The One You Feed - Finding Hope When Life Isn’t Okay and the Power of Micro Joys with Cyndie Spiegel

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

In this episode, Cyndie Spiegel discusses finding hope when life isn’t okay and the power of microjoys. Cindy shares her personal journey through profound loss and illness, explaining how micro joys, the simple, everyday pleasures, helped her heal. She explores the difference between happiness and joy, the importance of presence and gratitude, and practical ways to notice and appreciate micro joys, offering listeners compassionate tools for resilience and self-acceptance.Discover the six hidden saboteurs that quietly derail your best intentions—like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, and emotional escape. Download our free guide to uncover what’s getting in your way and learn simple strategies to take back control. Get it now at oneyoufeed.net/ebook.Key Takeaways:Concept of “micro joys” as small moments of joy amidst grief and hardship.Personal experiences of loss and challenges faced in 2020.Distinction between happiness and joy, emphasizing joy as a deeper, more enduring state.The importance of acknowledging both joy and pain in life.Critique of the self-help industry and the pressure to achieve constant happiness.The role of mindfulness and presence in recognizing micro joys.Strategies for cultivating gratitude and awareness in daily life.The significance of reflection and memory in appreciating past joys.Discussion on the balance between distraction and facing emotions during grief.Encouragement to adopt simple daily practices to foster appreciation and presence.If you enjoyed this conversation with Cyndie Spiegel, check out these other episodes:Navigating Fear and Hope: the Everyday Courage That Shapes Our Lives with Ryan HolidayFinding Your Way to Healing, Hope, and Peace with Seth GillihanThe Path to Inexplicable Joy: How Self-Friendship Can Change Everything with Susan PiverThis episode is sponsored by AG1. Your daily health drink just got more flavorful! Our listeners will get a FREE Welcome Kit worth $76 when you subscribe, including 5 AG1 Travel Packs, a shaker, canister, and scoop! Get started today!For full show notes, click here!Connect with the show:Follow us on YouTube: @TheOneYouFeedPodSubscribe on Apple Podcasts or SpotifyFollow us on InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You don't want to sit in front of the TV all the time because then you wouldn't be living in the world. But sometimes you need to get out of your head and watch Netflix or whatever it is that somebody's watching these days. And that's okay. And this idea that we're all looking for a prescription to do life right is irrational. There is no one way to do this. 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. What if joy didn't have to wait until things got better?

What if it could live alongside the grief, the loss, the chaos? My guest today, Cindy Spiegel knows this intimately. In a single year, she lost her nephew to violence, her mother to heartbreak, nearly lost her brother, and was diagnosed with breast cancer herself. And in that same stretch of joy, the idea of microjoys was born. Her new book, Microjoys, finding hope especially when life is not okay, reminds us that healing doesn't always come in grand transformations. Sometimes it's about paying attention, just a little bit at a time.

One moment of beauty, one breath of stillness, one small, act of noticing, microjoys align perfectly with this show's philosophy that real change comes little by little, and sometimes that's the only way it comes. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Cindy, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. We are going to be discussing your book, which is called microjoys, finding hope, especially when life is not okay. But before we get into that, we'll start in the way we always do with the parable. And in the parable, and in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say in life there are two wolves always inside of us that are at battle one is a good wolf which represents things like kindness and

bravery and love and the other's a bad wolf which represents things like greed and hatred and fear and the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second 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. Yeah, I love that parable. And I'll tell you what it means to me, you know, in its simplest form, it's where we focus our energy grows, you know, where we focus our attention and our intention is what flourishes. And we all have the ability to see the same thing very, very differently.

And it's up to us to decide what we want to walk away with, what we want to focus on, and what we want to act on. And I think it's a brilliant parable, and there's a reason that it's so popular. Yeah, and it aligns very much with the core idea of microjoys, which is even in the midst of difficulty, we have a choice about where some of our attention goes. That's right. Before we jump into microjoys, though, there's a big part of this book, which is really about the challenging circumstances you found yourself in. And so I'm wondering if you could just kind of walk us through, set the stage for kind of what happened and where you were and what was going on as this book and these ideas emerged. Sure, sure, sure.

So in 2020, most of us will remember 2020 for different reasons, but all for the pandemic. In 2020, my husband and I were living in Brooklyn, New York. I was speaking on stages. This is at the very beginning of 2020 in front of audiences of thousands. within obviously two months into the year, three months into the year, New York City shut down, the world shut down for COVID-19. For the first few months of the pandemic, my husband and I did what everybody on Instagram told us to do. We baked banana bread, practice yoga, did all the things. And then May of 2020 is when everything really started to shift, and that's where

MicroJoyce started to become. On May 29th of 2020, my 32-year-old nephew was murdered walking to a friend's house and a random act of violence. Within three months of my nephew's passing, my beloved mother, Mama Shelley, passed away unexpectedly. I will always believe it was at least in part due to a broken heart. Within my mom's past, within a month of my mom's passing, my brother had a stroke and went into cardiac arrest, where he spent two and a half months in the cardiac ICU again in the middle of a pandemic. By the grace of God, two and a half months later, he made it home to start recovering and healing. And within a month of his coming home, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

And all of that happened within a 10-month period of time. Yeah, you also mentioned a lifelong friendship ended, which, boy, that is a big deal. I mean, we might tag that on as an afterthought, but some of my lifelong friendships ended, that would be a really, really difficult thing. Yeah. Yeah, that was another loss, you know, and it's a loss we don't talk a lot about, which is losing adult friendships. To this day, we have not had a conversation. I'm not entirely sure what happened. But all of that happened at the same time. And so I felt like a completely different person than I had ever been up until that point. Yep. You mentioned you were speaking on stages and that you were out there in the world. And I assume this is sort of based on your

really best-selling book called A Year of Positive Thinking. So what I'm curious about is how has your thinking about how we work with our inner worlds sort of changed between that book and, you know, where we sit with microjoys? Yeah. It's a great question, right? Because I did in 2017 publish a book called A Year of Positive Thinking. Nothing that I wrote in that book is inaccurate. However, I see microjoys as the nuance to that book.

