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

Cyndie Spiegel 00:00:00  You don’t want to sit in front of the TV all the time, because then you wouldn’t be living in the world. But sometimes you need to get out of your head and watch Netflix or whatever it is that somebody’s watching these days, and that’s okay. And this idea that we’re all looking for a prescription to do life right is irrational. There is no one way to do this.

Chris Forbes 00:00:27  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 00:01:13  What if Joy didn’t have to wait until things got better? What if it could live alongside the grief, the loss, the chaos? My guest today, Cindy Spiegel, knows this intimately. In a single year, she lost her nephew to violence, her mother at a heartbreak, nearly lost her brother and was diagnosed with breast cancer herself. And in that same stretch of joy, the idea of micro joys was born. Her new book, Micro Joys Finding Hope, especially when Life is Not okay, reminds us that healing doesn’t always come in grand transformations. Sometimes it’s about paying attention just a little bit at a time. One moment of beauty, one breath of stillness. One small act of noticing micro joys align perfectly with this show’s philosophy that real change comes little by little, and sometimes that’s the only way it comes. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Cindy. Welcome to the show.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:02:14  Hi. Thank you for having me.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:16  We are going to be discussing your book, which is called Micro Joys: Finding Hope, Especially WhenLife is Not Okay.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:23  But before we get into that, we’ll start in the way we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life 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. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:03:02  Yeah, I love that parable. And I’ll tell you what it means to me, you know, and it’s simplest form. It’s where we focus. Our energy grows, you know, where we focus our attention and our intention is what flourishes. And we all have the ability to see the same thing very, very differently.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:03:20  And it’s up to us to decide what we want to walk away with, what we want to focus on and what we want to act on. And I think it’s a it’s a brilliant parable, and there’s a reason that it’s so popular.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:29  Yeah. And it aligns very much with the core idea of micro joys, which is even in the midst of difficulty, we have a choice about where some of our attention goes. That’s right. Before we jump into micro joys, though, there’s a big part of this book which is really about the challenging circumstances you found yourself in. So I’m wondering if you could just kind of walk us through, set the stage for kind of what happened and, and where you were and what was going on as this book and these ideas emerged.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:04:05  Sure. Sure, sure. So in 2020, most of us will remember 2020 for different reasons, but all for the pandemic. in 2020, my husband and I were living in Brooklyn, New York. I was speaking on stages.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:04:18  This is at the very beginning of 2020. in front of audiences of thousands within obviously, two months into the year, three months into the year, New York City shut down, the world shut down for Covid 19. for the first few months of the pandemic, my husband and I did what everybody on Instagram told us to do. We baked banana bread, practice yoga, did all the things. and then May of 2020 is when everything really started to shift. And that’s where Micro Joys started to become. on May 29th of 2020, my 32 year old nephew was murdered walking to a friend’s house and a random act of violence. Within three months of my nephew’s passing, my beloved mother, Mama Shelley, passed away unexpectedly. I will always believe it was, at least in part, due to a broken heart within my mom’s passing. And within a month of my mom’s passing, my brother had a stroke and went into cardiac arrest, where he spent two and a half months in the cardiac ICU, again in the middle of a pandemic.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:05:23  By the grace of God, two and a half months later, he made it home to start recovering and healing. And within a month of his coming home, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And all of that happened within a ten month period of time.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:39  Yeah. You also mentioned a lifelong friendship ended, which, boy, that is a big deal. I mean, we might we might tag that on as an afterthought, but some of my lifelong friendships ended. That would be a really, really difficult thing.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:05:53  Yeah. Yeah. That was another loss, you know, and it’s a loss we don’t talk a lot about, which is losing adult friendships. You know, to this day we have not had a conversation. I’m not entirely sure what happened. but all of that happened at the same time. And so I felt like a completely different person than I had ever been up until that point.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:12  Yeah. You mentioned you were speaking on stages and that you were out there in the world.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:18  And I assume this is sort of based on your really best selling book called A Year of Positive Thinking. So what I’m curious about is how has your thinking about how we work with our inner worlds sort of changed between that book and, you know, where we sit with micro joys?

Cyndie Spiegel 00:06:40  Yeah, it’s a great question, right? Because I did in 2017 publish a book called A Year of Positive Thinking. nothing that I wrote in that book is inaccurate. However, I see micro joys as the nuance to that book. You know when in 2020 I call moments like that those fall to your knees moments right where you look in the mirror and you don’t recognize who you are.  In  2020, in that moment, nothing that I said in a year positive thinking was going to help me. Okay. Right. Not because that book wasn’t accurate or helpful or deserving of the accolades it’s received, but because when we are at our lowest point, you can’t positive think your way out of it, right?

Eric Zimmer 00:07:27  And you almost shouldn’t.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:07:28  You shouldn’t. You have to sit with it. You know, I hate to say should or shouldn’t. For me, I could not. You know, I couldn’t in that moment think my way out of it. And so I needed something. I needed nuance, right. And micro joys. And the way that I described micro joys are these easily accessible moments of joy, beauty, delight that exists in the world, regardless of our current circumstances. Right? So they sort of coexist with our grief, with our loss, with the world as it is. And that’s not something that I talked about in a year of positive thinking.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:03  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, I think. In life, there are different tools for different jobs. There are different ideas for different times. There are there are seasons, and certain things work in some seasons. And they and they don’t in others. And my experience of difficulty is that trying to talk ourselves out of it is often problematic, because those things are all very real.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:29  Right. To be walking around all the time. Like things are going great with everything you just described. At least in my life, would be some form of denial and deception. What I love about Micro Joys is and I love the word nuance because, I mean, I guess if I had a brand, it would be nuance. And I love this idea that in the midst of what’s happening, we can find things that are really good. Have you ever heard the poem Relax by Ellen Bass?

Cyndie Spiegel 00:08:56  No.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:56  Can I read it to you?

