Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeMv_qeCV88
we're going to talk about the office I promise stick around folks rain welcome at the writer producer you know as Dwight Schrute assistant regional manager manager one of the most iconic characters in TV history hold on Michael I am coming I experienced a lot of pain in my life neglect abuse abandoned and then with anxiety and depression and addiction I remember getting these anxiety attacks that would leave me shaking on the floor and sweating and I thought I was dying waking up at three in the morning going why should I keep living but this is the Curious Thing I'm grateful for it there's a reason why so many comedians come from painful backgrounds because comedy shifts your perspective away from Pain and Trauma here's your choice you kill yourself or do comedy and that was my path it was my greatest dream come true you said when I was in the office I spent several years mostly unhappy because it wasn't enough I wanted more opportunities I wanted more money and as long as we want to promote the ego satisfaction we will never be happy we all have a shadow and it's always there it's self-important and righteous and entitled but I'm not going to get rid of those aspects of Myself by keeping that shadow at arm's length you need to embrace and accept and love one's Shadow sit the shadow on the lap almost like a ventriloquist dummy hello you Diary of a CEO get a new t-shirt idiot that's a wrap I think this is fascinating I looked at the back end of our YouTube channel and it says that since this channel started 69.9 of you that watch it frequently haven't yet hit the Subscribe button so I have a favor to ask you if you've ever watched this Channel and enjoyed the content if you're enjoying this episode right now please can I ask a small favor please hit the Subscribe button helps this channel more than I can explain and I promise if you do that to return the favor we will make the show better and better and better and better and better that's the promise I'm willing to make you if you hit the Subscribe button do we have a deal [Music] let's start with your context um I always think the the earliest years are the most important so could you take me back to your earliest context and
give me the factors that I need to understand to understand you sure a couple of key pieces in my background that have made me who I am and uh led me to lead the life that I live are my mom uh took off when I was a year and a half I lived with my with my dad and we were members of the Baha'i faith uh which in a nutshell is the newest of the world's religions uh there's about six million Baha'is around the globe it's the second most widespread religion so wherever you go in the world there's going to be Baha'is you know you go to Mongolia or Thailand or you know Botswana or whatever there's going to be Baha'i communities and after my dad had been kind of essentially abandoned or felt abandoned they got divorced uh we moved to the jungles of Nicaragua when I was three years old here was this abandoned kind of toddler kid living in the literally the jungle uh and my dad was an abstract painter and science fiction writer and Baha'i and uh that's that's how I grew up and then when it was kind of around kindergarten time first grade time we moved back to Washington State and um those are some key pieces yeah in your 40s you started to look back at your childhood and understand I heard this in an interview you did I think with Chase Jarvis yeah on his show and one of the things you said is when I look back at my childhood it was filled with depression and anxiety that you probably didn't it seems like you didn't realize at the time but hindsights giving you that Clarity yeah what were the Hallmarks of that what were the symptoms of that and what do you have any understanding of the causes of that at such a young age yes uh 2 uh two years of therapy has given me a lot of insights into the causes of that so you know you've got an abandoned toddler that that'll that'll [ __ ] you up um I don't know if I can swear um do uh do Brits swear yeah yeah the funny ones uh and then um you know it was this weird kind of uh gaslighting mind [ __ ] because I just spent five minutes describing the Baha'i faith right and this these beautiful
ideas and prayers and meditations and about world peace and finding love and connection and service and then in my family my dad remarried uh my stepmom uh who pretty much raised me and they lived in a Loveless marriage a hollow empty marriage so I come back from the jungles of Nicaragua at five or six my dad's remarried we're living in Suburban Seattle and Washington State and we are going to all these Baha'i meetings we're singing we're doing Kumbaya we're holding hands we're praying we're meditating we're reading Holy Scripture from all over the world and talking about love and yet here's this Loveless shell of a house so that's what I grew up in so you know addiction is something that I've I've struggled with I've struggled with depression I've struggled with anxiety uh I've struggled on a lot of different uh levels in my life a lot of alienation and uh it's born of this petri dish that I grew up in maybe I was also wired for it you know I have alcoholics that run on both sides of my