The One You Feed - What It Takes to Believe You're Good Enough with Lodro Rinzler

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

In this episode, Lodro Rinzler discusses what it takes to believe you're good enough. He explains how guilt, shame, and negative emotions can become mistaken identity markers, and how meditation helps us recognize our inherent goodness. Lodro also shares personal stories about releasing shame, taking responsibility for past mistakes, and the Buddhist concept that we are fundamentally good but obscured by life's challenges. A Weekly Bite of Wisdom: Want to go deeper with the ideas we explore on The One You Feed? Every Wednesday, Eric shares a short, practical email that turns insights about mental health, relationships, purpose, habits, and personal growth into simple practices you can use right away. You'll also receive our Weekend Podcast Playlist featuring a recap of the week's episodes. It's free, takes about a minute to read, and is enjoyed by thousands of readers each week. Sign up at oneyoufeed.net/newsletter. Exciting News!!! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life is out NOW! Order today!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Key Takeaways: Discussion of Lodo Rinzler's new book, You Are Good Enough. You Are Enough. Exploration of themes related to guilt and shame. The impact of modern distractions on mindfulness and presence. Identification with negative emotional states and their effects on identity. The role of meditation in recognizing and addressing negative mental patterns. Personal anecdotes illustrating the struggle with guilt and the journey of personal growth. The importance of expanding one's identity beyond limiting labels. Philosophical perspectives on human nature and basic goodness. Practical steps for cultivating mindfulness and compassion in daily life. The significance of holding a nuanced view of oneself and others in fostering healing and connection. For full show notes:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you enjoyed this conversation with Lodro Rinzler, you might also enjoy these other episodes: Meditation for Anxious People with Lodro Rinzler Lodro Rinzler (Episode from 2014) Hardcore Zen with Brad Warner By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed, and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! This episode is sponsored by: ⁠⁠Brodo Broth⁠⁠: Shop the best broth on the planet with Brodo.  Head to ⁠⁠Brodo.com/TOYF⁠⁠ for 20% off your first subscription order and use code TOYF for an additional $10 off. ⁠Quince:⁠⁠ Refresh your wardrobe with Quince by going to ⁠⁠Quince.com/feed⁠⁠ for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Aura Frames⁠: Named #1 by Wirecutter, you can save on the gifts moms love by visiting AuraFrames.com. For a limited time, listeners can get 25 dollars off their best-selling Carver Mat frame with code FEED. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout! ⁠Rocket Money⁠ Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at ⁠rocketmoney.com/feed⁠. ⁠Taskrabbit:⁠ When life happens, your to-do list grows. Get ahead of it now and get fifteen dollars off your first task at ⁠Taskrabbit.com⁠ or on the Taskrabbit app using promo code FEED. Taskers book up fast, especially for same-day tasks, so book trusted home help today. ⁠Hello Fresh⁠ – Get 10 free meals + a FREE Zwilling Knife (a $144.99 value) on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are really not comfortable having space in our life anymore. If there is a gap, we reach for that phone and we fill it one way or another. A dating app, a television show, whatever it is. It's like, it's all right there. It's crazy. And we don't have a preference to put that behind you and say, I can just be here. 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 feel. feed their good wolf. Lodrow Rinsler carried guilt about a high school breakup for years.

He'd ended things badly. He was sure of it. And when he finally tracked her down on Facebook and apologized, she said, I don't remember it that way at all. It's a small story, but Lodro uses it to make a point that runs through his whole new book. Most of what we hold against ourselves is either not true or not as big as we've made it. The book is called You Are Good Enough, You Are Enough, You Are Enough. This conversation is about what it actually takes to believe that.

I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Lodro, welcome back. Thanks so much for having me back. I was recently reading your book, as I'm sure everyone in the world is currently doing. And I thought it was so sweet that you remembered our early time together on the show a million years ago. You mentioned it in there. That was very sweet. So thank you for including me.

Yeah, I do not have a good man. memory, but I remember in those early days, if you had a book, you were like a legend to me, right, you know, in this space. And I remember, I email you because I'd seen your book. I can't remember which one it was, but it was one of your early books, I think. And you said, yes, and I remember telling my friend Chris, we got this guy, Lodrow Rinsler on the show. I was so, I was so excited. So I appreciate it. And he immediately said, I have no idea who that is. Of course he did. Of course he did. He still does, and you've been on like four times. Fair enough. No, I don't know how long you've been on. I'm kidding.

But yeah, those early guests were really meaningful to me, and you were one of them. So thank you. Oh, I was so happy to do it. Yeah. And I am also happy to be here now and to celebrate you and this incredible run that you've had on this show, but also this new book. And as we were talking about before we start recording, it's just really cool to see how much is shifted and changed for you and how much you're helping people. Well, thank you. It has shifted and changed a lot.

And I am so grateful for this podcast and all that's meant in my. life and all the people who support it. You and I are going to continue to talk here in a moment about your book, which is called You Are Good, You Are Enough. Free yourself from the trap of doubt and return to basic goodness. But before we do that, we will start in the way that we always have, and I will read you a parable that you've heard before and ask you what you think about it. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf. which represents things like kindness and bravery and love.

And the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, they think about it for a second. They look up with their grandparent. They say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, I was so tempted to go back and hear what my earlier answer was.

and maybe I'll do it after we have spent some time together today because I think it's also like an interesting marker for how has my mind and life change that I would come on. So the answer that's coming out for me today is, you know, I feel like one of the things I am personally struggling with as a meditation teacher is talking to people about their mind and the fact that we can make choices with our mind, that like no one gets to decide which wolf we feed

but us? Because I think a lot of people, maybe since the pandemic, I think I've seen more of an uptick since then, they really identify with their anxiety or their fear or their anger or whatever it is. And they're like, that's just who I am. I am an anxious person.

