How to Turn Life’s Pain into a Path of Meaning and Joy with Danielle LaPorte

In this episode, Danielle LaPorte discusses how to turn life’s pain into a path of meaning and joy. She explores spirituality, conscious choice, and emotional honesty. Danielle also delves into the importance of embracing both pain and joy, reframing obligations as choices, and avoiding “spiritual bypassing”—, which is the tendency to rush to positivity without fully feeling difficult emotions. She shares insights on authentic growth, the healing power of music, and the value of engaging with diverse perspectives. This episode will encourage you to face life’s challenges with compassion, presence, and self-awareness, nurturing the “good wolf” within.

Key Takeaways:

• The significance of conscious choice in reframing obligations as empowering decisions.
• The impact of spiritual practices on personal growth and the importance of joy in these practices.
• The distinction between pain (inevitable) and suffering (optional) in navigating life’s challenges.
• The concept of “spiritual bypassing” and its effects on emotional health and authenticity.
• The role of emotional expression in personal growth, particularly regarding anger and disappointment.
• The importance of self-awareness in managing one’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Engaging with diverse perspectives to foster understanding and compassion in social and political contexts.
• The healing power of music and its role in emotional expression and therapy.
• Embracing the fullness of human experience, including both struggles and joys, to live a meaningful life.

Danielle LaPorte is the creator of the Heart Centered Membership and the Heart Centered Leadership Program with 400+ leaders in 30 countries hosting  conversation circles, retreats, and workshops in all kinds of communities and businesses. She’s a member of Oprah’s SuperSoul 100 and the former director of a future studies think tank in Washington, DC, where she managed a team creating global scenario plans. She now speaks about the intelligence of the heart. This most recent book, How To Be Loving…when your heart is breaking open and the world is waking up, is also an Audiobook + ebook, with a companion Journal. Danielle is also the author of The Fire Starter Sessions, White Hot Truth, and The Desire Map, and producer of dozens of meditation kits and online programs for spiritual support. Her podcast, With Love, Danielle, often ranks in iTunes’ top 10 for wellness. Most of her offerings—from the Heart Centered Membership to classes—are on a pay what you choose basis. Named one of the Top 100 Websites for Women by Forbes, millions of people a month visit DanielleLaPorte.com.

Connect with Danielle Laporte:  Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

If you enjoyed this conversation with Danielle LaPorte, check out these other episodes:

Choosing Love Over Fear: Finding Joy, Confidence, and Self-Trust with Emma Gannon

Finding Hope When Life Isn’t Okay and the Power of Micro Joys with Cyndie Spiegel

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Episode Transcript:

Chris Forbes 00:00:07  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.

Eric Zimmer 00:00:52  How many times have you been angry about something and immediately jumped to, but I should be grateful or disappointed by someone and rushed straight to, well, everyone’s doing their best. Danielle Laporte, who’s a speaker, a poet, a painter and member of Oprah’s Super Soul 100, has a phrase for this that I absolutely love.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:12  She calls it putting spiritual sweetener on it. And while perspective is really important, so is allowing ourselves to feel the real messy human emotions and not going straight to the enlightened response. Because when we do that, all those feelings that we’re trying to transcend, they don’t necessarily go away. They fester, they leak out as passive aggression or resentment or secret grudges. The key takeaway in this conversation for me was permission to feel the hard stuff first, to have the courage to stop, to admit this is what’s happening. This is what I feel, and then take the next right step. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi Danielle, welcome to the show.

Danielle Laporte 00:01:53  Hi, everybody.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:54  I’m very happy to have you on. As we were talking about before we got started, I recorded an interview with you. It was quite some time ago when it was the first time I ever tried to record an interview without Chris, my partner with me, and I blew it. And so we’ve never been able to air it.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:09  So I’m very excited to have you back and get to have this conversation again.

