The Big and Small Podcast
#118 Open Heart, Smash and Recovery
Mar 20, 2026
Episode 118
The Big and Small Podcast
What if the moments our heart slams shut are actually the most important data we have?
We all want to move through the world with an open heart — but what happens when life hits back? When the grocery store guy elbows past, when trust gets broken, when we reach out and feel nothing in return? In this episode, Jason and Marit tackle one of the most honest questions asked inside the Integrated Human community: How do we keep our hearts open in a world that doesn't always meet us there?
This isn't a conversation about being nice or staying positive. It's about building the kind of heart that can take a hit, feel it fully, and come back — not hardened, but wiser. That's the lion heart. Strong and soft at the same time.
What We Cover in This Episode:
- 00:00 — The question that started it all — how do we meet the world with an open heart?
- 05:33 — We are literally connected — and why that changes everything about how we respond to others
- 07:36 — Feeling loved vs. feeling love — a shift that transforms how we walk through life
- 09:53 — The morality of difficult people — why unconscious behaviour isn't personal
- 12:03 — Viktor Frankl and the power of consciousness above circumstance
- 14:07 — Why we can only work on our relationship with the storm, not the storm itself
- 16:30 — Trauma, authority, and the filters we don't know we're running
- 21:09 — Waking up to our patterns — and the moment we realise every situation is healable
- 23:37 — Recovery speed: the real measure of emotional resilience
- 26:01 — The Jumanji framework — we're all playing different levels of the same game
- 28:00 — When the body holds back what the mind already knows
- 30:24 — Cultural frames and the "welcome home" moment — how our nervous system seeks lock-in
- 32:45 — The strategy for keeping an open heart — remove triggers, or recover faster (ideally both)
- 34:00 — Why we can't walk out with an open heart if we haven't accepted what's inside us first
Ready to Build an Unshakeable Heart?
If this episode resonated, our Flow State Continuum Workshop is where we go deeper — building the emotional resilience and inner structure that helps us stay open, recover faster, and move through life with more clarity and compassion.
Learn more about the Flow State Continuum Workshop: https://integrated-human.com/the-flow-state-continuum/
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Music: www.bensound.com