I'm a, you know, angry person. I've just always been prone to anger. And they don't realize that that's a wolf that they have been feeding. Yeah. As opposed to just who they are. Right. So I think that this is the big uphill battle

that I find myself facing when I sit down and I teach people meditation online in person wherever I am, that the fact that we can actually choose which wolf to feed, you know, and obviously those are two choices there, but I always think about like every time we feed into the anxious story that comes up over the course of the day, we are feeding an anxious wolf, right? Like we are just reifying those patterns. And every time we acknowledge, oh, I don't have to do that. I can just be present in this moment.

I don't have to chase that story. we come back, we are feeding that wolf. And that's all meditation is, frankly. It doesn't have to be anxiety specifically, but it's everything. Yeah, it's always, it's just us constantly making choices. And meditation helps us learn to drop some of the stories that keep us locked in pain long enough to make the better choice. Do you think that's changed?

You've been teaching meditation a long time now. Do you see people more identified with emotional states as identity than they used to? Yeah, I do. I was listening to a recent interview. Pam Chowdren sat down at the New York Times and was interviewed by Ezra Klein. I shared it online the other day. And in the world that we live in, of course,

I posted to Facebook, two comments immediately popped up. One said, I love Pamad Children. The other one said, F, Ezra Klein. It's like just two polar opposites into the spectrum. I was like, well, they're in conversation. Maybe there's some middle ground here. So I was listening to this, and I never heard someone say it so bluntly,

but he brought up the fact. He said, do you see people being more distracted than they see? And she said, yes. And he says, why? And she says, I just think that there is more detraction. There's more that we can do. And he gave the example of when we used to be on the subway, if we forgot a magazine, we would just sit on the subway

and we would see who's on the subway, right? We were just present. And that was actually a practice that he was engaging in, that he would just be present on the subway when he was on his way to pick up his kids from school. And now we have everything in the world at our fingertips. We can read. We can listen to things.

We can scroll on social media. We can do any number of things to distract ourselves. So we are so prone to distraction in a way that we weren't, I would go so far as to say 12 years ago. You know, I first started putting out books 14 years ago, definitely. Like social media wasn't even a big thing back then, which is crazy. It's been such a meteoric rise. But alongside it is this. this meteoric rise in distraction, that we are really not comfortable having space in our life

anymore. If there is a gap, we reach for that phone and we fill it one way or another. A dating app, a television show, whatever it is. It's like, it's all right there. It's crazy. And we don't have a preference to put that behind and say, I can just be here. So yes, I do find that, you know, because we are more willing to be distracted, we are more willing to just let our thoughts take over

and we're less likely to just be present to us currently occurring. So again, as I said earlier, it's like an uphill battle for me as a meditation teacher to be like, hey, let's all slow down and just, I don't want to say detox from our technology, but that could be a practice, but I think a lot of the practice

is just learning to be present with whatever we're doing. And we're with the dog, we're with the dog. When we are taking a walk, we do put that phone away and we just sort of enjoy whatever is on our walk. When we go grocery shopping, we're not just mentally lost and what needs to happen after. We're just looking and seeing

and being there in this weird little community called a grocery store, you know? If we transform our view around these things and obviously this is sort of a good lead in. I mean, to that book, you are good, you are enough because I have a whole chapter, our whole section really, on society

and the way that we're constantly co-creating society and influencing society with our choices of how we show up and whether we show up. Yeah, one of the things that I have seen happen over the time that I've been doing this, which is 12 years, is a big shift in the mental health debate out there. And I've seen it go from being still relatively stigmatized as a thing, to very largely destigmatized today. And almost in certain circles, I see people identifying

with a diagnosis as part of who they are, almost willing. And I think it's interesting. Now, I have a parallel in my life when I first got sober. I was very highly identified as a recovering person. And that was really, really valuable for a period of time until it wasn't. But I do think the more we identify with a way of being mentally, the more we lock ourselves into being that way. And I think it's always really tricky. I think a lot about this. Like, well, when is a label or identity valuable and when is it limited? And I think it's different for every person. I don't think anybody can make that. But I do think it's always worth in our own lives asking, like, is there a aspect of myself I'm over-identifying with? Or I'm saying that's just the way I am when indeed it's more just a pattern of conditioning and habits. Beautifully put. And I'm with you 100%.

And I remember early on in my career, I was touring for my first book, The Buddha Walks Into a Bar, which, you know, wildly provocative title. and I sat down with a Buddhist group that had a lot of people in recovery in it. It's a community that really emphasizes that aspect of bringing the two together. And they were actually incredibly kind, incredibly open. But there's one person who was just like, I don't think you understand that this is just who I am. I'm an addict now. Like, that's just it.

And I was like, I don't know if that's it. That is absolutely something that is happening. And that's absolutely, if it's helpful for you to hold that label, then that is good. But at a certain point, you may find that if that is the only label you hold and the only identity you hold, it can be very limiting for you. And I would like to think that that person took that to heart because, you know, it's been similar to what you just said about, you know, 12, 14 years since then. And it's just one of many versions that I have seen. I just had dinner the other night with a dear friend who, because of the pandemic, isolated and fell into

pretty abusive drug patterns and has now gotten sober, is in recovery housing and it's doing quite well. And we had dinner for the first time. Like I'd been in touch with him throughout all of this, but I hadn't been, he was in L.A. I'm in New York. So he finally came to New York and we had dinner. And he was sharing that exact story, which is that there was a time where it was really helpful for him to identify in a certain way and really hold certain discipline. very close. And at this point, he realized he needed to just not necessarily get rid of that, right? Like it's not like he's throwing the disciplines out the window, but he said, I needed more than just that. I love that idea of like, we can expand our identity. We can expand our

understanding of who we are. And, you know, obviously, as the Buddhist teacher, I have to point out, like, all of these identities are completely ephemeral and impermanent and always changing. And we don't have to cling to any of them too tightly. If I never wrote a book again, I wouldn't go around telling my, you know, new people at a party that I'm an author. I would, I would just, you know, come up with something else. Like that's, it's, it's, oh, things are always changing with us. And that's okay. You know, there's a time that I wasn't an author. There might be a time that I'm not an author. That's fine too. But, you know, in the meantime, if it's helpful for me to identify as that and talk to people about books and, ideally they get benefit from those books, then I'll,

