The One You Feed - Miguel Chen on Punk Rock and Buddhism

Episode Date: September 26, 2018

Miguel Chen is a meditation practitioner, a yoga instructor, a yoga studio owner and the bass player for a punk rock band. He has also published a book called I Wanna Be Well: How a Punk Found Peace and You Can Too. In this compelling episode, Eric and Miguel explore the connection between punk rock and Buddhism and they dive into the experiences in his life - both traumatic and positive - that have shaped his spiritual path of awakening.Please support the show with a donationBombas INCREDIBLY comfortable socks which is reason enough to wear them but they ALSO donate a pair to a local homeless shelter for every pair that they sell get 20% off first purchase www.bombas.com/wolf offer code WOLFLinkedIn Find talent whether they're looking for a job or not. Focus on finding the right people regardless of their employment status. www.linkedin.com/wolf $50 off your first job postingPhlur Expertly crafted sustainably produced perfumes without all the bad stuff sold at an honest price. Go to their website to view pictures, listen to sounds and connect with words...if you like those, chances are you'll like the scent associated with them and they'll send you a 3 sampler kit to see. www.phlur.com use the promo code WOLF to get 20% off your custom Phlur sampler set In This Interview, Miguel Chen and I Discuss...His book, I Wanna Be Well: How a Punk Found Peace and You Can TooHow he owns a yoga studio and plays in a punk rock bandThe way he suppressed grief for dead family membersAsking himself why he wasn't happyThe connection between punk rock and BuddhismThe other as selfForgetting who we areThe importance of being mindful throughout lifeNot being present with stuff we likeNot being present with stuff we don't likeEating mindfullyHow if you're used to disconnecting from things you don't like, it starts creeping into the things you do likeHow he stays in the present momentTraining the mindHis morning routineNon-attachmentBeing criticized for his spiritual practiceHis spiritual practice while on tourThe danger of taking people in life for grantedHow grateful he is that he woke up early in his lifeWhy some people get motivated to get sober and others don'tMiguel Chen LinksHomepageInstagramTwitter Please support the show with a donationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you're used to tuning out things you don't like, it starts to creep into things that you do like. 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 really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts welcome to decisions decisions the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Miguel Chen. He is a meditation practitioner, a yoga instructor, and the owner of Blossom Yoga Studio in Laramie and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Miguel is also the bass player for punk band Teenage Bottle Rocket, who I may have done sound for at Bernie's in Columbus, Ohio in the early 2000s. His book is I Want to Be Well, How a Punk Found Peace, and You Can Too. Hi Miguel, welcome to the show. Hi Eric, thanks for having me. I am excited to have you on, and we'll talk about your book, I Want to Be Well, How a Punk Found Peace,

and You Can Too. And we'll cover that in just a moment, but let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. You know, I think your life ends up

being the sum of minutes and moments and hours, and it all adds up to days and years. And eventually that's the life you lived, right? And really what we spend our moments thinking about or doing, it adds up. It's a nice little parable, I think, to sort of sum that up. If you spend a lot of moments angry or frustrated instead of appreciative or happy or joyful, it adds up and that ends up being your life, right? So the wolves, I think, are a nice little summary of that. Excellent. So in addition to writing this book, you also own a yoga studio, as well as you play bass in a punk rock band named Teenage Bottle Rocket. So talk to me about how you get from being a bass player in a punk rock band

to a yoga studio and writing a book about finding inner peace. I'll do my best to kind of loop this back around to this idea of the wolves, but for a long time all I would think about is punk rock music and I just kind of want to party and travel and be with my friends For a long time, all I would think about is punk rock music, and I just kind of want to party and travel and be with my friends. And this whole scene and this whole idea sort of represents that kind of freedom. And so that's where my attention was, and sure enough, that's what my life manifested. And yeah, I was in this band, and I still am in this band I should say but we started to do really well and we got to go a lot of places and do records and tour with

a lot of bands that we really looked up to and in the one sense I was I was kind of you know living living out all of my teenage punk rock dreams but But in the other sense, my attention kind of got lost at some point, and it kind of shifted away from like, this is a really fun, cool thing I want to do with my life to a little bit more like, I'm tired because I partied too hard, or we're stuck in this van. And I found myself a little bit, I guess, feeding the bad wolf. And I got kind of miserable. And it really took a moment of clarity to be like, why am I miserable right now? I'm

