From heroin to healing to hosting.
In 1994, Eric Zimmer walked through the doors of Maryhaven, an addiction treatment center in central Ohio, as a client seeking help for heroin addiction. Today, he is an author, teacher, speaker and the creator of "The One You Feed" podcast.
Fifty million podcast downloads later, Zimmer shares what recovery really teaches.
Zimmer has a new book called How A Little Becomes A Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life.
He joins All Sides to talk about his new book. He will also discuss his journey from being a client at Maryhaven to returning decades later in recovery and now partnering with them around his new book.
Guests:
Transcript
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Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. In 1994, Eric Zimmer walked through the doors of Mary Haven, an addiction treatment center in central Ohio, as a client seeking help for heroin addiction. Homeless and facing prison, he was at a turning point that would ultimately change the course of his life. Today, Zimmer celebrates more than 30 years in recovery. He is now an author, teacher, speaker, and the creator of the One You Feed podcast. More than 50 million downloads of the podcast later, Eric Zimmer shares what recovery really teaches. And he's sharing his story in a new book. It's called, "How a Little Becomes a Lot, the Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life." Welcome to All Sides, Eric.
Eric Zimmer: Thank you, I'm really glad to be here.
Juravich: So you had a moment of clarity that led to writing this book. You realized that for most people, there is not necessarily one big life change that happens to them, one big event necessarily. For most people it's a series of small choices made every day. So tell me about these daily small choices and your thinking of it that led to this book
Zimmer: Well, I start the book with me walking into Mary Haven, and I say, if you were filming the movie of my life, the pivotal scene would be me going into this treatment center and them saying to me, we think you need to go to long-term treatment. And I said, no, thank you, which makes me laugh to this day.
Juravich: And you were 24 at the time, right?
Zimmer: I was 24. I was homeless. I weighed 100 pounds. I was yellow and jaundice from hepatitis C. As you mentioned, I was facing prison. I was in bad shape. And I went back to my room and I had a moment where I just saw clearly that if I left I was going to go to jail or die and probably soon. So I went out and I said, OK, I'll go to treatment. Mm hmm.
And if we were filming the movie, that's the pivotal scene, right? And the music would swell in the background. It's very triumphant. And that was an important moment, but that moment only has the significance. It does because of the thousands of choices I made day after day, week after week, month after month after that to lead us towards recovery. And so all change I think is this way. We may have epiphanies. That tell us that we need to change we may become very inspired to change but it's the ability to keep doing it little bit by little bit over time that causes the true transformation to happen.
Juravich: And that's where the title of your book comes from, you know, how a little becomes a lot. It relates to the little by little proverb about small decisions. Can you tell me that?
Zimmer: Yeah, it's a Tanzanian proverb and it says little by little, a little becomes a lot. And that just is kind of the way most everything in life is.
Juravich: Yeah, yeah, I mean the the small choice everyone makes a lot of I can't remember there's a statistic that I that I can't think of right now, but like an elementary school teacher makes something like You know ten thousand decisions
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Juravich: So I guess we all make little decisions every day, whether we realize it or not.
Zimmer: We are making little decisions all the time. And recognizing that those decisions are important is really valuable, while also not freaking ourselves out about every single little decision that we make. And as the book goes on, I start to explore, trying to figure out like what really does matter. The subtitle of the book is the art of small changes for a more meaningful life. And that's the last part of that is what we're pointing at. A more meaningful life. So what changes can I make? What decisions am I making that are either leading me closer to that or further away from that?
Juravich: So you ask two big questions. Who do I want to be? And you ask what do I, sorry, you ask, what do want to and who do I to be. Those are your two questions. So, and then you follow up with, why am I acting like someone I don't want to? So answer that question for me. Why do people act like someone they don't actually want to.
Zimmer: Well, we all want lots of different things as part of the problem, and being human is that we want lots different things. I want to be in shape, and I also want to eat ice cream. I want to spend more quality time with my kids, but I also want to de-stress after work by looking at my phone. So we're pulled in multiple different directions. And recognizing that is really valuable because that's what it means to be human. We usually think there's something wrong with us that we're that way. And instead, that's just what it's like to inhabit a mind like ours.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking with author and podcaster Eric Zimmer. His podcast is The One You Feed, and his book is "How a Little Becomes a Lot, The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life." I want you to talk more about this little by little thinking, because you don't mean it in a vague sense. You literally mean do low resistant actions. Consistently in the same direction. Like that's what you say. So tell me, what is, give us an example. What's a low resistant action done consistently?
