The One You Feed - Barry Mangione

Episode Date: March 1, 2016

This week we talk to Barry Mangione about how there are no easy answersBarry Mangione is an author, musician, podcaster, life coach, and pediatric physical therapist.Barry was once a struggling alcoholic suffering from depression, failed relationships, and bankruptcy. He even came close to suicide, but he now enjoys a life filled with creativity, service to others, and abundant possibilities.In his Self-Help Rockstar Show podcast, he features music, interviews, and his own brand of self-help advice in order to raise self-awareness and to inspire people to go out and live their best lives every day.In his self-help book No Easy Answers: A Book of Life-Changing Questions, Barry shares his personal success story with readers so that they, too, can achieve personal transformation.Barry is also currently in the studio recording an album of rock songs to carry his message of hope and healing to music lovers everywhere.Barry lives in New York with his wife and their family, who are all firm believers in the paleo diet and lifestyle, for both physical and mental health.  Our Sponsor this Week is Casper MattressVisit casper.com/feed and use the promo code “feed” to get $50 off!! In This Interview, Barry Mangione and I Discuss:The One You Feed parableSimple practices to feed your good wolfJournaling as a practiceGuilt doesn't help but accepting responsibilityLearning to see our role in thingsAsking ourselves "Maybe it's me"The questions to ask ourselves when making a decision:How do I feel about myself now?How will I feel about myself after I've done this?How will I feel about myself if I don't do this?How will I feel in 10 days/10 months/10 YearsTrying to avoid black and white thinking when making decisionsHow perspective is intellectual while gratitude is emotionalThe 2nd ArrowResponsibility without creativity is lifeless and boringCreativity without responsibility is dangerous and misleadingFinding creativity again after getting soberLearning to do things sober as a challengeHow would I talk to my best friend if he was in my shoes?Visit our show notesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You know, the old saying, if nothing changes, nothing changes. Well, you're the one responsible for making changes. 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 No 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 Barry Manjone, an author, musician, podcaster, life coach, and pediatric physical therapist. Barry was once a struggling alcoholic suffering from depression, failed relationships, and bankruptcy.

He even came close to suicide, but he now enjoys a life filled with creativity, service to others, and abundant possibilities. In his Self-Help Rockstar Show podcast, he features music, interviews, and his own brand of self-help advice in order to raise awareness and to inspire people to go out and live their best lives every day. In his self-help book, No Easy Answers, A Book of Life-Changing Questions, Barry shares his personal success story with readers so that they, too, can achieve personal transformation. And here's the interview with Barry Manjone. Hi, Barry. Welcome to the show. Hey, Eric. Thanks so much for having me on. It's my pleasure. This is fun. You had me on your show, and now we're having you on here. So we'll get both sides of the story sooner or later out of both of us. We're going to spend most of this episode talking about your book, which by the very title, I love right away,

which was No Easy Answers, a book of life-changing questions. So we'll jump into that in a minute. But let's start like we normally do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. And he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather

says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you, and what are some of the ways that you feed the good wolf in your own life? Oh, wow. I guess I'll start off, I'll kind of go a little in reverse with that. Some of the ways that I feed that good wolf is just through some good practices and habits, which we talked about on my show when you, Peter, on there. And so meditation, mindfulness, in addition to meditation, I also keep a daily journal that I use covering, you know, several different aspects of my life, writing down gratitude, writing down what I'm going to offer to the world on any given day. And then on top of that,

I have another journal called The Habit Journal, which I backed on Kickstarter a while ago. And you can find it online just searching up Habit Journal. It's great for just tracking habits and staying consistent with them and then monitoring your progress. So I struggled with that parable for a while in my own life and in my stepson's life. He was diagnosed with a mood disorder. For a while, he was classified as juvenile bipolar, which was a misdiagnosis on him. And somebody had told him a while back this parable of the good and the bad wolf and which one do you feed? And one thing that I struggled with was the duality of it. And thinking that there's this good me and the bad me. And I think something that

he was seeing was that, you know, the bad wolf was not him. And only identifying with the good wolf. How to really integrate that parable into your life is to remember that you have both of them inside of you and they both are you. So realizing that was what helped me make more sense of that parable and be able to, you know, feed that good wolf as I talked about with good habits and good healthy living. In your book, you document a pretty rough stretch of time, alcoholism, bankruptcy, near suicide. So there was plenty of, to use the parable, sort of bad wolf feeding going on there for you. Yeah, there certainly was.

