Episode 51 | I Have A Felony. I Am Not A Felon. — And Yes, There's A Difference. And Who Might You, "Be?"

Episode 51 | I Have A Felony. I Am Not A Felon. — And Yes, There's A Difference. And Who Might You, "Be?"

I have a felony on my record. I'm not going to soften that or dance around it. What I am going to do is make a distinction that changed everything for me — and might change something for you. There is a world of difference between I am a felon and I have a felony. Between I am an alcoholic and I had a drinking problem. Between I am an abuse survivor and I was abused. One collapses the experience into your identity permanently. The other keeps them separate. I have a pair of Doc Martens. I am not Doc Martens. I have a felony. I am not a felon. When I believed I was a felon — when I had fully internalized that label and everything the culture attaches to it — I couldn't get a job, couldn't provide for my family, couldn't imagine doing a podcast, couldn't see past the shame of what that word meant. The label was running the show. When I changed the language to I have a felony — something shifted. Not the record. Not the circumstances. My relationship to them. This episode is about the self-concept work that lives in the words we use to define ourselves. About the labels we've inherited, internalized, and never questioned. About what happens when you finally ask: is this who I am, or is this something I experienced? And yes — at the end, I'll tell you what the felony was for.

Episode 50 | You Are Amazing — And I Know You Don't Believe That Yet, But That's Okay...

It's late. Sharon's in the bedroom waiting to watch something on BritBox. I'm trying to keep this one brief. I had conversations at work today that confirmed something I keep coming back to: we are waiting for the world outside us to tell us who we are. And it never does — not accurately, not completely, not in a way that actually sticks. Because that's not where the answer lives. This episode is about what happens when you stop looking out there and start paying real attention in here. Not as a spiritual practice. Not as a therapeutic exercise. Just as the most honest thing you can do with the time you have. Eight billion people on this planet. Still no single agreed-upon definition of love. Because love — like identity, like self-worth, like the question of who you actually are beneath everything you've been told — is not a collective answer. It's a personal one. And you're the only one who can find it. I also talk about what I learned when I tried giving the course away for free. And about a television clip I saw this morning about a parent and a transgender child — not as a political conversation, but as the clearest illustration I've seen recently of what it looks like when someone is trying to find themselves and someone else keeps telling them who they are instead. You are amazing. You always have been. It's taken me years to be able to say that without flinching. And I know some of you aren't there yet. That's okay. That's why I keep showing up.

Episode 49 | Trigger Warning — You Are Responsible For Your Own Choices (Yes, Even That One)

Here's your trigger warning. I didn't get a fucking “trigger warning” the morning  I found my son Malachi’s lifeless body on July 31st, 1999. There was no one there standing with their hands up and asking if I was “ready” or offering me “warning” that what I was about to experience was going to so fundamentally change me that even now, in 2026, I would not ever understand. Trigger. Warning. My son Malachi was born May 20th, 1999. He was dead July 31st, 1999. He was 2.5 months old.  I'm the one who found him. And I can promise you, again, as I said — no one walked in beforehand and said to me, with that warm look that says “this shit is gonna hurt. Bad.” No, “hey, this might be difficult.” Trigger. Warning. So when I hear about trigger warnings on university campuses, in classrooms, before conversations that might be uncomfortable — I have some thoughts. Not because pain isn't real. It is. Not because difficult experiences don't leave marks. They do. But because somewhere along the way we decided that other people are responsible for managing our emotional responses to information — and that decision has cost us something. This episode is about that cost.  About the difference between what happened to you and what you're doing with it right now. About the fact that your father, your ex, your childhood, the person who called you a name — none of them are in the room with you right now. What's in the room is your thinking about them. And that part is yours. You participated in every single thing you've ever experienced. That's not blame.  That's the most liberating thing I know how to say. Also: a hawk flew by at the end of this recording.  Make of that what you will. This is from the archive. 2023.  Malachi would have been almost 24. He’s still dead in 2026. No almost 27. Trigger. Warning.

Episode 48 | Sourcing — Why Knowing Where The Cow Came From Won't Make The Steak Taste Better

This is an archive episode that was originally created on April 28, 2023 at 7:48 AM, and when you hear different details within the episode, that's why. So much has "changed" over the years since I first began making the episodes.... ______________ I want you to imagine your favorite meal at your favorite restaurant. You already know what you want. You put in your order. And then — do you ask where they sourced the beef? Whether the cow was grass-fed or industrially farmed? Whether the chef went to the right school? Whether the pipes carrying the natural gas have been recently inspected? You don't. You just eat the steak. This episode is about why we apply a completely different standard to our own lives — why we've been convinced that we need to know the full sourcing history of our pain before we're allowed to enjoy the present. That if we could just go back and identify the exact moment that broke something, we could fix it, and then finally be happy. The steak hasn't changed. Only your perception of it has. And your perception changed the moment you started thinking about the supply chain instead of the meal in front of you. There is no separation between your nows. The only moment you have is this one. And the source of your father's rage, the origin of your self-concept wounds, the history of every relationship that didn't work — knowing all of it is not what changes how you feel about yourself right now. What changes how you feel about yourself right now is what you're thinking and feeling right now. That's the whole thing. That's the episode.

Episode 47 | The Biggest Lie You Tell Yourself Every Day — And It's Not What You Think

I lied my ass off as a kid. Not because I was a bad person. Because I was trying not to get beaten. When the truth was going to get you hurt, you learned fast that whatever kept you safe was worth saying — evidence be damned. That's where it started. But it didn't stay there. By the time I was dating, I was telling a woman I was thinking about becoming a vegetarian. I was not thinking about becoming a vegetarian. I was thinking about getting in her underwear. But the lie came out before I could stop it because somewhere in my self-concept was a belief that who I actually was — a steak-eating, imperfect, complicated man — wasn't going to be enough. That's the lie this episode is really about. Not the ones we tell other people. The one we tell ourselves every single day: that we're not lovable. That we don't measure up. That if people really knew who we were — the imaginary friends we had as kids, the marriages we failed, the standards we couldn't meet — they'd leave. We've been building that case for decades. Exhibit A: you didn't meet your parents' standard. Exhibit B: you didn't meet the relationship standard. Exhibit C: you didn't meet the cultural standard. The list goes on until the verdict feels inevitable. But here's the thing nobody says out loud: if you can lie to yourself that you're unlovable, you can lie to yourself that you're not. You're already doing it. The question is just which direction you're pointing it. This is from the archive. The foundation of everything that came after.