You can meditate every morning. You can journal. You can get the clearest message of your life and feel completely aligned.

And still be in the exact same place a week later.

Not because the practice is wrong. Not because the message was unclear. Because the receiving and the doing are two different things.

This episode is about the doing.

This conversation covers:

The distance between the message and the action — and what living in that distance actually costs

The Allow as the decipher — the most precise articulation of the method's middle step

Why the avoided thing generates the noise — and what happens when you sit with it instead

What the doing looks like when it starts with the most ordinary work available

The difference between finding yourself and building yourself

The receiving is the beginning. The doing is the point.

This Tree & Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs.

You can do all the work and still not get there. Not because of effort. Not because of discipline. Because of the gap.

This episode names what lives in that gap — and how to fill it.

Belief is not something you think into existence. It is not borrowed from someone else's excitement when you announce what you are building. It is proven. To yourself. By yourself. Through the accumulation of evidence you cannot argue with.

This conversation covers:

The gap between doing and arriving — and what actually fills it

Why announcing what you are building creates more anxiety than doing it quietly

How to look back for belief and forward for direction without confusing the two

What the foundation work is actually producing — and why the result is not next

What happens when the belief starts to thin — and the self-leadership response

The honest question underneath all of it: what are you actually building toward

This Tree & Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs.

Keywords:

belief, self leadership, personal growth, foundation, inner work, ego, self awareness, building confidence, LAF method, self development, worthiness, mindset, proving yourself, emotional growth

Most people are building in the wrong order.

The visible work gets done. The invisible work gets skipped. And eventually everything built on that unfinished ground falls — and the cycle starts again.

This episode is about the foundation. What it actually is. Why most people skip it. And what it costs when they do.

This conversation covers:

Why doing alone is not enough — and what the gap actually is

The house metaphor — foundation before walls, structure before aesthetics

What your foundation actually consists of — the three layers that have to be solid first

The practice vs the story — the difference between talking about self-leadership and living it

Prove it to yourself before you prove it to anyone else

The mirror principle — everything is a lesson about you

This is the work that happens before anything visible gets built.

This Tree & Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs.

This episode is coming from inside the middle of something real.

A life purge underway. The candles burning out one by one — Compassion first, Love next, Coach after, the ceremony candle last. A meditation mantra arriving and returning all morning: it takes all of us.

This conversation covers:

What a real purge looks like — not a closet cleanout, leaving the entire life that built you

The difference between feel and look when making the hardest decisions

What it means when all the parts — wounded and healed, scared and certain — are required together

Witnessing the handoff from one version of yourself to the next — from the inside, in real time, without running

Every transition before this one happened without being seen. This one is being witnessed while it occurs.

That is the whole arc. That is the episode.

This Tree & Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs.

What happens when you realize you've been trying to perform a feeling instead of actually feeling it?

In this episode of This Tree and Me, Cory J Riggs explores the distinction between “feel” and “look” — not intellectually, but through lived experience.

The conversation moves through:

how the ego manufactures appearance

why genuine feeling cannot be forced

the body as the authority over what is real

returning to the breath during fear and emotional static

giving wounded parts what they actually needed

spaciousness vs emotional containment

self leadership through honesty rather than performance

This is an episode about learning the difference between aesthetics and truth. Not what life looks like. What life actually feels like.

🎙 This Tree and Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs

This episode begins with a blood vessel popping in Cory's left eye — and ends with five words that changed the ground for everything ahead.

This is a storytelling episode. Not a teaching episode. The teachings are inside the story.

The arc moves through:

A physical limitation that stripped every external support away and revealed the practice beneath it

The worthiness wound named for the first time — the difference between capability and deserving

A ceremonial weekend that released what months of journaling had been circling

A conversation with the parts of himself that built him

A young part told the one thing he needed to hear

A landing in wholeness, calm, and a clear direction

This is not coming from the other side of something.

It is coming from inside it.

This Tree & Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs.

This is where the pattern used to break.

The eye. The financial pressure. Every legitimate excuse available. And two journal entries anyway.

In this episode we go into the place where the bad habits come back, the excuses start, and everything around you is telling you to stop — and what finding a way actually looks like from inside it. Not from the other side.

This conversation covers:

Recognizing the pattern before you repeat it

The difference between a setback and a juncture

Why perfection is the wrong standard for the practice

Capability vs worthiness — and why worthiness is the harder question

The band-aids that keep us comfortable and small

The or — and why it never gets spoken out loud

This is not a motivational episode.

This is what the practice looks like on a hard day.

This Tree & Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs.

You've already proven the process works.

In this episode we break down why most people refuse to apply what they've already built — and what that resistance is actually about.

This conversation covers:

Proof vs confidence

Fear that stays but loses authority

Applying a proven process to new and scary arenas

LAF as an operating system, not a philosophy

This isn't about starting over.

This is about recognizing you've already done this — and building it again.

This Tree & Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs.

Do you believe you have to suffer to heal?

In this episode of This Tree & Me, Cory J Riggs explores the belief that pain and suffering are required for growth—and challenges the idea that holding onto your past is what proves you’ve changed.

This conversation breaks down the difference between feeling pain and living in it, and how identity can become tied to guilt, past actions, and self-imposed punishment.

You are not your past.

You are not required to live in suffering to prove your growth.

This episode invites you to question what you’re holding onto—and why.

In this episode of This Tree & Me, Cory J Riggs explores the role intention plays in personal growth and why many people feel stuck despite consistent effort.

The conversation shifts away from productivity and external results, focusing instead on internal alignment. Cory breaks down how ego-driven patterns—comparison, urgency, and outcome chasing—can create the illusion of progress while keeping you disconnected from real movement.

Through a grounded and reflective approach, this episode introduces the idea that change begins not with action alone, but with the intention behind it. When you reconnect with how you’re showing up each day, life begins to move differently.

This episode also touches on the foundational concept of Listen • Allow • Follow (LAF) as a way to engage with life from a place of awareness rather than control.

If you’ve been working toward something but feel like you’re not getting anywhere, this conversation offers a different perspective—one rooted in presence, clarity, and daily alignment.