This Tree and Me

What does it cost us to be accepted by others—and what happens when we don't accept ourselves? In EP70 of This Tree and Me, Cory J Riggs explores the personal cost of seeking approval, performing for acceptance, and building a life around how others see us. Through reflections on divorce, relationships, career expectations, podcasting, and 22 years of coaching youth soccer, Cory examines the diffe...

When does helping someone become an attempt to control their journey? In EP69 of This Tree and Me, Cory J Riggs reflects on his lifelong desire to help, teach, mentor, and coach others—and the uncomfortable realization that good intentions can sometimes become tangled with ego, pride, and the need to be right. Through personal experiences and honest self-examination, Cory explores the difference b...

Can the environment that once helped us grow become the place where we are simply maintaining? Cory J. Riggs reflects on comfort, routines, and surroundings that provided peace, and how a new season can invite different choices. Through meditation, grounding, and intentional work, he explores the difference between rest and avoidance, movement and busyness, and learning versus repetition. An invit...

Who are you today? And how do you know? We spend years building identities around the things we enjoy, the routines we follow, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. But what happens when we begin questioning whether those things still fit? In this episode of This Tree and Me, Cory J Riggs explores self-discovery, familiar labels, and the uncertainty that can come with realizing we ma...

You can change the city, the job, the routine, and the life around you — and still quietly rebuild the same world. In this episode of This Tree and Me, Cory explores what happens when the things that helped us grow become the things we are comfortable hiding inside. He looks at the difference between following and running, when a good routine becomes maintenance, why “different” may matter more th...

One year after the first episode of This Tree and Me, Cory goes back to where it started. Using clips from that original recording, he revisits the things he was already wrestling with: starting before he was ready, consistency, fear, vulnerability, following his own life, his relationship with the tree, and not knowing what any of this would become. The language has evolved. The understanding has...

How big does something have to be before you're allowed to be afraid of it? We tend to assume the biggest version of something is the part we're afraid of—the bigger opportunity, the bigger stage, the bigger change. But sometimes the smaller thing directly in front of us can bring up the same fear. In this episode, I explore what actually changes as the opportunity gets bigger and what might stay...

What happens when you finally have some momentum—and then you stop? Not because you quit. You simply chose to put something down because something else in your life deserved your presence. But when you have a history of starting strong and eventually fading, taking a break can bring up an uncomfortable question: Am I doing it again? In this episode of This Tree and Me, Cory J Riggs explores the di...

There comes a point where you know. You know what you want. You know where you're going. You probably even know a lot of what you need to do. Then comes the harder part: doing it. In this episode of This Tree and Me, Cory J Riggs explores the difference between knowing the path and actually walking it—the pressure that shows up when something is sitting right in front of us, the muscle of sustaini...

Have you ever said something out loud and known it was true before you'd thought it? I was driving someone home from a live reading, explaining why I wasn't ready to date. And I'm leaving Tulsa came out of my mouth before the thought had formed. I hadn't decided it. It just came out — and then I had to decide whether I'd follow it. I followed it. The resignation came in June, the departure in July...

Everyone talks about the calm before the storm. Nobody talks about the other one. Not the calm from going around it, or over it, or under it — the calm that comes from walking straight through. That one is different, and it carries something the avoidance keeps you from receiving. The storm is not the problem. The avoiding of it is. Walking through it is usually simpler than you think — it's retur...

How much energy are you spending explaining yourself — not to other people, but to yourself? Building the case for why what you are doing makes sense. Finding the practical justification. Making sure the reason sounds acceptable enough to act on. And underneath all of that explaining, there is something simpler. Something that does not need a case built around it. What you were made for. This epis...

Everyone has a car they have not gotten into yet. Not a literal car. The thing. The decision. The step that has been sitting there waiting for you to feel ready. And here is what I know — you are never going to feel ready. The nerves are going to be there regardless. The not-knowing is going to be there regardless. The only variable is whether you get in. This episode is about every threshold feel...

What are you holding onto that you do not actually need? Not what you have lost. The things you are choosing to carry past the point where they were serving you. The version of yourself you outgrew but still perform. The safety net you never use but refuse to put down. The story about why things didn't work that you keep updated and ready. You cannot grow into what you are meant to be while carryi...

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 y...

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...

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....

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 i...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 differen...

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 r...

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 tim...