You know, in 2020, I call moments like that those fall to your knees moments, right? Where you look in the mirror and you don't recognize who you are. In 2020, in that moment, nothing that I said in a year of positive thinking was going to help me, right? Not because that book wasn't accurate or helpful or deserving of the accolades it's received, But because when we are at our lowest point, you can't positive think your way out of it, right? And you almost shouldn't. You shouldn't. You have to sit in it, right?

You know, I hate to say should or shouldn't. For me, I could not. Yes. You know, I couldn't in that moment think my way out of it. And so I needed something, I needed nuance, right? And microjoys, and the way that I describe microjoys are these easily accessible moments of joy, beauty, delight that exist in. the world regardless of our current circumstances, right? So they sort of coexist with our grief, with our loss, with the world as it is. And that's not something that I talked about in a year

of positive thinking. Yep. That makes a lot of sense. I think in life, there are different tools for different jobs. There are different ideas for different times. There are seasons and certain things work in some seasons and they and they don't and others and and my experience of difficulty is that trying to talk ourselves out of it is often problematic because those things are all very real right but to be walking around all the time like things are going great with everything you just described at least in my life would be some form of denial and deception what I love about microjoys and I love the word nuance because I mean I guess if I had a brand it would be nuance. And I love this idea that in the midst of what's happening, we can find things

that are really good. Have you ever heard the poem Relaxed by Ellen Bass? No. Can I read it to you? I would love if you would. Okay. I teach this in a program I run. And so, and I've also done it. I've read it to, I do special episodes for subscribers and I've used it there. But it's a little bit long, but it's not too long. And I just, we've got time, We've got time. It's my favorite poem in the whole world, too. Relax. Bad things are going to happen.

Your tomatoes will grow a fungus and your cat will get run over. Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream melting in the car and throw your blue cashmere sweater in the dryer. Your husband will sleep with a girl your daughter's age. Or your wife will remember she's a lesbian and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat, the one you never really liked, will contract a disease that requires you to pry open its feet. feverish mouth every four hours. Your parents will die, no matter how many vitamins you take,

how much Pilates, you'll lose your keys, your hair, and your memory. If your daughter doesn't plug her heart into every live socket she passes, you'll come home to find your son has emptied the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb, and called the used appliance store for a pickup, drug money. There's a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger. When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine and climbs halfway down, but there's also a tiger below, and two mice, one white, one black, scurry out and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point, she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice. She looks up, she looks down, at the mice, then she eats the strawberry. So here's the view, the breeze, the pulse in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you'll get fat,

slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel and crack your hip you'll be lonely oh taste how sweet and tart the red juices how the tiny seeds crunch between your teeth and i feel like that poem is the mirror of your book that poem is the mirror of your book to me that is my prejudice and you'll have to send that to me yeah yeah yeah she's an outstanding poet across the board but that that poem is my favorite poem because it speaks to this like I think that's the way life is there's tigers above there's tigers below there's mice gnawn at the vine no matter what sometimes it's worse than others but that's the basic thing and there are all these wild strawberries and right yep it's that it's always and can we hold both first of all thank you for sharing that that was beautiful and that is

the the sort of soul of micro toys it is holding both at the same time, and we live in a culture that doesn't know how to do that. Yep. You know? And for me, that was really the difference between where I was in 2017, when I wrote a year of positive thinking, and where I was, you know, in 2023 when MicroJoy's came out, right? I had to live in that end. I could not change what happened, right? I could not change the world as it was, and I wasn't willing to pretend it wasn't that way. Right. But in in that acceptance, right, I still deserved those moments of respite, those moments of looking outside and seeing the daffodils bloom or having that lovely conversation. That also existed. And

it didn't attempt to change the world as it was. And I thought, what I refer to as microjoys were really these moments of respite that saved me during a time that I really wasn't even sure I would figure out a way out of. Yeah. I have, thankfully. Yep. So I love this idea. Sometimes the term joy or micro joy I struggle with because, and this just may be being a former, like, heroin addict. Like when I think of joy, I'm thinking of like just like the top, the top state, right? So for me, I don't, I feel like I have a really pretty honed capacity to appreciate lots of little moments of beauty and serendipic. and humor and all of that around me. But the word joy, I always feel like I'm falling short of it. You know, it's funny. What you described, this sort of euphoria or this dopamine that we think of, right?

I think of that as happiness, as these moments of happiness. And happiness can certainly lead to joy. But joy, to me, is embodied, right? It's a way that we walk through the world. And microjoys lead to living a life joyfully. they are not it's not a state of perpetual happiness that's not what joy is to me right it's it's this way that we show up the state of being we've all met those people where you think what world are they living in why are they doing so well right now but it is very attainable

right it's very attainable when we pay attention to those moments that are happening throughout the day the moments that you are able to pay attention to like you mentioned humor humor when we are able to be in those moments, that is what leads us to live a joyful life. It is not euphoria. It's not the constant dopamine hits. It's a build-up, right? It's a practice that we create. Yeah, I love the practice element of it. I've got a line here from you that I wanted to see if I could find. But maybe I'm not going to. uh here it is unlike toxic positivity they require practice awareness and focus to take root i i love that that idea of of that yeah i think for me i have some idea of joy as being like way up there

in in happiness feeling and so then i often feel uh maybe like i'm coming short of it but i want to ask you also because later in the book you talk about how With all of this happening to you, you felt like your feelings just got kind of muted and turned down and that while you might be able to see these little things that were happening, you were having trouble feeling them. Am I saying that correctly? That's right. Yeah. That's exactly right. You know, there are two different things, right? There's the recognition that, wow, that I'll use this fiddle fig in my office. There's the recognition that this is so cool. and wow, it's grown so much. And then there's the, I'll use the word embodiment again, that real

