The One You Feed - How to Be the Love You Seek with Dr. Nicole LePera

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

In this episode, Dr. Nicole LePera explores how to be the love you seek as she delves into the profound impact of emotional connection with oneself on fostering authentic relationships with others. She explores the interconnected nature of thoughts, emotions, and bodily experiences, providing valuable insights into the complexities of trusting oneself. Nicole emphasizes the importance of integrating knowledge and action for personal transformation and explains the role of the nervous system in decision-making and stress management. In this episode, you will be able to: Discover the power of building emotional connections with yourself to transform your life Uncover the impact of childhood trauma on adult relationships and gain insights into overcoming its influence Explore effective practices for developing heart consciousness and nurturing deeper self-awareness Learn how to differentiate intuition from trauma responses to make more mindful decisions Master strategies for expanding stress tolerance to navigate life’s challenges with resilience To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As we feel differently based on the new habits or choices that we're creating, nothing is, in my opinion, as motivating as that. I don't care who's telling me how great they feel doing what they're doing. The most motivating thing to me has ever been when I feel differently. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor. What's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you?

We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dr. Nicole Lepera, a holistic psychologist trained at Cornell University, the New School for Social Research, and the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis. She's the founder of the Global Community Healing Membership Self-Healer Circle and the author of the number one New York Times bestseller, How to Do the Work. Today, Eric and Nicole discuss her newest book, How to Be the Love You Seek, Break Cycles and Find Peace and Heal Your Relationships.

Hi, Nicole. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Eric. It's great to have you on again. We're going to be discussing your latest book, which is called How to Be the Love You Seek. Break cycles, find peace, and heal your relationships. Before we get into that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild. And they say, in life, there 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 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. I think that the parable really is in alignment to with much of what I talk about in my newest book, which is my belief in what I hear when I hear that beautiful parable is that we contain as humans, right, a multitude of feelings, experiences, way of

expressing ourself and right, that which we give our attention, our effort, as you hear me speak quite often, that which our earliest environments and relationships imprint upon us becomes then, that is the translation I think I would then offer in terms of what we feed, what we give our attention to, what choices we make then creates ultimately the experience, our embodiment of those different parts of ourself, whether we're talking about the peace, the love, and the light, and the compassion as again, I talk a lot about in my new book or the kind of darker side of the darker wolf. You say early in the new book, in order to emotionally connect with another person, you have to be emotionally connected with yourself.

And to be emotionally connected with yourself, you have to be able to authentically feel and express your emotions. Say a little bit more about that core idea. I mean, that core idea was so foundational for me in my own journey. Coming to the realization somewhere in my early 30s of how disconnected I had been, yet at the same time, having found myself in relationship after relationship, romantic partnership included to having friendships, I felt, and the number one complaint you would have heard from my lips, usually in the context of a relational argument or disagreement, is how I didn't feel what I was looking for in terms of the emotional connection. I didn't feel emotionally close to the people I

was with, friendships included. I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel supported by them. And it took me, again, three plus decades to really acknowledge the role that I was playing in that disconnection. Because I had, I think as many of us do, assumed I was picking the wrong person. It was some way they were showing up or not showing up that was contributing to the way I was feeling, only to realize that in reality, I was so disconnected from my own emotional world that I was the one creating that felt distance. And so just really generally speaking, the way we learn how to navigate our emotional worlds, what we learn emotions are, how we learn how to be present to them in our bodies, how to gain support or co-regulation from another individual when the moments where we need it to be is a learning that happens in those earliest

environments. So when we then translate that into relationships, what that simply means is how we learn to navigate our emotions in relation to another person becomes then the roadmap for how we continue to try to relate. So just inserting me in that story, I learned a state of disconnection from a mother who was emotionally unavailable of no fault of her own based on her own limitations and her own traumatic childhood herself. So what I learned was a state of disconnection that I then continued to repeat into my relationships, then of course complaining about the experience I was co-creating. So something I'm going to be doing a little more often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but only if combined with action and integration. So before we move on, I'd like to ask you, what's coming up for

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

messages two times per week that give them a little bit of wisdom and remind them to pause for a second and come off autopilot. If you want, I can send them to you too. I do it totally for free and people seem to really love them. Just drop your information at oneufeed.net slash SMS and I can send them to you. It's totally free and if you end up not liking the little reminders, you can easily opt out. That's oneufeed.net slash SMS and now back to the episode. dot net slash SMS. And now back to the episode. It's so interesting, at least in my experience, how much of an ongoing process that is, right? Like, I mean, I got sober at 24 and was forced to take a pretty hard look at myself when I had a divorce at 28, which also caused me to do so. And so at that age, I very quickly saw like that a lot of the problems in relationships

were mine. And I did a lot of the type of work you're describing. I did a lot of dealing with childhood issues and looking at all that stuff and, you know, things got better. And then I would have another problem in a relationship and I would go back and look at those issues again. You know, even up till very recently, I kind of thought like, all right, you know, like I've done that work. I've kind of got that stuff safely packed away. And then I had some relationship things happen and I was like, oh, nope,

there's still an awful lot of that there, right? And what I found for me is that what happens is that, and my therapist described this and I thought it was a useful way, which was there is some level of distress at which those, you know, if we want to call them traumatic experiences, and mine are more like yours, the sort of neglect type thing, right? That there's some level of distress in which those things will always come up. But that the work that you've done over your time is that you've just increased that level. But that the work that you've done over your time is that you've just increased that level. You're able to handle more and more distress and remain sort of, you know, for lack of a better word, in your adult self. But if you get pushed too far, that's still going to come up. And that was a surprise for me to see it flare up, you know, so strongly in certain cases, again, relatively recently. I'm shaking my head very vigorously and a lot of alignment with what this therapist was sharing and language I would then use to describe the context and when they come up

