Have you ever noticed how a low mood can make everything in your life look worse, even when nothing has changed? In this episode, Owen Fitzpatrick explores “inner propaganda”: the convincing stories our minds tell us that turn self-doubt and difficult emotions into seemingly undeniable truths. Drawing from his book, Inner Propaganda, and his own experience with depression, Owen explains why our brains gather evidence to support how we already feel, and explores how questioning those stories, taking small actions, and bringing some humor to our inner dialogue can help us navigate difficult days without believing everything we think.
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Key Takeaways:
- Why negative thinking can feel like an accurate view of reality, making it difficult to recognize and question.
- How “mood congruent cognition” leads your brain to seek out memories and evidence that reinforce your emotional state.
- Why feeling certain about a thought doesn’t necessarily make it true—and how that certainty can become a cue to pause.
- How asking questions you can honestly answer can loosen self-doubt without forcing positive affirmations.
- Why working with thoughts, tending to emotions, and taking action offer different ways to respond when you’re struggling.
- How humor and patience can help you take painful thoughts less seriously and avoid feeling worse about feeling bad.
Owen Fitzpatrick is a social psychologist who has traveled to more than 100 countries and studied propaganda firsthand in places such as North Korea, Rwanda, and Afghanistan. Also an award-winning filmmaker and former television presenter, he brings the craft of storytelling to his work. He has worked with leaders at Google, LinkedIn, Pfizer, and Coca-Cola, studied at Harvard Business School and MIT, and is the author of nine books translated into 20+ languages. His TEDx talk “Mind Control” has reached more than 1.4 million viewers.
Connect with Owen Fitzpatrick: Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | TEDx Talk
If you enjoyed this conversation with Owen Fitzpatrick, check out these other episodes:
How to Quiet the Inner Critic and Finally Get Unstuck with Michelle Chalfant
How to Tame Your Inner Critic with Dr. Aziz Gazipura
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Episode Transcript:
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:00:00 Nude. Congruent cognition is when your brain is looking for information in the world that serves to agree with and confirm whatever it is that you’re feeling. So the reason I’m feeling depressed is because everything’s going wrong. And then you look for in the world, and this is unconsciously you find every reason there is to be depressed.
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 00:01:11 Some mornings I wake up into cloudy weather. Before I even had a real thought, I can feel it. And then it’s like every thought I have has the same color. The project that was going well yesterday looks like a mess today. Nothing changed but me. I’ve spent years looking for a name for it, and Owen Fitzpatrick’s book gave me one mood congruent cognition. Whatever you feel, your brain goes looking for reasons to keep feeling it. Owen is lived with depression for a long time, and his book, Inner Propaganda is about what you do once you know your mind is building a case against you. His answer involves patience and more humor than you’d expect. I’m Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hi, Owen. Welcome to the show.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:02:02 Thank you so much, Eric. A real pleasure to be here.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:05 I’m excited to have you on. And we’re going to be discussing your book, which is called Inner Propaganda: Leading Hearts and Minds Throughout Turbulent Times. And part of what I loved about this book that we’re really going to explore is it takes on one of the core questions I’m asking a lot about, which is do thoughts cause emotions, or do emotions cause thoughts? Or what’s the relationship between the two? And how do you work with each of them wisely. And your book is is very nuanced in that. And so I’m really excited to talk about it. But we’ll start 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 inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:03:09 Well, first of all, Eric, I love that parable, and I heard it a number of years ago, and initially what it meant to me was very much similar to Star Wars.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:03:19 When you have the good side of the force and the dark side of the force, and it was more of a moral message then I would always think of it in terms of the importance of nourishing the side of you that is behaving the way you would want yourself to behave, the way you would want your children to behave. Being a great citizen in society, looking for a sense of eudaimonia, the notion that the Greeks had in terms of being the kind of person that you want people to perceive you as being, but not just that doing the right thing for the right reasons, which is even more important than ever being a good citizen. As I’ve went on, though, I think I kind of see a slightly altered version of it, which is a lot of the terms there in terms of love versus hate or, you know, greed. They tend to be much more about being a good person. But for me, there’s also two wolves inside of us, which I think are much more about the darkness within.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:04:08 And that’s really what I’ve been fascinated with. My idea around what I call inner propaganda is that we convince ourselves of certain things. So it’s almost like we have two wolves inside of us, and one of them isn’t just talking about hate and negativity and greed and jealousy. It’s also talking about being overly critical with ourselves. It’s about hating ourselves. It’s about turning a lot of that towards the weaknesses inherent in who we are and feeling not good enough and feeling useless. And then you have the other wolf, which is our capacity or ability to believe in ourselves, to be more confident, to be happier, to appreciate what we have in our life. And having been someone who’s struggled with depression and anxiety, but particularly depression, it’s something that I always have to be vigilant of because just like this metaphor and this story suggests, if you want to be able to become happier, if you want to be able to overcome depression, it’s not about getting one insight that changes the way you think. And you go, oh, I’m happy now.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:05:07 Everything’s good. You have to be vigilant, and that means you have to continuously feed the wolf inside you. That is the wolf of self-belief. And to me, Bo wolves have a marketing team behind them. They they are able to be able to position their messaging in very, very powerful ways. And my goal is to try to share with people, at least from my experience or from my travels, from my work, how we feed that wolf, how we the wolf of self-belief and how we give it all of the requirements so we can defeat the wolf of self-doubt. And sometimes, ironically, that involves doubting the very beliefs that are holding us back. And to me, that metaphor is taken on that second life. Because initially, yes, morally, I think it’s a great one. And I love the concept itself, but for me it’s much more about the battle that I have internally, as opposed to being a good person, being good to myself, and caring about life and wanting to live.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:02 Yeah, I would tend to agree with everything you said and to put a finer point on it. Yeah, I’ve always thought of it to a large degree as that battle within. I think the reason it resonates with me is that feeling of being pulled in multiple directions. It’s just so human, so common. You’ve used the term inner propaganda in place of other phrases that we often use, like the internal or the internal critic or other things like that. Why did you land on propaganda as an idea to describe at least part of your book as describing our inner landscape?
