Eric Zimmer
Appearances
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
life coming alive to me, the world feeling like it was interesting and I wanted to connect to it. And that's the opposite of what my depression generally is, where I can tell when I'm in depressive slump, I don't get depressed in the way that I used to. I always remain functional.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And I can do the things I need to do, but I'll just notice I'll walk into a bookstore and I won't find anything I really want to read, which is unusual for me because my normal state is I walk into a bookstore, I could walk out with 30 different books I'm interested in. So that anhedonia, I think, is such an unpleasant feeling.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
That inability to derive pleasure from things that normally bring you pleasure is what drove me early on to addiction because it, like I said, it turned the colors on.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
For sure. I do think it felt like a slow unraveling, although my addiction took off really fast. I had started to drink a little bit early in high school, and I drank strangely, but I can look back and see, okay, that's not normal behavior. But then I founded this tutoring program for disadvantaged children, and I saw what alcohol and drugs were doing to their family lives.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I saw the chaos that their parents' alcohol and drug use was put into their lives. And I just was like, I'm not going to do any of that. And I just became completely no drugs, no alcohol, not because like today I need to, but because I just didn't want any part of that in my life. But then when I did later on start drinking, it was like I was I feel like I was shot out of a cannon.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
It wasn't like I slowly build up. It was like I was suddenly drinking every night in excess and then other drugs added. But yes, it was certainly an unraveling over time where it went from something that I'm doing now. You know, drinking, which is what a lot of people at the age of 18 or 19 are doing to ending up at the age of 25, being homeless heroin addicts.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
It was an unraveling and it was a somewhat slow unraveling, but in some ways it was a fast unraveling for me, which I'm actually really grateful for. I'm grateful for the fact that when I start using and I stayed sober eight years and I started using again, and when I do, it gets bad really fast. And I'm grateful for that because. It's unsustainable. I can't keep doing it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And I know a lot of people who are stuck sort of what I would call in the middle, which is that their drug and alcohol use isn't causing their life to burn to the ground. but it's also not a net positive either in their ability to move their life forward.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
It's not bad enough to do anything about really, or it doesn't seem to them that it's bad enough to do anything about, but it's also a real limiter on their growth and ultimately their happiness. And they stay stuck in that space. And I've seen people stay stuck in there for a long time. So I'm grateful that my unraveling ultimately is a little faster than the average.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Oh, sure. I mean, alcohol is everywhere in life. And now more and more marijuana is starting to be that way also. And the vast majority of people don't have any problem with it. So they're able to enjoy something that I think ultimately is enjoyable. If I had the choice, could I occasionally use drugs or alcohol? Would I? Probably, because they're enjoyable.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
But I can't with any kind of reasonableness. But it is everywhere. And learning to navigate that. Right now, we are staying with my partner Ginny's, some of her friends. And they are the sort of people that have a couple drinks every night, at least the nights we've been there. I don't know what their pattern is outside of that. And they keep asking me, do you hear? Do you want a glass of wine?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Do you want a cocktail? And I keep saying no, of course. And in my mind, just yesterday, I was thinking to myself, at what point do I say to them that I don't drink? Not because I need to give a reason, but because at a certain point, I worry that it starts to seem antisocial.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And I would experience this back when I was in the workforce, when I was in the software business, people would keep inviting me to happy hour. We're going out after work. We're going to have a couple of drinks. We're going out after work. We're going to have a couple of drinks. And I'd say no, because I don't want to make a big production out of it. Oh, I'm an alcoholic.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I mean, I don't want to do that. And yet at a certain point, I found with people, if I liked them, I had to say, hey, here's why I'm not going out with you afterwards. It's not because I don't want to spend time with you or not because I don't like you guys because I do. It's just that's not really my scene going out and having a couple of drinks.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
So, yeah, learning to navigate that is interesting. And I'm probably not. I think being around drinking situations where drinking is the primary focus are things that I tend to avoid because. A, I don't think I'm as fun at them as other people are. And B, I don't enjoy them in the way that other people are. Now, I don't avoid where alcohol is or I'd have to lock myself in a closet.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
But I do tend to avoid things where drinking is the main activity.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