doing all this stuff that I always wanted to do. So what's the problem here? It's kind of startling when that happens, when everything you thought you wanted to have happen happens. And you're like, but wait, I'm still not happy. You're like, what now? Absolutely. You know, it's startling and it certainly can be a turning point. Most definitely. And if you read the book, you know, you'll learn about like some deaths I had in my life that I kind of wasn't really dealing with that stuff. But it was down there and it was underneath and sort of suppressing that, the opposite of just like feeding into like, oh, I've got these dead relatives. It was really like, oh, I'm not going to deal with that at all. So like just suppress it, suppress it, suppress it. And that kind of started to manifest too,

I think. And by not dealing with these things i always kind of had this like negative frequency going on and and it did sort of manifest itself in like these like deep depressions and you know like substance abuse and that's kind of where i like dove in and like started to focus my energy like i'm just going to be this nihilistic punk rock star. I'm just going to party myself to death. That wasn't really working. So I had to come to this place where what's not working and why am I not happy? I think like most things in life, it was kind of in the middle.

Some of it was outside of me. These external things I was, I was bringing into my life, but the, the underlying problem was, was really like an internal, almost an attitude. And you found, I guess it was a book by Noah Levine, who we've had on the show before, but was it his writing that sort of first got you interested in, you know, for lack of a better word, the spiritual path? Or was there some, was there something before that, that started you down that path? When I was young, my, my mother was a really like deeply spiritual person. And I think like a lot of teenagers, you know, my mom thought that this stuff was cool. So I thought it was

totally lame and wanted, wanted nothing to do with it right and um yeah my mother passed away from cancer and it was like a several year thing you lost your sister too I did shortly after that in in a car accident but um I think the first kind of inkling that I had that like maybe my mom is like kind of on to something was like watching like watching her die in a weird way like it was such like a painful awful thing but she was like with it and and she was still like a joyful person which I couldn't quite wrap my head around like how how can you be joyful like you're you're So that seed was planted, and then I just kind of buried it really deep. I'm not going to deal with any of that.

And then a few years after that, we were on tour with this band called The Epoxies, and their singer was the one who ended up giving me that Noah Levine book, which I think it was a lot of stuff, all just like right place at the right time. And these talks I would have with her, I was just open, you know, I would listen to her. And so she thought that this book might help me. Maybe it was worth checking out. And that kind of like opened these floodgates that like, all of of a sudden all this like stuff with my mom that I'd like buried really deep just all kind of came pouring out and and that was the first time I kind of realized like the reason I'm miserable even though I'm living out like my dreams is has

nothing to do with like this anything outside of myself it's all it's all inside of me, and I have a power and an ability to change this. So that started a long, dedicated journey down trying to discover more. I always think it's interesting when punk rockers become spiritual. I mean, I grew up in the 80s and was in the very early punk scene and had bands and all that kind of stuff. And I think that I always think about like, it seems like such a far transition, but I actually don't think it is. I actually think that at least my experience was punk rock for me. And for a lot of the people I know, it was about finding some meaning, you know, life looked kind of meaningless, the culture,

as we saw it looked meaningless. And so here was this thing that had meaning. And that's not a very far step from spirituality, which is really, at its most basic, is a question about what matters. Punk rockers are looking for something really real. And anything that's kind of shitty or not quite the real thing. Should I watch my language, by the way? If you can, if not, we'll just mark it as explicit on iTunes, and that's the way it'll be. So don't sweat it. Cool. I think a lot of punk rockers are sick of just fake stuff, and so we quest out to look

for something a little more real. And it's the next-door neighbor, I, of like yoga or Buddhism, you know, because here's other people who, you know, maybe they don't like dress like punk rockers or listen to the same music as us, but they they too are on this quest where like the fake stuff isn't working for them anymore. And so they need something real. Right. Yeah, there's a line in the book I really liked. You say, we all get to choose our reactions because we all get to choose our attitude. To me, that's very punk rock. Way more than having green hair, putting safety pins through your face, or obsessively listening to the Ramones. All the things I do or have done, by the way.

