248. Inside Your Mind, Two Wolves Fight - Choose Your Fighter

We share the two wolves parable and turn it into a practical framework for managing emotions, shaping identity, and making better choices. Small promises, repeated daily, starve the dark wolf and strengthen the habits that carry you through stress, fatigue, and doubt.

• the two wolves parable as a decision framework
• reactions over events and training your default
• defining “feeding the wolf” as repetition and attention
• catching negative loops and building reframes
• dark wolf patterns like avoidance and rumination
• light wolf habits: gratitude, courage, consistency
• drift, chosen pain, and non‑negotiable plans
• practice over wanting and evidence over affirmations
• micro decisions, daily reviews, and end‑of‑year resolve

Chapters

• 0:18 The Two Wolves Parable
• 1:38 Reactions Shape Identity
• 3:14 What Feeding A Wolf Really Means
• 4:43 Catching Negative Loops And Reframing
• 6:09 Dark Wolf Patterns In Daily Life
• 7:55 Light Wolf Habits And Examples
• 9:39 Drift, Pain, And Choice
• 11:23 Practice Over Wanting
• 13:04 Keep Promises And Follow The Plan
• 15:06 Micro Decisions And Daily Review
• 17:58 Year-End Reminder And Close

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:18

Hello guys, welcome back to another episode of the Mindset Cafe Podcast. It's your boy Devin Gonzalez, and today I want to talk about the story of the two wolves and how everyone has the two wolves in them, and how you essentially get to shape your identity by picking which which wolf. So there's an old story about a grandfather who tells his grandson, Inside of you, there's two wolves, and they're always fighting. One wolf is darkness, it's anger, fear, jealousy, and despair. The other wolf is light, which is hope, discipline, compassion, and strength. The grandfather asks, sorry, the grandson asks, which wolf wins? And the grandfather answers, Well, the wolf that wins is the one that you feed. And most people hear that and think it's a cute little metaphor and a cute little story, but it's not. It's one of the most accurate descriptions of the human experience. Every day you're feeding something, right? You're with your habits, with your thoughts, with your reactions, with your discipline, or on the other hand, the lack of it. And the wolf that gets fed becomes the one that you controls your life. So today I want to break down the story in ways that you can use not just as a moral lesson, but as a practical framework, essentially, for you choosing your identity and managing your emotional state and taking back control of the direction of your life. So let's dive in a little bit. Every day there's situations that happen that aren't planned, right? And they have an emotional toll on you, whether positive or negative. And you get to choose, like we've talked about on previous episodes, you get to choose your reactions to these events. You can't change the event necessarily, right? You get in a car accident, you know, um the power goes out, your alarm doesn't go off. You can't change the event, but your reaction to the event is fully your your control. And that is essentially the basis of what the two wolves are. You get to choose the way you view the world, the way you get to view your circumstances, the way you get to view the events that happen to you or the things that happen to you. So it's really just understanding that you are who you choose to be. You are if you if you're viewing the world in a negative manner, then everything's gonna appear that it's you know going against you, everything's gonna seem like a problem. If you're viewing things on the lighter side and seeing everything as an opportunity or as a lesson, well, then you're gonna seek out more opportunity. Opportunity is gonna find you. You wonder how people, you know, some people are just you know, quote unquote, lucky, and opportunity just finds them. Well, those are the people that see the world and see their day through that opportunity, uh, opportunistic lens. And so what I want to talk about is really, you know, what does feeding the wolf really mean? Right. And so I want to clarify what that actually means so that you can actually start to break it down and and add this to your daily habits, essentially. You have to think what what feeding the wolf is. Damn, that's actually sounds pretty cool. Um, but what feeding the wolf is um it's what gets your attention, what you're what you're doing on a repetition, right? And in in repetition. So, what are you constantly doing that is a habit? What are your habitual responses to certain things? What is your view or your take when a negative thing happens? Whatever you repeat becomes your default, right? People think that they rise to the occasion, you don't, you default down to your level of training, and so it's not like you can flip the switch and just you know see everything through the light wolf, right? You know, through an opportunity opportunistic lens or through a positive mindset, but anytime you anytime you essentially catch yourself viewing things in a negative mindset or with a negative connotation to it, that's where you put the brakes on it. That's where you put a little pause to it, and that's where you take a step back and then you try to reshift. This isn't this one event isn't making my day a bad day. It was maybe a bad moment, maybe a bad minute, but what can I learn from this? And so, for example, if you are naturally an anxious person, right, and you you fight, you know, having anxiety, well, what happens when you focus on your anxiety? You start to become more anxious if you in