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:06:39 So there’s two reasons there. The first one was when I experienced depression. It didn’t feel like I often say, it’s not that you think negatively, it’s that you believe negatively. So I never felt like I had a negative voice that was saying negative things. That’s for anyone’s experienced depression. You don’t go right now, I’m depressed and therefore I have a negative voice inside my head that is saying negative things. And now I’m going to push back with positive things, and then I’m going to argue.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:07:04 That’s not what it ever felt like to me. It didn’t feel like I had an inner critic. It felt like this was reality. And so the more I realized that, the more I recognized so, so often we talk about propaganda as this thing that happens to us, and we never believe propaganda is happening to us. We always believe it’s happening to everybody else. We have it right. This is a concept called naive realism. Yeah, I know the reality. But Eric, well, he’s the victim of propaganda because he doesn’t believe exactly what I do, which is the truth. And this mistake we make isn’t just something we make with regards to, let’s say, political ideas. It’s also something we make with most of the beliefs we build. We perceive that we have the right perspective on anything. We feel a sense of certainty because our brain needs to give us that sense of certainty. So when you feel that you’re right about something, then automatically whatever is different to that may well be described as propaganda.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:07:55 But the more I visited places like North Korea and when I went to Afghanistan, and I want to interview people in terms of Rwanda and talked about what it was like living in a world where, for example, in Rwanda, that horrific genocide that occurred, or North Korea, where they’re still very much the victims of very blatantly obvious propaganda. The more I understood that the same kind of mechanisms that are taking place outside are also taking place in our brain. Our brain convinces us very quickly of the way we feel. When you’re anxious, you don’t think, I’m feeling anxious now. You feel the world is threatening. Things are scary. I don’t know if I’m going to escape this, and it feels very strong, like you’re going to be trapped forever. And so for me, that level of extreme feeling, the level of certainty I felt the term inner critic or negative self-talk, it just didn’t cut it for me. What did was inner propaganda coming from what I call an inner dictator. And the more I use those terms, the more it gave me permission to go.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:08:54 When I was in the midst of feeling the darkness, instead of me saying to myself, I’ve got a negative thought which didn’t feel right, I was like, the inner dictator is very convincing. And right now this is the propaganda that feels so true to me. Yeah, yeah. But recognizing that was the first step to challenging it.
Eric Zimmer 00:09:11 Absolutely. You have a term in the book, and I had never heard it until last week. This is so strange, the way this sometimes happens. I’ve been looking for this term for a decade, and I’ve never found it until last week. And then you again use it. And it’s a fascinating term. And the term is mood congruent. What does that mean?
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:09:33 So there’s a piece of research that looks at what they call mood congruent cognition, which effectively means that depending on what we feel, our brain will focus in on anything that serves that particular emotion. So emotions, like anything else, Like to be stable. We like to stay in the same state.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:09:50 When you’re feeling depressed, your brain will orient your memories and orient the way in which you think to focus more attention on everything, every reason you have to be depressed. So whatever you’re anxious, your brain will focus your attention on every reason to be anxious. The metaphor I like to use is our brains work kind of like a newsroom. Sometimes you’ve got the editorial team, which is really controlled by the mood that you feel at that moment, and the editorial team decides, this is what the story is, that we want to be able to communicate. So let’s say, for example, in the political sphere, you’ve got a a news team on the left or a news team on the right. Whatever their angle is, they’re going to look for information or evidence that backs them up on that particular point. So they’re not looking for what’s actually going on. They’re looking to be able to drill down to show whatever point of view they’re already coming in with is true. And the same is true of in terms of our feelings.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:10:40 So mood congruent cognition is when your brain is looking for information in the world that serves to agree with and confirm whatever it is that you’re feeling. So the reason I’m feeling depressed is because everything’s going wrong. And then you look for in the world, and this is unconsciously you find every reason there is to be depressed. And that’s why oftentimes when people come to us and they go, you know, oh, and what’s wrong? And I feel I feel down or depressed, they’ll turn around and go, well, what are you depressed about? And the problem isn’t that I’m depressed about a it’s that when I’m depressed, let’s say A triggers me to be depressed. I’m also depressed about BCDEFGH because my brain looks at the entire world and sees only the dark side of everything. And when I came across that research a few years ago, it was such a profound insight because it got me to realize we are living in these sort of tunnels where we only see whatever our emotions are directing us to, and often that’s what then leads to us constructing beliefs from that which can sometimes be devastating to our worlds.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:47 Yeah, I said, it’s a term I’ve been looking for for at least a decade, if not longer. Because if you get into the self-help world or the psychology world in general, there’s a lot of talk about our thoughts and that our thoughts, if we adjust them to be more accurate, to be more real, to be more positive, then we will feel better. And there is a relationship in that direction that does work. What I think about does drive mood, but it was really evident to me that there were times that I would wake up and I would describe it as like a weather front. I would wake up into cloudy weather before I even had any real thought I could feel it, and then I would notice that all my thoughts had the same color. They were all that way. It could be the exact same thing. I thought yesterday that I was like, this is going really well. And today I think it sucks. And I recognize like there’s something going on with the way I feel, which has sort of led me on this ongoing thought process of what’s the best way if I’m feeling bad or I’m having negative thoughts, what’s the best way to intervene? And where I’ve sort of landed is there’s lots of different ways, and we have to be sort of an artist in picking the one that works for us.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:11 But I just love that word. And you’re right, that description that you had is so true. It’s because we don’t. If you say, well, you’re having negative thoughts, we don’t see that. We just go, no, I’m seeing I’m seeing reality.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:13:24 Come to me. That’s why I think for me, I’m extra cautious about this notion. Like a lot of times people will glorify logic and thinking and they’ll sort of say emotion is the bad thing, and we need to be more logical and we need to think more. But for me as well, if you look at the research, we don’t really have a logical part of her brain and an emotional part of brain. I know we talk about the frontal prefrontal cortex or whatever, and the amygdala and whatever is being more emotional, but ultimately our brain works in terms of networks. And so what’s really important to recognize is that most of the time, your reality is filtered through your emotional state. This is another concept which I love comes from the field of neuroscience called affective realism.