The One You Feed - The Quiet Age: How to Find Calm When Life Won’t Slow Down | Cory Allen

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

In this episode, Cory Allen explores how to find calm when life won’t slow down and the pressure to keep doing more feels constant. Drawing from his new book, The Quiet Age, Cory shares how the tension we carry shapes our experience and why low moods can tell convincing lies about our self-worth. He also discusses letting go without giving up, making room for rest, and recognizing that a thought can feel real without being true. This conversation offers practical ways to meet difficult moments with greater clarity and find space to breathe within the life you already have. Feeling overwhelmed in your life? Check out ⁠⁠Overwhelm is Optional ⁠⁠— a 4-week email course that helps you feel calmer and more grounded without needing to do less. In under 10 minutes a day, you’ll learn simple mindset shifts (called “Still Points”) you can use right inside the life you already have. ⁠⁠Sign up here for only $29!⁠ Key Takeaways: How to recognize the everyday tension that makes small frustrations feel overwhelming The difference between accepting a difficult situation and resigning yourself to it Why rest supports progress—and how to loosen the pressure to always do more How low moods turn temporary feelings into damaging stories about who you are How returning to your values can help you separate your self-worth from your accomplishments Why mental clarity comes from changing your relationship with thoughts rather than trying to eliminate them For full show notes, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is available now! Order your copy today! If you enjoyed this conversation with Cory Allen, check out these other episodes: How to Shift Your Mindset and Believe More is Possible with Cory Allen Mindfulness and Understanding Identity with Cory Allen How to Feel Lighter with Yung Pueblo This episode is sponsored by: ⁠Ka’Chava ⁠is your daily all-in-one shake, with protein, fiber, greens, superfoods, vitamins, minerals, omega-3s, probiotics, and more. Go to⁠ KaChava.com ⁠and use code FEED for 15% off your first order. ⁠David Protein⁠ bars deliver up to 28g of protein for just 150 calories—without sacrificing taste! For a limited time, our listeners can receive this special deal: buy 4 cartons and get the 5th free when you go to ⁠www.davidprotein.com/FEED⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We just think about in that moment, like, all right, what am I doing? Am I being honest with myself in the world? Are my intentions good? Am I doing things to try and do my best for whoever it is that I'm around? Is my integrity there? Am I living by my values? Even though I don't feel good right now? And just asking yourself those three questions can ground you back in the truth of who you really are.

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. There are two very different people who say the exact same sentence. That's just the way it is. One of them has arrived at a deep acceptance. The other has given up. From the outside and often from the inside, these sound identical.

I asked Corey Allen how you tell them apart, and his answer is one of the reasons I wanted you to hear this conversation. Corey's a meditation teacher, and this is his fourth time on the show, and his new book is excellent. It's called The Quiet Age. It's a collection of short pieces you can read in a sitting, which is exactly how I've been reading it. A few minutes, then I sit down and I meditate. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Corey, it's great to have you on again. Man, I'm so glad to be back. Thank you for having me. Of course, of course. I think this is time number four, perhaps. So pretty good track record.

And we're here to talk about slash celebrate your new book, which is called The Quiet Age, Finding a Calm Life in a Chaotic World. And it is a beautiful book. I want to start there. I told you that before we got started. But just as a thing to hold in your hands and look at, it is beautifully simple. It's kind of a work of art in itself. And then there's all sorts of amazing material inside of it.

But congratulations. It's really wonderful. Thank you so much, man. yeah, that was one of the things about the book that to me was really important was because I feel that the material is crucial, but I wanted to extend it to where whenever a reader actually holds the physical object, that it feels almost like they're holding an exhale, that they're holding calm embodied in their hands, because it's really one of the main core aspects of the book is looking at the intensity and the overwhelm and just how much that

our awareness and our minds is eaten away by digital life. And I feel like a part of recovering from that and tuning back into our actual human experience is giving something people can hold and feel that reminds them of why that's so important. Yeah. When I'm reading spiritual books, books for my own growth, my own life, I read it as a book. Now, when I'm reading for work, I'm just. generally using a Kindle because I can highlight. I will often, sometimes I'll read fiction on a Kindle,

but if it's like a spiritual book for me, I want the book. You know, there's something, like I just for those minutes that I'm going to read that and then I'm going to meditate, I want to be off of any kind of screen. You know, it's not a lot of time, but it's a little bit of time. And this book is going to find its way into that stack. The main thing I'm reading right now is appreciate your life by Mizumi Roshi, which is just an incredible book also, but a Zen book. But we have neglected to do the part of this show that we always do in the beginning,

and I cannot break tradition. One of these days I will. One of these days I'll say, F it to the Wolf Parable and just throw the thing out the window. It could be today if you want. It could be. Could I do it? Can I do it? Well, think about it.

Think about what is this book about. The book is about seeing how life is projected on us and what we're supposed to be doing, and sometimes choosing, you know, that's not what I feel right now. I don't want to do that anymore. I'm going to choose a new action in the present moment and go against the expectations of others because it's what feels right to me. So if that's how you feel right now, you know,

then maybe we don't have to do the wolf parable. Boy, we have thrown me on the horns of an existential dilemma early. That's what I like to do. Early in the episode, my goodness, the dizziness of freedom over here. All right, you know what? I'm going to go with it. No parable today, everyone.