Cyndie Spiegel 00:08:57  I would love if you would.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:59  I teach this in a in a program I run, and so. And I’ve also done it. I’ve read it to I do special episodes for subscribers and I’ve used it there, but it’s a little bit long, but it’s not too long, and I just.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:09:11  We’ve got time. All right. We’ve got time.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:13  It’s my favorite poem in the whole world to relax. Bad things are gonna happen. Your tomatoes will grow a fungus and your cat will get run over.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:22  Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream melting in the car, and throw your blue cashmere sweater in the dryer. Your husband will sleep with a girl your daughter’s age, or your wife will remember she’s a lesbian and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat, the one you never really liked, will contract a disease that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth every four hours. Your parents will die no matter how many vitamins you take, how much Pilates you lose, your keys, your hair, and your memory. If your daughter doesn’t plug your heart into every live socket she passes, you’ll come home to find your son is empty. The refrigerator dragged it to the curb and called the used appliance store for a pick up drug money. There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger. When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below and two mice, one white, one black, scurry out and begin to gnaw at the vine.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:19  At this point, she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice. She looks up. She looks down at the mice. Then she eats the strawberry. So here’s the view. The breeze. The pulse in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen. You’ll get fat. Slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely. Oh, taste how sweet and tart the red juice is, how the tiny seeds crunch between your teeth. And I feel like that poem is the mirror of your book. That poem is the mirror of your book. To me.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:10:56  That is Micro Joy. And you’ll have to send that to me.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:59  Yeah, yeah, yeah, she’s an outstanding poet across the board. But that that poem is my favorite poem because it speaks to this. Like, I think that’s the way life is. There’s tigers above, there’s tigers below. There’s mice not at the vine, no matter what. Sometimes it’s worse than others. But that’s the basic thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:18  And there are all these wild strawberries and. Right. Yeah. It’s the.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:11:22  It’s that arms. And can we hold both? First of all thank you for sharing that. That was beautiful. And that is the the sort of soul of micro joys it is holding both at the same time. And we live in a culture that doesn’t know how to do that.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:38  Yep.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:11:39  You know, and for me that was really the difference between where I was in 2017, when I wrote A Year of Positive thinking and where I was, you know, in 2023 when Micro Joys came out. Right. I had to live in that, and I could not change what happened, right? I could not change the world as it was. And I wasn’t willing to pretend it wasn’t that way. Right. But in that acceptance. Right. I still deserved those moments of respite, those moments of looking outside and seeing the daffodils bloom, or having that lovely conversation that also existed. And it didn’t attempt to change the world as it was.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:12:21  And I thought what I refer to as micro joys were really these moments of respite that saved me during a time that I really wasn’t even sure I would figure out a way out of. I have, thankfully.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:34  Yeah. So I love this idea. Sometimes the term joy or micro joy I struggle with because and this just may be being a former, like heroin addict. Like when I think of joy, I’m thinking of, like, just like the top the top state, right? So for me, I don’t I feel like I have a really pretty honed capacity to appreciate lots of little moments of beauty and, and serendipity and, humor and all of that around me. But the word joy, I always feel like I’m falling short of it.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:13:12  You know, it’s funny what you describe this sort of euphoria or this dopamine that we think of, right? I think of that as happiness, as these moments of happiness and happiness can certainly lead to joy. But joy to me is embodied, right? It’s a way that we walk through the world, and micro joys lead to living a life joyfully.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:13:34  they are not. It’s not a state of perpetual happiness. That’s not what joy is to me, right? It’s. It’s these. It’s this way that we show up the state of being. We’ve all met those people where you think, what world are they living in? Why are they doing so well right now? but it is very attainable, right? It’s very attainable when we pay attention to those moments that are happening throughout the day, the moments that you are able to pay attention to, like you mentioned, humor or humor. When we are able to be in those moments, that is what leads us to live a joyful life. It is not euphoria. It’s not the constant dopamine hits. It’s it’s a build up. Right? It’s a practice that we create.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:17  Yeah. I love the practice element of it. I’ve got a line here from you that I wanted to see if I could find, but maybe I’m not going to dundun. Are here. It is. Unlike toxic positivity, they require practice, awareness and focus to take root.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:38  I love that that idea of of that. Yeah. I think for me, I have some idea of joy as being like way up there in, in happiness feeling. And so then I often feel, maybe like I’m coming short of it. But I want to ask you also because later in the book, you talk about how with all of this happening to you, you felt like your feelings just got kind of muted and turned down, and that while you might be able to see these little things that were happening, you were having trouble feeling them. Am I saying that correctly?

