The Jordan Harbinger Show
1327: Eric Zimmer | Making Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life
14 May 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.
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Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today we're talking with my friend Eric Zimmer, host of the One You Feed podcast, about why changing your life is usually not some cinematic rock-bottom epiphany where the clouds part, the violins swell, and suddenly you're a brand new person who drinks green juice and owns matching Tupperware.
Eric's story, I've known him for a while, but I actually had no idea about most of this. His story starts in a much darker place. Heroin addiction, hepatitis, weighing around 100 pounds, facing prison, and still somehow not being able to stop, even when the consequences were just glaringly obvious.
And what's fascinating and honestly pretty brutal is that the big dramatic, okay, fine, I'll go to treatment moment was not the thing that actually fixed him because that's the fantasy we all want, right? One breakthrough, one realization, one giant emotional lightning strike that rewires our personality and makes us stop doing the stupid thing.
But Eric says that real change is a lot less sexy than that. It's not one huge decision. It's tiny, boring, repeated decisions, calling the sponsor instead of the dealer, not walking past the barb, Making a good choice when you're tired, annoyed, ashamed, or absolutely convinced that tomorrow you will magically become a Navy SEAL with a meal plan.
We'll get into why motivation is mostly trash, why your brain fights change like it's defending a hostage situation, why habits don't always become automatic even after decades, and how values only matter if they actually show up in your behavior on a random Tuesday when nobody's clapping for you. So if you've ever thought, I know what to do, so why the heck am I not doing it?
This one is going to hit you right between the excuses. Here we go with Eric Zimmer. So you open this book, which we'll link in the show notes, with what honestly sounds like the worst possible version of your life. You're about 100 pounds or whatever you said you were. You got hepatitis. You're a heroin addict.
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Chapter 2: What is the main topic of Eric Zimmer's approach to meaningful change?
I was invited back promptly. And then strangely enough, I stopped using drugs and alcohol in high school because I had started this tutoring program for disadvantaged kids. And I just saw what alcohol and drug use was doing to their lives. But when I was 18, my best friend started dating my girlfriend. That hurts a lot. It hurts. And so somebody said, have a drink. I said, sure.
And from that moment on, I was rarely sober again. It was alcohol. It was weed. And then I was in, I played music in bands and I joined a new band and I was going to band practice. And these folks were, I mean, more messed up than I was. And I was like, what is wrong with these people? Well, I mean, what was wrong with them was they were heroin users. And one of them said, you want to try it?
And I said, sure. And that began several years of misery.
Yeah. I mean, it just does not, well, it all starts from pain, I suppose, but then it just gets worse from there.
Chapter 3: How does Eric Zimmer redefine the concept of hitting rock bottom?
You tell this story about getting money from your grandpa. Take us through this because I think a lot of us can put ourselves in your shoes and it's upsetting.
Yeah, I had been sober about a week at this point, and I was convinced that I was done. I was able to see, like, I'm dying, I'm going to jail. I was done and was sort of excited about the next chapter of my life. And it was around Christmas, and I went to the Zimmer family Christmas party, and my grandpa handed me my gift, which was an envelope.
I opened the envelope, and in it was $25, which just happened to be the exact amount that one thing of heroin was, a baggie. I don't know what the hell we called it then. And immediately, that voice that I wished wasn't there in my head just started up, you know, yelling to go get high. And I resisted it for a little bit, but not for very long. And I called my dealer.
who said, meet me at AutoZone, which was the shitty place in Columbus we'd meet behind to buy drugs. And I remember the drive there. It was winter. It was snowing. Aerosmith's Dream On was playing on the radio, and I was sobbing because I so desperately didn't want to do it. And yet I had no ability not to do it at the same time. which is a really awful feeling.
Well, yeah. And I think a lot of people can put themselves in your shoes, maybe not with the heroin part, but in the feeling that you're doing something and you're letting other people down and you're letting yourself down and you can't help yourself and you feel shame, but also compulsion at the same time.
And again, you know, most people aren't probably heroin addicts or former heroin addicts, but I think we've all eaten something we know we shouldn't be eating or have done something that's making us sick or have drank or whatever, done something to someone that we regret. And even in the moment, and we're like, I shouldn't do this. And then it's like, but I'm going to do it anyway.
