Choosing Love in a Divisive World: Empathy as Our Guiding Light with Scott Stabile

In this episode, Scott Stabile explores the idea of choosing love in a divisive world and how empathy can be our guiding light when life feels fractured. Scott shares deeply personal stories — from the tragedy of losing his parents to addiction in his family — and how forgiveness and compassion became the most difficult, yet most healing choices of his life. He talks about the role of awareness, the lies of shame, the futility of chasing quick fixes, and why love isn’t a fleeting feeling but an action we can commit to again and again.

Key Takeaways:

• The transformative power of love as a conscious choice.
• The parable of the two wolves and the importance of feeding the good impulses.
• The role of awareness and compassion in personal growth.
• The impact of shame and the healing power of sharing personal struggles.
• The relationship between forgiveness, empathy, and personal healing.
• The complexities of addiction and its multifaceted nature.
• The distinction between happiness as a feeling versus actions that promote happiness.
• The management of fear through consistent action and self-care.
• The futility of seeking a single solution to emotional struggles.
• The importance of ongoing personal growth and the acceptance of emotional impermanence.

A passionate love advocate and the author of Enough as You Are and Just Love, Scott Stabile is a hilarious and soulful storyteller, unafraid to dive deep into the human experience. Through his books, talks, and workshops, Scott invites us to choose love — even in the darkest of times — and to fully embrace our messy, beautiful selves.

Connect with Scott Stabile: Website | Instagram 

If you enjoyed this conversation with Scott Stabile, check out these other episodes:

How to Be Enough As You Are with Scott Stabile

Omid Safi on Radical Love

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Episode Transcript:

Eric Zimmer 00:01:00  First off, Scott Stabile is one of my favorite people and when he talks about love, he isn’t talking about rainbows and easy feelings. He’s talking about the hardest choice he ever made to forgive the man who murdered his parents.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:13  Not because what happened was forgivable, but because he realized carrying hatred was destroying him. That’s the kind of love Scott writes about in Big Love The Power of Living with a Wide Open Heart. It’s about a love that’s not sentimental but fierce, a love that asks us, even in our darkest moments, to choose connection over separation, empathy over rage. Today we talk about how that kind of love transforms us. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Scott. Welcome to the show.

Scott Stabile 00:01:45  Hey, Eric. Thanks for having me.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:47  Yeah, I’m excited to talk with you. You’ve got a book coming out soon called Big Love The Power of Living with a Wide Open Heart. And we’ll get into that book and talk about it in a moment. But let’s start like we normally do with the parable. There’s a grandfather who’s talking with his grandson, and he says, there are two wolves always inside of us that are 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 00:02:16  And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and looks up at his grandfather, and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you and your life, and in the work that you do.

Scott Stabile 00:02:31  Sure. I love that parable. I’ve shared it at least a couple times in the past few years on my Facebook page, and what I love about it is that it speaks to the power in choice and in energy, and the understanding that the energy we bring to our thoughts and our actions, and really to everything, makes a profound difference in the life that we stand to create for ourselves. I do think it’s really important to remember, though, that we’re all human and as such, we all have all the wolves going on inside of us, from the most loving to the most hateful, and that if we’re open and if we’re, we’re able to rest in awareness and in honesty and certainly in compassion, we stand to learn a lot from the wolves that populate the darker parts of our mind as well.

Scott Stabile 00:03:24  You know, the growth in learning doesn’t just come from those moments that we’re residing in our love and in our compassion and kindness. They come from being present in those times when we’re being raging assholes, you know, and we’re or we’re like complete prisoners to our fear. And how can we be aware in those moments and look at what those moments have to teach us as well? As far as the work I’m doing, applying this to the work that I’m doing in my life right now, I think one of the main things I’m trying to express in one of the main messages I’m I’m working at conveying to people is that, hey, we are all human. It’s okay. You are not alone in your struggle. You are not alone in your misery. You’re not alone in those darker wolves. Many of us are working at being the most loving, the most kind, the most compassionate we can be. But that it takes work and it takes effort and that that if you can show up to this path, in this journey, with as much awareness as possible and as much compassion as possible, that that’s the best way to show up.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:28  Listeners have heard me say this a bunch, but one of the things I really like about the parable is exactly what you said. I think it normalizes like this is going on inside of all of us.

