In this episode, Dr. Sara Kuburic discusses how to discover yourself, one decision at a time. Questions like: Who are you beyond your job, your relationships, and the roles you fill? Drawing from her book, It’s on Me: Accept Hard Truths, Discover Yourself, and Change Your Life, Sara shares how she lost touch with herself while building a life that looked good from the outside. She also explores why understanding your past is only part of creating change, how taking responsibility differs from blaming yourself, and how small, intentional choices can help you build a life that feels like your own.
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Key Takeaways:
- How living according to what you think you should want can leave you disconnected from yourself.
- Why understanding the roots of your behavior doesn’t automatically change it—and how everyday choices help turn insight into action.
- How to take responsibility for your healing without blaming yourself for what happened to you.
- Why discovering yourself is an ongoing practice, rather than a single breakthrough.
- How recognizing the choices behind familiar obligations can restore a sense of freedom and agency.
- Why authenticity sometimes means making an uncomfortable decision that aligns with your values.
Dr. Sara Kuburic is an existential psychotherapist, consultant, writer, and columnist for USA Today. She is passionate about helping people seek change and live authentic, free, and meaningful lives. Her interest in psychology stems from her personal experience living through wars, navigating complex relationships, and continually learning what it means to be human. Sara’s new book is called It’s On Me: Accept Hard Truths, Discover Yourself, and Change Your Life.
Connect with Sara Kuburic: Website | Instagram | Facebook | X
If you enjoyed this conversation with Sara Kuberic, check out these other episodes:
Finding Your Way to Healing, Hope, and Peace with Seth Gillihan
How to Own Our Struggles and Find Healing with Minaa B.
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Episode Transcript:
Sara Kuberic 00:00:00 Maybe some of your motivations came from here or there, or your past, or things that weren’t so great. Or maybe they were modeled by the most amazing individuals in your life. I don’t know if it fully matters. I do think sometimes it’s truly as simple as like, which do I want to keep carrying? Which ones are the building blocks of who I become? Do they resonate with my sense of morality that I have right now? And I think it’s just about choosing who you want to be in that moment.
Chris Forbes 00:00:34 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 00:01:19 Ask someone who they are and you’ll get a list. Job. Hobbies. Relationship. Status. Sarah Kuberic says none of that is the answer, because the answer to who I am is never verbal. You answer it by the way you live. One small decision at a time. She’s an existential psychotherapist, and she survived two wars before she turned nine. Her book is called It’s on Me, and it’s all about taking personal responsibility. Most of us are hoping for a one time discovery of who we are, Sara says. What we get is a lifetime of responsibility, and she makes the case that this is the better deal. I’m Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Sara. Welcome to the show.
Sara Kuberic 00:02:04 Thank you so much for having me.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:06 I’m really excited to talk to you. We’re going to be discussing your book. It’s on Me, except Hard Truths. Discover Yourself and change your life. Which the love that phrase. It’s on me. But before we get into that, we’ll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
Sara Kuberic 00:02:54 Yeah, it’s such a lovely, simple, yet thoughtful and provocative parable, I think to me represents that we all contain multitudes, that we can literally be anything. And although that’s an inspirational concept, I think that’s also a scary one. If you feed the wrong wolf, you will become someone you don’t like or someone you don’t recognize. And honestly, from my clinical experience and research experience, it made me immediately think about my doctoral studies where I was speaking with individuals who have committed infidelity. And it was fascinating because one of the sentences that kept reoccurring was, I never thought I could possibly do something like that. Yeah. And it’s such an interesting sort of concept that we are all possible of pretty much anything. What a scary thing to, to really think about. And that’s what it makes me think of. We are possible of anything. Nothing is unobtainable almost. And you have to be really, really selective about the choices that you make in life.
Eric Zimmer 00:03:58 Yeah. That brings me to like one of the key points that I got through the book. And I think you express really, really well, which is this idea that and it’s an existentialist idea, meaning we are completely free to do whatever we want, right? I mean, you could say that. Well, you’re not free to do that. You know, you’re not free to go 100 miles an hour on the highway, but you actually are you just may not want to deal with the consequences. But with that, freedom comes, in many cases, a real anxiety and an overwhelming ness because we have to figure it all out.
Sara Kuberic 00:04:39 Yeah, I think we all want freedom. If I ask someone on the street, do you want to be free? They would say, yeah, absolutely. But what I see in my clinical work all the time is that people surrender freedom. They surrender their freedom to Institutions, to frameworks, to worldviews, to their community, to their family, to their culture, whatever it is. And part of that is obviously wanting to belong. And the other part of that is just wanting someone to give us a script and tell us exactly how to do things, because even if we’re unhappy, we would rather be unhappy that ultimately have the anxiety that comes with the freedom. And so although freedom sounds really nice and I you know, deep down I do believe most people wanted, I think it’s incredibly difficult and scary. And that’s something that we don’t talk about, the fact that we accidentally give our freedom away.