Danielle Laporte 00:02:13  I didn’t know it was the first time you tried to record it solo, but here we are.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:19  Yeah, I happen to be out of town and I’ve got it all down now. I’ve got it figured out, but I didn’t then. So we learn. Learned as you go. So, your latest book is called White Hot Truth Clarity for keeping it real on your spiritual path from one seeker to another. And we’ll get into that book in just a minute. But let’s start like we normally do with a parable. There’s a grandfather who’s talking with his grandson, and he says, in life, there are two roles inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:07  So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you and your life, and in the work that you do.

Danielle Laporte 00:03:13  I love that parable. Always choose. I think you know, the most important word in all of this is choose, but always choose generosity. I feed my capacity to be generous.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:28  Yeah, there’s a line that’s in your book, and it was in one of your previous books, too. You’ve got this idea of in the latest book, you call it reframing your obligations into conscious choices. Can you talk about that? Because that is so important to me in my life.

Danielle Laporte 00:03:43  Well, I think, you know, this is part of getting in the driver’s seat of your life and really being an intentional creator and completely washing out any victim mentality out of your Consciousness. You know, the worst extreme is that that kind of robotic. Unconscious way of living have a really long list of obligations. All these things that we think we need to do. And in that approach, there is a lack of choice.

Danielle Laporte 00:04:14  There’s a woo. So woe is me. There’s a, you know, life is happening to you. And I don’t think it happens that way at all. Or you can choose, you can choose that other. That positive self doesn’t happen to happen that way. So to push most people’s thinking on this, the pushback would be, well, what about feeding my kids? That’s an obligation. What about taking care of my ailing, aging parents? That’s an obligation. What about my mortgage? I got to pay my mortgage. You actually don’t have to do any of those things. You could choose to be unethical. You could choose to be careless. You could choose to be lawless. But you’re still making a conscious choice to be a good son or daughter and a loving parent and, you know, a responsible mortgage holder. So, you know, when you frame everything as a choice, you’re empowered. It’s a completely different energetic approach to things.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:15  Yeah, I agree 100%. And I have that same kind of conversation with myself and with other people, which is like, no, you don’t have to do that thing that you just said you have to do.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:24  I mean, you, you don’t you could get on a bus tomorrow and hide in California and live on the streets if you wanted to. Like, you’ve got lots of options. And whenever I remember that, it is so helpful to me to get me out of that. Like you said, the woe is me or I have to do this, I have to do that. It just it opens me up so much to realizing that I am, you know, the author of my own life to some degree. And I heard you somewhere recently, and I don’t know where I heard it, but you were making this list of all the things in our lives we choose. We choose what we eat for dinner. We choose what dishes we put in our cabinet. We choose what you know, what art goes on our walls or on our desk and. And that how we are making so many choices in life, and that being artistic and creative is really about making choices. And we can bring that artistic or creative spirit into everything that we do.

Danielle Laporte 00:06:14  You know what I think is really key about what you said about the choices and the obligations is there’s a lot of different choices that we can make. So when you move out of that, the weight, I mean, even saying the word obligation, it’s just such a heavy crap word. You know, when you move out of the weight of that and you’re still feeling resentment, I mean, there’s lots of stuff to resent. There’s lots of stuff that is not fun to do in life that you’re still choosing to do. You can start to make different choices under that commitment you’re making. So it’s like, yeah, I’m taking care of my aging parents and it’s heavy duty. But, you know, if I move more into the power of choice, then maybe I could get someone to take a shift for me. Maybe I could ask for some of my inheritance money now to cover the bills. Maybe. You know what? Maybe they don’t need as much attention and care as I thought. And I’m just doing this out of guilt, and I can lay off, and I can have a vacation.

Danielle Laporte 00:07:13  So there’s this loosening. When you loosen up on the weight of obligation, then your creativity starts to flow. It gets lighter.

Eric Zimmer 00:07:21  Exactly. So I want to circle back. This leads us right into one of the topics I had, which was, you know, a theme early in the book. And really through a lot of the book, you say that my spiritual path had become another to do list. So in this case, you know, we were just talking about obligations. And a lot of us turn the spiritual path into yet another obligation.