Scott Stabile 00:04:36  Absolutely.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:37  We all have this. And and the way that parable reads, it sort of sounds like it’s a pretty close battle between those two things. And and that to me really normalizes like, oh, okay. That’s, that’s what’s going on with me. That’s to be expected.

Scott Stabile 00:04:49  Absolutely. 100%.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:51  I want to talk about something that you mentioned in the book, and you talk about shame, and I’m just going to read a small line from the book. And then, you know, we can kind of discuss it. You say shame, however, lives and lies. It sees beauty and standards set by magazines and movie stars and tells us we’re disgusting and need to hide ourselves when we don’t meet those standards, which is always you are ugly at taunts. Shame sees success as money and power and toys, and makes us feel little and worthless when we don’t have enough of those things.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:21  Talk to me about your experience with that.

Scott Stabile 00:05:23  Well, my experience with shame is that it thrives on secrecy. You know, if I speak to the greatest shame I felt in my life, it’s it was around my sexuality and growing up gay and feeling like that was certainly the biggest secret I had to keep because of all the shame I felt around it. And of course, the shame we’re feeling around things is because of all the conditioning that we’re seeing, and we’re growing up in a world that tells us we’re supposed to be one way, and if we in any way fluctuate outside of that way, that’s something to feel shame about. But what I’ve learned in my life and learn over and over and over is that the moment we announce those things that we feel shame about, we take the power away from shame. So for me, I mean, in terms of sexuality coming out as gay. The weight that that lifted from my shoulders, truly, it’s it’s indescribable. We certainly all know what it’s like to carry great shame about whatever in our lives.

Scott Stabile 00:06:19  And I think many of us know what it’s like to share that shame with someone we can confide in or trust, or a therapist, or a complete stranger that we’ll never see again. And we all know the the relief by sharing it, because it doesn’t it doesn’t take ownership over us once we’ve announced it. Once it’s out there, it’s like, okay, it’s out there and we see that we can survive announcing it and we see that we’re okay. Does that make sense?

Eric Zimmer 00:06:47  Absolutely. How old were you when you came out?

Scott Stabile 00:06:50  I mean, in varying degrees, I’d say in my early 20s. I moved to San Francisco after college in Michigan at 22, and started to come out to close friends around that time. To my family, to my three sisters specifically, which was essentially coming out to the whole family. That was when I was 27. You know, so not not especially young. Especially nowadays, it seems like thankfully, you know, LGBT kids are coming out sooner and at a younger age.

Scott Stabile 00:07:22  but but even then, just knowing that that and in shame, it’s not just about my sexuality. I mean, I write about in the book how I spent my entire college years under a baseball cap because I felt so ashamed of losing my hair at such a young age, and I felt like that was going to be something people were going to make fun of me for or see as a weakness. And so I spent so much energy on concealing the fact that I was balding. I mean, it was exhausting instead of just lifting that cap off. Often. And even then, in my senior year in college, when I started to take the cap off a little more, and certainly moving to San Francisco, and in part because the shaved head look was becoming cool, I can’t pretend that I had suddenly become enlightened, and that’s why I was showing off my bald head. But it was such a relief not to have to hide beneath the cap. It was such a relief just to be out there with the truth of who I am, you know? And that’s really a message I also I write about in the book and share a lot with my Facebook community, is it’s okay to be who you are.

Scott Stabile 00:08:23  It’s not just okay. What you do for others by being who you are is, is profoundly beneficial, because you create an opening and a doorway for others to see like, hey, maybe if he can be who he is, I can be who I am too. And that’s okay.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:38  Yeah, I think that is one of the big benefits of being yourself is how it can help other people. You talk about how you think as you’ve gotten older. You have a lot more nonchalance about these sort of things about, you know, going bald or how we look and all that and that. That age has a lot to do with it. And I think about that too. I’m like, well, yeah, I think it’s, you know, I could, could I teach a 25 year old to have that same level of nonchalance that I do, but you also make a point that it’s not just age, but that it was a time of working through these issues. So it wasn’t just that you got older, it was that you got older and you worked on these things at the same time.

Scott Stabile 00:09:18  Absolutely. I mean, I think that really in my experience, the only way we really grow is when we start to bring more awareness to our lives. The whole point of big love, really, is to encourage people to consider making more and more choices in their lives from the place of love. Because I feel like love is the base note for everything that’s that’s most powerfully good in this world. Like kindness, like compassion, like forgiveness, like authenticity with which ultimately just represents self-love. love. And so the more aware we become in our lives and awareness is hard work, it means instead of just being a hateful person. Checking in with yourself in those moments of hatred and looking at what’s really going on for you. You know, why am I provoked in this moment? Because it’s never really about the other person. It’s never really rooted in the situation at hand as much as what’s going on inside of me. But just being present in, in that awareness of like, hey, this is what’s going on for me right now.