So first I'll say I'm not a software developer. I was just around software development for my whole career. Software startup companies, then leading large software products and then doing, being product manager. So I was everywhere around development. So to clarify that, the second part of the question though, about sensitivity and creativity and vulnerability to addiction.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I think the answer seems to be yes. I wish the answer was no. I wish that there was no linkage there, but there does seem to be. And so I think that people who are more sensitive are likely to be more creative. And I think being more sensitive means you might be more likely to succumb to drugs and alcohol.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And then there's the fact that the scene, particularly when you're young, the scene around creativity is, has alcohol and drugs often baked into it? My thing was rock music, right? And of course, I mean, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, right? It's all embedded into one package. But I think you see that with writers.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I know a number of fiction writers who've done very well at New York Times bestsellers, and they talk about, and a couple of them have gotten sober, and they've talked about how hard it is to disentangle that notion of the idea creative writer who's also a drunk, right? Hemingway sort of set the archetype for this among modern writers.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
So I think it's a combination of yes, those personality traits make you a little bit more likely. And I also think that the creativity world, even more than a lot of parts of the world do have, there's a romanticization of substances that can be very problematic. And then I'll just end that by saying my experience is also, you can be creative.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
If you're somebody who's felt like your creativity comes from drugs and alcohol, you can be creative without them. It's a transition. My experience is it's a transition and the way of creativity changes a little bit, right? I think I got more ideas when I was still like drinking or smoking marijuana. I think more ideas just came out of me. But so many of them were terrible.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
They were terrible ideas, right? And so now it's a little bit different. And then I think there's also something about the prolificness of young artists compared to older artists, particularly in the music and writing space.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Right. Yeah, absolutely. It does seem to be baked in there. But I think that for people who... I think we could argue with a lot of bands, a lot of those people. There's the flip side. There's the Kurt Cobain's, the Janis Joplin's. There's the Jimi Hendrix. There's all the great artists that we lost because of their addiction. And what might they have gone on to do?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
What work could they have done? You look at someone like Bob Dylan, who doesn't seem to have battled those demons in the same way. The guy is still making great music in his 70s, or is he? He might even be 80. I don't know. The guy's still making great music. And yes, that creativity can be fueled in the short term. But it's really a long-term play that an artist, I think, wants to be about.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I think I've heard you say something to this degree or write something about how the goal isn't to just be able to do this for today or tomorrow. The goal is how do I sustain this over the long term? And so in that way, I don't think drugs and alcohol are actually useful to creativity over the long term.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I think you have to find a different fuel source that may have been a fuel source early on for people. But ultimately, I think there needs to be a different fuel source if you're going to do it long term.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
It's funny that you should say that because no, I did not see it. And, but my friend, I have, I'm on a group chat with a few of my old friends and they're right now discussing the documentary of the making of, do they know it's Christmas? Strangely enough, like just today, they're texting all about that. I've not seen either of them though.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Yeah, that's awesome. I think I would enjoy that. And I think when you get all those egos of that size together, it's got to be interesting. It's got to be a fascinating thing to watch.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
It took everything away from my identity that wasn't about being an addict. That was it in the last couple years of my addiction. That was all I was and all I lived to do, and it consumed every waking moment of my life. How am I going to get the next fix? That's it. That was all there was. It took every part of my identity away, any part of me that was anything different.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I think this is a really interesting question because I agree with you about defining moments. And I also know that I agree with you from, I was preparing for, uh, to talk to you, uh, on my show. And I also know that you believe in that it's the small decisions we make over and over again that really shape who we are.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And I'm at work on a book and the book really starts off with what my defining, if you're going to make a movie of my life about addiction, this would be the key moment, right? And I am 24, yeah, 24 or so. It's winter and I get arrested for multiple felonies and I lose the job that I'm in. The job that I was in had a van. I was sleeping in that van. I lost that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And I went to treatment because I was going to be really dope sick. I was a heroin addict. And I went to treatment because I just needed a couple days to have somebody help me detox a little bit while I figured out what the hell am I getting? Where am I going to get the money to keep doing what I'm doing?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And I went there and at one point they did the intake and they sat me down and they said, look, you really need our 28 day treatment program. And I said, I don't think so. I don't think that's a good idea. Now, why I would, what I possibly thought was so important. I had to leave for cracks me up today. But I went back to my room and we, I had what we call in sobriety, a moment of clarity.