First time ever. I am freeing myself from my own shackles. I love that. I'm honored to be the one to do it with you. All right. Well, then, your book comes at a good time for me and thinking about this with a parable comes at a good time for me

because I am experiencing a little of what I had been told by several people, about six, about six months after your book, you sometimes hit your first book, you hit a lull, you hit a low point. And I've kind of hit it where I'm just less motivated. What I'm trying to do is actually listen to that and pause a little bit, slow down a little bit, take away the shoulds. I think I've rejected life and other people shoulds pretty well. I think a lot of years of practice, that is largely, I think, again, there's always layers of an onion, right? But it's my internal shoulds that are far more the pressing ones these days. And I'm trying to back off that

just a little bit. And your book talks a lot about that at different places. Beautiful. So I want to read one of these. And the book is really a collection of short pieces that can be read kind of in a sitting, I guess you would say, that carry a message. It's a little bit like the Dowdy Ching in that way, right? The Dowdy Ching is a collection of, I call them poems. And they range from, you know, three or four lines to, you know, a page or so, which is kind of what your book does too. So it has that parallel. And I'm going to read one of them here. And it speaks a little bit to what I was just talking about. The tension you carry will ripple into how you see everything until you slow down and gently start letting go. Talk to me about that. Yeah. One of the things that, one of the

things that we don't necessarily keep in our minds are aware of most of the time is how much tension we're actually holding moment to moment. Because we get very used to the pattern of our lives. We get used to the stresses that we endure on a daily basis. Our relationships get normalized to where all of the things that make us uncomfortable, the things that frustrate us, the things that keep us feeling contained and maybe having to be a little bit of someone who we aren't sometimes. All of that stuff becomes very normalized. And it creates this feeling of tension that we just get used to. And so we all walk around carrying this level of frustration. And no one is really free from that. It is a part of being human. And what happens, of course, is if we're carrying that

tension, that the way that we experience our lives, in each moment that we look at, the filter of our experience is being colored by that tension. So to say that more plainly, things that might be insignificant will be more frustrating. They will seem like more of a big deal. because we're starting with this baseline of low-boil tension that we have. Things that don't matter at all seem like they are significant. They seem like they are maybe the end of the world. Maybe they really put us over the edge and make us, like, lose it and start catastrophizing because we already have this tension and there's one more thing that hits us and it just sets us off.

And this goes in large and small ways, too. but once you start realizing that you're carrying this tension and you start actually addressing it and being honest with yourself about it, not only that you're holding it, but also where it's coming from. What is generating and giving this tension energy? Because that type of emotional energy that we carry needs fuel. And so there is something in your life that is fueling that day-to-day tension. it could be your relationship, it could be work, it could be an existential question, who knows, maybe all of the above. But once you start, likely all of the above, but once you start figuring out in the moment, where am I feeling this frustration?

Where are these things coming from? And you begin to acknowledge them, to work through them, to let them go, to communicate, you know, if necessary in those situations, to start. freeing yourself from carrying this tension all the time. Not until you do that, will that feeling will it infect the rest of your day-to-day life? So where do we start with this? Because for most people, we have busy lives. And I think that there is time in every life. There's a lot of time we can claim back from digital distraction. So I think that's a starting place for some of this. But what do I do? my job is causing me tension. I'm not going to quit my job.

So how do I start to release the tension around that, even though the circumstances may not be changing? Which is kind of what in many ways, I think the whole spiritual path is about to a certain degree, is how we learn to relate to the circumstances differently. Yeah, definitely. So there's two parts that. One part would be,

Recognizing that your work life is giving a lot of stress and tension to begin with is great because a lot of people don't even consider that it's a source of frustration or attention for them. They just, they look at it as, well, I don't like work. Work sucks. And that's what it is. But that's not true. There are plenty of people out there that love their jobs that have a great time, that have great friends. And so again, normalizing the situation is that's just what it is. and I'm going to live with it is one of the sources of that tension that you carry.

Now, once you recognize and acknowledge that, yes, it's frustrating. It's draining my emotional batteries. It's creating intellectual issues. That's where if you can start addressing those things. You look at, is it the relationships? Is it a type of identity of the person that you're dealing with that's causing that frustration? Is there someone who is a warrior that you're dealing with all the time at work? Is there someone who is, you know, a details only person who is very unpersonable and always just

hitting you straight in a kind of a clinical dry way? And that's frustration. Is there someone who is trying to micromanage you? You know, there's all these different types of people. There's timing. There's a lot of different qualities and parts of the work that you need to understand, okay, what is it about this place that is causing me the frustration? And once you recognize that, then you can start addressing those. issues one to one and begin to try and work through and resolve some of that tension, repatter in the way that you approach your work life. For example, if it's someone at work, let's say someone you work with all the time that's

very anxious and always asking you a million questions and it drives you crazy and is draining your emotional battery, you realize that, well, I just need the shift how I communicate with this person. They need reassurance first and then they need a plan. You know, so you go, hey, I understand that you're stressed, but here's three steps we can, here's what we can do. Here's what we're going to do to solve this as just an example of how to begin to address something that is causing that frustration. Now, the other piece of this is recognizing that when you're not at work, since you're experiencing something that is causing tension and you've put a point on it, you then go, this needs a balance. I need to find time and put more effort into my personal life of recovering from that tension.

I need to create more space for myself, more time for me to just rest, to relax, to do something that's indulgent, to enjoy myself, as opposed to always being on and keeping that pressure going in your personal life as well. I'd say rest is a part of the machinery of progress. you know and so a lot of people think well i don't want to go take time off i don't want to relax and rest because i want to be out there doing stuff while resting is getting somewhere you know which is a very important distinction to make yeah and i think you know making it all about me as always because my podcast i think that that's where i'm feeling i'm feeling like okay it's time for a rest to a certain degree because i have been pushing really hard for a certain harder than i normally do for a period of time. And I think that rest being the thing that, again, part of me goes, oh, I shouldn't

need to rest. But then the other part of me goes, you always come out the other side of a rest better. Mm-hmm. I want to ask you a question, though, about something you said in there, because you said this a couple times, people just saying, that's the way it is. Because on one hand, saying that's the way it is, can be a deep form of acceptance. This is the way it is. Okay. But you're talking about that's the way it is in more of a sense of, it almost sounds like resignation.

