The Path to Inexplicable Joy: How Self-Friendship Can Change Everything with Susan Piver

The One You Feed

Eric Zimmer

Education, Self-improvement, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness, Buddhism, Mental Health

4.6 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Susan Piver discusses the path to inexplicable joy and how self-friendship can change everything. She shares this powerful statement, “I can’t defeat my enemies, but I can strengthen my friends,” which offers a different kind of hope that shifts our focus from fighting battles we can’t win, to caring for the people and communities closest to us. Susan shares what real power looks like, not dominance, but care, and also shares five practical ways to cultivate personal power in everyday life. This is an episode about moving from overwhelm to meaningful action. One friendship, one moment of care at a time.

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Key Takeaways:

Personal empowerment and its significance in daily life.
The practice of mindfulness and its role in self-awareness.
Exploration of Buddhist teachings, particularly the Heart Sutra.
The concept of interconnectedness and its implications for personal and communal well-being.
The parable of the two wolves and its relevance to nurturing positive qualities.
The importance of self-care and creating a supportive physical environment.
Practical steps for cultivating personal power and confidence.
The relationship between meditation and self-acceptance.
The distinction between relative and absolute views in understanding existence.
The role of compassion in personal growth and community connection.

If you enjoyed this conversation with Susan Piver, check out these other episodes:

How to Discover Your Way of Being Through the Enneagram with Susan Piver

The Four Noble Truths of Love with Susan Piver (2021)

Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Life: Finding Ease and Clarity with Charlie Gilkey

For full show notes, click here!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Meditation is a way of making friends with yourself, seeing how your mind works, how your heart
0:05.8	works. It's not like trying to go piece out to some other place. It's about being here as you are.
0:27.5	Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
0:33.0	Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.
0:37.4	And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
0:39.6	self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things
0:46.0	that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.
0:51.9	It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
0:55.8	worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
1:01.5	how they feed their good wolf. I can't defeat my enemies, but I can strengthen my friends.
1:10.7	That simple idea from Susan Piver really
1:14.3	helped me rethink a question that I think a lot of us are grappling with. When the world feels
1:20.1	impossible to change, what can we do? In today's world, it offers a different kind of hope,
1:26.9	shifting our focus from fighting battles
1:30.0	we can't win to caring for the people and communities closest to us.
1:35.8	In our conversation, Susan shares what real power looks like, not dominance, but care.
1:43.0	Susan shares five practical ways to cultivate personal power in everyday life.
1:47.9	We also talk about her new book, Inexplicable Joy, which explores the Heart Sutra's teaching that nothing exists in isolation.
1:57.5	This is an episode about moving from overwhelmed to meaningful action, one friendship, one moment of care at a time.
2:05.7	I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed.
2:09.2	Hi, Susan.
2:10.1	Welcome back.
	...

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