A Personal Note From Orion

Dear stellar listeners,

Have you ever wondered what it takes to completely transform your life, especially after experiencing deep trauma? Today’s episode with Michael Anthony Unbroken isn’t just another inspiring story – it’s a masterclass in turning pain into unstoppable purpose.

As someone who has navigated my healing journey from childhood trauma, I felt an immediate connection to Michael’s raw honesty and profound wisdom. His story of transforming from a 350-pound, suicidal executive to becoming a best-selling author, award-winning speaker, and transformational coach is more than inspiring – it’s a blueprint for possibility.

Michael shares the exact moment that changed everything – lying in bed eating chocolate cake while watching CrossFit games – and how his powerful mantra “No excuses, just results” emerged from hitting rock bottom. But what makes this conversation truly special is how he breaks down the practical steps of healing, from addressing stored trauma in our bodies to creating frameworks for sustainable change.

Whether you’re dealing with past wounds, feeling stuck in patterns that don’t serve you, or simply ready to step into your full potential, this conversation offers the inspiration and practical tools to move forward.

Join us for an hour that could change how you view healing, growth, and what’s truly possible in your life. Michael’s approach to transformation isn’t just theory – it’s battle-tested wisdom from someone who’s walked through the fire and now lights the way for others. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the show!

In This Episode

• [01:52] – Eric recounts his intense journey from being a homeless heroin addict to a celebrated behavior coach, highlighting the crucial turning points that reshaped his path.
• [06:15] – Eric unpacks the mysterious factors contributing to his successful recovery and transformation.
• [13:50] – Orion asks Eric why he started his podcast.
• [18:10] – Learn actionable strategies for managing emotional storms—Eric shares fascinating perspectives on equanimity and the myths surrounding emotional resilience.
• [23:04] – Eric presents his innovative “Wise Habits” framework, merging ancient principles with modern science to cultivate lasting change and personal growth.
• [29:34] – Eric shares profound habits that ensure entrepreneurial success, including blocking time, which effectively catalyzes productivity and focus.
• [32:03] – Discover how Eric balances work and life, providing a roadmap for entrepreneurs who seek joy outside their business commitments.
• [33:57] – Get Eric’s top tips for living a stellar life.
• [38:47] – Contemplate the intricate relationship between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and find out how this understanding can transform your decision-making process.

Jump to Links and Resources

Hi, Eric. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. I am really happy to be here, and I appreciate you asking me.

Yeah, thank you. Before we begin, you have a very intense story that led you to what you’re doing today. Please share a little bit about it.

Sure. I think we’re probably talking about when I was a 24-year-old homeless heroin addict as the core thing that made me into who I am today. And at 24, I did get sober, and that influenced the way I looked at the whole world. That has just continued to grow over the years. In the intervening years, I got really interested in how I changed, but also how other people change and how we maintain a good and useful attitude when life can sometimes be so difficult. 

That early sobriety—and I can go into as much detail as you would like—led to an overall curiosity that, about a decade ago, turned into the podcast I do, the coaching work I’ve done, the book I’m writing and all of those things.

Amazing. What brought you to use heroin and become a homeless person?

Well, that’s a complicated story, and I don’t think any of us know for sure how we ended up in those circumstances. But I began to experiment with drugs and alcohol like most teenage people do. From the very beginning, I just responded differently to them. What I mean by that is I used in weird patterns. We would get drunk one night, I would wake up the next morning, I would see the bottle of vodka, there was still some vodka in it, and I would pour it into my orange juice and start drinking. 

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I didn’t drink all the time. I even stopped for a few years, but I just drank strangely. And then, at one point, my girlfriend started dating my best friend, and I was really struggling, and I started drinking again. It was just an answer to what was bothering me at that moment. From that moment on, it just sort of accelerated. Drinking led to smoking marijuana, led to LSD, you know, dabbling in cocaine. Then, I was in a band and would go to band practice, but the people in the band were somehow more messed up than I was. I was taking many things and found out they were using.

Are you a singer?

I’m a guitar player.

Oh, you can be a singer, though. You have a beautiful voice.