Help me see the difference between how we know when that statement is resignation and when it's a deeply coming from a peaceful place of like, well, I can't, you know, let that be. There are two ways to engage with a problem. And one of those is, as you said, resignation. that's whenever we allow things to become normalized and just say, well, that's what it is. I'm just going to deal with it. I'm going to shoulder it and ultimately surrender to whatever this negative force in our life is. In the same situation, you can also choose to let go. And that's the other side of the coin.

So you can look at this and say, that's a problem. However, I'm going to intentionally step back from this and stop. Stop investing my emotional energy. Stop investing my personal energy. I'm going to deal with this when I need to, but I'm not going to take it personally, and I'm going to move on. And that's the difference. It's resignation versus letting go. That makes a lot of sense.

I want to turn this to you for a second because you are now in full book launch mode. And book launches tend to be, there's a lot to do around a book launch. And this is what, book number four for you? Is that correct? Three. Three. Okay. This is book number three for you.

So you've got a couple times around the rodeo. How are you taking what you talk about in this book and applying it to what is a traditionally tense and stressful time for people who are authors? And how is that different than maybe what you did the first couple times? I love that question. So the first couple of times, I put a lot of pressure on myself. I was really stressed. I had such big expectations, and both times those expectations weren't met because it's not really

possible to meet the expectations whenever you're working in your imagination. I'm dreaming of, you know what I mean? I'm dreaming of like, oh, well, then this book will be on every bedside table. You know, this is going to be the one. And to have those type of expectations aren't really fair to your actual expectations. experience of life. And I learned that the hard way both times. I thought the first time was maybe a fluke. But the second time, if I had the same expectations and put the same pressure myself, then all of my imagination would come true. So this time, not only because of the material of the book, the point of the

book, but also just because how I've changed, even over the last two years, you know, my my goals have change, how I relate to the world has changed, how I think about myself has changed. And this time I thought, I'm not going to have any expectations. Instead of putting pressure on myself and feeling all of the stress of it needs to sell well, it needs to blow everyone's mind, it needs to be hugely celebrated, it's got to do this, I have to get on every top podcast, I have to do all this stuff. I just said, you know what? What's going to happen is going to going to happen. And I can imagine good things happening. I can imagine bad things happening. But the reality is reality. The only thing that's going to happen is what happens.

And so instead of, you know, bringing a mindset of tension and comparison and frustration that the world isn't going, hey, this guy is the most amazing guy ever. This is the best book. Stop printing books. This is the last one we need. This is the only book. No more other titles will ever be released. This one did it. You know, instead of having that mindset, I switched it to, you know what, I know it's going to sell. I know it's going to connect with people. I know what I'm doing because I did it in a way that felt really right for me. And I also look at the time that we're living in.

And I know this is the perfectly timed book for this moment in our human existence. And so instead of bringing all that frustration, I thought, I'm just going to have fun with this. I'm actually going to enjoy it this time. And whatever happens is going to happen. And that doesn't mean, and this is a good distinction to get into, especially with the material in the book, but also just in our lives, usually whenever someone says, I'm just going to have fun with this, whatever happens happens. People hear that as I'm not going to try.

Well, that's not it at all. It's not about kind of giving up and just saying, well, we'll see what happens, whatever. No, no, I am still like working my ass off. I'm flying all over the country, you know, and over the next couple of weeks and doing tons of podcasts. I've got a, you know, a team doing work for me all day long on promotional and marketing stuff and organizing and scheduling and all that stuff. And I'm in the midst of it just like always. As a matter of fact, there's more pressure on me now than there were in the previous two books. And so the difference is is just how I'm approaching it.

Yes, I get tired. Yes. you know, there are moments where I have the thought, the negative thoughts arise. If you're not doing enough, you know, you suck. All your friends are more successful than you. You know, you'll never be the guy that you want to be. This book isn't actually is really bad. It's embarrassing.

You know, any of those thoughts arise, but I just see them for what they are. I label them. Like, okay, I'm just tired right now or I'm in a bad mood. So I'm having negative thoughts. But, you know, a thought can be real without being true. It's like, okay, that's a real thought, not true. and so let me just move on, keep having fun, keep management energy, and let's make this a joyful process instead of one that that makes you feel like you're going to, you know, you're going to die.

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I was fully prepared for all different kinds of scenarios. What I realized over a little bit of time was that I also had to acknowledge a little bit of disappointment in certain ways. Instead of towing the line of like, I didn't have any expectations, I, you know, I'm beyond all that. you know, and realize, because I really did focus during the process. I was like, you know what? This is so cool. Like, I have a book coming out. How amazing is this?

Like, let's enjoy this. And I think I did to a large degree. And I think, again, some of it's just part of a lot of different stuff kind of going on inside me. But I think a little bit of is a slight bit of disappointment. Like, well, I was hoping X, Y, or Z might happen, even though I didn't expect it. And so I think it's, like you said, it's managing. all of that and allowing it to be there without being so invested in it.

Yeah, absolutely. And there's nothing wrong with having hope. But I think that, and hope is good. Hope is what gives us the energy to do things, you know, because we go, hey, man, this would be cool if I could do this. I hope it goes well. But I think that tying your personal value and your worth to your aspirations is a very dangerous business to get into?

