The One You Feed - A Journey to Self Discovery and Sobriety with Matthew Quick

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

In this episode, Matthew Quick shares his insights of his journey to self-discovery and sobriety. His experience in Jungian analysis provides a unique perspective for listeners. Matthew also offers his profound understanding of the role of the psyche in personal development, overcoming addiction, and navigating creative blocks. In this episode, you will be able to: Understand shame and its effect on interactions with others Explore the concept of individuation and self-awareness Balance intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in creative work Understand unconscious motivations behind addictive behaviors and the need for comfort and security Embrace the delicate balance between seeking external recognition and staying true to internal creative impulses To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We live in a culture where people want to hear, oh, it's easy, you know, pay 10 bucks and you can get a pill and you'll be fine. Or, you know, just take this seminar one weekend and everything will be okay for the rest of your life, you know, and that's not really the case. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.

We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast,

or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Matthew Quick, an American writer of adult and young adult fiction. You may know his name from his debut novel, The Silver Linings Playbook, which became a huge New York Times bestseller and was adapted into a 2012 movie of the same name. He's penned many books since and was a finalist for the 2009 Penn Hemingway Award. His work has been translated into, I think, over 30 languages.

Today, Eric and Matthew discuss various things, including his well-known substack that Eric insists is the greatest one ever. It's called There Will Be Mistakes. Hi, Matthew. Welcome to the show. Hey, Eric. It's great to be back. Thanks for having me. I don't know how many times this is, maybe four, possibly five. I don't know. I should check this because I have a suspicion you are the most frequent guest ever to the one you feed. I could be wrong about that, but I think that's a factor of having talked to you a long, long time ago for the first time. Yeah. We've been talking, having this conversation for, I don't know, it's probably getting close to 10 years now. Yeah. Yeah. Getting there. Yeah.

Ginny and I were reflecting recently on a trip to Cleveland that we took. And in that trip to Cleveland, you were there for a book event and we came by your hotel room. And I remember that trip to Cleveland, you were there for a book event. That's right. And we came by your hotel room, and I remember that trip fondly. So welcome back. Hi, Derek. We'll start, though, like we always do, with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild, and they say, in life, 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 bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second and they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, I've been thinking about this parable for quite some time, you know, over those 10 years of conversation that we've had. And I really appreciate the show because it's given me a chance to allow my thoughts to evolve on this. And lately I've been thinking a lot about how we co-create experiences with other people.

And so like what we bring to the world ends up shaping the world for us, you know? So if we're angry all the time, we're probably going to make people around us angry. If we're laughing, the people around us are more likely to laugh. And so in the work that I've been doing lately, I've been thinking about what am I bringing to the world and thinking about this kind of good wolf, bad wolf parable as taking place inside of me, but also taking place outside of me as well. And so what am I feeding other people? What am I allowing to escape my psyche?

You know, what am I putting into the world? And how is that creating the world that I'm experiencing and other people are experiencing when they're with me? So I think when I first started listening to the show, I was really kind of focused on, you know, heavily what's going on with me, what's going on with me, and I'm still very focused on that. But I think lately, and particularly recently, I've been thinking more about how am I creating the world around me

by letting out of me what's going on in my psyche. And so I think that's another way to frame, like, this idea of good wolf, bad wolf. What are we creating? You know, what's the product of that? And how is that quote good or bad? So something I'm going to be doing a little more often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but only if combined with action and integration. So before we move on, I'd like to ask you, what's coming up for you as you listen to this? Are there any things you're currently doing that are feeding your bad wolf

that might make sense to remove? Or any things you could do to feed your good wolf that you're not currently doing? So if you have the headspace for it, I'd love if you could just pause for a second and ask yourself, what's one thing I could do today or tonight to feed my good wolf? Whatever your thing is, a really useful strategy can be having something external, a prompt or a friend or a tool that regularly nudges you back towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year, I've been sending little good wolf reminders to some of my friends and community members. Just quick little SMS messages two times per week that give them a little bit of wisdom and remind them to pause

for a second and come off autopilot. If you want, I can send them to you too. I do it totally for free and people seem to really love them. Just drop your information at oneufeed.net slash SMS and I can send them to you. It's totally free. And if you end up not liking the little reminders, you can easily opt out. That's when you feed dot net slash SMS. And now back to the episode. That's interesting because there were two themes that I was interested in talking about to you. One was community in general. And the second was in the world of Jungian analysis, which I think we'll spend a fair amount of time on. There's a couple of ideas that I wanted to explore,