family for Generations but uh that'll that'll mess you up what have you learned about the nature of childhood trauma and how delicate children are I've learned so much from speaking to people on this podcast about it and how you know if I listen to too many of these episodes I might be scared to be a parent because it's so interesting how such a small interpretations can leave really um Lasting Impressions on a child about the nature of the world I sat with Gabel Mata and he's talked about how children are basically narcissists and how they interpret everything is about them so there's an argument over there a baby will think it's it's about the baby but what have you learned about through your years of therapy but also your own experiences well I experienced a lot of pain in my life uh and a lot of suffering uh with anxiety and depression and addiction and as I kind of dove into recovery and to the therapeutic process I can pin that squarely on a lot of you know gross imbalances and Trauma that I suffered as a child so there's that um we all have that to some degree and it's important to excavate and honor uh the pain that we went through and the
and the lies that we were told the gaslighting we might have undergone um there's there's religious trauma that we undergo as well there's all kinds of different traumas that we suffer and this is the this is the Curious Thing I'm grateful for it because you know what if I had had a happy well-balanced childhood I you know I don't know what my career would have been but it certainly wouldn't have been an actor and it certainly wouldn't have been a successful actor so these these confluences of of pain and and difficulty and and abuse and neglect um they caused me a lot of suffering later on but at the same time they caused me to be driven to try and be the best version of myself they set me on a spiritual path uh to really deeply explore the world's spiritual traditions and to try and connect with my higher power and to go on a journey of self-discovery and then to take what I've learned and to share that with others and they they made me funny so there's a really interesting thing I heard uh Dr uh Arthur Brooks from Harvard University who you should have on the show uh speak about uh and he talked about how the opposite of pain and Trauma is is humor he's he was saying like for instance if you're feeling uh depressed let's say we all know you fill that with gratitude and when you have a gratitude journal and you share gratitude experience gratitude meditate on gratitude it the other stuff evaporates when you when you shift your focus and your perspective to what you're grateful for what brings you hope and joy and purpose and meaning even if it's a small thing like you know this delicious cup of tea right here so the same uh mechanism Works in comedy that and there's a reason why so many comedians come from painful backgrounds because comedy is what you plug in to shift your perspective away from Pain and Trauma just like gratitude takes you away from from depression so you'll see time and time again these amazing you know the great comedians of the age you know and how much suffering they underwent in their lives but
comedy became the the necessary uh thing to plug in to their perspective in order to carry forward it's like uh here's your choice you kill yourself or do comedy and um and then they do comedy and and you know you think about so many of the great ones uh Jim Carrey you think about Robin Williams they talk about mental health and common we did a for soul pancake we did a documentary um called laughing matters about the intersection of comedy and mental health and so in this sense too I'm grateful for what I went through because I wouldn't be here today having this incredible conversation with you had I not gone through that those those difficulties that neglect that abuse and that gaslighting that I underwent as a kid when you say the word abuse you mean the gaslighting yeah you know I don't want to get into stories there was you know there was some there was there was lots of different kinds of abuse yeah yeah if I if I'd met you 15 16 years old who would I who would be the man that I met at that point when your mother came back into your life you said you needed her at that point at 15 or 16 I was uh gawky and self-hating and um uh innocent and completely cut off from my emotions and had my dad and stepmom had zero emotional tools uh the only kind of expression of emotion that I experienced in my household was rage and uh and then either Rage or like again these spiritual Baha'i Gatherings where we were singing and praying and meditating so it was um but the idea of you know sadness frustration disappointment uh all these quote unquote negative emotions and how to navigate them there were I have I had zero tools so I'll never forget sitting down was one of the first meetings with my mom and I was at a Denny's restaurant in Yakima Washington and uh and she said rain you seem very tightly wound what's what's going on how is your heart and I just started sobbing I just started bawling I mean it was pretty unsightly at the at the Denny's um uh waiting for the Grand Slam breakfast