Eric Zimmer 00:05:35 Right? Accidentally give it away. I think there is a place for intentionally giving it away. And and give it away is maybe not the word that I would use, but by intentionally choosing to put some constraint in our life can make us. Actually, at least my experience is almost feel more free, because when this is sort of a trivial example of it. But if I wake up on a day off and I have absolutely nothing planned and no idea what I’m going to do, I actually struggle because the whole time I’m like, should I do this or should I do that? Or what about this? And it’s just I don’t like it. Right. The minute that I put some structure in there, I’m like, okay, well you know what it at.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:31 At ten you’re going to go take a walk. And then at three you’ll go to the grocery, right? Just as soon as I put a little bit of structure in, I suddenly feel more free to actually be. I’m a recovering alcoholic and addict. And there was a phrase we used to use which was the structure liberates. So I think what we’re trying to get at here is how do you know in what cases you are giving your freedom away, and in what cases is that a decision you want to make versus an unintentional or autopilot way of doing it?
Sara Kuberic 00:07:09 Yeah. I loved your example. Structure is, I think, the cure for this anxiety of freedom. And I think as long as the structure is intentional. So you made those choices. You decided to go to the store at three, and you decided that you’re going to work out at ten. And that was a very deliberate choice. I think you can create your own structure. I think what and let’s take you to a different example, is a lot of people think, what if you are religious, for example, and this is something that a lot of philosophers, existentialists have, they have things to to say about it.
Sara Kuberic 00:07:46 And I don’t think that they have to be mutually exclusive. I don’t think the religion within itself has to take away your freedom. I think it takes away your freedom when you didn’t consciously choose it, when it became autopilot, when it was something that was purely just passed down to you and you never had a moment to go. Does this align? Is this something I want to implement? How am I going to choose to implement it? It’s not so much that a structure has to impose. It’s that when we become passive in this structure and don’t ever reevaluate, don’t ever question, don’t ever decide within it that I think it becomes an issue. And, you know, religion is not the only thing. It’s it’s education, it’s culture, it’s family system. So as long as there is a moment of discernment, I think we can happily live within structures and not feel like that imposed on our freedom.
Eric Zimmer 00:08:38 Yeah. So I want to start kind of at the beginning with you and a little bit of your story, because I think it’s relevant to where we’re going to go.
Eric Zimmer 00:08:48 And I mean, the first places you say by the age of nine I had survived the Bosnia and Kosovo War. So tell us a little bit about your childhood.
Sara Kuberic 00:08:58 Yeah. So I was born in Bosnia and shortly after the Bosnian War started, and we moved to Serbia a couple years later, the NATO bombings occurred. And it was a very fascinating childhood. I wouldn’t say I have a lot of memories from my childhood, but I have enough. And I would say the most salient memories are definitely those of kind of war time. And I think it really skewed my perception of humanity. I think it made me very curious, but it made me very scared of humans. I think it really made me distrusting. It was a fascinating thing to live through. Instead of being a child that was playful and trying to explore and express, I think I went into self-protection mode and I saw all the adults do the same, and so it really changed the way that I kind of functioned up to my 20s.
Sara Kuberic 00:09:52 And I didn’t even realize. And part of the reason I didn’t realize it is because so many people I was close with survived the exact same thing, and we normalized it the first time I realized it was a normal to have spent nights in bomb shelters was when I was sitting in front of my therapist in my 20s, and I just kind of made like a passing comment about it. And she’s like, wait, what? And she had to highlight and point out that, you know, this isn’t a common experience for many, and this is difficult, and it’s not something that should be normalized to the extent that I was normalizing it. And so it was a very unique childhood, but I think it really made me sort of see the the darkness of humanity really, really early on.
Eric Zimmer 00:10:38 Yeah. And your book, to a large degree is about discovering yourself. You actually use that phrase very specifically, which we will get to. And it also starts off with it’s on me, meaning it’s my responsibility. And so I’d love to talk a little bit and using that that background as a starting place. Right. Because that’s a traumatic childhood, right? Yeah. I think we throw that word around a lot these days. But but by any objective measure, that’s a traumatic childhood. And so I’d love to to understand the process for you in which you owned that, you’re able to recognize the effects that it had had on you, but you were also at the same time, able to recognize it was entirely your responsibility to heal from that. Talk about the journey to get there.
Sara Kuberic 00:11:32 Yeah. I think for the longest time I didn’t want to admit that it impacted me, which now, as we were talking about it objectively is a very traumatizing experience. And I think the reason I didn’t want to admit that it impacted me is because I felt like that was a failure. As silly as that sounds, it’s like I must not be a strong enough person to, you know, not be able to handle that.
Sara Kuberic 00:11:59 That means that they got the best of me, whoever that they and my head was at the time, and look at them, they still had this sort of impact on me two decades later. And I think that really scared me. And I felt like a failure on my part in that felt like a victory on their part. And I think for a long time I didn’t want to realize that, that the consequences were there. And I think once I did the question of now, what came up real quick, and I think I could have used that as an excuse to act in many ways, but I think the suffering up to that point was already so strong that all I wanted was to get better and instead of going, okay, well now I can use this and justify all the things I wanted to do and ever did. Potentially I just went, now what? Okay, that was really crappy. That was not my fault. I was the victim in that context, how do I show up in a way that I won’t hate my life so much anymore? And I knew that the only way to do that was to actually start being present for me. I always say a responsibility saved my life.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:17 So it sounds like you. You went through this when? When did you guys leave and you came to the States after that? Is that or.
Sara Kuberic 00:13:24 Canada?