A hundred percent. It is a dangerous business to get into. And yet it is the business all of us get into all the time. You know, it is absolutely like a fundamental aspect of, I think, what it is to be human is that we start to identify our worth with how we're doing, you know. And I think learning to disconnect those things is a project for all of us. absolutely i mean it's something that i struggled with for years and you know i think back in the day i was a music producer and i came you know my background i just grew up and didn't feel wanted or loved and dealt

with a lot of emotional and intellectual abuse and was pretty abandoned and so it made me hyper independent hyper vigilant and it gave me an odd quality of having me an odd quality of having low self-worth but high self-confidence. Because being a high-performing, hyper-vigilant, hyper-independent person, you have to go out and go, I'm going to take care of this. I'm going to show myself the world. I'm going to make it myself because I don't have anything to fall back on

or anyone to trust. But doing that was a very low self-worth is weird, you know, because it makes it toward, your brain is big, but your heart is weak and hurting. And so how that manifested was me or what that meant. manifested into was me, you know, eventually I started my own audio production company in my 20s, and I was doing that. And I was able to do it and succeed because I had all of that hyper vigilance and independence, but yet my worth while I was in that was very, very low. You know, I had

artists, I produced over 100 records at least, and I was also doing commission composition at the same time and had people reaching out for me all over the world getting me to compose music for them and i was undercharging you know i was charging way less than what i should have for the time and the in the skill that i put in because i thought oh well who am i you know i'm just some unlovable you know worthless person that's doing this and so let me just oh and then the thought of charging more is scary because it's like people will be insulted they won't want to work with me anymore they'll think i'm arrogant whatever really i'm not and then what happened was that people started offering me more money than i was asking for to create music for them and that really hit me because i was like

well what is that ethical for me to take that like what does this even mean and i sat and reflected on it and i realized that i'm undervaluing myself like objective sources are literally going, Corey, this is what your worth is. I want to pay you this. But I was going, no, no, no, no one loves me. I want to let me charge you half of that. You know, but that's, honestly, that's how I was feeling at the time. And it just hit me that, oh, I've been undervaluing myself. And that extended not to my professional life, but I realized that extended to everywhere in my life. In my friendships, I was the one always bending over backwards to make sure the friendships worked. In relationships, I wasn't, you know, expressing my emotions. I wasn't talking about

what I needed in relationships because I thought, well, as long as we're here, then things are fine, then I can deal with whatever else. And so it wasn't until I realized that we're, you know, other people don't assign us our value. We set our value. And that's a really important in this world, especially in this world of comparison and what you were just talking about, is recognizing that it's up to us to go, like, this is what my worth is. It's not in things. It's not in material. It's not in status. It's not in money. It's about what I demand as a person. How do I respect myself? Who will I give my energy to? What people will I choose to be around? What work will I do? And what type of of my time is that worth. And so I think it's really important for people to remember that it's very

easy to have your value attached to what you're doing whenever really we should look to attach our value to just who we are as people. Yeah, there's a line somewhere, I have worth just because I am. You know, there's a certain degree of worth just because I am. Okay, I want to read, let's have you read this. Page 163. All right. This is in chapter called Become. Emotions will always expand and contract. That's the rhythm of being human.

The sooner we accept that tension is a part of life, the sooner we can learn to release it. When tension arises, don't push it down. Notice it. Label the sensation. Naming your emotion, create space. from that space, you can see what sparked the tension more clearly and respond with compassion. Life will never be free of emotional tension, but we can learn to process it with smooth wisdom

instead of clinging to it and letting it control us. I love that phrase smooth wisdom. It sounds like a jazz album. Corey Allen was smooth wisdom. I was probably listening to jazz while I wrote it. What I love about this is that just being very clear, emotions are always going to expand and contract. We'll never be free of emotional tension. And you just labeled it, right?

You've got an overall strategy for your book launch, who you want to be during the book launch. And yet within that, there is fluctuation. There is fluctuation where you suddenly am like, in general, I'm not tying my worth to this book. And then you have a couple hours where you're worth this. is tied to the book, right? And I think that that's just so important because for me, it allows me to let go of the secondary tension, which is the tension that I shouldn't be feeling the tension, right? That there's something wrong that like, why am I in a bad mood?

What's wrong? And sometimes I just, it's best for me just to go, well, because everybody gets in bad mood sometimes. There's nothing the matter. Here's what it is. Experience it, feel it, relax. Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the things that, you know, although my work does technically fall and the self-development, almost sometimes it gets put in the wellness category, I got a lot of problems with a lot of that stuff. Because my work just naturally found its way into that category because I'm interested in self-evolution.

I'm interested in because of my own experience, I know that you can go from being. anxious, incredibly depressed, existentially paralyzed, and intellectually overwhelmed to feeling calm, peaceful, happy, relatively complete, and optimistic. I know it's possible because I did it. And so I go, that's what I want to just share the map of that stuff, because I just thought my way through all of that stuff over my entire life. And I go, I'm going to share my map so that people can get there quicker than I do. it. And now I look at some stuff in the wellness world, some stuff in the self-help world,

and it's very absolutist. It's very surface level. And it just goes, well, you need to heal this and heal that and everything will be fine forever. And it's like, that's not real. What I'm interested in is telling people what how real life is. Because if you just tell someone, oh, yeah, just let go and heal and then everything's going to be, it's all rainbows and beautiful, that's actually doing a disservice to a reader because it's going to make them believe, oh, okay, cool. Well, let me just heal whatever that means. Let me let go and everything will be fine.