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:14:04 And it’s the idea that we interpret the world through the feelings that we feel. So the example I like to give, which is quite a bit easy, one is hangry. Being angry when you’re angry when you’re hungry, or angry when you’re angry because you haven’t gotten enough sleep, or anxious when you’re like, spiraling because you haven’t slept too much. So you’re overthinking things. But all of those. The problem is, you don’t always know you’re hangry when you’re angry, you just think that this person annoyed you, or pissed you off or made you feel bad. So the challenge is, is that we don’t always recognize our emotions, but our emotions then hijack our sense of what’s going on in the world. And it’s not that we’re not rational, but our brains are using rational logic through that lens of the emotion. And I think that in order for us to be able to work on our mental health, we have to recognize, like, I love the metaphor you use. That’s something I’ve used for years as well, just myself.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:14:54 I don’t tend to talk about it a lot, but it helps me to recognize that my emotions are kind of like weather, and sometimes it’s going to be raining and I can say it’s not raining, it’s not raining, it’s not raining, but I’m still going to get wet. And so when you recognize it’s weather, you also know weather changes. And it means I don’t have to figure it out in the moment. And I think sometimes I think recognizing what’s going on and even having a little patience is underestimated as how powerful it can be sometimes in coping with a mental health, I think, in this world is to your point, sometimes with the self-help word, it’s like, just do this exercise, it’ll change how you feel. Well, not always, because even if it changes temporarily, there’s still such a draw sometimes because, you know, in that moment You’re just you’re seeing the world and perceiving the world in quite an intensely real way. And for me, what helps me is recognizing, I know that this is propaganda and the spotting that it is, and recognizing that it is, allows you to at least take a step back to go. I don’t know whether to trust it or not. I’m not going to say it’s all wrong, but I’m gonna at least look at it differently than just taking it in and just believing everything that I think at that moment. Sometimes I believe the route to believing yourself starts by doubting yourself and recognizing that just because you feel it doesn’t make it so.
Eric Zimmer 00:16:15 Yeah, and I’ve said this on the show a number of times, but I have become I watch for when I feel something, when I, when I think something and believe it really strongly, like there’s a strong emotion. I take that now as a tip off that like, hang on a second, you might be off here. Where is the the default that I lived with for most of my life was when you feel that, it makes me feel extra certain. I’m extra certain I’m right. Because I’m because I feel it so strongly. But but that’s suspicious. I’m suspicious of that now because I’m like, okay, when there’s that much emotion attached to it, that’s often a sign that I’m not thinking clearly. Not always. It’s not that I’m always wrong. I just it’s a pause.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:17:02 And that’s the important piece, I think, for for me, I have a phrase I like to say, which is the speed to your anger reveals the depth of your programming. and to me this is really about oftentimes to your point, sometimes we’re so certain about something, it suggests that maybe we haven’t evaluated things that much, because most of the time, as I’m sure you’d agree, there’s a lot of nuance in the world, and we tend not to put our attention on that much nuance because nuance isn’t sexy. Nuance doesn’t get social media clicks. Yeah, right. Nuance is really what life is actually like, but it’s not as intriguing to us that it requires too much cognitive load for us to be able to to drill into it. But I think to your point, oftentimes it’s not that you might be wrong, you might be wrong, you might be right, even though it’s just being able to step back and question it.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:17:48 Like, I know when it comes to my country, Ireland, I’m biased about my history. There’s certain views that I have that are very, very biased, but I recognize them and I’m kind of okay with the fact I have them. But in no way do I think I’m being objective. And I think the problem isn’t that we don’t have these perspectives. A point of view. The problem is when we don’t own up to the fact that we know that we’re not being objective. Like I don’t say it’s the objective truth. I recognize it, that it feels true to me. And I think that’s one of the most important things for a mental health as well, is recognizing there’s a difference between something feeling true and being true, and that distinction can sometimes save our life.
Eric Zimmer 00:18:45 This is what I spend a lot of time talking about when I’m speaking these days. I’m doing a lot of talking about this very thing, which is what you said is that our brain has to believe something. It has to have a narrative. It has to have a story. It doesn’t work without it. It gets created automatically and instantly. That’s not a problem. Except that when we don’t see that, that’s what’s happening. As soon as I can see that it’s happening, I still have a point of view. I still have a perspective, I still have a story. But now that I know that it’s not objectively true, I can look at it. And so where I want to go now is you talk about different. I don’t know if you I don’t have the words exactly from your book. I don’t know if you call them types of truths. You’ve got five of them. How would you describe them?
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:19:30 So the reason I mentioned five types of truth in the first place is because. And I know straightaway, as soon as I say that people are like, bro, there’s one type of truth, right? There’s only the truth and there’s anything else, and the rest of it is just nonsense. But I particularly say five types of truth because that’s how people say it. In other words, there’s the objective truth. And objective truth is, if we were to do scientific study and we were able to make an accurate prediction or you’re in engineering or whatnot and you’re building something and you have to ensure that this if you do X, then you will produce Y. And you know that every time you do X, you produce Y, you can verify it. It’s objectively true. That’s objective.
Eric Zimmer 00:20:11 And there’s another type of objective truth if we want to think about it in our personal lives. And I read this in a book a long time ago called Crucial Conversations, and it was basically what a camera or a video recorder could pick up. Yeah, right. Like I saw Eric walk across the room and punch the wall, right. Like we might go, okay, that was objectively true. That happened.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:20:33 Sure the challenges when we talk about the truth, right? I would actually maybe push back a little on that. I think that if you were to, let’s say, the camera example and I think Crucial Conversations is a wonderful book, by the way.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:20:46 So I think overall it’s phenomenal advice. If you were to say I have a camera. So Eric went over and punched the wall, we could easily call that truth I prefer to think of. He went over and punched the wall. That’s the fact of what actually happened. The truth often comes into my explanation around that and the context.