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I had a moment where I realized. If I go, if I don't, if I don't do something different, if I go back out there, I'm either going to go to jail for a long time, right? I've already got potentially 50 years of jail sentences hanging over my head. And I'm going to go back and start stealing more again, because it's the way I'm going to get drugs. So I'm either going to jail or I'm going to die.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I weighed 105 pounds. I had hepatitis C, like I was dying. And I had that moment of clarity where I thought, okay, I'm going to go. And I went back and I said, okay, I will go to treatment. So that is the defining moment. If we were to film my life, it's a defining moment.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
What I think is interesting about it is a, that moment wouldn't have meant anything if it weren't followed by thousands of tiny choices that actually allowed that moment to stand out there. And there were all sorts of other things that led to that moment.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Me trying to going into a different detox for a couple of days and that not working and me trying narcotics anonymous and that not working and me trying to move to another state so I don't buy drugs and that not really working. Like all these other little things that we go through. So I think we can pull out defining moments.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
But I think that if we isolate them from what comes before and after, we miss part of the bigger picture, right? We miss part of the fact that those moments are created out of something and they only stand out because of what comes next.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
This is a really interesting thing to talk about because the first step of a 12-step program is, like you said, we admit we are powerless over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable. This seems to be an idea that works for certain people. And it seems to be an idea that for other people feels profoundly dispowering, unempowering, right? I'm powerless.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
For me, the surrender really became about, for that period of time, me saying, if I re-engage in a battle with drugs and alcohol, as in I try to use them successfully, which is the obsession of every great alcoholic or drug addict, is that I will figure this out. In such a way that I can continue to use or drink. That's our great obsession. We keep trying to figure that out.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
So surrendering to the idea that like, that's not ever going to work. I'm never going to figure that out. If I climb into the ring with drugs or alcohol, I am going to lose surrendering to that idea. And then surrendering also to the idea that I have no idea how to live without drugs and alcohol. Because I've been trying in different ways for a long time to figure that puzzle out.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And I've been completely unsuccessful. For me, the surrender was, I can't keep doing this. I'm going to lose. And I don't know how to do this. So I'm going to, for a period of time, listen to what people who seem to have figured this out think. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And ultimately, I think the thing about addiction that really becomes the thing is this belief that I can't do anything else. I'm never going to do anything useful or important or interesting because this thing owns all of me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Oh, thank you, John.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
That's a really good question. I've never thought about that in that way. So I would say that mattering means that everybody has for each individual, we have an interior world that is really important to us. And we have a tendency to see our internal world is really important. And everyone else is not that important because we're not living it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I think self-compassion is critically important in the role of us being able to change things. I think it's unintuitive. We tend to think that if we're really hard on ourselves, that will drive us to change. And I'm not going to say that never works because it does sometimes. But change is really, to me, ultimately about learning to do something in a different way.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
But when we can invert that and think about the fact that everybody's internal world is as important to them and their lives are as important to them as they as mine is to me. we realize then there's no way that anyone doesn't matter because it matters deeply to that person. And so I think it's really a matter of seeing that everybody wants the same basic things.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And we don't learn well when we are in shame because it's a very activating state. And when we are extremely emotionally activated, we tend to not be thinking very clearly. And thinking clearly is what we need in order to learn. So self-compassion becomes, A, it just feels better to be self-compassionate, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
It's one of the biggest changes I think we can make is to live in a brain that actually likes itself, right? When that's not the case, it's very close company with someone who's very negative, right? So it's A, one of the biggest changes we can make just for simple quality of life, but it's also critically important to our ability to change.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And I think one of the great things that I got in 12-step programs was was that I got to see lots and lots of other people who I could look at now and see that they were good people, that they lived a life that was valuable, they did good things, but yet they could describe being just like I was.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