Zimmer: A low resistance action is something you can get yourself to do. And so part of this is recognizing that little is going to look different for different people. For you, you might be able to go out and run for 30 minutes and that's a low resistance action. For me, walking around the block for 15 minutes might be my low resistance. If I tried to do what you're doing, it would be too hard. So can I get myself to do it? Hmm done consistently over time is how the little becomes a lot, right? It just adds up over time.
And then in the same direction is also really important because in today's world, we are inundated with ways we should change ourselves. If you go on Instagram, you might have 30 different life changes you could make in the first hour. You could do a juice cleanse. You could meditate. You can start journaling. You could sit in a sauna. I mean, the list goes on and on and. And what ends up happening for a lot of us is we try something for a very short time. We don't see an immediate result. So we go, that doesn't work. And we move on to the next thing. And then we do this again and again and then again. And so little by little scattered all over the place does not become a lot, right? It becomes a lot when we're pointing in the same direction.
Juravich: Yeah. You use the example of exercise in the book. You just use the example of exercises here. I'm going to use the example of the exercise on myself. I know it's good for me, right? I feel good after I do it, but I can't wire it into me. Why can't I make it a habit?
Zimmer: An action like exercise is not going to become habit in the sense of what behavior chain scientists talk about when they mean a habit. Because a habit means it happens automatically without effort. And in order for that to happen, it has to be an action that takes place in the same way, in the time, in the context. That's why putting on your seatbelt can become habitual. You always get in the car in the way, you sit down, there's a steering wheel in front of you, There's a Seatbelt behind you becomes automatic part of the reason that it's a culture We're very seduced by the idea of habits is we want what you're asking We want to just say all right exercises now easy for me forever
Juravich: Go. Yeah.
Zimmer: And it's just not that way. I wish it was. Resistance is part of the game. And we could spend lots of time speculating on why. And I ask people on my show this question all the time. But the essence of it is first, the competing commitment, right? You want to exercise, but your body also wants to sit on the couch. I have this all the time. I love to read Substack. So I'll be on the couch reading Substack and it'll be time to get on the bike. And I have competing commitments, right? There's the, I want to get on the bike, but I also want to stay and keep reading on Substack because it's comfortable.
And I often reframe this as the question of what do I want most versus what do want now? Okay. So what I want the best version of me, the wisest version of my wants to be healthy. The version of that's sitting on the couch wants to continue to sit there. That's what I what now. So
oftentimes we bring to mind this question, what do I want most versus what do want now? That's a question I will ask myself.
The other way to move through this is to just get started. There's an idea that we need to wait until we're motivated to do something. And that's lovely when it happens that way, but it very often doesn't. And so keep in with my example. What I'll say to myself is something like, just go put on your bike shoes and clip into the bike. That's little. I've taken something bigger. I mean, it's not that big, but say a 60 minute ride, which feels overwhelming.
Juravich: I don't have 60 minutes, yes.
Zimmer: I don't have 60 minutes. I'm too tired for 60 minutes Yeah, and I've broken it down into one little thing and then once I'm pedaling. I usually can keep pedaling We build momentum. So these things don't become habitual But we can build momentum meaning the more I do it the the easier it is to do not Not that it's always easy But I certainly know it's easier for me to get on the bike if I've gotten on three times this week already Then if I haven't for two weeks Yeah.
Juravich: Well, and a part of it for me with the, you know, knowing exercise is good for myself, but also not wanting to do it every day is, I joined a gym that cost me money. So if I don't go, the number of times per month that I'm paying for, I'm literally losing money. And that has helped me actually, yeah.
Zimmer: I think that's really wise, right, because you figure out what motivates you.
Juravich: It makes me mad to lose money.
Zimmer: Yeah, see me I'd be like, I don't that that just wouldn't work for me. I wouldn't really care I'd like all right. I'm paying for a gym and I go I just wouldn't think about it. It wouldn't factor into my Motivation, but it does yours. And this is a really important point Which is that there is no one-size-fits-all Approach to how we change or how we get to where we want to go and my book is an attempt to lay Out some broad principles that people can use But it's not a paint-by-numbers, because we are not paint- by-numbers, we're not a coloring book. We are much more complicated than that, unfortunately, or fortunately.
Juravich: Well, and at this point in the book, when you're talking about this, you also say that the repetition of AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, is what makes it work. So you found that repetition to be both meaningful and spiritual. So tell me more about that, how repetition plays into it.