Danielle Laporte 00:07:42  Well, I think in this case it’s more about it being another thing to achieve. So then it becomes an obligation. I’m going to be a better person. I’m going to be more giving. I’m going to be in better shape. I’m going to be more healthy. I’m going to be more evolved. I’m going to think more clearly. And with that achievement intention, then there’s so many things you can put on your to do list. It’s another workshop.

Danielle Laporte 00:08:07  It’s having to meditate, it’s having to pray. It’s a new wellness regime. It’s all sorts of to do’s. And I mean, tattoos are great if they’re getting you somewhere that’s more fulfilling if you like, you’re really feeling expanded. And ideally, you know, your teeth are awesome. They go from good to great. If you’re experiencing some joy on the way to expanding, it’s like there’s many times there’s many parts of my quote unquote spiritual practice that aren’t easy, and they require some discipline. And, you know, I, I meditate on a regular basis and it’s not always fun working my day around that. I have to get up earlier. I got to make my kids lunch at night so I can have my 15 minutes or my half an hour, whatever it is in the morning to sit and do my thing. I still struggle with feeling like I’m not up to my commitment as a planetary citizen. If I didn’t sit that morning and send some light to the world or pray for, you know, victims of the hurricane, or do whatever I think I need to do that day, I don’t feel like anybody’s keeping score anymore.

Danielle Laporte 00:09:28  I’m free to choose a practice that works for me, and that’s what’s changed for me. It’s like I am choosing joy inducing practices, the yoga that works for me. It’s not the hardcore hot yoga. It’s really chill stuff, the exercise that works for me. It doesn’t have to be every day a week, just three days a week is cool. You know the kind of meditation that works for me. It turns out I go out of my mind if I sit for long periods of time and watch my in-breath and watch my outbreath and try to empty my mind. It’s not how I’m wired. I choose something that fits my personality that fills me up. Big difference. Way more fulfilling to be devoted when the practice itself has some delight to it.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:14  Yeah, I agree completely. And the book you’re talking about, the striking, the balance between, you say, sincere spiritual aspiration versus the compulsion to change ourselves. One of the central themes of this show that I’m asking all the time is that, like, how do we balance that idea of, you know, I’d like to be a better person, I’d like to do this.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:36  I’d like to do that. You know, having some ambition and also being content right where you are with what you have. And I’m just interested in your thoughts on how you how you work through striking that balance.

Danielle Laporte 00:10:48  Well, I think you have to ask yourself the question, why do you want to be a better person? It sounds like, you know, ironic and a bit banal, but like. Why? Is it to impress your God? Is it to make more money? Is it some guilt programming that you got from your parents or your church? is it part of being cool in your self-help, in your New age circle? Are you, like, really just polishing your halo? I’ve always loved that phrase. Or do you feel better when you’re a better person? Do you feel more expanded and more loving and sexier and more flexible and more intelligent and like, more in touch with life and your version of God when you’re doing your version of being a better person? So like two very different motivations.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:38  Yeah, I agree. And I think for me, all that stuff has gotten to a point where I do most of it simply as a way to feel better. It does make me feel better. I mean, exercise, I say this on the show all the time. I’m sure people are perhaps tired of hearing it, but it’s not about how I look anymore. That’s a side benefit. It’s not so much that I’ll die in 20 years versus 15. It’s really like for my day to day mental health and meditation kind of falls into the same boat and eating right falls into the same boat. There are all things that relieve suffering in my life.

Danielle Laporte 00:12:13  Relieve suffering and creates joy at the same time. Yeah. Like it’s there’s a tipping point. It’s a tipping point I think if you do it for the right reasons.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:24  Yeah. Right. Here’s a question I’ve got for you. Because a lot of us are driven to spiritual practice and things like meditation and yoga and eating well and all those different things, because we are in pain.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:35  That’s where a lot of this starts. And what I’ve seen with a lot of people is that what’s the pain goes away. So does the desire to do some of these things. How have you worked with people through that? You know, once they kind of have moved from being in pain and not sort of settling back into, okay, everything’s okay now.

