The One You Feed - Gregg Swanson

Episode Date: January 6, 2015

This week we talk to Gregg Swanson about the warrior mindsetGregg Swanson is a leading, physical, emotional,  spiritual and mental strength coach and expert. He has authored several books and over 100 articles on these subjects. His life defining moment came in June of 1998 when he survived a horrific avalanche while descending from the top of Mt. Rainier. In This Interview Gregg and I Discuss...The OneYou Feed parable.The meaning of a warrior.The warrior mindset.Mental strength versus mental toughness.Mental strength cannot be developed by reading about it.Mental strength is not coming in 1st, it's finishing what you start.Changing course when things are not working.The main blocks to developing mental strength.NLP and Hypnosis.The difference between your conscious and unconscious mind.Surviving an avalanche on Mt. Ranier.Using shamanism to get in contact with your unconscious mind.High Mental Resistance and Low Mental Support.The Complacent Zone.Overcoming mental resistance.How leaders take responsibility for all of their results.The difference between a leader and a victim.Gregg Swanson LinksGregg Swanson HomepageGregg Swanson Amazon Author PageGregg Swanson TwitterWarrior Mind Coaching on Facebook Some of our most popular interviews that you might also enjoy:James ClearSrini PillayDan HarrisTodd Henry- author of Die EmptyRandy Scott HydeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If someone finds themselves blaming, complaining, or justifying why they can't get something, that's usually victim talk. 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. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. This January, join me for our third annual January Jumpstart series. Starting January 1st, we'll have inspiring conversations to give you a hand in kickstarting your personal growth. If you've been holding back or playing small, this is your all-access pass to step fully into the possibilities of the new year. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Greg Swanson, a leading coach and expert on physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental strength. He's authored several books on the subjects and over 100 articles. Greg's life-defining moment came in June of 1998 when he survived a horrific avalanche while descending from the top of Mount Rainier. Here's the interview. Hi, Greg. Welcome to the show.

Thanks, Eric. Really glad to be here. Appreciate you contacting me. And you're doing some great, great work with your podcast and looking forward to our conversation. Thank you. You and I talked, I don't know, it's probably been a couple weeks ago on your show, and now we've got a chance to have you on the show. So let's start where we always do with the parable. So there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and 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 in your life and in the work that you do. Well, that's great. You know, it's really interesting. I've studied Native American traditions when I moved up here to Bend, and I've always found that parable just fascinating. And you look at it and it's basically what you focus on, you get, you know, this is that whole, if you want to take it to a metaphysical level, it's you create your own reality. And for me, what is, you know, in my coaching and in my life, it's so much easier, at least it was for me to feed that bad wolf than it was the good wolf and it took a lot of discipline and focused and concentration to start to feed that good wolf

once it started being fed the other one kind of died off it's not completely dead but you know it it's not as strong as it used to be right Right. And so you focus a lot on, I mean, your show is called The Warrior Mind Podcast. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about what does the warrior mind mean to you? What is it that's behind that name? And why is that your focus? Well, great. Thanks. You know, I look at a warrior, traditionally, we look at warriors, we think of them as battling and, you know, perhaps Vikings or Spartans and going out to battle and just killing and doing whatever. But I look at it as the warrior is one that masters themselves physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. And really,

all of those have to start in the mind. And so the warrior mind is the one that uses that mind, that masters their mind, so they can master their body, their emotions, and their spiritual practice. And so with that, the warrior mind basically feeds the good wolf. And what are the characteristics of the warrior mind? Wow, that's a big question. There are so many, right? There's discipline, there's focus, there is release, releasing of those things that are not important. We tend to over-exaggerate the things that are unimportant and under-exaggerate the things that are important. And so there's this discernment that has to come in. But I would

probably say the biggest, biggest attribute of a warrior mind is aware, being aware, being aware of your thoughts, what your self-talk is, what you're saying to others. When you can be aware of what's going on in your head, you are then that much closer to discerning on which wolf you want to feed. And what are some of the main, you talk a lot about mental strength. Yes. And we had a guest on a few weeks ago where we sort of touched on that subject. And I'm interested in what you recommend as some of the ways to build mental strength, some things that maybe people could start on in a relatively modest way. Right.

