The One You Feed - How to Feel Lighter with Yung Pueblo

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

Diego Perez is a meditator and New York Times bestselling author who is widely known on Instagram and various social media networks through his pen name Yung Pueblo. Online he has an audience of over 2.7 million people. His writing focuses on the power of self-healing, creating healthy relationships, and the wisdom that comes when we truly work on knowing ourselves. In this episode, Eric and Yung Pueblo discuss his latest book, Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future Registration for The Well Trained Mind Program is now open!  Learn the foundations of mindfulness and create a more fulfilling spiritual practice in Ginny’s live virtual program that starts on October 9.  Visit oneyoufeed.net/mindfulness to learn more!540 Yung Pueblo and I Discuss How to Feel Lighter and … His book, Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future Human Habit vs. Human Nature What it means to live from compassion and self-awareness The anxiety and sadness that grew in him, starting in his childhood in poverty The life-changing moment that caused him to turn everything around That your initial reaction is usually your past trying to work its way into your present How he has gone about burning away the patterns that cause him misery His motto of “if this is helping you heal yourself, do it” Repetition in the positive sense The impact of gambling with his life in order to avoid his emotions  What to do and not do when you find yourself in a low mood The power of first letting whatever is happening to just be  Why it’s important to notice when a goal is slipping into a craving Yung Pueblo Links Diego’s Website Instagram By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Yung Pueblo, check out these other episodes: Life Through Poetry with IN-Q The Art of Poetry and Prose with David WhyteSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are just millions and millions of people who are actively healing themselves, whether it's through Eastern modalities, Western modalities, Indigenous modalities. Healing has become this massive, massive thing. Not only is that going to benefit your personal life, but it will ripple outward. 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. Thank you. 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 on this episode is Diego Perez, a meditator and New York Times bestselling author who is widely known on Instagram and various social media networks

through his pen name, Young Pueblo. The name means young people, and it serves to remind him of his Ecuadorian roots, his experiences in activism, and that the collective of humanity is in the midst of important growth. On this episode, Diego and Eric discuss his work in general, as well as his most recent book, Lighter. I love this quote from the Buddha, the mind hard to control, flighty, alighting where it wishes, one does well to tame. The disciplined mind brings happiness. Happiness can often feel like an elusive goal everyone seems to strive for and never quite achieves because we seek it outside of ourselves rather than going inward, which is something mindfulness teaches us to do.

And Ginny? Yes, Eric. This idea of taming the mind is why you named your program The Well-Trained Mind, right? Yep, and I'm excited to announce that it's open for enrollment now through October 8th in my live virtual six-week Introduction to Mindfulness program. Whether you're new to mindfulness and meditation or you're new to mindfulness and meditation or you're looking to strengthen your existing mindfulness practice, I'll teach you the foundations of mindfulness so that you can live with more ease, create a nourishing and fulfilling spiritual practice, discover how to be a friend to yourself, and strengthen your ability to live in a more grounded, connected, peaceful way.

To learn more about the program, go to oneufeed.net slash mindfulness. That's oneufeed.net slash mindfulness before October 8th. I hope to meet you there. Hi, Diego. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Eric. I'm excited to be talking to you today. Yeah, I'm really show. Thank you so much for having me, Eric. I'm excited to be talking to you today.

Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. You have been really writing very eloquently about personal growth and change for a while, and you've got a new book that's coming out, which we're going to definitely get into. But let's start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their 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, and they look up at their grandparent, and they say, well, which one wins?

And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you, what does that parable mean to you in your life and in the work that you do? That parable really directly reminds me a lot. It aligns well with the Buddhist teaching. Because greed and aversion, these are two really, really strong tendencies in the human mind. And they swim at the core of, you know, what we really have accumulated over time. And they're constantly motivating us. And oftentimes we think that greed and aversion are things that will produce safety, but what

they actually produce are misery. And I think it took me a long time to see that that was really the root of my like inner struggle was that I was leaning too far into greed, leaning too far into aversion and hatred. And all I ended up with was tons and tons of tension in my mind. So now that I've really started focusing on just peeling back all those layers, and I've been meditating for about 10 years now, it's shown me that if you do feed the wolf that's full of kindness and that's trying to do good in the world, that you'll live a much more fulfilled life. You used a word there I really like. You referred to greed and aversion as tendencies.

And I love that word. In your new book, you write about, I think you call it a human habit versus human nature. Let's talk a little bit about that because one of the things I love about the wolf parable is it sort of says, Hey, we have the seeds of all this inside of us, right? And we get to choose what we want to work with. So talk to me about tendencies or habits versus nature. Yeah. I think, um, one thing that we don't realize that became clear over time to me was that every time that you react, right, whatever action you take, it gets accumulated in the mind. And over time, these develop into really strong patterns. So if you are repeatedly reacting with greed, then greed just continues blossoming in the mind. And they do become sort of tendencies or directions

that you more easily move into, depending on the situation that you're in. So I think it's something to realize that when you're feeling something, you know, it may go away from the surface level of the mind at some point, but there's an imprint that was made. And especially in the way that you react to what you feel, those reactions just become really strong habit patterns over time. Yeah. You mentioned greed and aversion. In Buddhism, we tend to talk about those things. They're called different things in different traditions, the three poisons, the three afflictions. But there's greed, there's aversion, and then there is ignorance or delusion. Tell me about what that last one means to you.

You know, I feel like ignorance encompasses them all. And greed and aversion are really the children of ignorance. This is like how immediately they'll manifest. But at the core, it's really, you know, what are we trying to eradicate? We're trying to eradicate all of ignorance if you're really taking the Buddhist teaching seriously. Yeah, I often think about it is like greed or aversion, right? There's different translations of these things. And then I think of ignorance, I often think about when I'm sort of in my mind, the ignorance I have about how much greed and aversion cause me pain. Like that's my ignorance.