and one is really around individuation. And I wanted to talk about how individuation affects and interacts with the world around us. And I also wanted to talk about an idea that I think is a Jungian idea of submitting to your fate. And I wanted to discuss what does that mean? I've been thinking a lot lately. I've been reading existentialists because I'm a cheerful guy. over the years, which is, you know, they reject sort of this idea of essentialism, meaning that there's some essence of me that is fixed or that is determined or that is in any way exclusively mine and that it is sort of co-created. I like that you use that word. It is co-created by the choices I make, the people I interact with, the world that's around me. It is a completely evolving thing. And so I kind of wanted to ask a question from the perspective of Jungian analysis. What is your understanding of the psyche or the self? Because that's a key idea in Jungian analysis. And I kind of wanted to just see if you could describe what that is a little bit for a

second. Yeah. So I'll start by saying I've been in analysis for, it's coming up on four years and I've been interested in Jung, but I'm not an expert on Jung by any stretch of the imagination. I'm still very much a learner. But based on what I've learned in analysis and from reading, the psyche is kind of your soul, like everything that goes on inside of you. Whereas the self in Jungian terms, the way I understand it is almost what you might think of as God or like a higher power. It doesn't have to be specific to any one denomination, but this idea that something

larger than you is taking an interest in you and trying to help you not get to some good place in life, but to get you to be the truest manifestation of who you are, which goes to Jung's idea of individuation, which as I understand it is exactly that, like bringing out the truest manifestation of who you are and trusting that there's a purpose for you to be that way. It gets tricky because, you know, as times change, the idea of morality changes, like what is good, what is bad, like that's ever shifting. And, you know, the way that I understand the Jungian journey is that it's not really interested in those types of questions. Analyst is constantly saying to me, take the morality out of it.

You know, so if I say to him, like, I don't know what to do, is this the right thing or the wrong thing? He'll often say, like, what's the thing that your psyche is calling you to do? What are you programmed to do? And this idea of trusting that there's a reason for you to want to be that way. It gets tricky because of course, if you're programmed to do awful things, which some people are, it brings up hard questions, you know, like, is there a purpose for somebody to do something that you think of as immoral or, you know, flat out wrong? But I think one of the things I'm learning with my Jungian journey is to relegate ego and ego wants to, for me anyway, like my conscious attitude, it's very concerned with knowing the truth or knowing what's wrong, right or wrong,

because I don't want to look bad in front of other people. And so when I relegate that and say, I'm never going to figure out all of the mysteries of the universe, I'm never going to know all of the answers. The only thing I can do is get in touch with who I am as a person and who I was meant to be before I accrued all of the hits and all of the damage of childhood and the letdowns and everything else in life. If I could get back to that place where I go back to the original, you know, kind of DNA or seed information of who I am, I have to trust that there was a purpose that I was supposed to be that way. And that if I follow that path, I will manifest that into the world.

Now, that might not be exactly what my conscious attitude or my ego might want. But the idea is that there is some higher calling or some higher truth that you're serving by letting go of your conscious attitude and ego. And you need to follow that. The other idea too, is that in the psyche, there's the conscious and the unconscious, you know, so Jung is very famous for talking about the collective unconscious. And in Jungian analysis, we're always trying to raise the unconscious to consciousness. So one of the ways that we do this is by keeping a dream diary and writing down dreams every night and looking at those dreams

almost like we would analyze a novel or a fairy tale or a myth. And you're looking at what unconscious is trying to show you that you're not aware of. So in the dream analysis, if you think you know what the dream is about, you probably don't. That's a Jungian response. So when I write down my dreams and I bring them to my analysts, we talk about what they symbolically mean to me in a way that we're trying to raise information that I haven't consciously been thinking about through symbolism, through narratives, so that I can get in touch with all of the stuff that I've

repressed so that I can integrate it and be fully me. I throw a lot out there. No, it's great. It's funny. As you know, and I guess some listeners have heard of this point, I'm at work on a book and I was writing part of a chapter yesterday where I was exploring this idea. I'm working on sort of values and desires and how they are different and the same. And when you hear people talk about values, you know, there's this sense of sort of what you said, who you're meant to be or what you believe most deeply. And what's interesting is that, you know, there's an original encoding we had from DNA. But from the second we were conceived, we had from DNA. But from the second we were conceived, we began to have experiences, which began to shape who we are. And so I guess that's kind of the question I always get hung up

on is like, well, who's the truest me? Is there such a thing? Right? Or is there simply the me that has evolved through every single experience and moment that I've had. And at what point do you go back far enough where you're like, okay, there's the essence, right? Or there's me before it was corrupted by the world, before it was influenced by the world. I think you'd have to go back to before you were conceived almost to be at a point where you were not shaped by experience. But at some point you do have to be able to say like, as near as I can tell, this is the version of me that is most closely aligned to what feels like who I am, even though that who I am is a constantly evolving process. But the