Danielle Laporte 00:12:54  Well, I think everybody does that to some degree. You’re going to slip off track, and getting off track is part of deepening your devotion. It’s like, I didn’t meditate this week. I don’t feel as useful. I’m not thinking as clearly, okay, I’m going to at least get three days in this week or five days or whatever. So I have a lot more compassion for myself when I get off track. I think you know what you’re talking about can be laziness. You know it can. Like, sometimes we just need to call ourselves on it. Like, you know, my current question right now I’m about to do big speaking gig this weekend.

Danielle Laporte 00:13:34  to people who, you know, they self-identify as, like, high achievers. And I really want to put it to them and say, like, really? Come on, how devoted are we? Because personally, I’m really interested in going the distance. I think it’s not enough to kind of be on the self-help path or to kind of be kind. Like with the current state of the world and the psychology. For for most of us. I mean, personally, as someone who considers himself, it’s not enough for me to just be a good person. I have to be engaged. It’s not enough for me to just donate a little bit of money here and there. I’ve got to bake philanthropy into my business model. It’s not enough for me to just quietly meditate. I need to be vocal about what I think is ideal. You know, an ideal society to live in. Like, I gotta go the distance. So we take a few steps forward with our practice. We eat right, and then we go back to sleep.

Danielle Laporte 00:14:33  You know, commit, commit. I think that’s like where where some tough love comes in, like, are you in or not? And let me tell you, devotion is not easy, but it’s worth it. And it’s just like, you know, your relationship with spirit, it’s not a cakewalk. And this is part of it. Just like your relationship with anything, any person. The rough parts requires commitment and seeing it through and being flexible. And I think this is part of the dogma, the bill of goods that we’ve been getting for a long time from the New age, which is once you’re on the path and you learn how to follow your intuition and you really realize that you’re one with humanity, then there’s this grace and there’s this flow that comes into your life. Well, I can tell you I’m on the path. I’m very devoted to the path. I’m devoted to teaching by the path. And that has not been my experience. There is a there is a lot of grind.

Danielle Laporte 00:15:37  I still have extreme stuff, you know. Well, it’s extreme is an extreme way of putting it. But I still suffer very deeply. I still have intense struggles in my life, but I’m not going to get off the path because I have deeper love, I have deeper fulfillment. Easy. No. Worth it. Yes.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:27  I think we are all looking for that silver bullet. And then suddenly, life will just be easy. Like I’ll find the right way to meditate. Or I’ll read the right book, or I’ll follow this correct practice, or I’ll find this new exercise, and suddenly life will always be easy. And that’s just not the way it works. You used a word in their suffering, and in your book you talk about making a distinction between pain and suffering?

Danielle Laporte 00:16:54  This is a bit of an extreme statement, but it’s really worth considering for. Like mental clarity, I think that often suffering is a choice. you know, suffering is optional. Pain is not always optional. So it’s like a physical example.

Danielle Laporte 00:17:10  You break a bone, you feel pain. It’s inevitable. The suffering is what comes after. Like, you know, it’s. It’s a drag that you can’t walk. It’s a drag that you have to take the medicine. Whatever. You’re incapacitated, you go through a breakup. The pain is the breakup itself. Separation. The suffering is. How long are you going to hold on? How bitter are you going to be? How long does it take you to get over it? Are you choosing to forgive or you’re not choosing to forgive? I mean, I got lots to say about not choosing to forgive and why? Sometimes that’s actually an enlightened approach. So yeah, I think suffering is something that you have control over that a lot of us have control over. And I don’t want a broad brush stroke this and say, you know, someone who’s in Syria right now has no choice over their suffering. That’s an extreme situation. And no, you know, self-help, how two is going to help you get through that necessarily.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:18  I agree with you 100% that the pain is happens. Life delivers pain. It’s just it’s a it’s a very effective pain delivery mechanism, I suppose you could say. But it is a sign of what are the stories we tell ourselves. And a lot of times for me, I’ve started just thinking about it from a perspective of how do I just not make it worse? Like, yes, life has given me this thing. How can I just not pile on more pain with everything I’m telling myself? You know, I, I tell the parable the second arrow all the time. You know how the first arrow is kind of that life. You get shot, the pain you get, and then the second arrow is everything we add on top of it. And it’s it’s so true. And then, you know, there comes the third arrow, which is I’m feeling bad about myself because I’m not able to not, you know, suffer over it. And and on and on it goes. Lightning up can help a lot.