And one of the core tenets of my book is personal responsibility. And that's something that I did not have or at least struggled with for quite a long time. And I was feeding that bad wolf with all those habits, just mismanaging my money, just mismanaging myself and not being aware of my thoughts. managing myself, you know, and not being aware of my thoughts. And of course, you know, drinking. There was a whole mess of stuff that I was feeding that bag wolf with. Yeah. So you mentioned one of your tenets being responsibility. And I was really interested in the book, you talk about the idea of guilt being a drain on us, but that responsibility is something that can empower us. Yeah. I can expand on that. I was listening to another show, I believe it was Jim Quick was talking about meeting Stan Lee. And, you know, there's the old quote with great power comes great responsibility. And he turned it around on Stan by saying, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. And he turned it around on Stan by saying, you know, with great responsibility comes great power. And so that's sort of what I'm getting at

in the book, is making yourself feel guilty about what you've gone through doesn't help. What helps is accepting the responsibility for it and without adding any of the shame or the negative value judgments that we attach with that guilt. And once I was able to see that distinction and be able to separate the mistakes that I made from who I was and who I am, then I was able to make better choices and make better changes in my life. And the book, it's your story being told, but through a series of questions that we can ask ourselves that help us get closer to understanding what we're doing in life and why and how we're how we're behaving and one of those questions related to responsibility i guess it's not so much a well

it is sort of a question but it's the maybe it's me ah yes uh i think i referred it in the book as taylor swift syndrome right i'm picking on taylor swift Swift, but that's just what I know from my daughters. They were Taylor Swift fans for a while. But I could be picking on any artist, any singer-songwriter. But I talk about it in the book where I kept noticing that a lot of her songs just said, well, this guy did me wrong, and this guy cheated on me, and this guy did this to me. And I just thought, wow, it's always the other guy, isn't it? It's always somebody else. When's she going to write a song that's titled, maybe it was me. And that was a big lesson for me in rather than asking, you know, why me just looking in the mirror and saying, what have I done to create these situations? And what do I

do to bring these situations about into my life? And what can I be doing differently? You know, the old saying, if nothing changes, nothing changes. Well, you're the one responsible for making changes. I think that's an interesting perspective, the Taylor Swift syndrome, because it's funny because I think songs tend to go to one extreme or the other. It's the other person, the other person, the other person, or I'm so broken that I ruin everything around me, you know, sort of the very sad, sad country song or, you know, different things. And it's really hard in music to be able to say, you know what, this is kind of both of our faults. You know, we both have a role in this is a very subtle thing to say, which is hard to do in music.

It makes me think of, we had a guy on the show, his band is called Strand of Oaks, and he wrote just an amazing song that sort of talks about his wife's infidelity and his role in that in a really, it kind of kind of blew me away at how nuanced it was because it really is a nuanced thing. But to your point, it's the, maybe it's me from a personal sense is really the only question. Look at what was my role in it. It's the only one we can do anything with. Well, it's the only thing we can do anything about really, you know, I talked about, I think it would be kind of line by line with all the different things I was going through, you know, did, did anybody put a gun to my head and tell me to put myself in debt and tell me to make bad decisions with my credit cards and all that?

No. And on the other side of that, and you talk about the nuances, was it right for banks or lending institutions to give me credit that I didn't deserve and then further me in winding up in bankruptcy? No. I think it's well documented with the financial crash that we had that a lot of the banks acted poorly. But did that excuse me from making those bad decisions? Hell no. That was still on me. I could have known better. I should have known better. Thank you. And here's the rest of the interview with Barry Manchone. So another of the questions that you bring up in the book is, what's the right thing to do? You know, we're all faced very often with what's the right thing to do.

And you actually break that down. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know 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?

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with my podcast and everything I do is to raise self-awareness. And I talk about without self-awareness, true self-awareness, self-help really isn't possible. So this is about being aware of your feelings in the moment and making sure that you're balanced. Because if you're not feeling good about yourself, your odds are very high that you're not going to make a good decision. decision. And when you're trying to figure out what's the right thing to do, you want to be standing on as stable ground emotionally as possible. So then once you've decided and just taken a look inward and said, okay, I'm balanced now. Next two questions to ask would be, how will I feel about myself after I've done this? So fast forward, put yourself in the position of having done whatever you're thinking of doing already. And how do you feel in that moment? Do you feel a sense of accomplishment? Do you feel a sense of regret, remorse? Imagine what's that going to be

like when you finally attain or achieve or receive whatever it is you're wondering is the right thing to do. And then balance that out with how will I feel about myself if I don't go ahead and do this? For some of the people that I've spoken to, that's a real sticking point right there because some of the people that I've spoken to, that's a real sticking point right there because sometimes we have so much regret over choices that we didn't make and steps that we didn't take. And so put yourself in that situation where, you know, if I don't do this, how am I going to feel? Am I going to always be wondering? Am I always going to be thinking about what could have happened? What should have been? What could have been? always going to be thinking about what could have happened, what should have been, what could have been, or is it going to be at the very least a weight off my shoulders that I got this done?