And before I get into that, and I will certainly answer that, I'd like to just clarify a little bit my perception of mental strength versus mental toughness. Mental toughness has been used quite a bit. And when I look at the word tough, it almost means tolerating, putting up with. You know, when you get tough feet from walking barefoot, you get calluses on it. And it just prevents the irritation. But when you look at strength, it's like going to the gym. You are getting stronger because of the adversity you're facing. You're just not tolerating it. So if you go to the gym, you do a 200-pound squat, then you

do a 210, 220. you're actually getting stronger. And so that's where I look at the mindset. It's not just tolerating, but the strength is actually building from that. And one of the things that I love to help people get into first is utilizing a physical process to get into their mental process. I really like working out or going for a steep hike or something that's going to challenge you mentally. Like this is tough. I can't do it because that's where it shows up so, so quickly. It's, it's probably the easiest way to engage in a conversation is through a physical program. One of the things that I think is interesting, where I think of mental strength often is exactly in that way, in some sort of physical way,

where my brain wants to give up way before my body really needs to. And how do you, how do you continue? What are some of the things that someone can tell themselves to keep pushing through that? The reason I use the physical, because everybody can do that. The challenge is, and I will get to that question in a second. The challenge is people generally want to read a book on mental strength or mental toughness and think they can develop it by reading it. Mental strength is, however you define it, mental strength or mental toughness, you have to take action. You can read all mental toughness, you have to take action. You have to. You can read all you want, but you have to take action.

So for me, I like lifting or doing CrossFit. And there are some things that, you know, I say to myself beforehand. One is, you know, I'm just going to finish what I start. Because mental strength isn't coming in first. It's finishing what you start. And so if you can go into a weight room or run a 5K or do a CrossFit or start out on some long hike, a 20-mile hike, and if you can finish what you start, that's a huge step in developing that mental strength. So some of the things you get through there, when you feel like you can't go, take a two-second, three-second break, regroup, and then continue. Just finish what you start. That's great, great advice. And I think it ties into setting goals that build slowly over time. Exactly. And when you look at it through the physical perspective, then you can apply it to if you're an entrepreneur or if you're a salesperson or some other part. We tend to hit these roadblocks and we stop. And it's not necessarily that we have to push our way through that specific roadblock, but maybe there's a different path to get to that goal. So some people will look at that as being stubborn and contacting

the same client or doing the same thing over and over again. Well, that might not be the mental strength. It's where is that goal? If this path isn't working, what path will get me there? What are some of the main things that keep people from developing that mental strength? Are there some common things that get in the way? Yeah, they fed the bad wolf all their life. Yeah. Seriously. I mean, when you look at it, if you look at the bad wolf as a hiking trail, you know, when our brain, our neurons that fire together are wired together. And so if we've been feeding the bad wolf our entire life, that's the path of least resistance in our mind, in our brain. So automatically, our thoughts are going to go to the path of least resistance, which is I can't do this.

I've never done this before. This is tough. I'm too old. I'm too young. I'm too – whatever the excuses are because we've been using those excuses our entire life. So now we want to create a new path, and it's going to hurt. Just like when you go into the woods and you want to create a new hiking path, you might have to get poked with the bushes a little bit. But if you continue to walk down that path and feed that good wolf, then that will happen.