I'll go ahead and do it. I've often said that depression hates a moving target, but there's a cruel irony in there because moving is one of the hardest things to do with depression. And similarly, when we most need a therapist, it is often when we have the least ability to sort through the complex mess of finding one, which is why I'm such a big fan of what Alma is doing. They've made the search part simple because that's often the thing standing between us and getting help. Alma has a directory of over 26,000 therapists and you can filter by things that actually matter to you, like specialty, identity, life experience, therapeutic approach. And critically, you can put in what insurance you have,

and it will show you therapists who take that insurance. Over 1 million people have found care with Alma and 95% connect with a therapist within a week. If you've been thinking about starting therapy or getting back to it, I'd recommend checking out Alma. Get started at helloalma.com slash feed. That's H-E-L-L-O-A-M-M-A-D-M-A-D-E-M-A-D-E-E-M-A-D. com slash feed.

Ultimately, I think what happened with me and addiction was that there was a lot of, I had a lot of ideas about what it meant to be an addict. Under that heading, there were a lot of things, right? And in my case, the number of things under that list has come down to about one, which is I should not use mind-altering substances. Sure. Right? Like, that doesn't go well for me.

Yes. All the other things are just human things. that are transient. They come, they go. I'm impulsive. No, maybe I'm not. I'm this way. I'm that way. All of that I've seen is a lot more, as you say, transient. Yeah. And obviously, you know, I read your book and I know your relationship to another thing that comes up for many people who struggle in these regards is guilt and shame. And though I have not gone through a recovery program, you know, I have guilt and shame about things as well. And I write pretty explicitly in this new book about it, you know, like what the process of making mistakes can be, how we hold guilt

and shame against us, how that's not necessarily helpful once we have learned the lessons from our mistakes and how we can move forward. I think it's just a really potent time right now where I don't think it's like, I did something wrong and now I'm horrible, I'm like a non-being, right? Like we sort of say, okay, I have to learn and I grow as a result of this. I always think of this moment serving on the board of an organization that helps unhoused youth. I was teaching a meditation class there, and there was this kid who came up to me after. Something must have sparked this quote for him. I don't remember what I said, but I remember what he said.

He said, you know, what you said reminded me of an old saying my grandmother always told me, which is 100 of the same stakes is regressive. 100 different mistakes is progressive. And I was like, oh, that's cool. And obviously it stayed with me for a million years now, that we just keep doing the same thing over and over again. That's very regressive. But if we learn and grow as human beings, it's just who we are. That's just a human being thing.

I love that quote. I love that whole section. So I guess we're going to go into the book and then maybe come back around to the top of the book. Because you tell a story in there about guilt and shame that I really love. And it's about how you were feeling guilt towards a previous partner of years. Can you tell that story? Oh, sure. The one in high school?

The one where you thought you'd wronged her and you carried that guilt for all those years. Yeah. So I was in high school and I dated someone for, you know, it felt like forever, but maybe it was four or five months, right? I was high school. And I broke it off and I went on this meditation retreat. It's my first, like, very long meditation retreat. I was 17 years old. It was monastic. I shaved my head. I took the ropes, the whole nine yards. And I think on a meditation retreat is that you don't, like, even when you're doing others, things than meditating. You still are basically just left alone with your own mind. There are no distractions. I got in trouble for reading a book for school, like a fiction book, which

was considered a no-no. That's a no-no. You could see there's not a lot else to do. So somewhere around two, three weeks into this meditation retreat, I get in my head, I go, I was such a jerk to that poor woman who I broke up with. And I really went in on

that, and I just wallowed in the guilt and the shame. And the and beat myself up. And honestly, I say this in the book as well. There's no one who can say anything that I have not said worse to myself. Like I can beat myself up if I really want to. And I went to dark places. And finally, about three days into this self-flagellation thing,

I said to myself, listen, when you get out of here, you're going to go back home and you are going to formally apologize and you're going to make this right to the best of your ability. And I, with that understanding, started to let it go. I emerged from the meditation retreat. It went home. She had moved. Her father had gotten a new job.

They moved elsewhere. This is pre, you know, social media and all that. Like, this is not, I couldn't find her. And that was it. Years later, I'm in college. And I get a ping on Facebook. This is like early days of Facebook. And it's her.

And I immediately accept. And I still carried this. Like, I still care. I never said, I'm sorry. So I just held it to some form for a very long time. And we chatted for a little bit on that platform until I finally said, hey, by the way, I need to share that I feel really bad about what happened. And I was an absolute jerk and I am sorry.

And you don't have to forgive me, but, you know, I just wanted to say it. And after at that point, years and years and years of me holding this, she goes, oh, I don't remember it like that at all. Yeah, it wasn't a big deal. So, you know, it's like that's pretty common. I think, you know, we can go to any number of versions of the thing I said last night at that party, everyone's talking, they don't remember they're thinking about the thing they said, right? But like, there's always some version that we can hold over our head about ourselves. And as that

story illustrates, nine times out of ten, it's pretty useless. It's not actually helping us grow as a person. Yeah. I'm going to stay with guilt and shame a little bit and mistakes in the past because you tell a story in the book about somebody who during one of your not best periods in life you caused some harm to and that you've tried to make it right and that that person still feels very aggrieved. That person has gone out and told the world that they are aggrieved. I think you and I had a conversation about this. I don't know when this was, five years ago, four years ago, three years ago.