And once you get all of those questions figured out, you have a pretty clear picture of what's the right thing to do. I like that approach. A couple other things, tricks that I use. One is to kind of ask myself, you know, what will I think about this decision in 10 days, 10 months, 10 years, right? Space it out and give it a little perspective. And then the other one, I don't remember where I heard this, but it's such a useful idea is that we tend to very much frame things in should I leave my boyfriend or not? You know, these very black and white things. And often there are shades of that, that we can look at. How can we maybe not go all the way there, but how can we take some steps in that direction and feel what that's like, instead of just being in this huge either or situation all the time? Yeah, it doesn't have to be black or white, you know? It really is. Yeah, it really is true. So you had a line in the book that really struck me because I talk a lot about the importance of perspective,

even that idea of what will I think about this in 10 days, 10 months, 10 years, that's just simply a perspective exercise. You say that perspective is intellectual, but gratitude is emotional. So I think I was referring to that in, um, when I had a moment of gratitude that really sort of sparked, I guess what would be my, my true beginning of my recovery. Uh, and so I had perspective, uh, that despite my situation, despite my depression and what I was going through, I knew that there were other people in the world, heck, even in my immediate surroundings, who were worse off than me. That's perspective.

But I wasn't grateful for what I had. You can have perspective and know that in the grand scheme of things, there are people worse off than you. But it's another step to have gratitude and to be grateful to have some of the things you have and to be who you are and be where you are. And that's what really connected me wanting to change. I remember another quote. I can't remember who it is right now, but someone said, there's no real change without radical self-acceptance.

And that kind of ties in with this for me because I could finally just accept uh on an emotional level that uh hey you know what i still had friends i had i still had a job at the time i still had a place to live i still had a car to get me to my work uh and i i was aware of all those things but i wasn't grateful for all of them. And once you connect that emotional piece, I think like Tony Robbins would say, you know, connect pleasure with that, which is gratitude, then it's the old neurons that fire together, wire together thing, right? Right.

Yep, exactly. And I like that a lot because we had somebody on the show and she's a psychologist and is into a lot of positive psychology. And what she was saying is that people who feel like they should be grateful, so they have perspective, but they don't feel the gratitude that can almost make them feel worse because they're like, I know I should feel good about this. I know I've got things better, but I don't. And so, you know, in addition to being depressed, now they're saying to themselves, I'm depressed, I'm ungrateful. And so I think it's, it's interesting to frame it up in that perspective, being intellectual and, you know, maybe working from a, okay, first, let me find a perspective and then let's see if I can work that into emotion, which is gratitude. Yeah, and then bringing it back to what we talked about before, which you brought up, then for those people, it goes back into a cycle of guilt again. Right.

Yeah. Yep, the second arrow, it's the Buddhist parable that we talk about on the show a lot, which is basically, you know, we get shot with one arrow, there's nothing we can do about that, but then we turn around and, you know, shoot ourselves with the second arrow, which is all the stories we tell ourselves about what that means. Oh, yeah, exactly. You know, kind of what we were just talking about. That's one of my favorite parables, because I think that's where an awful lot of our suffering in life comes from. If we could stop that one thing, I think all of our lives would improve dramatically pretty quickly. So you are a musician. You've always been a musician, and you got sober.

And so I've been down the exact same path. And so one of the things that has been a growing up process for me is recognizing that, you know, I thought art was reckless, abandoned, and, you know, just kind of the rock and roll lifestyle. And you say that responsibility without creativity is lifeless and boring. And creativity without responsibility is dangerous and misleading. Yeah, yeah. You know, it got to a point where I had to realize that putting myself into an intoxicated state was not really benefiting me or giving me the edge that I thought it was. giving me the edge that I thought it was. It gets to where I think as, as artists, as musicians,

and I don't know if it's still the culture today, but you know, when I was growing up in the 70s and the 80s, uh, it was sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And that was, that was what was cool. And you know, if you were a musician, that was what you strived for yep and so you get that and you you think that if you don't have at least a few drinks to get yourself loosened up before performing or before uh i don't even recording uh you don't think you're going to be channeling that muse you don't think you're going to be feeling that fire. When I look back at some of the performances that I did, half if not completely in the bag, my playing doesn't hold a candle to what I can do today. I found that my creativity and my musicianship increased dramatically when I was actually aware of what I was doing. I think that can take time. I think that for a lot of people, certainly for me for a long time,

alcohol and drugs were a way of sort of opening up the creativity flow. Because I think it just shut the conscious brain down enough to allow things to happen. And so, but to your point, it was ultimately, you know, completely destroyed. 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 Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? 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 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. ...throwed those things, you know, it took those things right out of my life. You know, my band for a number of years was called Turkeys and Crows, named after wild turkey and old crow whiskey, which can give you an idea of what those shows were like. Wow. But it did take me a while to find my way back to, you know, getting the conscious brain to quiet down enough that