Thank you. Well, you haven’t heard me try to carry a tune. I have sung before, but it doesn’t come naturally to me. My voice’s timbre might be nice, but my ability to hit the right notes is more questionable. I did write songs and sing them, but I think of myself mainly as a guitar player. I joined this band, and then I started using heroin, and it just all progressed. I think the big difference for me between, say, heroin and alcohol was that heroin was illegal, and it was a lot more expensive. I started doing things that were dangerous and criminal to get it. I didn’t have the money to really pay rent or live anywhere, and it just sort of accelerated into the worst things that addiction has to offer.

There are a lot of people who were in your situation and never survived more than a year or two. What happened to you? What do you think was inside of you that helped you survive it? Or was it a mentor? What was it?

It’s a whole lot more dangerous to be a heroin addict today with the introduction of fentanyl into the world than it was when I was doing it 30 years ago, although it was still dangerous. I had friends who overdosed. I almost overdosed. If I knew why I was able to get sober and what it was that made me able to do it and made other people, some people not able to do it, then I would bottle it, and I would be rich, right? I would be Jeff Bezos rich. We really just don’t know. 

But I can tell you what I did is I went into rehab, I went into a halfway house, and I did The Twelve Steps programs, and I really, really applied myself to it. But I have friends who did those same things, and they went back out, and they’re dead today. I don’t think we fully know. We know some of the answers, but there’s some mystery about why some people are able to “get it” and others can’t. I think there are a lot of variables that I could elaborate on. But I think the most honest answer is I’m not sure I understand.

If you did know, what was it?

I think there were a few things. One, I took advantage of all the resources offered to me for recovery. Secondly, I had a certain amount of—the word we use today is—privilege. Now, I don’t mean privilege like I was really wealthy because, obviously, I ended up homeless. So, it’s not that kind of privilege. But I had at least gone to a good high school, had jobs before, and knew how to go into an interview and talk. 

I was in a position where I could move my life forward faster than a lot of people who I went through treatment and who were less privileged. When they turned their life around, it wasn’t suddenly like an upper-middle-class life was waiting for them. That’s not what was there. I sort of get back there relatively quickly. I think we know that people who get sober do three sorts of things that the Twelve Steps programs talk about. 

They find some way to be honest with themselves, and they become open-minded enough to try different things and listen to what sober people tell them. They become willing to do whatever is asked in order to stay sober. I think it became clear to me. I was able to see that I was either going to go to jail cause I had 50 years of jail sentences hanging over my head, or I was going to die. I weighed 100 pounds, and I had hepatitis C. 

I just somehow got the glimpse that this is going to end in a really bad way really soon. Then, once I got into recovery, I started feeling better and building friends, and my life got better. The two things that come together, I think we often talk about the bottom in recovery: people need consequences, and that’s true. Why would you give up something you love if there wasn’t a good reason to? 

But at the same time, there has to be some measure of hope that meets to arrive at that, and I had sort of both at the same time. I had the despair of the life that I was living and the hope of a different life being possible, and it worked for me, obviously.

I’m glad it did.

Me, too.

What was the process of you having hope and getting clean? When did the desire to help others show up, and how did you make that transition?

From the beginning, I was taught that serving others is important. Our mindsets, how we view the world, and how we process difficult past events or traumas are also important.

Well, I think the thing about a Twelve Steps program is that embedded in the heart of them is the idea that one alcoholic or addict is helping another. There are no leaders. Everybody’s an equal member of the program. The people who have a little bit more time help those who don’t have much time. There are things that need to be done in order to keep a meeting running. Somebody’s got to make coffee, somebody’s got to open the doors, and so I was taught really from the minute I walked in that I needed to start being of service to other people immediately.

I may not have anything good to share with somebody, but I can make coffee. This was long enough ago. If you smoke indoors, you can empty ashtrays. When I had a week, a month, three months, six months, nine months, a year, somebody was always coming in that it was their first day. While I may not be in a position to become that person’s sponsor, I can share some of what has been working for me. 