Zimmer: Well, I didn't at first. I mean, when I first went to 12-step meetings, there were times I wanted to gouge my eyes out because every- Because-
Juravich: Because of the repetition? Yeah, every
Zimmer: Yeah, every meeting starts the same way. They read the 12 steps. They read, we read the twelve traditions. They might read something called the promises, a little section from the book. And early on for me, I was going to. For sure, one meeting a day, often two and sometimes three. So I'm hearing this again and again, and it's it's driving me a little bit nuts. Right. For me, I, I. I later was able to see myself in a different setting and I was studying Zen Buddhism with a teacher and it was the same thing. He made me read the same 164 pages over and over and the Buddhist services start with the same chanting but somehow I was able then with a little bit more wisdom maybe more context. To see what the repetition was pointing at, what the deeper meaning of it was. And so repetition is very valuable because we have to keep doing the thing if we want the result. And repetition can become problematic. And I think we work with it and we try and internalize it and see the deeper meeting. And then sometimes it's time for a change.
Juravich: Yeah, do you still see the repetition of AA as more meaningful now? Like, after you went through the Zen part with the Buddhism, did it change your view of AA too?
Zimmer: Yeah, to certainly to a degree, I also reminded myself the deeper purpose. What's the deeper? Purpose. The deeper purpose isn't for me who's been in recovery for a long, long time to hear that. The deeper purposes, the people who are new to begin to understand and learn. And in that context, then I go, oh, this is beautiful actually. Right. There's a beauty in this because we're trying to give this gift. We were given to someone else.
Juravich: And also around this part in the book, you talk about motivation, right? And so, because you were saying for you, your motivation is to just do the small thing and clip your shoe, I'm not a biker, but you clip your shoes into the bike, right. And for me, the motivation is that I don't wanna lose money, so I might as well go to the gym because otherwise I'm losing money. But do you have any more tips for increasing motivation? Can you give me a tip?
Zimmer: Sure, I'll make one clarification. So what you're talking about with you and money is a motivation. What I was talking about is simply a strategy. Okay, got it. It's just, and ideally for me, I don't even have to get into the debate about motivation if I just take the simple strategy and it gets me on the bike, but sometimes it doesn't. And that's when I need to go back to why. Oh, because I want to be healthy. Well, why does that matter? That's just a, more cognitive processing, right? You wanna, I wanna do as little as I can to just do the action.
Motivation is an interesting thing because it tends to go up and down, we all know this. And it goes up and done based on a whole lot of factors, some of which we can control, some of we can't. We can't control, for example, I'm less motivated if I don't have a good night's sleep. Okay. And just don't feel it. True.
Speaker 4: It's true. Yeah
Zimmer: But I learned strategies to get me kind of over the hump on those days. The other thing about motivation that's very interesting is it goes up when we feel good about ourselves and about our chances of success, and it goes down when we feel bad about ourselves, and our ability to do something. And this is really important because this is the cycle that a lot of people get into. They'll start some new behavior, it will be going well, and then for whatever reason, And life intervenes and they don't. They don't do it, they don't do it that day, they don't to it that week, whatever it is.
And then their brain starts to say, see, I told you, you never stick with this. You can't do this. Oh, that's my brain. Right. Yeah. And so what happens is that pushes motivation down because you, we don't want to do things that we don't think we're going to be successful at. So we're less motivated. So we don't do it. Which causes us to double down on that self talk of see, I couldn't do. And it's a downward spiral, but there's an upward spiral too, which is when you do something, you feel good about it and you keep moving.
And it is really important to recognize, and it's one of the themes that underlies the entire book, which, is that change is a skill. We think it's in our ability to change or to do the thing we're trying to do is a character reflection. I'm just lazy Or I'm unmotivated, or I'm the kind of person that doesn't stick with things. And what I'm trying to say is we can all figure this out. I think that changing a behavior is a puzzle that can be solved, but we need to orient into that mindset so that we don't drive our motivation down by telling ourselves stories about ourselves that limit us.
Juravich: In my, in my notes from your book, I'm not sure if this is related to motivation or more of that, the small change thing. It's probably both, but I really liked one of the activities that you had, which was you said to try to do something that you've been putting off forever for two minutes, just to, and you literally mean just two minutes at a timer. Is that a motivation thing or is that like a chain? Like what, what is that? If I, if I have this task that's been sitting there.
Zimmer: Yeah, yeah, it's more a strategy than it is, right? It's just how do I get going? And that is often the case for some reason. Starting something that is difficult for us is the hardest part. It's the starting. Once we get going, we can usually not always, but we can often keep going. I think about it a little bit like a rocket. To get a rocket out into space takes an enormous amount of initial effort. It's hard to do. Once it's out there, it goes kind of on its own. And so that's what we're trying to do with doing something for two minutes. How do I break through the atmosphere, so to speak, so that I can keep going? And the reason to tell ourselves to do it for two minute is that we can usually talk ourselves into that.
