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In this episode, Dr. Robert Waldinger explores why good relationships are the key to living a long and happy life. Drawing from more than 85 years of research, Robert shares why deep, supportive relationships are stronger predictors of health and happiness than wealth, success, or status. He also explains how relationships regulate stress, why loneliness can be as harmful as smoking, and how we can proactively cultivate social fitness. Listeners will walk away with practical ways to strengthen existing relationships, build new ones, and approach connection as an essential practice for well-being.

Key Takeaways:

• The significance of relationships for health and happiness.
• Insights from the Harvard Study of Adult Development on what constitutes a good life.
• The complexities and challenges of living well despite societal pressures.
• The impact of loneliness and social isolation on physical and mental health.
• The critique of cultural messages equating happiness with material success.
• The importance of self-acceptance and acknowledging both positive and negative aspects of oneself.
• Strategies for nurturing and maintaining meaningful relationships.
• The role of curiosity in enhancing social connections and overcoming discomfort.
• The intersection of scientific research and Zen practice in understanding human well-being.
• The concept of “social fitness” and the ongoing effort required to cultivate relationships.

Robert Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital, and cofounder of the Lifespan Research Foundation. Dr. Waldinger received his AB from Harvard College and his MD from Harvard Medical School. He is a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he directs a psychotherapy teaching program for Harvard psychiatry residents. He is also a Zen master (Roshi) and teaches meditation in New England and around the world. Robert is the co-author of the book The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study on Happiness

Connect with Robert Waldinger: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Ted Talk

If you enjoyed this conversation with Robert Waldinger, check out these other episodes:

The Midlife Makeover: Redefining Success and Happiness After 40 with Chip Conley

The Happiness Formula: Using Your Body to Transform Your Mind with Janice Kaplan

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Episode Transcript:

Eric Zimmer  01:59

Hi Bob, welcome to the show. Thank

Robert Waldinger  02:00

you. Great to be here.

Eric Zimmer  02:02

I’m really excited to have you on. We’re going to be discussing your book, The Good Life lessons from the world’s longest scientific study of happiness. And we also might discuss Zen practice, because you are a Zen teacher, and we’ll see where this goes. But let’s start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with her grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent. They say, Well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. It’s

Robert Waldinger  02:48

so resonant for me, because we notice, I notice that I could feed either wolf at any moment, right? There are all these choices all day, every day. You know the choice to be kind or the choice to give in to my nastier nature, right? And so that idea that we’re constantly choosing which wolf to feed just seems right on target for my day to day life. The other thing I know for myself, but also often for the people I work with in psychotherapy, is that you know that nasty wolf isn’t the one you want to parade around to the world, right? You don’t want to say, Gee, I’ve got this nasty wolf inside of me. And it’s very tempting to tell ourselves that we don’t have that. No, I’m not that way. I don’t have that in me. That’s also dangerous. I find that I don’t want to feed that wolf, but I want to really remember that the wolf is there, right and acknowledge it, not try to bury it, not try to push it away. Just say, Oh yeah, that’s there. That’s a possibility. Because the more I try to push anything away, as you know from Zen practice, the more you try to push it away the stronger it gets. So I don’t want to feed that wolf, but I don’t want to pretend it isn’t there either. Yeah,

Eric Zimmer  04:07

there’s sections later in the book where you talk about avoidance, you know, you talk about how people who avoid difficult things in midlife turn out to be less happy later in life. And so that’s speaking to a little bit of what you’re saying is, if we’re going to be talking about relationships, which is a lot of what we’re going to talk about here today, avoiding problems or trying to push them away and pretend they don’t exist, is not a helpful or a skillful relationship strategy or a life strategy,

Robert Waldinger  04:35

right? Exactly. I think that difficulty is when we say, No, I can’t be having this problem, or this can’t be part of who I am, right? Yeah, so that the gradual greater and greater acceptance that comes sometimes with just the wisdom of getting older, sometimes it’s the wisdom that comes from sitting on a cushion meditating. But their variety. Wisdom practices that usually include a lot of self acceptance. So

Eric Zimmer  05:06

before we get into the results of the study, just give us a couple minute overview of what is this study that you have been the director of, and that research informed so much of this book. Sure,

Robert Waldinger  05:20

this study is called the Harvard study of adult development. As far as we know, it’s the longest study of human life that’s ever been done, the longest study of the same people, the same families. It started as two studies 85 years ago, and at first the studies didn’t even know about each other. One was started at the Harvard Student Health Service, and it was a group of college sophomores, 19 year old young men who were thought by their deans to be fine, upstanding specimens. And so they were going to be part of a study of healthy development from adolescents into young adulthood, you know. And now that makes us smile, because, you know, of course, if you want to study normal development, you study all white males from Harvard. No, you don’t, but at that time, that’s what they thought would be a good group of people to study for this also, though, on the other side of the Harvard campus, at Harvard Law School, there was a law professor and his partner, a social worker, who were interested in juvenile delinquency, and they were particularly interested in how some children born into really difficult circumstances managed to thrive. So they chose 456 boys, average age 12, from Boston’s poorest neighborhoods and most troubled families, and their question was, how did these boys stay out of trouble? How is it How’s it possible that they stay out of trouble? What are the things in their home lives that would predict them not getting into trouble. So that’s what they studied. And then eventually my predecessor, I’m the fourth director, my predecessor, brought the two studies together, and we’ve studied them as contrasting groups, very underprivileged, very privileged. We’ve brought in their spouses, we’ve brought in their children, more than half of whom are women. So we have good gender balance. Now I

Eric Zimmer  07:24

know you’ve brought in their children, you’ve brought in their spouses. Have you brought in more men that were not part of this original cohort? Or is everybody that’s part of the study somehow related to that original cohort?

Robert Waldinger  07:37

Everybody is related to the original people. And the reason why we did that, we thought, you know, particularly because everybody’s all white in our study, because in Boston in 1938 the city was more than 97% white. Wow. So if you want to start a study in 1938 in Boston, that’s what you’d get. But yeah, but we thought, Well, should we bring in more diverse groups of people? But the real value of our study is that we have these long family histories and that you can’t manufacture anew if we bring in people now. And so we said, Okay, other studies are looking at people of color, people from more diverse backgrounds. We’re going to just be the study we are of this group of people and these families over time, so over 85 years, these are the people we’ve got.

Eric Zimmer  08:27

However, in working on the book, you certainly looked at lots of other research that was far outside your study to come up with a sense of like the conclusions I’m coming to here to these hold up as I look at more diverse groups,

Robert Waldinger  08:43

they do, and we’re really careful to present only the findings that are applicable that have been found in more diverse groups, because we don’t want to present as facts, findings from our study that are only specific to a group of white people, you know, of the World War Two generation. We don’t want to do that, yeah, so we’ve made sure that our findings are corroborated, are replicated by other studies.

Eric Zimmer  09:11

So before we get to the main conclusion of the study, I want to start with a basic idea that you say very early on. And you say the good life is complicated for everybody. So let’s talk about why is the good life so complicated? I mean, you and I were talking before we started. We got all these ancient wisdom traditions, 1000s of years and 1000s of years of philosophers and all kinds of modern psychology, and why is it still hard to live

Robert Waldinger  09:44

a good life? Well, I think the ancient wisdom is there because we need correctives over and over again, because these wonderful minds and bodies that we’ve evolved have terrific advantages for our survival. But they also lead us astray over and over again. So in many ways, we keep practicing spiritual traditions and religious traditions to try to bring us back to feeding the Good Wolf, the kind, compassionate Wolf, because that other Wolf is there, and we evolved to have that other wolf in us too. And I think that that’s one of the big drivers of life being so complicated for all of us, we’re always, you know, fighting against parts of our nature.

Eric Zimmer  10:28

Yeah, yeah. You go on to say in that section that there are couple of common reasons why we have a hard time finding this happiness and satisfaction. And one is, you say the good life may be central concern for most people, but it’s not the central concern of most modern societies. And the second, and you sort of alluded to this, our brains, the most sophisticated and mysterious system in the known universe, often mislead us in our quest for lasting pleasure and satisfaction. So our culture tells us certain things are really important, and our brains go, oh yeah, those things are really important. And it turns out that when we look at the research, those things don’t tend to lead to the lasting happiness in the same way that some of the things we’re going to talk about do.

Robert Waldinger  11:11

That’s right, that’s right. We get these messages all day long, if you think about it, you know from advertising, certainly from social media, subliminal messages on TV and in films everywhere about what ought to make us happy. You know, if you buy this car, you’re going to be happier if you serve this brand of pasta to your family, your family dinners are going to be blissful, right? You know, it’s all these ideas that if you consume the right things, if you purchase the right things, if you look the right way, you’re going to be happy. We know that that’s not true, and yet, the feeling we get when we look at all that is, gee, that’s not my life. I’m missing out. I need to get those things.

Eric Zimmer  11:53

Yeah, you say that money, achievement and status, part of the problem is they’re not complete mirages. And I’ve often talked about this on the show like we all know that getting a new car isn’t the answer to happiness, and if the new car gave us no enjoyment and pleasure, it would be an easy thing to see through, right? But it does, actually, for a little while, it’s just not lasting. And so we chase these short term things that actually we know will increase our pleasure temporarily, versus this unknown sort of longer term fear ephemera. Can’t say that word yes, thank you. Certain words just seem to be unpronounceable by me in my my 50s, I don’t know, but these other things are easier to see, so they’d be easier to see through if there was nothing there. Well, right?

Robert Waldinger  12:41

The other thing is that they’re measurable. So if I have a certain amount of money, I can measure that, I can show that to you, and I can compare it to how much money you have, right? Yep, if I’ve achieved a certain amount, and I win this award, or I have this title, I’ve got that, I can show that to other people. You know, think about the likes and the number of followers. I mean, it’s a whole new way of creating, essentially false measures of achievement and popularity. But, boy, they’re there, and they can be measured. And the thing we’re going to talk about, which is relationships, you can’t measure that, and they are complicated, and they’re always changing, and so you can’t point to it and say, I am the greatest at relationships. I’ve won the Nobel Prize in friendship that doesn’t exist.

Eric Zimmer  13:27

So let’s not bury the lead any further here. I mean, you say relationships are significant enough that if we had to take all 84 years of the study and boil it down to a single principle for living one investment that’s supported by similar findings across a wide variety of other studies, it would be this good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period, yep,

Robert Waldinger  13:48

and that’s what we didn’t believe at first. You know, we figured, okay, we know so much about people that if we want to look at what predicts who’s going to live longer and stay healthier, it’s going to be blood pressure, it’s going to be cholesterol, it’s going to be those things. And what we began to find was that the strongest predictors were how satisfied we feel in our relationships with other people. We didn’t believe it at first, because we said, All right, relationships keep us happier. That makes sense, if we have good ones. But how could they make a difference in whether or not you get coronary artery disease or type two diabetes? How could that even be a thing? And then other research groups began to find the same thing. Now we know that warm social connections and more social connection are related to physical health across many, many studies. It’s a very robust scientific fact, but at first we didn’t believe it, and so we’ve spent the last decade or more trying to figure out how it works. How could relationships get into our body and shape our physic. Theology. It’s

Eric Zimmer  15:00

interesting. I’ve said this about the show, you know, I’m I don’t know how many episodes in now, 600 maybe I don’t know somewhere around there. And when I started, if you’d asked me, like, what’s most important about living a good life or being happy, I would have said it had something to do with going inside and knowing ourselves. I was a Zen practitioner, I had the sense that it was about that it was about quiet and solitude and going inside and and while all that is beneficial, the thing that I have been surprised by, I shouldn’t be surprised, because within the first year, the pattern was fairly clearly emerging that like, well, that’s not the whole story, because it’s our connection to others that really matters. I want to ask you a question about relationship, though, because, like many things in life, these things can cut both ways right, like I was in a 12 year bad marriage that nearly destroyed me, right? It was just so difficult. And no matter what we tried to do we just were the wrong fit for each other. We met when I had started drinking again. Anyway, there’s a bunch of reasons why it wasn’t the right thing. We could never really get it working well, and so in that case, I feel like that took 10 years off my life versus adding to my life. So let’s talk about what it is in a relationship that is important in our well being, happiness and longevity. What are the characteristics and knowing that most relationships are going to be a blend, right? No close relationship is without its stresses and its moments. So how do we know if the relationship is one that is actually contributing to our well being?

