This episode rounds out the 3 part mini-series of doubt, validation, and confidence. Confidence is broken down into situational confidence and general confidence. In my attempt to define what those two are and how I'm recognizing them in my life, the episode goes off the rails (as is becoming the norm) eventually circling back to how I'm using both situational and general confidence to reach my ultimate goal: Peace of Mind. 

This episode focuses on the next step after doubt, validation. In this episode (I've been talking about myself in these descriptions in the third person and it's coming off weird, so I'm changing it) I discuss my attempt to move from using external validation to internal validation to center myself in my experience of life, and more specifically how I can orient myself in sobriety to know I'm on the right path even when it doesn't feel that way. Gratitude emerges as one of the main elements of internal validation as I work towards confidence and ultimately inner peace. 

In what has become a 3 part series, validation serves as the second step in the doubt-validation-confidence progression. And now with a bit of a backlog of episodes I'll be releasing validation and confidence at the same time to finish off this little mini-series. 

This episode focuses on the nature of doubt, specifically doubt as it pertains to positive and negative states. Carp also discusses truth vs facts and how those things inform his perspective. 

With the focus on perspective there is also an exercise on how to challenge your perspectives so that you may realize that your "reality tunnel", as Robert Anton Wilson calls them, are created by your experience, but then end up limiting your experience as you live in tighter and tighter tunnels. 

This is a useful episode for dealing with the feelings of positive momentum slowing during recovery and how to confront your doubt when your progress no longer feels good, but you know you're doing good, so you must stay on the path. 

Carp discusses rage-inducing tv mounts, mindsets and expectations that lead to misery, and some of the various diagnoses he's received, namely adjustment disorder, and how working with diagnoses as a tool for improvement rather than a label to identify ourselves with can be helpful in creating separation for growth. 

This episode focuses on openness and willingness to simply notice things and be willing to change. Reading out loud is also attempted and failed, but as we learned last week, practice makes perfect. 

The second episode of the podcast is actually the 6th dry-run attempt at figuring out podcasting. In going back through the practice episodes before publishing this one contained great content that was worthy of seeing the light of day. 

While this one doesn't follow exactly in the sequential order of things, it does contain useful exercises in NLP-type activities and discusses the importance of understanding the language we use internally that shapes our reality. 

The first episode to get this podcast up and running! In this episode Carp discusses the plans for the show, a very brief history of his life, and the reason for the show's existence. 

Originally intended as a simple outline of things to come the episode evolves into a variety of other topics, which is a taste of things to come, as the show's ultimate format will be up to the impulses of the Funnel Cake Brain. 

So come along for the ride! Take some time to familiarize yourself with Carp, and his own personal best friend, Funnel Cake Brain, as they discuss how they've come to find themselves in the position they're in, and how on earth they plan on making it through this life.