and um there's a corporate sponsor for you potential uh and just like that kind of crying of the kind of the heaving sobs and that's what I'm talking about that's the kind of connection that I needed like finally someone was asking me what was in my heart you know and that began a kind of a process of having conversations about human emotions um that I was so ignorant of that we're all so ignorant of and it helped me immensely when you sit down the the animation you understood was like rage and then this real happiness at the spiritual gatherings it made sense the gaslighting because it's such a confusing message to send a young person it's a this juxtaposition between like uh yeah yeah in fact I remember I remember times uh and I don't really blame my stepmom for this because my dad was not a good husband to her and there was a lot that was out of balance and and he could be incredibly narcissistic and um but I remember having we would have a Baha'i Gathering let's say at our house and people were going to come over and we were going to pray or we were going to study holy writings or whatever people do at buy Gatherings and uh they would have a fight and she would be raging in the kitchen and slam dishes down and break the dishes and they would be fighting and then but ding dong the people would come over like hi I brought flowers and here's a here's some cookies and and they would come in and my step bomb would then march across the living room to the bedroom door and go so bam and slam the bedroom door and the people would be there in the doorway and my dad would go come on in thanks so much for coming and there was never any kind of uh uh you know you know acknowledging what had just happened and that was and so for an eight-year-old nine-year-old ten-year-old being in that milieu you're like what the hell is going on is this how people act is this how we're supposed to act we have all these emotions but we don't talk about them
and and then we go and we and we pray together so you know this led me to a very long period of time where I was completely alienated from my faith in my in my 20s and um I didn't want anything to do with religion or spirituality certainly not morality um because I just saw the hypocrisy in it and that's when I really started undergoing uh a spiritual crisis a mental health crisis things started breaking down for me and that's when I decided to kind of re-examine these ideas as a potential way out as a potential path forward for my own transformation for my personal healing and and I was ultimately able to come back to the religion of my youth and find great peace and Solace and meaning in it after a long journey through my 20s and early 30s that tumor and experience from your youth how does that play into you becoming an actor because you said you wouldn't have been you're grateful because you don't think you would have been an actor or the actor that you are without that experience what is the I'm trying to figure out where acting fit into that you talked about comedians using comedy as a as kind of like a life raft away from their pain why was acting the thing that found rain I don't know and there's the genetic component as well that my birth mother was also an actor and interested in acting I don't know exactly um even before I thought like oh you could be an actor or you could make a living in an actor or you could train as an actor like I didn't even know like I want to do that but it's like whatever that is is magical and amazing and I was drawn to it like a magnet so I don't know and then you know I I took my first acting class um we had moved to Chicago from Seattle and I went to a high school that had a really good theater program and I took my very first acting class and uh I did a scene where uh you're supposed to pretend that you're in your bedroom and that no one's watching right so I put on this Elvis Costello song mystery dance I brought in my my record player from home and I brought in some stuff from my room and I put on the record of mystery Dance by Elvis Costello and I started just
thrashing around and just being ridiculous and lip syncing and jumping around and flopping on the floor and stuff like that and it I was a brand new student this was like in the first week at this new school and it brought the house down and the the 15 to 16 year old that I said that was kind of pimply and gangly and emotionally cut off and self-hating um all of a sudden people were patting me on the back back and punching me in the shoulder and saying oh my God that was so great and high-fiving me and all of these like cute girls from junior year in high school were like oh where are you from you're from Seattle amazing will you come sit with us at our lunch table and like and and here I was this kid from Suburban Seattle where I had been on the chess team and played the bassoon and been on Model United Nations and I'd barely talk to a girl and uh and then I was like all right I'm in whatever this is I want this I'm good this is it forget all that other stuff screw the bassoon screw the chess team I'm in with the drama Geeks and uh and that was my path so so part of it is not so Noble part of it is um I went where there was acceptance where there was love where I had some skill I could make people laugh and where I got attention from the opposite sex hello most of us um 20 years old you graduate with a degree in drama ish 20 23 23 close and then you speak of 1991 when you're 25 25 years old that's really when you had your as you say your spiritual crisis hmm was there a catalyst for that it seems to it seems that at that point in your life is when you started experiencing anxiety attacks in a really debilitating way was there a catalyst for that was there anything in your life that was was absent or was it just do you think it was just things catching up on you from your earliest years um well I don't know about a catalyst but I will paint the picture that I'm out of drama school I'm getting a few little acting jobs here and there but they're not paying anything I'm living with a friend in an abandoned beer brewery in Brooklyn uh essentially kind of legally squatting