Eric Zimmer 00:13:25 Canada?
Sara Kuberic 00:13:26 Yeah, yeah nine I was nine.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:28 Okay. So it sounds like from nine for a while on you just sort of like I’m just going to put that in the rearview mirror. Right? I’m not going to let it impact me because like you said, it feels like that someone else has won then. And I’m strong and you carried on, and then you hit a point where you had a sort of a breakdown. I can’t remember what you call it in the book, but but describe that breakdown. Okay.
Sara Kuberic 00:13:52 All right. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a super accurate word. Yeah. So I was in grad school at the time learning to be a therapist, and I was married. I was part of the community. I was doing really well in grad school, and I feel like I was getting patted on the back by society, truly. And it was like, wow, what an example. And, you know, I’d have friends be like, if only you know, I had my shit together like you. And it was so fascinating to me because I would have like panic attacks in my car and they would be saying these things to me. And I was like, I really, I don’t wish that upon you. And there was a point in my 20s when, right before the panic attacks happened, I was having a drink with a friend and he asked me a super simple question. He just said, are you happy because we haven’t seen each other for a while. We haven’t seen each other since graduating college and he’s like. You’re doing all these amazing things, like. But are you happy? And I think no one’s asked me that. Truly, I think people will go, oh my gosh, you must be happy. There was an expectation, there was an imposition. And you’re not going to be like, no, actually I’m not.
Sara Kuberic 00:15:03 For the most part, you’d be like, yeah, of course things are so great. And as someone who came from my background, I felt so ungrateful, not loving my current life. I felt like I should just cherish it. Like, wow, I was in Vancouver. I was in grad school. Like, so many people don’t get these opportunities. What is wrong with me? And he asked me this question. And until that point, I think my defenses were up. And I think it’s the moment where I couldn’t cope anymore. And I don’t know if you’ve experienced that moment, but it’s like the straw that broke the camel’s back. And he he asked me this question and I started just crying in this, like restaurant bar. And until that point, I haven’t really cried in front of anyone. I haven’t really shown emotion in front of anyone. I was very private. I was very detached from my emotions, and I remember stumbling into the bathroom to like, gather myself and looking in a mirror and not recognizing the person I was looking at like she looked hollow.
Sara Kuberic 00:16:06 She didn’t feel like she represented me. And I think the worst part of it is that I genuinely hated her. Like, I looked at her and I went, I hate you, this is all your fault. And then the next day, actually, after that experience, I was like, amazing, profound. You know, I was training to be a therapist. I was like, this must be one of those life changing moments. But like, wow, I did it. It’s over. And I like, went to my hotel room, ordered a burrito and watched friends and was like patting myself on the back though, like the worst is over and like it was only the next day that I like. No. Yeah. It just got so much worse. For years after that. I had my first panic attack the next morning on a flight, and I think it’s kind of fascinating to want to reflect on it now that even when my body was starting to show me signs like something’s not okay, I still was in denial.
Sara Kuberic 00:17:00 And then I had a panic attack and I was still in denial. Like the denial was so strong for such a long time that I did not want to admit that I was unhappy and that I didn’t want my life. And then that took months before I fully quote unquote, crashed. And then was like, what now?
Eric Zimmer 00:17:36 So to some degree. You chose that life, right? You chose to go to college. You chose to go to grad school for psychology. You’re still in that field today, right? So what was it about that life that felt so profoundly wrong? Because it’s different than your life now, but it’s not like you went from being a psychologist to a, you know, deep sea diver, right? You know, where you just, like, completely like I just was in the wrong thing, man. So what was it, looking back, that you think felt so wrong?
Sara Kuberic 00:18:16 Yeah, that’s such a good question. I once actually asked me that. It wasn’t that things themselves were wrong.
Sara Kuberic 00:18:22 It was that my relationship to those things were wrong. It’s kind of fascinating. It’s the fact that I made choices based on what I thought I should do, Rather than what I actually wanted to do. The only thing that remained from that time in my life is psychology. Okay. And I think there was a deep level of shame that I was going through this while learning how to help others, because I felt like I was so broken. How could I possibly be of use to anyone but my all my friendships at the time, I would say 99% of them, my marriage, all of those things ended. And I think relationships are really important part of our life. I think they are enough to make you not like your life if they’re not right. And I think I kept choosing relationships with people who wouldn’t see me because I didn’t want to be seen. And I think I didn’t want to be seen because I didn’t know who I was. And I was scared what they would find. And it’s not that I am blaming any of those types of relationships that I had with people, from platonic to romantic, during my 20s.
Sara Kuberic 00:19:32 It’s more that I just kept choosing individuals that would maintain my self-preservation. And it really is hard to have a genuine connection with people when you’re not authentic. And so I think I was unhappy about relationships mostly, and then the relationship with myself was the biggest thing I was unhappy about.
Eric Zimmer 00:19:54 So a lot of the book is talking about something that you call self loss, which you say is our failed responsibility to be ourself. So talk to me a little bit about what self loss is and what the process is, and then we can move from there into sort of starting to. And I’m going to use your word again here. Discover ourselves.