Cyndie Spiegel 00:15:16  That’s right. Yeah, that’s exactly right. You know, there are two different things, right? There’s the recognition that, wow, that I’ll use this fiddle in my office. There’s the recognition that this is so cool and wow, it’s grown so much. And then there’s the I’ll use the word embodiment again. That real deep feeling in the middle of so much grief and loss. You know, again, I wrote a book called A Year of Positive Thinking.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:15:41  I had built the capacity to see what was around me prior to all of this. Yeah. Being able to embody it all when I was in the middle of it took practice. It took time. It took consciousness. It took me every day making a point to notice and pay attention and be present with that tree in the corner or whatever it was. Because that too is part of loss and grief and moving through challenge. Or, you know, it’s the honesty to say, I don’t feel this right now. I don’t feel this, this big delight in euphoria that everyone’s talking about at this thing, whatever that thing may be. I couldn’t feel anything. I was just a bit numb. And so it took time to build up. But first I had to acknowledge what was and be willing to see the beauty. I didn’t have to feel it yet. I had to simply see it.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:32  Yes, I love that idea because I have wrestled a lot as an adult. I’m far, far better than I used to be with with depression. And my flavor of depression is not. I’m sad. It’s just I’m sort of flat. Yeah. Really flat. So I can look at the tree and be like, that tree is really cool and look at all the amazing things that trees do. And, and, and there is a uptick. But sometimes that uptick isn’t as dramatic. Which is why for me, using the word appreciation is good. Because if I think I should be feeling, if I think I should be feeling something and I’m not there, I’m often setting a standard of what I expect to feel that I’m measuring against, that I am then ruining the very moment I should be appreciating by going, that’s not good enough. There’s a great Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where Calvin’s walking along and he’s like, here I am, you know, perfectly happy. And in the next moment you see a thought hit him. He’s like, but not euphoric. And then the whole moments ruined, right. You know. And so I think I have the ten, I have the ability to do that to myself.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:37  Like you should feel more in that moment, you know? Yes. You feel a pleasure. You feel a little bit of delight. But shouldn’t you be feeling. And then, of course, that’s that’s problematic. Which you address also in the book, this idea of just learning to say the way I am is the way I am right now, and I don’t have to improve it or fix it.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:17:59  That’s right. And it’s also why I said before, you know, I try not to say should or shouldn’t write. I shouldn’t feel that way. I shouldn’t think that thing right. Who am I to tell you? Right. Who are you? Who are any of us? Yeah. I think when it comes to loss and grief and whatever that may look like, any sort of difficulty, we don’t need to hold ourselves to standards of what we should or shouldn’t do. Right? What was important to me in that moment was that I sat in that moment. But I also think that for someone else, maybe that isn’t the right choice for them.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:18:33  Right. In that moment. And so all I am asking of readers in micro joys is to notice. That’s all. That’s all you got to do. You don’t have to feel a thing. You don’t have to do a thing. Well, you do have to do a thing. You have to know this.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:47  Yeah.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:18:47  Yeah. You know. But but that. That’s it. And it’s the bare minimum for a reason. And that reason is sometimes that’s all we got. Yeah. And the idea that we’re holding ourselves to this false standard is incredibly dangerous, because we’re never going to reach it. And then we’re constantly striving for this thing that is impossible.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:19  I think that that is a really subtle aspect of the I’m just going to call it the self-help industry, as of which you and I are both loosely in, is that I think a lot of us wise up to the fact that always trying to chase things on the outside is a is a strategy that doesn’t work.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:19:40  It’s a trap.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:42  Right, It’s a trap. I think it takes us longer to recognize that trying to chase internal states. Yeah, can also be a trap.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:19:52  That’s right. Which really means just chasing as a trap.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:55  Precisely. Yes, yes. Yeah. I would even say chasing in a certain spirit, because there’s a certain type of chase that is actually enjoyable. And I feel like it energizes me. But there’s a type of chase also that is very problematic.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:20:11  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I often feel like we we have so much access to the Joneses. I don’t know, I’m 47. I don’t know how old you are, but keeping.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:23  Up enough to know the Joneses.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:20:24  Say.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:24  Okay, I’m older.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:20:25  Than we all know. The Joneses. Okay. but we have more access to the Joneses than we ever have before. And in that, it makes it so easy to see what we believe everybody else has and and then feel as though we’re lacking. Right. And so we spend all of our time chasing this thing that isn’t even ours to have to own to, to inherit.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:20:49  And we’re constantly it’s this uphill battle to nowhere, and it’s internal and it’s external to your point. And we have to be really mindful. It goes back to the parable, you know, that that you talked about at the beginning. And what this podcast is, is based on. We have to be really mindful of where we focus our energy.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:06  Let’s dive into this a little bit deeper. How for you, do you work with that internally, which is I want to be feeling more joy. I want to be feeling more happiness. Am I feeling enough of it? I’m assuming as someone who has, you know, you say in the book, sort of, you know, spent a lot of your life trying to become a better version of yourself. How, you know, like moment to moment, day to day internally. Are you dealing with that, being a better, happier version of yourself? How do you talk to yourself through that?

Cyndie Spiegel 00:21:41  Yeah. You know, one thing I’ll say before I answer that is that I don’t do that anymore.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:21:46  I’m not chasing a better version of myself anymore. And I think I talked about that in the book as well, because there was no point in chasing, right, that better version of myself. At some point, we all have to come to this place where we acknowledge that who we are is enough. And so, you know, my answer to your question would be, I meditate every day. I surround myself in beauty, but I don’t do that in the hopes of finding happiness or, you know, becoming a more joyful person. I do that because it keeps me sane. It keeps me creative, it keeps me thoughtful, and it keeps me connected to the world around me. So I’m not actually seeking ways to be happier.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:30  But you are seeking ways to be more creative, more connected, more. I mean, there’s still a there’s still an there’s still something in it. Yeah. Zen Master Dogan is the first one who ever. I feel like really, really pointed this out. And he went to these.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:43  He went to the Chan teachers in, in, in China and said, if I understand you, you’re saying we’re already perfect. The way we are in the world is perfect the way it is. Is that what you’re saying? And they’re like, yeah, we are. And he’s like, but you also tell me I have to do all this practice. Why? There are great answers to it, you know. Yeah, yeah. Because I think it is always a there’s that there’s a little of that tension in it. And, and so even though you aren’t really seeking that, I would imagine that energy is didn’t just like, did it just disappear or is it okay.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:23:14  So so no, the energy didn’t disappear, right? What disappeared was the internal dialogue that I had to be better in some way than I am. Yes, right. That’s not to say that I don’t want to create and continue to create and write and do the work that I do in the world. I haven’t given up on myself, but.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:23:33  But what I have let go of is this need to be better. This constant need to be better than you know. If that person wrote a book, I should write ten books. If this person did this. It’s the Joneses. Again, there’s so problematic.

Eric Zimmer 00:23:47  yes, that’s.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:23:48  That’s what I have let go of. Right. So in meditation and I’m very conscious of sort of keeping being in a space that makes me feel creative and ignited and interested and in many ways rational. but it’s sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s it’s not it’s not an effort to make myself any better than I am. And I think that’s the difference.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:16  What type of meditation practice do you do?

Cyndie Spiegel 00:24:18  Oh, you know, I don’t even know if I have a name for it. I simply sit and set my timer for 18 minutes a day in silence. Yeah. with mala beads that sometimes I use, sometimes I don’t. And I speak to my ancestors.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:30  Okay, well, doesn’t need a name, I just don’t ask.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:33  I’m always curious how people spend their contemplative time. There are so many different little flavors of what you do in that time.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:24:41  So yeah, for for me, it’s it’s really about the sitting and the acknowledgement of something other than myself. And I have had so many folks pass away that at this point, it’s a deep conversation with the ancestors when I begin, and then it’s just quiet.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:56  Is it like a prayer in that way?