turn want to focus on, let's say, becoming more courageous, it's gonna feel like a manual action. You trying to become more courageous, you trying to becoming more mentally strong, but over time, you feeding that habit in that mental state, it starts to become your default. Then you don't have to think about it as much. So the dark wolf, right? Your fear, your doubt, your despair, um, resentment, jealousy, uh, apathy, insecurity, avoidance, you know, those are some just some everyday examples that can happen. Like, let's say, instead of let's let's take it even more simplistic, instead of getting started on the task, you're scrolling on Instagram. Instead of instead of looking at something that went wrong in conversation, in a sales pitch, in a game, um, whatever the scenario may be, instead of trying to extract what went wrong so that you can find a solution so that it doesn't happen again, you're just replaying that it went wrong. And you're not looking at it as what can I learn from this? And it's just playing on a loop, and then all of a sudden that starts to wear on you, and then you start to lose self-confidence. You another one is I know this is for a lot of people, especially when you're trying to level up, whether it's fitness, whether it's business, you know, professionally, whatever. The dark wolf would allow you or does allow you currently to choose the comfort path, right? Anytime there's a resistance, or you have to, you know, get outside your comfort zone, you take a step back. You're like, okay, well, and then you make 10 different excuses why that can't be done today. And so you have to realize that you have to focus on the growth and focus on getting uncomfortable, even when those times happen, so that you can continue to push forward, right? Where on the other hand, it's almost like the two devils that sit on your shoulder, right? The good and the bad, right? Same thing with the wolves, right? You have the dark wolf, you have the light wolf, and the light wolf is gonna be, you know, hope, strength, discipline, compassion, responsibility, courage, consistency. And while all those words, you know what they mean, but everyday examples of these things tend to be like let's say showing up early for work or showing up early for an event, um, taking the first step before you feel ready, practicing gratitude, as simple as that. You know, be thankful for what you've accomplished, what you've what you have currently, because if you're not grateful for what you have currently, then you're not gonna be grateful for what you get moving forward. So the point of that is realize that light grows through choice, and so it's especially in the beginning, it's gonna be difficult, but you are going to have to try to make this where it becomes a habit. So it's day after day, you know, like I said, consistency, making these things so that it becomes your default. You have to feed the right wolf long before you realize that you're on that side, meaning that if you're trying to choose the light wolf, you're gonna have to feed that and and practice it long before you realize that it's already become a habit. Most people don't consciously choose to go to the dark wolf, they kind of slowly drift, and it happens to all of us, but is when you catch that drift, or even if you're all the way over, it's like you realize it, and now you have a decision to make. Are you gonna stay there, or are you gonna actively do things to try to shift and drift back the opposite way? Because if you're gonna stay there, then that is also your choice. Growing physically, I mean, like in your fitness, in your business, all those things are painful mentally, physically, emotionally sometimes, but also staying where you are is also painful physically, mentally, emotionally, right, financially. And so you have a choice. Which route of pain do you want to choose? The one that has a bigger upside or the one that has less friction, but you're you're accepting complacency. And if you're accepting complacency, you also like for me personally, I hate when people complain about being the same or not not achieving their goals, but then you look at their actions, and there's nothing to back up why that you should even get those goals. Like you're doing nothing to prove to the world, the life, you know, life in general, right? The grind, whatever you want to call it, you're not doing enough or anything at all to even make it reasonable for you to say that you deserve that goal. Take Kobe Bryant, for example. You know, he used to shoot free throws, you know, for hours and hours and hours. He didn't just say, I'm in the NBA, I can just kick back. You have to constantly work. Do you think pro pro athletes? Do you think that you know the top CEOs that they just kick back, they're constantly perfecting their craft. They know that nothing guarantees them staying where they are. So they're not allowing the dark wolf to creep in because they know if they let it happen, they're going to slide down the mountain of success that they're currently on. But for you to be able to climb that mountain of success, you need to start shifting your mindset and realize that that mindset shift and what you choose starts to become your identity, right? Your identity is built through repetition, it's not built through just intention. You become what you constantly reinforce. Your wolves don't care about what you want, they care about what you practice. Wanting is is you know all good in your head, but in reality, wanting means nothing. You can want the world, doesn't mean you're gonna get it. You can want a Ferrari, doesn't mean you're