And whoever life happens and throws something at you and you're not fine, then you go, well, what's wrong with me? You're supposed to be able to be fine. But now I'm not again. So I must be worse. I should go buy another one of those person's books and see if I can get it right the second time. That's the emotional. sales funnel that that writing puts you in. But to me, I want to go, this is what life is like,

and here's the best we can do to deal with it, because it will make things a little bit better as long as you, you know, if you don't look at the fact that, yeah, sometimes you're going to have like challenging emotions. Of course. Whenever that happens, it's not the end of the world. It's just like breathing in and breathing out. Just know what to do whenever that happens, whenever it happens. Yeah, that is such an important point and a tricky point because we are often investing in this kind of work because we want to suffer less, be happier, and it can be frustrating when that doesn't seem to be happening. Somewhere in here, I won't be able to find it. I've got it highlighted. I wish I could find it.

Hang on. This is a paraphrase of it, but is that how you feel during the Lomu doesn't determine your worth. something to that effect. And I'm always astounded by, with all the smooth wisdom I have, I'm always astounded by when, like, whatever this depressive thing that kind of comes over me sometimes is, I'm always astounded by the fact that it says, like, you always feel this way, you always will feel this way, there's something wrong with you. And I'm like, how is that persuasive?

after I've seen through it a thousand times, and yet it is. It's bizarre to me that a little part of me is like, oh, yeah, that's true, even though I know it's not true. Yeah. So the line is, and you were so close, it's low moods lie to you about yourself worth. There you go. And it's such an important thing to discuss. Here's the process of how it works, is we get into a low mood. we feel depressed or tired or whatever it might be and that's whenever we start getting the

thoughts that's building the narrative about who we are because when we're in that low mood we're still doing life we're returning emails maybe we're at work we're out around with our partner and so then what happens is those thoughts start building up and so now we have little bits of proof that our you know that our low mood is correct as you said oh I am I am ugly no one likes me i'm failing i'm going to fail and what happens is that then we start thinking about examples because this is just how our mind works we start looking at something we're doing in the present and we connect it with the past or we think about something we've done in the past and we go that's right i always do that i always do that and so that's if you're in a low mood and you're

feeling bad and you're writing an email and it's coming off weird and you think you know it's going to insult someone or create some problem and then you go oh yeah this is i always do this that moment is identity fusion so that's whenever we take the low mood and the thoughts about ourselves and we apply that to experience and now we've created this self-fulfilling story that yes that is who i am and here's the proof I say whenever we get into those cycles of thinking that way, that it's important to, I think, for me, to just return back to and focus on your honesty, integrity, and intention. Because you can look at yourself and you can go, I'm, yeah, I suck. I don't like me.

I'm failing. And also I'm doing stuff that's proving that that's true. We just think about in that moment, like, all right, what am I doing? Am I being honest with myself in the world? Are my intentions good? Am I doing things to try and do my best for whoever it is that I'm around? Is my integrity there? Am I living by my values even though I don't feel good right now?

And just asking yourself those three questions can ground you back in the truth of who you really are. It's a clarifying process that goes, yeah, I'm doing my best, I'm being honest, and I'm living by what I think is the right way to be a good person. Okay, that's the foundation of who I am. Let's refocus on that. And then we can look at that low mood of like, I'm this person, but I also feel kind of bad right now, as opposed to I'm just this terrible person that no one likes.

That was about two minutes packed with great stuff there. I mean, describing the process, I think, is so important because there is an idea, and it's true, that our thoughts influence our moods. That is absolutely true. You can think of a terrible moment. You're going to feel worse. It's pretty clear the way that works. But there is a reverse process, which is that, like, moods emerge.

I don't understand from what they even emerge from. It's some mix of causes and conditions that is beyond my ability to sort, right? And some of us have different levels of mood. moods, but then I think of it as like that is now the filter which all the light of consciousness goes through. It is now going through the low mood filter. So everything now takes on that glow. And to your point, then the thoughts follow it.

And then you made another leap, which is that we go to identity. You know, anytime we're saying the word, I always do this or I never do that, we're generally in trouble, right? You know, extreme language causes extreme emotions. But now we're all of a sudden identifying as that's who I am. And often in those moments is where we're most likely to try and compare ourselves, which doesn't go well. I love the way you came back, which is like, am I being honest to the best of my ability right now? Am I living the best way that I can right now?

Am I doing the best I can in this moment? And that is a really grounding, is a really grounding thing. I really love that whole framework that you talk through. And I think the thing I've referred to this over the years as the emotional flu, because it's so much like being sick. I was just sick recently. I went to, I had a keynote in Vegas, and I got really sick once I got there. And everything just looked crappy to me. I'm going to Vegas sucks.

I'm never coming to Vegas again. Why is it? I mean, look, we could talk about Vegas. but I was even more, you know, and this talk is going to be terrible. I was all going through that because I was sick. I just know when I'm sick, my thoughts are dark. And so my job when I'm sick is like, just try not to believe those and do your best. And so I really love everything you went through is really beautiful.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, that's a great skill to realize whenever your thoughts are negative when you're feeling down. And I think that, you know, what I tend to do in those moments is let's say that I was going to give a keynote and I was a little sick and I was feeling tired and negative. And one of the things that bothers me is feeling not as mentally clear or sharp as I should be. Because for both of us, that's our livelihood. It's having a clear mind, you know.