line of inquiry that I just took us down is not a particularly fruitful one because it leaves you paralyzed. Like, well, okay, then what do I do with that? I think most people come to Jungian analysis, or at least I did anyway, because you are paralyzed. Jungian thought is something that most people get to in midlife. My analyst recently said, you know, it's not really for children. And one of the reasons is, is that you have to build up kind of your false self for the first half of your life. And then the second half of your life in Jungian terms is for finding out who you really are. And so, how do we build up the false self? Well, you know, when we're kids, if we're lucky, we have people around us that narcissistically mirror us in a proper way. It's like when my five-year-old nephew or my seven-year-old niece brings me a

picture that they have just created, I don't give them my real opinion about the quality of their art. I say, oh, that's wonderful. Like, that's fantastic. Look how pretty that flower is. What's that over there? Oh, that's a house. That's wonderful. It's so great. And so, I narcissistically mirror them. And what I'm telling them is I'm saying like, you are okay exactly as you are. But for a lot of us, you know, particularly in the recovery community, I'm coming up on six years sober. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't get that narcissistic mirroring when you're a kid, you know, you're told, what is that stupid picture you just made? Or don't do this, or, you know, your natural expression is wrong. And then you spend the next,

don't do this or, you know, your natural expression is wrong. And then you spend the next, you know, 20, 30 years trying to figure out how to make people who don't like who you are okay around you by creating a persona. And so, a lot of times people use the word persona pejoratively, you know, they use it in a negative way. But in Jungian thought, like the persona is just the mask you wear to get through your day. If that's working well and you're aware that you have a mask on, there's no problem. The problem is that when you create this mask and you don't know it's a false self, that's when it's the problem. And so for me, particularly as a young man, and especially when I was drinking heavily, I was just trying to stay afloat. Like, I was just trying to stay alive. I wasn't consciously thinking about what I was doing

and why I was doing it. I was just doing whatever made me feel okay or made me feel safe in the moment. And then it wasn't until in my early 40s, I woke up and started to think, you know, why am I doing all these things? And why do I feel like something's screaming inside of me? You know, that also coincided with getting sober as well. So, you know, you had the drink to kind of calm down that screaming voice inside of you so you can keep doing the act. But then once I stopped drinking, I couldn't do the act anymore. And then it was, well, why am I doing this act? And all of these

questions that we're getting into. So again, it's not that these things are wrong. We hear this term narcissist all the time and people throw it around at everybody. Like, oh, that's a narcissist. Let's get away from that person. They're evil or they're bad or they're a pariah because they're a narcissist. But a narcissist, as damaging as it can be to be around, you know, somebody who's a malignant narcissist, that's just a little kid that was never reinforced. That was just a little kid that was abused a long time ago and never got to go through this process of correcting that. And so, it's interesting lately too, particularly with the internet, how you see all these psychological terms weaponized. And I think that's particularly damaging because what we're doing is we're othering those people and we're projecting all the things that we don't want to see about ourselves onto a target so that no one will look at those things that are in us.

And we never look inside. And so the path to health is, you know, not to be saying, look at that narcissist over there who's so awful, but to say, where is the narcissism in me? Because every single person on the planet has some degree of narcissism. Like, you need narcissism to be healthy. You know, it's a spectrum. So where are those things in me?

Where am I the person that's letting people down? How am I creating these situations that I find so uncomfortable? So one of the things that's difficult about Jungian analysis is that you're never really looking at the world out there. You're constantly turning the camera back on you and you're doing the work inside of you so that you can go out in the world and co-create a better world for not everyone else, but also so that you are experiencing this relief so that I can walk out into the world without being drunk and survive. But all of that work is inside. And I think that's really been kind of a second half of life thing as well. Because I think when you're

young, you just don't know. And we're constantly projecting our worst fears out into the culture. And we're constantly scapegoating people and targeting people. And I think it takes some maturity to come back around and say, oh, no, it's not all of those people out there. It's us. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you

all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging really that's the opening really no really yeah really no really go to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think that's such an interesting thing to sort out in any situation. What about this situation is completely internal and the work that needs to be done is completely internal?

And when is it external? So, I mean, take narcissism, for example. Actually, narcissism is maybe an extreme example. A simpler example is I have a boss I don't particularly like. So the question then becomes, well, do I stay in a job with have a boss I don't particularly like. So the question then becomes, well, do I stay in a job with a boss that I don't particularly like and work on my own reactions to that boss to get to a point where maybe I have a different relationship with them? It's internal. Or do I go, life's too short to be in a working relationship with somebody who

you really don't like. And that's always such an interesting distinction. But I think that regardless, there is always the need to do that internal looking before you make the outside world the problem. At least that's been my experience. And, you know, I was fortunate to burn my life to the ground through substances far earlier than you did. And so in 12 step programs, we were taught this idea right away. And it was this idea that resentments were, they called them the number one offender. The thing that would get you drunk faster than anything else was a resentment. And it was this constant saying, the problem's out there, the problem's out there, the problem's out there. Instead of going, okay, what ways have I contributed to this situation, to this problem?