deep feeling in the middle of so much grief and loss, you know, again, I wrote a book called A Year of Positive Thinking. I had built the capacity to see what was around me prior to all of this. Being able to embody it all when I was in the middle of it took practice. It took time. It took consciousness. It took me every day making a point to notice and pay attention. And be present with that tree in the corner or whatever it was. Because that too is part of loss and grief and moving through challenge. It's the honesty to say, I don't feel this right now. I don't feel this big delight and euphoria that everyone's talking about at this thing, whatever that thing may be. I couldn't feel anything. I was just a bit numb. And so it took

time to build up, but first I had to acknowledge what was and be willing to see the beauty. I didn't have to feel it yet. I had to simply see it. Yes, I love that idea because I have wrestled a lot as an adult. I'm far, far better than I used to be with depression. And my flavor of depression is not, I'm sad. It's just I'm sort of flat, really flat. So I can look at the tree and be like that tree is really cool and look at all the amazing things that trees do and and and there is a uptick but sometimes that uptick isn't as dramatic which is why for me using the word appreciation is good because if I think I should be feeling if I think I should be feeling something and I'm not there I'm often setting a standard of what I expect to feel that I'm measuring against that I am then

ruining the very moment I should be appreciating by going to go. That's not good enough. There's a great Calvin and Hobbs cartoon where Calvin's walking along and he's like, here I am, you know, perfectly happy. And the next moment you see a thought hit him, he's like, but not euphoric. And then the whole moment's ruined, right? You know, and so I think I have the ability to do that to myself. Like, you should feel more in that moment. You know, yes, you feel a pleasure. You feel a little bit of delight, but shouldn't you be feeling? And then, of course, that's problematic, which you address also in the book, this idea. of just learning to say, the way I am is the way I am right now, and I don't have to improve it or fix it. That's right. And it's also why I said before, you know, I try not to say should or shouldn't, right? I shouldn't feel that way. I shouldn't think that thing.

Right. Who am I to tell you, right? Who are you? Who are any of us? Yeah. I think when it comes to loss and grief and whatever that may look like, any sort of difficulty, we don't need to hold ourselves to standards of what we should or shouldn't do, right? What was important to me in that moment was that I sat in that moment.

But I also think that for someone else, maybe that isn't the right choice for them, right, in that moment. And so all I am asking of readers in microjoys is to notice. That's all you got to do. You don't have to feel a thing. You don't have to do a thing. Well, you do have to do a thing. You have to notice. Yeah.

You know, but that's. That's it. And it's the bare minimum for a reason. And that reason is sometimes that's all we got. Yeah. And the idea that we're holding ourselves to this false standard is incredibly dangerous because we're never going to reach it. And then we're constantly striving for this thing that is impossible. Running a podcast in a small business means the work never really stops. Even when I close my laptop, my mind keeps circling. Who do I need on my team? How do I find someone who fits, not just on paper, but in spirit? Because in a small company like mine, every role is vital.

One person can change the whole culture for better or worse. The right person doesn't just fill a job. They bring energies, ideas, and momentum. The wrong fit can be catastrophic. That's why I like LinkedIn jobs. They make it easy to post a job, share it with your network, and get in front of the kinds of candidates who can actually help you move forward. It's not just about resumes, it's about finding people who fit.

It's like what I talk about on the one you feed. Small steps compound into big outcomes. Post in one job opens you to an entire network of possibilities. And that one conversation you have with the right person, it can change the trajectory of your business. So if you're hiring, try it out. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash one you feed. That's LinkedIn.com slash one, the number, Y-O-U-F-E-D.

So LinkedIn.com slash one you feed to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. There are a lot of Holocaust films that focus on the horror, and rightfully so. But what struck me about bow, artist at war, is that inside all that dark you see something else. Love, humor, creativity, even moments of laughter. It's people insisting on their humanity when everything around them is trying to take it away. Joseph Bow was an artist and a dreamer. He risked everything to help others survive and to keep his love for Rebecca alive. In the middle of the concentration camps, they secretly married. A wedding and a concentration

camp. It wasn't only an act of love, it was an act of defiance. And for me, this film isn't about what was lost, it's about what was found, the resilience of the human heart. And if you know me, you won't be surprised to know that by the end, I was in tears. Bow, artist at war, directed by Sean McNamara, opened September 26. You can watch the trailer and find showtimes at bowmovie.com. That's spelled b-a-u-u-movie.com. I think that that is a really subtle aspect of the, I'm just going to call it the self-help industry

as of which you and I are both loosely in, is that I think a lot of us wise up to the fact that always trying to chase things on the outside is a strategy that doesn't work. It's a trap, yeah. Right? It's a trap. I think it takes us longer to recognize that trying to chase internal states can also be a trap. That's right, which really means just chasing is a trap. Precisely, yes, yes. Yeah. I would even say chasing in a certain spirit because there's a certain

type of chase that is actually enjoyable and I feel like it energizes me, but there's a type of chase also that is very problematic. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I often feel like we have so much access to the Joneses. I don't know, I'm 47. I don't know how old you are, but keeping up the Joneses in the state. Okay, good, good. So we all know the Joneses.

