Hello, and welcome back to Practicing Human, the podcast where every day we're getting

a little better at life.

I'm your host, Cory Muscarra, and in today's episode we are going to talk about the dark

side of positive habits.

More to come on that in a moment.

First let's settle in together with the sound of the bells.

So before going into this, let me just apologize if I sound congested.

I am on the upswing of recently having COVID.

So I'm still not 100% yet, but I want to come on here and elaborate on a text I set

in our text community the other day where I said positive habits like reading books or

listening to podcasts can be cleverly disguised defense mechanisms that help us avoid meeting

our deeper wounds.

All this was met with appreciation by many people.

There were also a lot of people who were either confused by this or frustrated by it, thinking

that it was pushing back against positive routines or doing good things for yourself.

And that's not the intention.

As many of you know, I am a big fan of things like reading books or listening to podcasts

in all different forms of personal growth and very much intrigued by and encouraged doing

things that are nourishing and pleasurable and making space for that in your life.

However, sometimes these positive things, especially when they are positive type habits

or things that have a certain virtue attached to them, such as reading a book or listening

to a good podcast, maybe like this one, you know, these things you would never really

...