And I love that because I do think you nailed to me a lot of what the punk ethos was or is for me. Most definitely. You're in Columbus, is that right? I am. Yeah. We used to play a place out there called Bernie's. Oh, I remember Bernie's. I used to play there. And interestingly, my partner who does the show, does the editing, used to run sound at bernie's for years oh that's awesome yeah i i definitely remember like a show and and some kids lit off some fireworks it started like a dumpster fire or something i was like this is a pretty this is a pretty punk rock town but not to get too sidetracked sorry no no it's a good little

yep definitely columbus and bernie's it, no, it's a good little, yep, definitely Columbus and Bernie's. It's gone, but it was an institution for a long time. Definitely. So let's dive into some of the pieces in the book in a little bit more detail. And one of the things you talk about is coming to an understanding of who we actually are. You know, we talked about the punk piece, about what's really real. And you say, I've come to a semblance of understanding. who we actually are. You know, we talked about the punk piece about what's really real. And, and you say, I've come to a semblance of understanding. It goes something like this.

We are all everyone and everything part of one thing. We're interconnected. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah. So I'm super into like Alan Watts, I think was one of like the greatest minds and like one of the best people at explaining this, but he would always talk a lot about like this whole thing is kind of a game and that stuck with me like a lot. Like, um, of course it's not like original to him. Like if you go back into like Hinduism, like it's really kind of there where here's this one thing and we can call it God if we have no other word for it. But like if you're this thing that can do anything, like at some point it's boring, right? Like at some point over like millions of years or however long, like you have to find a way to like exist without just being bored out of your mind.

way to like exist without just being bored out of your mind so you set up a game and you're like i'm just gonna manifest as as billions of different things and i'm just gonna kind of play these games just just to pass the time or just to have experiences and the game only works if i don't know that it's me playing if you take this like God thing and it's like, okay, well, I want to experience what it's like to be Eric and in, in 2018 and to have the one you feed podcast. So I'm hoping God can do better than that, but yeah, well, I mean, yeah, yeah. So, so there you are. And then it's like, well, I want to know what it's like to be Miguel and so on and so forth. And here we are just kind of existing. But we don't know

that that's what we really are. And I think at the moment of death, that's when we really are like, oh, this Eric that I thought wasn't me, was me. It was just me playing a different role. It's one way of looking at it that gives me like a lot of comfort because it kind of solves a lot of problems in the human realm. If you kind of accept that, like at least as a possibility, that guy like cut me off in traffic and I'm so mad. But then you kind of take a step back and you're like, that's me. It's just me in a different incarnation and it's forgotten that it's me. Or like, let's just say like the most evil, awful person in the world. And I'll just leave that up to imagination. But it helps

you build compassion for that person when you're like, that person's not actually evil and awful. They're just really deep in the game. And they've really forgotten, truly, who they are. Because the moment they come back to the truth of like, we are this like one connected thing, all of a sudden they're like, oh man, I shouldn't continue to hurt people. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. 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 iHe it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You talk a lot in the book about interconnection. We're all interconnected. We're all part of one

thing and you talk a lot about disconnect. You say disconnect is a real problem. It's the single biggest obstacle between us and the truth. So we need to see it in all its forms, past, present, and future. So talk about disconnection. And for you, what do you do when disconnection rears its head? Because, you know, at least it happens to me, you know, pretty regularly. It happens to all of us like thousands of times a day, I think. pretty regularly. That happens to all of us like thousands of times a day. Let's go back to like this idea like if this is all a game and it's meant to be like joyful and fun, the more time

we like spend not connected to that, the more we're just robbing ourselves of whatever like beauty is in front of us. And even if it looks like something awful there's there's something really beautiful and powerful like in anything theoretically so if we're just kind of like mindlessly like brushing our teeth and like getting dressed for work like checking facebook and like doing eight things at a time. We're missing like this innate beauty where if we had done just say one of those things mindfully. I had a teacher in India who would tell me like, we get hungry. Our immediate impulse is like just shove food in your face.