Juravich: Now two minutes isn't gonna help me with the exercise thing, but two minutes will help me with the other problem I have, which is cleaning up, I pile things, cleaning up piles.
Zimmer: Yeah well the other thing also is often that the two minutes becomes 10 becomes 15 okay 30 right yeah so yeah you can do it for two minutes and stop if you don't want to do it and that is a that is an and I guess you
Juravich: And I guess you could do that with exercise too, yeah.
Zimmer: Yeah. Yeah. But so the point is either two minutes, you know, you slowly chip away at something or two minutes gets you going. Because I was saying earlier, we believe we get motivated and then act. But often it's the other way around. We start in action and the motivation kind of comes afterwards. And so the two minutes is a way to get us moving so that hopefully the motivation can come.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about how to make small changes in our lives to hopefully make a meaningful impact. And we are talking with author and podcast host, Eric Zimmer. Coming up, we're gonna talk about how our values and our desires can contradict each other. And we're going to learn more about Eric's popular podcast. That's when All Sids continues on 89, 7 NPR news.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host Amy Juravich. From heroin to healing to hosting. In 1994, Eric Zimmer walked through the doors of Mary Haven, an addiction treatment center in central Ohio, as a client seeking help for heroin addiction. Today, he is an author, teacher, speaker, and the creator of the One You Feed podcast. More than 50 million podcast downloads later, Eric Zimmer shares what recovery really teaches. And his new book is called "How a Little Becomes a Lot." The subtitle is The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life. And he's talking with us today about that. Eric Zimmer, thanks for being here today.
Zimmer: Thank you for having me.
Juravich: So for people who are not familiar, I want you to talk about your podcast for a bit. It's called The One You Feed, and can you tell the story that goes into that title for us?
Zimmer: Sure, it's an old parable of unknown origin. It gets claimed sometimes by Native Americans, but other Native Americans reject it. We don't know where it comes from. But it goes like this. 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 says, well, which one wins? And the grandparents says, the one you feed.
Juravich: I mean, I love that, and I love the title, and you tell that story in just about every podcast episode, right, because it's the way you get the guests to weigh in, right?
Zimmer: Yeah, I end that, I read that, and then I say, and tell me, I'd like to ask you what that podcast means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So I'm using it as a orienting point that we can kind of jump off. And I've done 800 plus episodes, so I've heard all kinds of different.
Juravich: Yeah, so it's your launch. It's your launching off point. Yeah. Yeah. But can you tell me maybe one of the more unique takes you've heard to answer that question that sticks out in your head? Like what pops to mind whenever you think about how you've That answered 800 different ways.
Zimmer: I think one of the most unique ones was somebody talking about how... We feed each other and I thought that was a really interesting idea that like yeah a we are You know, we're choosing which thing inside of us But they were talking a lot about how other people help us do that and I think that's a common theme that runs through a lot of this and it is in my book and Which is that? Yes, we We need help going in the direction that we want. Often other people are one of the biggest factors in that. Certainly was in my recovery.
Juravich: So tell our listeners what your podcast is basically about. I mean, you're talking to people about basically small changes to lead to a meaningful life. I mean that's what you're doing, right?
Zimmer: I mean, essentially, the intro of the podcast talks about creating a life worth a living. So if it falls under that rubric, I'm happy to have the guest on. What I did notice is that a lot of my episodes did start to feature what I would call behavior change experts, people who really thought a lot about how people change. And I've been fascinated with that question really since I was 24. I was first fascinated with it because I was dying and I needed to change.
But then as time went on, I saw some people that I cared about get into recovery and stay in. And I saw other people that cared about not get it and die. And so why, why is this? And then in my own life, as I went on as it became more sort of prosaic things, like, why can I exercise sometimes consistently and other times I can't at all. Why am I productive at work sometimes, and yet other times I procrastinate endlessly. And then I started working with coaching clients, I've coached hundreds of people from around the world, and the same thing. Like, you know, what is going on here? And I eventually got to the point where I felt like I had a point of view, and I wrote the book.
Juravich: Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you. So you've interviewed all of these behavior change experts. You've done 800 podcasts. What made you decide to get into this? I'm sure that you've read your podcast, your people on your podcast have written lots of books. What made want to get in this crowded space? Cause that, I mean, that would be intimidating for me. Yeah.