And that way of thinking, I think, just has luckily for me gotten sort of baked in over time so that it's where I start. I start from that place and then, you know, proceed to is the problem out there. But it's always such an interesting thing. And I love the word you used earlier, which is co-creation. Usually in any situation, it's not like all the other person's fault or all our fault. We have co-created something together. I have a big role in that. And my role is the only thing that I can change. I can't change their role. By turning internal in that way, we put the sort of locus of control back inside us. I think so.

That was a long response. Yeah. And I think, you know, the tricky thing in terms of the Jungian work I do is becoming conscious of all the unconscious ways that we affect people. And so, my analyst is always saying, you know, that boss that you don't like, when you walk into the room with that boss that you don't like, if you don't like that boss, the expression on your face is going to be saying to the boss, I don't like you. And you might be sighing at something he does or you might be tapping your foot or your body language might be a certain way. And so, if you're going into a room and your attitude is I don't like you and I hate working for you, how is your boss going to react?

It's a dance that you're co-creating. And so the other question is, why don't you like the boss? You know, and your boss could be objectively horrible, but it's easy enough for most people to, like you said, to get another job. So why are you staying there is the question. And also, what is the hook in your boss that really gets you? You know, so in, in Jungian thought, when we talk about projection, we talk about hooks. So there might be a little thing on somebody that there's like a nice little hook for

you to hang, like all of that stuff that you don't want to admit about yourself. So I'm not bossy with my coworkers. My boss is the one that's bossing everybody around or, you know, whatever this thing is. I'm not treating people unfairly. It's my boss that I'm not being judgmental. You know, it's my boss that is judging everyone. So, whatever that hook is, the work is, you know, becoming aware of that. And also, you know, thinking long and hard, if you hate your boss, like, well, why haven't I put that resume out there? Why haven't I gone to get, is there some part of me that wants to be in a relationship with somebody that I hate?

And like asking those questions are uncomfortable because it takes your boss off of the hot seat and puts you onto the hot seat. Precisely. And that's where you always have control over. It's not a fun experience. And that's where you always have control over. It's not a fun experience. You know, I can say firsthand that I'm conscious looking at all the things that you don't want to admit about yourself.

It's not fun work, but it is important work. And it's hard work. And it takes a long time. So listener, consider this your halfway through the episode integration reminder. Remember, knowledge is power, but only if combined with action and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause and reflect.

What's your one big insight so far and how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously, just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop and be present, can't it? If you want to keep this momentum going that you built with this little exercise, I'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life. And they're a helpful way to not get lost in the busyness and forget what is important. You can join at OneYouFeed.net slash SMS. And if you don't like them, you can get off the list

really easily. So far, there are over 1,172 others from the One You Feed community on the list, and we'd love to welcome you as well. So head on over to oneyoufeed.net slash SMS, and let's feed our good wolves together. I'd like to pivot a little bit, but it's going to take us back into the same territory again, which is talking about something you've been pretty open about. I think your most recent Substack talks about it, but you've shared this in different ways over the years since you got sober, which is that you're having a very difficult time writing fiction. You were really blocked for a long time and then you managed to sort of

overcome that and get out. We are the light. And at least in conversations you and I've had, you continue to remain pretty stuck on writing fiction. And something you wrote in the most recent Substack, and I highly recommend your Substack, it's a great one, is that you were talking about how not being able to write fiction fills you with this degree of shame. And you use a line that I love, which is it basically sucks the light out of you. So you're unable to interact with people at the end of the day. That's happening. And yet at the same time, you're also saying to your analysts and recognizing like, but my life is objectively great. Like I have a great wife, you know, I live in a beautiful place, you know, I'm doing this sort of work, you know, even if I'm not being

successful at it, my career has been in something I love, right? I mean, there's so many good things in your life. And so before we go into maybe some of the reasons why you might be blocked, I just love to hear you talk a little bit about how you're balancing or how you're working with those two energies. The one that says, oh, this is killing me. And the other that says, but my life is really good in every other way. Well, the first thing that comes to mind, I talk with my analysts about this a lot, killing me. And the other that says, but my life is really good in every other way. Well, the first thing that comes to mind, I talk with my analysts about this a lot, is sense of mission or purpose. And I think it's easy to quiet that voice. What is my purpose? What is my mission? When your career is going well, when you're publishing regularly,