Danielle Laporte 00:19:08  Yeah. Yeah. Not. Alan Watts says there will always be suffering. The trick is to not suffer over the suffering. Yeah, to stay out of that. Why me? It’s just like this is what’s happening. Sometimes you don’t even need to solve it. It doesn’t need to be your karma. You don’t even have to look at why you created it. Just do what you have to do to not make it worse and get through it.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:31  Yeah, yeah. Speaking of other great minds, you quote Martin Buber in the book with a I’m assuming. I think that’s how you say it. yeah. But I love this phrase. And it says the world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable.

Danielle Laporte 00:19:46  Yeah. Isn’t that great? He’s so lovely.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:48  Yeah. Yeah. What’s that mean to you?

Danielle Laporte 00:19:50  You got to leave lots of room for mystery. You know, our human capacities. And I put that in quotes because, you know, I think we’re spiritual beings who have crammed ourselves into these little suitcases called bodies and made a lot of choices to forget our divinity in order to have these experiences.

Danielle Laporte 00:20:07  So are we capable of comprehending the greatness of life and how it all works? No. I think, you know, when you get to a certain point of comprehension, you don’t need to. You definitely do not to be need to be on this dimension anymore. But you can really be intentionally on this ride. Like, you know, a lot of my friends and I this past week have been talking about all the suffering that’s happening on the planet. And, you know, we’re really having practical conversations. I’m about to have some friends over for dinner in the next couple of weeks. Talk about earthquake preparedness. We’re really feeling heartbroken over what’s happening politically with immigration and children in the US and like, what can we do? And can I produce more meditations that go up on my website? How would I raise my money? You know, and when I really go down that rabbit hole of where the world is at, at least the, you know, the dark side of it, you know, I worry about my grandchildren.

Danielle Laporte 00:21:05  I worry about my kid. I have a son. And is he going to be able to breathe clean air? I mean, there’s so many different directions that could go in and in terms of, like, bad direction. Here’s what’s getting my friends and I through right now. We just go. We signed up for this. We chose to be born to incarnate. At this time, I’ve got something to learn. And if I don’t have much to learn, which I think you know is unlikely, at least I’ve got a lot to offer. And I’m here. I’m here now, in this time of history, human history for a reason. So I’m going to embrace it. I’m going to embrace it. And on the quote unquote spiritual path, which I think too often is about ascension. I’m going to embrace being human. I’m going to love food. I’m going to love all the sensual things that come with being human, from food to rock and roll to like, you know, great holidays.

Danielle Laporte 00:22:04  Amen and amen. And I’m going to do my esoteric work at the same time. I mean, I’m really interested in heaven on earth, you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:15  Well, I looked up that quote after I read it in your book, and it goes on to say it’s embraceable by embracing the things that are in it. You know, by embracing the things in the world is, is how it becomes embraceable to us. And I just, I loved that when I read it. And I think it gets to what you were just saying. It’s about being here to to what’s actually in the world. Trying to figure it out is nearly impossible, but we can certainly engage with it in a real and meaningful way.

Danielle Laporte 00:22:42  Well, you went deeper with it than I did. Thank you.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:45  One of your favorite quotes I’ve ever seen of yours and I won’t get it right. But it says something to say, something along the lines of lying on the floor and listening to loud rock n roll. Maybe the only therapy you need, and.

Danielle Laporte 00:22:58  You usually is. And you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:00  Yeah.

Danielle Laporte 00:23:01  My recommendation is to listen to, Jim Morrison’s American Prayer. That was like the first time I just used music as there. I just, like In the Dark. And he’s in a studio totally wasted just reciting his poetry. shortly before he died. And then the the remaining doors, the band took those tracks and put it to music. Anyway, you got to do it.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:31  Yeah, well, my partner Chris here is giving you the the thumbs up sign for that one. For sure. For sure. So, yeah. No, I’m I am a strong believer that music is definitely healing in so many different ways. I would be lost without it, I think.