Robert Waldinger  16:39

Yeah, and you know, there have been some studies that show that really stressful marriages may be worse for your health than getting divorced. Probably are worse. So I think, and, yeah, and really, it’s stress. Stress seems to be the operative word here, that the best hypothesis we have about how relationships work is that they are stress regulators, that they can either ramp up our stress, or they can help us regulate and relieve stress and manage negative feelings. If you think about it, we’re having stressors. You know, sometimes all day long, but certainly many times a week, something stressful happens, and the body goes into fight or flight mode. So heart rate goes up, blood pressure goes up, higher levels of circulating stress hormones, higher levels of inflammation, right? That’s normal, because we want the body to go into a mode where it can react to challenge, but then when the challenge is removed, we want the body to go back to equilibrium. And what we think happens with good relationships, and we can demonstrate this with experiments, is that when I’m going through something stressful and my partner takes my hand or says something kind literally, my blood pressure goes down, my heart rate goes down, right? What we think happens is that people who don’t have anybody who they can talk to about what’s troubling them, or the person they live with as a source of stress chronically, all day long, we think what happens is that the body stays in a kind of fight or flight mode, and what that means is that there’s a low level constant increase in circulating cortisol and other stress hormones in low level inflammation that can break down multiple body systems. So that’s how, for example, a very stressful relationship or social isolation could make you more prone both to arthritis and to coronary artery disease, because it works throughout the body. So

Eric Zimmer  18:48

there’s a statement that’s running its way kind of all around the culture these days. It relates to loneliness. And it says, you know that being lonely is the equivalent of smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day or a whole I don’t know what the number? Yeah, right. And whether that’s an exactly true statement or not, it points directionally at what the same thing you’re saying, which is that relationships are important. Let’s take that loneliness for an example. So I can see where, if I’m having a stressful situation, having somebody in my life who can help me regulate that is valuable. I can also see how our relationships can ramp up that stress. In the case of loneliness, it’s not that they have a bad relationship, not that the relationships are causing them stress. There’s just very little there. Yeah, right. Are we saying that the danger there? To your point, we think, is the same thing. It’s just harder to regulate our stress response alone, yes, versus other people. And other people are an extraordinarily useful and adaptive way of regulating that stress response.

Robert Waldinger  19:49

Yes, what we think, and again, this is speculative, is that we evolved to be social animals, that you know, evolution is about having the greatest. Chance of passing on your genes. So evolution probably moved in the direction of us being social, because when we were banded together, we were safer. We could ward off threats more easily if we were together, right? So what happens then is that isolation is a stressor. The body perceives it. The brain perceives it as a stressor. We don’t sleep as well when we’re alone as when we sleep with someone we feel safe with, right? So what we think happened is that we evolved to be social animals, and then, as society has made many of us more isolated, the natural stress response ramps up that’s built into our DNA. I’m

Eric Zimmer  20:45

reading a fascinating book right now called the goodness paradox, and I don’t remember the name Wrangham. Maybe he wrote a book previously called Chasing fire. I think he’s an evolutionary biologist, perhaps by training. There’s a lot of really interesting things in it, but one of the things that many people believe is that human beings are domesticated animals, and that we self domesticated ourselves, which is a fascinating idea, but it speaks to I’ve got two domesticated animals behind me here right now, and they get extraordinarily unhappy when I’m not around. Yeah, like they are domesticated to me, and so they don’t like it. You know, one of them may start whining any minute here, like, Hey, would you sit on the couch with me and stop this stupid conversation? But, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, that’s off topic, but it’s a concept I’d never thought of before. Let

Robert Waldinger  21:36

me just throw out one other idea from Yuval Harari, who wrote about, he thinks that the wheat plant domesticated humans that, oh,

Eric Zimmer  21:46

you know what I kind of vaguely remember, yeah, which

Robert Waldinger  21:48

is really cool, a really cool idea that essentially, from the from the evolutionary point of view of the wheat stock, you know, they domesticated us to cultivate them, so that Wheat now he’s a very successful species on the planet. Yeah,

Eric Zimmer  22:03

yeah, it’s extraordinarily successful. You know, corn is giving it a run for its money. But, yeah,

Eric Zimmer  22:20

yeah. So one of the things that I think is difficult about this sort of research around relationships and loneliness makes me think a little bit about the last five years of sleep research, right? What I think happens is that we hear loneliness is really bad for you. Not sleeping is really bad for you. And yet we have people who are extremely lonely and who can’t sleep, and I sometimes worry that what we’ve done now is basically ratcheted the stress response up another notch by saying, well, not only are you lonely, but you’re gonna die from it faster. Not only are you having trouble sleeping, and that’s a pain in the ass and it’s uncomfortable. And your day to day life is bad. Now you know what dementia is in your near future like so, so how do we take this sort of stuff, yeah, and then turn it into something that is useful for us and not something that further pushes us down? That’s

Robert Waldinger  23:19

such a good question, because if you think about it, we do this with obesity. Yep. We do this with smoking. Not that I’m a fan of smoking, but there are people who just can’t stop or don’t want to stop, right? Yep. So how do we name the things that keep us healthy without shaming or making more anxious to people who can’t or don’t want to do those things, and I think that’s a really important question. The other side to that is that some people don’t want more relationships. You know, there are many people who want a quieter, less social life, and they’re content, actually healthier, less stressed when they have a lot of solitude, a lot of alone time. So the one thing I know from having followed these 1000s of people across their lives is one size never fits all. One prescription never fits all. So I guess my hope is that people get this message so that when they can and want to, they choose connection. Yeah, you know, it’s like the one you feed that they feed connection when connection is an option for them and seems desirable. But that doesn’t mean you have to. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed if you don’t do that.

Eric Zimmer  24:34

Yep, that’s a great way of looking at it. So let’s go into type of relationships a little bit. So if we say, you know, the evidence from your study and many others is that good relationships if you’re going to invest in one thing, that’s the thing you could invest in, what type of relationships are we talking about here? And how many do I need? Do they need to be varied? Do I need to eat from all the four. Food groups. I mean, like, what are we talking about here? Yeah,

Robert Waldinger  25:02

yeah. Well, you’ve asked a lot of questions. So, so, yes, no, that’s just help me remember the different ones because you raised, yeah, they’re really important points that you just raised. And there are several of them. So one is easy, how many friends? There’s no set number. And again, one size doesn’t fit all for some people, it’s like one or two trusted people, and that’s all they need. That’s all they want. For some people, it’s lots of people, because we’re all on a spectrum from being introverts to being extroverts, and there’s nothing better about being an extrovert than being an introvert, even though our culture tends to glorify the party folks, so no set number of friends. It’s a felt need for more or less, and each person needs to check in with themselves about that. And then which types of relationships? One of the things we know is that almost all types of connections can give us what I sometimes call hits of well being. So for example, like, yes, absolutely, having a romantic partner can be a great thing, but you don’t need a romantic partner to get these benefits. Could be friendships, could be family. Relationships could be workmates. The other thing we know is that casual relationships often make us feel good. So for example, the cashier at the grocery store, the barista at the coffee shop, having a nice, friendly interaction with someone like that day to day again, makes us feel good. It makes us feel we belong. It helps us feel seen. So all kinds of relationships can have this benefit. And then I think you asked something else. Well,

Eric Zimmer  26:45

I think the last part of it, you kind of hit there, which is that, you know, different types of relationships can be beneficial, but we don’t necessarily need all the different types, right? Right? Right?

Robert Waldinger  26:56

Again, it is a subjective experience. It’s how I feel. If I feel like I would like more connection, then the question is, well, what kind of connection do I want more people to have fun with? Do I want more people to confide in? Do I want someone to drive me to doctor’s appointments when I need it? You know, there are so many things that relationships do for us, so each one of us can check in and say, Do I want more? And if so, what do I want more of? And then how could I build that? Yep,

Eric Zimmer  27:31

I think it’s interesting to think about how these forces that we talked about earlier for money or status or prestige can corrupt our connection seeking. So for example, there’s a phrase that has become famous in self help circles, which is, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time around. I didn’t know that. You’ve never heard that one, huh? No, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time around. And I actually think, like anything, there’s some truth in there for sure, right? The challenge, particularly in the achiever space, is that people start going, Okay, well, I’m gonna jettison those relationships for these other relationships, because I want to be successful, so I’m gonna surround myself with these successful people. Or CS Lewis used to talk about the inner ring. Everybody believes there’s an inner ring out there of special people, and if they were just in that, yeah, yeah, right. So all of a sudden, these desires to be more successful, to have more money, to have more prestige, start driving the type of connection that we can seek out, yeah, and that we can look for. And I wanted to name that because as I was reading your book, I was sort of reflecting on those ideas, you know, and the sense that good relationships, there’s a give and a take, there’s a giving and there’s a receiving kind of thing to it. Oh,

Robert Waldinger  28:47

absolutely, absolutely, you know, that point about reciprocity is really key, that one of the things that characterizes good relationships of any consequence is that there is that give and take, that that I don’t just take and I don’t just give because it doesn’t feel okay for it to be really lopsided most of the time. Yeah, now, in fairness, with young children, yeah, we give a lot more, but we get other things. But you know, if you think about it, the person who who simply needs us to listen and to give, give, give that person eventually makes us feel kind of more alone and kind of depleted. Right? Similarly, if we don’t ask for help, if we don’t allow ourselves to be helped by other people, which I personally have had a hard time, I’ve had to learn more about that

Eric Zimmer  29:39

me too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And

Robert Waldinger  29:41

you know that that again, makes things feel lopsided. So I think reciprocity is really important when we think about the quality of our relationships.

Eric Zimmer  29:51

Yeah. I think those of us who are in a helping profession or a teaching profession tend to slide into those roles really, really naturally and easily. Absolutely, and yeah, at least for me, they’re not the right role to be in. In a lot of my friendships, it’s the wrong place to go, or, you know, I need to slide out, but it’s a conscious choice. I have to go up there. I’m doing it again, exactly, out of that mode, into a relationship. You know, that is not that sort of hierarchy. But you kind of get a sense of what I mean one person’s helping. It’s one of the insights that I love so much about 12 step programs, where, you know the fundamental insight of Alcoholics Anonymous was that when one alcoholic talked to another, there was a reciprocal benefit relationship. So I could be 15 years sober talking to somebody who’s two days sober, and it looks like I’m helping the person who has two days sober, but that relationship is actually completely reciprocal. Yep, right? That’s a deep insight. You know, is that, for me, the more I recognize that, the better I’m able to sort of be in those situations skillfully, yeah, yeah.