when money's coming in, when you're being recognized and people are saying really kind things about you in public. It's kind of easy to outsource the inner motivation. Oh, look at all this affirmation I'm getting. I must be doing something really important. I think the harder work is when your psyche or the self or higher power or whatever, you know, starts asking you to do work that might not be as readily praised or, you know, might be work that is difficult for you to do, you know, might make you face things that you don't want to admit, that you're not sure that you want to put into the world. That's when it gets hard. And I think the past couple of years, you know, particularly without alcohol, since I stopped drinking, you know, the creative act is, I think, the way that some artists

do it. There's creating, you know, genre or, you know, if you're writing a spy mystery or something, there's kind of like a pattern that you do it in. But if you're just writing from the heart, if you're just writing from the soul, if you're just creating something that comes from your own psychic material, putting that into the world can be a terrifying thing because you don't know what's coming back. And to take it back to an earlier conversation, it can really put you in a young place where you're the five-year-old kid drawing the picture and you're holding it up to the world and you don't know what the reactions would be. Are you going to get the Uncle Matthew reaction where it's like, oh, that's a great photo. Like, good job. Like, you know, you should keep doing this. Or are you going to get somebody on Goodreads who says, this book sucks one star,

you know, I hate you. You know, that's a funny way to look at it. But I think subconsciously, that five-year-old kid is always in you. And I think for a long time, my response was, well, just get the five-year-old kid drunk and he'll be knocked offline inside. And I won't have to worry about that response. So when I would drink a lot of alcohol, you know, I would write all day and I wouldn't be drinking. But I would start to write something and I would think, well, anyone like this? Or is this good? Or do I have talent? And then I would say, well, just get drunk and you will stop thinking about all of those questions. And all of those needs will just be muted.

And that's what I did. I would wake up the next morning and I would go right into my work and I wouldn't think and I would just channel whatever needed to come out of me quite nicely. And at the end of the day, when I said, what is this thing that I've created? Is anyone going to love me for it? Am I going to make my, I would just start drinking and that the alcohol would just wipe all of that away. And so, you know, it was something that worked for me and it works for a lot of creative people, but sitting here, I don't recommend it. The consequences were too high. And so now I'm doing this creative act, you know, over the last, I don't know, six years in a way that is infinitely

harder because I don't have the magic juice that takes away all of those complicated feelings. And I have to do the art and then sit with those complicated feelings and make sense of them and talk to the inner little boy inside of me and negotiate these strange conversations with the younger inner me saying, you need to make the picture even though if you put it out, and I'm going to put it out into the world. And there might be hundreds of thousands of people that tell you we shouldn't have made the picture, but we have to do that anyway. But having those conversations and allowing that inner child to mature, and for me to mature into a healthy person who isn't dependent on all of those outer reactions, it's tough work. That's work that should have happened a long time ago.

For me, it's required a lot of courage. And it's also taken up a lot of bandwidth that I suddenly needed to manage my analysis and all of this mental health stuff that I wasn't using when I was just writing novels and getting drunk at the end of the night. All of my bandwidth was going to the creative act. And that was pretty much it. And then the rest of me was just getting obliterated and going offline until the next time it was to have the creative act and that was pretty much it. And then the rest of me was just getting obliterated and going offline until the next time it was to have the creative act. So, you know,

I know I'm not really selling sobriety or Jungian analysis, which is kind of funny, but I also think that's part of the problem, you know, because we live in a culture where people want to hear, oh, it's easy, you know, pay 10 bucks and you can get a pill and you'll be fine. Or, you know, just take this seminar one weekend and everything will be okay for the rest of your life, you know, and that's not really the case. You know, most of the voices that I hear that I trust and feel honest to me are voices that are saying, this is going to be the hardest thing you ever do, but you need to do it anyway. And you're going to be better off in the long run for it. And I think that has given me a sense of purpose and mission personally, you know, to get sober,

to start being healthy, to start psychologically taking care of myself and interacting with other people in a way that I can respect. But I think the next step for me is, you know, all of this personal integrity and all this work I'm doing alone in analysis or alone in a room. I think the next step is taking that out into the world and having conversations like the one we're having here and allowing that to blossom in new ways. Because for the last six years, you know, besides the one book tour I was on, it's just really been me, my analysts, and a couple of very close friends that I talk with. My world has gotten really small. And so now the goal is to

start taking that out and to branch out into the world in new ways. And I don't know what will happen when that goes down. And just like with the work I'm doing now and the writing I'm doing, I think sometimes I get stuck because it feels unfamiliar and it doesn't feel safe. And I don't know what's going to happen when I write in these new ways. And I explore these new avenues that my psyche has wanted to explore the whole time. And I'm saying yes to those things without the guarantee of money or fame or, you know, anything that you hope for, but just doing it because it's going to be psychologically healthy for me. That's new, you know, that second half of life stuff. And it's certainly not what I was taught as a young man. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you.