And you've missed not only like the joy of enjoying this food and like being present with it and being mindful with it and like grateful for the the nurturing that it gives you to keep existing but you also missed the joy of of feeling hungry which was a weird thing for me to think about but he's like the actual feeling of being hungry like if you take the connotation away from it is an interesting experience you know among like another thousand things that guy told me like it kind of blew my mind and i i was like he's right like no matter what's going on around us like there's something we can connect to about it that's going to kind of like raise us up a little and like help us deal something right and the problem is like when something is seemingly unpleasant like of

course we're we're trying to disconnect to it like i think about it like if i'm getting a tattoo and it feels awful and i hate it you know like, like my mind's immediately like, let's play some music or let's talk to the artist and let's like do whatever we can to not feel this needle stabbing into my skin a thousand times. But whatever I've like taken a moment to kind of try and be present with it, like there's something there. And that's just what we do with like unpleasant stuff. Like we don't even realize like stuff that we like, we're not present with it. Stuff that is seemingly what we want in our lives, we don't even pay attention. Our friends are around, we're just on our phones, or we're traveling around and we all just have like our noses buried in a video game or, you know, like the

things we like, we disconnect from. Made me think of a couple things. One with hunger, I've been playing this little game lately where when my brain says something like, I'm hungry, or I'm tired, or I'm whatever, I try and ask myself, like, how do I know that there's a series of steps that gets to the thought in my brain, I'm hungry. And so if I can stop and go, well, how do I know that? What is it that's telling me that let me get, you know, the sensation itself or the thing itself, I found it to be an interesting way to be a little bit more mindful and try and understand a little bit more like, well, what does hungry really feel like? You know, what is it? What is it like?

And so I think, you know, that's a very, very similar idea. And the other idea is you were talking about eating mindfully. I'm always amazed by how I'm perfectly capable of doing this. And so are a lot of people. Like, I'm going to go eat something that should be a treat for me. I'm generally going to eat good. And now I'm going to go get, you know, a blizzard from Dairy Queen and how mindlessly I will eat that often. You know, I'm not even really enjoying it. Absolutely. I'm always a little bit like, well, that was a real waste.

Like not only did I eat something that, you know, isn't good for me and all the various pieces of that, like I didn't even really enjoy it to boot. You know, I might as well have had nutritious cardboard for as much as I paid attention to it. It adds up again, like these moments. And if you're used to tuning out to things you don't like, it starts to creep into things that you do like. And before you know it, these series of moments, like you've lived a life where you are just disconnected, like a decade goes back and like maybe a handful of times you were actually really present for what was going on where we're born with this ability to to connect like like in in a perfect world to everything every single moment and but you know like realistically

definitely a a lot more than we actually do and i think those moments of like pure connection are precious we can cultivate so much more of it like you were saying just slow down right stop and take a moment and be like well where is this coming from and investigate a little bit and like retrain the mind to activate and to work that way and less to just like shut up and mindlessly do what you do. Right. And in the book, you talk a fair amount about being in the present moment. And I'm kind of curious, how do you do that? That's not a theoretical question. That's more of a question about like, how do you do it? Because it's one of those things that my experience has often been like, okay, I need to be in the present moment. And I come to the present moment for about a fraction of a second. And then I'm gone again. Different people have different ways that sort of help them to reconnect or to remain present. Any that work well for you?

any problem is realizing that it's there, right? So it's kind of an over and over thing. Like the moment you realize you're really lost, like you're on the moon and not present, that helps. And you have to like train yourself to notice more. There's definitely things for me in my life that help a lot. And some of them are like, get up early in the morning and do my practice, do yoga, do meditation. And that sort of sets the pace for the rest of my day. Like, all right, I'm starting the day connected to my body and I'm starting the day connected to my breathing. So it gives me a leg up, but it certainly isn't this like, oh, I did yoga today. Like, today I'm just present. But it certainly isn't this like, oh, I did yoga today.