The other element is the 12 steps from an addiction perspective is based on something called the disease model of addiction. And it basically says you have a disease and it's not your fault. Now, we could spend, we could and I have spent a lot of time talking about the ways in which I think that's a helpful and a not helpful frame.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
But early on, it's a very helpful frame because it takes it out of moral failings. I'm an addict because addiction is a condition and I got it. And you know what? Once you have it, you're not going to just think your way out of it. And so that was really helpful in self-compassion also, was to be able to do that. At the same time, that is married with responsibility.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
So it's not your fault that you're an addict, but it's absolutely your responsibility to to figure out how to not be one, right? You are responsible, but you're not at fault. And so that was the beginning of self-compassion. As to your second question, when I went back out after about eight years and started drinking again, in the beginning, I just, I didn't think it was a problem again.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
It was fine. I was enjoying it. And, but the fact that I had to go back and get sober again, we can shorten that story to, it didn't end well. And going back was really difficult. It was really hard because I 12-step programs, there is certainly a lot of importance given to the length of time that you're sober.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Probably an importance that maybe overstates what it really needs to be, although it's important. So it went from being somebody with eight years who had sponsored hundreds of people, who was very involved in chairing meetings. I kind of missed her in a way. And now I'm back with zero days. And that was really difficult.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And I don't think there was anything for me to do except just recognize, okay, I did. What happened to me is what happens to addicts. And you just deal with those very uncomfortable feelings of coming back and being essentially at the beginning again. Now, the reality was I was not at the beginning again. I did not lose what I learned in those eight years, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I started from a place where I had a lot of knowledge and tools. that allowed me to move forward. So even though on the AA day counting chart, I lost my eight-year coin and went to a 24-hour coin, it's not like I had lost all those things. But self-compassion, I think, is really important.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
It's a balancing of recognizing the forces and the factors that cause you to do the things that you do that you may not feel good about, along with the responsibility of saying, I'm going to change those things.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
One of the things that has been really helpful for me over the years is to think about how every person wants some version of more enjoyable, good experiences and less bad experiences. Or said differently, they want to experience more pleasure and have less pain. That's true for every single human. And that's a commonality that is underneath all of us. And that matters.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I've thought a lot about this, and I think that there are two sort of core competencies that people need in order to make a change, right? And to me, they come down to these aren't exact terms, but I'll use them. I'll call them structural and emotional.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Structural change is things like if you're trying to do something positive, it comes down to having a really good and clear plan of what you're going to do and when you're going to do it. And what are you going to do when you try and do it and it doesn't work out? And what are you going to do when you get off track?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Cause you know, you're going to get off track and how can you set up your environment in such a way that you are more likely to do this thing? And it's all these things that we know about behavior change science that we've learned over the years. that is structural, and you just it's all about a plan a really good and clear plan. And those are really important.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And oftentimes, if someone gets those things, it's enough for them to make the change they need to make, and they're on their way. And there's a whole nother element of it, which is emotional. And it comes down to What do I do if I've done everything I can to set myself up for success?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
There's still going to be the moment where it's me and the decision, whether that decision is do I pick up a drug or drink or do I go to the gym or do I put down my phone and go to bed on time? There's still that there's still that choice point, that moment. And so I think that's the second piece is to learn what's going on inside of me at that choice point when I make the wrong choice.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
What was I thinking and what was I feeling? And then thinking, okay, what could I try and say to myself or do differently at that moment that's going to get me to go the other direction? And so if you only do that second half, I think you're going to lose again and again because you're relying on self-control, which is a limited resource.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
If you gathered 30 of the leading behavior change scientists in the world in a room and asked them to agree on one thing, I think the thing they would agree on is that the extent that you rely on self-control is problematic because it just isn't a really robust thing.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