Cyndie Spiegel 00:24:58  It’s more of an asking and acknowledging and and asking, okay, you know, whatever it is that I might be seeking, you know, I let’s see, what did I what was I talking about this morning? And I say talking even though I’m not talking out loud. It’s a dialogue inside where I said, allow this day to be grounding. I need your support and allowing this day to be grounding. I might be looking for a very tangible support in something, in writing my next book and doing a specific thing. And I will call to my ancestors, just acknowledging them one by one, and simply ask for help in that.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:25:30  And then I will sit in silence to receive. Now, is anybody physically coming through? No. Right.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:36  That’s not the point, though. Yeah.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:25:37  No, that’s not the point. That’s not the.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:39  Point. I assume you needed grounding today because of the vast excitement you were feeling at appearing on the One You Feed podcast was. It really was really hard.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:25:47  So much. I was very concerned that it was going to be too exciting for me to be clear. It is a it is a hot day and this was part of why I needed to be around. Yes.

Eric Zimmer 00:25:58  Okay. I want to talk about another thing that jumped out to me in the book. And you say, when my heart needs healing, I find ways to stay busy. The time will eventually come when I must slow down, stop and sit inside of the heartbreak. But there are also circumstances in which busyness really is the best temporary medicine for what ails us. You also say there will be a time to sit with the hardest things, but the respite that comes from doing instead of sitting is also essential.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:28  This is nuance again. That’s right. Right.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:26:31  That’s right. And this is where you talked about before when you said the word shouldn’t. And I was like, well, I wouldn’t say shouldn’t, you know, because some people would say, you have to face this all head on and you need to do it right now. Yep. Right. I don’t think that’s always the answer. I think sometimes we need to keep real busy and pretend that thing doesn’t exist. But we can’t do that forever, right? We have to start to know ourselves and know what we have the capacity for in any moment. And what I was talking about in that essay was specifically saying, right now, I don’t have the capacity to think about this right now. I have the capacity to paint my living room wall and not pay attention to that. I know it’s waiting for me. I know what’s there when I sit with this, but in that moment, that’s not what I needed. you know. And then there are other essays in the book where I talk about sitting in that moment, you know, sitting in that difficult thing.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:27:26  And I think for, for any of us, the biggest challenges is really knowing ourselves enough to know when we need what we need. And honoring that instead of saying, I should be doing this other thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:38  Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask you something. What’s one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it’s there. You’ve tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way. You’re not alone in this, and I’ve identified six major saboteurs of self control. Things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here’s the good news you can outsmart them. And I’ve put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control. Download the free guide now at oneyoufeed.net/ebook and take the first step towards getting back on track. 

Eric Zimmer 00:28:31  That is the art of all of this, which is what you just said. The knowing when we need, what we need.You know, it’s we want answers as to as to how, you know. What do I need? When could someone just please tell me like you need 65% busyness, 25% grief, 12% whatever, right? And that’s just that. That doesn’t make sense. A similar example is our. Our dog Lola passed away not too long ago, and the very first thing we did the next day was we just got out of town.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:28:57  Yeah, yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:58  And we just spent two weeks somewhere else. Now, we knew that when we came home, the home that didn’t have Lola in it was going to still be there. But we were going to be two weeks so long in our grief.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:29:13  That’s right.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:14  Right.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:29:15  And in your process.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:16  And our process. So in a way, if you were a straight just, you should sit in it and face it kind of person. You might label that as running away. I looked it as I looked at it as a skillful way of working with grief.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:29  That’s right. Right. Because it’s not that the grief isn’t. It’s going to make its way through. But for me that just because I remember when my last dog passed, that was the thing, it was like everywhere I looked was where she wasn’t.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:29:42  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:43  You know. So let’s look somewhere and, and again it’s not that we didn’t spend days really in a lot of grief, but there was there was some doing that and I, I’m the same way I find that doing sometimes is a part of my healing.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:29:58  That’s right. And I love that you use the word working or the phrase working with grief. Right. You weren’t running from it. That was your way of working with grief. Right. Coexisting of a list, you know, existing alongside it. That was exactly what painting. You know, our walls look like. In the middle of my grief, I wasn’t running, I was working with what I had, and in that moment, that was the very best way for me to do it right.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:30:21  And I’m sorry to hear about Lola. Pets are our children. Yes. at least for for my husband and I. And the very best decision for you in that moment was to leave. Yeah, right. To work with your grief in that way versus sitting in it. And there is no wrong way to navigate that.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:41  Yeah, I think we often in a, in the, in the self-help culture, there is that sense of you should always face things, you should sit with things, you should always be with things you should be able to be by yourself without needing. I mean, there’s all these again, I agree with you with should is just a generally, you know, a non useful idea. But I find that there are times that it’s like distraction is actually the right tool for the job right now. That’s right. Like I’m stuck in this spiral of thinking, and I can’t. I’ve tried the basic things I know to try and get out of it. And you know what? I’m still in it.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:21  So instead of staying in it, I’m going to turn on the TV and just get out of it. And and that’s fine some of the time. Now, again, as an addict who took my coping behaviors to the furthest extent, I’m aware that those coping mechanisms can become maladaptive. But they’re not bad. Just in a distraction in and of itself is not a bad thing. A lot of the time we can only be on. At least I can only be on in that way for a certain amount of time, at which point I need to turn things down.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:31:56  Most behaviors, thoughts, feelings are that way. They’re not inherently bad. Yeah, right. It’s just we have to know how to use them and how to work with them. You know, you don’t want to sit in front of the TV all the time because then you wouldn’t be living in the world. But sometimes you need to get out of your head and, you know, watch Netflix or whatever it is that somebody’s.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:14  Watching or someone else’s.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:16  Yep.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:32:16  Yep. And that’s okay. And this idea that we’re all looking for a prescription to do life right is irrational. There is no one way to do this.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:26  And yet we so deeply want it.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:32:28  Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:29  It’s why there’s a whole lot of five easy steps to X, whatever it is. You know, the crash diet. My first book comes out next spring, and the whole book is kind of around this idea of we we prioritize the epiphany.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:32:45  Say more?