But the reason it's so tough is that it is difficult to change. Change is tough. Our brain is not meant to change. And so when it's wired one way, it likes efficiency, and it's going to stay that way. And it's going to fight you tooth and nail to change your current way of thinking. A couple of things I saw on your site were around hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming. And I'm curious how you use those tools in relation to what we just talked about. So the brain is, obviously, you've got patterns in the brain, things that are wired in there, sort of the default settings that we've built over a long time. How do those two things help? Do they help accelerate that process? And how do

you use those in your coaching? Oh, absolutely. They absolutely do help because your conscious mind is really only about 5% of your daily activity and your unconscious mind is about 95%. It's been said that your conscious mind is the goal setter and your unconscious mind is the goal getter. So if you're producing results that are different than what you want, most likely your unconscious mind is directing your behavior. Your unconscious mind is also where your beliefs are there, your values are there. Your emotional experiences from the past, all those reside in your unconscious mind.gram them, and then use your conscious mind to take action as if the new beliefs were true, then you have a double-edged sword in creating a new behavior. I've always been alternately fascinated with and skeptical of things like hypnosis. I never have a good sense. Like,

does it really work? Is it a, but it sounds like you, you believe in it or seen results from it. Yep. And here's the thing. All hypnosis is self-hypnosis. If a person doesn't want to be hypnotized, they will not be hypnotized. But if they want to change and they want to be hypnotized, they can either do it themselves or have somebody facilitate it. But they are still self-hypnosis. So it comes down to how bad does a person really want to change. And when they really want to change, they'll drop the barriers. They'll drop the resistance and allow those changes to take place.

It's not a miracle where you go to sleep or go to hypnosis in one session and come out of it, although that can happen. The key is that using these tools in addition to acting as if, so if you're going to change a behavior that, oh, I'm too old to do something, and then you get hypnosis in there and says, no, you're young enough, and then act as if you're young enough. Between those two things, it works. If you just do hypnosis and don't act as if it's working, it's not going to work. Yeah, I think that idea about being open to suggestion or hypnosis is really important, although I have consistently been able to hypnotize my co-host Chris here with a bucket of fried chicken.

It's really all it takes. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair

you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

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It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What is NLP? How is it different than hypnosis? I don't know much about it. I see it a lot of places, but I honestly don't really know what it is. You know, depending on who you, which NLP school you go to and how it's, how they talk about it, it's basically excellence in communication, communication within yourself and communication with other people, because we have these filters through which we delete, distort, or generalize information. You know, you think about it, we're all exposed to the same amount of information externally. How is it somebody can see one thing and the other person not see it? Well, it's through those filters. And neuro-linguistic

programming works with those filters. So it's, you know, the neuro, the mind, or the brain, linguistic, the words, and then programming it. So it's basically excellence, at least the school I went to, is excellence in communication within yourself and with others. And when you can communicate clearly to yourself and understand that communication, you'll then be able to take action in accordance to what you want. See, most people communicate with what they don't want. I don't want to be sick anymore. I don't want to be alone anymore. I don't want to be broke anymore. I don't. And they keep getting what they don't want because the mind cannot think of a not. You cannot not communicate to yourself. So

if you're saying, I don't want to be alone, you have to think to yourself of being alone. One of the things I noticed as I was looking through your stuff is that you survived an avalanche. Is that a story you could tell the listeners in a relatively brief time? Well, I've done it in a minute, and I've done it in an hour and a half. So let me see if I can— Yeah, I'm looking for somewhere on the—it doesn't need to be a minute, but you know. Right. I was with my brother, we were doing a mountaineer course on Mount Rainier. And the grand finale was to climb Mount Rainier. And so we got up beautiful day,

beautiful morning, two o'clock in the morning, it was it was a June a couple of years ago. And we got to the top. And it was just gorgeous gorgeous and it was such a beautiful day we stayed up there a little bit too long the guide said come on let's get back down so we started coming back down and there's a place on mount rainier that's called disappointment cleaver and if you go up it you'll understand why it's called that but when you come down it there's a kind of a small little path that's right against a very steep part of the mountain. And it was in that part where I was the last person on the rope team, heard somebody above me say avalanche and try – and it's not the big powdery avalanche because this is June. The snow has melted.