but we didn't have heat we didn't have a shower there were rats scuttling around and I was working in this bar where I get off work at 4am and uh I had a roommate and we were living out there and I was really directionless I started really experimenting with a lot of drugs and alcohol and I was pretty rudderless and um uh and I started getting hit with really crippling anxiety attacks so I wasn't in the most healthy living environment right so but at the same time I remember getting these anxiety attacks that would leave me literally shaking on the floor and sweating and I thought I was dying and I was like about to call 9-1-1 like five different times and heart palpitations sweating and um I I talked to a doctor at NYU about them and they said oh these are just anxiety attacks so I knew that that's what they were but I didn't really know anything about them and uh I started getting really depressed and um so there wasn't really like an event but circumstances provided the perfect environment for kind of a mental health breakdown of someone who's 25 years old and how long did that chapter that parent of your life lost while you were having anxiety attacks and you were rudderless um I would say five or six years yeah there were some things got better I started working a little bit more uh I had a relationship with my girlfriend who's now my wife we've been together for 32 years and that was great but even that even a better apartment and a nice relationship couldn't save me from some of what was going on and we didn't in the 90s we didn't really have words for a mental health breakdown or mental health issues or crisis you know it was and people didn't really go to therapy you didn't really you couldn't really afford it it was that was like for rich people like Woody Allen or something um so uh uh it it stayed things got nominally better but I still uh was uh pretty uh depressed and and frustrated and overwhelmed and just generally alienated the kind of waking up at three in the morning with
just wide awake staring at the ceiling going like what the [ __ ] does life mean why am I here what you know why should I keep living what's how do I find meaning and um just that that just anguish and disconnection and a really core level you ask yourself that question why should I keep living yeah um and it wasn't at that point I mean I've had some suicidal ideation over the years that wasn't a time when I was actively thinking about ending it but it really was kind of again one of these life's big questions life's deep questions that I've been kind of poking at in my various books of like why should we keep living what what is the purpose is it because one of the odd things Stephen was that I was in certain regards living a life beyond my wildest dreams here was that kind of abused and gas-lit kid with low self-esteem from Suburban Seattle um who kind of hated himself and and really had trouble fitting in socially in any way shape or form here I am living in New York City beautiful girlfriend working as an actor in the theater not making much money and it was only fitfully but still that's a big leap to go from where I was and and yet I wasn't happy so there was this odd disconnect because I think societally we're taught like hey you find the thing you love to do you go study it you put in your time you work at it and you you're gonna start working and yeah you're gonna start slow but it's going to build and then you're gonna find incredible joy and purpose and meaning in your work and I was doing that work in the theater and I was getting to be an actor and I was getting paychecks as an actor which is an incredible uh experience uh but I was still chronically dissatisfied and it didn't make any sense because Society had been telling me this thing for a decade or two and I I sh I felt like I shouldn't be this uh chronically dissatisfied but I am when did I reach its peak um it's hard to say it it came in waves throughout my mid-20s and and early 30s