Scott Stabile 00:10:21  I’m feeling really envious. I’m feeling really shameful. How can I take ownership of those emotions? How can I take ownership of those thoughts? And and when we do take ownership, we don’t necessarily shift in, in that moment and suddenly become this enlightened, wise, loving human being. But every moment we take ownership and ask ourselves the question like, what does love invite me to do in this moment? How does love invite me to respond to this very provocative situation. I believe that we encourage greater growth.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:57  So let’s talk about that love. I it almost sounds like you’re talking about love as an action or an ideal, and less about love as a feeling.

Scott Stabile 00:11:06  I’m talking about love as an energy. And in my understanding of love as this underlying energy that is beneath all the noise of of all the negative wolves, all the darker wolves, you know, all the fear, all the rage, all the blame. underneath all of that is love. And that when we are present in that space, I see love as a very, very clear energy as well, so that when we’re coming from a place of love, we’re being guided in a way that is much more clear and is much more aligned with truth than when we’re being guided from our fears, when we’re being guided from that ego place, you know, because if you and I are fighting right now, my ego is going to tell me to go to battle with you.

Scott Stabile 00:11:54  My ego is going to tell me to make you wrong and make me right. But that’s surface. The love that resides beneath that ego is going to invite me to find connection between us. It’s going to invite me to listen with openness to your point of view, instead of just needing to be right about my point of view, and that that’s just one example of love and action in our communications. But when we bring the energy of love to everything that we’re doing, it transforms. You know, that’s been my experience. All the stories in Big Love were all moments in my life, some really casual moments about being on an airplane and watching a flight attendant act from a place of deep empathy with a grieving passenger, to much heavier moments in my life of losing my parents and them being murdered when I was 14 years old. But in reflecting on all of it. Recognizing that it’s when I can approach my life with as much love as possible. I feel the best. I feel the most hole.

Scott Stabile 00:12:55  I feel the most grounded, the most centered. And I also recognize that the energy I have to offer offer others is the most pure. If that makes sense.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:05  It intrigues me because I’m not a person who I don’t know that I would say I feel love in this, like very effusive sense. And yet if I look at the actions that I take in, the way that I behave, looking at it from the perspective you’re describing, I see it there underlying so many things. And that’s kind of why I was asking about, you know, I’ve certainly heard the phrase, you know, love is an action more than it’s just a feeling.

Scott Stabile 00:13:33  Absolutely. And and I think that love in action is more often than not, very hard work. Right. You know, when we when we look at the world around us and all the rage and anger and war and violence, Silence. those are the easier choices. I mean, again, if you. I don’t know why I keep coming to this example of you and I fighting.

Scott Stabile 00:13:53  You’re a very nice person. I don’t expect we’re going to go to battle. But if it’s like it’s very easy to get pissed off at someone who makes you angry, that’s a very easy choice. It’s very easy to go to a place of unforgiveness with somebody who betrays you. Yeah, these are all easy choices. And these these tend to be the choices that many of us are making more often than not, because our minds go there. So naturally, it’s when we choose to act from love, no matter what is going on, no matter what is presented to us, that is the most difficult choice. And that’s the choice. I believe that we’re all being called to make more than ever in this world, where we are inundated with separation and war and violence and bigotry and all the the list goes on and on and on and on. You know, we are called to love more than ever.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:43  I agree, and that makes a lot of sense to me. That idea that it’s that it can be very hard, that it doesn’t feel like this.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:50  You know, la la la. Feeling right can be very difficult. And I think about, you know, my son is going to college next week. And so it’s kind of that’s kind of a big deal, right. but I look back on being a father to him. And I think a lot of the times that I acted maybe with the most love, they weren’t really that pleasant or enjoyable. No, it was it was challenging.

Scott Stabile 00:15:10  Absolutely. If your kid is running into the middle of traffic and you’re yanking him out of traffic and maybe screaming in that moment, that is a reflection of love for your child, too. I mean, that’s the thing, I think where there is this misguided notion we have that love is all hearts and rainbows and this gentle almost. I think some people see it as a weak choice, but I don’t see it as that at all. I see it almost always as the most difficult choice we can make in the moment, and the most powerful choice we can make in the moment.