And so if your superpower is not firing, then a lot of other things happen. And I usually look at that and you go, well, there's nothing to worry about then because let's just go do this and have fun. Because like, you know what I mean? It's like, maybe I won't be my best, but at least I'm going to have fun. And let's just go do it. And usually that solves some of that problem because a lot of that pressure of the negativity and the sickness and the feeling bad is because of tension that's coming down on us because

we're stressed that we're not going to be able to perform. Yes. And so then whenever I look at it. at it and I go, well, screw it. Let's just have fun. magically, all that stress goes away. And I start feeling better. And then I go out, and I usually do better than I would have because I went through a little, a little journey to get there, a slingshot, you know, of energy if I would have been feeling fun. I love dark chocolate. And my favorite kind is dark chocolate with sea salt. The sea salt's really important. For a while, the brand I buy ran out of the chocolate with sea salt. It was just the plain

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dot net slash overwhelm. I can't speak to whether I did better or not. It went well. And I don't know if it was because I was sick enough that I didn't have the mental energy, or whether, again, I've gotten slightly more wise, but the whole

time I was like, I can get really stressed about like, am I going to have a voice? But I can't control any of that. I'm going to do the best to get as well as I can between now and then. That's what I'm going to do. I just was markedly not too stressed about my ability to perform because that's like three days away. So who knows how I'll feel. And again, I may be assigning wisdom to what was just mental exhaustion from being sick. But nonetheless, I was feeling like, well, at least, as I often say, I didn't make it any worse. Yeah. You know, I just didn't make it. it any worse. I was sick and I was like, all right, I'm sick. This kind of sucks. And not that there weren't other thoughts swirling in there. I'm not saying that because when I'm sick,

they're just there. And I'm like, okay, whatever, you know, drama queen. Let's settle down. Well, it sounds like wisdom to me, man, because I usually think about there's, you know, knowledge, information, and wisdom. So information is we'll read something, an idea. And we go, that's a good idea. That's a smart idea. That's wise. And then we can remember. that idea, that's whenever we now have knowledge, right? And then when if we take that knowledge and we apply it to an arising circumstance in life, that's what creates wisdom. So I think you got it. I love that. Information, knowledge, wisdom. That's really good. And what becomes interesting in certain ways, my experience, if I use that framework, is that sometimes the information and the

knowledge almost disappear once wisdom is integrated. Yes. It's like water on top of the soil. It soaks into the ground. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, you're like, well, I can't really, I mean, I don't, I don't have the exact words or the quote that that came from or the idea. It's just in here in some way. But that really is the process. And I do love that idea that wisdom is like the application of this. And you've got another line in the book that I really like. It's something close to this, which is that any moment of awareness is also a moment of enlightenment. And I love that idea of like not setting the bar so high, right? And being able to go like, oh, I'm awake for this moment. I may even not feel good. But in this moment, I am aware of what is happening. I am present.

I am, and that is like enlightenment. I like connecting those dots in a way so that we can start to see. progress and that's another thing in your book that I really loved is there's a lot of and a lot of wisdom looks like X peace looks like this growth looks like this I really love those because they allow us to pause and go oh look I have made progress oh I'm not as reactive as I used to be and to see progress instead of always seeing where we need to go. First off, I just want to say it means a lot to me that you enjoyed the every moment of awareness, a moment of enlightenment, because that's one of those lines I kind of put in there for me because I know it to be true, and I understand it's a little abstract for a lot of people,

and I try not to be abstract anymore. I used to be all abstract, but I'm so glad because that's like one of the lines of the entire book that I've wondered if anyone would understand or if it would mean something to them. And so the fact that you called it out is no surprise that you called it out, but it means a lot to me. And yeah, it's exactly as you described it. It's like enlightenment ultimately, people have this lofty idea of it of like what you're going to reach deliverance and your body will be trends migrated into nirvana forever and ever, et cetera. or they think about some being that is sitting there floating impervious to any negativity and fully aware of all things. Again, even in the, you know, in the Polycanon, these things are manufactured idealist ideas.

They're triggers and mechanisms to get a person to kind of reach for the stars, right? It's like if you shoot for the top of the mountain, you know, it might hit the middle of the mountain, you shoot for the stars, you might at the top of the mountain. That's sort of what these perfect figure, idea of enlightenment are moving towards. So I like to ground that in real life. I say, like, ultimately, if we dissect enlightenment a little bit, what is it fundamentally? It is looking at the true nature of reality, and to clarify that a little bit, it's just looking at what's happening in front of you. And then whenever you understand that, you can separate your perception of what's happening from objective reality.

So to make that more clear, we could say there's what's happening in the world and your conscious awareness is like a lens or an instrument that's taking in a reading from that. And it's got your thumbprints of experience and history all over it. And so you get an impression of what's happening, not an actual clear vision of, of objective reality. Now, anytime through whatever process, we can soften our idea of what's happening, expand a little bit, and see reality

beyond our own biases, we gain more awareness. And that is a piece of enlightenment. That is expanding our preconceived notion of what is in seeing more of what's actually there. And so, any time that we do that, it could be the smallest thing. It could be something huge and revelational that any time that happens, you're getting a little dose of enlightenment.

And it's a very powerful thing. And people might instinctively want to undervalue that a little bit. But it really, really adds up and is really key to all of the other things that we talk about in the book. Yeah, 100%. I would go down this rabbit hole with you for about an hour, by the way. But I'm going to surface for our non-enlightment people. I was just happy to get to talk about enlightenment for a minute with you.

Yes. These days, these days, you know, the podcast landscape has changed where I don't get asked about actual questions of spirituality or a philosophy these days anymore. It's become so like the three steps to do X. Everything is how to do. I have a theory, which is because we do some of that, but I refuse to subscribe to that. Like, I want to have long form, real conversations. And my hope, my hope is that this moment will pass a little bit. And people will realize that chat GPT can give me the three steps for anything I need.

I don't need the how anymore in the same way. What I need is the deeper human connection. So I'm hoping that my refusing to pivot everything. to how to do X will be of benefit. But either way, it's what I want to do. So it's, you know, I'm a little stuck in that way. It's like, I have podcast friends who are like, we just don't have poets on anymore. Poets just don't perform well.