Sara Kuberic 00:20:20 Yeah. Self loves to me is not just in authenticity. And in the authenticity to me is knowing what is right and not doing it, not listening to that inner voice. And the difference I have kind of a metaphor I use in the book is when you’re diving. You can tell. I’ve never done that. But when you’re diving, when you’re inauthentic, you’re like, okay, the surface is up there and I know exactly how far off I am, and like, I will swim in the dark. But I am pretty sure that when I need to take my next breath, I can reach the surface and take a breath of life and feel this aliveness. Feel the sense of self. Amazing. When you’re lost, it’s like you started to swim. You got disoriented, there was a riptide. Whatever it is. And now you go. I’m completely into darkness. I’m running out of air. I need to swim to the surface. But I don’t know which direction the surface is. I don’t know when I’m going to take my next breath. And that was the experience of being lost. I’m like, I don’t know how I’m going to keep myself alive, and I don’t know where my next breath of life is going to come from, and there are no indicators. There is no glimmering light that is like pointing me away to my way home. You know, because you’re always like, listen to your inner self, the silent like the quiet voice. He will guide you back. And I love it. But what if you don’t hear the voice? And to me that is self loss.
Eric Zimmer 00:21:52 Yeah, I have lots of thoughts on, you know, hearing that interior voice. And I love that analogy. So if we’re talking about self loss right. What is the thing that we lose when you say self what do you mean.
Sara Kuberic 00:22:09 Yeah. So the least sexy definition of self of all time, it is not your inner child. It is not some profound spiritual awakening. To me the self is a accumulation, a combination of choice, freedom and responsibility. And the self is constantly fluid, constantly changing, constantly evolving. It’s a process of being, of becoming. And so when I say you lose yourself, you lose the ability of sensing that freedom. You lose sight of that responsibility. You lose connection with those choices, and then you stop creating the self. And if you don’t create the self, it doesn’t exist without you, which I think we could get into with the discovery versus finding. But if the self is perpetually created and you stop creating, that’s what you lose. The nothingness of being essentially is what remains.
Eric Zimmer 00:23:06 I’m not debating that self loss in the way it is a thing, right? But but if our self is something that is constantly being created by our choices, largely right and the freedom, maybe we’re not acknowledging it, but it’s inherent in that we’re choosing. I mean, aren’t we creating a self at all times to some degree? Isn’t there an element of the fact that we are continuing to make choices now, how out of alignment they are with this thing we want to call self is we’re still creating this thing as it goes. Yes. And then my side question is I love that definition. And it seems that there is a part of ourself that might be behind some of those freedom, choices and responsibilities. Meaning it’s the conditioning that we have picked up as our life has gone on. What I choose to be responsible about, or the actions or choices that I make, is coming from the fact that I’ve had a suite of experiences that have brought me to this point.
Eric Zimmer 00:24:15 So that wasn’t even a very well-formed question, any part of it, but I’m going to pass it back.
Sara Kuberic 00:24:21 I love it, okay. There’s so much in there. I’m like, oh my God. so the first point is, is an excellent one. you’re always creating a sense of self. Always. And either that’s going to be an authentic sense of self, which I call the capital S. And what makes that different is that your decisions align with your morals, your ethics, your values. They also represent the way you see yourself and who you want to become. So it’s a little more complex than just like you make a choice that like, feels right. Yay! There’s a lot in there, right? Yeah. and then if you keep going, because I almost see it as, like, you’re constantly moving forward, there is no middle ground. You’re always either being authentic or inauthentic inauthenticity is when you’re not aligning with your morals or values, or expressing yourself in the way that you see yourself, or not going towards the person you want to become.
Sara Kuberic 00:25:18 It is not that sense of home. It is not that sense of resonance. And I think you end up creating a very inauthentic sense of self. And if you push far, feel self loss. But I think a lot of people spend a lot of their time in the inauthentic self. It’s not that they don’t have a self, they just don’t have the self they like or that resonate or that truly represents their values, ethics and so on. So I hope that that answers the question.
Eric Zimmer 00:25:45 I mean, you kind of hit it on there at the end, right? Which is my values, morals that are me in a sense, they’re me. But they didn’t arise out of nowhere. Right? They are deeply conditioned response to life.
Sara Kuberic 00:26:01 Correct. So when we talk about freedom in existentialism, at least from what I understand, I’m not going to speak for all existentialists worldwide is not that there’s no limitation to freedom. We all have limits. Freedom comes with limits. I cannot be taller than I am. I cannot have different birth parents than I do. I cannot change anything that’s happened to me in the past. So there is limitations to how we were raised to what has happened to us. That being said, I think the freedom of choice still remains, and that’s something that people can debate and do debate. Now, are you more likely to do things because they were modeled to you, because you were exposed to a certain environment? Absolutely. Does it mean, though, that when you have that consciousness and awareness of those patterns that you can’t change them? I would say you can. And so I think the cool thing about the self is it’s like the necessities, the givens, which is the limitations and the possibility. This is something so many philosophers speak about and the possibility is cool. I think it was Kirkegaard who said, you can’t look in a mirror and go, this is who I am. You can look in a mirror and go, this is who I am right now, in this very moment.