is as our stress, right, what you're talking about, this kind of window, we want to expand our ability to tolerate more and more stress, allowing ourselves to at the same time, while stress is happening, I do want to emphasize that because I think some of us are of the belief that we get to this place where there isn't stress or upset. No, that's present. And what is also present at that time is a grounded state of what we could call responsiveness, right? Our ability to decide, to choose, to be intentional about how we act. So what we do want to expand, like your wise therapist acknowledges, our window of tolerance or the amount of stress that we can tolerate without falling back into those habitual reactions. Because in childhood, we were very adaptive, attuned creatures with the same nervous system that we have now that is attuned to the

environment, needing to co-regulate with the environment, that has then learned how to adapt to that environment. So we all have a habitual, or initiated by our nervous system i should say has a habitual reaction to stress and i'm emphasizing in the early state of childhood where this occurs because i'll be the first to admit i can act a little bit immature in the sense of developmentally regressive in those reactive moments right i'm screaming i'm yelling i'm saying things i don't mean i'm storming off off, I'm slamming doors, quite like a little kid. And I'm not saying anything derogatory about myself or listeners, because again, when stress is too much, we will rely on the earliest habitual ways that we once dealt with stress, which for a lot of us look like those moments of explosive

reactivity or that shutdown, even if we want to connect, instead of that more responsive state. So ultimately, yes, and I love that this conversation is coming up again, because I think some of us either have the anticipation that healing means to be free of upsetting emotions or have the expectation that having this awareness and maybe a little bit of practice in terms of regulating in ourself a new way, that that will erase all of these habitual patterns, which is why I intentionally, I love the science of things and I very much map it on to neurophysiological or biological habits and patterns that are quite literally wired into us.

So if you are listening and you have those expectations, those might be creating a whole lot of more complicated suffering in an already difficult journey, though it is absolutely possible because we can change. We can wire new habits and patterns. Those neurophysiological pathways can be created at any time, regardless of our age, our biological age. So I want to emphasize that reality too. While it's hard to change, change can absolutely happen at any age. Absolutely. I mean, I think I always say that's the good news and the bad news

about change. The good news is you absolutely can change. And the bad news is it tends to take a lot of repetitions, right? It tends to take time. As you were talking, I was also thinking a little bit about the idea of sometimes viewing healing in a binary, like either I'm healed or I'm not, right? Which is not a very helpful framework. At least it hasn't been for me. I can look back and be like, well, the person I was 25 years ago, I am radically different than that person, but I'm still healing, right? And there are days that are better than others. And I love what you say about the neurobiology of it, because I mentioned getting divorced at 28. When I started doing this childhood work, it was known as inner child work. And a lot of the language around it was extraordinarily cringy to me. It just was. I am under a great deal of stress, I will relate to habitual patterns that I learned very, very young, you know, or to be said slightly differently,

when I'm under great emotional distress, my limbic system will be way more in control than my prefrontal cortex, which is actually able to choose from my values, how I want to respond. which is actually able to choose from my values how I want to respond. And those ways of looking at it allowed me to then kind of go, all right, that's good. Got it intellectually. Makes sense. Now I can start to express warmth to, quote unquote, that part of me, that child within. I appreciate our group sharing that. And I will admit I was shaking my head in affirmation because I too, when beginning to read about the earliest inner child kind of conceptualizations, even the exercises that, you know, are often journaling prompts, writing to my inner child and, you know, these visualizations, I very much

struggled to recall or call to mind my childhood. So that didn't feel like it was a kind of a fruitful path. And I too felt like it was a little cringy. I've heard from a lot of members in the community who have mentioned almost an intentional commitment. I think this is another group of us where we do not want to. We kind of affirm ourselves that we are not going to look back to that childhood. It was too painful. And then of course, I think there's the group of us that are like, well, why do I need to? I'm now decades beyond that. So I think understanding as you were able to do and, and, you know, share with us here. And as I kind of talk about understanding the impact that our childhood has, even if we don't want to look back, we are still creating and

recreating our past experiences more often than not specifically within our relationships, our patterns, the ways we show up well into our adulthood. And another thing I just want to touch into because it's so important and so wise, there is a drastic difference between knowing this information, hearing this information that you and I are talking about that you share weekly on your podcast that is now in the pages of this book if you choose to purchase it or what have you. That is different. Knowing is a separate step. I actually break those down into two steps of change having new information Maybe even a new awareness about ourself Maybe even seeing the old habit or pattern that i'm recreating is that first step foundationally important allows me to get to that second step

Equally important which is embodying. So now we're talking about especially when we're talking about emotions and emotional regulation And the immature ways that many of us have habitually learned to navigate our emotions, we are now talking about embodying new choices, integrating our nervous system and our physical body that houses the emotions. And that window that we were sharing about earlier of stress tolerance is an embodied practice of stressing our body out little by little and of intentionally then teaching ourself or helping our body come back in to calm regulation. I emphasize that point because I think a lot of us get stuck in that abyss. And I worked with a lot of clients who had so much of that awareness. Oh, I know I'm almost torturing myself daily as I'm watching myself not be able to break

those habits and patterns and won't be able to break them unless we create a new habit and pattern, which is an embodied action. I think there's a really key thing in there because, you know, I talk a lot about knowledge is power, but only if it's followed by like integration and action. But you have a step in there that I think is important, right? That I'm often not hitting on directly. And it was after I sort of read your book and went back through it again that I really sort of was like, I think that what you're saying here, and it makes a lot of sense, because I would say that, you know, the theme of the book is that, to regulate our nervous system is a really important piece to actually be able to apply these things, right? Even if I know the idea, if I am severely dysregulated, I can't apply it no matter how much I want, right? And so, you know, your book really

focuses on that aspect a lot. So say more about that. You were beautifully using even the language yourself when you brought up our limbic system, the very emotional part of our brain, of course, and then very simplified this neurology. And then, of course, the prefrontal cortex, frontal lobe, the place of grounded, mature, forward thinking, the space that's able to imagine a future that is different than the past that many of us have been repeating and, right, make choices into that direction. So that I think is a very important kind of understanding those two parts of our mind. I should say, if we can really simply understand what happens when we meet something that's stressful or upsetting

