the wolf you feed

There is a Cherokee legend about two wolves.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he tells the boy. ” It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil—anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good—joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

The same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thinks for a moment and then asks, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replies, “The one you feed.”

This story has resurfaced in my life repeatedly over the past few weeks, beginning with its mention in a workshop on polarity dynamics in intimate relationships. I started writing about its meaning as I integrated my profound experience in the course, but the words didn’t flow, so I set it aside. In the meantime, I traveled to a professional retreat, where I found myself surrounded by people who felt completely aligned—who inspired me and shared a mindset of curiosity, growth, and possibility. As I spent more time in this collective frequency, I became increasingly aware of synchronicities. There were so many unusual connections that I found myself sharing them aloud to prevent my mind from later dismissing them as mere coincidences. A few days into my trip, I awoke to a text from someone I hadn’t spoken to in many months. Out of the blue, he sent me a recommendation for a podcast I’d never heard of titled The One You Feed—with a picture of a wolf as the cover art. I was stunned.

Since then I’ve been reflecting more deeply on the wolf parable beyond the original context in which I heard it and its apparent connection to the notion of synchronicity. The story illustrates the ongoing battle within us—the tension between ego and our higher Self, between contraction and expansion, between fear and possibility. It reinforces the Universal law that where we place our attention determines what grows in our lives. And noticing synchronicity is all about attention. The late author and speaker Dr. Wayne Dyer emphasized that every thought carries energy that links us to something greater—a concept I was (not so coincidentally) reading about in Michael Talbot’s book The Holographic Universe the night before I received the text message with The One You Feed podcast. Talbot relays a theory that synchronicities reveal the absence of division between the physical world and our inner psychological reality, and what we are really experiencing “is the human mind operating, for a moment, in its true order and extending throughout society and nature, moving through degrees of increasing subtlety, reaching past the source of mind and matter into creativity itself.” So, when my high-frequency friend in the retreat circle, or soul brother as I lovingly call him, asked whether I thought these interconnected events were happening more often in my life or if I was simply more aware, I decided that it didn’t actually matter. I believe we are all creators of our reality. We are meaning-making machines, selecting what we focus on amid an infinite field of possibilities. And what we feed is what manifests.

At first, I saw this lesson through the lens of romantic relationships—how we show up in intimacy, and how our wounds and attachments shape our interactions. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized it extends to everything—our relationship with ourselves, with others, and with the material world. One of my favorite coaches, Peter Crone, offers that there are three fundamental “prisons” we all unconsciously live in: the first is our relationship to ourselves, where inadequacy manifests as self-doubt and imposter syndrome; the second is our relationship to the external world, where insecurity keeps us seeking validation and fearing judgment; and the third is our relationship to the material world, where scarcity convinces us we don’t have enough money, resources, or time. These distortions are the bad wolf. They keep us trapped in destructive cycles, feeding our fears, limiting our potential, and reinforcing the stories that hold us back. But when we come into right relationship, we shift. We open the field to the magic that is always available to us.

While I used to believe in coincidences, I don’t anymore. At some point in my journey, I realized that belief was rooted in the assumption that life is happening to me. But now, I see the bigger picture: when I take full responsibility, life is happening by me—through my choices—and through me, when I stop forcing or resisting and surrender. And in that state—when I trust, when I tune into the frequency of openness—I find myself aligned with something greater. The synchronicities increase. The messages arrive. The guidance becomes clear and life flows, just like the words on this page after I let the wolves inside me rest in peace.