Like you said earlier, we think they work to some degree, right? We think they keep us safe. Yeah. We use them as strategies, right? And to me, that's the fundamental ignorance. The ignorance is that that isn't really a very useful strategy. No, and it just leaves you in this loop of survival mode. And I see why greed and aversion have such a strong tendency in us, because they help us survive at the most basic level.

But we don't live in times like that anymore. We live in a growing civilization that's trying to become more and more humanistic. So we need to sort of switch from survival mode to a mode of doing our best to thrive and find fulfillment. And if you're going to do that, you need to not live from a place of greed or aversion, but you need to live from a place of compassion and self-awareness. There's a bunch I'd love to dive into right there, but let's pause for a second and jump back out and maybe have you give us the 30,000 foot version of your story. You know, who are you? Why are you writing about these things? Just give us kind of the very short version of it. Sure, sure. So I was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and my family immigrated to the United States

when I was about four years old. And we had a very difficult time while we were here. You know, we went through an immense amount of poverty. and I saw that the struggle my parents went through to just feed us, to pay rent, to, you know, just give us the absolute basics of life. Like we're talking no luxuries. My dad worked in a supermarket, my mom worked cleaning houses, and we were stuck in a poverty trap. And I think over those experiences, you know, my anxiety really grew, my fear really grew, and the sadness started growing. And that stayed with me throughout childhood, throughout my teenage years. And when I got to college, I was sort of so outside of my comfort zone that these tendencies of anxiety and of sadness really just like kind of blew up. They just gained more and more power and they snowballed. And what I ended up developing were just like

really, really unhealthy habits. You know, I was partying way too much, doing a bunch of different drugs, constantly running away from my emotions, had very shallow relationships. And it led into a year or two after college, I almost lost my life early because I ended up doing way too many drugs one night and felt like I was dying. I was on the floor, felt like my heart was going to explode. And I ended up speaking to a doctor afterwards and she told me that it sounds like I had a mild heart attack. And I was only, I think I was only about 23 at the time. And that was sort of the life-changing moment that really woke me up. I really saw how much I had run away from my own truth and how that led me to this horrible place. So when I started realizing that, I realized if I had

lied to myself so much, and that's what got me here, what I need to do is start telling myself the truth and being honest with myself. And then I slowly started coming out of that dark place. About a year later, I started meditating. Vipassana and I did my first silent 10-day course. And there I saw this like deeper level of healing and I was shocked by it. I couldn't believe that I actually felt better. And I kept going to courses and I realized I was like, wait, this is real. Like I actually feel better. My mind doesn't feel as dense as before.

And that's when the motivation to write came up. You know, I knew like I wasn't totally healed. I wasn't totally wise. I was just beginning, but I was inspired by the fact that healing was even possible. And that's when the writing journey really began. Yeah. I think a lot of people early in their healing journeys are often the most inspirational. I'm a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic. And I remember early on in my recovery career, I was just lit up, you know, and I see it with people who come in. I mean, in the beginning,

you're kind of like a baby deer, you know, you're sort of stumbling around. But it seems like when people hit around, like this is arbitrary a little bit, but about a two year mark, all of a sudden, they are just all about it. And that energy is really contagious and really beautiful. Now, there's something to be said for the mature facets of it too, right? Of continuing to heal over a long, long period of time. Then it sounds like that's about kind of when you really sort of started writing and really had this moment of like, oh my God, like, wow, I can change. I mean, it is so exhilarating. And it feels like that. I remember thinking it felt so wonderful and real, but I was

shocked that nobody told me that this was possible. Like I grew up in a way where like, if you were physically hurt, or if you had some mental ailment, you're just going to have to live with it for the rest of your life. You know, there was no solution. So I grew up Roman Catholic and didn't know anything about meditation going into it. So, this was just a whole new world. And, you know, I even sort of wanted to, during those first few courses after them, like I would test myself to make sure that I wasn't falling into delusion. Like I wasn't like, it wasn't like a new type of lying. And I was like, no, I actually like, I literally feel like I have more space in my mind. Like when situations would happen, like I know how I used to immediately react, but now I could feel that I could see

options where there weren't any options before. And I could intentionally choose, oh, you know what, I'm going to say this as opposed to what I would have said before. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the themes that shows up in your writing over and over again, and I'll just, this is just a line of yours, but it speaks to something you talk about a lot, which is the past is packed into your mind and heart. You also say your initial reaction is usually your past trying to impose itself on your present. So talk to me about what you mean by that and how can we start to work with that more skillfully? and how can we start to work with that more skillfully? Yeah, and it's sort of similar to something I mentioned a little bit earlier where when you feel something and you react to it,

you react to it with some action or another, it gets accumulated in the mind. So when you feel those really strong emotions as a child, they're imprinted into you and you feel them in your subconscious and they accumulate. And let's say if your common tendency is to defend yourself with anger, then if you encounter a situation that reminds you of the past, then you're just immediately going to react with anger. And that tendency of anger will just

become stronger and stronger and stronger over time, and it will more and more quickly appear. And a lot of people react in different ways, you know, they react with sadness, they react with, you know, whatever it is that their system has accumulated. And when you walk around in life, it's almost as if the past exists in the mind as a concrete layer that you're walking on top of, like that past is loaded into your mind. And that's something that I found, you know, in myself in meditation courses, especially the longer courses of like 20, 30 days, is that there is just such a hardened layer of who I was before, what I felt before. And when you're in there, you can actually, you know, really chip away at it and it can start burning away and you come out and just you feel lighter. But often we also just don't realize that when we're perceiving the world, we're looking at it through the lens of our own past, through the lens of our own emotional history. And that makes it quite

