Understanding Yourself: A Framework For Change

About Understanding Yourself: A Framework For Change

Understanding Yourself: A Framework for Change is a podcast about the thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and relationships that shape our lives. Rather than teaching something new, each episode is designed to help you recognize something you've likely known all along. Through personal stories and reflections, Ben Lemmon explores meaningful change, motivation, purpose, connection, and the patterns that quietly influence our decisions every day. The goal isn't simply to understand ourselves intellectually, but to experience the kind of insight that naturally leads to lasting change. Whether you're navigating a major life transition, seeking greater purpose, improving your relationships, or simply trying to live more intentionally, these conversations are an invitation to better understand yourself. Every episode is an invitation to recognize what you've always known, but perhaps never had the words to understand. benjaminlemmon.substack.com (https://benjaminlemmon.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Essays & Conversations on Human Behavior

Category

education · health & fitness

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

9 Aug 2026

Latest episode

25 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

9 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   25 Oct 2026

   Three and a Half Days

   In this episode of Understanding Yourself, I explore attention, emotional pain, judgment, meditation, forgiveness, recovery, and the slow process of becoming someone different. The title comes from the Seven Day Mental Diet, an Emmet Fox practice I have repeatedly failed to complete. My personal record is three and a half days. But failing at it taught me something important: change does not always happen because we finally understand something perfectly. Sometimes it happens because we repeatedly practice directing our attention somewhere new. This episode moves through stories from addiction treatment, early recovery, meditation, friendship, relapse, and even Cincinnati traffic to explore one central question: What do I want? Not because wanting something guarantees we will get it, but because once we know what we want, we have some idea where to look. In this episode: * How emotional pain can quietly become our baseline * Why sobriety may be the beginning rather than the destination * What judgment can cost us, even when the judgment itself is accurate * How much attention I used to give problems long after they were over * What repeatedly failing at the Seven Day Mental Diet taught me * Why meditation changed when I stopped trying to stop thinking * How forgiveness can protect our attention without denying what happened * Why the people closest to us sometimes notice our growth before we do * Why imperfect motivation can still lead to meaningful change * How what we repeatedly focus on can become what we naturally notice and eventually what we have available to give Understanding Yourself is a collection of stories, ideas, and conversations designed to help us better understand ourselves and maybe experience life a little differently. Written and narrated by Ben Lemmon. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benjaminlemmon.substack.com (https://benjaminlemmon.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   11 Oct 2026

   Different Windows

   In this episode of Understanding Yourself, I explore how easy it is to mistake our perspective for the whole picture, and what can happen when we become willing to see our lives through someone else’s window. Through stories about my family, relationships, work, and recovery, I explore how the people we trust can sometimes help us see things that are directly beneath our own window. One conversation with my sponsor, and three simple words, “blessed beyond belief,” completely changed the way I experience responsibility in my life. In this episode: * Why our perspective can be true without being complete * How other people can help us recognize what we can’t see ourselves * Why recognizing our part isn’t the same as blaming ourselves * How “blessed beyond belief” changed my perspective * Why therapy, recovery, faith, psychology, and other perspectives can all be valuable windows * Why self-awareness may require seeing our lives from more than one place Maybe the people we trust don’t necessarily have a better window. They simply have a different one. I don’t think the answer is to distrust our own perspective. Maybe it’s to become humble enough to recognize its limitations. Understanding Yourself is a collection of stories, ideas, and conversations designed to help us better understand ourselves, and maybe experience life a little differently. Written and narrated by Ben Lemmon. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benjaminlemmon.substack.com (https://benjaminlemmon.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   27 Sept 2026