Oftentimes, when people are new, the person who’s got six months seems a lot more relatable to them than someone like me who now has like 16 years. You look at that, and you’re like, “That’s impossible. Hang on, how did you do that? Because I can’t get a week.” From the beginning, I was taught that serving others was important. The Twelve Steps emphasize the idea that we must stop only thinking about ourselves. 

Ultimately, that’s what addiction is. It’s the ultimate in selfishness. It’s all, “I’m going to burn everything down just so I can feel different than I do,” and learning that trying to have a life based on just me feeling better is not a life that works. I learned that really, really early.

Do you see addiction as a gift?

I do today. I don’t want to say that addiction is a gift for everybody because, for a lot of people, it kills them. Many people spend a long, long time in misery and never get out of it. A lot of family members suffer terribly. So, I don’t want to say that addiction is a gift.

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No, just in your story.

But in my case, yes, I would say it was a gift. I don’t think that I would have figured out a lot of how to be a happier person if I hadn’t had the addiction. And clearly, I wasn’t a well-functioning human if I ended up as a homeless heroin addict at 24. I didn’t have it all together, and I don’t know how I would have figured any of that out. It became the platform where I could use that experience to have a work life and all that. That feels really meaningful and important to me. So yes, for me, it was a gift.

What was that pivotal moment in your recovery?

I’m working on a book, and the working title of the book right now is “How a Little Becomes a Lot.” It’s this idea that, little by little, things change. There are pivotal moments, and I’ll describe one in a second. But I think it’s important to note that pivotal moments don’t mean anything if they’re not followed by lots of other little moments that make that pivotal moment matter. So the pivotal moment for me, if you were gonna film the movie of my life, there’d be a time when I went into a treatment center. It was winter in Columbus, Ohio. It was freezing cold. 

This treatment center was in an old tuberculosis hospital. It was a total dump. Like I said, I had about 50 years of jail time pending. I weighed a hundred pounds. I went into there, and I just wanted to detox for a couple of days and be less dope sick. They told me they thought I needed to go into longer-term treatment. I’d been to short-term treatment a couple of times. I originally said no.

Now I look back and can’t imagine what I was saying no to. It’s not like I had a thrilling social calendar I needed to get back to. But I went back to my room and remembered I had that moment. They call them “moments of clarity and recovery.” I had that moment where I realized if I don’t do something different, I’m going to go to jail for a long time, or I’m going to die. I went back and told them, “Okay, I’ll go to your long-term treatment.” That’s a very pivotal moment. 

There were a lot of moments that led up to that that were really important. There were many moments of me trying to get sober and failing, and all of those mattered. Obviously, that moment wouldn’t be anything except another failure story if it wasn’t followed by thousands of micro-moments where I made the right decision and did the next right thing. That was one pivotal moment, for sure. There have been others along my journey, but that was pretty pivotal. However, we tend to favor the epiphany over the steady, ongoing process.

We tend to like Hollywood stories with pivotal moments because they are more interesting. “And then I had that moment, and God showed himself to me.” I totally get it.

Precisely, much more dramatic.

Yeah, we like stories. Why did you start your podcast?

I started my podcast for a few different reasons. The first was when I got sober and put my life back together. I ended up stumbling into the software business and working in several software startups. I sort of had this bug for entrepreneurship. About 15 years ago, I launched a solar energy company. It was my baby. After five years, I shut it down because it failed.

Good on you for trying.

Yeah, I’m glad. I loved it. So, all of a sudden, this one thing was over, and I didn’t really know what was next. I was doing consulting work, but I just didn’t have a little pet project thing going on. I just got the idea for the podcast, and I knew I needed it. I was in a really difficult marriage at the time. I had stayed sober eight years the first time, off heroin, but had begun drinking again and had been sober for several years again at this point. 

But I just thought if I talk to somebody every week about these ideas that matter, it will help me deal with this marriage. It will help me with my sobriety and boost my emotional mood. Then the last reason was my best friend Chris was an audio engineer. I thought, “Well, I can just ask Chris to do this with me, and it’ll be a project we can do together and spend more time on together.” Those were really the reasons. 