difficult to be able to engage with something in a fresh way, in a way where you're not judging it, in a way where you're taking it in as selflessly as possible. Yeah, the spiritual path is often referred to in certain areas as a process of unlearning, or a process of subtraction. And you say that one of the struggles that comes with being human is we find ourselves in a process of constant accumulation. And so kind of what you're saying here is we start to try and shed some of that. And it's so interesting to realize when you start to really recognize like, wait a second, I am simply a collection of causes and conditions. And then if you really internalize that, you kind of then start to go, well, wait a second, really internalize that, you kind of then start to go, well, wait a second, what then am I? What then is the real me? How do you think about that idea? Like, is there a real Diego out there? And

if so, how do you tell the real Diego from the conditioned Diego? Because even the good parts of you have been conditioned. It's true. It's funny. Like, I think that that question, it's never really brought me a lot of solace. Like, who is the real me? I think as opposed to being like, who am I? I found it much more useful to focus on burning away the patterns that cause me misery. do this huge, you know, pattern of anxiety. Let me undo this huge pattern of fear. And let me focus on meditating and not really try to figure out who I am, but actually just let myself be and flow. And that's something that I found has given me much more satisfaction and peace in life is to imagine myself as a flowing river, as opposed to something that's static, like this is who you are, and this is who you'll always be. And it's like, no, it's not. It's like when I observe the body, and I'm meditating, everything is constantly changing. Like there's nothing that is standing still. You know, we're talking like everything, we're talking the physical, the mental, the atomic,

and this is, you know, backed by science as well, like everything is constantly moving. the mental, the atomic, and this is, you know, backed by science as well. Like everything is constantly moving. And I think allowing myself to just embrace that truth of change and allow it to pervade my sense of identity has actually been really freeing. And embracing change at that level, it doesn't mean that, oh, you're going to do whatever you want, because if you start doing things and start putting out a lot of negativity into the world, then yeah, you're going to get a lot of negativity back and you're going to create a lot more tension in your mind. But it's more so the sense of embracing change and doing it in a wholesome way where you're treating yourself well and you're treating others well. I love that idea that that question doesn't bring you much solace. That's a really good

way of thinking about it. Ultimately, it is sort of a philosophical question, right? But I think that the heart of it for me is sort of what you just said is recognizing like, okay, there is something that's continuing to change here. And yet at the same time, as you talked about, we have these deeply embedded tendencies. We have this past that is like a cement underneath us, right? So everything is changing, and yet there are some things that are changeable, but they don't change quickly. You know, it's interesting. I'm going to interview somebody in a couple days. She's a Buddhist teacher that I've admired for a long time. Her name is Susan Piver.

She's written a bunch of books, but her latest book is on the Enneagram. I'm not sure if you're familiar with what the Enneagram is. They will say it's not a personality test, but it's kind of a personality test, right? And it's really interesting to me because I have a very mixed relationship to it. I find it helpful to understand myself in some ways, but I also then worry that I live into those things. And so you write about identity pretty well. You talk about being able to be flexible with identity. Yeah. And I, you know, I have a similar feeling too. Like I have a lot of respect for astrology

and different types of, you know, archetypes, but I don't try to live by them. And I don't try to inform myself too much from them because they're, I think, you know, just similar to what you said. I think it can become a thing where you give away your power to it and they're, I think, you know, just similar to what you said. I think it can become a thing where you give away your power to it and you're like, oh, this is just how I am. But actually, if you more so embrace that you're a changing being, you can more so focus on your evolution as opposed to just being like, this is how I'm always going to be, which I think can be, you know, an easy thing that a lot of people fall into. But I'm sure, to be, which I think can be, you know, an easy thing that a lot of people fall into. But I'm sure, you know, like, and I don't know much about, you know, Enneagrams or astrology,

even I'm a novice in those areas. But my real motto is like, if this is helping you heal yourself, do it. Yeah, I love that you write about that really well about how the healing journey is, you know, different for everybody and different modalities are really helpful. Back to that idea of identity, it's interesting to think about recognizing, I love your word, tendency. It's actually one that I use myself when I'm working with coaching clients. They'll say, I always do X. Or I'm like, oh, no, you have a tendency.

And it's good to know your tendencies so that you can work to correct them, you can work to heal them. And yet, how do we move free of them? And I think that identity is one of those things that's like really learning to go, okay, this is helpful for me. You know, there's research on habits that say somebody who identifies as a non-smoker is less likely to smoke. So there's an identification that's actually helpful. But then there's lots of other ways that identity gets us into trouble. And so do you just work with trying to keep a pretty loose relationship to identity? Yeah, so I think there's two levels to think about it. And this is sort of like, I try to put myself in between the two, like one is the conventional sense of identity,

like, yes, my name is Diego. Yes, like, you know, I release books, and I'm an author, and right now I'm having a conversation with Eric. But I'm also, at the same time, not trying to be completely dominated by the conventional level of existence. I'm also trying to more so embrace ultimate level of existence, which is like, what is Diego? Like, just like a series of changing phenomenon that's happening at incredible speeds. I think having that looseness in my sense of identity actually helps me more easily move through the conventional life. So when I go away to meditate and do those longer courses, you're really just digging

deep into what is the ultimate truth. It's like, am I fundamentally real? Like, no way. Like, there's, you know, like, if I'm really going to be It's like, am I fundamentally real? Like, no way. Like there's, you know, like if I'm really going to be honest, like there's nothing really here. And that understanding, that experience has helped just alleviate so much tension that I would cause myself about like, oh, this is the way that I want to be seen, or this is the way I want people to speak to me, or this is, you know, just all these different forms of attachments that just create a lot of friction in life.