Eight years ago, but yeah, who's counting? Was it really? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. You got to be kidding. No, no. Anyway, all right, eight years ago, that's amazing to me. You talk about your friend and remembering things differently. I'm counting down three, two, six months ago.

You're like, no, 35 years ago. Oh, okay. It's kind of how time feels anymore. I don't know if it does for you. Anyway, share about as much about that as you're comfortable sharing. Yeah, sure. So, as you noted, I had this period of time. I sparked this book on Heartbreak called Love Hurts,

Buddhist advice for the heartbroken, but there's this period of time where everything was sort of pulled out from under me. My fiancé broke up with me and moved overseas. I suffered a job loss, sort of a big egoic identity death as well with that. and then my best friend passed away, and then shortly thereafter my father passed away. And this was sort of bit bam boom just left me in a devastated spot. And I was drinking more than I should, period. You know, I had a lot of suicidal ideation.

I was at the lowest in this lifetime so far. And I don't think that there's anyone who should have come down from on high and saved me. But I do wish that someone had said, hey, maybe don't like keep touring and traveling for your book that came out during this. Like it's just, I should have just like laid low and taking care of myself. But I did. Yeah. And as you said, I inadvertently caused harm. And I carry that shame and guilt to some extent today, right?

I still hold, as I said earlier, like anything that anyone says against me. You know, I can do 10 times worse. So I, you know, and I work with that. I work with that as a practice. And I went through a whole process where it's sort of like when you make a mistake, what do you do? For me, I immediately said, hey, I am 100% sorry, and I spent a day with this person sort of unpacking it. There's just a lot of trauma from this person who I didn't know that up front.

And I sort of inadvertently stepped on some big issues that I had not been aware of. So, you know, I apologize. I spent a lot of time trying to unpack this with this person, sought mediation with this person, did whatever I could within the confines of working with this person to try and heal. And then it becomes, you know, at a certain point, you have to say, like, then I have to heal on my own too. If this person doesn't want to talk to me or be with me, like you have to sort of do your own healing work around it. The therapy, working with mentors, meditation, all of these things.

And then you sort of turn over every rock you can, learn every lesson you can. And you say, well, I'm not that person. I'm not in that devastated, traumatized state. I am, you know, I have learned a lot from it. And then you sort of come out the other end. And you don't have to say, like, that's a neat, happy ending, right? As you said, there can still be people in your past. to say, like, oh, that was a shitty time for you.

And, like, you were not the best person. And you can acknowledge that. I acknowledge that. And be like, that's also not who I am. So it's that sense of, like, identity that we were talking about earlier. Like, that's, we continue to grow. You know, I think, like, you know, there might be a cartoon villain version of a low drone in at least one person's mind, you know, of, like, the worst exaggerated features and

deeds. But that's actually not who I am. And it took me a while to realize, like, that's a caricature. That's not who I am. Yeah. You know, it's, I, I had a interview not so long ago where I literally came to tears because I was like, it's the end of day. It's like, one of the identities I hold is someone who's just really trying to help people.

And I do make mistakes along the way. And I'm very open about being a very human, human, a very messy human. And I also believe that we are all inherently basically good. And that's obviously the topic of this new book. Like, we are all inherently, fundamentally, innately, good, whole complete as it. Now, can we hold both of those things in mind? Can we say Eric is basically good and he went through his struggles and made mistakes? Lodro was basically good.

He went through his struggles, made mistakes that they've learned and that they can also be embodied with that basic goodness today. That's a big question. And I think that's something that we don't often give people a lot of grace and ability to do. It's sort of like, oh, I hear something bad about a person and that's just who they are. And I cling to that as their identity as opposed to. that is one small piece of who they are. Yeah, it is so tricky. You know, as our society has begun to have more conversations about harm

and things that traditionally have been hidden away come out into the open, and I think there's a more nuanced version of every public conversation that we have. I don't think there's a single one that we couldn't use a more nuanced version of. I think about this with prison and, I mean, any sort of thing like that. At what point are you not, like you said, not that person or even that one thing being a very small aspect of the whole person. And I just don't think we're very good at holding those things. We like good, bad. Yes.

Like that, we just like, it's just simpler, right? And that's what a lot of us want, particularly when we're thinking about just people in sort of passing. You know, are they good or they bad? Make it easy for me. And I think if you pay any more attention than that, you have to conclude, at least I do, like, hmm, both, right? I talk about this in the book a little bit because my wife had a great question. She just turned to me when she said, at what point do we allow people to change? And it was not about this.

It was just a great question. Yeah. And it just stayed with me. At what point do we allow people to change? Like, I'm not the same version of a lodra that existed a dozen years ago. Or, you know, back when all of this happened, that was, you know, 2013, so 13 years ago. or whatever, is I'm not the same person I was 24 years ago. I'm not going to be the same person I am, you know, five years from now. So we just, to do what we can to make up for any negative actions,

none of them means that we're not basically good. We can be basically good. We can be grieving and having a hard time and acting out of confusion. And can we hold both truths in our mind? That's the question. And I think that's, you know, there's chapters in here just about how we villainize people because it's not like we're making it very personal, you and me. More often, And we look at other people and we say, that person's bad because of something. We start to build a case around it. And again, my wife is incredibly wise. She is.

She brought up this point that she had, I think she didn't come up with it. I think she heard it somewhere. But she shared it with me that there's sort of two lenses through which we engage with the world. One could be as a lawyer or one as a scientist. A lawyer says, I see something and I now make a case for why that person is, for example, bad and why they're always going to be bad. And anything that comes in contradiction with it, they're giving all their time to charity or whatever it is.

We say that's because they want people to think nicely of them. They're actually bad. And we disregard it. Right? And then a scientist says, I'm going to look at all of the points of data here. And I'm going to make an informed decision. I think that's such a better way for us to live. Because if we just keep making cases against everyone in our mind, good, bad, or ugly,

we're going to end up in a pretty divided world. And we already are, which is sort of how we got here. actually. I talk a lot about the fundamental attribution error, which is this idea that when you do something, it's a character flaw. But when I do it, or my favorite politician does it or someone close to me, there were mitigating circumstances. You know, they did it because X, Y, and Z.