I was sort of surprised when it really kind of took off early on. I started realizing, “Oh, this actually also really helps other people.” That became another real driving motivation for why I did it and continued to do it.

Did it start as a solo podcast?

It started kind of like it does today. I interviewed other people. My friend Chris was the audio editor and helped me set up the sound. He’s still with it today, editing every episode of our podcast. So, the idea that it would bolster and strengthen our friendship was absolutely true, although we’ve had some interesting and challenging moments in between. I started it and continue to do it today. 

Along the way, people asked me, “Do you ever do coaching work with people?” So, I started doing some of that. I created a program called Wise Habits and sold a book to a publisher. So, things started to layer on top of it. But the core of it is still very much what it was a decade ago. It’s me talking to people I find interesting about topics that matter to me.

It sounds similar to my podcast, where I get to have amazing conversations with amazing people. Now, looking back 10 years, how did you change? How did the podcast change for you?

I think there are a few ways I could answer that. The first is that when I started the podcast, I knew the type of guests I was going to have. I’d read many of their books already and thought that it would be a podcast about how we need to really go internally and learn to manage our emotions and thoughts and find inner peace and settle and get balanced. It was going to be an internal journey. What started happening, and it’s particularly picked up in the last several years, is that we now know more than we did before. 

Yes, going inside ourselves is important. Our mindsets, how we view the world, and how we process our difficult past events or traumas are all really important. The external world makes a huge difference in the internal world.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, we can find everything inside, but life, the environment, and our friends shake us. Or something happens to someone we love. I don’t know. It’s hard to stay in the eye of the storm.

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That’s a hundred percent. I think there are a few things there. I think we know for sure that if you want to change your life, your external environment is really important. Would I have gotten sober if I lived in a house with three other drug addicts? Probably not. That’s an extreme example. But you can take that principle and apply it all across your life to anything you want to do more of or less of. 

The general idea is if you want to do more of something, make it easier to do, and that’s in your environment. If you want to do less of it, make it harder to do. There are all these things that we can shape outside of us, the people. The other thing that I think is really interesting is what you just said, which is that life can shake us up, and something really difficult can happen. There’s this idea that we should just stay in the eye of the storm and remain calm and unmoved. I think that’s a fallacy. 

When we talk about equanimity, which means staying right in the center and staying really calm, that’s not natural or human. We’re going to have strong emotions. We don’t want to turn strong emotions off, but we want to know how to deal with strong emotions wisely.

We don’t want to suppress strong emotions, but we do want to know how to deal with them wisely.

So, for example, I’m in a relationship with somebody, and we’ve been together for a decade. It’s a great relationship. But at one point, we had some turmoil and split for a bit. I was just devastated. I was going to this therapist, and he kept sort of making it sound like the reason I was devastated was because of issues in my childhood, and I just needed to resolve those.

At one point, I said to him, “Let me ask you a different question. If I came to you and said that my partner of X number of years just died, would you be telling me that I need to examine my childhood?” You’d be saying, “Of course, you’re grieving. Of course, you’re upset. That’s natural. You want to work with that.” I’m not saying that some of the way I reacted wasn’t a result of my childhood patterns and my attachment issues. Of course, it was. 

But the point is, the way to be in that situation would not have been without grief. That’s unnatural. Something that I loved was gone. The question, though, with emotion is, what do we do with them ultimately? I think that’s what it comes down to. There are certainly ways of dealing with our emotions that lead us not to destroy the outside world around us as part of it. And allow those emotions to be processed, heal us, and come out as different if we handle them positively. But to think that we’re not going to be shaken by life is a real misconception.

I agree with you, and I love what you told her because I had a grief expert on the show and she was actually explaining that the loss of a relationship feels exactly as if someone died in your life.

It often feels worse in my experience because when someone dies, I mean, not to be morbid, but there’s a certain amount of clarity about it unless you killed them yourself. It’s not your fault. But in a relationship, suddenly, you don’t know. What does this say about me? There’s anger, and there’s feelings of betrayal, and there’s feelings of self-doubt and insecurity and rejection. There’s all this stuff in addition to the grief of a relationship ending. So, in many ways, I think it’s harder.