Scott Stabile 00:15:44  We are not going to heal our country and our relationships and our planet through hatred. You know, it’s just not going to happen. It’s just not how anything happens. We’re only we only stand to heal it through love.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:56  Yep. And that is really a strong saying at this point, because I remain pretty flummoxed by the dialogue in this country. And here I go again on the podcast. I shouldn’t do it, but here you go. because every time I go in this direction, I end up getting myself in trouble with somebody. But my point is, really, I’ve been told before, like, I’m excusing people who are, you know, bigots or racists, and that’s not at all the intention. But to your point, I’ve just found like, until we can have some way of communicating with each other in some sense of love, this doesn’t get better. And it’s not like I came up with that idea, right? Martin Luther King and Gandhi, all the great teachers, you know, Jesus, they’ve all taught this idea, you know, hate can’t conquer hate.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:43  And how do we fight? What? In a lot of cases, looks like it’s monstrous in our world right now without being monstrous ourselves.

Scott Stabile 00:16:49  Absolutely. It’s not easy. And I think for me and I have not mastered this, I will say that first and foremost, when politics becomes a discussion, I have gotten better. A lot of the time. But I’m still not this all peaceful, all loving person when it comes to talking about the state of this country. But I will say the truest path to that place is a path of empathy, which again, I think is one of love’s mandates. It’s really looking at whomever you are speaking with, whoever is sitting in front of you, whatever they’re saying, and doing my best to connect with their humanity, doing my best to look at what may have transpired in there in his or her life to this point, to get that person to the place of thought where they are right now. You know, my parents were murdered when I was 14 years old, and I didn’t at the time even consider the idea of forgiveness for their killer.

Scott Stabile 00:17:42  I was just like, trying to survive that moment in those years and, like, make sense of of my life in that moment. Right. But at some point in my 20s, I recognized whenever I did think of their killer. It was with rage, it was with hatred. It was with this unforgiving attitude and this belief that what he did was unforgivable. And recognizing the toll that that took on me as a human being, because we all know what it feels like to feel hatred. That toxic, toxic feeling of believing that something is unforgivable. It wears on us. It feels awful. And I knew on some level that to feel more whole and to feel better in my life, I was going to have to open to the possibility of forgiving this man. And I didn’t know how. But I knew that by becoming committed to that possibility, there was a chance I would find my way there. In reflecting on how I found my way there, it was only when I started to become empathetic to his experience, it was only when I allowed myself to consider the very true reality that nobody operating from any place of self-worth or self-love, or of being seen in this world, could walk into a market and kill other people.

Scott Stabile 00:19:01  It’s just not possible. So what could that man have been going through in his life? How horrible must have his life have been? And I understood that. I hope I can never relate to the place of acting in violence towards someone. That’s not something I connect with in myself is the the place of actually murdering someone. But I certainly can connect to such rage that I’ve wished people would die horrible deaths. You know, I can connect to not being seen. I can connect to feeling like a complete outsider. I can connect to all of those things that I suspect he was also experiencing on some level in his life And from that place of empathy and connection. I didn’t just someday say, okay, I forgive him, but what I found was that when I would think about my parents murderer, it it started to shift and suddenly it wasn’t with rage. Suddenly it was with compassion, you know, which walks hand in hand with empathy. And ultimately it was with forgiveness. And when I think of him now, that’s what comes up for me.

Scott Stabile 00:20:08  It’s the recognition, like he is a human being who made some horrible choices in his life, but he’s a human being, like all of us, struggling to make sense of this extremely messed up and unpredictable reality and doing whatever we can to do so.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:40  I think there’s a couple key things that you just said there. One is it’s not about forgiving an action or saying that a certain behavior or action is okay, that’s not what it’s about. It’s about that empathy, particularly if we’re talking about politics again and trying to change people’s mind. It seems like that’s the only possible approach that will work just on a strictly pragmatic sense. Nobody suddenly gets screamed at about what a terrible person they are and suddenly goes, oh, I guess you’re right. Let me change my view. It doesn’t work. And then the other thing you said there about forgiveness is really that sense of you realized what it was doing to you. And I think for me, you know, I’m a recovering alcoholic and addict. And one of the maxims in a 12 step program is that resentment is the surest way back to a drink or drug, and so that you having them is extraordinarily dangerous.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:29  And so I think I was led to the path of learning to forgive people. I think it comes to me maybe a little bit more naturally than other people. But I think when I really understood the harm it was doing me. I got to the point that you did, which was I’m not there. I’m not able to do it, but I’m going to set that as a goal or an intention. That’s where I’d like to get.

