Bonus Track #8: External and Internal Influences

FAN MAIL - Send us a comment or a topic suggestionYour mood might not be “you” as much as it is weather, sleep, hormones, and the stories your mind tells about all of it. We dig into the hidden drives that push us day to day and how seasonal change can amplify everything from motivation to irritation, especially during spring and fall. When climate change stacks disruption on top of normal cycles, it gets even easier to confuse external forces for personal intention and then wonder why you feel off.From there, we get practical: meditation isn’t presented as a performance of calm, but as a way to organize the mind so cause and effect becomes visible. When you can name what’s actually driving you, you stop living as one reactive “clump” of self and start making cleaner choices. That doesn’t erase responsibility, it strengthens it, because you can recognize a surge of anger, craving, or stress and still decide not to act it out.We also take on the ego’s favorite habit: turning everyday friction into a conspiracy against you. The rude shopper, the missing cookie, the bad day suddenly becomes a personal attack, and that creates a constant hum of stress. We explore Buddhist psychology around anger at the world, the ways people seek discharge through habits, and the deeper truth that you can’t contort reality, but you can change the world within you. We close with a grounded teaching on the past: let it inform the present without deforming it, keeping the lesson while dropping the guilt.If this helped you see your patterns more clearly, subscribe for more, share the episode with a friend who’s been feeling off lately, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show.Support the showDr. Ruben Lambert can be found at wisdomspring.comVen. MyongAhn Sunim can be found at soshimsa.org