Eric Zimmer 00:32:45  Yeah, well, we prioritize the epiphany, not the fact that that epiphany is going to be lived into by a thousand small choices.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:32:53  That’s right. The process.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:55  And that epiphany only looking back, I talk about a pivotal moment in my journey of getting sober and how if you’re going to film the movie of my life, that’s what you would see. But that moment only makes any sense, has any value or importance because I made thousands of decisions after it. That’s right. That made that like okay, oh, there was a turning point because it wouldn’t have been a turning point.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:18  If I hadn’t done all those things. And so it’s all about this. Like you kind of say, you say it so. Well in that sentence I read earlier, which is practice, awareness, focus little by little.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:33:30  Right.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:31  The book’s called how a Little Becomes a Lot. And it’s basically aligns with micro joys too, right? Like, you stack lots of little moments of pleasure and joy up and look at what happens.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:33:41  Yeah, we don’t like to do that though. Do we.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:43  Know.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:33:44  Like, the work that’s required to get to that turning point, to that epiphany, to that peak? We don’t we don’t necessarily want to do the work we want. You know, I, I talk about this too, in like, peaks and valleys, right? We experience life and peaks and valleys, right? The highest of highs and the lowest of lows. The majority of life is somewhere in the middle.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:02  Yes.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:34:03  And we don’t want to. We don’t want to deal with the middle.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:34:05  We want to talk about the peak. We want to talk about the valley. But the boring stuff, we want to just run right through and we can’t. And that’s when Micro joys to me becomes so powerful is not when we are in the highest of highs or the lowest of lows. So they are helpful there. But we’ve got to start paying attention to the rest of it, because that’s what we have most of the time.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:27  I love that you said that because that is the case. Most of our life is kind of just normal.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:34:34  Yeah, not super exciting.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:35  For a long time. I got this idea. It’s a it’s an idea and embedded in many spiritual traditions and all over the place, which is that you can turn the ordinary into extraordinary by giving it close enough attention. And I believe there’s truth in that. Paying attention. My problem was I was expecting extraordinary. Right. Instead of saying I can make the ordinary more enjoyable, I can make the ordinary a little bit more special.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:01  I can make the ordinary. I was like, oh I, you know, if I’m not turning that, you know, that set of car keys over there into like a glowing mandala in my mind. I’ve somehow failed, right. And it’s a whole lot more prosaic than that.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:35:15  Yeah, yeah. And that’s the part, I think, for so many of us that we struggle with. Right? It’s that day to day stuff, the stuff that’s not extraordinary, the stuff that’s average, the stuff that’s going to get us there. But you know, it’s it’s the boring. It’s the day to day. I feel like that’s the place that so many of us lose ourselves and lose. There’s this real missed opportunity to enjoy those moments when we’re in them. They don’t have to be fantastic. Yeah, right. But we also don’t want to miss them.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:48  Yeah. I have a brain that is really good at always thinking about how to get somewhere else. You know, if I don’t work with it and I don’t sort of, you know, try and choose the energy I’m going to let be if I just let it run on its own, it is always two steps out ahead of me, and it’s just always solving problems.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:09  They could be very prosaic problems. What am I about to eat? What time do I need to get to the airport? What? It’s just da da da da da da da da da da. It just does that. And made me good as a project manager. Doesn’t make me good at doing what you’re describing, which is enjoying those moments in my life. Which is why meditation and spiritual practice and all that has been so important to me, because I really needed it.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:36:46  How did you go from the life you were living before? And I mean this sort of top level to to where you recognized that you needed it.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:53  The benefit of emulating your entire life at 24 and being a homeless heroin addict and being forced into recovery, kind of at death’s doorstep, is I had to in order to get better, to stay sober, I had to start to look at these things. You know, I was in a 12 step program and they talked about a spiritual solution being what you needed. And I after a little bit of time, I realized that my spiritual solution was going to be very different than the conventional one that was on order.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:24  This was a long time ago. Yeah. So I think I just, I was sort of just almost driven there. But then I found that I had a real interest. I had a real and I think it was that I was able to recognize the dissatisfaction that was natural to my brain.

Speaker 4 00:37:44  Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:45  And I, I also then started, I, it became clear to me, like, if I’m dissatisfied intensely enough and long enough, I will go back and start using again. I believe that even today. So part of my job is to, is to really keep that dissatisfaction at a workable level. And then of course, the flip side of that is always the the joy and the happiness and the connection and all of that. And I think sometimes, you know, I think about it from like lessening suffering to enhancing flourishing, like there are two sides of the same sort of thing. Right? But that’s kind of how I got there. How about you?

Cyndie Spiegel 00:38:21  Well, I think for me, you know, I was with a cousin who I hadn’t seen in 20 years the other day.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:38:26  That’s a story for another day. And he said, how did you get so optimistic? And I said, well, I think I was born this way, except, you know, I was born to parents who struggled with addiction. I was born into poverty. Right. Like born this way doesn’t mean we had everything figured out, right? Born this way means, you know, I think there’s always been a bit of me that felt like there was a different way. Even when I didn’t have the proof that there was a different way. And, you know, I think not just similarly, sometimes when we have experienced the extraordinary and I don’t mean extraordinary good. You know, the extraordinary. It gets us to this place where the only way out is to see beyond it, you know, is to see that there is something else that exists in the world. And I think for me, that’s that’s how I became optimistic. Right. I’m also a realist. And you are a realist. Right.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:39:22  We’re not pretending that, you know, you hit rock bottom and everything is up from here. Like, yeah, ish. Kind of. But I do think that. I guess I wonder sometimes why we wait, why the majority of us who aren’t going to be in those situations wait for something to drive us to make these choices? Right. To be mindful. To pay attention. Why do we need that difficult thing to happen?

Eric Zimmer 00:39:49  Yeah, I think I mean, I think it’s just a basic like if you are more or less satisfied with the way things are, you don’t look elsewhere. Now, I do think there is something like I’m very grateful that like my version of addiction is burn everything to the ground in a pretty quick period of time, and I’m actually really grateful for that because I know a lot, a lot of people where their substance abuse problem or their, you know, their substance use disorder, wherever you want to put it, it’s always it’s always on a spectrum from like way over here, like addict to not a problem at all.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:29  Everybody’s somewhere in between. Right. And the people who are closer to the not being a problem than me. It’s easy to stay in it. It’s sort of like a nagging, like a I almost sometimes feel like it’s there’s a term for this and I can’t remember it, but the core idea is sometimes it would be better almost to break your ankle.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:40:51  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:52  Then just have an ankle injury that you towed around for eight years, right. Because if you break your ankle to my to, to the point where making you kind of have to go deal with it.