   Love Doesn’t Always Feel Like Love

   In this episode of Understanding Yourself, I explore how some of the most loving things people do for us don’t always feel like love in the moment. For much of my life, I associated love with comfort. Love helped. Love protected. Love made things easier. But some of the people who have loved me most have done something very different. My father stopped fixing problems he could have made disappear. A counselor challenged stories I desperately wanted to believe. And my sponsor asked me to stop deciding which suggestions I was willing to follow. This episode is about learning to recognize the difference between love and comfort. It’s about walking my dog through the rain with an umbrella over his head and realizing what powerlessness actually means. It’s about the role our ego plays in helping us become independent—and what happens when that same ego starts protecting us from correction, responsibility, and growth. And it’s about becoming secure enough in ourselves to receive something we may not want to hear from the people who care about us. Maybe love doesn’t always make us feel better. Sometimes it allows us to struggle long enough to discover what we’re capable of carrying ourselves. In this episode: * Why love and comfort aren’t always the same thing * What my father taught me by eventually choosing not to fix some of my problems * How walking my dog in the rain helped me understand powerlessness * Why hearing suggestions and actually taking them are two very different things * How our ego can protect us from being wrong, corrected, or uncomfortable * Why someone hurting our feelings doesn’t automatically mean they’re loving us * The difference between healthy discomfort and cruelty or control * Why adulthood sometimes asks us to accept responsibility for what we’re finally capable of carrying ourselves Sometimes the people who love us most give us the very thing we would never choose for ourselves. And maybe one of the questions adulthood eventually asks us is: Can I become secure enough in myself to let someone love me in a way that doesn’t immediately make me feel better? Understanding Yourself is a collection of stories, ideas, and conversations designed to help us better understand ourselves—and maybe experience life a little differently. Written and narrated by Ben Lemmon. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benjaminlemmon.substack.com (https://benjaminlemmon.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

4. 

   13 Sept 2026

   The Meaning We Give Things

   In this episode of Understanding Yourself, I explore how the beliefs and meanings we attach to what happens to us can quietly influence what we notice, how we feel, what we do, and ultimately the direction our lives take. For a long time, I believed painful experiences needed to stay painful. Anger felt protective. Resentment felt like remembering. Fear felt like preparation. But carrying those things forward didn’t just preserve the past, it changed the way I experienced everything that came afterward. This episode is about learning to recognize that process. It’s about two people working the exact same job and experiencing completely different realities. It’s about the difference between “when it rains, it pours” and “I’m on a roll.” And it’s about a simple exercise a sponsor gave me that changed what I started noticing in the people and opportunities around me. Maybe we don’t get to choose everything that happens to us. But we may have more influence than we realize over what we continue carrying forward. In this episode: * How beliefs influence what we notice and how we behave * Why two people can experience nearly identical circumstances completely differently * How attention can reinforce the direction our lives are already moving * Why asking “Is this belief serving me?” can sometimes be more useful than asking whether it’s absolutely true * What gratitude taught me about changing my attention * Why letting go of pain doesn’t mean denying what happened * How the word “maybe” can create space for a different interpretation * Why changing the meaning we carry can change what we’re able to see next Sometimes changing our lives doesn’t begin with changing what happened. It begins by asking: What if I’ve been carrying a meaning that no longer belongs to me? Understanding Yourself is a collection of stories, ideas, and conversations designed to help us better understand ourselves—and maybe experience life a little differently. Written and narrated by Ben Lemmon. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benjaminlemmon.substack.com (https://benjaminlemmon.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

5. 

   30 Aug 2026

   The Thing I Never Lost

   What if your worth has never actually changed? In this episode of Understanding Yourself, I explore the difference between our worth as human beings and the societal worth we spend so much of our lives trying to increase. This isn’t really an episode about self-esteem. It’s about experience. It’s about what I began learning during some of the most difficult periods of my life, including an afternoon early in recovery when a man I barely knew sat beside me for more than twenty minutes without trying to understand me, fix me, or give me an answer. He simply stayed. Over time, experiences like that began changing something I had understood intellectually but had never fully internalized. Failure did not decrease my worth. Success did not increase it. My worth as a human being had been there all along. And strangely, when I stopped trying to prove my worth and began focusing on the unconditional worth I share with every other human being, I became more useful to the people around me. In this episode: * Why difficult feelings can be invitations to pay attention and learn * What one afternoon early in recovery taught me about simply being present with another person * The difference between human worth and societal worth * Why failure does not decrease our worth and success does not increase it * How recognizing our own worth can make us more useful to our families, workplaces, and communities * The question I continue asking when life doesn’t go the way I hoped: “What do I need to learn?” Understanding Yourself is a collection of stories, ideas, and conversations designed to help us better understand ourselves and maybe experience life a little differently. Written and narrated by Ben Lemmon. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benjaminlemmon.substack.com (https://benjaminlemmon.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

6. 