You talked about an ultimate level of existence where you don't really exist. In Zen, we refer to it as the relative and the absolute. I think some people refer to it as, you know, conventional and ultimate. There's different ways of referring to the sort of two truths idea. Say a little bit about, you know, ultimately there's nothing ways of referring to the sort of two truths idea. Say a little bit about, you know, ultimately, there's nothing here. Because on one hand, as you said, absolutely, there is, right? Diego and Eric are having a conversation, right? And I think this is where a lot of people when they start to hear this, oh, there's not really any solid thing here,

they rebel and they go, but wait a second, I very clearly sense that I am. So talk a little bit more about how you work with those two truths. Yeah, I think, you know, the ego is like a vehicle that helps you maneuver the conventional reality. But at the same time, as I kept meditating, like I kept experiencing that, you know, there isn't anything fundamentally here. And I remember reading one of the writings of Lady Sayadaw, a Burmese monk from the early 1900s, and he wrote about how, if I were to say that I exist, I'm not lying. And if I were to say I don't exist, I'm not lying. So, to think that there only has to be one truth is totally wrong. It's actually taking a much more expansive view and understanding that both of these things are true simultaneously, and it don't even contradict each other. It just depends on what frame you're looking at it in.

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, that's in Zen, what we're sort of taught is form is emptiness, emptiness is form. It's both. And when you say that there's nothing here, I think what you are saying, and please clarify and correct, you're saying that there is no unchanging fundamental Diego. Diego is simply a collection of all these different things that have come together, a combination of circumstances and genes and proteins and atoms and experiences. And all that has come together to make something that for some period of time will hold what looks like the form of Diego, but isn't a thing unto itself. Right. So it's pointing to the truth that what this is, is totally insubstantial and ephemeral. It's just a momentary combination of things that is just constantly changing fast. So, like, when you ask the question, like, who are you? It's like, well, I may have a sense of who I am right now, but like,

I mean, give it a week and it's going to be a whole nother sense. And I don't think that's a destabilizing reality. I don't think it's like there's discomfort in that. It's more so like, yeah, right now, you know, I'm someone who really enjoys like history books and next week I may really enjoy fiction. Like, you know, that's okay. Yeah. It's funny. I go through that every once in a while. Like, I'll be like, I'm really into just wearing t-shirts. Like I'm a person who just wears t-shirts. It's stupid. But then like three weeks later, I'm like, wait, I want to wear a button down shirt. I'm like, but wait, what about the t-shirt? It's just all – it's silly.

Why would you even put yourself in a box? Because I think we like certainty and some sort of identity that we can cling to. And it's been one of the greatest gifts of getting older and having done a lot of years of spiritual work is that identity. Just I see it and i am so much less attached to it yeah it's really freeing when you can get to that point 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. 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. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

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Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel

might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really? No, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to talk about the idea of repetition. You talk about repetition a lot. And I think we've talked about the negative form of repetition, right? That these things that happened in our lives, the things that are negative, they add up, they accumulate, right? Talk to me about repetition in the positive sense. Oh, yes. I mean, repetition can be incredibly healing, especially if what you're trying to

repeat is a wholesome action that's like bringing you fulfillment or like activating life inside of you. I found that before I even started meditating, like what I was repeating over and over were a few things I wanted to stay active. So I remember I first started just like going on long walks. Then I started going to the gym and I knew that I had to keep going, like rain or shine. You know, I remember like waiting outside, like in the rain for the bus to come, you know, get me so I could go to the gym. And but repeating that created massive results. And I remember when I first started meditating at home, and doing, you know, two hours a day, one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening, at first, it was just incredibly hard. And over time, like

after a month, after two months, I was like, wait, this is really making a big shift in my mindset so that not only was I getting the positive benefits of meditation while I would go to silent 10-day courses, but now I was actually bringing them at home and I was able to accelerate my evolution even further. But I think being able to repeat what you actually need will just set up that positive, healthy habit that you need to build a new foundation for your life. Yeah, I think it points to also that like, change largely isn't overnight and immediate, right? Not that there aren't moments we have insights that are truly like, whoa, okay. Yeah, yeah. Change is really this little by little by

little, you know, there's an African proverb, I love, which is little by little, a little becomes Yeah, yeah. on drugs. And you woke up one day and you were like, that's it. I think you've got some phrase, I wish I was just looking for it and I can't find it. But like, basically gambling with my life in order to avoid my emotions is over. And by gambling with your life, you mean taking lots of drugs in order to avoid my emotions is over. And you were kind of done. And you talk about, I decided I'm going to move my body. So I'm waiting in the rain, you know, for the bus. I'm meditating two hours a day at home. I mean, that is a significant commitment. And a lot of people struggle with that sort of consistency and that sort of determination. What can you offer from your experience that might help people that are going, wait a minute, I don't have that kind of determination?

Yeah, I think, you know, I'm sort of condensing a 10-year period into these small sentences. So, it sounds like it all is happening faster than it really did, especially with the very beginning. Like, it started off slow. Like, when I almost died accidentally, what I fully said no to were the really hard drugs. So, like, I was like, no more cocaine, done. Like, that's it with that. No more sort of, like, random assortment of pills that could, like, you know, that could just, like, contradict each other and totally make me black out and just, like, but I was still, I took a break right after that from smoking marijuana, but then I started smoking again and I would drink

alcohol occasionally. But there weren't any more like serious drugs that would, you know, like totally cancel out my life. And then after doing that for like three or four years, then I felt this motivation. I started realizing the way like alcohol and weed were kind of clashing with the depth of my meditation. And I was like, you know what, like, let me just put them aside. Like, I know what it's like to be high. I know what it's like to be drunk. Let me like take this meditation experiment seriously. And then I was able to set them aside and I haven't drank or smoked or taken any intoxicants, I think for almost seven years now. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. And that like helped so much, but it wasn't like, like I was able to just like, boom,

like do this, you know, automatically. And it like, like I was able to just like, boom, like do this, you know, automatically. And it's the same thing with meditating. You know, you start off with a course here and there, and then you kind of pick up steam over time. But I would say like to anyone who's listening, it's all about small victories. Like it's all about small, small victories and to be able to appreciate them and to not worry so much about the back and forth because it's a long journey. But if you're able to do small amounts of what you weren't able to do before and you're able to repeat those small amounts, then they're going to eventually accumulate into like a mountain of change. I am mostly an everyday meditator these days.