I want to start talking about your program and habits and how you even came up with that.

Well, I said, as I was sober, I started to get really interested in this question: why am I sober and other people aren’t? Why do I seem to be able to work with my emotions skillfully? I know people who can’t. So, I got really interested in how people change. I was also interested in an idea I got as part of the Twelve Steps program. When I was sober for eight years, I went back out and drank and smoked a lot of weed and ended up having to come back to the program. 

I didn’t burn my life down in the same way, but I needed to come back. But when I came back, the Twelve Steps programs really emphasized a higher power and God. I realized that I didn’t know what that meant for me. I had just been sort of pretending. So when I came back, I thought to myself, “I recognized this idea that I need a higher power,” because obviously, I can’t stay sober on my own.

What I realized was that, for me, there were certain principles. I call them spiritual principles, wise principles, philosophical ideas, and it doesn’t matter. But there were certain principles that if I lived my life according to them, I would stay sober, and I would be able to handle whatever came my way. I had these two threads that were always in my mind as I was doing the podcast beginning. It was like, “Why do we change? How do we change? How do we build good and healthy habits and then this principle view?” 

At a certain point, I went, “I wonder if the first, how we change, which is really the science of behavior change, and we know a lot about it. What if that was applied to these principles so that we actually became wiser and happier people?” That, for me, was where the Wise Habits idea came together. We know the science of behavior change. We know principles that show up in nearly every philosophical, psychological, spiritual, and traditional. There’s a lot of commonality. What if we put those two things together?

Can you give me an example of how you merged ancient principles with science-based habits?

Sure. Being present is a common thing you’ll hear from spiritual teachers and spiritual traditions. Psychology and philosophy emphasize it. It’s a common principle. If I want to experience my life, I have to be here for part of it. So, presence. There’s the principle. The thing about it is, how do you do that? I’d heard that for decades. Ram Dass wrote a book, Be Here Now. Eckhart Tolle wrote The Power of Now. I would try to be present, and in 30 seconds, I’m lost again in my mind. So, how do I do that? 

One of the ideas from behavior change science is that if you want to do something regularly, you have to remember to do it. The other idea from behavior science is that retraining thought patterns takes a lot of time. I want to be more present. How do I do it? First, I need to remember to do it. I don’t remember most of the time. I may think about it at night when I’m going to bed. “I wish I was more present. I should be more present tomorrow.” 

Then, I don’t think about it again. Later, I read a little blog article on presence and said, “Geez, I should be present.” But what if I got reminders to be present every day? What if I started doing things every time I get in or out of my car, “I am present.” A way that worked for me was that I had a job. I walked out to my car, got in it, drove to work, got out of it, walked into the office, and then reversed that five days a week. 

One idea from behavior change science is that if you want to do something regularly, you must remember to do it.

I probably got in my car a couple other times here and there. I had at least 10 to 15 opportunities a week that I could practice presence. What I would do is simply, when I got out of the car, do a little exercise called grounding in your senses. What are five things I can see right now? What are five things that I can hear? What are five things that I can feel in my body? That little exercise is sticky enough that it gets me to stick around for longer than a second. 

I’m giving my brain a little bit of something to do that keeps it in the present. And as I do that two, three times a day, every day, five days a week, little by little, a little becomes a lot. Over a period of time, I suddenly became more present in more moments of my life. I’ve trained myself how to do it, and that’s how real change happens. What we can take from behavior science at a base level is that we need to be reminded to do things, and we do them a lot little by little; a little becomes a lot. 

If we combine those two things and stay focused on, like, “Okay, I want to change. I want to be more patient. I want to be more present.” Whatever it is, we can actually really retrain how we view and see the world. That’s the good news. You can do it. The bad news is it doesn’t happen fast. It doesn’t happen with an epiphany of reading a book. You might have an epiphany like, “Oh, goodness, I want to be more like that.” But you’re not going to change because of that. There’s an example.

What are some habits that you had to change lately?