Eric Zimmer 00:21:05 Precisely. That’s exactly my point, is that the only thing we can say is true is that the minute that I say he did it because. Or this is why it happened or any of that, now I’m in the world of, to some degree, meaning making and story creation.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:21:24 And the problem is we use the term truth to describe that. It’s a little bit like someone says their opinion, right? I think this is a disaster and This is the worst. Let’s say someone takes out. Just to give you an innocuous example, let’s say some person puts out an album and somebody gets on and goes, this is the worst album they’ve ever released. Fact, right? Saying the word fact after your opinion doesn’t make the opinion the fact.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:21:48 It’s like, oh my goodness, you said fact. You win. Okay. Like that’s not the way it works. But yet people do it totally. So there’s the objective truth. There is what I call the past truth, which is if I remember it a certain way, then that’s true. There is emotional truth. I feel it’s true. Therefore it must be true. There’s desired truth. I want it to be true, therefore it’s true. And then the shared truth. Me and Eric agree it’s true. Or me and my group agree it’s true. Therefore it must be true. And the problem is each of these. You could describe desire truth as wishful thinking. Yeah, but the reason I call it desire truth is because when people talk about it, they don’t say, hey, I’m wishful thinking now. They say this is true because they want it to be. And sometimes your desired truth, your wishful thinking. Sometimes that’s what you need in order for Dyson to be able to succeed in building his organization, he had to believe it was possible for him, after 5000 iterations and 5000 prototypes, to be able to be able to invent exactly what he wanted to invent.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:22:44 But that same desire, truth that helped him be resilient in spite of all of that adversity, is the same thing that people use to dilute themselves and ignore the elephants in the room and ignore the disaster that is happening to them in their life and make terrible decisions. So recognizing these are all different forms of truth. And the reason I call them truth is because that’s how we describe them. We say, well, it’s just true.
Eric Zimmer 00:23:06 Right.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:23:07 Well, have you verified or have you done scientific? Well, no, but I just know it is. Well, no. You feel it is. And I think that the more honest we all are, including myself. Because I have to do this all the time myself. Yeah. The more we’re able to make that distinction, which could also help us to grapple with the world that we’re facing and how we cope with that better.
Eric Zimmer 00:23:25 Yeah. I mean, one of the things and you point to this in the book at a couple different points that I think about a lot is that if we accept what you and I are saying, which is that a lot of what passes for reality or truth in our mind are opinions, stories, meanings that we have ascribed to things.
Eric Zimmer 00:23:46 If we buy into that, then one of the things that I find really interesting for me is which of these is useful? And I’ll give you an example that I sometimes use. I was laid off from a job when my wife was six months pregnant with my son. It was very early in my recovery, and I was certain I’d never get another job that seemed certain to me. I mean, I had a criminal record. I’d never been to college, all of that. And yet there’s another way I could look at that. There’s a positive way I could look at it, like, well, maybe I’ll find another job. And and the question is, which of those was true? The reality was at that moment none of them were true because it was future prediction. And so where I’m getting with this is that for me? I often think about like which of these is useful if I’m making a lot of it up, how can I make it up in ways that are useful? And you talked about this in the beginning and it’s in the book a lot.
Eric Zimmer 00:24:41 How can I use the beliefs that are self affirming versus self-denying versus, you know, tearing myself down?
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:24:50 I think you really hit the nail on the head when you talk about the word useful, because that’s very much aligned like I’ve a a tool in the book I talk about as called a belief audit. And a belief audit is pretty much four questions. Question one is what’s the belief? But the second question is not is it true? Because if I ask you of a belief and you say, I’m terrible at golf or I’m terrible at presenting, let’s say, right? And I say, is that true? Then your brain, depending on what you believe, might go, yes, it’s true because. And then you’ll give me all the evidence. Now, I can challenge that logically, but if you feel that you’re no good at presenting, it won’t matter how much logic or how much logic bullying. As Adam Grant would say that I’m challenging you on, you’ll still stick to your guns and your belief is going no matter what he’s saying.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:25:34 I know I’m no good at presenting. Whereas that’s not the most useful angle. Instead of asking, is it true? My question is, what is it you’re trying to achieve? So the first question is what’s the belief? The second question is what are you trying to achieve by believing that? And so you might say, well, I want to be able to be honest with myself so I know what I’m good at and what I’m not good at, so I can, you know, improve in the areas that I need to. The third question is, how’s that working for you? In other words, how is you believing that you can’t or that you’re no good at presenting helping you in that way? And then the final thing is, is that what’s a different belief or a different story? You could sell to yourself? Because I believe that a belief that you build is a story that you sell to yourself. And so to your point, when you lost your job, the fact is you’ve lost your job.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:26:19 Now we tell ourselves stories about that, stories about why it happened and stories about what it means. And so the story you tell about why it happened is an opportunity for you to be able to go. It happened because I’m whatever we might say to myself, because I’m useless, because I’m this, because I’m that, because life is unfair. Depending on if you position yourself as a victim or you’re a villain in your own story. But either way, it would be very easy for you to be able to fall back into addiction by telling yourself or selling to yourself the wrong story about why it happened, or else what does this mean? That’s a new opportunity for stories. So once again, it means that I’ll never get a good enough job. You can’t trust people in this. It’s impossible in the industry. I’m no hope. I’ve no chance I’ll be a terrible father. Like all of those things are stories that you can easily sell to yourself. And the moment that you made the decision to decide, you know what this means from a causal perspective and also from a meaning perspective.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:27:12 Those two stories became the most important stories at the time of your life. Because those two stories determined exactly not only what you were going to do, but determined how you dealt with the entire experience, how you communicated with your wife, how you started to raise your child, how you went out there and dealt with the adversity. The story you tell yourself about what happens is so much more important than what happens.
Eric Zimmer 00:27:34 Yeah, 100%. So you talk about how in order to, as you just said, sell ourself an idea or a belief that in order to change beliefs, they have to meet three criteria. What are those criteria?
