This Tree and Me

Two hours a day. Three days in a row. That is all it took to shift from weeks of noise to mornings that opened.

This episode is about what actually happens when you stop waiting to feel ready and just move. Why the inner world gets loud when you are not doing what you know needs to be done. Why the tasks you are avoiding are not the fear — but the fear will find them and attach itself to them if you leave them undone. And what the mornings give you when the doing finally gets its place.

This conversation covers the specific sequence that changed everything across three days, the question that shifted the practice from where does the noise live to where do I live, what two hours of the actual work looks like versus the visible work that feels productive, and why the clarity you have been waiting for is not waiting for you to figure something out — it is waiting for you to do something.

The doing produces the clarity. Every time.

This Tree & Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs.

There is a version of this work that feels like enough. The clarity that keeps arriving. The understanding that deepens. The knowing that grows.

And it is not enough.

Because listening is not living.

This episode is about the step most people never take — the Follow. Why the Listen and the Allow are the beginning and not the destination. Why the act is what opens the door to everything that comes next. And what it actually looks like to stop waiting to feel ready and move in the direction you have already been shown.

This conversation covers why the Follow is the hardest step, how the practice can quietly become protection, why everything changes after the act rather than before it, and what the smallest available Follow looks like right now in your own life.

You already know. The only question is whether you are going to keep listening to it or start living it.

This Tree & Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs.

What if the answer to everything you have been chasing is smaller than you think?

Not a ceremony. Not a breakthrough. Not a vision. A clean kitchen. A made bed. A folded pile of laundry.

This episode is about the most practical and most overlooked teaching in all of self-development — the little things. Why they are the actual foundation and not a checklist to complete before the real work begins. Why every small thing you skip puts quiet weight on you that shows up everywhere. And why knowing this and actually feeling it as true are two completely different things.

This conversation covers the honest version of the question most of us avoid asking, the difference between intellectual knowledge and felt knowledge, what the cluttered space does to the cluttered mind, and what it looks like when the answer to what is next is smaller than you expected it to be.

The magic of all of this is that it is not magical.

This Tree & Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs.

Before you lead anyone else — there is something that has to happen first.

Most people skip it. Not because they don't know it matters. Because they don't know what it actually looks like.

This episode covers what self-leadership actually is and what it is not, why the LAF Method is not a clean sequence but a living process that loops and deepens, what it means to teach self-leadership by living it rather than performing it, and what the practice looks like on the quiet days when nothing dramatic arrives.

The teaching at the center of this episode: you do not teach people how to lead others. You help them learn how to lead themselves. From that — they figure out how to lead others.

You do not have to arrive before you start. The growth never ends. Lead yourself from wherever you are.

This Tree & Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs.

How much of your life have you actually given yourself permission to live?

Not the life you are capable of. Not the life you talk about. The life you have actually stepped into.

This episode covers what the noise inside actually is and what it is pointing at, why we point outward at others when we cannot face something in ourselves, the version of you that got buried and why buried is not the same as gone, where the permission to be yourself went and how it gets taken away, and what it looks like to give it back to yourself without waiting for someone else to do it first.

The performance of the healed arrived version is not sustainable. The one still in it — still building, still figuring it out — that is the one that lasts.

This Tree & Me — hosted by Cory J Riggs.

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