What I have found is that there are core habits that are really important to my overall wellness. By wellness, I mean physically, but I also mean mentally and emotionally. They’re the sort of things that are extraordinarily obvious, but we all hate to hear because we’re like, “I know I should do that, and I’m not doing it.” I had to exercise regularly. I have to eat well. I have to make sure I’m getting good sleep. Things that are that sort of big don’t become habitual in the sense that they happen automatically every time.

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They always take some amount of effort, and there’s always some amount of resistance. We could go into why, if you want, but assume that’s true. That means that over time, I stray a little bit from those habits. I’m in a consistent process of saying, “Oh, okay, well, I want to be moving my body every day, but a couple of days last week, I didn’t because I spent too much time working. And, okay, that’s fine.” But I don’t want it to become a habit. So, I’m always adjusting to those things.

I frequently look at my thought patterns and say, “Okay, what’s the way of thinking that is problematic to me right now, and how can I retrain that thinking?” I think that’s a lifelong process to keep doing that. I feel like I’m always sort of tinkering around with that as well.

But generally, my overall habits of eating well, exercising, and meditating are on track. I just have to steer them a bit and ensure they stay that way and that if they fall off as I go on vacation, I can start back up when I get back. We know a lot about how to keep things like that working and what to do when they stop working. That’s a big part of the work that I do.

Core habits are important to your overall wellness, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Nice. What are some of the most profound habits you established that helped your business? Being an entrepreneur is hard. You have to be very disciplined, and therefore, you have to create good habits.

I’ll tell you the single most useful habit I have is to block time for specific things. When that time is available, I really try to do it. For example, I’ve been working on a book, and the first draft is due to the publisher in April. In order to write a book, you have to have a fair amount of focused time, so I have a little routine. I have a little timer. I set it for 30 minutes. I put on the same playlist. It’s sort of my productivity playlist. It primes my brain. Okay, now we’re in focus mode.

I put my phone on “Do Not Disturb.” I use technology like the SelfControl app on my Mac to block me from places I don’t want to go. I try for 30 minutes to stay in that work, not come out. And if I come out, I use technology to help. I have a little thing to tell me when I’m in one of those focus blocks. It’ll tell me, “Hey, you’re in email. I don’t think you’re supposed to be in email right now.” I’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” I would say, for me, over the years, that’s the most important thing because a lot of us tend to work in sort of a jumble. 

This means I’m checking my email, and I’m kind of preparing for that interview. “Oh, yeah, I need to update that. Oh, gee, I have a presentation to deliver this weekend.” I’m working on that for a minute, and then I remember, “Oh, I wonder if that email got replied to.” We’re in this jumble, and for me, I have found it to be A: way more effective, but B: also more enjoyable for my mental health and my feelings. I got something done to approach my work in that type of way. I would say that’s the main habit.

Nice. What do you do for fun?

My single most useful habit is to block time for specific things.

Well, I play guitar, read fiction, do indoor rock climbing, and love to walk outdoors. My partner and I watch good TV series on Netflix. I love to travel. I was fortunate to spend three months in Europe last fall, so I also like traveling.

That’s beautiful. Do you take enough time for fun activities, or are you always busy?

No, I take enough time. Several years ago, I hired a business coach who was really useful to me. He really helped me figure out, “Okay, we’re gonna work on building this business, but let’s make sure we build the business that you actually want that supports your life, not the other way around.” I really gave a lot of thought to the fact I don’t want to work weekends, I don’t want to work most nights, and I want to be able to take time off. All of that has been a process. 

I remember this in the last decade. I’m terrible with time, so I decided, “Alright, I’m actually taking weekends off.” Until then, I just thought, “Well, I work a couple hours on the weekend. No big deal. My work is kind of in my life.” But I got clear and said, “I actually want some time off.” The more I did that, the more I wanted it. That built into my epic thing. I remember when I was like, “Alright, I’m taking a week off was a big deal as an entrepreneur.” 

I got to a point where I was like, “I’m going to take two weeks off.” It felt like I was doing the craziest possible thing you could do. And I did it. I was like, “I want to take a month off.” I just am really fortunate in that.