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:27:48 In order for a belief to change, it needs to, number one, feel right. And that means it needs to feel like it’s true, or it needs to feel like we want it to be true. Number two, it needs to fit in with who we are so it doesn’t threaten our identity. It’s like something we could accept, and it doesn’t have any negative repercussions on the groups that we find ourselves part of.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:28:08 And only then do we get to gate three, which is it needs to make sense. So making sense is that it logically makes sense. The problem is, most of the time when we try to influence someone or try to change a person’s belief, we go straight to making sense. So you believe A and I want you to believe B So I give you all the logical reasons as to why B is right. But you’re not even listening. Because if you, for example, change from A to B, maybe that feels wrong to you. Maybe the fact that I’m coming from a different place feels wrong to you. Maybe by you believing what I want you to believe that is a negative impact on your life, so it feels wrong to you. Maybe by believing B as opposed to A, that means you’ll be ostracized from your group, or you will suffer in terms of your identity. Or maybe it totally makes a joke of who you are. If you change course and believe what I want you to believe.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:28:59 So what a lot of people miss is that the only time that logic works is with the person that already feels right and fits in. In other words, they’re just looking for accuracy. Like if me and you were having a conversation and both of us are trying to get to the bottom of something, but neither one of us cares about whether we’re right or wrong at the beginning. We just want to find the truth and we have a conversation. Then in that case, making sense is all we need, but we both need to be feeling that and be comfortable enough with who we are in that moment, so that our identity is on finding the truth. And the feeling is whatever feels right is only what we can verify as objectively true. But most conversations don’t work like that because in most conversations, it’s not so much about what’s objectively true. It’s about what feels true. For example, the the beliefs I hold. Oftentimes when you join a group, the membership fee you pay is the fee of believing what that group believes.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:29:54 And you don’t always join a group because of what the group believes, but you will believe whatever they believe once you’re part of that group. And this goes back to, you know, evolution to the point that we do not want to be thrown out of or tried. So often, the easiest thing in the world is just to agree with the people in our group. And that’s often how, you know, we don’t come to the conclusions we do because it’s true. We come to the conclusions we do because everyone else around us says it. And we don’t want, you know, to stand out in that. We don’t want to be thrown out of the group. And so I think we have this naive belief that our beliefs are just like, logically created. And really, they need to feel right. They need to fit in with who we are. And only then does the logic come in and take the credit for the other two.
Eric Zimmer 00:31:00 Check in for a moment. Is your jaw tight? Breath shallow? Are your shoulders creeping up? Those little signals are invitations to slow down and listen. Every Wednesday, I send weekly bites of wisdom, a short email that turns the big ideas we explore here in each show. Things like mental health, anxiety, relationships, purpose into bite size practices you can use the same day it’s free. It takes about a minute to read, and thousands already swear by it. If you’d like extra fuel for the weekend, you also get a weekend podcast playlist. Join us at oneyoufeed.net/newsletter that’s oneyoufeed.net/newsletter and start receiving your next bite of wisdom. All right, back to the show. So let’s apply this to changing an internal belief. What’s a good internal belief that we might want to change.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:31:58 So if we talk about for example not not feeling good enough okay. Right okay.
Eric Zimmer 00:32:02 So here’s my challenge with what you just said. I think I agree with it, particularly in an external conversation. The challenge is I think on an internal belief, like I’m not good enough. If I say yes, you are, it doesn’t feel true. And it also then threatens an identity I have of myself as being a certain way. So how do we overcome that? Because I think this is really important, because this is what happens when we try and change an internal belief. At least my experience is it feels wrong.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:32:37 Exactly. And by the way, I think your example was perfect because if you say I’m not good enough, let’s say I’m not good enough, I don’t feel good enough. And then if you try to convince yourself you are good enough, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to logically explain, well, you are good enough. You know why? Because look at how good you’re doing as a father. Look how good you’re doing as a partner and whatever. But your brain has still the ability to look at everything you’re doing wrong. So it doesn’t matter how much logic you give yourself, because the other wolf still has the capacity or ability to be able to give you all of the evidence as to why you’re so useless and when when you’re in that dark place, you’re able to come out like your lawyers are absolutely incredible.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:33:15 They are able to find every piece of evidence to suggest that you’re useless, right? We all have that. My inner dictator is really smart, really good. Logically knows how to put an argument together, knows how to, you know, challenge anything. It’s really good. And that’s why arguing with my inner dictator isn’t always the best approach, right? But when we talk about the feels right fits in and makes sense, the first thing is to recognize it is a feeling. I don’t feel good enough. You can say all day long, I’m not good enough. But really, that’s just a you haven’t even defined the terms like what do you mean by good? Right? Right. What do you mean by enough? Like if you say I’m not good enough, do you mean you’re not smart enough? You’re not handsome enough, you’re not sexy enough, you’re not competent enough, you’re not loving enough. You’re not all the. Exactly. But but this is such a general thing, you know, you can’t really say that this is absolutely true when you don’t define what you’re actually saying.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:34:08 It’s like me saying the world is terrible. Well, okay, but what exactly are you talking about? So what you do first is you’re looking at the feeling You recognize that it is a feeling. Number one. Number two is what are the times of situations where you do feel good enough? Well, there’s this time and there’s that time, but that’s not the way I feel it. No, that’s a different feeling. And my argument is not that you are good enough, but what I’m looking for is I’m looking for a belief that we want to replace it with, that you can accept. So if you turn around to me and you say, I’m not good enough, and I turn around to you and say, you are good enough, we’re we’re at an impasse. There’s no way of getting through. But if I talk around and go, is it possible for you to get better? Well, that feels right. Like it feels right that I can get better. It doesn’t feel right that I’m good enough now.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:34:53 But it feels right that I can get better. And that opens the door. Yeah, right. The way I like to look at it is if you tell me you’re not good enough. Let’s imagine I take a real example. I’m training for the marathon at the moment. Currently, I’m not fit enough to run a marathon, so you could say I’m not fit enough to run the marathon by marathon day. I need to be fit enough to run the marathon. So there’s a gap between where I am now and where I need to be now. In that situation, I’m not fit enough is very useful for me because it tells me there’s a gap between where I am, where I need to be. Yeah. But if you say I’m not good enough, okay, cool. How would you know that you were good enough? What does that feel like? And what is it that you could improve on right now? Today? What is the small step you could take today to get you a little bit better than you were before? And it’s easier for us to feel right about that.