And so it's easy to think, well, okay, that's determination, but that misses the, I don't know, 25 years that I was an on again, off again meditator. Like I couldn't, I won't say I could not, I did not for whatever reason, figure it out. You know, it was periods of market intensity, then nothing, then periods of market intensity, then nothing. And it has been all about small victories, then nothing. Then periods of market intensity, then nothing. And it has been all about small victories, I think. Yeah. And it was the same for me with meditation. I knew meditating was good for me, but I just like did not have the mental muscle to help me do it at home. And there were times when I would try, you know, I just couldn't keep it going. And then

there was a moment where it really clicked. And that's something that we were talking about slightly before where like there are these moments of inspiration where your mindset shifts so much and then you understand the direction that you need to move into. And the day after is when you start the hard work, is when you start like building that positive habit. And then the next day you do it again, next day you do it again. And eventually, you know, your life is totally different, but it takes time to really build up.

Yeah, I think the important thing is to recognize also, as we're saying, just because you've tried something a bunch of times before, doesn't mean that you're going to be unsuccessful this time. And in the coaching work I do, that's something a lot of people bring is by the time you're going to hire a coach to help you with your behavior, it's because you've been unsuccessful a lot, right? You wouldn't spend that kind of money if you'd been successful. And so they come with this, I'm the kind of person who can't stick with anything. And that's his back to that tendency. Well, okay, we can look at your tendency

in the past to have not stuck with things. And we can learn what we can from that. But we have to shake the idea that you're going to fail in the future. Right, right. And it's true. It's like, you know, how was success created, like through a long series of failures, like, I feel like, you know, even when I was developing my voice as a writer, I wrote a bunch of shit, a bunch of stuff that I just didn't really like, that didn't really align with what I wanted to do. So it just takes time to be able to really kind of figure out how you want to move forward. Then it's okay to mess up along the way.

I'd like to talk about low moods because there's a lot of different times scattered throughout your work that you reference when you're in a low mood, don't do this, or when you're in a low mood, do do this. And as someone who has low moods, and I know a lot of our listeners do, I'd love to talk about some of the wisdom you've gotten from your own low moods. What are some of the things that we don't want to do when we're in a low mood? And what are some of the things that maybe would be helpful? Yeah. First off, I like to write about them because that's the reality of life is that there are ups and downs. And a lot of people think that once you stop drinking and once you stop smoking or once you, you know, make this big change, then it's just going to be uphill from here. If I did a 30 day retreat, I'd always be happy afterwards, right? Yeah. Nope.

It's still life after that. You know, it's still, you can better handle the ups and downs. You can be more quantumist to the ups and downs, but you're still going to have some days where it's easier for you to feel joy and it's easier for you to be funny and to laugh and to, you know, just like have a great day. And then other days you're just going to wake up heavy. And obviously like, right, this universe is dominated by the law of cause and effect. But sometimes the cause is something simple as like, oh, I worked a lot the day before. So today I'm just feeling kind of tired, you know? And it's nothing big. It's not some crazy narrative, like some massive thing or like someone did this to me. No, you're just tired, you know, so your mood is going to be dragged down a little bit. And then what do you do in

those moments? Something you just said there, I think is really interesting. I'd like to go a little bit deeper, which is, you know, when we're on a healing journey, we have low moods, we have emotions, right? I have myself subscribed to two different views of what to do in those moments. There are some people who say anytime you're having a negative emotion, there's something going on and you need to go find it. Right? Right? It's coming from somewhere. It's some condition, right? You know, and then there's the other school that I've often subscribed to, which I call the emotional flu school, which is, I'm just like, well, you know what? I've got the emotional flu today. I feel down. I'm going to take good care of myself. I'm not going to make a big fuss about this. And I find both those approaches useful, but I often don't know which should I be doing. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I think what I have found most successful is that the healing happens in how I deal with what I feel. So if I'm feeling in a particular way, like how am I responding to that?

Am I going to react to it by taking this anxiety that's coming up and just throwing more anxiety onto it and turning it into this burning fire of anxiety? Or am I just going to sit with the anxiety and let it burn itself away? I think a lot of times when we want to heal ourselves, we think that the process might be rather imaginative or it's very intellectual and it's like, oh, because my mom said this to me back then, that's why, you know. And sometimes some of that may totally be true, but a lot of times it's like the past is very opaque and memory is very unreliable. Yeah. So, what I can rely on is the fact that I do feel this tension in this moment,

but how am I going to respond to it? And you'll find that a lot of the healing of the past and a lot of the alleviation of the past will happen in the present moment. So oftentimes I'm not trying to necessarily give a narrative to what I'm feeling. Sometimes it may be very clear, like I feel like this because someone said this to me.

But sometimes it's just like, okay, I feel this way, but what are my tools? What am I gonna do?? I'm going to make sure that I let my wife know that I don't feel that good today so that, you know, I don't unnecessarily start any arguments by accident. I'm also going to like make sure that I am relaxing the way I am aware of myself, that I'm not doing any like harsh negative self-talk, or I'm not like trying to analyze myself really intensely while I'm already in a bad mood. And I'm just gonna, you know, walk a little more gently through the day. And I'm also trying to understand that like this feeling is not always going to be there. It's just another transient thing that's happening in this human phenomenon. But I really find that what's most valuable

to healing itself is that capacity to feel as opposed to thinking, because thinking can be pretty murky. So you talk about how the past leaves these imprints, and a lot of them are subconscious. Is your belief that simply being attentive to the feelings that are coming up and relaxing into them and observing them is helping to burn away those subconscious imprints. Is that how that mechanism is working? I think at the very least it'll help not create new ones. Well, yes. Right. My life philosophy, which is like, I'll just teach you how to not make life worse.

