Ep. 648 –Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life with Eric Zimmer
Mindrolling with Raghu Markus
Be Here Now Network
4.7 • 542 Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Author and speaker Eric Zimmer shares how committing to small, sustainable habits transformed his life—moving him from addiction and homelessness to integrity and meaning.
Grab Eric’s book, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life.
This week on Mindrolling, Eric and Raghu chat about:
- Burning the house to the ground: Eric’s experience with kleptomania, addiction, and homelessness
- Embarking on a life-long spiritual quest and journey of self-transformation
- How meditation creates more space between stimulus and response
- The opportunity to make better choices when we slow down through mindfulness
- Why lasting change is so difficult
- Cultivating new habits of both thought and behavior
- Treating yourself as if you are a friend or child
- Becoming a positive force in the world
“Things that feel insurmountable now often can become almost second nature down the line." –Eric Zimmer
About Eric Zimmer:
Eric Zimmer is an author, teacher, speaker, and the creator of The One You Feed podcast—an award-winning show with over 50 million downloads across 800+ conversations exploring meaningful living. At 24, Eric was homeless, addicted to heroin, and facing prison. His journey from those depths sparked his lifelong inquiry into human transformation and resilience. Through his behavior coaching, workshops, and mentorship, he has guided thousands worldwide in creating sustainable habits that last—not through willpower or epiphany, but through steady change. His approach combines cutting-edge science with timeless wisdom, providing practical pathways to greater integrity and deeper meaning. His story and his work have been featured in the media, including TedX, Mind Body Green, Elephant Journal, the BBC and Brain Pickings. Check out his new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life.
“One of the critiques of the modern mindfulness movement is that it divorces the practice from the ethical structures from which it evolved, which leads to ‘I’m just focused on me getting better and feeling better.’ While that’s an important and useful aim, it’s only half the game. The other half of the game is that it is in service of other people and being able to be a positive force in the world. We all have the ability to be a positive force in the world.” –Eric Zimmer
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone. |
| 0:11.4 | It's Rago back with mind rolling, and I'm here with Eric Zimmer. |
| 0:16.9 | Eric and I have been trying to talk for about six years. |
| 0:21.6 | No. Six months, maybe. |
| 0:23.6 | Welcome, Eric. |
| 0:26.6 | Welcome. Great to have you. |
| 0:28.6 | Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. |
| 0:31.6 | Yeah. And by the way, Eric has his own podcast, which you can, the one you feed, which is so in alignment with who we are, |
| 0:41.0 | which is a big reason why I thought this would be great to chat with you. |
| 0:46.0 | So give us a little bit of a, well, how did you get anywhere near and into some of the things? |
| 0:56.7 | And you're relatively young, and what happened in your earliest days, like teenagehood? |
| 1:05.1 | I always say, you know, I was a mess and ended up being a good thing because it led me to really want something beyond my thoughts, my story, my weird habits and so on. |
| 1:19.5 | I feel very much the same way that I'm really grateful for the trouble I well, I was relatively young and how bad it actually |
| 1:29.9 | got for me that really put me on a path that's been, been deeply rewarding since. I mean, how far back |
| 1:39.9 | do you want to go? I mean, as a child, I was, I was a troubled child from, I mean, by the age of 10, |
| 1:45.6 | I was a, I was a kleptomaniac. I mean, I don't mean, like, I took things occasionally. I mean, |
| 1:51.1 | like, I was constantly stealing things. I was organizing neighborhood kids to steal things. |
| 1:58.2 | I was, I was, and I was just always in trouble. I think just as a as a way of |
| 2:04.0 | feeling alive and that led into in my you know starting around 18 and then into about the |
| 2:12.5 | age of 25 of a of a descent into alcoholism and addiction that at the eight you know right at right around 25 |
| 2:20.6 | I was homeless I was a heroin addict I weighed 100 pounds I was yellow and jaundiced from hepatitis C |
| 2:30.6 | the prosecutor said I could be facing up to 50 years in prison, I was in bad shape. |
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