But for you, it's a character issue. And that attribution error is a really big problem. Yeah. So, okay, let's come back now all the way around because you kind of led us there to the idea of the book that everyone is born with basic goodness. So there are three versions of this story that I think are out there and there's probably permutations on them. But version one is a more Christian version, which is that you are fundamentally flawed and born into sin. You're bad to start with. You need redeemed. There's the Buddhist version, which is you are fundamentally good, right? You're born good and everything that happens is sort of covering over that beautiful diamond. And then there's the view that I think I land on probably, but I don't know for sure, which is we have the seeds of all of it inside of us. So talk to me about your belief in the second of those that we are fundamentally good.

I'm happy to talk about all three. So I'm looking over our fence here. My neighbor is a Christian pastor. Sometimes he'll come over for dinner and we'll break bread and he'll look at me and say, so you Buddhists, you really believe that everyone's born basically good, that they have the potential for awakening, for enlightenment, all these things. I see, yeah, and goes, ah, you, Buddhist teachers have it so easy. Because, you know, it's like a different come from than where he starts.

Totally. Yeah, you know, like, yeah. So there's original sin and we've got a tone and all of that. And I understand that a large swath of this nation gets behind that idea and grapples with it. It's just fundamentally different from how I was raised. It's so interesting because I was raised Buddhist. You know, it's not something I just sort of stumbled upon. I had a household where my parents taught me this concept very early,

this experience that underneath the stories and things, we are basically good. And I started meditating when I was young. And I don't know if I necessarily am changed. I'm sure the meditation is just like I've been doing it so long. I don't know how it's changed me. It's sort of like what's that versus growing up and being an adult? But I do know that this view of basic goodness changed me. That when I was a kid, it something went wrong.

And it does. I have a three-year-old daughter now, you know. And I caught myself. She was screaming. My poor mother, you know, 85, severe dementia. We took her out for her birthday. my wife was on a meditation retreat. I brought my three-year-old.

I was like, this will be fine. And it was not fine. I know you're laughing. What an idiot. So, you know, take her out for a birthday dinner. And the kids screaming. Oh, the perfect storm is not to throw my, again, very wise wife under the bus. But she called while we were over on the way there.

And so my daughter got like a hint of mom and like was missing mom. And then like we go into this dinner. And she's like, I don't want grandma. I want mom. And I'm like, we can't say I don't want grandma. And I'm just. I'm in this point where I'm like, I'm not going to burst into tears, but I'm so like at wit's end. And I am like, I'm going to take my daughter outside.

I'm going to take her for a walk. And I noticed that there's this tendency. And I've seen so many people, friends, are like, you're being bad. And I was like, nope, it almost came out of my mouth. And I was like, hey, you're not being very nice to grandma. Yeah. It's such a slight reframe. But it's not you're bad and wrong.

It's you're basically good. And you're not being. nice to the person we're having dinner. Like, it's such a slight distinction, but it's what was imparted to me as a kid. You're basically good. You're good. And this isn't how we behave, right?

Like we don't scream to my grandma and say, I don't want you, right? Like, it's just, anyway, this was fundamental to my being. The third thing that you offered, I think is very much in line with Buddhism, though. It's not, okay, you're basically good. Now everything's fine. It's we need to continue to develop a relationship

to that thing that we have lost along the way. Through stories of shame and guilt, through stories of why we're not enough and we're not good enough and all the things we get in society. I don't think I put this one in the book, but there's these subway ads, and they're often very tasteless. I look at them like, oh, whatever. I forget sometimes how easily influenced we are as children. My wife was writing the subway, and there's this kiddo, probably six years old, a woman, a girl, and she was with her dad, and there was this breast augmentation ad where there was one woman, looking sad, holding lemons in that area.

Same woman smiling, looking happy, holding cantaloupes. Not necessarily subtle, but, you know, and subtle enough for that. A six-year-old says, Daddy, why is she sad there and why is she happy there? And this poor dad thrown under the bus just goes, pivoting us, I don't know, maybe she just really likes candelope. What sort of fruit do you like? Let's talk about fruit. Clearly, I hope to be that good in such a question.

That's smooth, yes. Yeah. But it's like, oh, yeah, we are taught, look like this, act like, this, et cetera, from such a young age that when we don't meet whatever societal standards are being sold to us, we think the flaw is us. We think we're wrong or bad. And we internalize those stories of, I don't have enough. I'm, you know, my family's poor and I'll never have enough, whatever it is, all the way into adulthood. And we don't deal with that. We just hold those stories as if we talked about before, like those identities are true. So so much of what we're talking about

and you are good, you are enough, is letting go of the stories that aren't serving us so that we can return to that relationship of goodness that we were born with. I think that's just a really important thing that, frankly, not enough of us are willing to do right now. We're not willing to let go of the stories that are holding us in pain. Check in for a moment. Is your jaw tight, breath shallow? Are your shoulders creeping up? Those little signals are invitations to slow down and listen.

Every Wednesday I send weekly bites of wisdom, a short email that turns the big ideas we explore here in each show, things like mental health, anxiety, relationships, purpose, into bite-sized practices you can use the same day. It's free, it takes about a minute to read, and thousands already swear by it. If you'd like extra fuel for the weekend, you also get a weekend podcast playlist. Join us at one you feed.net slash newsletter. That's one you feed.net slash newsletter and start receiving your next bite of wisdom. All right, back to the show. I certainly think it is a more useful perspective to start from we are good and then that gets

occluded by the travails of life. Then concluding the opposite. when I think about usefulness, because that's so much of what I'm interested. I mean, certainly truth is important, but truth is a, that's a slippery creature, right? And ultimate truth is, you don't know. So I'm very much into like, well, which of these ways of viewing this is most useful in me being the person that I want to be, you know, to myself, to the people around me, all of that. And I certainly think starting from a place of goodness is a much, more useful,

stirring frame of reference, I think. I don't know if I'm understanding the third perspective that you offer that you feel like you connect with more, though. It's that we're neither good nor bad. We have the seeds of both within us. We have the seeds of both with us. Yeah.