Scott Stabile 00:21:47  Absolutely.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:48  You know, if for no other reason, then I don’t want to suffer.

Scott Stabile 00:21:51  Absolutely. And look, I think if that’s the reason that someone goes to forgiveness, that’s beautiful. I think however we get there, the end result is the same. And that’s forgiveness. And that can only serve us and all involved. You know, and I think what you said right then was important. And also one thing I I’ve seen in my life over and over because people ask me all the time, well, how did you become so loving and how do you forgive? And these are difficult questions to answer because there’s no, for me, really specific one note answer.

Scott Stabile 00:22:24  If you do this and this and this, you will forgive everyone in your life. But the only thing I know for sure is that it takes a commitment and it takes a dedication, because I am deeply committed to being as loving as possible as often as possible. So I know that when I fall off the love train and act like an asshole and do whatever else I’m doing, that I’m going to bring myself back on the love train, because that’s my greatest commitment in this life. And it’s the same with forgiveness. You can read ten books on forgiveness, but if you are not deeply committed to being a forgiving person and forgiving that person or action, you’ll never find it. It doesn’t happen. You know we need that intention.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:07  I want to touch on something you alluded to there when we were talking about, hey, if you give forgiveness out of your own motive to feel better, that’s okay. And you talk about this idea that you say it’s talking about self-care, and you say most selflessness comes with some selfishness wrapped into it.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:24  We almost always consider ourselves and the choices we make, even when we think we’re only considering others. And I love that idea because it it allows us to have less than pure motives all the time. And I actually think that’s almost the only way we can be.

Scott Stabile 00:23:40  Yeah, well, I definitely think it feels good to give to others. This is the other thing. I don’t try to present myself as this selfless, like, all good do gooder, you know what I mean at all? Because if being loving didn’t feel so good, I would not make it a priority in my life. Like, for me, being a kind, compassionate and loving person as often as possible feels really great, you know? And so that’s where the selfishness comes into selfish behavior, because when we’re being selfless, quote unquote, it, we feel good when we’re helping out others in our lives. It feels good to us as well. And that’s what I was trying to say there, because selfishness gets a bad rap.

Scott Stabile 00:24:19  And self-care, I think, sometimes gets a bad rap as being just totally selfless. But what I’ve, what I’ve learned in my life is that when we’re taking care of ourselves, when we’re really taking care of ourselves and looking after ourselves, we tend to be much more caring in the way that we treat others as well.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:38  Hey, friend, before we dive back in, I want you to take a second and think about what you’ve been listening to. What’s one thing that really landed, and what’s one tiny action you could take today to live it out? Those little moments of reflection. That’s exactly why I started good wolf reminders. Short, free text messages that land in your phone once or twice a week. Nearly 5000 people already get them and say the quick bursts of insight help them shift out of autopilot and stay intentional in their lives. If that sounds like your kind of thing, head to one newsfeed and sign up. It’s free. No spam, and easy to opt out of any time.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:20  Again, that’s one you feed. Tiny nudges, real change. All right, back to the show. I wanted to have a brief discussion about addiction because you said some things that were were very interesting. So your brother died from addiction and you kind of went on and, and said that you used to believe that the drugs were more powerful than your brother, and you don’t believe that to be the case anymore because you see other people recover. And I’m just interested. This is the discussion that fascinates me as a recovering addict and alcoholic. I think it is so confusing to me how some people get sober and how some don’t, or why some do and why some don’t. You reference that as a as a topic. So I thought it might be interesting to talk about for a minute.

Scott Stabile 00:26:08  Yeah. I mean, I certainly don’t have the answer as to why some people get sober and why some don’t. If the intention in both those people is to get sober. my trajectory around how I approached addiction growing up with a brother who was addicted to heroin was, as a child, not understanding in any way why he was addicted to heroin and just thinking he was this terrible person, bringing a lot of grief to our family.