and it that's what prompted me and this is why pain can be such a valuable teacher and in fact Arthur Brooks just had a column today out in the Atlantic where he was talking about pain and anxiety and depression does not mean that you have a mental health issue those are those are normal standard uh uh aspects of being a human being so but my pain prompted me to go on a spiritual Quest and I'm really grateful for that like I said to go on a spiritual Quest depression and pain and anxiety and those things were signals telling you something something's out of balance how are you going to bring yourself into balance how are you going to make sense of all this and at the time there weren't podcasts on positive psychology and there weren't I mean I guess there were some self-help books but I didn't really know about them because of my uh background because of my childhood I thought well perhaps because I've abandoned anything and everything to do with God and spirituality and religion maybe that's where I have lost my way and maybe I need to re-explore those Avenues and maybe I could find personal meaning and serenity uh by exploring spiritual ideas so it was a long process it was a good eight or ten year process but I'm I'm grateful that my pain took me along that path one of the things that I think brings spirituality and some of these big questions into focus is death something you talk about in your new book Soul boom and something you've spoken about previously as well something that I've often pondered about um I think it's one of the things that really made me go in search of answers deep questions at a very young age um you talk I think it's in chapter three of your book but I listened on the audiobook so it's chapter not six on the audiobook um about the passing of your father how did how did that bring into Focus spirituality meaning and some of these big questions of life well I think if you're going to look at spirituality one of the top three big questions is what happens when we die and of course we don't know but just
because we don't know or will never know um does that mean that we shouldn't explore that question uh hint no so uh it's something it's a topic and a theme and a question I had thought about a lot I had spoken about I'd researched um and pondered deeply but obviously and I had had you know some people that I knew that had died along the way of course but when my father died about three years ago um that made a profound impact and really prompted me to write the book Soul boom because I had one of these key kind of transcendent experiences spiritual experiences which was in uh we my dad died of heart disease he was getting a quadruple bypass surgery and he just couldn't make it he didn't they didn't have any way to repair the damage in his heart and anyways it was we thought he was going to get through the surgery and he died so it was in we knew it was risky but it was uh it was it was not a predicted death and uh my his current wife his widow and myself were in the hospital with him and we had to essentially unplug him and um it was devastating and terrifying and oddly enough strangely cliche at the same time and I couldn't help but uh and maybe this is is that that trauma-based comedic kind of uh aspect of my of my uh of myself that I I just kept witnessing myself in the situation where my father was dying there's a heart machine going beep beep beep beep there's a little oxygen machine going and there's doctors and nurses walking around with their squeaky shoes and the linoleum floors and I was like wow this is just like one of those Hospital shows I just kept thinking like this is just like er Gray's Anatomy like wow um it's like it's so cliche but we had to unplug him um he was going to be dead within an hour and uh we were sobbing and I looked at his Gray body there on the table and you know I saw all these aspects of my dad that I
loved you know the one eyebrow hair kind of poking out and you know the mole on his arm and the way his hands are and uh his hair kind of messy and uh was filled with such love and such heartbreak and at the same time at seeing his lifeless body I was like um this isn't him this isn't my dad this is the vessel that carried my dad Robert Wilson and his beautiful heart and spirit and his dynamism and his creativity his light as it were is no longer here but that's his reality this body is just a shell it's a vessel it's an avatar and and I also didn't experience it as oh he has it's been snuffed out like a candle it just seemed very clear like oh it has passed on it's somewhere else now and here is is his body and that was such a profound spiritual experience that I knew intellectually from my study but it's one of those learnings that kind of has to hit you in the gut to make you really understand it and go oh and I remember that amazing quote that I often pull out from uh father tahar de Chardon a Jesuit priest who said famously we are not human beings having a spiritual experience we Are Spiritual Beings having a human experience and that quote which I've always loved I saw just evidenced with my father oh he's a spiritual being he had a human experience for 79 years in this body and now his spiritual reality has passed and moved on and this is one of the essential messages of Soul boom is that we Are Spiritual Beings we're having this incredible Human Experience look at us having this incredible dialogue right now and then I'm gonna go get an Uber and then I've got to go do some voiceovers then I'm gonna go play tennis with a friend and I'm having this you know I'm having a relationship with my wife and with my son I'm learning I'm growing I'm being challenged and uh it's magnificent and here's my my fleshy somewhat corpulent 57 year old body that has done I've done pretty well by it's ridiculous enough so I get to take my shirt off occasionally as Dwight and people can laugh at my absurdly pale and oblong torso and I'm fine with it it's all for comedy right and parts of my body are starting to