And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir.

Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to come back around to alcohol and its place and all this in a moment.

But it's interesting because you are writing and putting it out into the world. So, that is happening. Does doing it in the way that you're doing it by writing and putting it out on Substack feel safer in some way than fiction? No, it really doesn't. Okay, okay. In some ways, it feels even more intense. With fiction, you always have the mask of fiction.

You know, you always have like, this isn't really me. This is some character I've made up. The stuff I'm doing on Substack, you know, there's nowhere to hide. I'm writing about myself. I'm writing about my life. It's nonfiction. So, it's been exciting, but it's also been something that I've had to kind of dare myself to do it, will myself to do it and I enjoy it. I've made some friends on Substack, I've met some other writers

and started having phone conversations with people that I've met on Substack which has been fantastic. It really has been healthy for me but it's still you know, there's still this part of me that wants to just take the Substack down and go high you know and maybe you know, get's still this part of me that wants to just take the sub stack down and go high, you know, and maybe, you know, get metaphorically drunk, just take myself offline, remove myself from the world. And that's the thing that I'm always battling, you know, that if I do this, it's going to lead to something that will be worth it, even if it's only engaging with other people. You know, with the writer's block, I wrote a novel two years ago that I finished and then I just put it in a drawer. And I was like, I don't think it's good. You know, I don't know that I want to work on this. And recently, my analyst has challenged me to go

back in and look at that book and not look at it with eyes of, you know, am I going to make a lot of money or is this going to be made into an Oscar winning film? But just looking at it the way we would look at a dream, looking at it for psychic information and asking the question, why did your soul want to write this novel? And what are the gifts in there for me? And what can I do with those things that they might be useful or beneficial to someone else? You know, getting back to that resentment question, I think there's a part of every artist, this is a universal battle and I've seen this taken many of my friends offline. You mine the best of your soul. You go in deep and you really dig and you put the best of your soul out there into a song or a book, dance or a poem or whatever it is. And then you put it out

into the world and the world goes, I don't really care about that. And then you're crushed because you're like, that's the best I had to offer. But I think one of the things my analyst is always teaching me is why does the psyche want to write that? What is it trying to express? And to whom is it trying to express? To write something that's going to make a lot of money or be made into an Oscar winning film or, you know, be a hit song on the radio, you have to write something that's kind of universal enough so that it speaks to everybody. And sometimes by speaking to everybody, you're really kind of speaking to nobody, which I mean is you're saying something so general or universal that

people just kind of hum along when they listen to the song and they don't really think about it. They watch it mindlessly on Netflix. But sometimes when you really kind of drill down and get into those specifics, you're writing something that's very specific, but might be meaningful to just a small amount of people. And then the question becomes, well, isn't it meaningful to touch only even one or two people in like a really beautiful way? Like, can that be enough?

And I think that's where you've got to, you know, kind of check in with yourself. You know, you got to have that balance of ego, which, you know, ego for me is always saying, well, if it's not going to be some huge thing, then why do it? But psyche is always saying, you know, if I drill down and like get to the bottom of it, it's always saying you have something that's worth saying. And if you can connect with one human being that gets something meaningful to that, like if you can make it a beautiful connection with one person or just a few people, wasn't that worth doing? You know, because that makes you feel alive. And to get back to that drinking thing, I think you get into this resentment. I mind the best of my soul and only 10 people read my novel or it only sold X amount of books or I didn't get that movie concept. Well then, F you, I'm offline. I'm not

going to mind my soul anymore. And so I think the struggle for every creative is to really be in touch with the truest part of yourself, and then trusting that there's a reason for you to be in touch with that and putting that out and just seeing where it leads. And oftentimes that leads us places that are unexpected. And then the job is to be appreciative and find the beauty in those unexpected places. And that's the work. That's what I'm working on now. And I still struggle. Every book I've ever put out into the world, I've had fantasies of grandeur and all kinds of wonderful things happening. In every single book I put into the world, wonderful things have happened in various different degrees. But

there's this part of me that always says, but something more should have happened or, you know, this particular thing didn't happen. And that's where you get into the resentment part. And I agree. Like the resentment is always the poison that just takes me offline and makes me just want to get small and hide. That's what I'm working on, but it's a dance, you know, and my analysts would say, we don't know why Psyche shut you down. We don't know why you haven't published the book in two years. Maybe if you had published the book last year, you would add a mental breakdown and started drinking again. We don't know. So thinking about that and saying, maybe there is a reason that I needed to take some time after We Are The Light. And maybe that

served me in being appreciative of that. That's the work and that's hard. And I'm not always there every day, but that's kind of where I'm always aiming to be. There's so much that you said there that's so important. And I think when we talk about creation or really doing anything, psychology talks a lot about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, right? The intrinsic motivation is essentially you're doing the thing because you want to do it, because it matters to you, because it's important. The extrinsic motivation is I'm doing it to be famous or make a lot of money or whatever it is.