So it's like a cement mixer of slushies coming down on you. It's just heavy, heavy, heavy snow. It's not going to fluffy. So I kind of hit, I try to push myself off against the mountain as tight, tight as I could, but because it's just so slushy, it took me and the five people attached to my rope down the mountain. And we ended up hanging basically off the mountain because we did have a rope that was attached to the mountain higher up so this this rope helped us but we stayed there for almost eight hours before we were rescued and the rescue was another long story because we had basically had to hike a mile to where the helicopter landed to be able to get out of that. And we were all – I had a – my PCL was torn, which prevents your knee from hyperextending.

So every time I stepped on it, it would hyperextend. My hand was broken. My brother had a crack in his tibia. And unfortunately, there was one person who um, from exposure on the mountain. But it was quite a, uh, up until that point, it was, you know, just a beautiful, beautiful experience. And, and after that, there's, you know, there was a lot of shifts that happened to me personally, you know, I don't know if it was post-traumatic stress syndrome or whatever it was, but there was quite a euphoric feeling once I got back home, like really nothing matters.

And it's not that I didn't care, but really I saw the really nothing did matter that much. And so were you doing kind of what you're doing now then? Or was this part of what helped catapult you into sort of doing your own thing? Yeah, I was working in corporate sales at that time. And I was also starting to develop or understood the power of mental strength at that point when I was training for the mountain. And my brother and I climbed Mount Hood and Mount Shasta. And so I realized the mind is important. I saw how the mind worked with me in sales, saw how definitely it worked with mountaineering. And so that was kind of the beginning part of it.

And then obviously surviving that, I took a different look at that from a mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual perspective on how really all of that came together when I was hanging off the mountain. So another thing that you have done and talked about is shamanistic journeys. Can you share a little bit about what that entails for you and what some of your experiences have been? That's a wonderful spiritual practice. It is not a religion. Shaman basically means one who sees in the dark. And it's not necessarily the dark of a cave but the dark inside a soul. And so when the – I mean when shamans were very prevalent, they would do the journey work for a sick individual. They would find out why they were sick they would find their power animals they would journey for the other people and as

shamanism became more and more known throughout the you know at least the united states through michael harner and and alberto v of the aldo more and more people were able to do it for themselves. And I've trained with them. And it's basically tapping into your soul or your unconscious because the unconscious mind is the seed of the soul. And it's going into your own soul, unconscious mind, and getting answers and direction on big questions in your life. And it's it's a really great great practice i enjoy it the thing is the soul or your unconscious mind speaks in symbols so it doesn't speak in to us in words or language so when you go on these journeys you know you many people probably heard about finding their power animal and then

it comes to them with different things or a rock or a heart or whatever it might be. So these are all ways that we can communicate with our soul to get some direction in life. We all have answers to our big questions. Why am I here? What's my purpose? What am I supposed to be? How am I supposed to be? We can all find those questions, those answers ourselves if we take the time to go inward. Some people will meditate. Some people will pray. Journey work is very much similar to that, where you go deep inside, setting an attention, asking the questions and and consciously being aware of what's happening around you without controlling what's happening and this is the interesting thing is you you set

the intention to go on a journey you put on some music and if you practiced it enough or you could have a drum there and you go so you know what you're doing you know where you're going but then you're not controlling the scenery and it just unfolds. And it's been a great help to me as far as working with where I should be going in my life. And I recommend a lot to clients and even on my workshops, I take my clients on journeys. spot on your website where you talk about a situation where people have high mental resistance but low mental support. Can you walk us through that? Yes, the complacent zone. This is something that came to me in kind of a journey, if you will. It was a meditation, and it's a combination of neuro-linguistic programming, and we've all heard of the comfort zone. Well, when we look at it, when I look at clients and I look at myself and look at people, we have this mental line of support. If it's weight, we'll never get any heavier than this weight.