creativity could flow. Um, and, and I think it's just learning how to do that. And once, once you were a little bit better at that, I do think it's a preferable way to be, particularly if you are like you or I, in which case, you know, alcoholism is completely, you know, takes everything away. It did. I'll tell you one, one area though, where it did. Yeah. I did say take some, uh, getting accustomed to, and it did take some time to really get my feet under me was not so much the playing in the musicianship, but at interacting with a crowd without being lubricated by, by the alcohol. Uh, I remember, and, uh, this was with a, a cover band that I had been with for a while

and then left and then came back to. And the whole time I was with them before, before I left, I was drinking. I came back to them sober. And now here I am in this bar in front of a crowd of people. And I don't know how the heck to rile these people because they're all drinking and I'm not. And I'm dead sober. And, and it's like, all right, wow. Um, what do I do? But it forces you to try to connect with people actually more on a human level. And it was challenging, but if you can do that, then you're so much, uh, more of a, a better performer. If you can do that without any kind of artificial aid. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that, that I do is I try and actually in situations where I'm like, Oh boy, some drinks would be

helpful here. Right? Like those, those situations that I'm uncomfortable in. And I realized that, you know, Oh boy, alcohol would have smoothed this right over is that I actually turn it into for myself sort of a challenge. Like, let me, you know, I want to show that I can do this without alcohol. Like I, I want, it becomes something that I use to push me forward instead of being stuck in, oh boy, I wish I had this. I wish I had it. I look for, you know, the being able to do things sober that, you know, a lot of people can't do with, you know, only when they're drinking. I can, you know, a lot of people can't do with, you know, only when they're drinking is I can use it as sort of a way to motivate myself.

Yeah. Yeah. I actually had an experience with that just recently and I'm going on, uh, six years sober here. And one, one area that's, you know, outside of musicianship is, uh, I was at a wedding with my wife about three, four weeks ago and dancing, dancing for a white guy like me, you know, without any alcohol in front of other people. It's hard. Amen. Amen. Yep. There are, there are a variety of things that fall into that category, but the, the good news is I think for, you know, anybody that's been sober a while you, if you put yourself in those situations enough, you learn to do it. And, and those initial feelings, you know, once you get out there, it's, it's easier, whatever that out there is for you. Yeah, yeah, totally. So I want to wrap up here with a question that you

use. And I use it with my coaching clients a lot when we're talking about, you know, how do I talk to myself? You know, because we tend to be pretty hard on ourselves, or the opposite of that is we can kind of let ourselves completely off the hook. And you have a question in your book that, again, I really like, which is, you know, what would I tell my best friend? How would I talk to my best friend if they were in my shoes? I think for other people that I've spoken to and other people who've read the book, that's one of their favorite questions in there. And when I was beginning my recovery, uh, that was a difficult one for me until this, until it dawned on me, you know, looking at all the negative self-talk that I was

throwing on myself, uh, and then witnessing some other friends go through some challenges and supporting them. And in those moments, having a moment of clarity where I was able to step outside myself and think, you know, I'm being really positive and supportive with my friends. Why can't I do the same with me? You know, if my friends came to me telling me that they did the same things that I did or made the same mistakes that I did, I wouldn't shun them. I wouldn't belittle them. I wouldn't make them feel worse for doing it. to make them feel worse for doing it, I would, I would tell them, look, you made a mistake and you can come back from this. It's forgivable and you can make a change. And so when I was able to just, that was another way to separate, uh, the things you do from who you are. And I just found

that question to be a valuable tool. And I still use that today as well. Yeah, it's a great one. My only problem with it is that Chris is my best friend. And the things that I say to him are really, I can't even put them on this show. So I have to think of a different friend in that case. But in general, the principle is solid. Is that strictly a guy thing? I don't know if women do that with each other, right? I actually am. It's an ongoing joke on the show where I mildly make fun of him. I'm actually sweet as pie to him all the time. But I don't want a word on that to get out. Okay.

Well, Barry, thanks so much for taking the time. I really enjoyed the book. Like I said, the title, No Easy Answers, is an instant win for me because I am always suspicious of anybody who thinks there's an easy answer. So I really liked your, you know, the fact that you were saying, look, no one can do this for you, but here's some questions that can help you think through it for yourself. So I really enjoyed the book and I enjoyed talking with you. Well, thanks for having me on, Eric. It's like you said, I believe it was in another podcast, or you might have even said it on Twitter, self-help is work.

There are no easy answers. Yep. So I appreciate you having me on. Thank you so much. All right, Barry, take care. Thanks. All right, bye. Bye. You can learn more about this podcast and Barry Manjone at oneufeed.net slash Barry.