And you're just like, why? Why am I this person? And I think a lot of us can imagine letting down your grandpa. I mean, for most of us, the only thing that's worse than letting down your grandpa is like letting down your own kids or something like that. I mean, it's way up there.
Yeah, it's got to be up there. Luckily, I didn't take him with me to AutoZone, so I spared him that indignity. All of us know that feeling of watching ourselves make exactly the wrong choice.
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Chapter 4: What role do small, repeated decisions play in making lasting change?
And by wrong, I mean the choice that the best part of us knows we shouldn't make.
Well, in your life and in the book, there's this moment, and people love to latch onto this, right? You walk back into the room and you're like, all right, I'm gonna get clean. And like in the Hollywood version of this, you do, you just get clean. There's a montage of you, I don't know, jogging or hitting a punching bag and like going and volunteering at an old folks home instead of doing heroin.
And it's like, oh, good job, buddy. But you're saying, and with the book, you're largely saying it's not this moment that changes your life. So what does?
Yeah, what you're describing is a moment in the book where I agree to go to long-term treatment, and that would be the big moment. Or we often talk about hitting rock bottom, or this one thing occurs. But that moment is only significant because of all the thousands of little choices I made after.
If I had not made those choices, I would not have stayed sober, and that moment would be just like all the others that I thought I was going to get clean and failed at. And so we overprioritize sort of the epiphany, the watershed moment, and we tend to underappreciate all the little steps that we make along the way after that, that are how we actually change.
Why do you think people latch on to the watershed moment?
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Chapter 5: How can we shift from all-or-nothing thinking to sustainable habits?
Is it because it's sexy? It's kind of like easy to wrap our minds around the time that this thing happened?
Yeah, it's a good story. I mean, we love stories. We like drama. And the truth is a little more boring. You know, the truth, as I'm saying it here, is a little bit more boring to say like, well, yeah, that was important, but... I didn't hit the punching bag three times, visit four old people in the nursing home, and suddenly I was fixed, right?
I got better little bit by little bit, day after day, you know, choosing to go to a meeting, choosing to call my sponsor instead of my dealer, choosing to drive a different route home instead of going by a bar. All those little choices, none of which are monumental in and of themselves, though, are what makes the difference.
I guess it makes sense to go buy drugs there behind AutoZone. Now you can't go buy new windshield wipers because you have to go to AutoZone. I mean, do you have to avoid those triggers forever?
Yeah, I still take the bus everywhere. I haven't owned a car since. Oh, man.
Yeah, I can't refill the wiper fluid. It's triggering for me. Honey, I need you to do it.
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Chapter 6: What are the emotional challenges associated with behavior change?
How long are you going to lead on this excuse, Eric? All right. Yeah, you told me on the phone, I mean, this is years hence, right? I mean, you told me this a couple of months ago. You ended up having to drive, was it OxyContin or Oxycodone to your mom.
You said something kind of, I don't know if funny is quite the right word, but you said something that I thought was in the moment quite funny as you were like, I would have robbed you at gunpoint for those a few years ago. And I didn't even think about popping those instead of driving them to my mom. So you have kind of like completely turned the ship around when it comes to this.
Yeah, the story that we told about me driving to AutoZone opens up a chapter in the book. And the last story in that chapter is exactly what you said. I had been picking oxycodone at the pharmacy and driving it to my mom for several weeks before I even thought about it. And yeah, I would have probably robbed you at gunpoint for those.
And now they had about as much emotional significance as a loaf of bread, which is incredible. I don't tell that story to brag. I tell the story because it shows that what often seems completely insurmountable to us can become second nature down the road. I don't struggle not to do drugs anymore. It's not there in that kind of day-to-day struggle.
Now there's things that I do that I think keep myself mentally and emotionally healthy enough that those cravings or those feelings don't come back. But yeah, it's disappeared as a problem for me. And for anybody that's dealing with a compulsion, that's part of what's hard is you think about life without it and you just imagine that you'll always want it.
Like, yeah, maybe I could give up whatever your thing is, gambling. I don't know. Maybe I could give up gambling, but life would always feel like I'd always miss it. I'd always wish I could do it. And the truth of people who get over these things is that's not true. The thing just ceases to be attractive to you, which seems impossible.
