The One You Feed: How the Two Wolves Story Reveals Life’s Choice Points
- Bobby Jakucs, Psy.D.
- Nov 17, 2025
- 10 min read
Updated: Dec 1, 2025
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” — Romans 12:21
The Two Wolves Story and the Battle Within
There’s an old story I've heard many times, often attributed to Cherokee tradition, though its precise origin is unclear. It goes like this:
“An elder Cherokee Chief is walking along with his grandson one day through the woods. As they reach a ravine the chief pauses and looks intently at the young brave and says, ‘my son there is a battle going on inside of me. There are two wolves: one is evil, full of pride, anger, jealousy and greed. The other is good: he is loving, humble, compassionate and grateful. These two wolves battle constantly. And this battle goes on inside you and inside everyone who walks the earth.’
They continued to walk along in silence, the young brave reflecting on what his grandfather had said. After some time, he turned to the old man and asked, “Grandfather, which one will win?”
To which, the Chief replied, “The one you feed.”
We all have moments like this. Crossroads where we choose between reaction and intention. Often it is not in the major battles of life, but in the slow grind – the way we greet our coworkers, interact with our children, come home and respond to our spouses.
Sometimes it's not even major, we simply wake up on the wrong side of the bed and everything seems to be a struggle. Because in these moments, our wounds and worries tend to come with us.
How do we handle these wolves battling within us? The answer lies not in suppressing one. After all, the worst thing you can do to a hungry wolf is ignore it. Just ask the three little pigs.
Perhaps the answer lies not in trying to get rid of the bad wolf but to ask: which am I feeding in this moment?
The ACT Choice Point: Moving Toward or Away From What Matters
This concept is illustrated brilliantly in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) an evidence based approach to alleviating suffering. From the perspective of ACT, painful emotions, thoughts and experiences are inevitable. What causes true suffering is our response to this pain.
Because, in difficult moments, we often fall into patterns of psychological inflexibility. Something painful shows up and we react automatically in an effort to escape the discomfort. Anxious about an event? We opt out. Feeling lonely? We reach for the bottle. Angry that the kids aren’t listening? We add more volume to the chaos. And with each of these narrow, fixed responses, we drift further from the man or woman we want to be. That is suffering.
ACT instead teaches psychological flexibility—the ability to broaden our responses in the presence of difficult thoughts and emotions. So instead of opting out when anxiety shows up, we acknowledge it and move toward what matters. Instead of numbing loneliness, we reach out and call a friend. Instead of escalating our anger, we pause, breathe, and bring presence and love into the moment.
Research shows that psychological flexibility—the capacity to stay present, accept inner experiences, and commit to values-based action—is central to mental health. For instance, Kashdan & Rogers (2010) describe it as how a person “(1) adapts to fluctuating situational demands, (2) reconfigures mental resources, (3) shifts perspective, and (4) balances competing desires, needs, and life domains.”
Psychologist and ACT expert Russ Harris illustrates this concept with the Choice Point. In any given moment of struggle we face two directions to choose, toward our values or away from them. Do we choose to respond in a loving way, congruent to the man or women we want to be? Or do we respond out of fear, anger or avoidance?
This maps perfectly on to the story of the two wolves. When we choose those “away moves” of checking out, withdrawal, and snapping we throw a chunk of meat to that bad wolf.
When we instead make a “toward move” by responding with love, courage and presence in the midst of that difficult moment, we toss a hearty T-bone steak to that good wolf.
The important thing to remember, just as the Old Chief illustrated, both wolves are a part of us. Anger, bitterness, jealousy and envy will show up. In ACT we don’t demonize an emotion – after all emotions often tell us something useful – but we also don’t let emotions guide our actions. We notice them, accept them as a part of the human condition, and choose to respond in a way that matters.