And that's all well and good, except that oftentimes, particularly if we've had any degree of success, all of a sudden intrinsic and extrinsic start getting mixed together. You've had enough success that writing is what you do. It's how you make a living. You know, it's the way that you put food on the table. So of course you have this intrinsic motivation, but there's also extrinsic motivation that starts to get mixed in. And I would argue for most people creating, there's a mix of those things from very early on.

You know, I think I started really getting into music and playing guitar because, A, it lit me up inside and I loved it. And I also hoped that the chicks would think it was cool, right? Like, you know, I'm talking about that's how the 18-year-old me would talk. Not me today. Don't anybody get all bent out of shape. Nice clarification there. Nice clarification. Exactly. So when these things get tangled, it's hard to sort of tweeze them apart. And yet I find it an ongoing exercise that's important, right? I started this podcast because I loved doing it and I still love doing it. And it's how I make a living and it's how a couple other people make a living. And, and so there are extrinsic things that you're looking at also. And so for me, the key is not trying to deny that they're both there. It's just

that if I can focus on the intrinsic, I tend to be more content with the work I'm doing. You know, I tend to get more out of it and feel less pressure. I have a coach for the business who often talks about this concept of finite and infinite games, right? And a finite game is a game you play to, it's a game you play to win. An infinite game is a game you play so you can keep playing. And I think that speaks to this, a lot of what you were talking about. Let's switch to alcohol for a second though, because I think anybody who is creative, who did a lot of their creating while they were consuming heavily is going to find an adjustment after getting sober. It's going to change that. And I would say that that is true for anybody who's giving up substances in general is those substances were playing a role in your life and now they're gone.

Bennett who is a successful artist who's also a schizophrenic. And when he's off his meds, he is incredibly destructive, like tries to basically carve his sister up at one point, right? Like pretty bad stuff. Wow. And so he finally stabilizes, gets on his meds and everything in his life gets better. He has a better relationship with his family. He gets a job teaching. I mean, everything is, but you know, he's not insane, all that stuff. And yet over time you see he was a photographer, but he's not taking pictures anymore, right? He's just teaching about taking pictures. And you know, there are sexual side effects from the medicines and there are all these things that come along with it. And the place I am in the series now, he has decided to stop taking the meds. And I think that the reverse of that often happens to people with alcohol, right? You take away the alcohol or you take away the drug,

and then many aspects of your life get better. But in a couple aspects that may be very important to you, things don't seem better. And you're inclined to kind of go back. How do you work with that knowing that writing fiction is so important to you and so a part of who you've been and knowing that you seem to be able to do it better while you were drinking? Now, that may not actually be correlated, but in your mind, sometimes it's correlated. How do you talk to yourself so that you don't end up like this character in Six Feet Under who decides like, well, you know what, this isn't working for me, take the drink or quit the meds? Yeah, well, hopefully I'll never get that extreme. It's quite a comparison you make. For me, internal and external motivation,

you know, I used to talk a lot about that back when I was learning how to be a teacher. And I think that that's important. But I also think that we're not always conscious of our motivations, whether they're internal or external. Like you can have unconscious internal motivations and unconscious external motivations. I think I'll bring it back to, you know, unconscious and conscious, like it's very young in. You know, and in terms of drinking, I think when'll bring it back to unconscious and conscious, which is very Jungian. And in terms of drinking, I think when I used to drink, my conscious desire to drink or what I would tell myself was that I need this drink in order to function socially. I need it because I will feel unwell without it. I'll feel anxious.

I'll feel afraid of people. I won't have courage. That was what I was consciously telling myself. I need this alcohol to function. But I think through the work I've been doing in analysis, what I've really learned is that unconsciously, what I wanted from the alcohol was to return to this very baby-like state where I could have my bottle and I could be back in the womb. I would feel warm. I would feel fluid. I would feel loved.