And I'm like, I know, but God, I want to have poets on. Like. Yeah, because poets are literally taking time to see what life is. Yes. Yep. Okay. I'm going to read another one here. And it ties to a little bit of what you just.

said, I think, which is mental clarity isn't having a mind without thoughts. It's recognizing your thoughts for what they are, temporary mental formations and choosing to use them mindfully or let them go. Man, you're picking the juicy ones. I love it. Yeah, I mean, that goes back to something I said earlier. A thought can be real, but it doesn't mean that it's true. Yeah. So one of the things that causes people a lot of anxiety, a lot of pain, a lot of frustration, is just taking their thoughts at face value. We have a relationship with our thoughts. And I actually have a deeper theory on this of why we do this, but we generally have a relationship with our thoughts that they represent truth. Yeah. Whenever really, they are just passing notes. There's suggestions about what we're

experiencing because our brain has evolved to go, okay, we're in this situation. Let's give this person as many fragments to deal with the situation so that they'll be prepared in case something happens that relates to this fragment. That's why people who are anxious usually have a bazillion thoughts. It's because their mind is going, give them as many thoughts as possible so that whatever happens, they'll have some framework for it and be prepared. Yeah. What happens is that we get so used to that

because we've always lived in our consciousness with thoughts arising that we think that it is a real metering system of what's going on in reality or what's going on about ourselves. And so they deeply affect how we feel and how we think. I think to go even a little deeper, because I can here, and that's exciting,

I think that another reason and we have that feeling with our thoughts is because there's almost an authority there. Because if you think about whenever we come online as conscious beings, the first thing we experience is our parents telling us, no, don't do that, do this, don't do that. So there's this frequency of thoughts above ours that is telling us what to do. Then we become teenagers. We go to school and teachers say, you better not do this, do that, do this. okay we graduate and maybe we go to college same thing professors and now also money's involved you better pay this

don't do that do that you host this then we graduate and then the cops are going hey don't do this or else you better do that and if we want to go really really far back we can look at the idea of the julian jane's books the breakdown of the bicaramel mind and how ultimately it says that he believes that religion came from humans in the earliest days of human consciousness, mistaking their own thoughts for the thoughts of an omnipotent being or some type of God. And... Huh. Yeah.

And so if we look at our relationship to thoughts, there's always an authoritative quality around us formulating our relationship to ourselves and reality. And so finally, at a certain point, when we're adults, and sure, we have general social guidelines of the police and cultural rules, but we also have this other voice going, Corey, you better do this. Don't do that. This is what's happening. And we're so trained to just go, okay, you know, that must be true because I've always had this thing above me saying it's true. But whenever we practicing meditation is really useful, you know, meditation stops the story in your mind long enough to realize that your mind is always telling you a story. It gives you a moment to back out and go, hmm, what's really happening is just this moment. and these thoughts are neither bad nor good they're just passing notes it's just information what gives those thoughts energy is if we choose to turn them into action yeah i sometimes love to think about like there was a time where we did not have language but we still thought

so hey what the hell was that like right but then it's some juncture and it wasn't like tomorrow it happened, but over time as language became more and more of our experience, that inner voice evolved to be entirely linguistic, which I just, I find that whole, like, what is this thing doing? There was another thought I had as you were talking, because the other thing about thoughts is how often repetitive they are. And I was interviewing David Epstein last week, and he quoted some, I think it was a neuroscientist who said, the point of thoughts are not to make you think, it's to make you not have to think.

Right, the brain is trying to conserve energy. So it just kind of keeps spitting the same shit out. Because, again, our situations repeat, oh, I'm on my porch again today. Oh, I'm like, it happens again and again. And the brain just goes, well, here's, okay, here's what you get. And I'm astounded by that still to this day, the way certain thoughts pop into my mind that are so incongruous

with who I am. I mean, they're so over the top dramatic. Like, I wish I was dead. And I'm like, hang on. Like, what? And it's just bizarre the way that that thought is just somewhere, there's just some neural circuit that something in my experience, and I have ideas about what it is, but something in my experience triggers that that thing just shoots out.

Now, when I examine it, I'm like, that is ridiculous. It is preposterous. But thoughts are that way. And they seem to also come with a. certain amount of emotional energy to them. And meditation, I think, slows that process a little bit. Because they seem, and I was meditating this morning, and I was watching the same exact sort of thing happened. We are moving to Atlanta, and I'm working on like, okay, I finally own a house now. I'm going to design the podcast studio office of my dreams. So before I meditated, I had been thinking about

different things, and I've been looking at this and looking at that. And some of that carried in with me. and I was just noticing how those thoughts were sticky, whereas other thoughts were kind of coming and going, and they were just sort of floating on by. And I was like, how interesting, what makes these particular ones more sticky in this moment? But often we just don't see that, because there's a process of thought

and then almost instantaneous attachment to it with an emotion. And the early Buddhist text talk about this, that at the same time the experience arises, there is a fundamental, I like it or don't like it, that arises at the same time. And a lot of times the thoughts that we don't like are the ones that instantly come. There's an immediate, I don't like this attachment to them. But slowing that process down actually changes things. It really does.

And also, there's an interesting recursive loop that happens where you mentioned having the thought and the emotion is that we have the thought first and then we react to the thought. and that creates the emotion. And then when we feel the emotion, that emotion of our reaction to the thought, then validates the thought. Yeah. Because we intuitively feel,

well, if I'm feeling scared or sad or excited about this thought, then it must be real. And they start reinforcing each other and it gets very difficult to get out of. I wanted to go back to what you also said before, which was this idea of the authority of our thoughts. How real and true they seem.