Like, today I'm just present. It helps start the day on the right foot, but inevitably, like anybody else, all of a sudden I'm just lost and I'm gone. And it is just inch by inch and step by step. If you notice, deep breath in, deep breath out, and come back. And then it'll happen again and again. And it'll keep happening for the rest of your life. Every time you notice, like I enjoy and aha, I noticed. Cool. Yeah. The one that I have been having a lot of success with when I remember to do it, which you're right, that is the key piece is the remembering is just this idea of, I think I've heard it referred to as like grounding yourself in your senses. I think of like, all right,

what are five things I can see right now? And then what are five things that I can hear? And then what are five things that I can feel physically? You know, oh, I can feel the backpack strap on me or a breeze or a boy, I can feel my, my knee hurts a little bit, or it's just for me, that's a really useful way to do it. Because anything like that, that gives my brain a little something to do, while it's being present, really helps me from that, like I'm present, I'm gone, gone, gone, gone, I'm present for half a second, I'm gone, it gives me something, it just the word I always use is it makes the moment a little stickier for me in some way. And that's one that like, I've really, really been trying to do

a lot over the last several months and really find it to be when I remember, I find it to be really, really helpful for me. That's awesome. Like you say, your, your mind has to kind of be trained, right? And you see it in Buddhism a lot. You see monkey mind, they call it. And it's been running wild forever. So now to kind of reel it back in is a big task. And a lot of people think yoga definition is union or connection. And I think about they go for that but like if if you go to the yoga sutras like the practice of yoga is defined as they say yoga chitta vritti

nirodha and that just means yoga calms the fluctuations of mind and And so all this stuff we're doing with our bodies where we're training ourselves to like, okay, notice your right foot, notice your spine, notice your posture. It is all just a process to train our mind to be still. And do you find that you have both a sitting meditation practice and a yoga practice for you? Are those both equally important? Absolutely. Yeah. If you go from a yogic system, there's like lots of steps. And one of the later steps is meditation, but it's like first like body and breathing and then like senses. And it's all just from like really external stuff to internal. And so once you're connected with your body, you can go deeper and connect with your breathing.

Then you can like notice the subtle aspects of your senses. And from there, you can go to like a seated meditation practice. And I didn't even like consider yoga, like real thing I would ever think about doing. Like, it was just a seated meditation practice. All of a sudden, when I started doing like a physical yoga practice, I was like, this makes my meditation so much easier. Do you do yoga and then sit down and meditate? Are they part of at the same time? You do the physical part first and then you find that that helps your seated practice. My morning routine, depending on how much time I have, is usually an hour, hour and a

half of yoga followed by like 20 to 30 minutes of seated meditation. So if I'm lucky, I have two hours a day, but when I'm not lucky, you know, condense and do what I can. Yep. As we say on the show all the time, a little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing. And you say that in the book. If you get nothing else from this book, sit down for five minutes a day and start a practice. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne 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 iheart radio app on apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts a question for you around your life in the punk rock world. How open have bandmates been, other bands, people that you've met to kind of what you're doing? And has this been something that you feel sort of isolated in when you're out on the road? Or is it something you feel really supported in when you're out on the road? It's the full spectrum. I have friends who I'm like really close to and people I look up to a lot that like do not even pretend to try and understand

they just kind of you know rip on me and and think it's it's a complete waste of time which is fine and and then I have friends and people I look up to and like strangers who talk to me about like this, I think you're onto something, you know? And the thing I have to keep coming back to is not attaching to either of them too much, like connect to whichever one is in front of me and then let it go when it's done. Because it's easy to like, if someone comes up and is like, oh, your book, like it got me started on meditation and did this this and this like it's easy to be like i'm awesome you know like and pat yourself on the back and and all that but then but then you're also like really kind of disconnecting from something by being that way and it is also easy when it's like someone you really look up to is kind of like, dude, this is stupid.

This is like the least punk thing you could possibly do. Like, you know, it's hard to not like take that personally and like feel really sad. But like that's also part of the practice. That's not necessarily true. And this isn't necessarily true. Like what's true is in the middle. And it's like I'm just in the middle and it's it's like i'm just i'm just doing my best and that's it you're doing your thing which is pretty punk rock as we talked about

before doing your thing yeah man do you find it easier to practice when you're home stationed at home or on the road or is there not much of a difference for you in that? Again, it's kind of twofold. At home, it's so easy. I'm at one of my two studios every day of the week. It's easier for me to have a normal schedule and a normal routine, but there is also the aspect of I'm home and I'm comfortable. It's harder to stay motivated to practice all the time when you're comfortable. On tour, there's no schedule. It's always just chaos. And a lot of times it's hard to find like a place or time to like get this in. So that can be difficult. But there is also a lot of times like I'm struggling