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:35:42 Or at least that doesn’t feel wrong, because once again, you’re not immediately throwing out positive thinking that your inner dictator could eliminate. But then the second piece on the identity it needs to fit in is, I often talk about the fact that people have two types of identities. They’ve perceived identity. This is the kind of person I am and desired identity. This is who I want to be. But I think there’s a much more useful type of identity that we all can embrace, which is, and this is coined from Nassim Nicholas Taleb work on antifragile. But it’s what I call the antifragile identity. And it’s the the idea of you as the type of person that every single time that you fail, every disappointment, every setback, every challenge, every problem, every pain, every trauma, all serves to help you become better than you were beforehand. And so your experience, Eric, all the tragedies in your life, all the worst experiences you’ve been through, all serve to make you so strong as a result of those.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:36:38 And when we look at that, when we start to embrace that, the reason it’s easier for us to see that is because if you don’t feel good enough today and you recognize that necessarily you don’t have to turn around and be good enough today from feeling not good enough to feeling good enough doesn’t have to happen straight away. Instead you go, can I improve? Yes. And then what kind of person would I be if every single event that had happened to me helped me become a little bit better each time, and we all learned lessons, like, there’s certain mistakes you made in the past that you wouldn’t make today. Therefore, you have the evidence there. Therefore it could fit in with who you are, because you’re the kind of person that even if you weren’t good enough in the past, you can learn to be a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better. And now you’re focusing on how can everything I’m going through help me to keep getting better as I move forward.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:37:29 And then the final gate of, you know, making it make sense. That’s when you could bring in your logical questions from areas like cognitive behavioral therapy, a rational mode of therapy, or, you know, neuro linguistic programming, where you go, how do you know you’re not good enough? What’s good enough look like? Who says you’re not good enough? Or motivational interview? I’m on a scale of 0 to 10, how sure are you that you’re not good enough? Well, I’m eight. Okay, cool. So why aren’t you attend? Well, I suppose I have a little bit of doubt, because maybe I am good enough for this way. Or again, we can deep dive into what exactly enough means. And why is it necessary to feel good enough in the first place? And is this one action you could take today good enough for today? Let’s let’s change the timeline. So I guess it’s always a multi-pronged approach, right? But for me, the big mistake we make is we try to rationalize and try to explain. No, you can do it. No, no. Not necessarily. Maybe I don’t have to go from I can’t do it to I can do it in a moment, but maybe I can go from I can’t do it to maybe. Yeah. Because all you need to do is start doubting what the inner dictator tells you. And I call the inner dictator Dick. So I’m like, okay, Dick, maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re not. Yeah, let’s think about it.
Eric Zimmer 00:38:42 Yeah, I often refer to that as just trying to sometimes get to neutral. Like from where I’m sitting. Positive is a is a. It’s a pretty big stretch. Right. So can I move towards neutral. And that often works for me. My book published in the end of March and I didn’t think I could write that book, really. It would be time to sit down to write and I would dread it. And I was like, what is happening? And what I realized? It was just self-doubt. It was just me saying, I can’t, I’m not good enough.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:12 I’m not a writer. I haven’t been writing long enough. All of that. And I would do kind of like what you just said. I would just say something to myself like, well, okay, but do you think that if you sit down and work at it, you’ll get better? And I’d be like, yeah, I guess that’s true. That’s how things work, you know? And do you think if you get something down on paper that your editor can help you make it better, I believe that. Do you believe you’ll feel better about yourself if you sit down and write versus if you don’t? Okay. Yeah, I believe that. Right. It was enough to open the door, let a little bit of light in so I could move forward. It didn’t replace self-doubt. I don’t think that’s actually a possible thing. I think it continues to come back in different ways. And I love what you said also about a multi-pronged approach, because I think sometimes we need to be cognitive.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:56 Like you said, ask ourselves the questions, you know, get get in there and examine the beliefs. And a lot of times, if you can just see that something you’re believing isn’t true, it just goes away. Sometimes it’s a very effective approach, Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes I need to work on my emotion. What’s the emotion I’m feeling? How do I work with this emotion? How do I move an emotion through my body? How do I allow it? How do I do something physical that might move the emotion? And then sometimes I just have to do something right? Like I have to take an action that I feel good about. And I think it’s as I said earlier, I think there’s a bit of an art to this of like, okay, which of these levers do I pull in what order?
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:40:36 I couldn’t agree with you more. I think the challenge I see is a lot of times people are like, this is the secret, right? Of course, what you need to do is this.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:40:43 And I think that fails because we are too focused on telling people what we think, as opposed to recognizing that when it comes to the human mind, we all might be facing a similar battle, but the battle shows up the different ways, and we all have different weapons and we all have different preferences. I’ve got friends of mine that, you know, swear by meditation and mindfulness. And so if you ask me how useful meditation and mindfulness are. I think they’re absolutely super useful. I think everyone should learn how to master them. I think they’re great and wonderful. They’re not as helpful for me in my struggles. That doesn’t mean they aren’t helpful in certain contexts, but they might be the most powerful thing for other people. And I think this ability we have to go, look, we want to teach all the tools. For me, the concepts around enter propaganda is I believe that this will speak to a large amount of people, because I think that a lot of people can relate to it, but it won’t speak to everyone, and someone else might turn around.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:41:39 And, you know, I prefer going down a much more sort of spiritual route, or I prefer going down a much more sort of, you know, habit based route, or I want like each set or own. But I think that it’s important for us all to share what we’ve found works well and make it so to your point, with a collective array of tools, because the war that we’re fighting, this story, war is the most important war battle that we ever face. I was suicidal when I was a teenager, and so the desire I have behind this isn’t just about teaching people something that can help them make better decisions or, you know, heal polarization or, you know, influence more effectively. A large part of it is helping us to be able to deal with the demons and the darkness of things like depression, which the inner dictator will often master. And how do we respond and react to that so that we can, at the very best level, save our lives? And to me, that’s one of the most important things, is that saving your life isn’t about like one method or one technique. It’s an ongoing battle. But we want to give people as many weapons and as many tools as possible to do that.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:43 Yeah. Beautifully said. Let me ask you about today. So you talk about, you know, depression isn’t gone for you. It’s not gone for me. I’m not quite sure what to call it anymore, whether depression is even the right term. But when you enter that state, to me, I mostly would just call it a very low mood state. How do you respond? Like, what do you do?