Zimmer: It well, it is intimidating and it's intimidating because a lot of those people that come on are incredible writers and so this book was very difficult for me to do Because of the self-doubt that it brought up but the reason I decided to do it was as I said, I kind of felt like I finally had a perspective I wanted to share and And some ideas that were different than what I was seeing out and that combined different aspects of things in a way that I hadn't seen anybody else combining them. And again, I've done a pretty thorough study of what's being written in this space.
Juravich: So you don't have a PhD in psychology, like some of your guests do, right? Right, but you hosted 800 podcasts. So is that kind of your extended learning university, your podcast is?
Zimmer: Well, certainly the the book knowledge sense of it. Yes. I mean, I've read most of those people's books. So I've red. I wouldn't say all of them, but I've probably read five or six hundred books in the psychology, spirituality space. There's that. There's also my own experience of being in recovery and being around people who are trying to change. And then, like I said, I had. You know, coaching hundreds of people. I led thousands of people through workshops. So I also had a real hands-on element of it. It wasn't theoretical. It was me actually trying to change myself and trying to help other people change and seeing what worked and what didn't.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking with author and podcaster Eric Zimmer. His podcast is The One You Feed, and his book is "How a Little Becomes a Lot, The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life." And I wanted to ask you about the coaching aspect, because I listened to one of your podcast episodes where you coach someone kind of live on the podcast. And the one I listened to happened to be about anxiety, so you were coaching him through anxiety issues. Where did the coaching come about? Have you always been like a life coach? Is that, am I calling, is that a life Coach?
Zimmer: I don't like that word, I've often called it a behavior coach.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Zimmer: Because people are trying to make some sort of change. But life coach sort of gets it, too. I just don't for whatever reason it that has a connotation I don't like. That came up relatively early into the podcast a couple of years in and people started asking me, well, do you ever do coaching work with people? And I thought, no, I don't I'm not even quite sure entirely what that is. But after I got asked, I looked into it a little bit and I thought you know what, I'll try it. And This may be me remembering things slightly different, but it feels to me like the very first time I did it, I went, oh, I know how to do this, because I sponsored so many people in AA over the years.
Speaker 5: And
Zimmer: And I was like, this is a very similar process. And I went, and I just realized that I felt incredibly comfortable doing it. I think I was, right away I was like, I think, I'm really good at it. And I really like it. And so that's kind of where it came from.
Juravich: How do you get people to agree to come on the podcast to be coached? Because I'm assuming you coach people, you know, without the podcast.
Zimmer: Well that what you heard was a new experiment we did in the last three months where I had a couple people agree to come on and be coached on the podcast normally all my coaching is private confidential all of that yeah but I just put it out to the listeners I was like if you're interested in an hour of free coaching with me um and are willing to have that done on the podcast let me know and we got a bunch of responses and I kind of went through and pick the ones that I thought might be good, talk to those people to make sure that You know, I felt like it would be a compelling episode in addition to me being able to bring them value. So that's a new experiment.
Juravich: All right, so I wanted to pivot back to your book. I mentioned earlier that I wanted to talk about values versus desires and how they can contradict each other. So how do you get clarity about what you really want most? How do I figure out if it's a value or a desire?
Zimmer: Well values are what the best part of us has decided is worth wanting Desires are the things that you just want no matter what right and I think most of us can recognize this in our lives It's part of why I have stuck with that parable for all these years I mean on one level you hear it and you recognize it's about choice But the other element of it is that we all know this feeling of being pulled in different directions, right? That's a very common human thing. And that's what the two wolves parable is saying. It's saying we all have this. And so recognizing what we want most is an exercise in figuring out what do we really value. And I have a bunch of exercises in the book to kind of hone in on what that is.
Juravich: There's also the element though of values versus values. You write about this, your example is you can write a novel, but you can also want to keep your stable job. And so you call this a motivational tension. So how can you motivate yourself to both write the novel and keep your staple job value versus value?
Zimmer: Yeah, values versus values, conflicts are hard. Most all of us will recognize that if we have children in the work versus family tension, that seems to never go away. It's why people talk about it so often. It's because it doesn't resolve itself. You value your career, you value what you do at work, and you value spending time with your family, and there's gonna be times where those things are in conflict.
The novel versus writing your book is a perfect example for me because I built the podcast while I had an executive job in software. I did the podcast on the side for five years before it and the coaching business was doing well enough that I could go do that full time. And so I had to come up with what do I do here because the advice is generally either Just don't mess with that stuff. Stay focused on your career. Or just quit work and focus everything on this new thing. And that, neither of those options worked for me. And so I had to find sort of a third way to do that. But recognizing values versus values conflicts is important, not because we can make them go away, but because we just relax knowing, oh, that's part of the way we're wired up.