Okay. But we have more access to the Joneses than we ever have before. And in that, it makes it so easy to see what we believe ever, everybody else has and, and then feel as though we're lacking, right? And so we spend all of our time chasing this thing that isn't even ours to have, to own, to, to inherit, and we're constantly, it's this uphill battle to nowhere. And it's internal and it's external to your point. And we have to be really mindful. It goes back to the parable, you know, that you talked about at the beginning and what this podcast is based on. We have to be really mindful of where we focus

our energy. Let's dive into this a little bit deeper. How for you do you work with that internally, which is I want to be feeling more joy. I want to be feeling more happiness. Am I feeling enough of it? I'm assuming as someone who has, you know, you say in the book sort of, you know, spent a lot of your life trying to become a better version of yourself. How, you know, like moment to moment day to day internally, are you dealing with that being a better, happier version of yourself? How do you talk to yourself through that? Yeah. You know, one thing I'll say before I answer that is that I don't do that anymore.

I'm not chasing a better version of myself anymore. And I think I talked about that in the book as well. Because there was no point in chasing, right? That better version of myself. At some point, we all have to come to this place where we acknowledge that who we are is enough. And so, you know, my answer to your question would be, I meditate every day. I surround myself in beauty. But I don't do that in the hopes of finding happiness or, you know, becoming a more joyful person. I do that because it keeps me sane. It keeps me creative. It keeps me thoughtful.

And it keeps me connected to the world around me. So I'm not actually seeking ways to be happier. But you are seeking ways to be more creative, more connected, more. I mean, there's still, there's still an, there's still something in it. Zen Master Dogen is the first one, whoever I feel like really, really pointed this out. And he went to these, he went to the Chan teachers in China and said, if I understand you, you're saying, we're already perfect the way we are and the world is perfect the way it is. Is that what you're saying? And they're like, yeah, we are. And he's like, but you also tell me I have to do all this practice. Why? There aren't great answers to it, you know? Yeah, yeah. Because I think it is always, there's that, there's a little of that tension in it. And so even though you aren't really seeking that, I would imagine that energy didn't just, like, did it just disappear? Or is it, okay, so.

No, the energy didn't disappear, right? What disappeared was the internal dialogue that I had to be better in some way than I am. Yes. Right? That's not to say that I don't want to create and continue to create and write and do the work that I do in the world, right? I haven't given up on myself. But what I have let go of is this need to be better, this constant need to be better than, you know, if that person wrote a book, I should write 10 books. If this person did this, it's the Joneses again. They're so problematic.

Yes. That's what I have let go of, right? So in meditation, and I'm very conscious of sort of keeping being in a space that makes me feel creative and ignited and interested and in many ways rational but it's sometimes that works sometimes it doesn't but it's it's not it's not in an effort to make myself any better than I am and I think that's the difference what type of meditation practice do you do oh you know I don't even know if I have a name for it I simply sit and set my timer for 18 minutes a day in silence with mala beads that sometimes i use sometimes i don't and i speak to my ancestors okay well doesn't need a name i just always i'm always curious how people spend their contemplative time there are so many different little flavors of

what you do in that time so yeah for for me it's it's really about the sitting and the acknowledgement of something other than myself and i have had so many folks pass away that that at this point it's a deep conversation with the ancestors when I begin and then it's just quiet. Is it like a prayer in that way? It's more of an asking, an acknowledging and an asking. You know, whatever it is that I might be seeking. You know, I, let's see, what did I, what was I talking about this morning? And I say talking, even though I'm not talking out loud. It's a dialogue inside where I said, allow this day to be grounding. I need your support in allowing this day to be grounding. I might be looking for a very tangible support in something.

in writing my next book and doing a specific thing. And I will call to my ancestors, just acknowledging them one by one, and simply ask for help in that. And then I will sit in silence to receive. Now, is anybody physically coming through? No. Right. That's not the point, though.

Yeah. That's not the point. That's not the point. I assume you needed grounding today because of the vast excitement you were feeling at appearing on the One You Feed podcast. So much. So much. I was very concerned that it was going to be too exciting for me.

To be clear, it is a hot day, and this was part of why I needed some ground, yes. Okay. I want to talk about another thing that jumped out to me in the book. And you say, when my heart needs healing, I find ways to stay busy. The time will eventually come when I must slow down, stop, and sit inside of the heartbreak. But there are also circumstances in which busyness really is the best temporary medicine for what ails us. You also say there will be a time to sit with the hardest things, but the respite that comes from doing instead of sitting is also essential. This is nuance again.

That's right. That's right. And this is where you talked about before when you said the word shouldn't. And I was like, well, I wouldn't say shouldn't. You know, because some people would say you have to face this all head on and you need to do it right now. Yep. Right? I don't think that's always the answer.

I think sometimes we need to keep real busy and pretend that thing doesn't exist. but we can't do that forever, right? We have to start to know ourselves and know what we have the capacity for in any moment. And what I was talking about in that essay was specifically saying, right now I don't have the capacity to think about this. Right now I have the capacity to paint my living room wall and not pay attention to that. I know it's waiting for me. I know what's there when I sit with this. But in that moment, that's not what I need it, you know, and then there are other essays in the book where I talk about sitting in that moment, you know, sitting in that difficult thing. And I think for any of us, the biggest challenge is really knowing ourselves enough to know when we need what we need and honoring that instead of saying, I should be doing this other thing.

Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask you something. What's one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it's there. You've tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way. You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major saboteurs of self-control, things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism, that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's the good news.

You can outsmart them. And I've put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control. Download the free guide now at one you feed.net slash ebook and take the first step towards getting back on track. That is the art of all of this, which is what you just said, the knowing when we need what we need. You know, it's, it's, we want answers as to, as to how, you know, what do I need when? Could someone just please tell me? Like, you need 65% busyness, 25% grief, 12% whatever, right? And that's just that, that doesn't make sense.

A similar example is our, our dog Lola passed away not too long ago. And the very first thing we did, the next day was we just got out of town. Yeah, yeah. And we just spent two weeks somewhere else. Now, we knew that when we came home, the home that didn't have Lola in it was going to still be there. But we were going to be two weeks along in our grief. That's right.