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How Small Virtuous Actions “Feed the Right Wolf”
The classical tradition emphasizes that “feeding” the right wolf is a process. Aristotle said that “we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” (Nicomachean Ethics). When faced with a difficult situation, and we choose to respond guided by our conscious rather than our pain, we not only feed the good wolf - we build a habit. And those habits are what shape the soul. Choosing presence over disengagement, courage over withdrawal, and love over anger in small actions, make us ready for the more difficult moments.
Now, it's important to remember that in each difficult moment, both wolves will show up. If your toddler is not wanting to get in the bath, and you’ve had a long and exhausting day you (if you’re anything like me) will feel anger. You want something to be done, it's not happening, and you are not firing on all cylinders.
In ACT there’s a powerful concept called defusion. So often, when a strong emotion like anger shows up, we become fused with it. It drags us along until we lash out. Rather, with practice we can learn to separate ourselves from anger. Not by denying it but by observing it without obeying it.
Because an away move would be, in the situation above, lashing out when hurt. A toward move, would be pausing, taking a breath, recognizing anger, and speaking from values like love or truth.
Here are some other ways we can practice defusion rather than simply obeying our thoughts and feelings:
1. Viewing Thoughts Like Weather
Sometimes defusion is as simple as recognizing that thoughts are not commands, but passing experiences—much like weather patterns. I might catch myself thinking, “I’m failing at this. I’m not good enough.”
That’s an “away move” waiting to happen.
Instead, try this:“Ah, here’s the ‘not good enough’ storm rolling in again. Clouds pass. I don’t have to build a house under this one.”
Naming it as weather helps us make a toward move—taking the next small step that reflects who we want to be, even while the storm is overhead.
2. Noticing Thoughts as Passengers on the Bus
Another way to defuse is by picturing your life as a bus you’re driving. Your thoughts and emotions? They’re passengers. Some are loud, some rude, some give terrible directions.
When the “anger” or “shame” passenger stands up and yells, “Turn around! Don’t do this! You’re not capable!” an away move would be slamming the brakes and changing direction just to shut them up.
But a defused move sounds more like:“There’s the shame passenger again. Loud as always.”
And then you keep driving toward your values—love, patience, presence—because the passengers don’t get to hold the steering wheel. You do.
3. Naming the Wolf
Sometimes the most effective defusion technique is the simplest: just name the thought or emotion as it shows up.
If you notice the thought “Nobody cares about me,” you might label it:“Ah, here’s the Lonely Wolf thought again.”
Or when jealousy shows up:“There’s the jealousy wolf, growling in the corner.”
Naming it creates just enough distance to choose differently—to respond from your values instead of your fear. It interrupts the automatic feeding of the wrong wolf and opens the possibility of feeding the right one.
4. Carrying the Cross With Christ
There is another way to defuse—one that speaks deeply to the Christian heart. Sometimes painful thoughts and emotions feel like a weight on the chest: fear, anger, shame, envy, discouragement. In ACT, trying to get rid of them is an “away move.” But recognizing them, accepting them, and choosing how to carry them is a powerful “toward move.”
For the Christian, this often looks like imagining these thoughts and emotions as a cross—not a punishment, but a place of meeting. When a painful emotion shows up, you might gently acknowledge:
“Lord, here is my cross today… this fear, this anger, this heaviness.”
Then you make the choice Jesus invites us to make: “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” (Luke 9:23)
Defusion here is not white-knuckled endurance. It’s relational. It’s saying:
“Jesus, carry this with me. I offer this moment to You.”
This turns the experience from something that drags you away into something that draws you toward love, presence, patience, and surrender.
Carrying your cross with Christ is not about suppressing the painful emotion—it’s about choosing how to carry it, and with Whom.
And every time you do, you are feeding the wolf of faith, courage, and virtue rather than the wolf of despair.
Logotherapy and the Freedom to Choose Our Response
Viktor Frankl understood this concept of choice well. He witnessed the absolute horrors of the concentration camps and saw what men could, in fear, anger and desperation be driven towards. Certainly among his captors but even among his fellow prisoners. He wrote of fellow prisoners who, in fear and desperation, informed on, stole and beat each other. Capos and foremen who acted as merciless, or more, than the Nazi’s themselves.