But no, I do not work all the time. I take time off, and I really love it. I enjoyed it, and it turned out to be good for the business. Ultimately, I will be good for the business because I will come back energized, recharged, and ready to go again.

Yeah, it’s good for everyone, I’m sure. What are your three top tips for living a stellar life?

I’m going to give you my three top tips for me, but one of the things that I’ve learned over doing this for a little over a decade, having been in recovery for lots of years and having coached hundreds of people from around the world and have hundreds of people go through my program, is that my three top tips may not be yours. Because we’re different and people are different, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach to living a stellar life. 

It’s nice to have a menu of things and learn what works for you. One of them for me, though, and I mentioned, is movement. I just recognize that vigorous exercise is my key foundational wellness habit, meaning it gives me more energy and helps me deal with depression, which I’ve dealt with in my whole adult life. It makes me happier. It’s very foundational for me. It’s the most important one. If you said you could only do one thing for the rest of your life to manage your mental health, what would it be? I would say I’ll take exercise over everything else.

I agree with you. I used to be a personal trainer a long time ago. I also read somewhere that they had a group of people on Prozac and another group on exercise, and after three months, they all got the same results as far as happiness. But the ones who exercised didn’t have side effects; they also had physical benefits.

I think I’ve seen that study and other studies similar to it, and I would caution that if somebody has serious clinical depression, doing a 30-minute jog a couple of times a week is not going to solve the problem. Antidepressants have a place. Serious intervention has a place. Antidepressants have played a big role in my recovery from depression, and exercise absolutely has been proven in lots of different ways, lots of different times to help with mental and emotional health.

Behavior drives emotion and thought.

So for me, it’s really important. Someone else might say, “Yeah, exercise is good. But boy, if I don’t get enough sleep, I’m a basket case, right?” So, that might be theirs.

I agree with you. What you said was good. I do believe everyone can benefit from it. Just moving your body means moving your emotions, which means moving your mindset. Even stepping forward instead of sitting gives your brain the signal to step forward and improve your life.

You’re right. One of my favorite phrases is, “Depression hates a moving target.” That’s just very simple for me. When wrestling with a low mood, the answer is to move in some way. I move my thoughts and my body around. And I would say that’s tip number two. Tip number two is to become more aware of our thought patterns and what we’re saying to ourselves. It’s a curious phenomenon that we can be completely lost in thought and yet at the same time not know that we are. 

I wish I had a word to describe this experience, but I think we all recognize it. There’s a level of meta-awareness where I go, “Hang on, I’m really lost in repeating ruminating thoughts about what a bad person I am.” Before that, I was lost in those thoughts. So, the ability to step out and recognize what is happening inside of us is critical. Any change you want to make to your mental and emotional well-being will start with recognizing what stories are going through your head. Building that awareness and then recognizing that. 

Depression hates a moving target.

My last tip is to recognize that what’s going on in our heads isn’t necessarily true. A question that I always use, and I think you can use the principles I talked about behavior change, science, and cues to remind you, is to ask ourselves, “What am I making this mean, and what else could it mean?” Because so much of what’s going on in our mind is our meaning-making out of events that are happening. When we see how much we do that, and it’s natural, it’s normal, the brain does it, we see, “Oh, if I’m making that up, then I can choose a different, more useful interpretation.”

I bet you’re familiar with The Work of Byron Katie and the five questions.

Yes.

They lie most of the time.

Yeah, they do a lot. That’s a tangent. I love Byron Katie’s work because it’s very much like cognitive behavioral therapy, which has been around for a long time. It’s about questioning your thoughts like you said, and recognizing what’s an actual fact and what’s an interpretation. However, there’s another element that I’ve often thought about because that model says thoughts cause emotions, and that’s absolutely true. 

Thoughts can and do cause emotion on a regular basis. However, it can go the other way, too. This is an experience I can talk about. I wake up in the morning, and there’s a mood within seconds of opening my eyes. There’s an emotional flavor that’s there. I haven’t even had a conscious thought yet. My thoughts take on that flavor, like when I’m sick. When I’m sick, my thoughts turn really dark. I mean, it just happens. I feel terrible. 