Sara Kuberic 00:27:19 And that just alludes to the fact that you’re perpetually becoming. And I don’t think that our past defines our future. I would be very sad if that was true, and I think I would have a very hard time practicing as a psychotherapist. I do think it informs it gives us hurdles, but I still think that we are responsible if there is a cycle, if there is, you know, things that have happened to us and impacted us to a degree, whatever degree is possible, it is our responsibility to fight it. And sometimes we can and sometimes we can’t. But all we can do is show up for ourselves.
Eric Zimmer 00:27:54 Yeah, I agree with everything you have said there. I think that choices are constrained, but always a choice within whatever those constraints are. There always is some degree of choice. I mean, and I don’t know if he would be considered an existential thinker. Right. But I think that’s why Victor Frankel’s work is so inspiring, because he was showing that even in a situation like a concentration camp where literally all freedom more or less had been taken from him, he still had some, right? He still had some choice in the midst of that. So I believe we always have some degree of choice, but there are different constraints. I think what I’m driving at more, and it’s probably because I’m working on a book and I’m fighting with this chapter, and it’s.
Eric Zimmer 00:28:39 Though it’s the one about the idea of I’m talking about the idea of motivational complexity, meaning there’s lots of things going on inside of us, lots of different things we want, different things that we think we might value, and trying to figure out which of those are mine and which of those are imposed from the outside, I think is a tricky business, right? Because even the ones that I think are mine again, didn’t arise in a vacuum. Right? It’s almost as if I’m going through all the the different things that I could choose and picking which ones most resonate with who I think I want to be? Is it really just kind of that simple? Am I overcomplicating this?
Sara Kuberic 00:29:29 I mean, I’m sure if you asked therapists. Many therapists would have many different responses. As an existential therapist, I would say, yeah, I think life is arbitrary. I think the one idea that I had to unlearn is that there was a wrong and right way to live your life, or that there was just a wrong and right way to do anything. Obviously, within reasons I’m not talking about like harming individuals or right. But I what I’m talking about here is like, okay, so maybe some of your motivations came from here or there or your past or things that weren’t so great, or maybe they were modeled by the most amazing individuals in your life. I don’t know if it fully matters. I do think sometimes it’s truly as simple as like, which do I want to keep caring? Which ones are the building blocks of who I become. Do they resonate with my sense of morality that I have right now? And I think it’s just about choosing who you want to be in that moment. Some will not agree, I don’t necessarily. You know, I think to myself, like, why did I want to become a therapist? Like, did that come from some deep rooted trauma? Did it come because I saw a therapist on TV and was like, wow, they’re really successful? I don’t know, did I think it was just so cool to have a cozy office, like, what was it? And I think at some point the initial reason why not matter what matters is for you to know your reasoning now, to know your why.
Sara Kuberic 00:31:04 Now, to know your meaning right now. And I think that meaning and reasoning is also going to evolve. And that’s okay.
Eric Zimmer 00:31:27 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. 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 oneyoufeed.net/overwhelm. That’s oneyoufeed.net/overwhelm.
Eric Zimmer 00:32:48 I think that’s a really great way of simplifying, which is I can get lost in trying to go, what’s the real me in all this? Versus just sort of, as you said, like, this is my best guess as of right with what I can see. You know, an analogy just came to mind, which is.
In 12 step programs, there’s something called step four. They call it a searching and fearless moral inventory, which basically means you’re looking at what things have happened in your past that have become who you are, and you’re largely looking for things that are going to get in your way. And people will always be really worried and say, well, what if I’m missing something? And my answer always was, if you can’t remember it, it’s probably not what’s eating your lunch enough right now that it’s going to cause you to pick up a drink, right? Yes.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:43 It may more may be revealed, but today, don’t sweat that because you can’t see it. And it’s not the thing that’s causing you so much angst that you’re drinking. Right. And so I think applying that to what you said, which is like more may be revealed. There may be hidden motivations and underlying things that I don’t yet understand. And I am defined by my freedom, choices and responsibility. And so I’m going to have to make those. What’s the best version of those I can make today based on what I know about myself today?
Sara Kuberic 00:34:16 Yeah, I love that so much. What a great summary. Now we say people will come to me and be like, Sarah, what is the right choice? Should I do this or should I do that? You know, all the time. And obviously I don’t make the choices for them. And I go. The right choice is the choice. You want to take responsibility for the choice you’re.
Eric Zimmer 00:34:35 Willing answer.
Sara Kuberic 00:34:36 To take responsibility for. That, to me, is the ultimate choice.
Sara Kuberic 00:34:42 And so that’s how I answer that question.
Eric Zimmer 00:34:45 The one that you want to take responsibility for. That’s great because I get partway there, which is I’m always like, what? There isn’t a right choice, right? You just make the best one you can and there’s going to be some good things about it and there’s going to be some less good things. And if you’ve chosen that, there’s going to be some good things and less good things and we’ll never know the difference. Like, just make the best choice you can make. But I love that idea of framing it as the one that you could take responsibility for, or that you’re willing to take responsibility for.
Sara Kuberic 00:35:11 Yeah. And I think my sometimes my hesitation with some of the mainstream psychology concepts that have become so popular is that there’s so much emphasis on the past to help the person, I think, understand why they are in the place that they are, which I mean, that is so helpful and so needed. But if that’s all you do, that’s not the full work at that point. That is just the springboard. That is just the foundation from which now you go, okay, now I make choices, responsibly. Now I do all these things. And so I think we forget that we go and here’s how we define you, because of all the things that have happened to you. And we stop. And I actually think that’s really disempowering to individuals because that’s not their full story.
