change. I mean, all the drama. I have this, I have a framework in the book about what happens when we get off track because everybody does. And I've got a little framework and one of them is called neutralize the emotional drama, like when you get off track, because it stops us from being able to learn. And so self-compassion is really important in that way. Now, a lot of people will say, look, look, I've made a lot, I have accomplished a lot by being hard on myself. And they're right. Because that, that, that really angry inner voice is a kind of fuel.

39:54but it but i heard somebody once say it's a dirty fuel it burns dirty and it gunks up the engine and my experience is i start seeing it in people in their 30s 40s and 50s that maybe they got by doing that before but it suddenly no longer works that being so hard on themselves and it takes a lot of work to kind of unwind that it's a it is a thought pattern that gets pretty deeply embedded but I do believe that thought patterns can change. The good news is they can change. The bad news is they take a while. It takes a pretty pronounced effort to like unwind a thought pattern that's had its way of running for 30 years.

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43:22Jonathan Fields: It is wild, right? Because so many of us get to a point where we have had this script, you know, deepening neural grooves in our brain for decades. And then we become aware of it. And then we become aware of how it's limiting us and the way that we want to live and be in the world. And then I think, okay, now that I've seen it, now I'm aware of it, I'm a sentient being with a certain amount of ability and willpower, and now I should just be able to change this. I should be able to wake up tomorrow and re-groove my brain and change my behavior and start just living differently in the world. Not acknowledging that it took three decades to get there.

44:03Yeah, it did.

44:04Jonathan Fields: It's going to take a minute longer, you know, to actually change that. Yeah, I actually have a method in the book that I think is, I mean, right, we've all we've done so many of these podcasts, you and I, we're all repeating things again and again, right? Like, we're being reminded of the things we need to know. But I do feel like I do offer something new in this area. And it's something I call the still point method. Because I started to think about, like, how do you change a thought pattern? you can't change it by thinking about it once a day. So what happens for most of us is we don't remember and we don't do it frequently enough.

44:51So the still point method is that we use the science of behavior change that has things called prompts or triggers. Like we get reminded to do something. So let's say you're working on being more patient. you could set an alarm on your phone to go off four times a day where you reflect on patients. Now, any one of those is invaluable or any one of those has no value. It just doesn't even matter. But four of them a day starts to add up. So I'll give an example from my own life. I, back when I still worked in the software business, every day when I would walk from my house to my car, my car to my office and reverse route, I would do this little thing where I would just say, what are five things I can see right now?

45:43What are five things I can feel right now? What are five things that I can hear right now? Again, doing that one time, sure, it's lovely, right? Whatever, who cares? But doing that four times a day, five days a week, month after month, my ability to be present deepened tremendously. So what we need, if we're going to change a thought pattern, is to have it interrupted frequently enough that we can then do it. So again, another one could be, I have a still point. We actually have an app. So if you pre-order the book, you can get this app that randomly does these. they do these sort of your phone dings at you and and you you do the little still point like one is to ask us just to do it and when it goes off just ask ourselves for a second like what am i thinking what am i feeling takes 10 seconds but if we do that more often we can eventually build to sort of the holy grail of these and the holy grail is that you can capture you can capture it when it's happening.

46:51But if I'm asking myself five times a day what I'm thinking and feeling briefly, just seconds, it's more likely that when I start to spin out, I'm going to catch it.

47:03Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, and that lands as really practical to me. And it also gets to one of the things that you talk about, which is, it's the notion of presence. And it's sort of like the overlap of awareness and presence you know like we the more we can be present and how we're actually showing up and in those scripts that just run whether they're emotional or thought scripts um or behavioral you know generally it's all the above you know that a big part is your ability to become present in the moment and aware of what's actually happening rather than what you wish were happening or you're completely unaware of what's happening because we can't affect anything until we're aware of what's real and what's not real so that's like if it's the foundation of change i feel like it really is i mean it is the foundation to be able to change things um particularly things that are habits in the bad sense like awareness is critically critically important if we're trying to add new things, the good news is if we do the structural parts of change that we talked about well enough, we get ourselves to choice points, right?

48:23We get ourselves to the point where we know what the choice we want to make is. And then what we're able to do is we don't have to examine all of our life for like, what, what wrong? We don't need to hire a Jungian therapist for four years, right? We can zoom in and go in that moment that I, instead of getting on the exercise bike, I chose to continue to scroll Instagram. Like what was I thinking and feeling in that moment? So the structural actually brings us to a choice point where we can focus more easily on the emotional or thought pattern. And it's really practical in that way. Because otherwise what What happens for a lot of us is we never get to the choice point, which means that we're vaguely procrastinating and we are looking at like, what is wrong with me globally?

49:13Right. And if what we're trying to do is take a behavior, that's not the moment to solve all our deep seated emotional problems. We don't have to. We just have to get skillful enough to talk to ourselves in a way that gets us over the hump.

49:27Jonathan Fields: If we zoom the lens out and we take a really big step back in time, you know, you look at your life now versus 25, 30 years ago when you were deep in addiction, what feels most different to you now? I'll tell you a story because it's a story that still, even after I've written it and told it, sort of astounds me. And, you know, I had been picking them up for a couple months without even really thinking about it. I'd wait in line at the pharmacy I'd get the little paper sack with a stapled prescription I'd put them in the passenger seat of the car and I'd drive them to my mom's and I'd take them up and I'd give them to her she had fallen and what I'm talking about are opiates Oxycontin to be specific like the good stuff 30 years ago I might have robbed you at gunpoint for that 30 years ago I was helpless.

50:32I destroyed my entire life to get what was sitting right there in the passenger seat. And I tell that story not to brag or show off. I tell it to say, like, holy mackerel, we can really change. You know, we are really capable. You know, I would have thought I'm an addict. I have an addict personality.

50:59right not really because now i'm taking you know and so i that is a that is a sign to what little by little over a long period of time achieved a completely different consciousness one that doesn't even make sense to me because it was it took me a month before i even had the thought that i was doing it that's how you know it's how they were like a loaf of bread to me i didn't think about them. And so that would be kind of what I would say zooming out is we are really capable of immense change. We really are. But it takes time.

51:41Jonathan Fields: It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So I have asked you this question before. It was quite a while ago. So I'll ask it again, because time has changed in this container of Good Life Project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up right now for me i am really focusing on something that i learned early in recovery and it's been in many ways what i've worked on all these years and there's a line in the abo book that says selfishness self-centeredness that we think is the root of our problem and that's a little bit of strong language i get that and yet i think it's still true for me that that my life is best the less I focus on myself and the more I focus on the people and the world around me and so to me a good life is really one where the changes that I'm making make me better and happier but also are good for the world and the other people in it.

52:53And a good life is where I figure out how to do both of those things.

52:57Jonathan Fields: Thank you. Hey, before you leave, don't miss next week's episode. I'll be talking with Arthur Brooks about the meaning of life and practical science-backed ways to find purpose and discover your deepest calling. Be sure to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young, Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts.

53:32Jonathan Fields: If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still here. Do me a personal favor, a seven-second favor, and share it with just one person. If you want to share it with more, hey, that's awesome, but just one person, and even then invite them to talk with you about what you both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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