Danielle Laporte 00:23:47  Yeah. Me too. Me too.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:49  You call something the sacred paradox. And you say transformation begins with the radical acceptance of what is.

Danielle Laporte 00:23:56  Yes. And you know what? That is some of Krishnamurti’s thinking and. And mine. I’ll give myself a little bit of credit for that, where you can’t really see something until you fully accept it.

Danielle Laporte 00:24:08  And I think what a lot of us do to try and get out of pain, like completely understandable response to pain, is we go in denial that it’s not happening. Like, this job doesn’t suck, this marriage isn’t shitty, and we just keep trucking along or we go into solution mode of, you know, we see that something, something like, how are we going to get out of this? How can I come up with the money? I don’t see a way through. We can’t solve it. Just stop. Just stop and accept that it’s happening as awful as whatever it is, is. And then usually with that presence and that absence of being frantic, then you can take a really clear next step. You can make you know, the next right decision, as Oprah puts it. That’s my favorite phrase of hers right now. The next or the next best decision. Yeah. And it’s really hard to do because you have to suspend wanting to fix it and you have to just be in it, not knowing how you’re going to get out of it.

Danielle Laporte 00:25:15  Like, you know, this marriage is brutal. Pause. And then you figure out what you’re going to do about it.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:22  Yeah, I love that that Oprah phrase I’ve been in in 12 step recovery. And I think the phrase I heard was very early on was just do the next right thing. And that was so helpful in just like one foot in front of the other. What’s the next right thing to do right now? And you keep doing enough of those and you end up with good things happening. Also in the book, you talk about painting over pain with premature positivity and short circuiting the healing process, which is what you were just talking about. You’ve got a phrase that I love. I think a lot of people have heard the the phrase spiritual bypass, but you’ve got a got a great phrase where you talk about putting spiritual sweetener on it.

Danielle Laporte 00:25:58  Well, spiritual bypassing. You know, I hope, I hope that this concept, like, really rises to the front of the self-help space.

Danielle Laporte 00:26:08  I mean, this is really what the White Hot Truth book is about. It’s things like something negative happened to me. The shitty thing went down. But you know what? I’m so grateful that this happened. Because I should be grateful. Should I be grateful? That’s the spiritual, New age enlightened thing to do. And I learned so much from this. All that may be true, but before we get there, it’d be a really good idea if we felt maybe angry, if we felt disappointed. Despair. pissed off, you know, just all of those really human, justifiable things because that’s what’s real. And when we skip over those real human emotions and then move straight to the, you know, the more quote unquote spiritual approach, that stuff just festers. And what happens is, you know, the same person who pissed you off a year ago. You know, a year after you’ve been repressing it, then you have some fantastic passive aggressive interaction with them and they’re just like, where is this coming from? And you realize he’s actually secretly been holding your your grudge against them for quite a long time or comes out in other ways.

Danielle Laporte 00:27:25  I mean, what’s repressed? We’ll find a way to sneak out. Also, if we’re not feeling our anger, it disables us from creating justice and creating change. It’s like there’s a lot of reasons to be very angry about things that are happening in our political system, and that anger is clarifying. That anger, you know, helps you stand up straight and use your voice and create change. And there are many occasions where it’s just not the time to say, well, you know, this is karma unfolding. We’re all learning something. That’s that’s bullshit. Passivity.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:33  Eight years ago, I was completely overwhelmed. My life was full with good things, a challenging career, two teenage boys, a growing podcast, and a mother who needed care. But I had a persistent feeling of I can’t keep doing this, but I valued everything I was doing and I wasn’t willing to let any of them go. And the advice to do less only made me more overwhelmed. That’s when I stumbled into something I now call this still point method, a way of using small moments throughout my day to change not how much I had to do, but how I felt while I was doing it.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:08  And so I wanted to build something I wish I’d had eight years ago. So you don’t have to stumble towards an answer that something is now here and it’s called overwhelm is optional tools for when you can’t do less. It’s an email course that fits into moments you already have taking less than ten minutes total a day. It isn’t about doing less, it’s about relating differently to what you do. I think it’s the most useful tool we’ve ever built. The launch price is $29 if life is too full, but you still need relief from overwhelm. Check out overwhelm is optional. Go to one. You feel net overwhelm. That’s one you feed net. I agree with you that what we repress ends up showing up. And it’s funny you were mentioning anger and passive aggressiveness and I was just thinking about that earlier today. I was looking at a situation in, in some of the other work that I do, and I was like, I’m being passive aggressive to that person because I’ve not said what I’m frustrated about.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:12  And it was a I was all of a sudden like, oh yeah, and that’s not that’s not a good that’s not being a good leader. Anger is the one that I struggle with. I’ve gotten pretty good at being sad and allowing sadness to occur and and flow through me and and not afraid of that. But I think anger is the one for me. How about you? Is there one that you still are more inclined to run from?