Eric Zimmer 00:36:04 Right. Well, it’s a lovely idea that if I could just understand why I am the way I am, that I would simply stop being that person. That’s a lovely idea, but it’s. It falls into the category of, you know, three steps to perfect abs. Right. Because it gets us to the point where you’re right. You still have to. Then, with your new knowledge, be conscious enough to keep choosing the thing that you want to choose. And it’s going to be hard to choose it, very possibly because it goes against the grain of what you’ve chosen so many times before.
Eric Zimmer 00:36:40 Absolutely. And I loved so much of your work because it really gets to this core idea of this is the phrase I wanted to find. Small, meaningful decisions reveal who we are more than big existential questions. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about here. Right. This is a different version of that, which is I may know that I’m the way I am, right? You know, because of these things that happened in my childhood. But it’s the small, meaningful decisions that I make that are actually going to reverse that chain of events, not just knowing about it.
Sara Kuberic 00:37:17 Absolutely. And I think we want to categorize things. We want very static goals. And what I mean by that is also like we want one meaning like we we want there to be this answer like, who am I? And it’s like this clear answer we want. Like, what is my meaning of life? If you want the clear answer. And what I’m saying here is like, stop seeking for those big answers. Answer it by the way you live your life. Because I always say the answer to who am I is never verbal. Whenever I do this activity with people, no one can answer the question who am I without listing hobbies, roles, relationship status? And that is not who you are. The answer to who am I can only be shown by the way you live your life. That is it. And that’s what I’m talking about. It’s like that being proactive, choosing meaningful things every single day. And at the end of your life, I think you’re going to be able to answer the question of like, what was my meaning of life? And why am I here? More so than sitting here and being like, why am I here? What am I meant to do? What is the one thing that’s going to make me feel super fulfilled from 20 to 60? And honestly, I think if your meaning doesn’t change and evolve with who you are, you’re probably not actually being aligned with your meaning, because I think meaning is very tightly associated and linked with your sense of identity.
Sara Kuberic 00:38:41 So what was really meaningful to you when you were 20 is probably going to change from year 40. And so I think we’re so scared of the undefined, the fluid. And we really tried to, as you said, like find these concrete answers and kind of be rigid in our existence when I think existence is a bit absurd and chaotic and messy, and that’s the point of it, and it’s finding beauty and structure within all of that, that I think makes us feel really empowered and like ourselves. That was a tangent.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:11 No, no, that was a beautiful response. I want to try and go deeper into something here, and I don’t quite know how to form the question yet, but in essence, you just sort of said a minute ago that what we do shows who we are, right? Yes. And I believe that to a certain degree. And there’s an idea in psychology, a theory, what’s called revealed preferences, meaning that if you show what you do, I can tell you what you value.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:40 But I’m not sure I agree with that. And I’ll tell you why. Right. So let’s go back 15 years. And I was drinking at that point, and I had a son and I would pick him up from school. I would take him to soccer practice, and then I would go have 2 or 3 drinks at the bar. Now, that’s a terrible thing to do, right? I had all kinds of justifications for it. Right? So on one level, yes, it showed that on some level I was valuing getting drunk over my son’s well-being. So on one level, that is true. And yet I don’t think that’s who I was. I think that was an aberration of who I was that was being caused by my inability, for a host of reasons, a complex syndrome of reasons that manifested in addiction. So talk to me about this relationship between, like, the way I’m acting doesn’t feel like the person I want to be. If I look at my actions, I would conclude that I’m a terrible person, but that may not be the case. So talk to me about reconciling those things.
Sara Kuberic 00:40:52 Well, yeah, such such a good question. So let’s say that I yelled at my partner today, which I did, but let’s say that I did. And I have the logic of how you showed up in the moment is who you are, and I also understand the backstory of why I may have yelled at my partner. Okay, so all of these things are present. I would say that in that moment of yelling at my partner, there is no other self because self has to be expressed. And yet I was expressing an inauthentic self. So I think it’s important to note that there is no self without expression, because otherwise it’s just thoughts. And I think we’re often startled by who we think we are versus what our actions show us. Now, I think addiction is a little bit of a tricky topic in terms of this. And we can, you know, we can circle back to addiction in particular, especially if we’re talking about free will.
Sara Kuberic 00:41:54 But I think what happens oftentimes is we don’t want to admit to ourselves that, yeah, that is who I am in this moment. I’m not saying this is who I am all the time. Overall, I’m saying this is who I am in this moment. And let me tell you, I do not like the person I am in this moment. I think if the self is not expressed, it’s not truly the self. In my opinion. That being said, I think we express it in in authentically. A lot of the time. And so being able to go like, hey, this is how I am showing up, this is how I’m expressing it does not feel authentic, but I can’t pretend it’s not how I’m showing up in the world. It is the only expression I am putting out there and it’s one I don’t like. Okay, so how do I change that?