I would say the Bruce view is just that, yeah, we have basic goodness and that, yeah, we, as I mentioned before, we all get confused. We all get confused at times. We all make mistakes from that acting out of that sense of confusion, but it's because we're confused about our goodness,

not because we're bad yeah so you have a chapter in the book called the entire buddhist path in two pages can you can you be that succinct in a podcast interview yeah that's a great question i like that you're like by the way i've done this a few times with you right now succinct is not your vocabulary let's see what you can do um i'm teasing yes it's really three steps step one is that we make that discovery of basic goodness and i want to be clear that basic goodness isn't a concept that we grapple with from a philosophical point of view. It is experience. We meditate, for example, as one way to access it.

We notice there's this moment, oh, I'm okay as I am sitting here on this cushion. That could be a revelation, oh, I am basically good. In this moment, I am basically good. Once we get a glimpse of basic goodness, we start to see it can be this real source of peace and stability. And that's where things get juicy. We go to step two, where we deepen that relationship with basic goodness. There's so many different tools, books, you know, retreat. teachings, things like that, but they're meant to keep you connected, reconnecting to your innate nature

more fully, more frequently. And they're different skillful means that help us train our heart and mind to recognize that goodness within us so that that relationship gets strengthened in the same way that if we made a friend at a barbecue, right, we would just continue to strengthen that relationship over time. There's times where it feels awkward, times where it feels fun, but like over time, we're just getting to know this person better. Same thing. We're returning, getting to familiar with our basic goodness more and more. So that step three, we live our life through the lens of basic goodness. So as that relationship grows, it transforms how we approach life.

We start to notice our interactions or decisions, even some of that like the self-talk that we were just talking about, it starts to shift, that we trust in our goodness so much that we start seeking validation from the outside world. And we bring more compassion, kindness to our own relationship with ourselves, with people at work, and our family, with friends. we start to see everyone, really everyone, as fundamentally good as well. It's not just I'm basically good, you're basically good. It's like, our all beings are basically good.

And that's where it gets really interesting. And then I basically just take that as the three sections of the book. The first section of the book is just discovering your own basic goodness. The second one is, can I start to see it in that person I don't like, the person I'm villainizing, whatever it is, the person I do like, the person I love, my child, the people I don't know that I see all the time, the grocery store example I gave earlier. And then we come to that third section, which is, well, what's society? If not the people I like, the people I don't like, the people I don't know, and me.

That's everyone. Could we realize the basic goodness of society, not in a polyana way, but in the way that we're all humans and we can all sort of come at each other from that perspective of there's basic goodness. And as we talked about, there's confusion, sure it is. But that's not fundamentally who we are. Yeah, and I want to get to each of those. I want to start, though, because I love the way you illuminate. this through a couple of core Buddhist teachings. The first is around that all of us, when we encounter any experience, any stimulus,

you can say this better than I do, we have either a positive reaction towards, we have a negative reaction towards, or we just simply really have a neutral reaction to. And that those three things then tie to what are called poisons, which are, I'm not sure exactly the words you use in the book, but I would call them greed, aversion, and ignorance. And I love the way you then sort of tie that to the way we relate to others, right, in that some people we relate to, we like, some people we really don't like. And most of them, we have no opinion about it, or their background furniture that sometimes gets in the way. Yeah, you're right. Did I say that all fairly well?

It did. You're spot on. And it is. It's funny because I'm actually teaching a course on this exact thing right now, which is that sense of wherever we are. Like right now, I'm here with you and I'm enjoying being with you. But then a car went by and I was actively ignoring that car, right? Like I'm just doing it all the time. But I knew it was a car. I didn't look. I just heard the sound. I know I'm on the road. There's some sense of always projecting out and trying to fill in these gaps because we can't do with uncertainty. So I say, okay, that's a car. And it's going by and I hope it's not so loud that it shows up in the record.

And then I don't like that. I don't like that there's this car now that I'm turning my attention to it because I don't want that noise to be on the recording. And there's always something my dog, June, is being very sweet and just sort of laying out on the floor with me. She's gotten in the habit of coming to work with me. And I see her, I like that. But I'm vacillating wildly between wherever my eyes or ears

or all of my sense perceptions are making contact with the phenomenal world around me. I'm constantly saying I like, I dislike, I ignore. And then the question is, how far do I go with that? Do I just let that be? Car comes and goes and that's it because it's over. Or do I get really mad and say, I just, I can't work here. I need to get a formal office and I need to do that. And I need to be somewhere where there's never any cars.

And every time a car goes by, it just reifies how horrible the situation is right. Like it could just be that. I could make this my day if I wanted it to. And people do. We do. We get so. hooked by something that we just spiral and let that be the day. And that's the choice thing that we're talking about with the two wolves at the top of our time together.

Do I want to make that choice and continue to feed, in that case, the angry, frustrated version? You know, you said what greed, hatred and delusion? Is that what you used? I think I said greed, aversion and ignorance, but greed hatred and delusion. Yeah. These are good. Wanting, not wanting. Right.

Yeah. These are all good words for it. But we're constantly fascinating. And again, meditation is us saying, okay, I'm going to have reactions if a car goes fine, fine. But it's up to me whether I acknowledge it and come back to this present moment or whether I just continue to go and go and go. So how far does that rubber band go before it snaps back? That's up to us. And the more we train the mind, the more we're able to rise and fall, we say, oh, you know, for example, oh, I hope I didn't say something stupid on that podcast, right?