You have to have it, but what you want to do is make sure that you need it as little as possible, but you still need to know in that moment, how can I ultimately choose the thing that I want to choose?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Yeah, yeah. We used to, in 12-step programs, call that playing the tape all the way through, right? You're focused on how the chocolate chip cookie is going to taste right now, or you're focused on how good it would feel to be drunk right now or whatever, but you got to keep going. Okay, well, what's after that? And then what's after that?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And I think also, like you said, I think it's really important that we consider choices and decisions in a broad concept, in the whole context of our lives. I see this a lot with people who are constantly on the self-improvement loop. And what I mean is they listen to podcasts like yours or mine, and they, somebody comes on and says, you really should be doing X. And they go, Oh God. Okay, great.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I need to do X. That sounds good. Right. But X now has added to a list of X, Y, Z, Q, T S and B that they're trying to do. And if you look at that thing individually, you might go, yes, that's a good thing to do. But when you look at your life as a whole, when you look at it, you go, wait, There's no way that I'm going to do all these things.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I have, let's say I'm a busy professional with children and my parents are aging and I have to take care of them. And I've managed to carve out 30 minutes in the morning for myself to take care of myself. That's an accomplishment. But they don't. And they then use that 30 minutes to exercise, say, for example. That's great.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
But a lot of those same people are going to be feeling bad about themselves over and over again because they're not also meditating and they're not also journaling and they're not also right. When you look at things in the whole context, you go, well, I can't do all those things.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Everything up from that ends up being strategies. It's the strategies that people employ to bring those things about. And I think when we can see things that way, we're better able to connect with somebody at the most deep level, which is that to them and the people around them, they matter a lot.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I oftentimes when I coached people, one of the one I one of the things I thought was the biggest victory was the number of things I can the number of things we arrived at that they weren't going to do, which might feel like a might feel defeatist, but it's not. Because there's no point in feeling bad about the fact that you don't have time to meditate every day.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
If you don't have time to meditate every day, you're better off just going, okay, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to feel bad about not doing it. And it's the same thing with people who find themselves in a situation of saying yes to too many things. Because we evaluate it based on the thing.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I want to do that. But the problem is I need a little bit more information. Well, when is that going to be? And right, because now, so I need to not just consider whether I want to do it, I need to consider how does it fit into the whole context. And so that's that I think what you're saying in general with choice bracketing right it's it's a bigger view of what's happening.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
How does this thing fit into the big context of who I want to be.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
That thing at the end that you said there is it is a training in being present. It is a training in what's here right now. And learning to see things that you don't normally see. It's a means of turning what seems very ordinary into something that is extraordinary because you're giving it more love and attention. And that's its main, I think that's its main purpose.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And so it's a good remedy for somebody like me who is super conceptual and and always somewhere else and always can think of a way that things could be better than they are. Any situation. Yeah, it's a beautiful day, it's sunny degrees, the sun's out, but I wish the wind, can we just turn the wind down like two miles per hour?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Or yeah, it's a beautiful sunny day, the wind's not blowing, it's a blue sky, but boy, it sure would be good if my left knee wasn't a little bit tight, right? This is constant fiddling with the controls of existence, right? And Zen is a counterbalance to that. It says, stop doing that. Just be okay with what is here and look at it more closely.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
So in those ways, I think that's why Zen has been really helpful for me. It does not push concept. It pushes presence and attention.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Yeah. Phil Jackson is pretty much a certified genius, I think, and certainly drew a lot from Buddhism in really interesting ways.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And so it's a way by thinking about mattering both for ourselves, but also for others, we can decenter ourselves as the center of every single story.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I think I've been doing this a decade. Perspective change, I think it changed a lot in the early years. And then over time has become, you hear very similar things again and again. That's not bad because we forget we need to be reminded. We need to understand it at a different and deeper level. The thing that comes off the top of my head when you ask that question right now is change.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
interviewing people who by all measures are pretty successful people. I tend to interview authors a lot. So these people have written books and have been very successful at writing books, or they've been very successful in their academic career. And then they went on to write a book. These people have written multiple times, bestsellers, all this, that they all have, they still have self-doubt.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