But then there were also men who, despite the horrors around them, and a world that drove them toward bitterness and despair, chose heroic love. In these moments, he witnessed that even in the midst of suffering, “everything can be taken from a man but the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances; to choose one’s own way.”
For Frankl, meaning emerges in the act of choosing love, courage, and faith. Not in the absence of difficulty but in the presence of it. Feeding the right wolf rarely happens in comfort, nor giving in to avoidance, but through pursuit of what gives life purpose. Often while the other wolf is howling to give up, opt out or strike back.
And, as the Old Chief said, that battle rages in all of us. Perhaps meaning and purpose, are not found in solving the struggle but in the very act of engaging in it. That does not mean it's easy, in fact, it’s probably the hardest thing you’ll ever do.
The Christian Struggle Between the Two Wolves
We need to look no further than St. Paul, who captured that struggle so well. In his letter to the Romans he recounts just how real that struggle is when he writes, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19). We will fail, we will make the wrong choice from time to time, but do we stay there? Even after an away move we still have a choice – to keep going down that path or to turn back and make a toward move now.
It is a fact of our Fallen human nature that we are prone to vice, anger, greed, lust, pride, jealousy, etc. Yes, even the Saints faced that. They just kept up the struggle. Because later on St. Paul writes, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21).
Grace does not remove the struggle from our souls. We wouldn’t be human without it. Rather, it gives us the strength to feed the right wolf. And Christ shows us the ultimate example of that on the Cross – choosing love and forgiveness in the face of unimaginable hatred.
So too does St. Maximilian Kolbe, a contemporary of Frankl. Like Frankl, he was imprisoned in a concentration camp—arrested for speaking out against the Nazis and sheltering Jewish refugees. Even there, he continued to make “toward moves,” comforting fellow prisoners and offering spiritual support.
One day, after a prisoner escaped, the Nazis selected ten men at random to die by starvation. When one of the chosen cried out in anguish for his wife and children, Kolbe stepped forward—an act that stunned both guards and prisoners—and quietly offered to take the man’s place. When asked who he was, he simply replied, “A Catholic priest from Poland, I would like to take his place because he has a wife and children."
Kolbe and the remaining men were sent to a starvation bunker. Over the next two weeks, he led them in prayer, encouraging each one to the end. When he was the last survivor, guards entered to finish the execution. Kolbe raised his thin arm—an act not of despair but of final, defiant love—and received the lethal injection with serenity.
Feeding the Wolf of Love, One Small Choice at a Time
Most of us will blessedly not be faced with a choice like Maximilian Kolbe’s. But we will be faced with the two wolves that live inside of us each day. Each moment presents a choice. In the car ride to work, responding to a text or email, speaking to a friend or loved one, we will be moving towards or away from what matters – and feeding one of two wolves.
Our daily difficulties become the proving ground of our character. And there lies our true freedom. Not the absence of temptation nor in living an easy life. But, in the awareness of our struggles and acting out of intention. In that way, like the stroke of a sculptors chisel, each of those daily choices shapes our soul. And each meal we give to one wolf makes that one grow stronger, more ready to respond.
So today, as you go about your day, make this one different from any other. Ask yourself, “What wolf am I feeding today?” And ask for the grace to choose to feed the right one by saying, “Lord, help me to choose love in each moment I face.”
Disclaimer:
This post is for informational and inspirational purposes only and does not constitute medical or psychological advice. The content provided here is not a substitute for professional care, diagnosis or treatment. Reading this blog, subscribing to updates or engaging with its content does not establish a therapist-client relationship. Please consult a licensed healthcare professional for personal support. Portions of this blog may be generated or refined with the assistance of AI tools. All material has been shaped, edited, and finalized by the author to ensure fidelity to Catholic teaching, sound psychological practice, and lived human experience.