Speaker 4 00:41:02  Yeah.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:41:02  You have to do a thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:03  But I do think there’s a lot of people that find their way here without something, like, really a huge like. You have to change a moment. But a moment, I would argue, is probably most of the people that are reading your book, and the majority of people who are listening to this podcast have a lesser version of I hit a point where life just didn’t feel right.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:25  Yeah, I just noticed that I wasn’t happy or I felt empty or I felt whatever it is not, you know, not the extreme thing. But that’s when they started looking for a different way of being.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:41:36  And I find sometimes it’s much later in life.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:39  100% I think 40s.

Speaker 4 00:41:43  And.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:43  Particularly.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:41:45  50s. Yeah. You know it’s like why did we wait this long.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:49  Because whatever I think because whatever we were doing was working. I see this a lot.

Speaker 4 00:41:52  Like, yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:53  I think a lot about how self kindness is critical to any kind of change and how really harsh self-criticism is a type of fuel. Because if you say to somebody like, well, self, you know, self-criticism doesn’t work. A lot of people go, yeah, it does. It got me through med school. Yeah it does. It got me to be a partner at the law firm. Yeah it does. But what I’ve seen in working with people is that that all of a sudden, at some point stops working.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:21  Yeah. It’s like a fuel that burns dirty and it eventually the engine gets all junked up. So, yeah, it worked fine for a while. And in the same way, like, you might be like, well, it’s fine, I’ll put, you know, I’ll put cheap gas in my car. I don’t really care until ten, 15 years later, you’re like, oh, that probably wasn’t the best idea, you know? Yeah. It’s hard as humans for us to connect action today with consequence in the future. We’re just not very good at it.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:42:50  Yeah, yeah. No, I tend to agree. It’s interesting. Right. Because as we were just talking about that, I thought back to where I was when I was writing this book. And I thought if I had never asked myself a lot of these hard questions, that I find a lot of us wait until much later to ask. I don’t know that I would have come to that place to write a book called Micro Joys.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:43:11  I don’t think I would have recognized Micro Joys, right? You know, like I had to be asking myself the harder questions a lot sooner than you know. When I when I hit rock bottom, when everything seemed to have fallen apart.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:24  Yep. 100%. I mean, it’s I do think one of the benefits, one of the things I like about having had, let’s just call it some form of self-development practice for a long time, is that when the bad moments come, I feel far more equipped.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:43:43  Yeah. That’s right.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:45  That’s not that. The bad moments aren’t really bad. Not that it’s not really hard, but the way I respond to them is a better version than the way I would have responded to them in the past, which a lot of times for me is it just comes down to like, I don’t make it worse. Yeah. You know, like, I just, I, I just don’t make it worse. Which I think when you consider the number of ways we are capable of making anything worse with our brain, not making it worse is actually sometimes a very big accomplishment.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:16  Yeah. Yeah.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:44:17  You know, I think you’re right. I think you’re right.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:19  You say in the book, there’s so much magic around when we are clear enough to witness it. And we’ve been kind of talking about this, but I’d love to just ask you, you know, what are ways that we get clear enough?

Cyndie Spiegel 00:44:32  Yeah. You know, I don’t I hate to be a meditation pusher. but I do think sitting. You don’t have to meditate. I my husband, you know, I talked to my husband about this. I’m like, you don’t have to meditate, but you probably should sit and close your eyes for a couple of minutes. I do think call it whatever you want to, but I do think building an internal practice, whatever that looks like for you, you don’t need to talk to ancestors. You don’t do anything. You need to do anything that doesn’t feel comfortable, but I think we do have to reconnect back to our physical self in some way and our emotional self in some way.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:45:02  And I think the, you know, easiest isn’t is relative. But I think the easiest way that we start to train our brains to do that is by spending time in silence. Right. We live in a world that keeps us occupied, where our brains are constantly going, and it’s not until we are able to quiet them, quiet our brain, rather that we are able to open our eyes back up and see things for what they are. And these are things that, you know, it’s kind of like having a windshield and it’s all gucht up, right? We have to we have to clean the windshield at some point. And to me, having a contemplative practice is cleaning the windshield. You don’t have to call it meditation, but you do have to have some sort of practice. The second, you know, sort of key to this for me is having a gratitude practice. And I’m not talking about starting a paper journal where you write it. You can do that. By all means, knock yourself out.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:45:56  But for me, it’s about. Am I constantly thinking about what I am grateful for? Am I acknowledging it? You know, I love a voice memo moment in my phone. You know, I may just make a voice memo where I talk about something that I saw today. but it’s keeping me in that conversation of, wow, this is what’s working. This is what is good. So I’m not constantly being pulled into all the things that I don’t have any semblance of control over, which is what we see on social media every day.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:26  Yep. I do think that ability to just for some period of time, stop stimulating the brain.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:46:33  Yes.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:33  That’s it. I mean, it’ll keep it’ll keep running on its own. I’m not saying like I mean, meditation experience for me and for many people is like, it’s not like exactly like the brain quiets, it doesn’t know, but you’re not giving. You’re providing everything that’s happening instead of constantly something being fed into it. And for me, that has been a really important thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:56  And following the idea of sort of micro joys. Also, I think that if we can build these moments into our day, I call them still points, but these just brief moments that happen multiple times a day, and sometimes we need to be reminded to even do them, where even if all we do in that moment is like, what am I thinking? What am I feeling?

Cyndie Spiegel 00:47:14  Yeah, yeah. It stops you in your tracks.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:17  Yeah. It just gives you that little or, you know, the old classic, like, what are five things I can see right now? What are five things I can hear right now? That’s right. If you do that five times a day, every day, my ability to be present shifted.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:47:32  Yeah, yeah. And to add to that, I think doing that once a day is a great place to.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:38  Sure, absolutely.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:47:39  You know the five thing. Do it once a day. Like get yourself used to stopping. Yeah. You know, and and with meditation, I will just say this.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:47:49  I don’t remember the last time. My mind has been fully quiet and I sit every day, sometimes twice a day. I’m not. I’m not sitting to have a quiet mind. So I am with you on that. And I think that’s true for a lot of us.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:01  Yeah. I mean, your brain may quiet some, but even meditation masters will acknowledge for the most part, like, it’s not like it shuts off brain, you know? One school of Buddhism used to call thinking a sense. In the same way that, like, if there’s a loud sound, you’re going to hear it. That’s it. You can’t not do it. Thinking is sort of the same thing, in the same way that a sound sort of just happens and arises. You’re not doing anything. Thoughts just happen and arise. They are they are what the brain does. And so not making them a problem is, is obviously really important. There was something else I thought was really interesting in what you said. You were saying how that these moments are accessible when we’re present, but paradoxically, can also occur as insights made clear only by looking backwards.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:55  What do you mean by that?