Juravich: So you were working, was it, you said a software engineer?
Zimmer: I was in the software business, I did it product manager, project manager, kind of everything around software was my previous career.
Juravich: Okay, so you had that career, stable job, probably health care benefits, all the things you need, but you were doing the podcast on the side.
Zimmer: I was.
Juravich: So eventually at some point, did something flip or did you just realize that you could make a career of the other one.
Zimmer: I mean, a couple years in, I just started to allow myself to think like, well, what if I could do this full time?
Juravich: Bye.
Zimmer: Because it's difficult.
Juravich: Were you not finding the software career rewarding or?
Zimmer: I liked my career. It was challenging. It was interesting. I liked the people. But to me, it didn't have a much deeper meaning. And when I started doing the podcast and I started coaching people, there was just a full resonance. The only way I could say is like, my software career was really good and it was like 85. But the podcast and all that felt like 95 to me. And I was in a fortunate enough position that that was what
Juravich: So both felt good, yeah, both felt.
Zimmer: Both felt good, but there was a point where it became very clear which I wanted. You know, I wanted to do the podcast full time. And so once I realized that, I started planning towards it. But it still took me three years.
Juravich: Was it scary or exciting to make the switch?
Zimmer: Mostly exciting. Okay. What's interesting though is the scary part as I thought about I was like, you know What if this falls apart in six months? It's not a big deal I'll just go back and get a job in the software business What felt scary then and is scary now which turned out to be true is that what if it fails? Seven years in and you no longer have Skills in that world, right? So it wasn't I mean sure it was initially nerve-racking to a certain degree and As the savings that I had to to make the jump began to dwindle Yeah, it got scary. I mean being an entrepreneur has its you know, good moments and it has its frightening moments for sure
Juravich: I also wanted to, before we take the break, I wanted to talk about another element of the book is want-to goals versus half-to-goals. So you say half-do goals are driven by external factors, but calling them obligations makes them hard to achieve. So how do we keep seeing our half-goal goals as important and not obligations? Talk to me about the half-2 goals versus the want-2 goal.
Zimmer: Yeah, the moment for me that this crystallized, it was a while ago, my son is much older now, he was younger then, and I was in a marriage, so I had a son, I had step son, and they were like many kids involved in different activities, but they went to different schools. So I'm driving one here, and then I'm driving the other there, and I'm kind of all over the place, and I'm having one of those days where I'm just feeling like, oh, I have to keep doing this, like trapped in a way. And I paused and I went, wait a second, no, I don't. There's no law on the books that says I have to take kids to soccer practice, right? Nobody's gonna come arrest me for that. I don't have to do it. And I went well, why am I doing it then?
Juravich: Because you want to.
Zimmer: Well, because I want to in the deeper sense, right back to this idea of values versus desires. What I wanted most was my kids to be happy, to be healthy, and that's what I want most. So then I all of a sudden go, oh, I'm choosing to do this. That is a radical change in the way we approach things.
Years later in caring for my mother who was struggling. I'd get into that same thing. I have to do this. I have do that. And then I would be like, no, I don't. I have siblings that are not doing that. I'm choosing to do it because it reflects a deeper value of mine. But living according to your values is difficult sometimes. It is not always fun. It sounds lovely. People say, just live according to values and everything will be great. Not necessarily. But the more often that what we do aligns with our deeper values and the more we connect to those dots in our mind, that's what makes life meaningful. If I'm approaching all of this from an obligation perspective, life feels like a drudgery. When I connect it back to I'm doing this because it matters to me, doesn't make it easy, but it does make it meaningful in a different way.
Juravich: Can you shift your phrasing to instead of have to I get to or is that too much?
Zimmer: That's even a lot of people do that. Yeah for me. I That starts to move into almost positive thinking that is hard for me to swallow. I'm a little bit
Juravich: too cynical for that. Cynical's the wrong.
Zimmer: Is the wrong word. But my internal system has to be able to believe what I'm saying. That's why positive affirmations don't work for so many people is because you don't believe it because you're saying something that isn't true. And so for me, it wasn't like I get to take care of my mom. I mean, I suppose you could have that framing for For me, it was, I choose to because it matters to me. That is a, you know, that's about as far as I needed to get. And I'm that way with many things. Like, can I just get to neutral? Can I just move out of the negative and into a more neutral space?