Scott Stabile 00:26:30  And why didn’t he just stop? When I went to college and learn more about addiction and the notion that addiction is a disease. My thought process shifted to this idea that my brother had no control over his act. I went from one extreme to the other that he had complete control to. He had no control, and that he wasn’t in any way to blame or responsible for anything that he was doing. And then I shifted again. And what I view addiction now, where I view it, is that there is choice in sobriety, and that is a really important component. And if addiction were only an incurable disease, which is how it is sometimes outlined, then how are people getting sober? It doesn’t make sense to me to view addiction as only an incurable disease. I absolutely believe that drugs and alcohol can be addictive, but my my experience, knowing a lot of of people who are addicted and who are in their addiction, who are in the recovery, is that there’s more at play.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:31  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:31  No, I think there definitely is. I think it’s almost that disease term has always bothered me, even when I was early in recovery. And the idea of it makes sense, right? Because on some level, back to that same idea, right? Like, if I just think that I’m this hopelessly awful person, I’m not going to get better. I need something to to help me recognize that, like, this just isn’t all like me just making bad decisions. There’s more going on there than that. And at the same time, you’re right. There is some element of choice to it. And, you know, we had a we had a guy on Gabor mate who’s an addiction doctor and he, you know, talks about and you mentioned it in the book how strongly childhood trauma is linked to addiction. And I think that, you know, I think of addiction more kind of like I think of depression is sort of like a syndrome. There’s so much going on that it’s so hard for there to be easy answers to that.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:22  It’s like, why are you depressed? Well, there could be 50 different things happening there. Same thing with addiction. There could be so many different causes, childhood trauma, or you don’t have enough dopamine in your brain naturally. I mean, there’s all these different things and and so I think that that to think that what helps one person will always help the other person or that one person has choice and can get out of it, and another person who doesn’t, they just made a bad decision. It’s just to me, it’s so much more confusing and confounding than absolutely. And I think that’s partially why it’s so hard to solve either of those things, because I don’t think you can go like, here’s the cause, you know, like the common cold. You all right? There’s that virus that did.

Scott Stabile 00:29:00  Absolutely.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:01  This stuff is so complex.

Scott Stabile 00:29:03  Absolutely. And I don’t think you can also say, here’s the solution matter of factly. And I think the other thing I really believe, Eric, is we live in a wholly addictive society.

Scott Stabile 00:29:12  I think that whether you consider yourself someone who is addicted to a substance or to gambling or to shopping, and you’re aware of it or not, like we are all riding the fine line of addiction all the time. And what I write about in the book when I talk about addiction is really in terms of of love and kindness and growth and how we’re serving ourselves is how can we go about creating lives that are more fulfilling so that we don’t feel the need to escape them? Because ultimately, all we’re doing in addiction is numbing ourselves from feeling the reality of our lives. And we all do that. Whether you count yourself as an addict or not. We’re all doing that constantly. So how can we make choices in our lives, and how can we create the kind of lives that we don’t want to escape from? And I really believe that that is a necessary component of living a sober life.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:08  Yeah, I agree. I used to think there was a line you stepped over that made you an addict, and I think it’s much more of a continuum than I ever thought before.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:15  And and I agree with you. Although I would modify what you say a little bit, I don’t think it’s always to numb something that’s happening for me. And I think some people it’s to actually awaken something that you have self numbed for so long.

Scott Stabile 00:30:29  Oh, interesting.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:30  You know, It’s to feel alive. Yeah. It’s not like I’m feeling pain. I’m feeling dead inside. And this brings me alive. It’s. It’s a variation on the same thing.

Scott Stabile 00:30:38  Yes.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:39  Yeah, but.

Scott Stabile 00:30:40  I like that distinction. Yeah. I mean, it’s an escape. It’s a it’s an escape from feeling or from not feeling or, you know, but I like how you put it as well.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:07  Let’s talk about happiness. You used to say, I believe happiness is a choice. We can choose to be happy. And you don’t believe that anymore. Talk to me about that change.

Scott Stabile 00:31:17  You know, I think I did a happiness challenge on my Facebook page. I’ve got a Facebook page with a big community there.

Scott Stabile 00:31:23  And last February, I announced a happiness challenge. And the intention was for every day of February. We were. Whoever wanted to be involved in the challenge would choose one thing each day that they would do that, that stood the chance of serving their happiness. So I chose to do yoga for at least an hour every day, and I didn’t launch the challenge, believing that we could choose happiness anymore because I’d already come to the understanding that happiness is not a choice. But what I’ve come to realize is that, you know, we can’t choose our feelings. That’s the bottom line. We can’t choose to be happy simply by saying, I want to be happy right now. If you’re if your partner just left you, your wife just left you, you can’t scream. I’m going to be happy right now. You’re going to still be miserable. And what I’ve seen in this, this self-help world, in the world of personal development and spirituality, is this mantra is said over and over and over. And it is.