They do come with this, absolute like I am right feeling to them to the extent and I've said this on the show before that now the more strongly a thought arises and I'm like this is it like the more convinced I am of it the more suspicious I now am of it I'm like that's interesting what what is happening here like why is this thought seems so incredibly true and carry so much energy with it. I'm going to pay closer attention to that one versus what we normally do is the strong, the more we feel it, the more we believe it's true. And I've started to try it with varying success, trying to almost do the opposite. The more I feel it, the more I'm going to go,

hang on. Like what? Yeah. What is this? Why? It's really smart. I love that you're doing that and approaching it that way. I usually looked at that as a type of psychological divination. almost. It's like, you know, if you walk around with the sticks crossed looking for water in the desert, it's kind of,

your mind will keep repeating something because it's trying to get you to recognize because ultimately and very weirdly, our brains spend their entire life trying to get themselves to realize stuff, which is the weirdest setup. Well, what you're saying, to put it in slightly different terms,

is that there are, all sorts of autonomous aspects of our brain that are functioning that in certain theories are fighting to make it into consciousness. Exactly. Because it's trying to get you to process something. Yep. And the thing that is repressed or subconscious, your conscious mind won't allow itself or can't see it yet.

And so the subconscious mind will continue to force it through in a lot of different ways until you process it because it's created. creating some type of pain. It's creating some type of pattern that's, you know, holding you back or doing something that's messing you up. And so it's trying to purge this so that you can see it, get clarity on it, integrate it, and then let it go. And so, yeah, whenever I have those thoughts that keep emerging, I go, let me sit with them. Right. And I just think, why am I thinking this? Why has this kept arising? And I'll just track it back. And I'll just track it back. And I just, usually will go into a combination of some felt sense of that experience because I find that to be

very helpful because we generally think of our non-integrated mind or our subconscious mind as being linguistic, but it's all emotional because it's all, it's symbols. So everything that we perceive and all of our experience moves into basically symbols that go into our subconscious. And then sometimes those symbols come together in a relationship to what we experience and create language. but most of the time it's just a felt sense of being because as you said our brain is trying to be economical and therefore there's no reason to waste trying to turn these incredibly complicated thoughts or sensations into language because most of what's going on to the serfiness of our minds it should be a 10,000 page book. You know, you really could write that much on one of those things.

Instead it goes, here's a feeling and then here's a feeling and then here's a, thought that's kind of a root that's coming out of that feeling that we're going to poke into the conscious part of this guy's mind to see if he can grab onto it and track it back and kind of detangle what's going on sit with the thought and then feel into it and just slowly get deeper and deeper and continue to ask questions and keep my mind flexible and usually I'll figure out what it is pretty quickly but I think that's the only real way to deal with those. guys unless you just you know put more dirt on them and say you're not coming out yeah yeah no I know I know exactly when that firing in my brain goes and it says something really dramatic like that I

know what it is it's that I don't know the answer to something I've recognized that for whatever reasons not knowing the answer to something causes and a feeling in me that is deeply aversive. Interesting. Yeah. It is, it is deeply aversive. And I just, I've learned to kind of go,

okay, well, you know, like, you don't have, kind of like you said, I spent enough time watching it to be like, what, what is happening when that comes up? And it's always some variation on that. It's even more charged if the decision

involves other people. Mm-hmm. Right? Like the worst of it used to be when like my ex-wife and my mom hated each other and they both were pulling at me to go their direction. That caused such existential

dread in me. Yeah, and it's really unfair. Because I didn't know what was right. I couldn't figure out the answer, and yet it was really emotionally charged from those two people. So that's an extreme version of it, whereas the shampoo is a silly version of it, right?

But it's in between there. I've recognized that that like knowing the answer, which is funny because it's a big part of Zen practice, right? We say all the time, not knowing is most intimate. And so for me, that not knowing takes a little bit, I have to wade into that water a little bit carefully, you know, because, oh, okay, it's okay not to know. It's okay to not know the answer. Absolutely. And also remembering that our minds can be so dramatic. It's like whenever you're

in that area of thought, they can just go from something sensible to something completely ridiculous because it's kind of the wild west in there when there isn't logic processing and happening and it's just the mind kind of free associating based on your emotional state the thoughts can get really rambunctious and wild and you can think about someone who's passed away and been like oh you're lucky bastard you know and it's like well wait it's like wait why did i think that because i'm tired today you know that's absolutely absurd exactly exactly all right well we are out of time, but I would love to close with having you read. I think I got one.

This is a good one to end on. So this is from page 155 from the section called Discover. And I feel like this connects everything that we discussed in this podcast and will help people move forward with the energy of what this book is trying to do and what is trying to bring into their lives. We are sold the story that to feel truly alive, we must chase great peaks and exotic experiences. The truth is that those extremes move us only because the experiences themselves awake in a mindset that reveals the sheer brilliance of human existence. You don't need an extraordinary experience to see the magnificence of being alive.

The great mystery lives in the most ordinary experiences. the real art is to kindle that mindset from within rather than waiting for circumstances to do it for you. Look deeply at the present moment. Consider the impossible magic that you are a conscious being who is aware of your own awareness, experiencing the timeless moment of now while floating in the infinite expanse of the universe.

Feel the gravity of being alive and know that if you peer into the present, with deep attention in its truest nature, you will forever find profound insights woven into ordinary experiences. Well, that is a beautiful place to wrap up, Corey. Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to have you on. You and I are going to talk a little bit more about meditation in the post-show conversation.

So listeners, if you're interested in meditation, this is going to be a great conversation. If you want ad-free episodes, you want other post-show conversations, you want other post-show conversations and you want to support the show, which is always an important thing. We can always use your help. Go to one you feed.net slash join. Thanks, Corey. Always a pleasure. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Eric. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm certainly not a celebrity. But we have some

something even better, and that's you. Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one you feed community.