They still, when they're in the midst of the thing, aren't sure they can do it. And that is a tremendous comfort to me because when I am trying to do something, so I signed a book deal and I'm in the midst of the manuscripts due in a few months. And I know you've written a book and it's really hard. It is really hard. Because my standard is very high.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I've been reading these type of books for a decade. I know what's good and I know what's not. And I really want to write a good book. So my standard is very high. So when I'm in the middle of it, it's really difficult. And what my brain says is the fact that it's difficult means that you're not good enough to do it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Instead, I've been fortunate enough to talk to enough people to know, no, that's just how it feels when you're in the midst of trying to create something. There will be a period where you're like, I can't do it. I don't know enough. I'm not smart enough. Whatever it is, that will happen no matter who you are.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And I think that we often take that sort of doubt and difficulty as a sign that we can't do something or shouldn't be doing it. We're not made to do it. And so it's great to talk to somebody who's written like three New York Times bestsellers. And they're like, I don't know if I can do it. And I'm like, well, of course you can do it. You wrote three New York Times bestsellers.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And their brain will go, well, yeah, you did it before, but you can't do it now. And so I just think that's a really great thing to know that is going to come along for the ride. It's normal. It's not enjoyable, but it's normal. And that for everybody, no matter how they might look like they are succeeding or doing well, their life can feel hard to them. It's back to where we very started, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Everybody's internal world.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
is full of the things that they're worried about and concerned about and the doubts that they have and along with lots of all kinds of great stuff in there too but that remains in my experience in nearly everybody I've ever had who's been open enough to share that yeah I was talking to Dan Pink one time and he said the same thing he said I am only as good as my latest book and
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Yes, exactly. You and I are convinced Dan Pink can write a great book, right? But Dan, when he's in the hard part of it, is not. And that's good to know.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Right. And she's allowing time for things to germinate and come about. There's another writer, Oliver Berkman, who's written a couple of really good books recently about the finiteness of life and how that affects time management and productivity. I was fortunate enough to interview Oliver. He was like our second guest ever, like a decade ago.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And he had written a book called the antidote happiness for people who hate positive thinking. And I think he was a column. Hey, I know best title ever. He was a columnist for, I think the guardian. Anyway, I got to know him a little bit and we met in New York and became friends a little bit. And I was able to see this period for him where he had done that thing.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And he had not yet done this thing right this next book I can't remember the title of his latest one is called meditations for mortals, but I don't remember what the one right before it was. But there was this long period in between there, and I think that. for anybody, when there's that long period, you doubt whether you've got it, you've got something right.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And, and then Oliver takes this a lot amount of time where these ideas are germinating, and he doesn't quite have it. And then the book comes out. And it's it, I think it is a masterpiece. And it's because there was he I think he was willing to be in that uncomfortable space in between. And I think Susan has that ability also.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I think you'll find three or four episodes with Oliver. I've had him on multiple times. I think he's brilliant. Funny guy too. Really nice. Yep. So telling myself hello.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Well, thank you. It took me a few minutes to get there, but hopefully it made sense.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
You can find our podcast called The One You Feed in any of your podcast players, or you can go to oneyoufeed.net, O-N-E-Y-O-U-F-E-E-D.net. You can get our newsletter. We send out weekly newsletters. I've got programs that I lead and teach, so you can find everything there.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Thank you, John. I really enjoyed it. And great preparation. Very good. Very good.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Probably, yes. I think more than anything, it was a way for me of feeling alive. And what I mean by that is I think that the way that I was raised, and it's not unusual to a lot of people of our generation or before, is that there's only certain ways that you can be seen and that are okay.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
If you're different than that, then what often we do is we will mute those parts of ourselves so that we are acceptable to the people who love us or should love us. And my experience is if you do that long enough, you push down In my case, you numb and deaden everything in order to be acceptable and be okay.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And then the problem with that, though, is that feeling numbed and deadened is a really awful feeling. It feels terrible. So then you're seeking some way to then feel alive. And so I think for me, that's stealing made me feel alive. It had an energy to it and it had a the danger had some adrenaline. So I think that's a lot of it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