Danielle Laporte 00:30:33  That’s a great question. I think mine is disappointment. And instead of just like being with a disappointment like I got let down, I let myself down. That’s that’s where I’ll spiritual bypass. And I’ll just be like, well, everybody’s trying their best and I’m so capable I can do it. I’ll take care of it. And I shouldn’t have asked for that much, or I should have tried harder. And it’s really not cool as a leader. I mean, just to, like, get deeper into it. For me, it’s a personality thing. It’s an Enneagram thing.

Danielle Laporte 00:31:08  So like on the Enneagram, I’m four. You don’t even need to know how the Enneagram works. But what I’ll tell you is that my weakness is that I’ll just do it myself. It’s actually not a strength. And so when I’m disappointed, that’s the default I go into. I’ll just do it myself. And that’s not it’s not cool because then I get well, I get overworked. And it also doesn’t allow people to rise to, to improve, rise to the occasion. Then this is part of the spiritual bypass. I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings feeling as much of a take no shit kind of person that I am. I’m just like, well, you know, and I’m way better, way better in the last two years at it than I used to be. I used to let things just go completely. And now I’m just like, you know what? Sorry. You gotta redo it.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:01  Yeah, well, I’m a nine on the Indian gram, so I think that’s peacemaker. So I wrestle with the same.

Danielle Laporte 00:32:06  Wonder.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:06  Same challenge, and I get better at it when I’m really focused on it. And I guess this goes back to what I was saying earlier. I get I focus on it, I get better, and then I sort of slide back into my old habits again and, and then I, like I was saying today I was realizing like, okay, I need to reengage with this as, as be more conscious about what I’m doing here.

Danielle Laporte 00:32:28  Because, listen, you nines would, you would do anything other than express anger. You might you might evolve to the point where you’re like, oh, it’s I’m okay feeling it. But to actually confront somebody, it’s really. I feel your pain. I have a friend, a mo. One of my best friends is a nine. And I’m just like, you know, sweetheart, you just tell me. Tell me what you would tell him. She’s like God, and she gets it. I’m like, okay, now just give him 10% of that and you will be making progress forward.

Danielle Laporte 00:32:58  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:59  Chris just said, should I send her a picture of the black eye I gave him last week? As if I got mad enough to hit him. Know that I, I can’t imagine what he could possibly ever do that would provoke me to to that. But yeah. And as a nine, as a peacemaker, I keep trying to remind myself that not saying what’s going on and just stuffing it is not making peace. It seems like it, but in a deeper sense, it’s just not. And and I’ve learned that often enough in life that you’d think I’d have it by now, but I keep learning it.

Danielle Laporte 00:33:30  Yeah, well, I mean, we’re all just it’s all a big repeat, but I. You know, one thing that might be helpful. Can I just give you some therapy for a second, please? It’s more creative to speak it. I mean, I think you can totally identify like, you want to create your reality. You want to be an intentional, a deliberate creator.