From where I was sitting at one time, I would not have believed you if you told me that. I might have believed, yeah, maybe, maybe I could stay sober, but I would not have believed that I no longer would care about heroin. That was inconceivable.
Yeah, you just thought you'd eventually develop willpower to resist it on a daily basis? Exactly, yep. So it turns out that it's the boring stuff, the unsexy stuff, that actually helps you change. So I would love to talk about this because, first of all, why does the boring stuff work?
Well, I don't think it works because it's boring.
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Chapter 7: How does Eric Zimmer suggest we discover our true values?
I could never sustain it.
Right, it's like a near-lethal experience if you're in terrible shape.
Exactly. So it means what can I get myself to do? And then consistently over time is how it starts to accumulate. And then in the same direction is also important because you could hop on Instagram and by within an hour, you could have 10 new changes you think you need to make in your life. And we can't make 10 changes. We can make a couple at best, usually.
And so having the patience to say, like, I'm going to work on this. This is the thing I'm going to work on. And staying with it is how a little actually does become a lot.
How do people not lose motivation? Because it seems like with motivation, with the idea that you have to stick with something, it's good to have a big emotional payoff. And that's really hard when it's A big emotional payoff is washboard abs and a spray tan or whatever, not I went to the gym on Monday. You see what I'm saying?
I think a lot of people, they get motivated by this big, what is it called? Big, hairy, audacious goals. That's a trendy thing people talk about. They have those because it's so insanely motivating to think, oh, I'm going to, I don't know, have a YouTube channel that a million people watch all of my vlogs about Pokemon. That's motivating.
Showing up and turning the camera on, not motivating, maybe.
Well, yeah. And I don't think there's a one size fits all prescription for anybody on anything. You know, this book is for people who have found themselves struggling to make changes. If you can set a big, hairy, audacious goal and you can change your life overnight and you can just keep doing it, I would set this book down and I would keep going. But for the rest of us,
This is an approach that works, but I agree with you because you're right. We do things emotionally. And one of the problems of little by little is you get into this long middle where not much is happening. So I think there's a few different ways to work on that.
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Chapter 8: What practical strategies does Eric offer for navigating daily decisions?
They're actually like five tasks that I've called one thing.
Oh, I've made this mistake before. Your to-do list has like right book on it.
Exactly. It's ridiculous that I should need to deconstruct getting taxes done into the first step, which is go gather up all the mail that's in the eight different places in my house. But it does matter when I do that, when I get that specific, I do it. So the structural carries us a long way. And then there is what I would call the inner, meaning I know exactly what to do. I know how to do it.
It's all clear. The moment is here. I call it a choice point. I'm at that moment. and I don't do it. That is something's happening inside me. I'm saying something to myself, or I'm feeling something in that moment that I don't know how to get over, and I just turn away.
And so in the book, I identify, I call them six saboteurs of self-control, which are like six categories of the sort of things that go wrong in that moment. And all we have to learn to do is not change our entire psyche, We have to learn, how do I navigate that moment? So writing a book for me, a big one was I just doubted I could do it.
If I'm going to be more specific, I doubted I could write a good book. I mean, I was sure I could get a book out, but I doubted I could do a good book. And so that I call, you know, in my little six saboteurs, I call this self-doubt stalemate, which can stop us from doing something. I just find myself not writing.
And until I really pause and get myself to the point where I'm like, it is time to write right now. So I'm not procrastinating generally. I'm procrastinating very specifically. I can then look and go, all right, what am I thinking? What am I feeling? And when I would do that, what I would see is there's a voice in me that was like, you can't do it. And so nobody wants to feel that. You turn away.
That's a yucky feeling. Instead, I could learn just to say to myself something along the lines of, Well, I don't know if you can write a good book or not, but I do know that if you sit down and write, you're going to feel better about yourself and you have a way better chance of getting better at writing in order to write a book.
I didn't have to give myself a pep talk like, look out, Hemingway, here comes Zimmer. I just needed to get that voice to just settle down just enough to do it. But most of us are not aware of of what that is because either we haven't gotten specific enough to push us to a choice point or we blow right by it without really understanding what we're thinking or feeling.
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