Cyndie Spiegel 00:48:56  Yeah, what I mean is, you know, a lot of our life happens, and I talked about the peaks and the valleys and how most of our life happens in between. We’re not going to catch every moment in the moment. Yeah, that that would be great. But it would also be overstimulating, right. So sometimes and I think this is where that contemplative practice is really helpful because we are still thinking in a lot of ways is we can look back and remember something. You know, I think about people who have passed away, pets who have passed away. Right. That recognition, that remembrance is a micro joy and it’s a micro joy, not because it’s happening in this moment, but it’s because we as human beings have the capacity to look back at something that maybe we missed. Right. And to be mindful of it. So these micro joys, again, it would be overstimulating to, to sort of my husband calls it ooh sparkles. You know, when you’re looking around and you’re like, oh, look at that thing and look at this thing.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:49:51  Sometimes we don’t have that right. Sometimes we’re not in a situation where we have that. Where is there an opportunity to look back and remember and think through, you know, and sort of catch up with yourself about the micro joys that you’ve experienced because they’re not always happening in the current moment.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:09  I love that idea. It’s it’s using another human capacity for this. I just had a thought that came up when you were talking about a voice memo and gratitude. I have experimented with something over the last few weeks. It’s the first time I’ve ever really tried it, which is I record myself talking about the things I’m grateful for, and then I play that back to myself, where I hear my voice. There’s something, there’s something. Sometimes I’ve played with this in other areas where I’m like, Having having myself say it to myself.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:50:48  How’s that feel?

Eric Zimmer 00:50:50  I, I like it. Yeah, I like it because it’s my words. It’s me.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:50:57  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:57  You know, it’s.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:50:58  It’s living.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:59  That’s me.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:00  Yeah. Yeah. In the same way that, like, there’s an exercise when it comes to being kinder to ourselves, to imagine what we would say to a friend. Right. And part of the reason I think that’s such a valuable thing is if you really do imagine it, you think about what you would say is that you will find your words, the words that resonate with you. Not not the words that somebody said. These are words you should use to be kind. They’ll be the words that you you actually use to be kind. And as somebody who’s allergic to certain types of language, this is really helpful for me.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:51:33  Yeah. Yes. What language are you allergic to?

Eric Zimmer 00:51:36  Well, I’m generally allergic to abbreviations.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:51:39  Really?

Eric Zimmer 00:51:40  Yeah.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:51:41  Say more.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:42  Well, I mean, I’m not sure how important this is.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:51:45  Like very.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:47  Okay. You know, vegetables, calling them veggies. I mean, that’s fine, but there are other ones. There are other ones that I can’t think of right now that I particularly apparently the kids call this breathing.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:51:59  Breathing.

Eric Zimmer 00:52:00  Breathing for abbreviating. Oh, it actually has a term. They call it breathing, which is in itself an abbreviation, which.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:52:07  Yes, yes.

Eric Zimmer 00:52:08  You know, almost triggers me, I also am I’m also allergic to overly too touchy feely of language for me. For me.

Speaker 5 00:52:17  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just know, like.

Eric Zimmer 00:52:19  What what what word sometimes, you know, cause a little bit of. Not that sometimes that recoil isn’t good. I mean.

Speaker 5 00:52:27  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:52:28  You know, I, I try and investigate it, but but I do find it’s like affirmations, right. They, you know, the, the the study, the, the, the studies out there seem to be and studies aren’t everything that the affirmations that tend to work the best are the ones that you actually kind of can believe on some level. And so again, you’re using your words. You know, you’re using.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:52:52  So first of all I love that the word veggie is triggering for you.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:52:56  I think that life is good generally if that is triggering for you I think that speaks volumes, which is good for you.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:05  100%, yeah. It’s the problem is how enraged I get. I actually hit somebody with a baseball bat last week.

Speaker 5 00:53:11  Stop it for calling.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:12  Instagram the gram.

Speaker 5 00:53:14  I was like, all right, that’s it. Yeah.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:53:17  I think this is this is what matters, right?

Speaker 5 00:53:20  It’s like when we can say.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:53:22  Okay, veggies piss me off. Yeah. Oh, I had a thought about what you said, and I forgot.

Speaker 6 00:53:28  What my thought was. It was going to be a good one.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:30  I’m sure they’ve all been good veggies.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:53:34  All right, I’ve lost it. It’s gone now. It’s gone. Eric, it’ll pop back up when we’re done.

Speaker 5 00:53:39  That will happen.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:40  Well, luckily, I’ve got a great place from your book to take us, because there were so.

Speaker 5 00:53:43  Many great.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:44  There were so many great places.

Speaker 5 00:53:45  Thank you.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:46  You said, after having spent much of the previous year in and out of hospital waiting rooms and unconsciously waiting for phone calls that no one deserves to receive.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:55  My husband and I both have deep gratitude for unremarkable weekend mornings.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:54:00  Yeah. You know, again, that’s the extra. It’s the ordinary, right that we miss out on. I remember even now, you know, it’ll be a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning, and we’re doing nothing. And one of us will look up and go, oh, this is nice. That’s it. That’s all the acknowledgement it takes. But we know what the opposite of that is, right? So we’re not looking for anything exciting here. We’re just looking to not get a call from a hospital that’s like bare minimum. Right. and now several years out from that, you know, it’s now so sort of built in that those ordinary moments feel extraordinary because we know what the opposite is.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:41  That’s so important to be able to recall that.

Speaker 5 00:54:44  Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:54:45  And it was a shitty time, right?

Speaker 5 00:54:48  Yeah.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:54:48  Without question. However, that felt sense of that time has created such a deep appreciation for anything other.

Speaker 5 00:55:00  Than that sign. Yeah.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:55:01  You know, and I think that’s that’s really important.

Eric Zimmer 00:55:04  Yeah. What I think is an interesting question is how are we able to maintain that as distance from the event happens? You know, how are we able to maintain this there? That line of yours, coincided with something I’ve been watching the TV series The Crown. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. It’s so good because I’m going to England.