Robert Waldinger  31:03

Really important, really important. I’m a shrink, right? And I’m a psychotherapist. I work with people every day in therapy, and it’s really easy then in my personal life, as you were saying, to slip into that mode of, well, I’m just gonna listen and let other people, you know. And then I realized, oh my gosh, here I am doing it again, you know. And then, rather than realizing, no, this, this needs to be a two way street,

Eric Zimmer  31:31

that’s a great point. Yeah, me too. I’ll just sit back and listen, yeah, yeah. I’m like, Well, you know, I kind of need to move out of interrogation mode. And, you know, talk about myself a little bit. You know, interviewing people for a living doesn’t right? Yeah, all these things we just do what comes easy to us and comes natural. You know, it seems to me that depending on where you are in your life and in your relationships, there are different skills you might really need. So for example, you may be a person who has a significant other, a couple family members and several good friends, but there’s tension throughout many of those relationships, and so the skill that’s needed is probably to learn to improve those relationships and feel connected within them, etc. And then there are other people, and this is more the loneliness epidemic we’re talking about who don’t have relationships. Like I know a woman, she’s been part of our spiritual habits program before, where, in rapid succession, she lost several family members, several friends. I mean, went from somebody who had a relatively connected life to completely isolated, right? And so now all of a sudden, her challenge is, how do I rebuild that from nothing, you know, and not everybody’s gonna be that extreme, but it does seem that there’s these couple of skills that we need some ability to do, both of which is, how do I improve the relationships I’m in and connect with them more? How do I learn to cultivate new ones. Yeah. So I thought maybe as we move forward and talk about some different ways of doing this, we could sort of think about them in those two buckets. Yeah,

Robert Waldinger  33:09

those are great buckets. Okay, so let’s start with, how do I improve the relationships that I’m in? Yeah? So one thing we find in studying so many lives is that being proactive in taking care of your relationships matters a lot. So when I was in my 20s, I used to think, well, I got my friends, you know, from grade school, high school, college, you know, they’ll always be my friends. But what we would see is that people would let totally good relationships just wither away and die from neglect because they wouldn’t do anything about them. And there’s so many pressures, work and family and so many things to do, but that what we found was that the people who were good at this, at maintaining the relationships and strengthening the relationships they already have, is by being active, reaching out. So I’ve had to learn this. So, you know, I’m a professor, I could work a non stop, 24/7, and at times I did that. What I find is that, because of my research, that if I don’t reach out to my friends, I don’t see them, they kind of drift away. So now I make sure that I go for walks with friends every week, that usually I have dinner with somebody once a week, and I’ll make it a point to reach out. And usually they will reach out to me as well. It’s reciprocal, yeah. So I’m more active than I used to be, and I think that each of us can do that. It can be tiny actions. Could be just sending a little text, saying hi. I was just thinking of you want to say hello. So that’s one thing.

Eric Zimmer  34:42

Can we pause there for a second? Yeah, you gave a talk to not a TED talk, but a talk to the smaller TED audience, or Ted members. Yeah, I don’t quite know what it was, but you had them do something in there that I thought we could just have listeners do right now. You gave them a challenge. Do you remember what. That challenge was, Well, I

Robert Waldinger  35:01

think it might have been the what I just said, which was, so I could do that. Now, do you want to do it? Yeah, let’s do it. So the challenge is this, think of somebody in your life who you don’t see as much as you want to, who you just you know, you miss them. Or, gee, you think to yourself, we should get together more, or I should be in touch more. Think of that person. Hold them in your mind. Now, take out your phone and just send them a text or an email, just saying, Hi, I was thinking of you. Wanted to connect. That’s all you have to do. Just do that now. So

Eric Zimmer  35:37

listeners, you can hit pause on this and do it. And I really recommend that, like, that little strategy is one that I’ve incorporated over the years of just occasionally sitting down and scrolling through all my old text messages. I mean, like, God, it’s been six months since you know, and so listeners, that’s your challenge. Pause for a second. Hit pause, send a message to somebody in the way that Bob just described, you

Robert Waldinger  36:03

know, and then they could let you know I do have, I don’t know if there’s a place where people can leave you comments, but you can leave comments like, what happened with it? So sometimes, when I when I do this, yep, sometimes I’ve done it where I’m talking to a live audience, and I’ll do this, and then during the question and answer, I’ll say, did anybody get anything back from that text you just sent? And all these hands go up and people will say, oh, this person was so glad I reached out, because they just had surgery and they really wanted connection, or somebody just made a dinner date with me for next week. You’ll be amazed at what comes back to you. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer  36:38

All right, so listeners, if you want to do that, we’ve been spending more time on Instagram where it won. Underscore you, underscore feed. Those are all spelled out. Love to have you just share if you did this challenge. Kind of how’d it go? What happened? That actually wasn’t a planned promotion, but Bobby teed it up. Too good. I couldn’t resist. Okay, I couldn’t resist. So that’s one is to be proactive. You know, along those lines, you said something else in there that I think is a really great idea and a really important idea, which is to establish routines with people. Yeah, like the constant decision making of having to decide things again and again and again is difficult. So if we can decide something once and have it more or less be the rule, exactly, right? Like Saturday morning, I go to my Zen group to sit, and I go out to eat with them afterwards. That’s the standing rule, right? And do I do it every Saturday? No, like things come up, but I don’t have to keep re deciding, or I’m gonna see my friend and we’re gonna walk Thursday afternoon. That’s the rule, and it’s just planned. We don’t have to keep rethinking it. So establishing these routines can make it easier to keep these connections going. Exactly.

Robert Waldinger  37:50

My co author, Mark Schultz, is a friend and a research collaborator, every Friday at noon, we have a call for 90 minutes, and it’s just in the calendar. And you know, of course, we talk about our research and our writing, but we also talk about our lives, and we have to cancel that, otherwise it’s just a given, yeah, that it’s gonna happen. When my kids were little, someone told my wife and me to have a date night, and so we hired a babysitter to come every Thursday night at six o’clock, and so we had to cancel her if we weren’t gonna go out. So it meant that we just went out, even if we just went to the mall and bought underwear. I mean, we just, you know, and it was so great, yeah, because, as you say, we didn’t have to choose every single time. We could just do it. So if you have one or two people who you want to make sure you’re with every week or even every month. Set it up regularly you

Speaker 1  38:59

music.

Eric Zimmer  39:07

We’ve given our Instagram account a new look, and we’re sharing content there that we don’t share anywhere else, encouraging positive posts with wisdom that support you in feeding your good wolf, as well as some behind the scenes video of the show and some of Ginny and I’s day to day life, which I’m kind of still amazed that anybody would be interested in. It’s also a great place for you to give us feedback on the episodes that you like or concepts that you’ve learned that you think are helpful, or any other feedback you’d like to give us. If you’re on Instagram, follow us at at one underscore. You underscore feed, and those words are all spelled out one underscore you underscore feed to add some nourishing content to your daily scrolling. See you there. Let’s get one more idea from you about, you know, sort of the cultivation of the existing relationships, or even in some cases, the. Moving that balance in that relationship from one of I feel like I’m getting more stress out of this than I am. You’re a couples counselor, so I’m sure you could give us 20 hours of stuff like this, but if we wanted to give people just a couple of small ideas, one

Robert Waldinger  40:14

idea that I find really works is just bring curiosity to a relationship, particularly a relationship with someone who you think you know so well, one of my Zen teachers once gave us an assignment on the meditation cushion. So here we were. We’d meditated, you know, 1000s of times, but he said that the meditation today is going to be to ask yourself, What’s here right now that I have never noticed before, and if you do that with another person. So if I have dinner with my wife tonight, and I’ve had 1000s of dinners with my wife 37 years, if I have dinner and I ask myself that question, like it might be something about her hair, it might be some expression she uses in conversation. It might be anything, but just to notice, just to actively be more curious, and then ideally, to notice it with the other person. People feel so valued when we see them, when we’re curious about them. Everybody loves to have someone notice them. And so what I would say is see if you can bring curiosity to those relationships that might be getting a little old and stale.

Eric Zimmer  41:27

That’s a beautiful one. Curiosity seems to be one of those all purpose tools that is helpful in nearly any scenario you find yourself in, with the possible exception of like, there’s a lion chasing me. You may not right, be curious about the lion or but for most things, all right, so let’s talk about for people who find themselves in the situation where it’s like, I don’t have many relationships, I want more, but I’m 55 years old, and it feels either too late or too hard, or I just don’t know What to do?

Robert Waldinger  42:00

Yeah, well, first of all, it’s never too late. We have a chapter in our book titled it’s never too late, because when we follow all these people, we find that many of them have these surprising events in their lives where they find relationships or they find love when they least expect it. So what can you do if you think I’m not good at this or it’s never going to happen for me? Well, they’ve actually done research on this, and they find that one of the best ways to make new relationships is to do something with other people over and over again with the same people. So what do I mean? So it could be that you join a gardening club, or you join a biking club, or you join a church group, or you volunteer to work for a political cause or to prevent climate change, whatever it might be, but you do something that you’re interested in, and you do it alongside the same people week after week who are also interested in that. It gives you a natural conversation starter, because you’re both interested in something similar, and you’re more likely first to start new conversations and then to have those conversations deepen when you see those people again and again. So that’s one thing. Find things you’re interested in, do it with other people.

Eric Zimmer  43:27

I want to echo something you said there that I think is really important, and I’m speaking from experience with this one, which is that, okay, I want to develop more community. Of course, I’m going to go find people who have shared interests and show up and volunteer or show up at the meditation group. My trap has been I haven’t done the second part of what you said, which is to do it again and again and again. I show up and then I immediately am in judgment mode, because that’s what many of us do when we’re a new group. We either judging ourselves or judging others because we’re uncomfortable, and it takes me a while to feel at all comfortable in a new group of people. And so after a time or two, I conclude the connection I wanted isn’t here. And so I quit, and I’ve done this a lot of times in life, right? And I finally on to myself years later, you know? And after I started to see a lot of the research out there that talks about how long it takes to actually build a friendship as an adult, like it just takes time. So it’s this matter of kind of what you said, which is to continue. Yeah, you know to continue. Now that’s not to say that, like, if you’re in the wrong community, that you just go forever, but it just takes time to feel like you’re at all part of it. Yeah, at least for me, some people may jump in faster and feel more comfortable faster, but I don’t Well, I’m

Robert Waldinger  44:50

really glad you’ve named that, because the other thing we need to put out there is that it’s not gonna succeed every time. So let’s say. So let’s say you just did the little challenge, and you sent somebody a text, not everybody’s going to answer you back, right? Or you go volunteer for something, or you go, you know, do a church group, or you do something, and you’re going to feel uncomfortable. So I think the first thing to do is expect that you’re not going to hit a home run every time that it’s going to take going again and again, getting up to bat, trying again and again. Sometimes you’re going to strike out and you try some place different, and sometimes it’s just trying it again and again until you succeed. But don’t expect it to succeed every time

Eric Zimmer  45:38

or right away. I mean, I do this thing called Food Rescue. I’m part of a national organization, and basically what we do is we go and we take food from places they’re gonna throw it away, and we deliver it to places that need it. Yeah, and it’s kind of a solitary thing, like I just pick up a route and I go grab food from one place, take it to the other. One of the reasons I like it is because I can just grab a route randomly, and I’m very busy, but there was a period of time a couple summers ago where every weekend a huge semi of food would arrive, all fresh produce. I believe it was some national initiative. And so we had to kind of take it all off, unload it, package it back up in different ways. So I was around these food rescue people every Saturday for, I don’t know, maybe 10 weeks. I feel like, the first three weeks, I just felt like I was on the outside looking in. But about the fourth or fifth week, all of a sudden I was like, well, now I’m starting to strike up a couple more conversations. Now I’m starting, you know, and by the end of it, I was like, well, wow, really. Like all these people, this is a great group, and so I share that story only to say, like, it just can take a while depending on your personality type, right? And that’s right. We talked earlier about self acceptance, right? Like, how important self acceptance can be, or maybe that was in our pre show conversation. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, but this self acceptance, for me, that’s a self acceptance thing, just going, that’s who I am. Yeah, instead of feeling like I should be more extroverted. Instead of feeling like, right, I should do it faster. I’m just gonna do it the way I do it exactly, and know that about myself, and just be okay with that for a while. Exactly