Like I could dwell on that for the rest after this. I'm going to go take my kid to her music class. I could be totally checked out not with my kid trying to do this. And little teacher that she's going to know it too. She's going to immediately call me out. She will see it in a second if I'm not fully there. Or I can be like, yeah, you know, if I did, it's okay. And if I, hopefully I didn't.

And that's, that's it. And like, I just let it arise dissolve. And then I'm playing with these silly shakers and pretending to be on a choo-choo train. Like, it's just, that's fine. Right? Like now I'm here for that. So I think it just allows us to enjoy our life more. It seems simplistic.

But going back to the Ezra Klein Pama Chowdh Children thing, he was like, what's the grand thing that you've actually achieved out of any of this? And she said, contentment. And I was like, oh, bless. Because that's what I always say too. It's just this sense of just that we can be present to what's currently occurring and find a sense of joy, happiness, contentment within that. That's actually a great way to live a life in my experience.

It's the whole thing that drew me to the Buddhist and spiritual. path and still does is that ability to be okay in the midst of whatever's occurring. And I find those two teachings that you sort of use and then tie into how we relate to others so valuable that that no matter what I do, there's an immediate, I like it, I don't like it, it doesn't mean anything to me. Like, it just arises. I've never been able to circumvent that process. It is so instant in me. The process I can circumvent is what's next, which is the, I want more of that, I want less of that, you know, that pushing and pulling or that leaning really strongly in the direction of those things. But I think those two teachings are very central to the way I often think about the world,

you know, what am I wanting, what am I not wanting, and to what degree of ignorance am I in about how that shapes the contents of my life? Yeah, it's, if you're a very important, And, you know, sometimes the term ignorance is even translated as prejudice, because there's almost like, really like I don't want to look at it. I, like, I'm actively. Yeah, delusion. Yeah. Yeah.

Which, you know, I think we all almost have our own proclivities for these things, right? You know, and these things can get their hooks in us. There's this Tibetan term clasia where we basically just get yanked around once it's like a fish on a line. You know, it's just once anger has its hooks in your aggression or hatred or or how if we want to translate. Like, once it's there, once we're hooked, we can get pulled around. Going back a gazillion books,

you know, I use the example of the incredible Hulk in the Buddha walks into a bar. Because that's such a, like, when mild-mannered Bruce Banner gets hooked by anger, he transforms physically into this giant monster that causes destruction wherever he goes. I was like, that's anger right there. What a beautiful metaphor, actually.

It's like, if he can acknowledge it and come back, he would be fine, but he can't. He has to keep going. And then it's just the more he angry, the more destructive he is. And I think what you just said, there's a very subtle and important point, though, which is we are not saying that having an experience of anger is a problem, or having an experience of wanting or not wanting, or aversion, or greed. That's not the problem.

The problem is what occurs after. Yeah, that's it. It's that rubber band thing. It's like, how quickly do we acknowledge it come back, or how far does that band go before it snaps? and we're going to have reactions. I'm going to go with the previous example. The ice cream truck came by as if it knew we were talking.

Just now? The noises coming on the recordings. Yeah, just a moment ago. You know, doing the jingle, and he always goes by at 50 miles an hour down this road. You know, like he does it twice. He'll be back in probably five more minutes. He does a loop. And it's every day.

And I could really, you know, continue to spiral if I wanted to. But it's like, no, there's no point in that because it's not helping me. The Buddha once said that holding on to anger is like holding on to a hot coal. It's only burning ourselves. We're only causing our self harm. And the same can be said with a lot of the other things. When we get so fixated, I remember a million years ago when I was actively dating that I would be like, why isn't this person texting me back? And I was just like, oh my God, what's going on?

What's going on? And like, you know, do they reach out to me? Do they want to be with me? And then they'd be like, oh, sorry, I was at a movie or something. Right? Like it would be, it would pop. But I was like, man, that was a lot of wasted energy of wanting, right? And so we do this to ourselves all the time. We're just constantly doing it.

And in terms of these choices, it's the old thing of like when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, when you invite the meditation teacher on, he's just going to talk about meditation, that this is the thing. Meditation literally rewires the brains that we notice, oh, I'm sitting here, I'm with the body breathing. A story comes up of why haven't they texted me? back or why is this ice cream truck doing this loop and never stop. I acknowledge it.

I come back to the breath. Same thought can come up again. Again, as you said, it's not that we're not having reactions or that these thoughts aren't coming. I acknowledge it though. And I come back to what's happening right now, the breath. The more I do that in meditation, the stronger I get at being able to do that in my post-meditation life.

So sometimes people say, I can't meditate because I have so many thoughts. Honestly, I'm starting to reframe this for meditation students. I work with, which is when we drift off and we come back 100 times in a 10-minute meditation, that's like lifting 100 reps of a weight, you know? It's like that's giving us the workout. If we only went to the gym and lifted that dumbbell once, that's not much of a workout. We don't grow from that. Our muscles stay the same.

But if we did it 100 times, my God, yeah, you're going to, it might feel uncomfortable to do that. It definitely would, whatever you're lifting. But that's when the muscle tears grows back stronger. that's how we get stronger so same thing we are literally rewiring the brain every time we say i'm acknowledging the thought i'm coming back you do that a hundred times in a meditation you're really rewiring the brain in a positive way for the rest of your life yeah i was having a conversation with somebody today about my book and we were talking about meditation and i was saying there were a

couple of big switches for me that allowed meditation and become sort of a thing i did regularly and one of them was that exactly that i just flipped it for you for you for you for you for you from like, oh, it's a problem that my mind keeps wandering to, oh, it's great news that I keep fighting it and treating that it as a victory. And I've often said, I think what meditation gives me more than anything else is what Victor Frankel talked about, that space between stimulus and response. I feel like meditation increases that space for me. It just gives me more room in there for me to then do what the best.

version of me thinks is worth doing. Yeah, hugely put. You should write a book. Maybe so, yeah. Maybe so. I loved your book. I'm sorry, I'm going to take a stop topic. I really did.