Scott Stabile 00:32:18  Happiness is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Choose happiness. What I came to discover was like, wait a minute. If happiness is a choice, wouldn’t we all be happy all the time? Right? And if happiness is a choice, why am I so unhappy so, so often? And it got me feeling worse about myself because I believed I fell into that belief that I could choose my happiness. And yet I’m living in a reality where I’m not happy so much of the time. So then I was wrong. What’s wrong with me? And it adds to this weight of shame, honestly. And what we can choose though, and I think this is really important and it’s it’s aligned with the wolf parable, is we can absolutely choose actions that stand to create happiness in our lives. And the example I use in the book is I love playing tennis. So I know that by choosing to play tennis, I stand to create happiness in my life. I’m not choosing happiness, I’m choosing to play tennis.

Scott Stabile 00:33:10  And there’s a difference. So we can absolutely choose actions. If we become more aware of what makes me happy, okay, it makes me happy to be outside. Why don’t I get outside more often? And then if I’m finding, hey, I’m feeling a little happier more often, that’s no coincidence. It’s because of the choices we’re making.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:28  I couldn’t agree with you more. I mean, that very much mirrors my opinion and my experience, and it also mirrors what a lot of the positive psychology people will say, which is, you know, a lot of us have sort of a happiness set point. Some of that is just built into you, and yet you have the ability to move that to a certain degree. And and you have the ability to do that by the actions you’ve taken. And I think that’s totally true, I think, to flip happiness on its side. I talk about depression a lot. I think about with depression. Like once I’m in depression, there’s not a whole lot I can really I’m not going to think my way out of that.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:01  Sure. But I do believe that there are things I can be doing in my life that make it much more likely I’m not going to slide into that depression and that I have some control over. And I think happiness is the same way. I can’t choose to be happy, but I can choose to take actions that lead in that direction. I can choose to try and work with thoughts that I know get in the way of that.

Scott Stabile 00:34:23  Absolutely.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:23  I’ve always thought about like emotions is like like you said, you can’t change him. But I’ve always thought by working with action and thoughts, that those can act as levers that can help move the emotion, even though I can’t control it directly.

Scott Stabile 00:34:38  I love the way you put that. I agree, absolutely, and I think it’s so important to do it. It’s so important to consider our self-care. It’s so important to be making choices in our lives that stand to create more fulfillment, more happiness in our lives, you know, to to make that a habit.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:55  Yep. So while we’re on the topic of taking action, let’s talk about You’ve Got a line and I love this line. You say action helps assuage fear.

Scott Stabile 00:35:04  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:05  Talk about writing the book for you because that’s your example that you use.

Scott Stabile 00:35:09  Well, writing the book was was a scary, scary thing for me. I mean, when the when I got the book deal, I mean, there’s this immediate elation, of course you got a book deal. That elation probably lasted maybe a half an hour. And then the reality of, oh my God, I have to write this book now. You know, like, now, this this is very, very real. And seeing, you know, here’s I’d like to say one thing about fear in general is just that I don’t believe fear is something we conquer. I don’t believe that we ever become fearless. It’s just not how life works. I believe that what we can do, and what I’ve started to do in my life that’s made a profound difference, is to have a different conversation with my fear, to recognize I’ve always seen my fear as a bully, you know, as this abusive tyrant that was keeping me from living my best life possible.

Scott Stabile 00:35:57  And I. I cowered to it so often. My fear told me, don’t ask this person out on a date or don’t submit your book to this. And and I would listen to it for fear of rejection or fear of the unknown or fear of change, whatever our fears are. And now I realize that my fear is just trying to protect me. That’s its job, but that it’s not very smart. You know it like it’s trying to protect me from submitting a book proposal with the same fervor that it would protect me from running into a building on fire. You know, it doesn’t. It doesn’t have emotional intelligence, and it’s not distinguishing between those things that are scary. It’s just saying, don’t do it. Don’t do it. This is going to be uncomfortable. So the example I use with writing the book was that, okay, I got the book deal. Okay. I’m really afraid. And every day I would show up to work on the book. My fear was there with me, but I was showing up to write the book, and I was working on whatever chapter I was working on and what the message that I was giving.