Robert Waldinger  47:13

that self acceptance is so key, because then you’re out of judging mode, right? Yep. You’re not saying, I’m not doing this, right? You just say, Okay, I’m just gonna keep showing up, just putting one foot in front of the other, and see what happened. Yep,

Eric Zimmer  47:25

you used a term. I don’t know if you used it in the book or it got used in the TED thing that I listened to, but it was the idea of social fitness. Yeah, I love that idea. And in that talk, you say, you know, if we think about it like we would normal fitness, we would realize that you don’t go to the gym once. You have to keep going and that idea of social fitness, same thing, we have to keep nurturing relationships. The other part of that analogy that I really liked is it made me think about those of us who are out of practice, or, let’s say you’re lonely and you need to build new skills or whatever. When we start back to an exercise routine after having been off of it for a while, it’s extraordinarily difficult in the beginning, yeah, right, it feels hard. I’m like, I don’t remember it being this hard, and I don’t like it. And then over time, we sort of catch our stride and it becomes sort of easier. And as I was thinking about social fitness, I was thinking about that analogy too, which kind of ties to what we were just saying. Yeah, when you show up in a place for the first time, it may take a while. In the same way, it takes a while of going to the gym till you’re kind of back in the groove of it

Robert Waldinger  48:33

exactly. And the other analogy is that you build muscles. So if my muscles are out of shape, it takes a while, and then you realize, oh, it all gets easier, because I’ve built up right, the ability to do it better. I’ll give you an example. I never used to talk to Uber drivers, Lyft drivers, taxi drivers. I just didn’t do that. I wanted to sit and do my phone thing and everything, and then I started taking my own medicine. I said, Okay, I’m just gonna strike up a conversation. And many of these drivers are people from other countries, so I just started asking, Where are you from? And they would start to tell me, and it would be so interesting. I mean, I got to hear so many stories about so many parts of the world, why people came here. What’s it been like to come here? What’s it like to go back home? I mean, it’s like my muscles got stronger, and so now, yeah, if I can, I want to talk to a driver, because more often than not, it’s going to be really interesting. It’s going to make the ride go a lot faster.

Eric Zimmer  49:36

You share a study in the book about people on a subway? Yeah, will you share that? Because it ties to what you just said,

Robert Waldinger  49:43

yeah, exactly. This was done in Chicago, where there are a lot of commuters taking the train, and the researchers assigned people to do one of two things when they were about to take their daily commute. One was, do what you normally do, read the newspaper, stay on your phone, listen to music. Okay, and the other people were assigned to talk to a stranger. And they asked people, before they took the trip, they said, How much do you think you’re going to like this? Well, the people who were assigned to talk to strangers thought, I am not going to like this. After they completed their assignment and they got off the train, they asked him again, how do you feel now, and how much did you enjoy it? The people who talked to strangers were way happier, on average, than the people who did what they normally do. And it’s taken as one example of how we’re often not so good at predicting what’s going to make us happy. Because when you stop and think, do I want to talk to a stranger, it’s like, no, that’s probably going to be awkward. I’m not going to

Eric Zimmer  50:40

do that. Yeah. I think that study is fascinating because, yeah, it shows what you just said, which is, we don’t know what will make us happy. I think, if I recall other wording from that, there was this sense that people thought like, this could be kind of messy and, you know, it could be awkward, and it usually wasn’t as much, yeah, and, you know, I think the caveat there right being what you said earlier, you’re not always going to hit a home run. You may sit down on the subway and start a conversation with somebody that you’re three minutes in and be like, Okay, maybe, right, maybe I wish I didn’t do this, right, yeah, but more often than not, particularly, if we can bring curiosity, yeah, you know. But I’m completely that way. Put me in a public situation, and I just, I want shields up. Give me a book, let me read, let me do my processing, let me do you know. And yet, those are not the memorable times I’ve spent doing stuff like that. The memorable times are when I’ve interacted with somebody, right,

Robert Waldinger  51:36

exactly. So it’s just another way to rethink what your routines are. I’ll give you another example that I learned from a woman who’s in the clergy, and she said, what she has started doing, she travels, and when she goes through security lines, she looks at the security workers, name tag, looks them in the eye, calls them by name and say, How are you doing, Joe, how’s your day going? And people love it. They love being seen. They love being called by name, because usually they’re seen as these functionaries, these automatons, or just to be passed by, you know, gotten by. You know. Again, this idea that if we really notice each other. So much good stuff can happen.

Eric Zimmer  52:23

Yep, there was another part in the book, and this is off tangent a little bit, but you were talking, I believe, about social media and how we can connect with social media in ways that are helpful and not helpful. But you shared a little bit about a photograph from 1946 you shared that in 1946 a young Stanley Kubrick published a photo and Look magazine that would be very familiar today, a subway car of New York commuters, heads bowed, nearly every single one of them absorbed in their newspapers, their newspapers, right? And I just thought that was interesting, because I’m not saying that we don’t need to be very conscious of how we use our digital devices. But I love that analogy because it shows we’re always predicting, like these huge problems with what technology is. You know, I’m sure there were people in 1946 being like, Why aren’t these people talking to each other? But I think the point in the book was further that this fracturing of our attention is not a new thing. That’s

Robert Waldinger  53:21

right, it isn’t a new thing. And we can use media to take us away from each other. So it’s perfectly good to read the newspaper or perhaps to use social media, but what function does it serve? And if it serves the function of keeping us from each other, then we’re in trouble. Example, my wife and I come down to the kitchen in the morning, and sometimes I realize she’s on her email, I’m looking at the news feed, and we haven’t even looked at each other. We’ve hardly said good morning, right? Can we be more intentional and more deliberate about not letting these media take us away from each other when we need to be with each other. Yeah,

Eric Zimmer  54:07

I think it’s so interesting. I was in a restaurant the other night with my mother, and she was looking at the table over and she was like, those two people have not talked to each other at all. They’ve been on their phone the whole time. The initial judgment was like, Oh, that’s terrible. And then I thought, well, you know, sometimes that’s what Ginny and I do. Like, you know, when we’re traveling in Europe and we’ve been together for 18 straight days, 24 hours a day, it’s like, well, you know what? Maybe this. We don’t need every single moment of connection. So it’s kind of like you said, no one size fits all, but I do think that’s a really interesting thing, and to be conscious of, for example, Ginny and I like to watch certain TV series, right? I think, like, we’re in a golden age of, like, art being, yeah, we

Robert Waldinger  54:47

do too.

Eric Zimmer  54:48

My original reaction is, TV’s bad. Don’t do it right, right? You should be reading instead. But what I’ve realized is that reading doesn’t always have to be but in our case, is a solo activity. Yeah? The. Watching TV together is a group activity. However, too much of it does pull us away from each other exactly right where some of it feels like it brings us together. Too much of it feels like, okay, that’s taking up the special time we have together. And then trying to think about ways of like. Can we talk about what we saw? Can we talk about what we watched like, can I use it as a tool to engender future connection in a way? And I just think there are ways to approach all of these things, to use a Buddhist term skillfully, or less skillfully, right? Yeah,

Robert Waldinger  55:32

yeah. And to see everything as focusing on the right processes. So the process of connection is what you’re trying to focus on. That doesn’t mean you have to connect every moment, and it doesn’t mean that TV is good or bad. It means am I using TV or the newspaper or other things in my life in a way that at least doesn’t detract from my connections with what’s most important to me and maybe enhances what’s most important to me. So, you know, using TV as a way to talk to each other about something could be a great thing in terms of your relationship. So again, it’s really looking at, what do I most care about, what do I most value? And does this further that is it skillful in that way?

Eric Zimmer  56:19

Yep, yep. So we’re nearing the end of our time, and we haven’t gotten to talk about Zen, which we probably could do for the next three hours. I hope we get a chance to do it at some point. But I’m wondering if I were to sort of give you a pop quiz here, which would be like, talk to me about how the work on the Harvard study and the work that you’ve done as a Zen teacher, as a Zen student all these years. Where’s a commonality here, or where are some things that they might inform each other? They do

Robert Waldinger  56:48

inform each other. So Zen is about the big questions of life and death. What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to be a human being in the world? And the Harvard study is about human life. It’s about what does it mean to have a whole life and to be able to look at entire lives? And for me, that’s such a privilege. And so I get to ask questions, informed by my Zen practice. I get to ask questions in research, like as you look back on your life, what are you proud of stuff as you look back on your life? What do you regret the most? I wouldn’t have asked those questions if I weren’t a Zen practitioner and focusing all the time on my own life and what it means to have this moment and this day. Yeah,

Eric Zimmer  57:36

you write beautifully in the book also about attention, which is, to me, is a core Zen idea, which is, you know, where is my attention, and how can I sharpen that attention, and how can I notice, as you said earlier, something I haven’t noticed before. And so I saw a great overlap there, too. As you were writing about that, I was like, This sounds like a guy who’s had some contemplative practice in his background. Oh, yeah.

Robert Waldinger  57:59

And you know, my dharma great grandfather, so he was my teacher’s teacher’s teacher. John Tarrant, he said attention is the most basic form of love. And I love that quote because it is so true when I think about, you know, what I give to other people, that’s what other people really want.

Eric Zimmer  58:23

Yeah. I think he also said something around like to learn to attend is the path to learn to attend more and more deeply, is the rest of the path. I’m not getting it right, yeah, but John tarran has talked about attention in a number of different ways. Well, Bob, thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed having you on I really enjoyed the book, and I really enjoyed the prompts that it will give me in my own life, and I hope others to get out there and make relationships and connection really important.

Robert Waldinger  58:49

Well, this was a delightful conversation. Thank you for having me.

Eric Zimmer  58:53

You’re welcome. You

Chris Forbes  59:10

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In this episode, Shaka Senghor discusses the power of choice; and how to break free from shame, anger, and grief, which can be the hardest prisons to escape. Shaka spent 19 years in prison and seven of those in solitary confinement. But he’ll tell you that he was imprisoned long before handcuffs, and that his freedom came long before his release. His new book, How to Be Free. A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons, is about finding the doors we often don’t notice and walking through them.

Key Takeaways:

• Shaka’s journey of transformation and healing after 19 years in prison.
• The concept of “hidden prisons,” including emotional and psychological struggles like shame, grief, and anger.
• The role of literacy and mentorship in personal growth
• The impact of grief, including the loss of his brother and his son’s health challenges
• The relationship between anger and unresolved emotional pain, and how it can hinder healing.
• The significance of accountability and self-forgiveness in overcoming past mistakes.
• The societal challenges faced by formerly incarcerated individuals and the need for systemic change.
• The complexity of personal agency and responsibility in the context of life choices and circumstances.
• The importance of embracing life’s messiness and the ongoing journey of healing and growth.

Shaka Senghor is an inspirational speaker, entrepreneur, and author of the New York Times bestselling booksWriting My Wrongs and Letters to the Sons of Society. A sought-after resilience expert and recognized “Soul Igniter” in Oprah’s inaugural SuperSoul 100, Senghor has captivated and transformed global audiences with his extraordinary journey from incarceration to influence. Through raw authenticity and profound insight, he doesn’t just share his story—he equips others with the exact resilience practices that fueled his own remarkable transformation, proving that reinvention isn’t just possible—it’s within everyone’s reach.