and our nervous system becomes activated and our attention, right, goes to survival, meaning physiologically all of our systems now are running full focus on survival. My heart is pumping, my blood is pumping, my breath is quickening, my energy is mobilizing so I could overcome the threat if it's possibly at hand. And my attention is narrowing to the threat at hand. And within kind of the threat threaded hand is also in my subconscious mind, the learned behavior, the thing that I habitually repeated over time, right? Those habitual reactions that we're talking about. So what happens when you and I are having a conversation, when I was working with clients, when I did one-on-one individual therapy work

that I was doing, we were having a conversation going back to those parts of the brain, right? We were having a conversation going back to those parts of the brain right seemingly from the very powerful forward thinking prefrontal cortex And then as stress happens outside the office door right as activation and my body gets stimulated and then my focus Goes right back To whatever is immediately at hand meaning I lost focus of the conversation I lost the intention of the new future action that I want to repeat. And for a lot of us, we lose the ability because we are too overwhelmed in that moment. And now our body is operating solely based on our survival because

what it thinks is happening, even if what we're navigating is say an interpersonal conflict, an argument between me and someone else, what our body thinks is happening is a moment of life or death survival. So, right, thinking about a future and trying something new in this moment is going to be the farthest thing that our body is going to instruct us to do, which is why we continue, maybe some of us even shamefully, I can admit, I can almost be hovering above myself in some moments. And I watch myself say something I don't mean. I watch myself do something I don't mean to do. And it's almost like I'm hovering like, no, don't do that. And then I feel guilty.

We feel shameful. We feel broken. We wonder why we can't create change. And because literally, we do lose access to the idea to create change. And then many of us to the resources or the ability to create change because we've become overwhelmed. And of course, we're not going to be able to make a new choice because newness is only more stress to my already overwhelmed nervous system in that moment. Yep. And so would you say that a key piece of this then is learning to regulate our nervous system in moments of more minor stress, right?

Because obviously, I think we all know the experience of like, you know, we're all told like, well, when you're really upset, take a few deep breaths. I'm not saying that's not good. Of course it is, right? But if I haven't practiced that as a skill, right? When I'm at a 10, it's like bringing, as they used to say, like a knife to a gunfight, right? Like it just isn't going to work, right? So trying it maybe when I'm at a four. I think the first indirect step, right, to get to that place of even answering the question, when, right, when do I practice? practice, I would make a case that there's two steps in terms of our nervous system and the work that will translate then to these responsive moments that many of us are looking to create. And the first step I would say is a daily commitment to just reconnecting with our body

and our nervous system cues in particular. Noticing, even as you're listening right now to me talk, right? If I were to just ask you, right, to just tune into your body while you're listening right now to me talk, if I were to just ask you to just tune into your body while you're listening to me talk right now and just do a quick scan from top to bottom, maybe noticing the tension in your muscles. Are you holding? Is there clenching? Is there areas of constriction and tightness?

Or do your muscles feel more or less at ease, ready to mobilize you into action should you need it? Or do you feel so depleted of energy and your muscles feel so weakened they couldn't carry you into action if you needed it? Maybe noticing your breath. Our breath is another marker of the amount of stress our body is under. Are you able to breathe deep and evenly and calmly from your belly? Are you holding your breath? Is your breath really quick and is it shallow? Your heart rate, again, that kind of shifts in tandem with our breath and our

energy system, right? With our heart rate elevating sometimes as we become more stressed or more upset. So these are markers. The more consistently I'm connected to my body, which for a lot of us, for me, the focal point, my number one commitment for probably about the first six to maybe even 12 months of my healing journey, every day I wrote in my journal and committed throughout the day to not doing all of these tools that I talk about daily. My only intention was be present in my body, take the focus away from my worrying about other people, take the focus away from endlessly thinking about myself and analyzing myself, and just learn how to refocus my attention on my body. And again, I emphasize that foundational piece of paying attention to our body, those nervous system markers in particular,

because Eric, that then translates to us knowing as we're inching up that stress scale, because some of us aren't even realizing how much tension and stress we're carrying when we're already at a six or a seven. So then it does take that one, you know, stressful event or something outside of our expectation and now we are in that reactive state. So I spent time on that foundational step because that I think gets overstepped a lot, right?

With this idea that, oh, I will just remember and do this thing in the moment. I'll know when I'm stressed out. I need to even use these intentional tools. That awareness and possibility only comes when we're spending at least some part of our day paying attention to our body. And then of course,

we can begin to make those intentional choices to regulate our nervous system, to amplify our energy if we're feeling so depleted of energy, to decrease our energy if we're feeling too overstimulated. Of course, I'm really simplifying. I go much more in depth in my book and all of the content that I talk about really generally, but just giving us idea of what we mean when we're talking about

the nervous system, foundationally be connected to the body allows me to determine where my stress level is. And then yes, more specifically answer your question. It is so important to practice consistently, especially outside of those moments where I'm at that seven or that eight, so that when I increase my stress and I get to those moments, I A, have access to this new choice and I can apply it in a way that will feel like you were saying. Two, three, five belly breaths when I'm already kind of at a 10 or 11 of overwhelm are probably not going to

do much, then when we practice all of this together, then we can start to see and experience the shift. Yep. Yep. And I do think that there's a lot of really important points in what you just said. And I think it's also important to recognize that because what I do see happen sometimes is we wait until these really difficult moments to practice. It doesn't work. And then we assume that none of these practices work. We give up on the method, right? Because we're like, well, I did what they said and it didn't work, right? And so I think that's the bigger danger, obviously, than the fact that the breaths didn't calm you down in that situation. The bigger one is that you breath didn't calm you down in that situation.