And in your process. In our process. So in a way, if you are a straight, just you should sit in it and face it kind of person, you might label that as running away. I looked at it as a skillful way of working with grief. That's right. Right? Because it's not that the grief isn't, it's going to make its way through. But for me, that just, because I remember when my last dog passed, that was the thing.

It was like, everywhere I looked was where she wasn't. Yeah. You know, so let's look somewhere. And again, it's not that we didn't spend days really in a lot of grief, but there was some doing that. And I'm the same way. I find that doing sometimes is a part of my healing. That's right. And I love that you use the word working or the phrase working with grief, right?

You weren't running from it. That was your way of working with grief, right? Of coexisting, of a list, you know, existing alongside it. That was exactly what painting, you know, our walls look like in the middle of my grief. I wasn't running. I was working with what I had. And in that moment, that was the very best way for me to do it, right? And I'm sorry to hear about Lola, our children, at least for my husband and I.

No, me too. And the very best decision for you in that moment was to leave. Yeah. Right? To work with your grief in that way versus sitting in it. And there is no wrong way to navigate that. Yeah. I think we often in a, in the self-help culture, there is that sense of you should always face things.

You should sit with things. You should be able to be by yourself without needing. I mean, there's all these. Again, I agree with you with should is just a generally, you know, non-useful idea. But I find that there are times that it's like distraction is actually the right tool for the job right now. That's right. I'm stuck in this spiral of thinking and I can't see. I've tried the basic things I know to try and get out of it.

And you know what? I'm still in it. So instead of staying in it, I'm going to turn on the TV and just get out of it. And that's fine. And that's fine some of the time. Now, again, as an addict who took my coping behaviors to the furthest extent, I'm aware that those coping mechanisms can become maladaptive, but they're not bad just in a distraction in and of itself is not a bad thing a lot of the time.

Like, we can only be on, at least I can only be on in that way for a certain amount of time, at which point I need to turn things down. Most behaviors, thoughts, feelings are that way. They're not inherently bad, right? It's just we have to know how to use them and how to work with them. You know, you don't want to sit in front of the TV all the time. Right. Because then you wouldn't be living in the world.

But sometimes you need to get out of your head and, you know, watch Netflix or whatever it is that somebody's watching these days. And that's okay. And this idea that we're all looking for a prescription to do life right is irrational. There is no one way to do that. Yes. And yet we so deeply want it. Yeah. Yeah. It's why there's a whole lot of five easy steps to X, whatever it is, you know, the crash diet. My first book comes out next spring. And the whole book is kind of around this idea of we prioritize the epiphany. Say more, yeah. Well, we prioritize the epiphany, not the fact that that epiphany is going to be lived into by a thousand small choices. That's right. The process. And that epiphany only looking back, I talk about a pivotal moment in my journey of getting sober and how if you're going to film a movie of my life, that's what you would see.

But that moment only makes any sense, has any value or importance because I made thousands of decisions after it that made that like, okay, oh, there was a turning point because it wouldn't have been a turning point if I hadn't done all those things. And so it's all about this, like you kind of say, you say it so well in that sentence. I read earlier, which is practice, awareness, focus, little by little, right? That's it. The book's called How a Little Becomes a Lot. And it's basically aligns with microjoys too, right? Like, you stack lots of little moments of pleasure and joy up and look at what happens. Yeah.

We don't like to do that, though, do we? No. Like the work that's required to get to that turning point to that epiphany to that peak, we don't necessarily want to do the work. We want, you know, I talk about this too in like peaks and valleys, right? We experience life in peaks and valleys, right? The highest of highs and the lowest of lows. The majority of life is somewhere in the middle. Yes. And we don't want to, we don't want to deal with the middle. We want to talk about the peak. We want to talk about the valley. But the boring

stuff, we want to just run right through and we can't. And that's when microjoys, to me, becomes so powerful is not when we are in the highest of highs or the lowest of lows, though they are helpful there. But we've got to start paying attention to the rest of it because that's what we have most of the time. I love that you said that because that is the case. Most of our life is kind of just normal. Yeah, not super exciting. For a long time, I got this idea. It's an idea embedded in many spiritual traditions and all over the place, which is that you can turn the ordinary into extraordinary by giving it close enough attention. And I believe there's truth in that, paying attention. My problem was I was expecting extraordinary, right?

Instead of saying, I can make the ordinary more enjoyable. I can make the ordinary a little bit more special. I can make the ordinary, I was like, oh, I, you know, if I'm not turning that, you know, that set of car keys over there into like a glowing mandala in my mind, I've somehow failed, right? And it's a whole lot more prosaic than that. Yeah, yeah. And that's the part, I think, for so many of us that we struggle with.

Right. It's that day-to-day stuff, the stuff that's not extraordinary, the stuff that's average, the stuff that's going to get us there. Yeah. But, you know, it's the boring. It's the day-to-day. I feel like that's the place that so many of us lose ourselves and lose. There's this real missed opportunity to enjoy those moments when we're in them. They don't have to be fantastic, right? But we also don't want to miss them. Yep. I have a brain that is really good at always thinking about how to get somewhere else. You know, if I don't work with it and I don't sort of, you know, try and choose the energy I'm going to let be, if I just let it run on its own, it is always two steps out ahead of me. And it's just always solving problems. They could be very prosaic problems. What am I about to eat? What time do I need to get to the airport? It just does that. And made me good as a project manager, doesn't make me good at doing what you're describing, which is enjoying those moments in my life, which is why meditation and spiritual practice and all that has been so important to me, because I really needed it. How did you go from the life you were living before? And I mean this sort of top level to where you recognize that you needed it.

The benefit of immolating your entire life at 24 and being a homeless heroin addict and being forced into recovery kind of at death doorstep is I had to in order to get better to stay sober. I had to start to look at these things. You know, I was in a 12-step program and they talked about a spiritual solution being what you needed. And I, after a little bit of a time, I realized that my spiritual solution was going to be very different than the conventional one that was on order. This was a long time ago. Yeah. So I think I just, I was sort of just almost driven there.