   23 Aug 2026

   The Invitation:

   What if understanding isn’t the destination? What if it’s simply the invitation? In this episode of Understanding Yourself, I explore the difference between understanding something intellectually and having an experience that actually changes the way we live. I’ve spent much of my life trying to understand more through books, conversations, podcasts, education, and reflection. While understanding matters, I’ve started to wonder whether the experiences that change us most deeply happen somewhere beyond explanation. Some experiences change how we feel for a moment. Others change what begins to feel normal. They shape what we notice, what we fear, what we value, what we pursue, and what we offer the people around us. Maybe the goal isn’t to spend our lives collecting better explanations. Maybe it’s to stay open to experiences that change the way we experience life itself. In this episode: * Why understanding and insight may be the beginning rather than the destination * The difference between experiences that change a moment and experiences that change our baseline * Why I’ve become less interested in explaining experiences and more interested in having them * What love, connection, forgiveness, faith, purpose, and peace may have in common * Why meaningful change doesn’t always require trying harder * What it means to stay open to the next experience Understanding Yourself is a collection of stories, ideas, and conversations designed to help us better understand ourselves and maybe experience life a little differently. Written and narrated by Ben Lemmon. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benjaminlemmon.substack.com (https://benjaminlemmon.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

7. 

   16 Aug 2026

   Why I Love an Album That Was Never About Me

   Why can an album about a life completely different from our own still feel like it understands us? In this episode of Understanding Yourself, I explore why Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt has remained my favorite album (even though almost none of the details of his story resemble mine). This isn’t really an episode about rap. It’s about authenticity. It’s about the strange way we can recognize something deeply human in another person’s story, even when their experiences look nothing like our own. Ambition. Fear. Identity. Approval. Regret. The search for enough. I’ve never lived Jay-Z’s life. But I’ve lived the human experience underneath his story. Maybe that’s why great art lasts. The details belong to one person. The emotions belong to all of us. In this episode: * Why authenticity matters more than having the same experiences * What Reasonable Doubt has taught me about ambition, identity, and the search for enough * Why the questions underneath addiction and recovery are really human questions * How great art helps us recognize ourselves in people whose lives look nothing like ours * What my fiancée taught me about love with one simple sentence: “I love that you love him.” * Why the stories that change us may be the ones that help us understand our own Understanding Yourself is a collection of stories, ideas, and conversations designed to help us better understand ourselves—and maybe experience life a little differently. Written and narrated by Ben Lemmon. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benjaminlemmon.substack.com (https://benjaminlemmon.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

8. 

   10 Aug 2026

   Dopamine Is Loud. Oxytocin Whispers.

   Dopamine Is Loud. Oxytocin Whispers. Why do accomplishments feel so good—and then somehow leave us asking, "What's next?" In this episode of Understanding Yourself, I explore the difference between the excitement of achievement and the deeper sense of fulfillment that comes from connection, meaning, peace, and presence. This isn't really an episode about neuroscience. It's about experience. It's about the strange reality that some of the moments that make us feel most alive don't look particularly impressive from the outside: laughing with friends, watching the ocean, having a conversation where time disappears, or simply being completely present with the people we love. We spend a lot of our lives pursuing the next accomplishment. Maybe what we're really searching for are more moments when we forget to ask what's next. In this episode: Why achievement and fulfillment aren't the same feeling How I experience the difference between dopamine and oxytocin What addiction has taught me about connection, meaning, and the desire to escape Why some of life's most meaningful moments happen when our minds finally get quiet The difference between thinking about presence and actually experiencing it Understanding Yourself is a collection of stories, ideas, and conversations designed to help us better understand ourselves—and maybe experience life a little differently. Written and narrated by Ben Lemmon. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benjaminlemmon.substack.com (https://benjaminlemmon.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

9. 

   9 Aug 2026

   The Lesson I Didn't Know I Was Learning

   Some of the most important lessons in our lives don't feel like lessons while they're happening. In this episode, I share the story of Peter, a Jesuit priest who entered my life when I wasn't particularly interested in what he had to teach me—and what I came to understand years later. Prefer to read? Read the original essay on Substack. https://benjaminlemmon.substack.com/p/the-lesson-i-didnt-know-i-was-learning?r=8tmuow&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web (https://benjaminlemmon.substack.com/p/the-lesson-i-didnt-know-i-was-learning?r=8tmuow&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benjaminlemmon.substack.com (https://benjaminlemmon.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

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