If it's money, we'll never get any broker than this. If it's being alone, we'll never be alone for more than six months. Whatever it is, it's being alone, we'll never be alone for more than six months, whatever it is. It's almost like hitting bottom, right? Rock bottom. So we hit this mental line of support. And that's when we start to take action. So we start taking action and we start to improve our life, whether it's physically, mentally, financially. And then we start to get to this, what I call this line of mental resistance. And this is where our limiting beliefs are, our past experiences, our emotions come into play. And that's, you know, you're not worth $100,000 a year.

You've never made it before. What makes you think you can? These are all conversations that go on, maybe not in the conscious awareness, but there's the beliefs that are there. And so as we start to approach this mental line of resistance, we tend to take less and less actions. We tend to make more excuses. We tend to put off things. We tend to procrastinate. For example, if it was a person who was on a nutrition program and they wanted to lose some weight, let's say they wanted to lose 100 pounds. Well, right about the 90-pound mark, they may say, you know what?

I've done really good. Let me just have this one piece of cheesecake. You know what? I'm going to sleep in tomorrow. I'm not going to go to the gym tomorrow. And then all of a sudden, that 90 pounds, now it starts losing. Now they're only 80 pounds lighter. So then they start getting down.

They go, oh, what's happened? And they go right back up again. And you could see it financially with people, relationship-wise, they just go up and down, up and down, up and down. And part of it is because, one, we're not aware of it. And if you track out your behavior in life, you'll see that it's kind of like a sawtooth that goes up and down, up and down between this mental line of support and this mental line of resistance. Then what people do is I'm going to set this big goal. So they set this big goal that is so far above their mental line of resistance that they think it's going to motivate them. But again,

when they get there, it just, it stops them. So these big, big, big, big – I mean I love big goals. But if you haven't achieved smaller goals, then these big goals are just not going to do it for you. So what I recommend is within this complacent zone is get three goals that you know you can achieve and then put the fourth one just above that mental resistance. and then put the fourth one just above that mental resistance. And it's that the third to the fourth one is where a coach comes in handy, somebody comes in handy to keep the person focused. Because up until that time, they've done it all. I mean, you look at it, if you go back and forth, back and forth,

everything within the complacent zone, you already have created at one time or another in your life. So achieving those goals aren't really any big deal. But what you want to do is get momentum to get really close to that mental resistance and then have that goal just above it. So let's just say it was income. You've made $90,000, but you've never made $100,000. You get to $90,000. At that time, you hire a coach. You get somebody and say, keep going, keep going. What else can you do? What else can you do until you get to that hundred thousand? And then you keep making it because what you want to do is convert that mental resistance to your new mental support. And then you start the process all over again. That's a really interesting way to think through the goal setting process.

Yes. Because people will, I mean, here we are, we're coming on to the first of the year and people make these big goals, which they've never accomplished before in their life. And they're going to use that as motivation, but they don't track where, you know, I've set this goal before I set this goal before, well, then don't set it again. And so if you look at really some of the things that you have accomplished before, set those as small objectives. And then perhaps at the end of the year, have that one goal that's just outside that mental resistance or maybe six months from now. And then when you hit it, maintain it for three months so that now that mental resistance is now your mental support and you get to start it all over again. Yeah, it's that idea of basically start small and connect the dots, right? Things that you can do and build from there.

Right. And the key though, is being aware of when you're getting close to that mental resistance. Cause although I draw it on a nice diagram, and again, this gets back to your question about a warrior mind, you need to be aware. So when you start hearing the self-talk of, I'll take a day off, or let me go on vacation now, or let me have that cheesecake, none of those things are bad. However, if they're creeping up all, you know, if they come back on a regular basis as you're getting close to accomplishing your goal, that would be a telltale sign that you're getting very close to that mental resistance. Hey, y'all.