I would feel as though I didn't have any responsibilities. Like it was taking me back to this very childlike place that I was trying to get to. And I wasn't aware of that when I was drinking, but through analysis, I've really seen that I was trying to go back in time to this place and kind of get things that I didn't get when I was younger. And once I knew that, I started to look at, you know, well, why am I writing my fiction writing? Why am I writing my novels? Like, well, consciously I'm saying, oh, I have something important to say. And I think I have talent and people in Hollywood are interested in

me. And, you know, people have given me awards and, you know, this is what I'm supposed to do. But I think through my analysis, you know, I started thinking about unconsciously, why am I writing my fiction? And I started to see, well, there are all these things happening inside of me and I'm unconsciously trying to process them I'm going through a psychological process and I think I started writing when I was I don't know 12 not because I thought someday I was going to get a book contract but because I just had all of this psychic information that I couldn't carry and I needed to put it down in metaphors and symbols because it was too much for me. And I also think too, when I was creating,

there was a part of me that thought, you know, I was the little boy drawing the picture. And if I draw the picture correctly this time, will everybody love me then? You know, will everybody say that I'm a good boy and that like I did the picture? Will Uncle Matthew come around and say, that's wonderful. Good job. Give me a hug. You know, it sounds silly to say that I'm a good boy and that like I did the picture. Will Uncle Matthew come around and say, that's wonderful. Good job. Give me a hug. You know, it sounds silly to say that, but I think that there was a very young part of me that just so needed that.

And at the end of the day, after I was writing, alcohol came and said, oh yeah, I'll give you a hug. Like, I'll make you feel warm. I'll make you feel loved and cared for. And I'll take all of those worries away from you. And I had a few scotches. I mean, it was better than a hug from anyone I had ever had. It was just this warm feeling. And it was just like alcohol always accepted you. Always was like, I'm here for you. You know, every day, whatever you do, I'm going to be there at the end of the day with that hug to make you feel good. And so I think realizing that the alcohol

served a purpose. It wasn't that I was just immoral or I was just a glutton or I was just doing this stupid thing that I shouldn't have been able to do it. It had a psychological purpose that I was not fully conscious of. And that's why I was so chained to it. Because if I was trying to get this sense of love, like who can live without love? But what I didn't realize and what I'm realizing now through the analysis and raising unconscious to consciousness is that there are better ways to get love. And I was not truly experiencing love, but I was experiencing this sense of false, you know, love that wasn't real, which is sad, you know, and ultimately that's why you just

need more and more and more of it. And no matter how much you drink, you just start to feel worse and worse and worse about yourself. And so, again, it gets back to this idea of why are we doing the things that we're doing? You know, and whenever someone approaches me, you know, for writing advice, they usually ask things like, how do I get an agent? Or how do I get a book contract? And there's a part of me inside that wants to say to them, why do you want those things? Have you even thought even once, like, do you them, why do you want those things? Have you even thought

even once, like do you know what's driving you to get that? Because until you know that part of it, everyone else is playing 3D chess and you're playing checkers. You know, like you're not even aware of what's going on. And there are people that if you have talent will totally take advantage of that. Like I worked with Harvey Weinstein for years. He was the master of psychologically analyzing you and pushing your buttons to get you to do things. So it's important to be aware so that when you're writing or you're going to the marketplace and selling or you're interacting with people, that you're conscious of why you're doing

those things so that you can be masterful about them. So you're not just acting on these instinctual things that you don't understand, but you actually are showing up fully present and making decisions about what you're saying and doing so that you're fully there, that you're not drunk either literally or metaphorically, but you are sober in the most literal sense of the word that you can look at things without being inflated and make decisions that not only benefit you, but benefit the other people that are around you. So listener, in thinking about all that and the other great wisdom from today's episode, if you were going to isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what would it be? Not your top 10, not the top five, just one. What is it? Think about it.

Got it? Now I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little thing you can do today to put it in practice? Or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember, little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive heroic effort. If you're not already on our Good Wolf Reminder SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool you can leverage to remind you to take those vital baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed.net slash SMS. It's totally free and once you're on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a week with little reminders and nudges. Here's one I recently shared to give

you an idea of the type of stuff I send. Keep practicing, even if it seems hopeless. Don't strive for perfection. Aim for consistency, and no matter what, keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem from recent guest Light Watkins. And if you're on the fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe. If you want to get in, I'd love to have you there. Just go to oneufeed.net slash SMS. All right, back to it. Well, that is a beautiful place to wrap up.

You and I are going to talk a little bit longer in the post-show conversation because I had a ton of other things I want to talk about. Mainly, your father is dealing with Alzheimer's. As you know, I lost my father about a year ago to Alzheimer's. And we also took care of Jenny's mom for years who had it. So we're going to talk about that in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you would like to get access to some of the best things we create here at The One You Feed, the post-show conversations, the episode I do each week where I talk about a song that I love, a poem that I love, and I give a little teaching called Teaching Song and a Poem, monthly community meetings, and many other things. We'd love to have you as part of the community. You can go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. Matthew, thank you so much. It is always such a pleasure

to talk with you, whether we do it here on the air or we do it on the phone. It's a pleasure. So thank you so much for sharing so openly about challenging things. I appreciate the time. And it's always a pleasure speaking with you too, Eric. Always happy to be here on The One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You

Feed community, go to oneufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.