So with writing the book, like I mentioned earlier, I had so much self doubt. If I had sat there and said to myself, you are a great writer. You're really amazing, you. Like, look out Hemingway, here comes Zimmer, right? If I had done that, I wouldn't have believed it. But what I could do was get to a point where I say, well, do I believe that I will get better if I keep working at it? Yes, I do believe that. Do I know I can't write a good book? No, I don't know that, right. That would get me to a place where I could get self doubt quiet enough, not gone, quiet enough to allow me to do the work. So that's an example for me of a little bit more towards neutral.
Juravich: Okay. This is All Sides. I'm your host Amy Juravich. We're talking with author and podcast host Eric Zimmer about his book, "How a Little Becomes a Lot." Coming up, we're going to talk about disappointments and how to move past those setbacks. That's when All S sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides, I'm your host Amy Juravich. Author, teacher, speaker, and the creator of the One You Feed podcast, Eric Zimmer, has a new book. It's called "How a Little Becomes a Lot, The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life." And he joins us today on All Sighs. Thanks again for being here, Eric.
Zimmer: I'm really happy to be here.
Juravich: So we made it this far into the hour without talking in great detail about Mary Haven. Mary Haven is an addiction treatment center in central Ohio. You were there as a young man seeking help for heroin addiction. Can you talk a little bit about how Mary Haven impacted your life?
Zimmer: Well, it was really transformative. It was the, that was the time that I got sober for real and it lasted. It wasn't the first treatment center I went into. I had been in others, I had trying for, in some ways for years to get better, but Mary Haven offered just the right level of support and care and hope for me. For whatever reason, I was ready and it was there.
Juravich: Right place right time. Yes, exactly. And you returned there recently to talk about your book, right? You're in your partnering with them related to your book. Can you tell me about that?
Zimmer: Yeah, well, the opening scene in the book, as I talked about at the beginning of our time together is me walking into Mary Haven 30 years ago. So there's a lot of synchronicity around the book was, you know, starting to come out right around when I had gone in there 30 years ago. And I always, you know, I wanted to do something with the book that wasn't all about how many books am I selling? Because it's very easy to get myopically focused there as an author and I thought, well, what could I do? And I was like, oh, I think what I could do is I could get books into the hands of the people there because I feel like this book is really good for people in that circumstance because they can see themselves in me because literally I was sitting there.
And so, yeah, I started going out to give talks there and I also had a program where my supporters, listeners could buy two copies of the book, they would get one and one would get donated to Mary Haven. And so at this point, I think I've delivered something like 200 books to them and have another big delivery to take over and we'll find the time that I can go and talk to the groups again there. So it's just been very meaningful to me as part of the Book Launch to be able to do that.
Juravich: I mentioned earlier that we're going to talk about getting past disappointments and this relates to you too because you write in your book about relapsing at one point and you say that we have all had that feeling of being disappointed in ourselves. So tell me about getting past that disappointment for you at that moment
Zimmer: Well, the part of the story that doesn't often get talked about is I stayed sober for eight years after I came out of Maryhaven, and then I began to drink again, and I never went back to heroin. I eventually ended up that did not work out, and I had to come back to recovery, and that was really difficult because I had been eight years sober, and one of the things that happens in 12-step programs or for better and worse, as we count days. So all of a sudden I have one.
Speaker 4: Not eight hundred.
Zimmer: I had sponsored so many people, I knew so many people, and so I came in and that disappointment is really something to work with. I can't say that I just made it go away, but I tried not to focus on it. And in the book, I have a way of talking about what happens when we get off track with whatever we're trying to do. So what I just talked about is a big off track. I'm talking more about in the book, the smaller ones. I'm exercising, I've been doing it every day, you know, I been doing three days a week for three weeks and then I just don't do it at all.
And as we talked about earlier, it's often that moment that's really pivotal because what we start to say to ourselves about that disappointment often informs what happens next. And so what I'm encouraging people to do in the book is to recognize that is completely normal. It is totally normal to get off track. Matter of fact, almost everybody gets off track. I won't say everyone, because there are those people who seem to be sort of robotic and just able to do the same thing, just to never miss.
Juravich: You've met perfect people, okay.
Zimmer: No, no. Look, you look into other areas of their lives and you'll see that it's not perfection. But in that area, they have that. Most of us don't. So we're going to get off track. And so what we want to do is recognize that's normal, not make a big deal out of it, not tell ourselves what it means about us.