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:43:05 So I’ll usually use the term experiencing the darkness, but I would call it depression, right? So every now and then I find it that I’m experiencing the darkness, and it’s just because my sense is almost dull, I start to perceive things are closing in a bit. My brain starts to show me the new congruent cognition thing, all the things wrong and all the things the difference between me when I was a teenager and me now, is that it rarely penetrates to my feelings of worth, so it doesn’t affect my feelings of self-worth.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:43:34 I tend to be quite strong there, but it manifests more about my perception of the external world than my external world and the world in general. Right. And the hopelessness or helplessness or worthlessness there. So when it comes to when it happens, my first initial reaction is, okay, the inner dictators back, okay, this is inner propaganda. I cannot trust all of the I call it bullshit. I kind of trust all of the bullshit that it’s feeding me. It’s just like when I was in North Korea. The Dear Leader was reported to have gotten like a hole in one on his very first time playing golf. Right. I have to recognize this is bullshit, right? No. Maybe he did. Maybe not. Probably not though. Right. So whenever my inner dictator starts, remember, it feels true. But the awareness. It’s like when you’re sick, sometimes it feels like you’re always going to be like this, or I don’t drink anymore. But when I had a few drinks, there would be a part of me that knows, okay, this is the moment that you need to stop drinking, and sometimes you go over and sometimes you don’t.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:44:33 But there is a little voice inside your head that recognizes when you’re under the influence. And to me, it’s the same kind of thing. You recognize what I’m believing and feeling and experiencing right now feels true, but it’s the inner dictator. And that metaphor was so helpful for me, the notion of inner propaganda. And once I do that, it really is a case of what are the actions I need to take today and what are the things I need to do to ensure I’m taking them in the best possible way. And then what do I need to do moving forward to number one, be as successful as I can despite how I feel. And number two. Is there anything I can do or need to do? That allows me to feel a little bit better than I am today. And then part of it is patience. And wait until the cloud lifts or waiting to the darkness leaves. I think that the mistake a lot of people make is that they feel bad about feeling bad, so they double down.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:45:25 It’s like, oh my goodness. Like I could easily turn. The inner dictator tried this before. I would be in a state of darkness. And I would go, oh, you see, you’re supposed to help people to feel better and you’re feeling depressed. So I was feeling miserable about the fact that I was feeling miserable. And then I realized, I’m like, you really are sophisticated. You’re a clever little shit. Like, you’re really good at being able to generate arguments, to be able to be very conniving in the way in which you’re doing it. But the more I learned the tricks that the inner dictator plays, and I know this is ridiculous because I’m talking about my own brain here. Right, right. But the more I learned the tricks, the more I was able to combat them, because now when it does that stuff, I’m like, okay, so you’re playing the whole feeling bad about feeling bad game. Okay, that’s a good one. Yeah. Go ahead mate. Keep going.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:46:10 Yeah keep going Dick. Yeah I’m listening. And that kind of relationship transformed it for me. So it doesn’t mean that I don’t get depressed. But it really lasts a lot less than it lasted before. And it impacts me a lot less. And it really is something that for the rest of my life, maybe I’ll have these bouts, but when I do, I feel that I’m pretty well able to cope with them. And that’s kind of largely because the way in which I perceive it, it is so much of it comes down to recognizing the game that is being played, because as soon as you know that you’re inside the game, it gives you the opportunity to play it better.
Eric Zimmer 00:46:44 Yeah, I think so much of that is exactly the way I approach it. And it’s back to this mood congruent idea. I’m astounded by still that when I start to feel depressed, one of its core stories is you always feel this way and you always will. And I am still astounded how realistic that is, despite decades of evidence that is not true at all.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:14 To use your words, it feels so true. It feels so true. And so for me, yeah, it is a matter of just going well. It feels true. But I know on some level it’s not. And I can’t argue with myself about it right now too much. Right. Because logic isn’t really going to work that much, but it does lessen it a little bit when I can get rid of that. That is one of the core stories that is really the most problematic for me. And then, yeah, like you said, the feeling bad about feeling bad is another one that we all get and then we feel bad about, I mean, it just it loops on itself in so many different ways. And then a lot of what you were saying is a phrase I use of just don’t make it worse, right? You’re like, what do I need to do? What are the actions I need to take like three days from now, when I emerge from this, what will I wish I had done during that period? I often think about just like the wisest, truest version of myself for the best version of myself.