But then I found that I had a real interest. I had a real. And I think it was that I was able to recognize the dissatisfaction that was natural to my brain. Yeah. Yeah. And I also then started, it became clear to me like, if I'm dissatisfied intensely enough and long enough, I will go back and start using again. I believe that even today.

So part of my job is to really keep that dissatisfaction at a workable level. And then, of course, the flip side of that is always the joy and the happiness and the connection and all of that. And I think sometimes, you know, I think about it from like lessening suffering to, enhancing, flourishing, like they're two sides of the same sort of thing, right? But that's kind of how I got there. How about you? Well, I think for me, you know, I was with a cousin who I hadn't seen in 20 years the other day. That's a story for another day. And he said, how did you get so optimistic? And I said, well, I think I was born this way, except, you know, I was born to

parents who struggled with addiction. I was born into poverty, right? Like, born this way it doesn't mean we had everything figured out, right? Born this way means, you know, I think there's always been a bit of me that felt like there was a different way, even when I didn't have the proof that there was a different way. And, you know, I think not dissimilarly, sometimes when we have experienced the extraordinary, and I don't mean extraordinary good, you know, the extraordinary, it gets us to this place where the only way out is to see beyond it, you know, is to see that there is, something else that exists in the world. And I think for me, that's, that's how I became optimistic,

right? I'm also a realist. And you are a realist, right? We're not pretending that, you know, you hit rock bottom and everything is up from here. Like, yeah, ish, kind of. But I do think that, I guess I wonder sometimes why we wait, why the majority of us who aren't going to be in those situations, wait for something to drive us to make these choices, right? To be mindful, to pay attention. Why do we need that difficult thing to happen? Yeah, I think, I mean, I think it's just a basic, like, if you are more or less satisfied with the way things are, you don't look elsewhere. Now, I do think there is something, like, I'm very grateful that, like, my version of addiction is burn everything to the ground in a pretty quick period of time. And I'm actually

really grateful for that because I know a lot, a lot of people where their substance abuse problem or their, you know, their substance use disorder, wherever you want to put it, it's always, it's always on a spectrum from like way over here, like addict to not a problem at all. Everybody's somewhere in between, right? And the people who are closer to the it not being a problem than me, it's easy to stay in it. It's sort of like a nagging, like a, I almost sometimes feel like there's a term for this and I can't remember it. But the core idea is sometimes it would be better almost to break your ankle. Yeah. Then just have an ankle injury that you towed around for eight years, right? Because if you break your ankle to my, to the point we're making,

you kind of have to go deal with it. Yeah. You have to do a thing. But I do think there's a lot of of people that find their way here without something like really a huge like you have to change a moment but a moment i would argue it's probably most of the people that are reading your book and and the majority of people who are listening to this podcast have a lesser version of i hit a point where life just didn't feel right yeah i just noticed that i wasn't happier i felt empty or i felt whatever it is not you know not the extreme thing but that's when they started looking for a different way of being. And I find sometimes it's much later in life.

A hundred percent. I think 40s, particularly. 40s, 50s, you know. It's like, why did we wait this long? Because whatever, I think, because whatever we were doing was working. I see this a lot. Like, I think a lot about how self-kindness is critical to any kind of change. And how really harsh self-criticism is a type of fuel.

Because if you say to somebody like, well, self, you know, self-criticism doesn't work. A lot of people go, yeah, it does. It got me through med school. Yeah, it does. It got me to be a partner at the law firm. Yeah, it does. But what I've seen in working with people is that that all of a sudden at some point stops working. Yeah.

It's like a fuel that burns dirty. And it eventually, the engine gets all gunked up. So, yeah, it worked fine for a while. And the same way, like you might be like, well, it's fine. I'll put, you know, I'll put cheap gas in my car. don't really care. Until 10, 15 years later, you're like, oh, that probably wasn't the best idea. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard as humans for us to connect action today with consequence in the future. We're just not very good at it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I tend to agree. It's interesting,

right, because as we were just talking about that, I thought back to where I was when I was writing this book. And I thought, if I had never asked myself a lot of these hard questions that I find a lot of us wait until much later to ask. I don't know that I would have come to that place to write a book called microjoys. I don't think I would have recognized microjoys. Right. You know, like, I had to be asking myself the harder questions a lot sooner than, you know, when I hit rock bottom, when everything seemed to have fallen apart. Yep. A hundred percent. I mean, it's, I do think one of the benefits, one of the things I like about having had, let's just call it some form of self-development practice for a long time, is that when the bad

moments come, I feel far more equipped. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Not that the bad moments aren't really bad, not that it's not really hard, but the way I respond to them is a better version than the way I would have responded to them in the past, which a lot of times for me is it just comes down to like, I don't make it worse. Yeah, you know, like I just, I just don't make it worse, which I think when you consider the number of ways we are capable of making anything worse with our brain, not making it worse, is actually sometimes a very big accomplishment. Yeah, yeah.

No, I think you're right. I think you're right. You say in the book, there's so much magic around when we are clear enough to witness it. And we've been kind of talking about this, but I'd love to just ask you, you know, what are ways that we get clear enough? Yeah, you know, I don't, I hate to be a meditation pusher, but I do think sitting, you don't have to meditate. I, you know, I talk to my husband about this. I'm like, you don't have to meditate, but you probably should sit and close your eyes for a couple of minutes. I do think, call it whatever you want to, but I do think building an internal practice, whatever that looks like for you, you don't need to talk to ancestors. You don't do any, need to do anything that doesn't feel comfortable.

