Phil Stille

You do not have to be fully healed, fully clear, fully confident, or fully “ready” before you can help people. Whether you see a direct relation or not, I think it is a valuable thing to take in or affirm.

When my first mindset coach suggested that I offer some kind of guidance or coaching opportunity to the people who were commenting on my videos, my immediate thought and statement was, “Who am I to do that?” To which he said, “Who are you not to?” And I sat back and said, “Fair point.”

The idea of our capability to help others, or how much value we feel we have to offer, is one of the sneakiest places the inner critic shows up. It can sound like, “Who am I to do this?” or, “This isn’t good enough yet,” or, “I still have too much of my own stuff to work through.”

All of that is the same s**t as any other aspect of a negative inner narrative. Just more extensions of the inner critic that we already focus on practicing awareness around with cannabis, self talk, and the way we relate to ourselves.

These negative thought patterns are not always isolated to one area of life. They can show up around relationships, work, money, cannabis, purpose, and confidence. But underneath it, they are often connected in a nonlinear way through the brain, nervous system, and even the endocannabinoid system.

So if resistance comes up around offering your perspective to someone who wants to hear it, or sharing your perspective online, or speaking in front of a group of people, that does not automatically mean the resistance is telling the truth.

More often than not, it just means you touched an old pathway that is pretty deeply embedded. That part of the brain wants to keep you safe. You are likely already aware of the idea that the ego or subconscious does not usually like to divert from what is familiar.

If this resonates with you, please know that you are able to help more people than you can possibly imagine. You already are, even just in your smile or occasional laugh around others. But beyond that, your life experience as a whole and the lessons you will continue to learn are worthy of being shared with those who either desire it or happily

Cannabis use disorder is a term that gets thrown around a lot, and in many ways I think the current conversation around it creates more confusion than clarity.

In this clip from my recent sit-down with Dr. Riley Kirk , she helps unpack what the term actually means and some of the criteria that currently go into determining whether someone qualifies for it.

Loosely speaking, both addiction and cannabis use disorder point toward a similar mechanism. Continuing to engage in a behavior despite negative consequences. Certainly there are situations where that is happening and should be taken seriously.

What makes this conversation interesting is that some of the criteria used to determine cannabis use disorder are incredibly broad. Dr. Riley points out that building a tolerance and spending time preparing or consuming cannabis can contribute toward qualifying someone for CUD. By that definition, she would technically qualify.

The interesting question then becomes: does that label actually tell us something meaningful about the quality of someone’s life?

Dr. Riley is a cannabis scientist, researcher, published author, and educator. She has strong relationships, meaningful work, a supportive community, and a healthy relationship with herself. Cannabis is not creating chaos in her life. It is part of a life that is already functioning well.

That doesn’t mean cannabis use disorder isn’t real. It means we need to be thoughtful about how we define it, how we measure it, and whether the criteria are actually helping us identify people who are struggling versus people who simply consume cannabis regularly.

If you’d like to hear the full discussion, you can find it on my page. 🙌🏼

The most impactful thing in changing my relationship with cannabis, and myself, was when I began to rewire my inner critic and negative thought patterns.

For a long time, I assumed those negative thoughts and feelings were just part of life. Part of who I was. I could be fine in social settings, but internally, the way I viewed myself and where I was at in life was often heavy, critical, and pessimistic.

What helped me was understanding this from a nervous system and neuroplasticity perspective. Those thoughts felt real because they had been repeated with emotion for years. They were tied to deeply embedded neural pathways.

The timeline for anyone making changes here, or seeking to make changes here, is going to be different.

A 30-90 day course or coaching program can absolutely help someone build awareness, create momentum, and begin to feel real shifts. But it does not mean every old pattern suddenly disappears when that window is over.

The longer a pattern has been reinforced, and the more emotion tied to it, the more patience and consistency it may take to begin unwinding it.

But the core idea is that if those pathways were built through repetition, they can also be changed through repetition in a new direction.

Looking back, the more I worked on these patterns underneath it, the more positively my relationship with cannabis began to change.

For a long time, cannabis users have been painted with a pretty narrow brush. Usually that brush carries the assumption that cannabis users are lazy, unmotivated, or don’t amount to much.

The reality is that many people who consume cannabis don’t fit the stereotype at all.

They run businesses. They raise families. They build careers. They create art. They contribute to their communities. Most of the time, you would never know they consume cannabis unless they chose to tell you.

In this clip from our recent podcast, Dr. Riley Kirk speaks to how common cannabis use can be among successful, high-functioning adults and why the old image many people still carry may not reflect what’s actually happening in the real world.

Cannabis is neither good nor bad. It is a plant, and people’s experiences with it can vary dramatically. While cannabis can certainly become part of an unhealthy pattern, things like low motivation, avoidance, and stagnation are often a reflection of the individual’s underlying system interacting with the plant, rather than the plant itself.

If you’d like to listen to the full discussion, you can find the link on my page.

If you enjoy cannabis, feel fulfilled in your work and relationships, take care of your health, and generally feel good in your life, but still have a part of you wondering if you “shouldn’t be leaning on it,” this clip is for you.

