How the Words You Choose Shape the Life You Live | Mark Nepo

Mark Nepo (0:00)

A very simple question that I return to in difficult times, whether it's physical, whether it's emotional, whether it's fear, confusion, is, is what's before me heartening or disheartening? Is what's before me life-giving or life-draining? If it's life-draining or disheartening, then what am I doing? If it's life-giving and heartening, then even if it's difficult, I'm all in.

SPEAKER_2 (0:34)

Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do.

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer (1:19)

Mark Nepo tells an old story in this episode. A master hands his complaining apprentice a fistful of salt, has him stir it into a glass of water, and tells him to drink. The apprentice obviously drinks it. It's disgusting. He spits it out. Then the master walks him to a lake, has him throw the same amount of salt in, and tells him to drink again, and it tastes fine. The usual moral is that we should become more like the lake, create more space.

And I agree, but I've also been arguing something else in my book and keynotes lately. And that's that we can also just stop putting so much salt in the glass. And a lot of that salt turns out to be words. Mark just wrote a whole book about the power of words, so we had a lot to talk about. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is The One You Feed.

So I've mentioned that I'm moving to Atlanta this fall, and it's just starting to dawn on me that I need to find all new doctors, a primary care doctor, a dentist, a dermatologist, all of it. And the way that I've always done this is call an office, leave a message, wait, call back, play phone tag for a bit, and then find out a week later that they don't take my insurance or I can't get in till next May. And that's the problem that ZocDoc is built for. ZocDoc lets you search and compare high quality in-network doctors. You put in your insurance and you only see the doctors who take it. So I did this to find a dermatologist, and right away it started asking me intelligent questions about what I needed to see a dermatologist for, and within a couple of minutes I had a list of dermatologists who would deal with what I needed dealt with, as well as appointment times, and I knew they took my insurance. It was kind of amazing. They have a lot of doctors, 150,000 providers, with 200 plus specialties across all 50 states. You can see actual appointment openings and click instantly to book a visit instead of leaving a voicemail. Your health matters and taking care of yourself shouldn't be complicated. Are you ready to be seen? Head to zocdoc.com/feed to get started and check that appointment off your to-do list. That's zocdoc.com/feed.

SPEAKER_4 (3:29)

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Eric Zimmer (3:58)

Hi Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Nepo (4:00)

Oh, thank you. It's great to be with you again.

Eric Zimmer (4:03)

You have a new book called The Language of the Soul, How the Words You Choose Shape the Life You Live. And we'll get into that in a moment, but we'll start in the way we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.

One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, they think about it for a second, they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.