But I think we do have to reconnect back to our physical self in some way and our emotional self in some way. And I think the easiest is relative, but I think the easiest way that we start to train our brains to do that is by spending time in silence, right? We live in a world that keeps us occupied where our brains are constantly going. And it's not until we are able to quiet them, quiet our brain rather, that we are able to open our eyes back up and see things for what they are. And these are things that, you know, it's kind of like having a windshield and it's all gucked up, right? we have to we have to clean the windshield at some point and to me having a contemplative practice is cleaning the windshield you don't have to call it meditation but you do have to have some sort of practice the second you know sort of key to this for me is having a gratitude practice and I'm

not talking about starting a paper journal where you write a day you can do that by all means knock yourself out but for me it's about am I constantly thinking about what I am grateful for Am I acknowledging it? You know, I love a voice memo moment in my phone, you know. I may just make a voice memo where I talk about something that I saw today. But it's keeping me in that conversation of, wow, this is what's working. This is what is good. So I'm not constantly being pulled into all the things that I don't have any semblance of control over,

which is what we see on social media every day. Yeah, I do think that ability to just for some period of time, stop stimulating the brain. Yes, that's it. I mean, it'll keep running on its own. I'm not saying, like, I mean, meditation experience for me and for many people is like, it's not exactly like the brain quiets.

It doesn't. But you're not giving, you're providing everything that's happening instead of constantly something being fed into it. And for me, that has been a really important thing. And following the idea of sort of microjoys, also I think that if we can build

these moments into our day. I call them still points, but these just brief moments that happen multiple times a day. And sometimes we need to be reminded to even do them, where even if all we do in that moment is like, what am I thinking? What am I feeling? Yeah. Yeah. It stops you in your tracks. Yeah. It just gives you that little or, you know, the old classic like, what are five things I can see right now? What are five things I can hear right now? That's right. If you do that five times a day every day my ability to be present shifted yeah yeah and to add to that i think doing that once a day is a great place to sure absolutely you know the five things do it once a day like get yourself used to stopping yeah you know and and with meditation i i will just say this i don't remember the last time

my mind has been fully quiet and i sit every day sometimes twice a day i'm not i'm not sitting to have a quiet mind. So I am with you on that and I think that's true for a lot of us. Yeah, I mean, your brain may quiet some, but even meditation masters will acknowledge for the most part, like it's not like it shuts off brain. You know, one school of Buddhism used to call thinking a sense. In the same way that like if there's a loud sound, you're going to hear it. You can't not do it. Thinking is sort of the same thing. In the same way that a sound sort of just happens and arises, you're not doing anything, thoughts just happen and arise. They are what the brain does. And so not making them a problem is obviously really important. There was something else I thought was really

interesting in what you said. You were saying how that these moments are accessible when we're present, but paradoxically can also occur as insights made clear only by looking backwards. What do you mean by that? Yeah, what I mean is, you know, a lot of our life happens. And I talked about the peaks and the valleys and how most of our life happens in between. We're not going to catch every moment in the moment. That would be great, but it would also be overstimulating, right? So sometimes, and I think this is where that contemplative practice is really helpful, because we are still thinking in a lot of ways, is we can look back and remember something. You know, I think about people who have passed away, pets who have passed away, right? That recognition, that remembrance is a microjoy. And it's a

microjoy not because it's happening in this moment, but it's because we as human beings have the capacity to look back at something that maybe we missed, right, and to be mindful of it. So these microjoys, again, it would be overstimulating to sort of, my husband calls it who sparkles, you know, and you're looking around and you're like, oh, look at that thing And look at this thing. Sometimes we don't have that, right? Sometimes we're not in a situation where we have that. Where is there an opportunity to look back and remember and think through, you know,

and sort of catch up with yourself about the microjoys that you've experienced? Because they're not always happening in the current moment. I love that idea. It's using another human capacity for this. I just had a thought that came up when you were talking about a voice memo and gratitude. I have experimented with something over the last few weeks. It's the first time I've ever really tried it, which is I record myself talking about the things I'm grateful for.

And then I play that back to myself where I hear my voice. There's something sometimes. I've played with this in other areas where I'm like, huh, having myself say it to myself. How's that feel? I'm I like it yeah I like it because it's my words it's me yeah you know it's you living that experience again yeah yeah in the same way that like there's an exercise when it comes to being kinder to ourselves to imagine what we would say to a friend right and part of the reason I think

that's such a valuable thing is if you really do imagine it you think about what you would say is that you will find your words the words that resonate with you not not the words that somebody said, these are words you should use to be kind. There'll be the words that you actually use to be kind. And as somebody who's allergic to certain types of language, this is really helpful for me. Yeah. What language are you allergic to? Well, I'm generally allergic to abbreviations.

Really? Yeah. Say more. Well, I mean, I'm not sure how important this is. Very. Okay. You know, vegetables calling them veggies. I mean, that's fine, but there are other ones that I can't think of right now that I particularly, apparently the kids call this breven. Breathing? Breathing for abbreviating. It actually has a term. They call it breven, which is in itself an abbreviation, which, you know, almost triggers me. I also am, I am also allergic to overly too touchy feely of language. For me.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I get that. I just know like what words sometimes, you know, cause a little bit of, not that sometimes that recoil isn't good. I mean, you know, I try and investigate it, but I do find it's like affirmations, right? They, you know, the study, the studies out there seem to be, and studies aren't everything, that the affirmations that tend to work the best are the ones that you actually kind of can believe on some level.

And so, again, you're using your words, you know, you're using, so. First of all, I love that the word veggie is triggering for you. I think that means that life is good generally. If that is triggering for you, I think that speaks volumes, which is good for you. 100%. Yeah. It's a problem is how enraged I get. I actually hit somebody with a baseball bat last week for calling Instagram the gram.