When I sat down with Dr. Riley Kirk, author of Re**er Wellness, I asked her to speak directly to this because there are plenty of people who have cannabis in their life, especially flower, and are not experiencing any obvious negative effects. They are not disconnected from their life, avoiding responsibility, or quietly falling apart. But they still feel some tension around the idea that they are leaning on the plant at all.

That tension is worth looking at, but it does not automatically mean cannabis is a problem. If you are being honest in your self-reflection and the only real negative you are experiencing is the guilt, fear, or internal conflict around it being a habit, then your relationship with cannabis may be more okay than old narratives have led you to believe.

Sometimes it is worth taking a deeper look at the stigma, fear, or conditioning around cannabis that may still be living in the background and shaping the way you view your relationship with it.

This conversation with Dr. Kirk, along with her content, book, and podcast Bioactive, can be a really good place to begin dissolving some of that old stigma.

Full episode is on Spotify. Search Stillecast or follow the link on my page.

Dr. Riley Kirk discusses why cannabis deserves a more honest conversation than the one it usually gets. It is remarkably safe for a large amount of people, especially compared with many pharmaceutical drugs, but that does not mean it is automatically right for every person, at every dose, through every consumption method. Dose, sourcing, health history, nervous system state, and method of use all matter.

The same mechanism that creates a risk for one person can be of benefit to another. That is why we need to stop putting cannabis under a microscope that no other medicine is placed under, while also being mature enough to talk about real considerations. The better question is not “Is cannabis good or bad?” The better question is: how is this person, with this body, this mind, this life, and this relationship with the plant, actually being affected?

If you would like to listen to the full episode, you can follow the link on my page or search for Stillecast on Spotify.

A lot of people don’t realize how much a negative inner narrative or consistent rumination affects their emotional state, their physiology, and even the kind of experience they have with cannabis.

There are certainly times where you have to sit back and genuinely think through a decision, but that’s very different than getting caught in repetitive rumination spirals.

Rumination usually has a certain feeling behind it. The mind starts looping through worst case scenarios, trying to find the hole in everything, replaying conversations, chasing certainty, and creating this underlying franticness in the body.

And the important thing is that most people didn’t consciously choose to think this way. It became conditioned over time through environment and life experiences, starting with the first seven years of our lives, which is sometimes referred to as the human imprint period.

I know for me, if somebody came and spoke at my high school auditorium years ago and told me I needed to start paying attention to my thoughts because they were affecting my nervous system, emotions, and overall wellbeing, I probably would’ve thought they sounded ridiculous.

But the science is actually very clear that the way we repeatedly think influences the way we feel, react, and even our physical health.

The good news is that once you begin catching these moments in real time, they can become opportunities instead of automatic loops. Pattern interrupting the rumination, reframing the experience, and working with your nervous system in those moments is where real change can begin. This is where you literally begin to build new neural pathways that start dissolving the inner tension in the body that has been created through years of rumination and negative thought patterns.

It’s a process, a nonlinear gym in a lot of ways, but well worth implementing and sticking with.

A lot of people hear the phrase “regulated nervous system” and don’t really know what that means or how to tell if their nervous system is actually dysregulated in the first place.

One of the easiest places to begin looking is not just around when you use cannabis, but in the small moments throughout your normal day.

Someone cuts you off in traffic. You drop your keys. Your spouse tells you something you didn’t want to hear. A text comes through and your body instantly tightens before you even fully read it.

Those little snap reactions, the tension in the body, the irritation, the immediate anger, the feeling of your nervous system jumping before you consciously choose a response, these are often signs of an overtaxed nervous system.

I know for me, years ago, if somebody pulled out in front of me or I dropped something, I’d instantly blurt out “piece of s**t” and feel this spike of tension in my body. At the time, I thought that was just my personality. Looking back, it was a nervous system that was constantly bracing against life.

And it’s important to give yourself grace here. This isn’t about judging yourself or thinking you’re broken if you notice these patterns in your life. Most people have them to some degree.

The good news is that these micro moments are also opportunities. Working with your nervous system in these moments instead of letting the automatic loops continue to run is where you can begin to create real change over time.

If you’d like a good place to start, you can check out a simple six-part framework on my profile.

If you smoke to feel normal, but you notice that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, that inconsistency is a sign that cannabis is acting as a somatic bridge. This is the case for so many people. I think it’s important to give ourselves grace and understanding here if we have w**d in our life and have felt in any way that it is an issue.

The plant is doing its best to create relief for a nervous system that’s carrying repressed emotions, a harsh inner narrative, and tension that’s been accumulating for a long time. If this is you, it makes sense that you currently rely on it and that it’s a part of your life.

If you’ve been going in circles with this, shifting your focus away from the habit and toward how you interact with the plant and your nervous system will begin to create a more intentional relationship with it.

Any negative feelings that surface, the reactions that catch you off guard, or negative thoughts that seem to come from nowhere can actually point toward deeper patterns that have been there for a long time. Working with your nervous system in these moments instead of letting the automatic loops continue to run is where you can begin to see real change here.

If this resonates, there’s a simple six-part framework on my profile you can start with.