I think you have such a knack for synthesizing so many different things from different traditions, different modalities. You brought it all under one roof and you could be like, hey, here's like 10 different ways of looking at something like shame and guilt, right? Like, you know, it's just, I thought it was very cool. I was impressed by your ability to do that. So, yes, I love that very. Victor Frankel quote, I love the idea that you're talking about because that's the thing we can expand upon.

And it is a life-changing thing to not to have that gap before we send that aggressive text message or whatever we do as a reaction, right? Like to say, I don't have to do it. It was funny because I actually caught myself. It's similar going back to the story of this perfect storm I built for myself of taking my mother out to dinner with the toddler who had just seen, you know, FaceTime with my wife for two minutes. and I had this tendency to be, I wanted to be like, Adriana, like you threw me under the bus by calling right then.

Like, I wish you would just stay, like called us after like we had agreed to. And I just, I saw myself texting and I just was like, she misses you. That's all. That's actually what's being communicated right now. She misses you.

Don't feel any guilt about that, but like, you know, just wanted you to know. It was one of those, but it was like, oh, watch me, watch me in this like moment that I'm at like my breaking point. Yeah.

This gets screaming. Everyone's looking at us in the restaurant. She wants to run outside. She's banging on the door. She's never done this, by the way. She's not that, like, nothing against anyone who's going to do this regularly. But, like, I was shocked. I was unprepared.

And, yeah, I just was at that breaking point. And I noticed, look at me wanting to say, you're bad. Look at me wanting to blame someone to text them something. And I was like, man, if I hadn't, if I didn't have a practice, I'd probably give in both of those tendencies. And I'm so glad I did that I could just say, actually, it's more about like being nice to grandma. Actually, it's more about, you know, your daughter misses you and, you know, she's having a bit of a hard time, but don't feel bad. She's going to be fine, you know, like that sort of thing.

Yeah, I love that example for a whole bunch of reasons. A, it sounds like a setup to a joke. I'm half-empted to go try and craft one. Yeah, exactly. But what I love about it, and I've always admired about you as a teacher, is you don't pretend that that, doesn't rattle you or that that isn't hard. What you do, and I think, you know, listeners hear me say this often is that I think so much of the practice is not making things worse. What you didn't do is you did not make it worse. You could have made it worse by shaming your daughter. You could

have made it worse by guilting your wife. You could have taken what was a difficult situation and made it worse, but you didn't. You just had the situation, which didn't make it fun or easy. Right. But that's a big deal because I am always amazed by our infinite capacity to make most things worse. Yes. You know, not that we don't have basic goodness. That's not what I'm saying. I know exactly what you're saying. We are all so good at that.

Yeah. Of pushing that button when we know it's not going to feel good for us or the other person. We, for saying that thing that cuts someone down at work, whatever. Like, we're just, why did we get so good at that? Yeah, and we know outside of whatever temporary satisfaction of like, I told them, like it just makes us feel shitty long term and it absolutely hurt the other person. Like, why do we do that? I think that if there's something that I've learned over my years of practice, it is to cause less harm.

Yeah. And that's really, like it's, you know, as I said earlier, ultimately the goal is, oh, I want to help people. and I think the skillful means is through doing as little harm as possible. I lead meditation teacher trainings and I always tell them like, listen, you're going to say the wrong thing. Everyone wants to be the perfect meditation teacher coming out the gate and I'm like, I get that and I was there. I remember at one point just giving a talk and making reference,

like making a joke about soul cycle, you know, and that I look down and the person in the front row had these massive soul cycle socks on. I was like, well, I just offended that person. You know, like, it's just that you're always going to say or do something. It's going to be a thing. You just can't know. We can't know. We're human beings.

We're like the Korean Zen master, Sung San, equated community to dumping a bunch of potatoes into a barrel of water and banging them against each other until the dirt fell off. And I was like, that's it. That's what we do as humans, you know? The idea is that we just, you know, try to be as skillful and as hopeful and ideally cause the least harm as possible. But you're right. I think the idea of at some point we transcend and become someone else

or that we transcend and we no longer have difficulty is a fallacy. It's more about how do we work with our modern world with all of its myriad distractions, all of its ways of causing us heartbreak and seeing, you know, we're so exposed to the suffering of the world around us. It's so heartbreaking right now. And we're expected to go around and operate, like, do nine to fives and get groceries and live.

like normal people in the midst of this crazy time. It's rough. It is rough. We have to acknowledge that it's rough. And that doesn't mean that we aren't basically good. And it doesn't mean that we can't strive to be as helpful and to cost as much as least harm as we can. Before you check out, pick one insight from today and ask, how will I practice this before bedtime? Need help turning ideas into action?

My free weekly bites of wisdom email lands every Wednesday with simple practices reflection and links to former guests who can guide you, even on the tough stuff like anxiety, purpose, and habit change. Feed your good wolf at one you feed.net slash newsletter. Again, one you feed. Dot net slash newsletter. I think that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. Thank you so much, Lodro.

You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation, and I want to talk about the role children play in our lives, similar to the potato banging thing that you just gave. So listeners, if you'd like access to post-show conversations, ad-free episodes, and supporting this show, you can go to one-you-feed.net slash join. Loddrow, thank you so much. It's been, as always, a pleasure.

Thank you for having me. I will continue. This was the eighth book. You are good. You are enough. And every time I have a book, I will say, hey, let's get together because it's just a fun thing to do. When I was asked you, I said,

hey, you should go promote this book. I'm happy to do. I just want to sit down with the people I really admire and really enjoy their company. And you were top of that list as I wrote you. So I'm so glad that we can continue to do this. And thanks for having me. 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 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.

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