The bigger one is that you abandon believing there is a way to get there. I want to emphasize that danger because I think for many of us, that just either creates or contributes to and strengthens a feeling and a belief that many of us have within us around powerlessness. us have within us around powerlessness. And I think that when we do have those moments and the things that people are telling us don't work and they don't work for us, for a lot of us, this is just further confirmation of how nothing, right? We go right to that place of, well, nothing is going to work, right? There's something inherently broken or different about me that it's not working for me, yet it's working for all these people. And now before I know it, I feel more helpless, I feel more powerless. So I appreciate you speaking to that. And I'm always the first to admit, I'm never going to sell someone a magic elixir because I've yet to find it myself.

And I'm always going to be the first to acknowledge the reality of the repetition that is needed of what it really does take. And I will be the first to acknowledge right here, right now that one, two small practices, five deep belly breaths here and there really are going to be limited unless we kind of look at the whole picture. And when we do, I mean, then the amount of change in my opinion is incredible, is life-changing. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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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. I have a program called Habits That Matter. And the core idea is that we can use the science of behavior change to optimize for wisdom rather than just productivity or efficiency. But the heart of the program is really this idea of little by little, a little becomes a lot. Like that's the whole thing. But little by infrequent doesn't do it, right? I'm not saying like every single time you practice without ever missing. I just mean that these things add up over time.

They really do. And so it's not the way most of us orient towards change. We orient towards the epiphany, or we orient towards the scene in the movie where the person has an insight, and then a minute later in the movie, they have a brand new life, right? Where is it those of us that I think have spent a lot of time around this world know that like, well, that's pretty rare. I want to also speak to you acknowledging that there will be times when we don't maybe keep our commitment, stay in creation or maintaining maintenance of the new habit. And I would make a case that not only is that inevitable, and again, we're somewhat indirectly, and if not directly talking about our nervous system,

I'll offer right here, because our nervous system, why it is wired to create and allow us to create an incredible amount of opportunity difference evolution it does perceive and experience newness as stressful inherently yeah so inherently even if right we could kind of say like oh well these habits are objectively you know beneficial to me, doesn't matter to my nervous system because they're still simply new and therefore stressful. Again, this is kind of what we were talking about when we began our conversation. Those habits, the habitual way we've been living, habits exist outside of these emotionally reactive moments.

I mean, habits carry us through our day from the way we care for our physical body to the emotional habits as we were talking about them. We have habits in all of these areas. So when we go to change a habit, right, it is going to probably result in us not just keeping that commitment or that new choice consistently over time. We will probably fall back typically when stress is high into those old habits. And what I see those kind of backslides or whatever we want to call those, those moments where I'm not continuing forward in creation of new habits, I see those moments as a beautiful opportunity to create or over time that contribute, I should say, to the rebuilding of self-trust. Because I can't tell you how many,

whether it was days I stopped, habits that I knew were beneficial to me. And I think this is another piece that as I'm saying, and I want to voice here as well, as we feel differently based on the new habits or choices that we're creating, nothing is in my opinion, as motivating as that. I don't care who's telling me how great they feel doing what they're doing. The most motivating thing to me has ever been when I feel differently, right? When I have started to care for my body in a new way that has allowed me to get my sleep in order, I'm eating nutrient dense foods. And so now I have a contrast. Oh my gosh, I have more energy. Oh my gosh,

I can think clearer, right? Now I feel what those old habits and I can feel the contrast in those new habits. So now it doesn't matter who I read that tells me that these new habits are beneficial to me because now I have that contrast to compare. So I'm saying that to say, I can't tell you how many times I've fallen off of habits, even ones that I know and I have the data in my own lived experience. These work. I've fallen off for days. I've fallen off for weeks. Furkan can acknowledge, I probably complain to him when I'm in busy season. Sometimes I can fall off for a long period of time. One habit, two habits. I only do kind of one thing and I forget everything else in the morning. And what that has done, the opportunity, what I'm sharing then is to re-engage habits once we've fallen off the wagon, however long that wagon might've been,

is an opportunity, in my opinion, to rebuild that trust. Because I do think some of us put this expectation, and I see this all the time in my online community, and the relief when I acknowledge myself even, hey, I don't do it all the time myself. The relief is palpable because I think a lot of us put this expectation that we do it perfectly. The second we know we need to create a new habit, we consistently engage this habit, even if it's logically appropriate for us, because now why wouldn't we, right? And we create all of these shameful experiences around the natural difficulty of creating a new habit, which is why I'm always the first to say, throw out that expectation of perfection.

You will fall back into old habits. And the gift again that it has given me is now I have a level of confidence, right? I could be sitting here in a moment away from my habits for however long it's been. I now know what I need to do, how I feel when I do it. And that gives me then the option or possibility of making a choice to return to those habits that create that experience for me at any time. Yeah. There are so many things you said in there that are important. I love that idea of it gives you a sense of self-trust, right? Because like you, I've worked with a lot of people. I did a lot of coaching with people around behavior change. And that was one of the most, you know, what I often thought was the worst part of their inability to make the changes they wanted to make

worse than the fact that they weren't exercising or whatever it was, was their inability to make the changes they wanted to make worse than the fact that they weren't exercising or whatever it was, was their ability to not trust themselves. The damage that it did to their psyche of why do I keep failing at this? Right. And so I go to great pains to stress, like we're going to make some progress and inevitably it's all going to fall apart. Right. It is absolutely going to happen. So what we want to do is think about it's all going to fall apart, right? It is absolutely going to happen. So what we want to do is think about what are we going to do then? How are we going to respond? You know, and what way can we respond that has the least amount of drama and self flagellation because that perpetuates the cycle, right? That feeds the belief, well,

I can't really do this. I'm not the kind of person that sticks with anything, you know, and then also getting clear on what to success is like, to me, if it's a behavior I'm trying to do daily, like, I consider myself successful at like 85%. Like, if I'm upwards of that, I'm like, perfect. That's great. And I'm not always even there. But intentionally, I'm like, I'm not going to do it every day. It's just not going to happen given the nature of my life. So let me not even, you know, think that that's the bar. Two thoughts I'm having.