Speaker 5 00:55:27  Oh, right.

Eric Zimmer 00:55:29  So I’m like.

Speaker 5 00:55:29  Okay.

Eric Zimmer 00:55:30  I kind of want to see the, you know, because it’s not the royal. It’s not the monarchy I particularly care about. It’s all the history that’s spinning around it.

Speaker 5 00:55:37  In that show.

Eric Zimmer 00:55:38  But the Queen says at one point she says, that’s the thing about unhappiness. All it takes is for something worse to come along, and you realize it was actually happiness after all. And like, that’s kind of what you’re saying. Something worse came along and now you realize like ordinary boring weekend mornings are a happiness.

Speaker 5 00:55:58  Fantastic.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:55:59  Yeah they’re.

Speaker 6 00:55:59  Fantastic.

Eric Zimmer 00:56:00  But keeping that I think is the because we are creatures who habituate so easily. Being able. It’s the same thing that any addict faces over long term, which is how do you keep the the, the enough of the pain that came from that experience that keeps you from not wanting to repeat it, and also keeps you in gratitude for the very fact that you’re not there.

Speaker 5 00:56:28  Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:56:29  You know, and so I’ve been sober 18 years, so I have to work. I have to consciously.

Speaker 5 00:56:33  Work.

Eric Zimmer 00:56:34  To, to be like, okay, Your life right now is so much better. Yeah, than it was. It is so much better. And to appreciate that without it just only being an intellectual exercise.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:56:49  That’s right. You know, I think that we we meaning so many of us, we want to put hard things behind us. Right. I think about times like nine over 11 in New York City. I’m a black Jew, you know, and I think a lot about my own history, kind of.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:57:05  And we will not forget meaning that in many different ways, applying to, you know, all parts of my culture, I think it’s really important that for all of us, we don’t forget. Right? We are in this sort of instant gratification culture where we want to put all of the bad things behind us, sweep them under the rug and just get on with it. But I think there’s such value in not forgetting, in reminding yourself, you know, in my home, I have a lot of pictures of folks that have passed away. My brother, on the other hand, or one of my brothers will not look at a picture of my mom, right? Because he just needs it to be out of sight. For me, I feel like it’s been a gift to be in remembrance of what has happened before, right? Because if I forget, then that ordinary Saturday or Sunday morning won’t matter anymore. So I think really building a culture of remembering and not fearing that we’re going to go back there because we remember.

Speaker 5 00:58:04  Yep, I agree.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:58:06  Really valuable.

Eric Zimmer 00:58:06  I’m the same way. My partner and I differ in this way, but I’m happy to see the the dog before Lola that we put to sleep was called Benzi. I love seeing pictures of BNZ. Yeah, there is a there is a tug on my heart when I do it, but there’s also a joy. Like I like it. I think she, on the other hand, would prefer like, not to, you know, and there’s no right or wrong way. That’s right. But I’m more like. I’m more like you. And she’s perhaps a little bit more like your brother.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:58:34  Yeah, I again. You know, we keep saying there’s no should or shouldn’t, but I do think there is a lot of fear for a lot of folks in wanting to put things behind us.

Speaker 5 00:58:47  Yeah.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:58:48  Fear of going back. Fear of bringing up sad memories. Fear of a lot of things. Yeah. And I do often wonder if we are willing just a little bit to go there anyway, if we would ultimately be better for it.

Eric Zimmer 00:59:02  Well, I think a good general principle. Again, there’s no principle that applies to everyone. Everywhere is that avoidance is often not a great long term strategy. Again, we talked about where being busy can make sense, where distracting yourself but but exerting effort to not feel something again over the long term has a poor track record.

Speaker 5 00:59:27  That’s right, that’s right.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:59:28  That’s right. And yet it doesn’t stop us from doing it.

Eric Zimmer 00:59:31  Oh no no.

Speaker 5 00:59:32  No.

Eric Zimmer 00:59:32  It’s a great I mean, we think it’s a good stretch. It seems like a good strategy.

Cyndie Spiegel 00:59:36  It feels like it in the moment.

Speaker 5 00:59:37  It does? Yeah, it.

Eric Zimmer 00:59:38  Feels like a good strategy. But it is. It is, you know, almost always it is almost always a it turns out to be a problem. All right. So the last thing that I would like to do is ask.

Speaker 5 00:59:49  You.

Eric Zimmer 00:59:50  In the spirit, and your book is in this spirit anyway, but in the spirit of my sort of philosophy of little by little, what is like one thing someone could do, they listen to this and they’re like, all right, this is awesome.

Eric Zimmer 01:00:02  I’m going to do one thing tonight before I go to bed. That would would bring some of what we’ve talked about to life. What would you ask him to do?

Cyndie Spiegel 01:00:11  I would ask them to think about three things within their day that they are actually grateful for.

Speaker 5 01:00:16  Okay.

Cyndie Spiegel 01:00:16  They don’t need to be big. They don’t need to be these giant things. Just three experiences, places people name something. Three things that you are grateful for. And if that is easy enough for you to do, do it again tomorrow.

Eric Zimmer 01:00:30  And are you talking about things that I’m grateful for. Like I’m grateful that I’m employed. Or are you talking about three things that happen that day that we have some appreciation for? Like, oh, I appreciated my my cup of coffee and the way the sun glinted through the trees or either whatever. Pick your pick the one you want.

Cyndie Spiegel 01:00:49  I think it’s your choice, right? The latter really leads us into micro choice. And we’ll get there. Right? But for right now, it’s like I’m grateful I have a job.

Cyndie Spiegel 01:00:57  That’s a great place to begin. Yeah, essentially. What is the easiest or the low hanging fruit for you when you think of.

Speaker 6 01:01:03  Gratitude.

Cyndie Spiegel 01:01:03  Whatever that is.

Eric Zimmer 01:01:05  Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn’t quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals. And that’s exactly why I created The Six Saboteurs of Self-control. It’s a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them. If you’re ready to take back control and start making lasting changes. Download your copy now at one you. Net ebook. Let’s make those shifts happen starting today. One you feed net book. Well, Cindy, this has been an absolute blast. Thank you.

Cyndie Spiegel 01:01:53  Thank you so much Eric. What a treat.

Eric Zimmer 01:01:55  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 01:02:04  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.