I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow i always tell people that when you buy a handbag it doesn't cover a childhood scar you know when you buy a jacket it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love so when i think about beauty is so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present and future, all in one idea,

soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are getting near the end of time, but I'd like to talk through one last thing with you before we wrap up, and it's the idea of being a victim or being a leader. Yes. Yeah. There's a lot of great people out there who talk about leadership, and I admire all of them. The list is too long to go into. But a leader, in the purest sense, takes responsibility for all their results, in my opinion, in my world, that is whatever result they get, they take responsibility for it or the responsibility to change it or the responsibility on how to react to it. They're not pointing the finger. So the victim, when they blame, complain – if you find – not you personally, Eric, but if someone finds themselves blaming, complaining or justifying why they can't get something, that's usually victim

talk. And when you can shift from, and this is in NLP and a lot of other parts, they call it the cause and effect. You can either be on the effect side of the equation, meaning that the world is doing this to me, my partner is doing this to me, the government is doing this to me, and you give up all control of your life, you give up all your power, or you can say, yes, this is happening, but I can change, I can do this instead, I can react this way, I can change, I can, so you can be causing an effect, as Joe Dispenza says, or you can be at the, you can be the effect. And the leader is on the cause side, the victim is on the effect side. There's certainly a spectrum there, right? There seems to be some things, at least I've noticed, that it's easy for me to be clear on, like, okay, I'm a leader, I'm responsible for this, and then other areas where I think I'm more likely to continue to play the victim. And so it seems like that's an ongoing process to sort of drive that mentality through every aspect of your life. Right, which brings us back to that warrior mind being aware. If you're not aware of playing

the victim role in that area of your life, you're going to continue to do it. And what you just have to look at, not you personally, but what a person has to look at is, is the life, is the situations in this area of my life, financial relationship, is this what I want? And if it's not what I want, then how am I contributing to this creation? Have I released everything to – if I'm not happy in a relationship, am I putting all my happiness on my partner? Where in work you may say, listen, I need to go out and make sales. I'm responsible for all my money, and you may be a go getter at sales, but in relationship, you give all your power away. If you know that that's happening, then being aware of it is the first step. And that's what we talked about in the beginning, right? Having a warrior mind is being

aware. Exactly. I think you and I talked about that when I was on your show last week about that awareness being so important. And I think it's, I think it's really interesting how subtle some of those things can be in, in tricking us into thinking that we're not in charge. Which effectively, when we say we're not in charge, we're feeding the bad wolf. Exactly. Yep. And when we, when we are in charge, when we're taking responsibility for how we, how we respond, or the, or the change of it. Because there's something, when we talk about responsibility,

it doesn't mean fault. And many people get confused with responsibility and fault. And I'm not to blame, nobody's saying to blame, but at some level, if you get in a car accident, you decide to get in your car at that time and take that route and somebody hits you. So it's just, that's the responsibility part of it. And now you can be

responsible for how you respond to that accident and you can be responsible on how to get the car fixed. Yeah. I think that, like you said there, that difference between being responsible and at fault is such a, such a critical distinction. You know, I find a lot of people, a lot of people go through things in their life where something really terrible happened to them when they were younger. And they're certainly not at fault for that in any way, but they are responsible at this point. We're all responsible at a certain point for what we do with those things that happen to us. Absolutely. Absolutely. And not to diminish any experiences, at some point, you either can play the victim for the rest of your life, or you can play the leader or the warrior and go, this happened to me, and now this is what

I'm going to do with it. Right. And the ability to draw strength or draw some sort of meaning out of these experiences we have is so critical, I think, to building a good life. Right. And that goes in perfect with the name of your podcast, right? The one you feed, you know, we can either feed that bad wolf and relive that bad experience over and over and over and people are this and this happens and people can't be trusted, et cetera, et cetera. We just keep feeding that bad wolf or we can go, you know what? I learned from this. This is what I can do now. And you feed the good wolf then instead. Well, I think that is a great point to wrap up on a good way to end. So, Greg, thanks

so much for taking the time to be on the show. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Eric, thank you so much. Keep up the good work. swanson at one you feed.net swanson