This one is kind of starting with this idea of flexibility. you know, anytime we're operating or making choices from something separate from our deeper intuition, meaning how I feel in this given moment, anytime we say, oh, well, this is my nutrition routine. I do it every day. Doesn't matter what, right? That to me is always a little bit of, I call that into a little bit of question. Well, what about the days where your body needs more of something or less of something else, right? So then is there one program that applies to every day with all the different hormonal, seasonal, energetic shifts that we as individual humans experience? And so I can make a case that for most things, if not all things, this idea of a universal one size fits all everyday model, right? I could give you categories of

things that I think could be helpful through any given day, and then I give a range of flexibility to honor the individual that is living inside the body that might have different needs in that area in any given moment. That piece, I think, around flexibility is so important. And just wrapping back into as well, when we talk about shaming and criticizing, because I couldn't agree. I think the most suffering that we cause ourselves, I should say, is that lack of trust, the resilience and the lack of trust. And then all of the habits that have been created around our inability to be attuned and centered in ourself and childhood, because no one taught us or were able to show up in that presence for ourself, right? It has created, I think, for so many of us, all of these different habitual ways that are neglectful, that are self-harming,

that lack trust in ourself. So when now we're trying to do something productive and helpful and change ourself, right, in a direction of a future that we want to see if it's possible, right, in a direction of a future that we want to see if it's possible, nothing is so devastating when then that critical voice. So what I want to say here is most of us have a critical voice in our minds. So again, this is another area where if we're going to expect in those moments where I decide not to do the things that I know are good for me, if we're going to expect immediately that that voice is going to vanish, we are possibly setting ourself up for disappointment because that voice, right? Those beliefs that are represented in the thoughts running through my mind have been verified by our lived experience at one time when

I didn't show up in service of myself because no one taught me how, and then I continue not to learn how, right? So that voice will likely be there. The most empowering choice we can make in that moment when we notice that voice and how much attention we're paying to that voice is how much attention we choose to continue to give to that voice. So what I want to say here in practicality is, if in those moments where we're beating ourself up, whether it's because we missed habits that we want to create or whatever the reason may be, the voice may come, probably will come.

Doesn't mean anything shameful about you in that moment, just means it's the practice voice that's usually there to narrate this particular type of event. You can empower yourself in that moment by noticing the voice and by removing your focus and paying attention to anything else,

to your breath, to what's happening in the moment. But the less we give attention to that voice, the less now moving forward, we're going to continue to strengthen it. Because again, I think this is another area where we expect immediate results. Oh, I'm going to change my belief overnight. And so those thoughts are going to go away. I'm going to immediately feel different. And when that doesn't happen, this must not work. When in reality, right, these are the practical behind the scenes steps. It works, but not immediately overnight. It works in those moments when I remove my focus of attention from that thought so that over time that neural network weakens. It happens then when I consistently now fire up a new thought that can begin to plant itself as a new belief. not just awareness and thought, like we were talking about earlier, when I embody new choices that now are in alignment with the feelings that go in attachment, right, with that belief. So now

I'm creating the story of when change happens, absolutely somewhere down the line, but it's not going to happen immediately. That voice isn't going to vanish. So I just like to give the practical application of how we then get there. Yep. Yep. That's great. I'd like to turn a little bit and talk about, we talked a little bit about it, this embodied self idea. But you make a point in the book, and it's a good one, that sometimes our thoughts are driven by our nervous system, right? idea of cognitive behavioral therapy says, right, that my thoughts cause emotions. And I think we all can see examples of where that is true, right? There are times I have a thought, and it is a thought that is distressing. And after I have it, I suddenly feel bad, right? So that seems obvious. But I think what is less obvious, but equally true, is that our emotions or our nervous system drive thoughts to say this practically, right?

Like I didn't sleep well last night. So for whatever reason, you know, a couple of different things, I just didn't sleep really well. And I know that when that happens, my thoughts just have a slightly darker hue to them, right? And there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it except go, oh yeah, all right, well, there's those thoughts, you know, I know what's causing them, right? But I mean, I think that took me a long time to figure that out. You know, it took me a long time to recognize that this is a bi-directional thing here. It took, and it's still taking, in my opinion, this obviously isn't a statement on my field, it is taking quite some time, even I think for the field of clinical psychology itself, to evolve that framework. Because that is not what I had been taught when I was actively in

my program. It very much was, while my program wasn't just focused solely on CBT or cognitive behavior as the gold standard, I went to a program in New York, so I learned interpersonal therapy and other types of modalities. So thankfully it wasn't as limited, though even at that time, there was little, if any talk of the body outside of the fact that yes, we have a nervous system. It connects our brain and our spinal cord. And really that's all you have to know about that. And so I too lacked, not only personally in my own awareness, in my own experiences, in my own relationships, in my professional work with the clients I was seeing, I didn't have, in my opinion, which is the most foundationally important part, if not half, right, of our human experience, which is our body. Because I could even make a case,

I really appreciate you using yourself in that lived example of waking up in the morning, feeling tired because I could call to question then at least it's like the chicken or the egg thing, which came first, because what was happening right in your body as the hours of the night were progressing, when you weren't in that restive, restorative, replenishing state of sleep, right? You're up and your body's energetic resources are being drained. right? You're up and your body's energetic resources are being drained. So you woke up in a state, in a physiological state that we could then say, now that we acknowledge that it's not just the mind, the brain sending instructions down and we don't just march along. Our body is equally sending, actually our nervous system has more nerves that send information from our periphery to our brain, from our body to our brain, to simplify it, than from our brain to our body.

So to me, that indicates the importance and the sheer mass amount of this information that my brain is considering. So now back to you in the morning, your brain and your mind was getting physiological information. So it could be then said that your thoughts were dark in reflection of the state of your body. Absolutely. Overstressed, under-resourced, right? And so similar. And that I think is the case that very few of us are aware is happening all the time.