Eric Zimmer 00:48:10 What would the best version of myself do? Obviously that best version is not here right now. He’s he seems to have vacated the premises. But what would he do if he was here? I guess that’s a little bit like what would Jesus do? But not I’m not considering myself. Jesus. I’m just saying I’ve spent enough time with the best version of myself to have a sense of what he thinks is important.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:48:30 Yeah, I’m definitely on the same page. I think the challenge that sometimes we have is we sometimes think it’s about positivity and negativity, and I think that’s where we can go wrong, because I think there’s an allergy sometimes we have towards negative thinking. It’s almost like, well, we can’t think anything negative. And if you think negative, it’s something wrong. But my best version of myself is quite cynical and can be negative. Yeah, but is is strong, has a smart sense of humor. And for me, when I’m talking, let’s say talking back to the inner dictator. It is that kind of relationship where I feel that my edge, a little bit of my edginess, helps me in terms of thinking.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:49:07 Because if my inner dictator says, oh, and you’re pathetic, you’re the worst idiot. Your book was rubbish. No one likes you. And this and on the other that. My response to that in the past might have been like, because, you know, I went to enough positive thinking seminar. I was like, no, you’re a good person. You’re a good look. There’s no way I’m going to believe that, right? That person sounds weak. It sounds all over the place for me. But for me, what does work is when I turn around. All right. Dick? Yeah. It seems you’re really certain with yourself. That’s it. Keeps moving on. This is really good. I love the tactics. You do. You know, the rhetorical strategies you’re using right now? First of all, you you’re discounting the positive, which is actually more of a cognitive distortion, but you’re using repetition. The rule of three there. Do you notice the way you set up useless this and that.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:49:47 Like I play around with it that way. And this is really nerdy. I’m like, I’m almost embarrassed to suggest it. But for me, that’s the kind of thing that when I hear it, I’m more likely to believe it than you know you can do it. Or. Or even loving yourself like I do believe in loving yourself. But for me, when I hear a lot of the sort of, you know, you just be good to yourself and love yourself, it doesn’t cut mustard with my inner dictator. I think it’s wonderful. I think it works for a lot of people. I think it’s amazing and I highly encourage it. But for me, if I try to turn around and go, oh, and you need to be more loving to yourself, you need to be more caring. Dinner dictators say, what are you talking about? Shut up. Yeah, right. So you don’t need to be more loving to yourself. That’s just a bunch of crap. Like you need to do this. And for me, I have to find. I have to find the side of me that was able to deal with the inner dictator, not to defeat them and to out argue them, but to just be a bit of a almost like a smart arse so that I’m not taking what they’re saying as seriously as I would have before, if that makes sense.
Eric Zimmer 00:50:47 I love that. Thank you for sharing the way that you do that and the way you bring you into it. It’s like with the idea of self-compassion. I think it’s one of the most important things. And the advice I like is, imagine how you would talk to a friend. And the reason that I like that advice is that if you actually imagine it and you go through the exercise, you will use the words and phrases that are authentic to you. And then you can go, okay. That’s what I would say. Now, can I say that back versus the the self-compassion phrases out of the book that, you know, I may cringe at it is knowing ourselves to a certain degree and what works with us.
Eric Zimmer 00:51:32 Like my editor, Chris, who’s listening to this, and my best friend, I think his is a constant inner stream of humor, you know, and he’s really good at that piece of it. Like he is just good at laughing about it, which I also think is a good strategy and and use. But he’s particularly good at using that tool. And he’s found, you know, that’s an effective one for him. And I think we all just want to go, what is it that is most effective and authentic to me?
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:52:01 And I think humor is underused as a strategy to be able to cope with things like depression and whatnot. Like a lot of comedians struggle with depression, and their amazing comedy comes almost like as a coping mechanism for that. Totally. But but the beauty of humor, as opposed to just positivity or care or even fighting back or discipline or whatever, all of those are great, depending on who you are. So it’s not like I’m saying these are wrong. This is right.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:52:27 But I think humor certainly I, you know, I lean towards it as a tool because I think I used to use it with a lot when I work with clients as a therapist as well as I think when you’re able to laugh at something, it takes a lot of the energy away from it. Like we talk about the wolf that you feed right? When you laugh at something, you are taking energy away from it. And I think a lot of times if, if I like, take being offended by something, If I feel offended by something, if I’m able to laugh at something, I’m taking energy away from that thing. But if I take it seriously, it’s like I get tunnel focused on something. I’m giving energy to it. And if we can learn to laugh at our problems, more people will turn around. How could you laugh at this? This is really serious. I’m not talking about the super, super, super serious stuff, which is like ruining everything in your life and you need to do something about it.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:53:13 I’m talking about the 90% of everyday things that piss us off. Learning to be able to laugh more at that and find the humor in that. And when we do, that can transform the way in which we think. And I think that, again, there’s an artistry to this. Like I did a few years ago, I did a TEDx talk, and it was based upon this exact thing. And the TEDx talk I did, I rhymed the entire way through, and it was ten minutes on what I call mind control. But in it I had three rap battles between the negative voice and the positive voice.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:53:44 And it was. And it’s been it’s been seeing quite a lot of people. I was like, I bet I think more than a million people, have watched it, but it’s basically I started as a Ryman as the narrator, and then I go into the negative voice and it’s like I insult myself in a really horrific way. And then the positive voice goes in and I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but this and that and the other.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:54:03 But the best lines of the positive voice were the ones where I was able to joke about it. Right. So it’s almost like, you know, the eight mile where he starts up and he goes, you know, I am this, I am that, I am this. So he opens up and he almost inoculated against the insults because he tells the other person what they were going to say or whatever before they said it. Well, it’s kind of like the best parts of my, let’s say, rhyme, where I’m rhyming with myself on stage and I’m not very good at the rapping or whatever, but when I did it, it was the best parts were the ones where I was using humor to challenge what the inner dictator had said. Yeah, and to me, that’s what works internally for me as well. And I think it’s it’s a wonderful tool because we take so many things seriously. And I think that some things warrant that, but humor is just such an underappreciated tool.
Eric Zimmer 00:54:53 Before you check out, pick one insight from today and ask, how will I practice this before bedtime? Need help turning ideas into action? My free weekly Bites of Wisdom email lands every Wednesday with simple practices, reflection and links to former guests who can guide you even on the tough stuff like anxiety, purpose and habit change.
Eric Zimmer 00:55:16 Feed your good wolf at one you feed your net. Newsletter. Again one you feed your net letter. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation because you have a great framework for making decisions that I want to talk about. Listeners, if you’d like to hear that post-show conversation, you’d like to add free episodes and you want to support us because we need your support. You can go to one. You feed, net and sign up, and we will have links in the show notes to where people can find your book. Find your website and we’ll have to we’ll have to link to the Ted talk where you rap and rhyme. I’m now thinking that might be a requirement to be a guest on the one you feed. Is that at least five minutes of the conversation have to be done that way. Thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. I knew reading the book that it would be a good one. And thank you.
Owen Fitzpatrick 00:56:10 Thanks for being a pleasure, Eric.
Eric Zimmer 00:56:12 Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the One You Feed community.
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