out there and that motivates me to find time and make time and make a place. So it's both. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about what you said there at the end earlier this week, about that sense of like you said, so when I'm struggling, I go to my yoga practice, or I go to my meditation practice. And, and I was thinking about like, it seems like there's this point where for a lot of us, something changes. We realize like suffering means that there's some actions we can take to feel better. And so we suffer that that is a motivator towards practice. For me that I'm so glad that that happened with me. I try and be motivated when there's not only by pain, but I know some people

who suffering and pain and all that does not motivate them forward really in any significant way. And I was just thinking about how grateful I am that that happened for me. Again, I'm not quite sure how, but that somehow the idea of I'm uncomfortable, I'm in pain, here are some things that I know that are good for me to do and that pushes me towards them. I'm just grateful for that, that somehow that connection happened in my brain. Absolutely. And the people, I think, who you see them and it seems like all this suffering and this pain doesn't motivate them to find something else, I think it's more of a question of time. It just doesn't motivate them yet. and people have a tremendous ungodly capacity to endure suffering and pain and like everyone's got the like different tipping points

and some people's is like way way way way up here and but i do like to think that like at some point everyone wakes up a little bit and it's like, Oh, I have to suffer. And, and this idea you have of, of, of feeling gratitude and feeling grateful for, for like the pain and the suffering that kind of led you to do something about it.

Like absolutely. But a thousand percent, I think about that. okay. If, if my mom and my sister are dead, okay, everyone who has a mom and a sister, you know, they're going to lose them eventually. And it's just part of it. And like, given a choice, like, of course, my mom would be about

to become a grandma. My sister would be about to become an aunt. They'd be in my life. You're expecting then. I am. We're would be about to become an aunt. They'd be in my life. Oh, you're expecting then. I am. We're having a kid next month. Congratulations. That's wonderful. You're first? It is. We're super excited. But, you know, like, it's there. Like, absolutely, I would have them here for these moments in my life. but that's not the truth of it. So if I have to look at it and find something to be grateful about, you know, outside of like I still feel their presence and I know that they're here with me in one sense. But the more tangible thing is that had I not had that happen when it happened at such a young age, I wouldn't have woken up the way I did and when I did.

So hopefully I get to spend most of my life a little bit more awake and a little bit more connected than I would have otherwise. If they were just around and I took them for granted the whole time and, and it wasn't until like I was almost dead that I had to wake up. It, you know, it, it feels like, like a waste to, what if you don't wake up till you're like 80 and then you die and you think I just wasted like 80 years, relatively young. Like I was 16, 17 when they passed away and maybe five or six years later when I started to really deal with it. And thanks to that, I've had many years of a really connected life where I get to do really a lot of a lot of cool stuff my version or variation of that was becoming a heroin addict at 24 like that I'm so grateful that it got that bad that fast

you know I'm pretty certain I could have kept drinking or smoking weed I mean for a long time you know I'm just really glad that like I just got my ass handed to me so early and so hard. I mean, it was just, you know, it's such a, at the time it seemed terrible, but in retrospect was a total benefit. Absolutely. And I can kind of see now with like that information, what you're saying about like, what is it about you that that led you to want to wake up and change something where like others aren't? Because obviously like heroin, like there are a lot of people who like no matter how much they suffer because of that stuff, it isn't the motivator they need to get out of it. I would say that's one of the great mysteries of my life is why are some people able to do it and others that not? I've been around so many people that have and so many people that haven't. You could look and say, well, the people that get sober, the people that do the following actions that help them to stay sober, which I get. But it's like, where did the motivation for that come from? Like, it's just, it's a mystery. If somebody could crack that nut, they'd have quite something on their hands there. If someone could solve that problem. Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. We're going to wrap up here because we're out of time. Thanks so much. We're going to do a little post-show conversation like we always do. So listeners, if you're interested, you can go to oneyoufeed.net slash support and learn more about that. It's a gift we give to people who support the show. And one of the things we're going to talk about are favorite punk rock bands in our post-show conversation.

So thanks so much for taking the time to come on. It's been a real pleasure. Eric, it's been wonderful to be here, man. All right. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors we have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.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. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn

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