So listener, consider this your halfway through the episode integration reminder. Remember, knowledge is power, but only if combined with action and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously, just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop and be present, can't it? If you want to keep this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,

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and let's feed our good wolves together. I mean, the mystery to me when I started to try and like unravel this personally, now I've been talking about these things for a decade with people, so I've got a lot of hearing it, right? But what used to puzzle me was the idea that depression was always a thought based thing, because I would be like, I wake up and before a single thought has hit my brain, there is a weather system that is here. That's how I would refer to it. There is a weather system that is here. And if it is the depressive weather system, it's almost as if my thoughts, they're passing through that filter, right? They're taking on the color of that weather system. I think that there's a cyclical relationship between all these things. They feed on each

other, right? So a thought causes a feeling, then a feeling causes a thought. And I mean, untangling, it almost seems impossible and not necessarily even important to do. So talk to me about how you think about this idea, specifically when it comes to working with those difficult emotional states that then color everything else, or those difficult physical states that then color everything else. We have the information, even our personal awareness, that this is what's happening, that our body is having sensory, sensational experiences, physiological experiences, and all of that information is traveling to our mind. In my opinion, that's the big significant piece of the journey for a lot of us, because in there for

so many of us might hold the explanation with why I'm experiencing what I'm experiencing. So now I can relieve myself of the shame, right? Oh, my nervous system is dysregulated. I'm overwhelmed. I'm returning to these old, you know, just tying all these concepts together, immature ways of being, or I'm just showing up in these roles. I don't know who I am in my relationship. So it makes sense. It's hard to change. Oh, I'm not broken, right? That I think for a lot of us is incredibly, I think, relieving, healing, an important and necessary part of the experience.

Understanding again, too, that our body is foundationally playing a role specifically around our emotions, then outside of just having this information gives us then the space for these embodied choices. Because to think, and just tying it again to the concepts of my book, to be able to think in collaboration with someone else, meaning to hold space for their perspectives, their wants, their needs, that all takes a actual state of nervous system activation

to be able to be open and receptive to whether it's someone else or the world around us. Because when we are in that state of activation, when we're feeling stressed by whatever the threat is, again, that narrowing of focus that I mentioned at the beginning impacts our ability to think or care about anyone's perspective outside of our own, which is why a lot of us act in very shameful, hurtful ways because we are only focused on our survival. Right. So when we're talking about, again, how important and foundational nervous system in the body work is, especially on emotions and our ability to connect with our emotions and therefore

to connect with other people in relationships on emotions, we are talking about our body needing to be in an open and receptive state to do that. One where I can be open and present to my emotions, where they're not overwhelming me and causing me to go into those reactive states, where I'm grounded and present. One that I can be aware of, again, how my body is doing so I can intentionally help it navigate through stress or through upset. And then one where I can then be open to sharing or to attuning and connecting with another individual. And without our nervous system playing a role to either facilitate all of that or to prevent all of that, it is playing that

foundational of a role because we can't think a new thought, we can't have a grounded thought, we can't shift perspective or care about anyone's thoughts, let alone their emotions, if our nervous system isn't allowing us. You talk about different types of consciousness in the book. You sort of talk about body, mind, and heart consciousness. And this is more a theoretical question than I'd like to get into the practical aspects of it. But I more and more start to wonder if when we talk about mind and body, or we talk about different types of consciousness, or we talk about thoughts and emotions, we're separating apart something that isn't inherently, in essence, one thing. Like we know scientific reductionism can say it can be helpful to take things apart so that we can look at them. But there's something

happening in totality of the wholeness of it. And I more and more, I'm like, well, I never see a thought without an emotion and vice versa, right? Like they don't travel apart. They're always together. So, you know, either they're really good friends or are they kind of the same thing? I'm smiling ear to ear because when we think about our human experience, let me start at the most global, right? Our human experience. And for a very long time, I would have, right, defined, I mean, even, I think we struggled with this, what Descartes, however many years ago, right, said, I think therefore I am. We've all kind of conceptually been trying to figure out, right, what is it that makes us human? And for a very long time, we emphasized, right, thought, thought, and all of the mind, the mental faculties, our brain and action of, right, mental faculties is a mind. So we thought, oh, okay, that's what makes us human, right? And now we're starting to enter in or reenter, I should say, because again, the body and work and awareness of the body and many of the tools aren't new. They are grounded in really ancient wisdom. We're kind of returning back, in my

opinion, to the body. And so what makes us human then continuing the conversation is our mind is also, in my opinion, right, our body. So that's kind of thinking about these kind of awarenesses then kind of plucked out into three. And then what makes us human, I could, and this goes into how I would even define holistic. You would hear me using similar language that I'm using right now. I would make a case that there is another less definable, maybe I should say less measurable, visible, you know, some of us have definitions for what some of us might call an essence, a spirit, a soul, right? Whatever the language is that we use for it, that there is a uniqueness, right? That kind of differentiates me from you

and obviously me from all of you listeners. So even just thinking about, right, the human experiences, all three of these parts, our very powerful mind, our very powerful body, our uniqueness, our essence, I could even locate that for me learning again about the body, our uniqueness, our essence. I could even locate that for me learning again about the body, but diving into the different aspects of the body, the nervous system. Of course, we spent a lot of time talking about that already, though learning for me about the heart and all of the beautiful, and I think groundbreaking research that heart math puts out in terms of the energetic power of the heart. And for me, if I were to locate as the scientist, I'd like to see where this essence

or this soul or spirit would reside, right? Understanding, at least my understanding is that we are an energetic creature, right? I would kind of locate that in the heart. So thinking about these layers or aspects of consciousness, then as I mapped them onto the book, couldn't agree with you more. It is conscious awareness, right? In the most

expansive sense, then allows us to be mind conscious or conscious of the stories or narratives, interpretations running through our mind, allows us to be body conscious or aware of the sensations and physiological shifts of our body. And then within that state of consciousness, we can also then be heart conscious or aware specifically of the feelings and sensations and for a lot of us, messages that we can receive from our heart. So for me, those kind of three parts are really, I couldn't agree more, Eric. We are an integrated. So when we rely or over rely or leave out any of those aspects of our being or any of

those practices when we're healing, I do think that's why a lot of us aren't able to feel the impact of the work that we're doing and why many of us continue to walk around not feeling fully grounded, fully whole, fully ourself. Because one aspect of our being, I think for most of us at least, is left out of our daily equation, if you will. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