Connect with Shaka Senghor: Website | Instagram 

If you enjoyed this conversation with Shaka Senghor, check out these other episodes:

Dr. Tererai Trent on Incredible Perseverance

Improvising in Life with Stephen Nachmanovitch

Life Lessons with Dr. Edith Eger

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Episode Transcript:

Shaka Senghor 00:00:00  There is the duality of holding disappointment but also recognizing purpose. And what I always come back to is like whenever there’s adversity, whenever there’s an obstacle, there’s also opportunity.

Chris Forbes 00:00:18  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 00:01:03  Sometimes the hardest prisons to escape are the ones that we can’t see. Shame. Grief. Anger. These can keep us more trapped than any cell.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:14  Shaka Senghor knows this firsthand. He spent 19 years in prison and seven of those in solitary confinement. But he’ll tell you that he was imprisoned long before handcuffs, and that his freedom came long before his release. His new book, How to Be Free. A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons, is about finding the doors we often don’t notice and walking through them. Today we talk about that journey. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Shaka. Welcome to the show.

Shaka Senghor 00:01:46  Hey, thanks so much for having me, Eric. I’m super excited to be here and I’ve been looking forward to this conversation.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:51  We’re going to be discussing your book, which is called How to Be Free A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden prisons. But before we do that, we’ll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with a 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.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:19  And the grandchild stops it. 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.

Shaka Senghor 00:02:29  Absolutely.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:29  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.

Shaka Senghor 00:02:35  That’s a great question, and it’s one that I was really excited to answer. I came across this parable maybe 15 to 20 years ago, and it really embodies how I think about life. And I think about my own experience where there was a time that I bought into a narrative that represents that negative Wolf, the narrative that my life can only have certain outcomes. And and I fed that narrative based on the environment I grew up in. And when I shifted the narrative to the more positive outlook on life, my life completely transformed. And so that parable embodies how I show up. And now specifically that I show up as a writer, but also as a dad, a father, a husband.

Shaka Senghor 00:03:16  And I’m always thinking about what narratives am I consistently feeding, and how does that allow me to really show up in life?

Eric Zimmer 00:03:23  So when you heard that parable 15 or 20 years ago, would have been either late in your prison term or after you were out, did you hear it while you were still in prison?

Shaka Senghor 00:03:33  I think I first came across it right as I was getting close to getting out of prison, which was 15 years ago. And, you know, as you know, when you’re an avid reader, you, you, you read so many things and sometimes you lose track of where and when, but it’s become such a prominent part of how I parent, you know, it’s this I’ve changed the wolves to, you know, pit bulls before. I’ve changed it to all type of things. with my son, I remember just a few years ago, he was having a tough time in school, and it was a parable that I pulled out for him. And he always comes back to that, you know, of, like, okay, which wolf am I feeding today? And it’s just such a beautiful, great way to parent and you know, as well as teach.

Shaka Senghor 00:04:16  So it’s been quite a while since I’ve been using it.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:19  Yeah. So let’s start with the backstory. I just alluded to the fact that you were in prison, but give us the sort of story that got you to a place where you could write a book about life’s hidden prisons.

Shaka Senghor 00:04:31  Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, so I grew up in the city of Detroit. Hence my ever present Detroit Tigers had, represents all things Detroit to me beyond just the the team itself. And, you know, I grew up in a tough household, you know, a household of abuse. And I ran away when I was a kid around 13, 14 years old. I got seduced into the crack cocaine Trade, which is rare. When I think of going back to that narrative, I mean that parable we talked about earlier. You know, that was some of the early beginnings of this, of this negative self-talk. my life outcomes could only end in two ways. But I got seduced into that culture.

Shaka Senghor 00:05:07  And the reason I say seduced is because what happens often is when young children run away from home, you know, there’s adults waiting to prey on them and take advantage of them and kind of bring them into an adult world. And that’s what happened to me. I found myself into this culture, and I dealt with all the horrors that came with that culture. You know, I was beaten nearly to death. I was robbed at gunpoint. My childhood friend was murdered. And about three years in, I was shot multiple times standing on the corner of my block. And 14 months later, I got into a conflict at nearly two in the morning over a drug transaction that I refused to make. That argument escalated, and sadly and unfortunately and regrettably, I pulled out a firearm and fired four shots, which with tragic because the man’s death. I was subsequently arrested, charged with open murder and sentenced to 17 and 40 years in prison. And I ended up serving a total of 19 years, with seven of those years being in solitary confinement.

Shaka Senghor 00:06:06  And it was in that environment that I began my journey of healing and transforming my life, but also my journey as a writer.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:13  So I want to explore some of the things that happened in prison. But you mentioned being an avid reader. I’m curious, did you go into prison as an avid reader, or is that something that developed while you were in there?

Shaka Senghor 00:06:26  Yeah, so I was really fortunate. You know, it’s one of the things I always, you know, tell people was this is, you know, sometimes we hear the story of how people are lucky to be born into a certain area code, or they’re lucky to be born into a certain family, a certain amount of wealth. For me, my luck of the lottery was that I was actually illiterate when I went into prison. The average reading grade level in prison is third grade And when I first went in, I wouldn’t consider myself an avid reader. I knew how to read, but I wasn’t really reading anything when I first went in.

Shaka Senghor 00:06:57  But I was fortunate. I met these incredible mentors who saw something redeemable in me. These were men who were serving life sentences. They didn’t have any ROI for me other than being an asset to the community if and when I got out of prison. But they saw something redeemable in me and they guided me to books. And initially it was just fiction. They was giving me, like all of these fiction books that were kind of about the inner city. They was written by authors like Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines and Chester Himes. And once those books ran out, that’s when they started giving me more serious books to read. You know, Malcolm X’s autobiography, which led to me reading a lot of philosophy and studying theology. And I was just became really, really curious about the world. And I would intermingle those those books with, you know, fiction. I’m still a big lover of fiction. So I would, you know, check out two serious books and three. Fiction books. and, you know, books were really my saving grace.

Shaka Senghor 00:07:56  It’s something I’m a big advocate about literacy, especially in prisons and inner city, because I know the power of the written word to transform and change lives. And not only do I live it, but I’ve also been able to contribute to it.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:09  What are some recent fiction books you’ve loved?

Shaka Senghor 00:08:11  So I’m actually reading a book. I don’t have it with me, but it’s, something about by the River, and it’s written by Wally Lamb. So his most recent book. Oh, Holy mackerel.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:23  I just started that book on audible, like, three days ago. Holy mackerel. Is that a hell of a start to a book? I don’t want to give it away, but. Oh, man. Yeah.

Shaka Senghor 00:08:33  Yes, I mean that it’s it’s so fascinating because it’s hard for me to read when I’m writing. So as soon as I got done with my most recent book, I was like, I’m gonna read some fiction. I haven’t read fiction in a while. Yeah. And so I picked Wally Lamb’s book up, and I started reading that.

Shaka Senghor 00:08:49  And so I’m about two thirds of the way through.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:51  Okay. Yeah. I’m still in the very early part where you’re like, yeah. Oh my God.

Shaka Senghor 00:08:57  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:57  All right. Interestingly, my story is at 24, I was a homeless heroin addict, and I had I had the potential to go to jail for a while. I had a whole bunch of grand felonies stacked up on me. Now, you talk about the fortune of the zip code you were born into. I was given a diversion program as an option, which I think happens because partially because I was middle class and white. But when I got sober, one of the things that you just mentioned that I realized was like one of my biggest assets that was really fortunate was the same thing that I had been taught to read and I liked to read. And that, I mean, that did so much for, I mean, my whole life, really. It is interesting even in like, really difficult stories you can often find, there’s like there’s something in there that leveraged is a point that can be used for better.

Shaka Senghor 00:09:52  Absolutely. And it’s one of the things I love about fiction. I actually, when I started writing the first books I wrote were fiction books, and it was because I was able to create these characters with these other worlds. And, you know, to really get to the truth faster through fiction, which is so interesting when you think about, you know, when we’re actually telling a real life truth. But part of what I’ve discovered is that, you know, we formulate opinions about other people so fast that oftentimes we don’t get to the truth, whereas with characters we don’t often enter with that same level of judgment. But, you know, I love it. You know, I love the craft of writing. I love storytelling and and what it’s done for my life, you know, to spark my imagination and to think beyond those sales that physically held me in place.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:39  So in prison, you mentioned you spent seven years in solitary confinement, which is usually not awarded to prisoners who are on, you know, living their best life. You would know more about it than me. I’m making an assumption. But, you know, I’m curious. Like, when did things start to shift for you? Yeah, because that’s a hard environment for things to shift in.

Shaka Senghor 00:11:03  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, when I, when I think back to my journey, you know, I always I’m, I’m always I’m super transparent and very honest. You know, I didn’t start my prison sentence off with putting my best foot forward. You know, I was angry, I was bitter, I got into tons of trouble. And in fact, I like, you know, I made a declaration that I was never going to follow the rules. And I really honored that, you know, I got, you know, 36 misconduct probably within my first five years. And so, you know, I was getting in trouble all the time. And what it really was, was that I was hurt. You know, I was sad, I was angry, I was disappointed with my life outcomes.

Shaka Senghor 00:11:39  I didn’t want to be responsible. You know, there was no accountability on my behalf. And so I was just self-destructing. And it was really the written word that helped me start to really work my way to a sense of one, you know, I had to be responsible and accountable for the decisions I made in life, and I had to be honest with myself. And that that was a long, arduous journey. And I know we live in a society where we kind of want things to happen very, very quickly. We want people to have their kind of come to Jesus moment or hit rock bottom. I hit rock bottom a lot, you know, and then I would hit rock bottom and realize that, you know, there’s even something up under that rock, you know, and I would figure out a way to find myself down there. And I was constantly picking myself up, you know, until I got to a place where I was like, I was tired of being tired, you know? And I think that that’s when real transformation takes place is when you get tired of living a very toxic, Unhealthy, you know, really sad existence.

Shaka Senghor 00:12:41  And, you know, despite being in prison, I realized that I had been incarcerated before I ever had handcuffs on me. you know, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, you know, I was already incarcerated, but I got free before I ever left that prison cell. And that’s when I realized that the power of transformation in real freedom is an inside job.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:08  Yeah. As somebody who’s traveled in addiction circles for the better part of my adult life. Right. I’ve heard that again and again. I used to take 12 step meetings into prisons, and you would see people in those meetings who had started to work a program of recovery. And they would say that they would say, I am more free now, right? Because addiction is a is you talk about a prison. It’s a I mean, it’s it’s a we all have prisons. That’s like a, that’s like the solitary kind of right. Like, you know, you’re really locked in when, when you’re in there. And that idea that we imprison ourselves and there’s a line in the AA big book that says, essentially we were looking for freedom from self bondage.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:49  That phrase is resonated with me as much as any over the years, because I’ve realized exactly that the degree that I feel free and that I’m free to consciously choose and make choices, is the degree to which I am free of that burden of myself.

Shaka Senghor 00:14:06  Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s, you know, that’s really when you think about the subtitle of of How to Be Free as a Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons, because what I believe is that everybody has a hidden prison, but every prison has a door. And it’s that insight. Work has been so transformative in my life and the life of those I’ve been fortunate to mentor and coach, and it shows up in all kind of ways. You know, you think about addiction oftentimes that is the symptom. It’s not the cause. You get out to the cause, you know, it’s childhood trauma. It’s a disappointing childhood. It’s physical abuse, sexual abuse, like you name it. And all those things lead us down to that path of self imprisonment.