I was like, all right, that's it. I think this is this is what matters right yeah exactly well we can say okay veggies pissed me off yeah um oh i had i had a thought about what you said and i forgot what my thought was it was going to be a good one errs i'm sure they've all been good veggies all right i've lost it it's gone now it's gone eric it'll pop back up when we're done all right well luckily i've got a great place from your book to take us because there were so There were so many great places. Thank you.

You said after having spent much of the previous year in and out of hospital waiting rooms and unconsciously waiting for phone calls that no one deserves to receive, my husband and I both have deep gratitude for unremarkable weekend mornings. Yeah. You know, again, that's the extraordinary, right, that we miss out on. I remember, even now, you know, it'll be a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning and we're doing nothing, and one of us will look up and go, this is nice. That's it. That's all the acknowledgement it takes. But we know what the opposite of that is, right? So we're not looking

for anything exciting here. We're just looking to not get a call from a hospital. That's like bare minimum. Right. And now several years out from that, you know, it's now so sort of built in that those ordinary moments feel extraordinary because we know what the opposite is. it's so important to be able to recall that yeah yeah and it was a shitty time right without question however that felt sense of that time has created such a deep appreciation for anything other yes yep you know and i think that's that's really important yeah what i think is an interesting question is how are we able to maintain that as distance from the event happens.

You know, how are we able to maintain this? That line of yours coincided with something. I've been watching the TV series, The Crown. I don't know if you've ever seen it. It's so good because I'm going to England later this week. So I'm like, okay, I kind of want to see the, you know, because it's not the royal, it's not the monarchy I particularly care about. It's all the history that's spinning around it in that show.

But the queen says at one point, she says, That's the thing about unhappiness. All it takes is for something worse to come along. And you realize it was actually happiness after all. And that's kind of what you're saying. Something worse came along. And now you realize like ordinary boring weekend mornings are a happiness. Fantastic.

Yeah, they're fantastic. But keeping that, I think, is the, because we are creatures who habituate so easily, being able. It's the same thing that any addict faces over. long term, which is how do you keep the, the, the, enough of the pain that came from that experience that keeps you from not wanting to repeat it and also keeps you in gratitude for the very fact that you're not there. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, and so I've been sober 18 years. So I have to work, I have to consciously work to, to be like, okay, your life right now is so much better than it was. It is so much better. And to appreciate that without it just only being an intellectual exercise. That's right. You know, I think that we, we meaning so many of us, we want to put hard things behind us, right? I think about times like 9-11 in New York City. Yeah, I'm a black Jew, you know, and I think a lot about my own history kind of and we will not forget, meaning that in many different ways applying to, you know, all parts of my culture. I think it's really important that for all of us we don't forget, right? We are in this sort of instant gratification culture where

we want to put all of the bad things behind us, sweep them under the rug and just get on with it. But I think there's such value and not forgetting in reminding yourself, you know, in my home, I have a lot of pictures of folks that have passed away. My brother, on the other hand, or one of my brothers will not look at a picture of my mom, right? Because he just needs it to be out of sight. For me, I feel like it's been a gift to be in remembrance of what has happened before, right? Because if I forget, then that ordinary Saturday or Sunday morning won't matter anymore. So I think really building a culture of remembering and not fearing that we're going to go back there because we remember. Yep. I agree. It's really valuable. I'm the same way. My partner and I are different in this

way, but I'm happy to see the dog before Lola that we put to sleep was called Beansy. I love seeing pictures of Beansy. There is a tug on my heart when I do it, but there's also a joy. Like, I like it. I think she, on the other hand, would prefer like not to, you know, and there's no right or wrong way. But I'm more like, I'm more like you and she's perhaps a little bit more like your brother. Yeah. I, I, again, you know, we keep saying there's no should or shouldn't, but I do think there is a lot of fear for a lot of folks in wanting to put things behind us. Yeah. Fear of going back, fear of bringing up sad memories, fear of a lot of things. Yeah. And I do often wonder if we are willing just a little bit to go there anyway, if we would

ultimately be better for it. Well, I think a good general principle, again, there's no principle that applies to everyone everywhere, is that avoidance is often not a great long-term strategy. Again, we talked about where being busy can make sense, we're distracting yourself. But exerting effort to not feel something, again, over the long term has a poor track record. That's right. That's right. That's right. And yet it doesn't stop us from doing it. Oh, no, no, no. It's a great, I mean, we think it's a good strategy. It seems like a good strategy. It feels like it in the moment. It does. Yeah. It feels like a good strategy. But it is, you know, almost always, it is almost always a, it turns out to be a problem. All right. So the last thing that I would like to do is ask you in the spirit, and your book is in this spirit anyway, but in the spirit of my sort of philosophy of little by little, what is like one thing. someone could do. They listen to this and they're like, all right, this is awesome. I'm going to do one thing tonight before I go to bed that would bring some of what we've talked about to life. What would you ask them to do? I would ask them to think about three things within their day that

they are actually grateful for. Okay. They don't need to be big. They don't need to be these giant things. Just three experiences, places, people. Name something, three things that you are grateful for. And if that is easy enough for you to do, do it again tomorrow. And are you talking about things that I'm grateful for, like I'm grateful that I'm employed? Or are you talking about three things that happen that day that we have some appreciation for? Like, oh, I appreciated my cup of coffee and the way the sun glinted through the trees or either. Whatever. Pick the one you want. I think it's your choice, right?

The latter really leads us into microjoice. We'll get there, right? For right now, it's like, I'm grateful I have a job. That's a great place to begin. Essentially, what is the easiest or the low-hanging fruit for you when you think of gratitude? Whatever that is. Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn't quite match the person you wanted to be?

Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why I created the six saboteurs of self-control. It's a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them. If you're ready to take back control and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at one you feed.net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen starting today. Oneefeed.net slash ebook. Well, Cindy, this has been an absolute blast. Thank you. Thank you so much, Eric.

what a treat. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better, and that's you. Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the One You Feed community.