Choosing Love Over Fear: Finding Joy, Confidence, and Self-Trust with Emma Gannon
The One You Feed
Eric Zimmer, The One You Feed
4.6 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Emma Gannon explores the idea of choosing love over fear and how to find joy, confidence, and self-trust. She talks about her new novel, “Table for One” that includes themes of the inner battle between positive and negative thoughts, the healing power of love, and the importance of choosing joy. Emma shares how writing fiction is therapeutic and reflects on her personal growth, confidence, and the grief of changing identities.
Key Takeaways:
- The power of love over fear and hatred in personal and societal contexts.
- The importance of choosing joy and hope amidst life’s challenges.
- Writing fiction as a therapeutic tool for self-exploration and personal growth.
- The dialogue between different stages of life, particularly between one’s younger and older selves.
- The complexities of mental health and the impact of age on confidence and self-perception.
- The concept of grief associated with personal transformation and the loss of previous identities.
- The significance of self-acceptance and understanding one’s own needs and limitations.
- The role of intergenerational relationships and support in personal development.
- The idea of recognizing and supporting the complexities of individuals in a judgmental world.
If you enjoyed this conversation with Emma Gannon, check out these other episodes:
How to Cope with Burnout with Emma Gannon
Beyond Anxiety: How Curiosity Turns Fear Into Fuel with Martha Beck
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I shouldn't be this person. I should be the person in Italy with the cocktails. I shouldn't be this person in bed at 9pm. And the minute I just go, I'm out of spoons, that's what my body's saying, and I'm going to protect myself and take myself to bed. |
| 0:25.2 | Welcome to the one you feed. |
| 0:29.9 | Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. |
| 0:35.3 | Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. |
| 0:38.6 | And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. |
| 0:40.2 | We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. |
| 0:44.9 | We see what we don't have instead of what we do. |
| 0:47.8 | We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. |
| 0:51.3 | But it's not just about thinking. |
| 0:53.3 | Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, |
| 0:56.4 | and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep |
| 1:01.7 | themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. |
| 1:08.4 | There's a question I ask myself sometimes. Would my younger self be proud of the life I'm living |
| 1:14.8 | today? Emma Gannon's new novel, Table for One, is in a way that very conversation. Her 36-year-old self |
| 1:22.5 | speaking with her 20-something self through her characters. In our conversation, we explored how writing fiction can |
| 1:29.0 | be therapy and disguise, how confidence shifts with age, and how every stage of life brings its own |
| 1:36.0 | kind of wisdom and its own grief. This is a conversation about complexity, creativity, |
| 1:41.5 | and learning to trust yourself. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you |
| 1:46.1 | feed. We are conducting a survey to find out what you want. Look, you know this, I know this. There's ads on |
| 1:53.6 | this podcast. It's how the podcast stays alive and feeds those of us who devote ourselves to it. |
| 2:00.0 | But I'd love to improve that ad experience for you. |
| 2:03.0 | And in order to do that, though, I need to know a little bit more about you. |
... |
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