Danielle Laporte 00:33:48  And if you can express your anger. You were you were. You’re making an awesome life. You’re creating more precisely. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:57  Yeah, I think that is is great feedback. A lot of what I wrestle with. And you had a line in your book about this which was, you know, if your heart is just genuinely you’re sort of that easygoing and good natured, that’s great versus if you’re repressing all that stuff or you’re not saying all that stuff because of you’re afraid or you don’t want to cause conflict. And and I sometimes don’t know that I can tell anymore. Right. Because I am fairly laid back about stuff like I’m kind of like, well, okay, whatever, but I don’t know how much of that is sort of the unconscious habit over all these years of being that way. And so I’m really trying to look more closely at like what’s going on underneath the surface. My initial reaction is to say, oh, everything is fine, but what’s really happening underneath that and and recognize and I usually can tell, like I said, because I sort of become slightly passive aggressive without really even knowing it.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:52  I just noticed that I’m irritated with the person, and then I’m like, why am I irritated with the person? I’m like, oh, because that thing that they did that I didn’t think mattered two weeks ago, you know, blah blah, blah, blah.

Danielle Laporte 00:35:02  So for me, my body always knows when I’m angry. I mean, there’s lots of reasons I could get angry, but when I’m in that mode of like, well, okay, that’s healthy. But if I feel that fire and I don’t express it somehow, then I pay. I pay for it.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:19  Yeah, well, it’s that idea of how, for most of us, our best trait can also be our biggest weakness if we don’t deal with it. Right?

Danielle Laporte 00:35:27  Yep.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:28  So another idea that you had in the book and I really liked it, was you said that the more you can expose yourself to conflicting dogmas, the better off you are. And that seems to be something that a lot of people in the world today are simply not willing to do, is to explore anyone else’s perspective on things.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:49  So why does that help us?

Danielle Laporte 00:35:51  Because I think we do have more common than we have differences. And when we realize that there’s significantly less conflict, because that’s how you become a more loving person, being able to entertain other perspectives helps. I mean, it helps you see what you’re dealing with. Like it’s good to know who else is on the planet and to know, you know, the extent of there’s a lot of density and there’s a lot of darkness and there’s a lot of hatred. It’s good to know that and also to to know that the light and the love and the humanity that is living next door to you and teaching your kids and, and and running your communities. So there’s that, there’s just like general awareness and just expand, expanding your perspective. Expansion is always better than construction. I think the healing is there in that dialogue. I’ve been talking a bit about and thinking a lot about this over the last, you know, the summer, basically the last couple of months. I don’t know when this is going to air, but, you know, there’s a lot of strife that’s happening in terms of racism and immigration and I mean, mostly in the US, but we certainly have our problems in Canada as well and are thinking about what would the effect be if I had some one on one conversations with people who identified as being racist, and what would happen if we had town hall meetings and really sought to understand each other.

Danielle Laporte 00:37:24  And I think we’d find out that a lot of people who, spew hatred are deeply wounded. Doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be justice doesn’t doesn’t justify it at all.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:37  Right.

Danielle Laporte 00:37:38  But it helps us understand, because what I’m seeing is, you know, I’m not quite comfortable with the kind of protesting that’s happening right now. Like, I’m about to go to the Women’s March. I’m not going to be comfortable marching and screaming. It’s not who I am. So my way of protesting is, well, it’s more peaceful.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:01  Yeah, I agree 100%. I, I am very concerned about a lot of the politics that we see and what’s happening. I’m almost equally as concerned by how we are treating each other. you you reference Parker J. Palmer in your book and and he’s got so many wise things to say on this topic that that I just think he’s he’s got so many great ideas.

Danielle Laporte 00:38:25  Yeah. He’s brilliant. And he I mean, when you talk about somebody whose face they’re suffering, he’s amazing.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:30  Yep.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:30  Yep. Well, Danielle, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. The book, as I said, was called White Hot Truth. And I really enjoyed reading it. I like reading all of your stuff, and I appreciate you being willing to come on yet another time.

Danielle Laporte 00:38:44  Eric, thank you for being so thorough and for really, I have to say, you know, I’ve done a lot of I’ve had a lot of conversations about this book and you’ve really got the subtle stuff. So this was like a total pleasure. I’m really grateful. Thank you, thank you.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:01  Take care. You too. Okay, bye. 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. Share it 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. 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.