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podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I know for me that I'm not sure which is left out more regularly, but they vie for it, which is heart and body, right? 100%. Yep. Mine pretty tuned in pretty clear. You know, I think I've made a lot of progress. I have a question for you about heart math. I know who they are. We interviewed one of their people quite some time ago. Is it Howard Martin? Is that his name? Yeah, it's been a long time. We had somebody on. I'm curious. I think you've looked at their stuff in more detail. Does the science look pretty rigorous? Does it look like it's well done and peer reviewed and all of that? To me? Yeah. I mean, from what access I have, of course, I don't have any intimate or professional connection. But that's, I mean, to say that, you know, so I'm an outsider to some

extent consuming the information. So from what they offer, I mean, I do think that they are putting solid research and work, you know, again, I could go down the whole rabbit hole in terms of peer funding and all of the factors that are at play in peer funding. So I can't answer whether or not they're, or peer review and peer funding and everything that really goes in that same camp. So I don't know to that extent, I can't, and I don't, I'm not going to be on a record. I don't know. But to me, it looks rigorous and I'm in belief. And again, I don't even just defer to other people. Most of when I'm like, oh, the heart is powerful, it's because I am seeing in my own life and in the clients and the people in my community, right, how powerful it is.

I'm not just taking it because someone said it, right, without that kind of translatable evidence. Even like I was talking about earlier, we want to see for ourselves, right? And I have that in me too. Like I want to see for myself. I want this to be personally meaningful, not just because someone else said said and i think we have an epidemic too of a lot of us for a lot of reasons perhaps because we feel so powerful powerless and helpless where we've created a system within ourself even of deferring yeah to people and i think this all ties into

again this conversation in so many ways of our internal guidance, right? Not outsourcing, developing our own connection back to that intuition that for a lot of us, we disconnected from, not that we didn't have it. We weren't able to trust it because we didn't have the environment and the relationships that allow us to develop that trust, though now we can. Yeah. I think one of the things that drew me most forcefully towards Buddhism was the basic idea where the Buddha, in essence, was asked, like, why should I believe you versus every other spiritual teacher who comes wandering through here every three days? And he said, well, don't. Try it out, right? And if it works for you, then you can trust that it's useful. And I was like, oh, well, isn't that refreshing?

Don't just take my word for it. Don't just take my word for it. Try it out yourself. So let's talk about the heart consciousness and heart coherence. So for you, what have been the practices that have allowed you to develop that consciousness and that presence? We've already, I think, talked about a large majority of them because probably of no surprise to listeners at this point in the conversation, they are grounded in reconnecting and rebuilding, I should say, that consistent connection with my body. With allowing myself to widen my own window of stress or emotional resilience or tolerance. falling into reactions quite often, quite regularly, so that I could be grounded and present and receptive, that state of awareness that allows me to be even interested or curious

in connection with the world around me. So foundationally, let's say everything that I've kind of been talking about in terms of sleeping, eating nutrition-dense foods, making sure I'm moving my body, making sure I'm resting my body, making sure I'm aware of my changing stress levels. And that in those moments I'm bringing or helping my body or co-regulating with someone else so I can come back into that safe and secure and grounded place. And so outside of that, just being consistently what I would call it my lifestyle intentions. And at any given day, of course, there's days where i vary in terms of how i execute yeah then the most practical in terms of reconnecting with my heart this journey began with me having

an awareness first which was the awareness i had with myself was wow nicole you always overstep yourself whether it's your boundaries knowing that you don't have the energy or attention or desire to do something But you say you're going to do it because you're afraid of disappointing or hurting someone else Whether it's emotionally you don't say or do something because you're afraid of upsetting someone else And so seeing that habit, right? We have to begin with where we're at seeing all of the ways I suppressed Myself I began to break that habit which meant as I instinctually saw myself

overriding my emotions, determining that the person isn't interested in what I have to say, or not just freely being myself, I would pause in that moment and give myself the opportunity to reconnect inward. Because what I was really doing in that moment, I was not only factoring whatever my body might be needing in that moment, I was giving myself the opportunity to turn in and to explore and maybe discover or notice what was happening on a deeper level for me. What was on my heart? What was it that I really did want to say in this moment? Or what is it that I really do want to do in this moment before all of the censoring, right? Convinced me before my environment, my relationships of older years convinced me not to. Because then in those moments, right now I can shift my focus

because I believe that our heart has information available to us at any time. It's just a matter of whether or not we're tuned into it, whether or not we even feel safe enough in this body to pay attention to it. And for a lot of us, the answer is no. What's in my body is overwhelming trauma that I am under-supported or under-resourced in dealing with, which is why you and I have just spent an entire hour having a conversation about how to resource ourself so that I can then be safe in my body to even begin to listen and decode that which it is, is on my heart, or in my opinion, what is speaking through, right? The unique vessel that is me. So that's why those concepts of awareness, I think,

give us the bridge of the intentional action. And for me, it's those two daily commitments, the consistent practice that allows me to be regulated and present and safe enough in this body. And then seeing myself in action in moments where I'm not giving myself even a moment to notice what's on my heart, let alone choose or decide or act from it. And then of course, giving myself that opportunity, allow myself to connect with and speak or act from my heart and then tolerating perhaps the outcome how people actually do then react to me in my more authentic right essence that's great so we're near the end of our time here so i thought i would ask one last question which is admittedly perhaps a big question so feel free to answer it in whatever succinct way you would like. But it's this, we've talked about trusting yourself. We talk about intuition. We talk about knowing what your heart wants, right? And you've also talked about how for many of us,

given our traumatic pasts, those signals are really kind of messed up, right? And so I often have thought about this because there was a period in time, right, as a heroin addict at 24, like, you probably shouldn't trust my intuitions, probably shouldn't trust my perception of the world. So how do people start to think about when I can trust this is an authentic part of me that's coming out. And when is this a habituated response to previous pain? Because those feel really real. I appreciate you speaking this question and opening this up for exploration because I could not agree more. Many of us, the habits that we continue to talk about whether there are daily habits or our reactive habits