Shaka Senghor 00:14:50  And you know what? I offer our real tools, much like the big book that gives people agency over their lives and gives them an opportunity to really escape those kind of hidden prisons in their lives.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:04  I love that phrase. Everyone has hidden prisons, but every prison has a door. I mean, that’s just a beautiful statement of both compassion and hope. Rolled into one was eight word phrase or so. It’s really good.

Shaka Senghor 00:15:17  Thank you. Thank you so much.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:19  So your book really takes us on a three part journey. It takes us through the first part, which is sort of identifying and breaking the chains. Yeah. Then we talk about finding strength and then we talk about embracing freedom. So let’s kind of start with the chains and you say their grief, anger and shame and maybe we’ll work our way through them. But I want to talk about grief because the chapter on grief is really powerful. You talk about sort of three big losses in there, right? Your stepbrother, your dog, and then sort of your son’s health.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:52  Can you can you walk us through that time period?

Shaka Senghor 00:15:54  Yeah. In July 1991, my younger brother was murdered. and it was devastating to our family. You know, he was he was doing good. He had started to really turn his life around. He had just got his master’s degree. It was really, you know, sort in our life when he was murdered by a friend of his. And it was devastating. You know, I came home as the, you know, as a good son to help support my, my parents. And it was a moment where I saw my mother crying, and I was stricken by this deep sense of guilt because I knew that I had made somebody else’s family feel like that during my younger years, and so it made it nearly impossible for me to grieve. And then shortly after that, a few months later, our puppy was, was ran over by a car after a trainer left the gate open and didn’t want to accept accountability. And it was devastating to, you know, tell my my son that our puppy had been been killed.

Shaka Senghor 00:16:55  And then literally just just last year, you know, my son was rushed to the hospital to the E.R. and we discovered that he had type one diabetes, which completely changed our lives, changed his life. And, you know, grieving his innocence was one of the things that really, you know, as a dad, one that just made me more empathetic toward people who have children with special needs. And it made me sad. You know, I was so sad to see my son struggle with this new orientation around life and and but what what I’ve arrived at with all three of those things, was the power of gratitude to help you get through grief. And you know, when I think about my brother’s murder, I think about what he meant to me as a brother, more so than how his life ended. What was his life before that, what he meant to our family? the laughs, the jokes, the stories we were able to tell and to experience together. And the same thing with our puppy, Andy.

Shaka Senghor 00:17:55  my brother’s name is Sherrod. Our puppy name was Andy. And, you know, there are stories that my son and I and my wife, we talk about these moments when we had this big, old, beautiful football puppy, and he would get the zoomies and knock things over in the house. And you know, how it would send my son into his own hysterics. And so still, to have those memories, you know, are really powerful. And then when my son, the spirit of gratitude is knowing that we’ve raised him to be resilient and we’ve raised him to be a leader, and he’s taken such great control over his own health From what he eats to how he administers, you know, his insulin. And it is profoundly beautiful to watch this kid who was given something that he didn’t ask for. His body turned on him and for him to rise to the occasion and still show up and compete in sports and show up as a leader in school, help prepare his own meals. Like, I have so much gratitude and so much respect for him, which is just an incredible experience as a parent to have.

Shaka Senghor 00:18:59  And so that’s what I’ve learned. You know, the lessons that I share in this book is that, you know, the way I process the grief of my brother was I wrote a letter to the person who murdered him, and I wrote this letter from a position of really understanding that his life had to be tragic and trauma filled for him to kill someone who he thought of as a friend. And that processing of that horrendous moment allowed me to have gratitude for all of our journeys and experiences.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:50  The next chapter is about anger, and I want to use anger to look back on grief, because I think what I’ve heard you saying is that anger is often a way that we stop grief from occurring.

Shaka Senghor 00:20:05  Yeah. You know, when I, when I was really going through this, this grieving process, it was so many different emotions that I realized sat beneath, what we consider grief. Right? There’s the anger of it all, you know, the injustice. And what was really interesting and powerful in my, in my own experience, is that up until the point where I dealt with these two tragedies back to back, I had avoided anything that would cause me to get angry because I was afraid of my own anger.

Shaka Senghor 00:20:36  Given my my background and my experience of being in a very anger filled environment. And then when I was, you know, hit with this devastating news back to back, I realized that the anger that I had in that moment was attached to this deeper anger that I’ve carried throughout most of my life from things that had transpired and that I had never got resolution to. And it was really one of those moments of epiphany when, you know, I never thought of myself as the angry person. You know, I always thought about myself as someone who stood up when I felt an injustice happened, or someone who would defend myself in the midst of conflict, but not as someone who was really angry. And it was when I began to process it. And, you know, as an adult. Post incarceration, where I realized that I’ve had this deep seated anger that went all the way back to my childhood and that that anger kind of undergirded all the things related with grief. And, you know, when even the structure of the book, you know, I kind of, you know, stair stepped it down from like, grief to anger to shame.

Shaka Senghor 00:21:45  Yeah. Because in order to resolve any of these things and get resolution, you got to get to the root of them.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:51  One of the things that I think is interesting in your book, and that you do a good job of, is holding two truths at one time, and one of them is the absolute importance of facing these emotions, allowing ourselves to feel these emotions, not shoving them down, not avoiding them, not running away, but also not letting them run the show.

Shaka Senghor 00:22:16  Absolutely.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:17  And so how for you? I know this is a broad question, but, you know, like, let’s say we got off this call and you got some piece of news that I don’t know. Your book is gonna sell five copies. That’s it. We know that’s not true, but you feel really extremely disappointed, right? Like, how do you work with yourself when you’re having a strong emotion like that? And yet you also know that the answer is, I’ve got four more interviews I need to go do.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:39  I can’t drag this disappointment with me. How do you how do you work with that inside yourself today?

Shaka Senghor 00:22:44  Yeah, that’s a great question. And it’s one that really, you know, is also a contributing factor with the book is that there is the duality of holding disappointment, but also recognizing purpose. And what I always come back to is like whenever there’s adversity, whenever there’s an obstacle, there’s also opportunity. And there’s also like, what if this moment meant to teach me, right? And the reverse of that can be true, right? So say I sell 5 million books this week. you know, there’s an excitement there, but then there’s still a responsibility that I got to do podcasts and interviews and, you know, which can be a hard thing to do when you’ve achieved extreme success in a short amount of time, right? Totally. So there’s always this this moment of this clarifying for me of like, you know, when I’m faced with something that’s really, really tough or really disappointing.

Shaka Senghor 00:23:31  I always start off with being curious about what does this mean to teach me? what am I meant to extract from this moment? I mean, just recently I received some news that was devastating. You know, I put in for a pardon. I’ve been out of prison for 15 years. I’ve accomplished more in 15 years than most people can humanly even think possible. For someone who’s never been to prison, let alone someone who’s actually been in prison. And I put in for a pardon, and I got the news that not only was the pardon denied, but that I have to apply back in two years if I hope to get one. And there was no there wasn’t even no reason that they gave for why I was denied. And so, you know, at that moment, it was it was heartbreaking. It was like, man, this is so disappointing. Like, I’ve worked hard. You know, I’ve done incredible work throughout the world. Global work, policy work, community work, mentorship, you name it, I’ve done it.

Shaka Senghor 00:24:28  And not even with the intention to get the print. I’ve just done it because that’s how I live my life, right? And, you know, to be hit with that news, like right before the book goes public and I gotta come out and I gotta show up and be present. You know, I really sat with it, you know, and I and I accepted that I was angry and I was disappointed. And then I said, okay, well, what is this opportunity meant to teach me? What does it mean to present in my life that allows me to help other people? And so I was like, you know what I want to share with people how devastating this was. And what does it mean for people to get a second chance? And who is deserving of that? Right. So it created an opportunity for me to do more work to really help people who have earned a second chance, and to challenge society on this idea that people should be punished indefinitely and you can’t expect people to achieve contribute.

Shaka Senghor 00:25:24  The access to societies if we’re going to punish them forever. Now. I know that I’m fortunate. I’m lucky I’m a writer. Right. So I’ve been able to create my own opportunities. That’s not most people coming out of prison. No. Right.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:37  No it’s.

Shaka Senghor 00:25:38  Not. I’m saying to people that no matter how much you do in the world, we’re still going to just hold just a little bit of punishment. You know, you may not be in prison. You may not be in a prison cell. But guess what? You can’t use TSA, or you can’t travel to this country, or you can’t get insurance on your home or health insurance, or you can’t take your child to school because you have a felony. So even though you’ve served your time, we’re still going to hold just a little bit of punishment over your head. Yeah. And so if there’s anything to come out of this story, hopefully what comes out of it outside of me being upset about it, is the opportunity for us as a society to decide, hey, do we want people to come back healthy and whole? Or do we not?

Eric Zimmer 00:26:23  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:23  Our policy seems to indicate we don’t. I mean, you know, I mean, right. Like I said, prisons kind of a I didn’t go, but I almost went. And I’ve had a number of friends who’ve done, you know, 20 years that I’ve sort of coached and mentored through their whole time there. And yeah, it’s just a messed up system, you know. Yeah. So you come out and you just don’t have. You just don’t have the same opportunities that normal people have. And I’m not saying you should come out and be like, well, automatically admitted to Harvard. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying though, that we’re setting it up. So it seems to me that people are much more likely to fail.

Shaka Senghor 00:27:00  Absolutely. You know, and that’s that’s the thing. Right. And so I could be angry and I can be trapped in that kind of system and, you know, or I can say to myself, you know what? I’m just going to keep on fighting.

Shaka Senghor 00:27:14  I’m going to keep on pushing forward, and I’m going to do everything I can to lead by example and hopefully change some lives and change some policies in the process. And so, you know, that’s how the hidden prisons show up. One thing I do know is like once you make a declaration of good, you’re going to be confronted with challenges to see how firmly you stand on what you’ve made a declaration to. And so I you know, I accept these things. That’s how I’m able to hold the duality of, you know, success and failure. And and, you know, that’s the tough thing about it all.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:46  Check in for a moment. Is your jaw tight, breath shallow. Are your shoulders creeping up? Those little signals are invitations to slow down and listen. Every Wednesday I send weekly bites of wisdom, a short email that turns the big ideas we explore here in each show things like mental health, anxiety, relationships, purpose into bite size practices you can use the same day it’s free.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:15  It takes about a minute to read and thousands already swear by it. If you’d like extra fuel for the weekend, you also get a weekend podcast playlist. Join us at one youth newsletter. That’s one you feed. And start receiving your next bite of wisdom. All right. Back to the show. Well, thank you for sharing that. I share your disappointment, although I’m not sure on the same level you do. And thank you for giving us a real life example of, you know, working through. Through something with me, I often think, like, I have to start by acknowledging I actually feel something because I can very easily shift into sort of like you said, I can shift into like, well, there’s a lesson in this, or, you know, something good will come out of this, or I can talk myself out of having any emotion if I’m not careful. Right. So I start with like, okay, I actually do feel really angry. I do feel really. Whatever.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:14  Okay. Now what? Right now what? Now what? What do we do with that? We’re going to stick with anger for a second, because near the end of the chapter, you have something I’d like you to expound upon. And you say you often need to ferret out anger from its hiding spots, blind spots and sore spots. Okay, what? What are hiding spots? Blind spots and sore spots?