It's hard to sell that. But boy, that's so valuable. I mean, that's huge. That's, that's a bit, you know, if you can teach people how to do that, I mean, you're golden. Yeah. It's just not a good marketing campaign. So yeah, but I do find that like acceptance is just like critical. The tension may be there, but are you going to make it worse? Like, are you going to make it worse by throwing more attention onto it? And, you know, I don't like to give a step-by-step like, this is how you let go and this is how all letting go happens because different modalities have their different peculiarities. You know, they're all very different. You know, different meditation techniques, they work in different

manners or different forms of therapies and whatnot. But I do find that in a lot of them, in a lot of these modalities, the key aspect is acceptance, is can you just accept? Can you just be with what's happening? And you'll find a lot of unraveling in that. Yeah, a lot of deconditioning. Yeah, I think you speak to an important point there, which is depending on the modality that you're working in, you know, obviously, it's going to have its point of view. And, you know, me having probably a couple decades on you, right? I've had a couple decades to experiment with different modalities and different ones have been helpful at different times. But broadly speaking, I tend to, at least this phase of my life, kind of be where you are,

which is like, okay, that's why I love the emotional flu metaphor. It just sort of says, like, when I have the flu, I don't make a big deal out of it, right? I'm like, okay, that's why I love the emotional flu metaphor. It just sort of says, like, when I have the flu, I don't make a big deal out of it, right? I'm like, okay, am I taking care of myself? Am I resting? Am I, you know, don't make any decisions while you have the flu. You know, the world looks crappy. Don't trust it. You know, just let it just kind of relax into it. And so it's a metaphor that served me. So you've, you mentioned a couple things to do in the low mood moment, right? You mentioned like, I love the one about telling your wife, you know, like that's so helpful to just say to the people around me, like, I'm really irritable today. No good reason,

nothing you're doing. It just can relieve so much suffering, you know, of my partner wondering, did I do something wrong? And I'm like, no, proactive. So that's a good one. You also mentioned don't self-analyze a lot. So talk a little bit more about not self-analyzing when we're in a low mood. Yeah, I think it happens often when you're already in this low mood, all of your accomplishments seem tiny, seem like you haven't got anything done. You're actually, you know, not as far along as you thought you were. And this person hates you and this other person probably hates you too. And it's just, you know, you're just snowballing down this like hill of negativity. Yeah.

So, don't add yourself to that. Yeah. You know, this isn't the time for you to like be like, you know, doing some deep internal assessment of like how far you've really come. You're better off doing something like that, not too often, but when you do, like do it when your mind feels balanced. Take that big step back and see, okay, you know, where was I when I first began this journey and where am I now? Not where I was last week, because last week doesn't matter. What matters is like from the beginning to where I am now. I try to be really careful with my low moods, because I can like, look at what I've gone

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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. In certain schools of thought, there's an idea that thoughts cause emotions, right? I believe that's true, but I believe there's another direction, and it's that emotions cause thoughts. That like, if I wake up for whatever reason, and there's a heavy mood here, my thoughts get filtered through that, you know, and recognizing that, like you're saying, like, let me not do a lot of self assessment. Now, the nature of being in a low mood for me is I go, what am I doing wrong? Yeah.

Oh, God, you know, you've hosted 500 podcasts. How can you be in a mood like that? Like you say, setting that aside can be really helpful. You talk a lot also about relaxing. Say more about the role of relaxing in these moments. Yeah, I think we have this attachment to speed. We have in our society, everything is moving so incredibly fast. And it's to the point where it's just detrimental to our mental health, even down to the way the internet works and social media works and, you know, the amount of information that we get through our cell phones. Like you have to realize that every time you

consume information, you're burning energy. So if you already don't feel good, this is an opportunity for practice, like practice your gentleness towards yourself and allow yourself to slow down. Allow yourself to accomplish a little less that day. You know, we often feel like we're in this like race when actually a lot of that is self-imposed. You know, you can accomplish great things without having to work super, super, super hard every single day. Being able to give yourself good rest can actually be what you need to take a really big leap forward. We talked earlier about greed, greed and aversion.

Greed is often talked about also as craving, right? Gets translated sometimes into attachment. A superficial reading of Buddhism or a reading that isn't real well informed can end up with the idea that wanting anything is wrong. Right. Talk to me about your thoughts on that. Yeah. I mean, so I never really connected with the Buddhist teaching until I did my first Vipassana course.

So, like, obviously the Buddha is a very popular guy, you know, like I've been hearing about him throughout my whole life. And whenever I would hear about the teaching, I wasn't really interested. But when I went to go do that first Vipassana course, what immediately stuck out to me was that they translated the root of suffering as craving, not as desire. And I was like, this makes way more sense, you know, because I remember that first course I asked the teacher, you know, was the Buddha craving liberation? Because he was putting a lot of effort into liberating himself. And he was like, no, there's a difference between having a goal and having a craving. I remember hearing that and it just blew my mind that there's a

subtlety there, you know, that we're all householders, like we're not monks, you know, we're out here living our lives and it's fine for us to have goals. And you notice that it's something that is becoming, if the goal is slipping into a craving when you don't get what you want, and then you get so upset that you don't have what you want and your mind is just, you know, rippling with tension and, you know, you're really just totally out of balance. And if it's just a goal, it's something that you try to keep working towards, you're doing so in a balanced way. And when you don't get what you want, you're okay. But what you end up doing is you go back to the drawing board, you strategize again, and you figure out what can I do better to continue calmly taking steps forward to achieve