Have been repeated Have been verified by our experience For so long and so frequently That whatever, you know age it is into our adulthood. They do begin to feel like instinctual instinctive Reactions. Yeah, because I mean if I really want to simplify it, we have not yet started to pay attention to everything that's happening beneath the iceberg, I think is an analogy many of us maybe are familiar with, or behind the scenes of those reactions, right? We're not paying attention to the habitual nature of our interpretations or

our narratives or the stories. We're not paying attention to all those physiological shifts and changes, many of which are very consistent in the emotional state or climate of our body. Some of it becomes a resting state of the same emotional salience or feeling, right? And we're not paying attention to everything then that contributed to what feels instinctual. Because we didn't see that, yes, a thing happened, what feels instinctual because we didn't see that. Yes, a thing happened, but my body started to shift in terms of its physiology. At that same time, then my mind picking up on that shift started to interpret what is happening. And then I tune in somewhere along as I was sharing hovering mid-reaction or somewhere after the fact. So of course, I'm not able to separate out.

And it feels like this is just what I felt in the moment. So I just spoke or did right from my instincts. And that is the reality. We've practiced our habits so much. We can't differentiate that which is a learned instinct, if you will, a learned habit. So I don't keep confusing with instinct and that which is an actual instinct or intuition, intuitive feeling. And so the way we know, while I can't give an exact rubric or formula, like this type of thing would fall into the bucket of it, we know because what intuitions aren't, let's start there, they're not repetitive, right? They're not consistently the same over time, right? What they are a lot of times are springs of insight, right? Something that pops into our head, right? An idea that just

comes to mind, a different maybe feeling or sensation, not one that we're feeling each day, every day, right? Where we're feeling always tightness and constriction, maybe we feel a lightness or an ease in one moment, right? That could be a marker of something coming from intuition. Because intuition isn't consistent. It's not the same day in and day out because it is evolving and responding to the changing scenarios internally or our internal landscape and our external landscape. So again, while I can't give specifics, I like to give kind of general ideas and more often than not, I think what most of us are talking about are learned habits that feel instinctual. And so again, how do we practically find our way to the differentiation is everything

we've been talking about, right? I learned how to regulate my body. I learned to observe all of these repetitive narratives and I learned how to separate out and create a safer space where I can now begin to attune to whether it is the ideas, the thoughts, the words. Some of it's actually here, right? Or these kind of more sensory-based markers. And it's going to be a little different flavor or style. I know for me, I'm having funny. As if on cue, one of my markers, when I'm resonating with something or I'm feeling an alignment, whether it me, I'm having funny. As if on cue, one of my markers when I'm resonating with something or I'm feeling an alignment, whether it's something I'm saying, something I'm watching or hearing someone else say is I get goosebumps on my skin. And so I'm getting that experience

right now, which is for me, again, a marker of, oh, something deeper is in alignment with what is coming out of my mouth or what I'm feeling in this conversation that I'm having. So that is, again, one of the many ways for me too. It's just, I could be on a walk, right? Not really necessarily thinking about anything or listening to music. And then, right, an idea pops into my head. It's not an idea I've been perseverating on. I think a lot of times that's the learned, right, aspect of these instinctual behaviors. Oh, the interpretation I always make of events oh i always seem to feel this way oh this is always and instinctually how i'm being

well probably not that might be more of the learned reaction as opposed to the true intuitive reaction so listener and thinking about all that and the other great wisdom from today's episode if you were going to isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what would it be? Not your top 10, not the top five, just one. What is it? Think about it. Got it?

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

free and once you're on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a week with little reminders and nudges. Here's one I recently shared to give you an idea of the type of stuff I send. Keep practicing, even if it seems hopeless. Don't strive for perfection. Aim for consistency, and no matter what,

keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem from recent guest, Light Watkins. And if you're on the fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe. If you want to get in, I'd love to have you there. Just go to oneufeed.net slash SMS. All right, back to it. I really like that idea of seeking out what's different

than what you normally do as at least a clue, right? You know, another clue for me is the more convinced I am of something and the more strongly I feel about it, I very often am like, investigate deeper, right? Because normally you think I feel this so strongly, it must be true. In my case, I'm suspect. I'm like, why am I having this strong of a reaction to this thing? I should probably like, look a little closer here. It's again, it's just another clue to me sometimes that there's more here than, you know, sort of intuition, right? The good intuition. So thank you for that response. Because I do think, you know, I hear a lot about intuition and I get it and I understand it. And I think for those of us who have difficult pasts,

intuition and trauma response, they're difficult to sort out sometimes. So thank you. That's a really helpful answer. I was smiling. Thank you, Eric, for offering that additional because I couldn't agree more with those really big, overwhelming feelings seemingly out of nowhere I do think are a possibility to pause and investigate further. It was coming to mind when you were saying that I have a running joke with my partner Lolly. We've been together for almost, if not a decade now. And it's usually in the context of us having a conversation about something and me offering a statement, kind of confirming a fact or a factual type statement. And she jokes because I have this way sometimes when I'm like demanding, you know, a piece of information is

true. I'm like, yes, I know it. I have this certain way where I'm like emphatic. And she's like, oh, I have to investigate this further. Because when I have this particular way of being emphatic, of course, I share information with her, with everyone all the time. So it's this kind of mode I shift into when I'm like, I know this one for sure is usually, and she's more often than not, and I hate to admit it, right, where usually I'm wrong in what I'm offering. She's like, oh, you're so certain. This now means I need to look into this further because typically I'm not as certain when I'm presenting actual factual information. Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I'm happy every time I get to talk with you. I feel like these are great conversations. We'll have links in the show notes to your book, to your Instagram, and all the other great things you're offering to the world. Thank you, Eric. I could not agree more. It was an honor to be back here.

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