Shaka Senghor 00:29:35  Yeah. You know, when I think about anger and how it shows up, right? So you’re driving across, you’re driving down the street, someone cuts you off in traffic and you go berserk. Is it really that someone cuts you off in traffic, or is it this deeper thing that you’ve been hiding from, that you’ve been suppressing, and it just creates an opportunity for you to have that outburst? Right. And the blind spots are the things we just don’t see is when your child does something and you go on a tangent or you’re irate and you don’t even see the damage that you’re causing because you’re blinded by, you know, this anger that’s been a part of your life.

Shaka Senghor 00:30:16  The source parts are that one thing that can set you off for some people is traffic, but some people it’s noise. For some people, it’s, you know, someone who is, you know, not great at communication. And what I realized in my life was that there was all these different things, you know, and some of them were attached to shame. You know, what does that thing that as soon as you hear it, you feel it, you know, you feel that thing where you have to talk yourself off the ledge, you know, that’s that hidden piece of anger. and a lot of times we just aren’t aware that that’s really the thing we think is some external factor that’s driving it. But in reality, it’s an internal thing. Right? And I always use the example of, of the road rage or getting cut off in traffic or things are moving too slow because no one is immune to being upset by a poor driver, right? But to go to the extremes of irrational reaction to something that’s just a human error usually speaks to one of those three things.

Shaka Senghor 00:31:21  And sometimes there’s a combination of them. Right? But but most often there’s one of those three things.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:54  I am always fascinated by the road rage phenomenon, and I don’t mean the type where you get out and crack somebodys windshield with a baseball bat. I just mean, how many of us get so bent out of shape, I just I marvel at it and I don’t marvel at it because I don’t do it. I’m just saying, like, I don’t fully understand, like, what is it about that that, like, makes us so, so mad? I’m sure people have studied it. I’m sure there’s probably a good answer that I don’t know, but but I’m always fascinated by it. I also think these hiding spots, blind spots and sore spots are also for me. A good indicator is when the reaction is out of proportion to the thing, right? So like if somebody cuts me off in traffic, I might be mad for a minute and then I’m like, okay, whatever. No big deal, right? Right.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:43  If I’m still mad an hour later.

Speaker 4 00:32:45  Yeah. Or.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:46  You know, there are these things that happen that the response is way out of proportion to what happened. That’s also, for me, always a good sign of like, okay, there’s to use your terms. There’s, there’s a, there’s something hidden here or something that’s particularly sore that I’m not seeing.

Shaka Senghor 00:33:03  Yeah. And it’s the difference between having a bad moment and having a bad day. You know. Yeah. None of us, none of us are immune to somebody endangering our lives. But that’s often that’s a natural reaction, right? It’s not natural to, like, chase that person down and, like, try to run them off the road or even think that that’s, like, the way that you, you know, you handle that. And so I, you know, I always equate those things to like when, when there’s a deeper thing happening in our lives, you know, oftentimes it shows up in ways that it’s clear indicators.

Shaka Senghor 00:33:36  But if you’re not aware that this is a recurring theme, it’s easy to blame those external factors, right? you know, I live in I live in LA, so traffic is always bad. So, you know, if you’re if you’re if you want to be just unaware and move through life that way, it’s the perfect environment to be upset every day. but if you want to get to the truth, you have to realize, like, hey, maybe there’s something deeper here and maybe there’s a sore spot or a blind spot or something hidden, and I ended up discovering it through this, this writing journey. which was really comes up in the chapter on shame that, you know, there were things that was beneath the surface that really was driving a lot of the things that I experienced in my life.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:16  So let’s talk about shame. Shame is something I think a lot of people are much more familiar with than they used to be. Right? Brené Brown has done a lot of work, but it’s just been in the culture.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:27  It’s been talked about. It’s this idea, not that I did something wrong, but there’s something fundamentally wrong with me. I’ve also seen shame to be one of sometimes the hardest things for people to get by or to get over. And I’m curious what what has worked for you?

Shaka Senghor 00:34:47  Yeah, I think journaling probably was the greatest unlock for me when it came to shame. And in the book, you know, and I don’t want to I don’t want to give the whole book away. But I think this is a really important part of me discovering this shame that I was carrying. There was a neighbor who was a trusted friend that my parents trusted with our care, trusted us to be around to hang out with, and he attempted to molest me. And in reaction to him attempting to molest me and me getting out of that situation, and I and I’m so thankful that I had the spiritual wisdom, even as a precocious kid, to know that something wasn’t right. And I was able to to get out of that situation.

Shaka Senghor 00:35:28  I was really angry. I was angry at the sense of betrayal. I was angry that this person who I looked to as a hero, really was a villain. And so in response to that, I burglarized his house and with the attempt to cause him harm. And I was caught. I was arrested, and I was punished by my parents. And my parents were angry and upset and embarrassed. I was embarrassed in front of our neighborhood, our community, you know, people who have trusted me to be the good kid, the honor roll student. You know, they saw me being led out of this man’s house in handcuffs, and that was embarrassing. And so I carried this deep sense of shame about that moment, well into my adulthood. And it was through the process of journaling when I was trying to really uproot this, this sense of like, man, I carry this angry anger. What is it? And I realized that I was really angry at my parents because they had not created space for me to say to them, hey, this man tried to take advantage of me, and this is why I burglarized his house.

Shaka Senghor 00:36:38  this is why I wanted to cause him harm and hurt. And it wasn’t until I was 50 years old I was turning 50, and I was like, you know what? I need to have a conversation with my parents. And, you know, I was so frustrated with, you know, Brené Brown interpretation of shame. And she talked about how you got to tell the story. And I was like, I’m tired of telling these painful stories in my life. But it was exactly what I needed to do. And I was able to talk to my parents. And they were they were present. It was hard, you know, it was really hard for my dad. It was hard for my mother, you know. As a parent, you never want to have that feeling that you’ve entrusted your child into someone’s care that caused them harm. But we were able to sit with it as adults, you know? And so that’s what you know, when you’re talking about getting beneath the anger and you’re talking about grieving things from childhood.

Shaka Senghor 00:37:32  you know, it’s those, those moments like that that creates that hidden prison. because for years I didn’t even make the connection between the anger I carried and the shame that I had for feeling like, man, what was it about me that made this man target me? And what was it about me that made my parents not even be curious enough to know why I did this? I wasn’t I was an honorable student. I was a scholarship student. I was the smart, good kid on the block. You know, I was the kid who cut neighbor’s grass and picked pears from their trees and helped. You know, lady, the older ladies carry their bags to the house, and then, you know, they didn’t think that there was something else there. And that was I was angry. I carried that angry with me for a long time. And that’s what the. That’s what shame does, you know. And the way that it showed up in my work is when I didn’t get a thing right.

Shaka Senghor 00:38:26  and the CEO would come and say, hey, you didn’t execute on that, right? It would bring up those old feelings, you know, and it erased all the wins. All the times I did get it right. It just completely eradicated that. And that’s that hidden prison of shame. That’s what it does. It erases your wins in a way that you’re constantly, you know, trying to navigate life against the tide of your past.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:49  You were in prison for murder, which is something that obviously you’ve had to reckon with?

Speaker 4 00:38:55  Absolutely.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:55  Was that the sort of obvious thing that you needed to reckon with? And so you did earlier and more often than some of these other hidden forms of shame.

Shaka Senghor 00:39:04  I think with being sentenced for murder, there were there are different stages of what? Of how I had to reconcile that. And the first stage was I had to accept responsibility. That I made a horrible decision and that didn’t come easy. You know, you grow up in drug culture. It’s a very violent culture.

Shaka Senghor 00:39:27  there’s constant conflict. There’s constant threats to your life. you know, I had all type of fears and anger attached to when I was shot as a kid. And those things began. Became an excuse for why I made that decision that night. And what I realized is that those things aren’t an excuse. You know, I had to be responsible. I had to be accountable. However, those things did explain how I arrived at that point in my life. And that’s what, you know, took me some years to reconcile. So it was a it was a more drawn out, you know, process, because I wanted to get to the root of, like, why would I make that decision? You know, why would that be the decision? Why didn’t I take the second step after I took the first step to walk away? And it was really unpacking like this deeper stuff and realizing, like, you know, it’s ego, it’s anger, it’s paranoia, it’s PTSD. It’s all these it’s a volatile cocktail.

Shaka Senghor 00:40:29  And yet within that volatile cocktail, the truth is, ultimately, I made the decision and I have to be responsible and I have to be accountable. And that, you know, even though I’ve been given a prison sentence that does not atone me to my community, you know, the real work happened when I got out of prison. You know, I knew getting out of that environment, that the work that I need to do to repair harms in my community could only be done once I was physically free. and so when I got out, I immediately started mentoring other kids because I never, I never want another human being to ever live with this type of, a burden that hangs over your head no matter what. Right. Like I’ve been I’ve been out of prison for 15 years. And I can tell you, in the 15 years since I’ve been out, I have done so many things that have nothing to do with my past. I’ve accomplished and achieved more things than you know I can even write about in one book.

Shaka Senghor 00:41:36  And those things are as much a part of my life as my past is. But people get trapped in my past. You know, they get trapped in a singular moment. Even though there’s been thousands of moments since then that are very compelling. You know, I’m on a Grammy nominated album with Nars. One of the greatest American poets in the world. and he thought enough of my writing of the Craft to ask me to join him on an album. You know, that has nothing to do with the time I served in a cell. Like, my talent is my talent. But, you know, people will always go back to that moment. It doesn’t matter. I can have this conversation in 20 years from now. And people will say in 1991, what happened? and it’s and it’s no fault of theirs. It’s just the facts of like how we think about about life in our culture. And so I would never want a kid to experience that. You know, I would never want another person, another human being in general.

Shaka Senghor 00:42:33  but the reality was, I was I was a kid, I was 19. and so what I, what I did when I got out was like, you know, I’m going to I’m going to work to make sure that I do my part to, to tell the kids how painful it is to live with a regrettable moment over and over and over again. and so, you know, that’s the that’s the tough work, right? That’s the that’s the, you know, and even within this work, I realized, like, I had my own hidden prisons around the work. You know, it’s anger. And I have to talk about your past all the time. It’s it’s sad, you know. and so I had to figure out ways to do it in a way that that honored my humanity while still getting to the truth.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:20  Yeah. I think that is something that many, many people, it’s. It’s a double edged sword doing what you do. And I guess I do to a certain extent, which is examining these old things that happened.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:40  You know, mine is the the homeless heroin addict piece re-examining these things. ideally for, for good, but but some of it is. I’m like, well, I’m the one who keeps stuff, right? I’m the one who keeps dragging this back into, you know, into the light. So I think what we’re sort of talking about here is forgiving yourself. And that is one of in part two of the book, under the finding your strength is forgiveness. And you say something in there that I really like that I think speaks to what you just said. Consider how forgiveness might look in your own journey, not as a single event, but as a series of small choices that gradually lighten your load. What would be your first step? And and I love that idea, because I don’t think that we forgive ourselves or others all at once, generally. Right. Like, my guess is this ground of forgiving yourself for what happened back then. You have been over this ground a lot to get to the degree of freedom that you that you do have around it.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:46  Say more about the process of all of this.

Shaka Senghor 00:44:49  Absolutely. You know, the forgiveness is so powerful in general, right? Like to forgive someone else. To free yourself with a burden from carrying anger, disappointment, sadness, grudges, whatever. Whatever you carry when you refuse to forgive someone. I mean, it’s such a powerful gift to give yourself, to lighten your load and to to let yourself, you know, live your your most free life. It’s it’s even more difficult when it comes to self-forgiveness because we self-flagellation, you know, we we beat up on ourselves over and over and over again and negative self-talk. You know, it’s one of the biggest hidden prisons. You know, you you you’re like, man, I’m not. I’m unworthy. you know, I don’t deserve this. I, you know, I feel bad about myself. I’m not good. You know, it’s all that negative talk that comes with the inability to forgive. And what it looks like over time is that gets lessened.