I know enough now to be like, “We do not need to read a Camus novel. Settle down. It’s just because you’re sick.” So emotions cause thoughts, and then the last element that’s in there is behavior. Behavior drives emotion and thought.

Extreme language causes extreme emotion.

So those three things, thought, emotion, and behavior, are like this little knot together. Sometimes, we can change our thoughts, and that knot loosens up. But sometimes, we have to change our behavior to work on that knot. 

Sometimes, we need to process our emotions to work on that knot. So, there’s more to this than just the cognitive element; I think it is always the place to start because we can catch ourselves saying things that are not helpful to ourselves.

There’s a phrase I love: “Extreme language causes extreme emotion.” If I’m using extreme language in my head, I’m going to feel more extreme emotions. So when I find myself saying, “My back is killing me,” can I rephrase that? Is that really true? That’s extreme language, which is causing me to react in a more extreme way.

I was first exposed to the power of words when my mom gave me You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay when I was 17. It was profound. I got two books: Louise Hay’s and The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. Those two books have stayed with me for life. What were some books that influenced you?

Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman was really important to me, and the Tao Te Ching was really important. Those are two books I remember reading a lot at 18. I was really kind of beginning my descent into addiction and alcoholism. So it’s not like they prevented any of that, but they seeded something inside me.

That’s what I was thinking, the word “seed.” Planting seeds in your mind that were also aiding in the recovery. That’s beautiful.

Absolutely. Both of those really got to a little bit of what we talked about earlier when you mentioned that life shakes us. What I got from reading those things was there was a way to be okay even if life threw really difficult things your way. I was a depressive teenager. I was reading Camus and existential philosophy, and I was pretty clear that life can be really difficult already. I was kind of an old soul already.

Did you have long hair?

I did, yes. And I listened to a lot of punk rock music.

Philosophical and kind of gloomy.

Listening to punk rock. I am that cliche.

There is a way to be okay even if life throws difficult things your way.

That’s amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here. Where can people find you, learn from you, listen to the podcast, and all of that good stuff?

If you go to oneyoufeed.net, you can find out everything about us. Or, with whatever podcast player you’re listening to, you can search for The One You Feed and find us.

Beautiful. Thank you so much. I really appreciated our time together. Thank you for being here and sharing your wisdom. That’s really great.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on.

Thank you. And thank you, listeners. Remember to improve your energy and mindset with exercise. Be more aware of your words, watch the meaning you give your thoughts, and have a stellar life. This is Orion till next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓} Practice daily presence through sensory grounding. Identify five things you can see, hear, and feel in your body to develop greater presence and mindfulness.

{✓} Establish core wellness habits that support physical and mental health, such as regular exercise routines, proper nutrition, and quality sleep patterns.

{✓} Implement focused work blocks. Set aside a dedicated 30-minute period for focused work. This structured approach enhances productivity and reduces mental strain.

{✓} Question your thought patterns. Regularly ask yourself what meaning you’re making of situations and what alternative interpretations might exist.

{✓} Structure my business operations to support my desired time off by creating systems and delegating responsibilities.

{✓} Move through depression. Use exercise as a foundational wellness tool, remembering that “depression hates a moving target.”

{✓} Make positive behaviors easier to execute by removing friction points and make negative behaviors harder by creating obstacles.

{✓} Practice meta-awareness by regularly observing my mental state without immediate judgment. Watch for repetitive or ruminating thoughts and notice the connection between your thoughts and emotions.

{✓} Focus on small, consistent actions rather than dramatic transformations. Track your progress over time and celebrate small wins.

{✓} Connect with Eric Zimmer: Visit oneyoufeed.net to access resources and information about Eric’s work. Listen to The One You Feed podcast for regular insights on living better. 

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About Eric Zimmer

Eric Zimmer is the creator and host of The One You Feed podcast, author, teacher, and behavior coach who offers wisdom and practical tools for living your best life. Having overcome addiction, he inspires others with his habits and personal growth insights.

 

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