Eric Zimmer 00:42:41 Yeah, it’s an interesting idea that the only self that that actually exists is the one that is expressing in that moment.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:47 I think it’s just it’s so weird because we can look at things like, I might snap at my partner because I’m hungry, you know? Really. Right. You know, like Snickers has done a great job of making these hilarious commercials, right. Of like, there’s one where Godzilla is, like, playing volleyball and going to a party. And then he gets hungry and he starts rampaging through cities, and you give him a Snickers bar and he’s back to, you know, good times, Godzilla. And so you recognize that, like, even these very basic physiological things by what you’re saying, those are part of the self that is expressing. Is that the way you would say it? Is that that those things are part of that self in that moment?
Sara Kuberic 00:43:31 In that moment? Yeah. And in that moment, you can recognize that you didn’t feed yourself when you first had the cue of hunger. And you or maybe you have a really bad headache, which isn’t your fault. And you realize that your expression is encompassing the physiological pain.
Sara Kuberic 00:43:45 Now, it’s not your fault that you’re in pain, but you’re expressing it, and maybe you’re disappointed with yourself. And that means you can sit and give yourself some grace because you know you have this pain. But I don’t really know what it would mean to go. How is it not you is my question. Yeah. In what other alternate reality. Do you exist? How is it not you? Is my question.
Eric Zimmer 00:44:07 In this sense of all of this being an ongoing process, which you refer to in lots of different ways, which I really like. You say that most of us are hoping for a one time journey of discovery, rather than a lifetime of responsibility. Say more about that.
Sara Kuberic 00:44:25 Yeah, I think we all hope that one day we’re going to journal or walk out of a therapy session, or put down a self-help book and be like, I get it. This is me, this is it. And I truly, truly wish that was the answer. I wish my book can do that.
Sara Kuberic 00:44:46 I wish you just, like, walked away. Be like I have it forever. I’m done. I’m cured. This is the promise. And I couldn’t make that promise in my book. Yeah, I couldn’t. And I think it’s because what we want is an answer. But what we truly get is a lifetime of responsibility. I think that’s what my book gave you, was like a lifetime of responsibility that hopefully will feel empowering and meaningful. But that’s all it is, is life is thousands, millions, trillions of decisions that you’re responsible for that will create who you are.
Eric Zimmer 00:45:20 It’s probably why I liked it so much, right? Because it doesn’t offer easy answers. And I’m always suspicious of easy answers, right? I don’t think they’re real, right? Because life isn’t easy. And it is this ongoing going challenge. And so talk about how can we embrace that in a way that feels empowering versus feeling overwhelmed by it?
Sara Kuberic 00:45:46 Yeah. And I think to be honest, we’re going to feel both.Yeah, I think we’re going to feel empowered and overwhelmed by it and think as long as we know what to expect, it’s okay. It won’t make us feel like we’re doing something wrong. And I think the biggest issue is the way we see responsibility as a society. Like I used to think, responsibility was about blaming. It’s like, who’s taking the blame for this one? It’s not me. And I think there’s such a big distinction there. Of my relationship to responsibility really had to change before I was willing to embrace it. And I went. Responsibility means I am free. And that is so, so liberating to me. I think it’s empowering. If I had no freedom to change my life, I would not be responsible for it. You’re not going to yell at a pilot because a cake got destroyed at a bakery. Like he was not baking it. He was not there like he had nothing to do with it. Like it makes no sense. And that’s. But you are probably going to make the person who baked the cake bake it again because they were responsibility for it not working out or they were responsible for it. Not, I don’t know, coming out the right way. And so that’s my thing of like when we feel responsible. It’s interesting to go, Where’s my freedom? Where is my participation? Okay, cool. How can I empower myself and make this a pivot towards making a decision? I want being a little closer to who I want to be. And so I think you can’t have freedom without responsibility. And you can’t have responsibility without freedom. And I think just combining those two makes responsibility an easier pill to swallow. And then just realizing that it sucks. Like there is no way, like of course it sucks. You have to be responsible for the reason you said something or did something, or your email is late. Like, of course no one loves it, but it is also the reason why you get to create yourself. And I think that that’s really cool.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:58 Yeah, it is one of those things that on one hand can feel overwhelming. But the flip side of it is also an awful feeling, right? When you feel like you have to do something. That is an awful feeling. Right. I think often about how I think for a lot of us, we get to feeling awful because we keep thinking we have to do things. And it goes back to what you originally said. It wasn’t necessarily the things in your life, although that was part of it. It was your relationship to those things. Right. And I think that in our day to day life, we have this relationship to things, things that we did choose, we now think are have tos. And when we can recognize that we did choose. And I’m choosing to do it again, you know, I don’t have to do this with my children. I’m choosing to do it because it matters to me. I don’t have to go to work today. I’m choosing to go to work today because of these things. It’s a very liberating feeling. It gives you back a sense of of agency.
Sara Kuberic 00:49:03 Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I think it’s when choices get perceived as obligation. I see this relationships and marriage all the time. It becomes something you have to do. It’s an obligation. You chose to get married. And I always say your relationship is a daily, daily choice. It is a daily choice and that is the only way to preserve it being a free, safe space for you. Otherwise, it’s none of these things and otherwise you don’t actually feel that responsible for it because you don’t feel like you really have the freedom to be in it or not, or how to be in it or not. And so I think it’s really important to keep reintroducing of like just because you made the same choice over and over and over and over again does not mean it stopped being a choice. You stopped seeing it as a choice. Yes, but the choice still remains.