And then also the really important part then is to try and learn what happened. Why? Why was I doing really well for three weeks and then last week it all fell apart? Oh, it's because my mom was in the hospital and it was really hard to get exercise in because I had to be there every morning to see the doctors. Well, in that case, I go, all right, there's not much of a lesson here, right? I just go, okay, but I'm not then saying, oh, see, you screwed up, you screw it up. I just, oh, other times I might be like, Oh, I'm not scheduling well. You know, I'm thinking that this time's gonna be free, but it's often not free. Maybe I need to move what I'm doing to another time. Or I notice that when I go on vacation, I don't do anything, which is fine, but coming back, I have a really hard time starting. So we learn.
Juravich: You also write that in order to succeed in all of this, you have to have a very specific action plan. So not vague, because if things are too vague, you will fail, ultimately. So talk about how being very specific helps, because you even in the coaching session I listened to, you were saying that you have set the alarm for the time and this is the time, and you do it at that time. Yeah.
Zimmer: Yeah, this is really when you're, a lot of the time when you are trying to begin something. Over time, we need to learn to also be flexible, but in the beginning, specificity is very often our friend, and ambiguity is our enemy. So let's say I've got a goal of getting in better shape, and maybe I even narrow that down to like, I'm going to exercise more, okay, when, what am I doing?
Juravich: And what's more? Yeah. Right. Maybe I even get it down to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I'll go to the gym. Okay, that's good. That's close.
Juravich: But when?
Zimmer: But when and what am I going to do there? Yeah. And then do I have an alarm to tell me that it's time? So back to my substack and bike example earlier, if I don't have an alarm that tells me it's time to wrap this up and move on to that, I just slide right past it. And what a good plan will do with specificity is will force us to what I call choice points where we are at a point where it's like, OK, either I'm going to do this or I'm not going to do it in that moment. And the good news there is if we're making decisions in that moment that we don't want to make, we can analyze what was going on inside us at that moment. But if we never get that specific, we are procrastinating in a very vague way. That's hard to troubleshoot.
Juravich: Yeah, one of the, the example you give in your book that I was interested in maybe trying is you say that there's an app you can put on your phone that will actually regulate the number of minutes you're allowed to like, for example, check your email in one day. Yeah.
Zimmer: So does that work? It does it does. So for example, I was just saying, you know, we analyze what happens in that moment Right and what I realized is I looked at like what are the things that commonly go wrong for us in those moments I recognize one of them. I just call the autopilot pitfall, which means we don't even recognize it So my little digital tick is checking my email on my phone. That's everybody's got their own every time
Juravich: Every time you pick up your phone, you do that.
Zimmer: And I will pick it up just for no good reason if I myself do.
Juravich: Doing it.
Zimmer: It's not that I'm choosing, I want to check my email. It's just happening automatically. So what the app does is it causes me, when I click on my email app, this thing pops up and it says, makes me take a deep breath. And then it asks me, do you want to do it? And if so, for how long? What I find is that eliminates my checking email superfluously by about 70 or 80%. Because it'll come up and be like, take a deep breath, do you want to do it? And I'm like, no, I didn't even, I wasn't even thinking of it. I just did it because it's habitual.
Juravich: Like putting on your seatbelt.
Zimmer: Like putting on your seatbelt. We are very habituated to whenever there's a spare moment of like anything, grab the phone, which for some people, I mean, to each their own, but for me, I recognized that wasn't a behavior that was very useful to me.
Juravich: We only have two minutes left, so I know. The time has flown by, but we can just end on, your book has exercises at the end of each chapter, so you have like the part in the back. So it's not just a book you read, you can also dive into it more deeply. What kind of feedback have you been getting about the exercises? Are people asking questions about them?
Zimmer: Yeah, I am getting questions and I'm surprised that a lot of people are doing them. Look, all these type books have exercises. They usually put them right at the end of the chapter. I wanted this book to read well, so I chose to take all the exercises and put them kind of in the back of the book so that it read well but you also had the chance to do the exercises. And the exercises is where we change, right? There's a big gap between knowing something and doing it. And the exercises are intended to help us bridge that gap between knowing and doing.
Juravich: All right, well, we have been speaking this hour with Eric Zimmer. He is an author, a teacher, a speaker, and the creator of the One You Feed podcast, and his new book is called "How a Little Becomes a Lot, The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life." Eric, thank you for joining us today.
Zimmer: Thank you so much for having me on, it's been a real pleasure.
Juravich: Congratulations on the book. Thank you. And you've been listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. If you missed any part of today's show, listen back at wosu.org slash all sides. You can subscribe to our podcast. Every episode is available to listen to for free in our mobile app. You can also like the show on Facebook and be sure to like all sides on Instagram. Our Instagram handle is at all sides WOSU. This is 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich. Thanks for joining us.