Scott Stabile 00:36:59  My fear was like, yes, I hear you, yes, I’m afraid, and I can still move forward despite these fears that I’m feeling. And so after so many days of showing up to write the book, your fear is going to start to take the hint that when I said action assuaged fear, when you begin to act and when you show up for your life, your fear is going to take the hint and it’s going to take the passenger seat instead of driving the car. And that’s been my experience time and time and time again. It’s not that the fear goes away, but it doesn’t command our actions. We can still act.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:33  I find that a good way to deal with anxiety. Too often I get this generalized anxiety and I’ve got all these different things going on. So I’ll just sit down and write down everything that I can think of that I’m anxious or nervous about, and then write down like one action I could take for each of those things that would be any sort of moving forward.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:53  And then from there, I try and do one of those things, and instantly I feel better.

Scott Stabile 00:37:56  That makes 100% sense with anxiety as well. And just the idea, because underlying it all is energy. Whether the conscious action you want to take is a five minute walk or a half an hour walk, that’s the action. But along with that action is the energy that you are sharing to life, to God, to the trees. Whatever you believe in that is saying I matter enough to myself in this moment to take care of myself in this way, and that energy is powerful.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:25  So we’re near the end of time. I want to talk about one other thing that the show talks about often. And I love the way you say this, so I’m just going to read it. You say most of us want to believe in cure alls, but they don’t exist. I’ve spent much of my adult life searching for the one book, superfood or habit to eradicate all my emotion or physical problems. If I just do yoga, I’ll discover inner peace.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:46  If I drink more water, I’ll be energetic all the time. If I sleep eight hours a night, I’ll be less moody. Okay, that one works, but I’m still plenty moody. Healthy habits will always service, but they don’t guarantee happiness either.

Scott Stabile 00:38:59  Yeah, that’s just the hard truth.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:01  I know it’s such.

Speaker 4 00:39:02  A I know what I mean.

Scott Stabile 00:39:03  It’s like I’ve become more okay with that. Look, our emotions are fleeting. We’re going to be happy, and then the happiness is going to go away, and then it’s going to come back if we’re lucky and it’s going to go away. The same with sadness, you know, the same with all the emotions. They’re fleeting, you know. Still, we can still we always serve ourselves Selves by considering the choices that we’re making in our lives that stand to create the most meaning and the most joy. We always serve ourselves. If in our minds, as you know, our minds go much more naturally to the negative. Our minds go much more naturally to self-abuse, to, to negativity, to looking at all the downsides of a situation and what I try to remind myself.

Scott Stabile 00:39:44  And I don’t always succeed, but I’m I’m better at it is look, if I’m going to at least spend 50% of the time considering the upsides of a given situation, you know, at least spend 50% of the time putting energy toward positivity. not in a phony like Pollyanna. Everything’s all great spiritual bypassing sort of way, but just with this understanding that it’s not real to be negative all the time either. That’s not why we’re here. That’s just as much bullshit as pretending that we’re happy and positive all the time.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:18  As we wrap up. Take one thing from today and ask yourself, how will I practice this before the end of the day? For another gentle nudge, join good Wolf Reminders text list. It’s a short message or two each week, packed with guest wisdom and a soft push towards action. Nearly 5000 listeners are already loving it. Sign up free at once. No noise, no spam. Just steady encouragement to feed your good wolf. I agree with everything you said, and I love that idea of.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:52  I think for me, when I stopped thinking that the next book or the next thing would do it, like I’d find this ultimate happiness, somehow I became a lot more comfortable with the fact that, well, all right, I guess, like you said, day in and day out, I’m just going to have to make these choices. I’m going to have to I’m going to have to keep doing this work. And I think as long as I thought that I was going to find it somewhere in the magic bullet, I resented or didn’t want to do the work or didn’t do the work and and accepting that like, okay. Unfortunately that’s not going to happen, right? Made it easier for me just to keep doing it.

Scott Stabile 00:41:24  Absolutely. It comes down to the hard work we’re doing on our own growth. I mean, that’s how we serve ourselves. The greatest, you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:31  Yeah. Excellent. Well, Scott, thank you so much for coming on. We’ll have links to where people can get your book in the show, notes, links to your Facebook group and all that.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:40  Thank you so much for taking the time. I’ve really enjoyed.

Scott Stabile 00:41:42  It. Thank you so much. Okay.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:43  Bye bye. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.