gonna get it. That's why when people say, you know, the whole like vision boards and stuff like that, like I think they're cool tools, but like just speaking affirmations in the mirror and creating a vision board isn't gonna get you the results that you want. You need to also back that up by work. That's supposed to be a tool that you use for you to also follow it up with by work. It's a reminder that you need to put in the work today. But just by saying that you want something doesn't mean you're gonna get it. I mean, damn, if if that was the case, my three-year-old wants ice cream every morning. She's not getting it, she can want it all she wants, right? But that's not what you need, that's not what you are gonna get. So an example of this also is wanting confidence versus being confident. Well, you can want to be confident all you want, but you need to do things that are gonna start to reinforce your self-confidence, which is gonna take you outside of your comfort zone. And if you're not willing to do that because it's uncomfortable, then you're not gonna become confident. It's that simple. You done enough times and done through enough repetition, your goal is not just about fighting the dark wolf, it's about letting it starve. You should be focusing and putting so much work into feeding the light wolf that the dark wolf is literally starving. It's not that you even have to worry about drifting anymore, and that won't happen overnight. But over time, when you stop feeding it, it goes away, it becomes less strong, right? Like, think about think about uh an actual wolf, right? Or a dog, right? If if you can picture that a little bit better, if you have two dogs and you're feeding one constantly and one's not, and you call both of them over to you, which one's gonna get up and run to you? Well, the one you've been feeding because it's stronger, it has more muscle, it has you know the energy from the food. Like you, that's the same thing with this and with your mindset. The thing that you practice is going to come a lot faster to you and be a lot stronger in your mind than the thing you're not feeding. So you have to constantly feed the light wolf, right? Focus on the habits that are gonna make you proud. If you make a promise to yourself, for example, I hear this one all the time. I'm gonna work out today after work. Well, then fucking go to the gym after work. Let's say, God forbid you can't go to the gym. Well, then do a workout at home. The main thing is you kept the promise to yourself that you were going to work out after work. You didn't say you're gonna work out at the gym, and if you can't, then you're not gonna work. No, you said you're going to work out. I heard an interview with Kobe Bryant. Um, and actually, this is kind of a little off script of what I was planning to talk about, but I think this kind of goes right into what I'm saying is he talked about his game plan, and you know, someone was asking him, you know, was it hard sticking to your plan and and you know, pushing yourself throughout the season? And he said, Yeah, that honestly that's one of the hardest things, right? You know, before the season starts, you have a game plan, you write everything out, like this is what I'm gonna do after each game, this is what I'm gonna do um at this point, and so forth. And then all of a sudden you hit that point, and then you know your body's sore and you're tired, and you know, you're succeeding, and you're like, and then it starts to creep in. Well, maybe I could just take a rest day today, or maybe I could just, you know, I'm gonna do half the workout. And then that's when he was like, Nope. Is I said I was gonna do this, I'm gonna do it, regardless of how I feel. That was the plan. There is no, this is not a negotiation, right? You cannot negotiate with yourself if you set the plan, follow the plan. You told yourself you're gonna do X, then do X. There is no A, B, or C. You said I'm gonna do A, then do A. Then you said after A, I'm gonna do B, then do A, and then do B. That's simple, right? And I'm not saying it's that simple in the terms of like you're just gonna be able to do it. Like you're gonna have to mentally battle yourself on certain things, but it gets easier. I promise you. It gets easier. The more you practice it and the more you keep the promises to yourself, the easier it gets. The more you do the uncomfortable reps, the more comfortable you get at being uncomfortable. I'm not saying it goes away, but you start to accept that feeling of uncomfort a little bit more, right? So I want you to analyze your day and realize that there's micro decisions that you're making all throughout the day. And I want you to review just even like what's happened so far today. What did you start to feed the opposite wolf today? What could you have done next time to not do so? So when it happens tomorrow, you don't feed the dark wolf, right? It's your choice which wolf you choose. But again, no one can do it for you. You have to choose, and you have to want it bad enough, and then you have to do it so many times that it becomes a habit, and the dark wolf is starving out there in the dark. I hope this guy, I hope this helps. I know we're wrapping up towards the end of the year, and I know you guys still have goals to hit by the the end of this year before the new year's hits and all that kind of stuff. And if we're talking about fitness and everything like that, like the holidays are all coming up. So this is the time that you get to reinforce your light wolf. But I hope that helped you guys. I love you guys. I appreciate y'all. I'll see you guys on the next video.