Shaka Senghor 00:45:45  You know, it’s it’s you know, you started up for me. I started to develop different language for it. You know, the language was that was a singular event at a very particular time in my life. It wasn’t the entirety of who I am. And so over time, it took me finding new language. It took me writing about, you know, the moment it took me being responsible and accountable and saying, hey, you know, I, I made a poor decision. I made a horrible decision, a regrettable decision that can never be unchanged. And I did that as a broken kid. And in that moment, that kid was responsible for that singular act. But it’s not all of who I who I am. And so it was writing it down and being able to own that. There was other parts of me, there’s other ways that I’ve lived my life. There’s other ways that I’ve shown up. It was recognized that I let myself down. You know. And so that that ability to reframe language, not reframe the experience, because the experience is the experience and it’s a real experience that really happened that I’m really responsible for.

Shaka Senghor 00:46:57  But it was reframing the language around the finality of judging this kid for the rest of his life from that one singular act. And that’s the work, right? That’s the where the the mantras come from. That’s where imagining your life without that trauma and then giving yourself that gift, you know, that’s where rewriting the narrative of, of of self, you know, and reimagining what is your life look like when you don’t cause harm and then making a choice to not cause harm? so it’s all those things that really became part of that kind of long, drawn out process. And there was moments where you can get pulled right back into that old feeling. And if you don’t have tools, it’s hard to get out. But fortunately, you know, what the book provides is a toolkit that helps you keep moving forward even when something tries to pull you backwards.

Speaker 4 00:47:51  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:52  I think that idea.

Speaker 4 00:47:54  That you.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:55  Keep talking about, which is.

Speaker 4 00:47:56  That.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:57  On one hand you take responsibility and on the other hand you, you recognize like you didn’t enter that moment in a vacuum.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:04  We are always, I think, to, to a certain degree, a some of the causes and conditions in our lives, both good and bad. You know, it’s not that there’s not choice, but it’s not like a completely free choice. As if the way I talk about this sometimes is like the difference of choice I have now about doing drugs or not is radically different. The amount of choice I had at 25 felt incredible. There was some element of it in there. I had to be the one that went into recovery, right? But the choice I had then and the choice I have now are very, very. They feel very different.

Speaker 4 00:48:40  Absolutely.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:41  And so I think that I’ve seen people and at different points in my, my healing journey, get stuck on one side of that either. It’s all responsibility. I just shouldn’t have done it. I’m a, you know, like, all the running ourselves down or the opposite, which is like, well, you know, of course I did that.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:59  Like, I was just this, you know, I, you know, I was abused. I had all these things happen. And there’s a middle ground of agency in there somewhere. I’ve straddled it a bunch of times and hopefully maybe in in later years I’ve gotten a little bit better at doing it. But you talk about that really eloquently here and in the book a lot.

Shaka Senghor 00:49:18  Yeah. And I think that’s the thing about the world we live in now where we want to have these very clear binary philosophies. Right? Yeah. It’s an either or proposition. And it’s one of the, you know, things when I think about the Robert Frost poem and it’s like the road less travel, right? You can take this path of that path. And the reality is, a lot of times you got to carve a new path. There’s a new ground to be, to pursue, and that is when you can kind of merge these worlds, right? Where, yes, there is some agency there. Yes, there are some responsibility.

Shaka Senghor 00:49:51  And these things really did happen to me, right? I really did get shot. I really got shot and there was no treatment and there was no care, and there was nobody to coach and talk through all these things. And then I also made the choice to carry a gun, and I created a narrative that led to me pulling the trigger. Those things, we can hold space for both of those. Right. And it’s not about letting me off the hook. I’ve served my time right. So I don’t I don’t have a vested interest in not being responsible. I’ve already served the time. but what my real interest is, is telling the truth. And if you can tell, if I can tell the truth, the whole truth, it helps us recognize, hey, if we see somebody else on that path and we see them early enough where we can catch it. Maybe we can prevent, you know, a catastrophe from happening. That’s what agency really looks like. Is ownership over all of the experience? Not just part of it?

Eric Zimmer 00:50:44  That’s very well.

Speaker 4 00:50:45  Said.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:46  Before you check out, pick one insight from today and ask, how will I practice this before bedtime? Need help turning ideas into action? My free weekly Bites of Wisdom email lands every Wednesday with simple practices, reflection and links to former guests who can guide you even on the tough stuff like anxiety, purpose and habit change. Feed your good wolf at one you feed. Net newsletter again one you feed your net newsletter. I want to jump to another part of the book that I think brings this whole messy nature of like, things just aren’t one thing or the other. They are. They are confusing and it’s a story. As a as an Ohioan, I live in Columbus, Ohio, so I am a a, you might imagine.

Speaker 4 00:51:36  A.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:37  A Cavs fan. right. And you tell a story about a Cavs game. The game I know it well everything about it. Tell this story because hey it’s you know I resonated with it just from like, oh my God what a choice kind of thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:52  But it also gets into this fact that there aren’t clear answers about what the right thing is.

Shaka Senghor 00:51:57  Yeah, that’s such a great question. That story is one that I will hold over my son’s head for the rest of his life.

Eric Zimmer 00:52:04  You’re going to be like 90, and you’re going to be like, you are coming here to to change my diaper because. Exactly. Exactly.

Shaka Senghor 00:52:12  Yeah. No, I you know, it was game seven. You know, NBA finals. And I got invited to be courtside at the game. And it was also Father’s Day. And I made a promise to my kid that I would be home from for Father’s Day to spend it with him. And and I made the choice. You know, he was I think he was maybe 4 or 5. And because I gave him my word, I felt this, you know, this immense sense of responsibility to actually fly back because I was already in L.A. I was in L.A., I was living in Detroit, and all I had to do was take an hour flight up north to to Oakland, to watch this game seven, you know, and, against Golden State.

Shaka Senghor 00:52:55  And I opted to honor my word with my son and fly back. And it was one of those moments where I realized that, you know, there’s moments in life where we’re, you know, we’re we’re faced with a decision and we can over index on how we choose to make the decision. And that’s what I did. You know, I felt this immense sense of guilt that if I didn’t show up on Father’s Day, that I was somehow letting my son down. And it wasn’t until years later that I’m like, he wouldn’t know the difference between Sunday and Monday. I could I could have went to watch that game seven. The LeBron block. I could have been a part of history potentially.

Speaker 4 00:53:35  Yeah.

Shaka Senghor 00:53:36  One of the great and I’m a big basketball fan. So yeah, I’m like, I probably would have been on the screen immortalized in every NBA film as the crazy fan that ran on the court. Like it was crazy. Yeah. And I and I, and I for, you know, for went that moment for for my son, you know and so it’s, it’s it’s wisdom.

Shaka Senghor 00:53:56  It’s life lesson learned. You know, and now it’s, you know, now it’s a funny story I can tell him. and hopefully because he’s just now kind of getting in the basketball and I’m like, oh, I can’t wait till you fall in love with it, because I can really hammer home the the point of how much I love you.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:12  What a good dad I am. Well, what really hit me about that story, besides the fact of like you missed this iconic moment, was you talk about the ambivalence that pulled at you not just then, but has continued to write. There’s there are there are two easy narratives there. That one narrative is what a great dad you are. You gave up this huge, important thing to go spend Father’s Day with your son. That’s one narrative. The other narrative is you shouldn’t you shouldn’t give up everything that’s important to you for somebody else. And neither of them are right. Right. Right. The fact that you’ve had ambivalence for so long about this, I think, really hits at this fact.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:58  And I think so many of us fall into this thing at a certain point in life. Many of us were battling between our values and our desires, and that’s a certain type of battle. But but I think the next version of that is when you’re when you’re battling between your values and your values. Right. When you’re battling between love of your son and yet something that is also hugely personally important to you. Those are the ones that I think make life so challenging. Absolutely. Is that there’s no right answer.

Shaka Senghor 00:55:32  That’s the thing about it, right, is that, you know, it’s a great thing, but it’s also the challenging thing of life, right? Is that there are no, no right answers. You know, in some of these things. And the reason that I share them is that we end up beating ourselves up over and over again, even though there is no right answer. And like, that’s that’s the hidden prison part of it is sometimes you have to recognize that, you know, there is there’s no clear and easy path.

Shaka Senghor 00:56:00  And whatever path you choose, you just have to make peace with it. And I did that with my son is yes, I missed the game. And yes, I you know, I could have been in that moment, but also loved the fact that I made the choice because I love being a father. and whether he remembers it or not, I still found a way to have a great evening watching the game and still was able to celebrate, you know, being a dad in a special way. And that’s sometimes that’s what you get from it. You know.

Eric Zimmer 00:56:29  I feel pretty certain you’re gonna help him, remember. Oh, absolutely.

Shaka Senghor 00:56:34  I can’t wait.

Eric Zimmer 00:56:35  Shaka, thank you so much for coming on. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. I really enjoyed the book. And thank you.

Shaka Senghor 00:56:42  Truly an honor and really appreciate it and love everything you’re doing. I mean, it’s such a great title for a podcast.

Eric Zimmer 00:56:49  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.

Eric Zimmer 00:56:57  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.

Prince EA is a modern-day sage who inspires millions with wisdom gleaned from various spiritual traditions and practices. He uses his experiences and challenges with depression to inform and empower his audience. His unique expressions of vulnerability and honesty continue to connect with people worldwide, inspiring them to live a more mindful life. His explorations in spirituality have not only provided him with much-needed solace and also ignited a journey to help others in their quest for peace of mind.

In this episode, you’ll be able to:

• Learn the intricate role of conscious living and making deliberate choices in shaping your life
• Attain practical tools for nurturing mindfulness, guiding you to stay present in each moment
• Learn strategies for managing depression and fostering better mental health
• Explore the intersection of spirituality, meditation, and mindful living, and why it’s a valuable approach in today’s fast-paced world
• Discover how welcoming uncertainty and developing a beginner’s mind can lead to new forms of personal growth

Richard Williams, better known by the stage name Prince Ea, is an American spoken word artist, poet, rapper, filmmaker, and speaker. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from the University of Missouri-St. Louis with a full scholarship and a degree in Anthropology, he initially pursued a career as a hip hop artist. Inspired by artists like Immortal Technique and Canibus. In 2014, Prince Ea shifted his focus from music to creating motivational and inspirational spoken word films and content. His YouTube videos have received over three billion views, and he covers a wide range of topics such as environmentalism, race, work-life balance, and spirituality. Today, when he’s not creating, Prince Ea speaks at conferences and gives lectures to high school and university students nationwide on the topics of self-development, living your passion, and the importance of being motivated and engaged in the classroom.  Prince EA’s work is widely recognized including Oprah’s Super Soul 100 and Forbes 30 Under 30.

Connect with Prince EA: Website | Instagram | Sauna Sessions Podcast

Resources mentioned in this conversation:

Tao Te Cheng

Anthony Demello

David Burns: (Book: Feeling Good)

Stephen Wollenksy

Byron Katie (Interview from 2015)

Eli Jaxon Baer (Interview from 2019)

Timothy Leary

Robert Anton

John Tarrant – (Author of Bring Me The Rhinocerous)

Alfred Korzybski

Adyashanti (Interviews from 2021, 2019-part 1, 2019-part 2; 2017

If you enjoyed this conversation with Prince EA, check out these other episodes:

Gradual Awakening with Dr. Miles Neale

Deconstructing Yourself with Michael Taft

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