whatever goal it is that I desire. I love what you're saying there. I love the use of the word subtle because as the path goes on, it gets more clear, right? And I've been able to notice in myself where I'm not sure what to call it. It's a goal. It's not a craving in that like I'm not getting all bent out of shape, but I am thinking about it a lot, right? Like it's always kind of there, you know? And so for me, it's even been, well, okay, am I just strategizing in a useful way? Am I just, you know, back to the drawing board? There's a subtlety in this that I find takes a lot of discernment. Yeah. And you'll notice that if you think it's a goal, but it's actually a craving,

what you'll notice is the tension. There's tension there. And it's, you know, consuming your mind too much, or it's like stopping you from enjoying whatever beautiful moment is happening in front of you, then there's too much tension around this and it's actually a craving. But to be able to work when you need to work and then rest when you need to rest, being able to set those two aside and being able to live them in a good way, then you know that you're living in a much more balanced way. In order to do that, I think there is a sense of enough. There's a sense of what is enough?

What is enough work? What is enough money? What is enough? Like, what is enough? How do you think about enough for yourself, right? You're in a world where I don't know how many social media followers you have, but it is a big number, right? But is it enough, right?

You're making some money from doing this work, but is it enough? How do you think about that? I try to be really careful with that because it's, you know, craving, like what we're talking about, craving is a really powerful tendency. So it's easy to just like, be like, oh, you know, how quickly can I get to like the next like 100,000 followers or whatnot. And it's just like an empty black hole. You know, it's just there's never going to be enough. Like it's never going to be like, I finally got here. I'm here where I want to be. And also, if I'm thinking in that way, then I'm already externalizing my value as a human being. Like I'm already saying like, that I have to accomplish this thing and

then I'll be where I want to be. And this isn't like a conversation between me and other people, it's between me and me and I'm losing, right? Like if I'm just like, I need to get this to be happy, I've already lost. So, that's something that I've been really careful with in my own mind. Instead of being like, what else can i get instead to be grateful for where i've gotten for how far i've gotten and to try my best to not so much care about oh is this piece like getting x number of likes no it's more so like is this piece actually meaningful to me does it make sense to me, is it something that when I was creating it, it really felt right? It's a very slippery slope. And I think a lot of people, you know,

a lot of creators out there just are internally struggling because they're putting too much value on the numbers. Yeah, it is pernicious. I'm thinking to a conversation I had with somebody recently about addiction, and they said, it's hard to get enough of something that almost works. And that is such a great, getting more social media followers almost works, right? It almost makes you feel better, but doesn't, but almost, but that almost is enough. We've recently been engaging with some people about podcast growth and they're often like, well, which episodes of yours are performing best? And I'm like,

you know what? I don't know. Yeah. Because I've tried to divorce myself from not that I don't care what people want or like, because of course I do. But my process, similar to yours, has always been if I'm interested in talking to the person, then I think it's going to be an interesting and good conversation. If I'm not, and I'm doing it because I think that's what people want to hear about, that's not going to work out so well. You referenced the Tao Te Ching a couple times, which is a favorite book of mine, but there's a line at the end of the eighth verse or poem or whatever you call them that says, you know, do your work and step back, The only path to serenity. I recently on a similar note, like about a month and a half now, almost two months where

I just like stop checking the analytics on Instagram. It has made such a world of a difference because like I would check the analytics and immediately feel tension. Like even if it was good, even if it was like good, you know, it's just like, oh, like what, you know, like how can I do things better? And now that I've like stopped checking it, life is a lot better. And what you were saying with the conversation you had with your friend reminds me of a conversation that I had with my wife where I think we were eating ice cream and I turned to her and I

was like, maybe this is the one that will actually make me happy. You know, like this, this. And she just starts laughing. It's just like, yeah, because it's not, you know, like this is a part of the Buddhist teaching that I think a lot of people don't like, but it's just super real. It's dissatisfaction, you know, is another way to translate suffering. But there's this like pervasive dissatisfaction that we're constantly combating because you can have everything and it's still not enough. I agree. When I was a 24 year old heroin addict, suffering was the word that really applied. And I have had times in my life where I've been in deep mental suffering. And there are people who are in deep mental suffering. For me, though, the work these days is, as you say, it's around this sort of pervasive, very mild dissatisfaction.

You know, it's noticing that and going, okay, hold on. Like you said, everything I need to be happy is right here. It really is. You know, if you told me any number of years ago, Eric, here's where you'll be at this age. I've been like, I will take it. I will take it. I will be 100%. I'm in, right?

But of course, you know, we still have to work with the mind all the time. Listening to you talk is making me realize how whether it's suffering or whether it's dissatisfaction, both of them are pulling you out of the present moment. Like they're immediately pulling you into planning. Like, how am I gonna get the next thing? How can I reset up these conditions to be able to get this sensation one more time? And you're immediately just in this like imaginary world that induces even more dissatisfaction.