Eric Zimmer 00:49:52 I agree with that 100%. I think we should continue to choose. And I love the word. You use their obligation. We think something’s an obligation when it’s a choice. And we’ve also said that choices happen within certain constraints. Right. So I am in a relationship and I choose that I want to be in it. But there may be things within that broad choice that I don’t really necessarily always want to do. So how do we frame up this sort of momentary passing things that come through us, these desires or whatever, to act in a certain way? So honoring the fact that we continue to make choices, but not living only in a sense of like, I’m just doing what I feel like doing right now.
Sara Kuberic 00:50:44 Yeah, I think choices come with responsibility. Okay, so not profound consequences. Also choices come with consequences. So if you’re going to choose to be in a monogamous relationship. You might not love that every day. You might not love that. When someone you have an attraction with someone, but your choice came with consequences, which was limitation of freedom, now you ultimately have the choice to walk away if you want to. That’s still technically there, but if you want to honor your initial choice, you’re going to have to handle the consequences of not pursuing something that maybe you want to be pursuing. And so I think we just have to always go back to what was the initial choice and what are all the consequences that come, which might take away some other choices when you make one choice. Other choices get taken away.
Eric Zimmer 00:51:34 Yes.
Sara Kuberic 00:51:35 So how do you balance that? And which one do you take responsibility for? It’s not so much. I think authenticity has also gotten a bad rep where it’s like, what feels good? What do I want to do in this moment? And it’s like, that’s not what we’re talking about. That’s that’s not really the definition of authenticity. It’s like, well, I just wanted to sleep with this person. He felt right. It’s like, that must have been super authentic. It’s like what? And if you look at a Heidegger, Martin Heidegger, who’s a philosopher who coined the term authenticity, the literal translation is to own one’s self, ownness. What does that sound like? That’s that’s responsibility. And so ownership and and showing up in a, in a way that you said you would that that feels aligned.
Sara Kuberic 00:52:22 And so for me, I think we just forget that one choice eliminates others. And you just have to commit to a choice that you’re making, even if all the little consequences don’t always, you know, tickle your fancy and don’t always allow you to express every desire and drive and curiosity that you have.
Eric Zimmer 00:52:43 I love that, and I like this idea. I said I had lots of thoughts on when you earlier were talking about like, just go with your gut, right? And you just sort of hit it there. Like it just felt right. You know, it just felt right to cheat on my my wife. Right. And as a former addict, I have a certain lens on the world. But I can tell you that every time I got high, on some level, it felt very right. You know, it also felt very wrong. Which is why I’m like, well, I’m just not sure that I’m like. Trust your gut all the time kind of person. Unless you’ve cultivated that thing.
Sara Kuberic 00:53:19 Yes, yes. Thank you. No. I’m so glad we went back to that point. I think rightness is built. It’s like you have earned the trust. You have earned the right to trust that feeling because that feeling has been aligned. Those decisions have been aligned. You will start to make decisions that honor who you are and who you want to be, and then you’re going to have a sensation. And after you have that sensation enough times, you’re going to be able to use it as part of your decision making. Not all of your decision making, but I think you’re going to get that sense of like rightness, that sense of home, that sense of I can live with myself. I can look at myself in the mirror. I’m okay with that. It is not just like, wow, that feels so good. That is not what I mean by like, feels like home feels right. That feels good is not the same thing.
Eric Zimmer 00:54:12 Right? I often think of it as, and I always make this hand gesture when I do it. It feels like internally things are aligned. It is a very subtly good feeling. You know, it’s not a like, you know who you know, but but when when that’s not the case. You know, my, my poor dog tore ACL and I didn’t know this until recently. But basically what the ACL does is it keeps your phobia and tibia from doing this. Like basically going opposite directions from each other. Right?
Eric Zimmer 00:54:41 When that happens inside of us, it feels really lousy. And we know that, right?
Sara Kuberic 00:54:46 Yeah. It’s almost like it clicks. I don’t know if you have ever like something that clicks into like a satisfying. You’re like, yeah, it clicked into place and you’re like, yeah, your phone case or something. You’re like, you’re like, and I think I like that you emphasize the fact that it is not a thrill or excitement necessarily. It’s satisfaction, I think is the closest sort of it’s a feeling that I would come to contentment. It’s like you’re not going to sometimes like what comes out of this alignment. It might be like, shoot, I have to apologize. You’re not going to always feel excited when there is that alignment in your decision, but you’re going to feel that satisfaction of being authentic. And that’s almost like that click that happens. You’re like, and then it helps you deal with all the other stuff that comes as a consequence.
Eric Zimmer 00:55:35 Yeah, well, I think that is a beautiful place to wrap up. I could do this for another two hours, but but we’re at the end of time. I am going to get the chance to talk to you for a little longer. In our post-show conversation. Listeners. If you’d like access to the post-show conversation to add free episodes, all sorts of other good things, and to be part of what we’re doing here and join our community, go to one you feed. Sarah, thank you so much. This has really been a treat.
Sara Kuberic 00:56:03 Thank you so much for having me. It was such a fun conversation, and you really got me to think about a lot of things in a very interesting way. So thank you.
Eric Zimmer 00:56:12 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.
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