But yeah, I probably some of it also was simply trying to say, yeah, I matter or in a strange way, finding what is the thing that. that I could be really good at. Like, I was athletic, but not great athletic. I was never going to be a star. I was really good in school, but not, again, not exceptional. It seemed like in some way this was this thing that made me different or special.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Not a great different or special, I now recognize, but I don't think I knew that at the time.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I'm impressed.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
We know from a whole lot of study and experience at this point that our early years shape a lot of who we are, both in our personality development, but also just in how our brains are actually formed and wired. So it's really important.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And I always find this an interesting topic because on one hand, there's a lot of studies that really show if you've had difficult early experiences, you may have a difficult later life. And I think that's helpful to know so that we understand who we are and maybe why we are some of the ways we are, but ultimately that is not a very empowering mindset either.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And so it's how do I hold both those things? I had these early experiences that shaped me, causing me to be the way I am in certain ways and are still acting upon me. And I have some degree of agency to be different. So I think that wasn't an answer to your question. I was setting up the answer. I think it certainly shaped me in lots of ways.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
I have my theories of in what ways it shaped me and they align with the current psychological theories of what would be. And if we know anything about science is that 20 years from now, we'll look at a lot of these things and be like, well, they thought it was this, but it's really that. And we'll realize it wasn't exactly the way that we thought it was.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
But I think in general, what I got from both of my parents was a stay unseen. Don't be upset. Don't ask for too much. Don't make any sort of mistake. My dad's anger was I would try and do something. And if I didn't do it well, he would get angry. Whether that was we're throwing the baseball together or playing golf, or he's trying to teach me how to hammer in a nail, whatever it is. And I think
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
For my dad, he was just trying to make me better, right? And I don't think he knew really how to relate. So I got that from my dad, which was like, don't make any mistake. Be very careful. And still to this day, if I do anything wrong, I'm looking around me like, who's going to be mad? For really silly things.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And then for my mom, I think I spent my whole life up until my early 20s being focused on not being my dad. Because my dad was very, his depression came out as irritability and anger. And it was way out there. It was very obvious. It was easy to see. What I didn't see was the other iceberg I didn't want to hit, which was my mother.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And my mother's was much more just a very pessimistic way of looking at things. Her depression took the shape of anger. deep withdrawal from the world. I have one memory of my mom before about 18 and it's her sitting at a table playing solitaire for hours. That gives you a sense. So I think the ways that shaped me are don't make a mistake.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
don't have needs that are going to be difficult for somebody to meet because then they're not going to like you and then just this withdrawing nature of that my depression and my depression when it shows up it actually gets both those I get the irritation and I get the sort of deadening
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
This is, again, where I think we're speculating, right? Addiction is a very complicated thing. Why is anybody addicted? We know some things. We know, for example, as you said, that trauma or adverse childhood experiences make you way more likely to become an addict, right? That's just a pretty well-documented fact.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
But we know lots of people who had terrible childhood experiences, far worse than I ever had and did not become addicts. And we know lots of people who seem to have had a pretty good childhood and end up being an addict. So it's really multifactorial in the different things that causes it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
So when I say why I think I became an addict, I'm stating a working hypothesis because we just don't know for sure. But I do think for me, it comes back to that sense of feeling alive. When I first really started getting into drugs and alcohol, Some of it was probably pain escape, but a lot of it was that the world came alive for me in a way that it wasn't normally.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
There's an old movie called Days of Wine and Roses, and it's about an alcoholic couple and the husband gets sober. And at one point he's trying to get his wife sober and she's not, and he's talking to her about it. And she says something along the lines of life is normally in black and white for me, but when I drink all the colors come on.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
And that's, for me, the best description of what the early journey into addiction was. It turned all the colors on. Now, the problem with alcohol or problem with addiction is as you go, you start behaving in ways that you don't feel good about. which then means that the only way you know how to deal with an uncomfortable emotion is to drink or get high.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
Then you do that again, you do something you feel bad about, you're worse than you were, and you're in a descending cycle. So over time, my addiction became about avoiding the shame of being an addict, right? That becomes a driver, becomes the main driver of addiction at a certain point, I think, is it gets a life of its own. But early on for me, I think it was really about