Yeah, that is my primary mental direction is forward and planning. And it's not highly anxious. It's not fretting, but it is still not here. You know, it is still not here. And so I think all of our work, right, is how do we come back to this moment and have it be enough? Yeah. In your latest book, Lighter, Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, Expand the Future, you say that the goal of this book for you was to be a bridge between the ideas of personal transformation and global transformation. Say a little bit more about that. the different thresholds that people go through when they're actively evolving, when they're actively trying to heal themselves. But I wanted to make sure that the end of the book tied that into how this healing generation that's emerging, because I really feel like there are just millions and millions of people who are actively healing themselves, whether it's through Eastern modalities, Western modalities, Indigenous modalities, healing has become this massive, massive thing. Not only is that going to benefit your personal life, but it will ripple outward and it will start making global

transformation become more possible in a sustainable manner. And I write about this in the book where, you know, there have always been groups of people who try to change the world and make it into a better place. People who've had these amazing values. But something that happens repeatedly is that once people gain power, power has this way of functioning like a magnet where it will literally pull out the roughest parts of your ego. So if you've never healed yourself and if on the surface you seem like a pretty good person, once you get power, then the roughest parts of you are going to come out. They're going to be given a platform for you to play out just like all of the trauma that you've experienced. And what happens often is that people who set out to change the world into a better place end up recreating

the thing that they were originally fighting against. One example that comes to mind is like the French Revolution. And... That's so funny. That was the exact one in my mind. Yeah. And, you know, I just finished reading the biography of the Marquis de Lafayette. And it was beautiful getting a taste of the American Revolution and the French Revolution through the lens of his life. And when the Jacobins and when they started gaining power and, you know, they killed the king and then this red terror began where so many thousands and thousands of people were killed. And, you know, at first, it may have, quote unquote, seemed like there was some form of

justice, but like, you know, this wasn't really like justice, it was revenge. But then it was just like, oh, I don't like this person, so I'm going to add their name to the list, or I don't like that person. And it just was this horrible bloodbath. But then when you look at these people who were in charge of this bloodbath before, they seem like they were people with good values and they were trying to build this beautiful revolution. Yeah. I mean, Robespierre for a long time, you're like, this is an extraordinarily admirable man. Exactly. Extraordinary. Yeah. And then it's like, uh-oh. This went wrong, you know.

This definitely went wrong. What I'm hoping that is the big sort of shift in our century is that people are going to continue trying to change the world into a better place because that's the direction of history, right? We're trying to increase human dignity. We're trying to create the conditions for human flourishing. And we've made a long way. The world is definitely like, I'd rather be born now than in 1840 or like 1620. Like I'd rather be alive now. Yeah. Pick any time really. Exactly. And though that this century has these really giant daunting challenges, I think that our inner healing is going to streamline

the way that we try to actively build a more compassionate structure in our world. So when we build this structural compassion, I think our healing is going to be the foundation that it really rests on. Because we haven't had that before in human history, where people who were more self-aware, had more self-love, were less burdened by their past traumas, who were actively healing themselves. People who go into this deep work, they're far, far less inclined to hurt other people. They're just not interested. They're like, I don't want to hurt you because that's going to immediately hurt me. Like it's going to cause so much tension in my own mind. So I really think the two are just really deeply interconnected and I'm excited that they're going to be happening simultaneously for the first time, the inner healing and the outer healing.

Yeah, that's beautiful. I can't resist a plug here, which is I do this thing called teaching song and a poem each week that I give to supporters of the show. And a recent one was all about like, I'd invested so much time in the French Revolution learning about it. I was like, I got to make something out of this. So I made an episode out of here's what the French Revolution can tell us about teachings that we can apply in our own lives. Listeners, if you want access to that kind of stuff, one you feed.net slash join. You got another one minute, two minutes? Sure. But if you promise me to send me a reading list about the French Revolution,

because it seems like you've read more than I have. I primarily listen to a podcast. Are you familiar with the Revolutions podcast? Yes, but I haven't heard their series yet on the French Revolution. It's like 40 hours. It's more than you really need to know. But once I started, I couldn't stop. I also read a novel. So I love fiction, but I read a novel by a woman named Hilary Mantel. She wrote Wolf Hall about Thomas Cromwell and Louis VIII. But she also wrote about Robespierre, Desmoulins, and Danton from the perspective of their family. So it's historical fiction, but it's kind of from

their families. It's a fascinating book. Oh, that sounds great. Oh, it's so good. I think you'd love it. All right. So this is my last question. You sort of alluded to it there, but you say that you think that humanity is maturing. I'd love to explore that a little bit. Some people vehemently disagree with that. I actually, I think, am on your side. I think we actually are maturing as long as we're alive as a species long enough to continue it, which is a little worrisome with climate change. But talk to me about why you think we're maturing. I think a lot of that is due to this emerging healing generation. I think there are just a lot of people who are basically exhausted by suffering, exhausted by dissatisfaction.

And not only are they individually exhausted by it, but they're also seeing that being miserable is going out of style. Like, you know, wellness has become this like really popular thing. And it's more acceptable to like go meditate, to go see a therapist. You know, if you need a psychiatrist, to go get a psychiatrist and get, you know, whatever it is that you need that's going to help you take steps forward in your life, positive steps forward. And I think out of that, there's going to be more people who are not only going to change the way that they behave on the individual level, but it's going to affect their work. It's going to affect the institutions that they're a part of. It's going to affect who they vote for. It's going to just affect the way that they see the world and they're going to allow

their compassion to become more expansive. Because I really believe that if your self-love is real, it has to open the door to unconditional love to all beings. Because the two are just so deeply intertwined. That's one of the reasons why I write under the name Young Pueblo is like, when I started meditating, I realized I was like, whoa, not only am I immature, but the world is immature. Like, we have a lot of growing up to do. Like, we can't do these basic things. Like, you know, the things that we were taught in kindergarten, like clean up after yourself, tell the truth, share with each other, don't hit each other, and just generally be kind to one another.

These are fundamental, basic things that we should be able to do on the collective level, on the human level across the world. And I think that our individual healing is going to spur us into just building sort of this compassionate structure that I think is going to be possible. Wonderful. I think that is a beautiful place to wrap it up. Diego, thank you so much. I have really enjoyed this conversation. I've really enjoyed diving into your work over the last couple of weeks and getting to know you better. So thank you. Thank you so much, Eric. This conversation brings me so much joy. Thank you.

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