break down I've got like half Hearing in my in my left ear and I've got mild sleep apnea and I have to wear a mouth Appliance that juts my jaw forward and I wake up in the morning and I go and I place it on the side of the bed and here I am this spiritual being having a human experience as rain Dietrich Wilson this is fabulous but this is part of what we need to recognize and this could help people this can help people with their mental health struggles is an understanding that where we're radiant luminescent precious shards of the Divine inhabiting these these fleshy meat suits for hopefully 89 to 100 years and struggle and suffering and anxiety it just comes with the game baby it's just part of the game talk about a friend called Dave yeah David or Dave who also passed quite suddenly um and his handling of that in particular um surprised you in many ways oh Dave one of my best friends um David vonenkin who's a television director and film director brilliant guy uh wonderful human being and he just got diagnosed out of out of nowhere with stage four stomach cancer I mean just like out of nowhere mid 50s and uh essentially a death sentence so I got to spend a lot of time with him in his last year and a half after that diagnosis and we did weekly Beach walks and he said to me several times and he would just grab my arm and he would say rain it's just static it's all just static you've got to get the static out of your life the emails the meetings the the career the the appointments the the driving the traffic the phone calls the zooms it's all just static it's all noise and that really resonated with me and I know a lot of people have mentioned that in the book because we do experience our life as this kind of like buzz of like appointments and choppings and zooms and a point and and bills to pay and and whatnot and uh that was profoundly impactful um and I would always encourage David to
it's a tricky situation you know when someone's dying I don't want to like God forbid lecture him on on death or thinking about it but I would always just turn it a little bit toward a more profound discussion about you know the soul and the journey of the soul and the and the movement of of the spirit you know beyond our this Corporal 3D uh surround sound experience of being a human being to the Realms Beyond um but he like many people um he he he got a little stuck in a way that made me sad because he really just focused on fighting the cancer which is super super important right so he devoted all of his waking time and energy to to research and treatment and diet and everything to fight the cancer which is super important and I don't blame him but um it was pretty terrifying for him to consider mortality and the implications thereof he had a daughter and um but I'll never forget him talking about static in that way and I find that very to be also very clarifying you know in my daily meditation practice like How can I again the Buddha uses the image a lot of the lotus flower you know it's floating on top of the swamp you know these beautiful lotuses and there's the swamp and the mire and the bugs and the dirt and the and this beautiful flower Rising above and how can we in our own little way be a Lotus Flower and the rest of the swamp is is our daily static the rest of the swamp the alternative way of living to everything you've just described what is the alternative way of living so you know you've got the the realization that everything is static and the understanding that we Are Spiritual Beings having a human experience yeah what is the opposite of that that you see when you walk the streets or You observe people like what is the opposite way of living to that and why is it causing suffering Thoreau talked about the unexamined life is not worth living why did he say that and what did he mean by that well it's been a long time since I read Walden Pond um and the night throws bent in jail but I love the transcendentalists because that is really kind of the first authentic uh American spiritual movement
and uh this idea that uh we're seeking uh Transcendence that were that was kind of the first movement that really acknowledged like we're Spiritual Beings so I think you know it's the unexamined life I think um living in the static living in the swamp is not taking the time to uh honor the sacred Divinity of aspects of our life and you know I I have a when you study meditation and you and you participate in meditation there's this strange thing that happens where you realize that you the reality of you is the Watcher The Observer when you meditate your thoughts are still bouncing around you know the Buddhists call it the monkey mind right so you're about your thoughts are bouncing around you might have some anxiety and worry like oh is that person going to accept my offer on this or is this thing going to work out or oh is my wife still mad at me or whatever so you have this emotional dissonance and you have this kind of intellectual uh dissonance and then in the meditative State you're just witnessing that it's almost like you're floating above it and looking down and then you realize like oh my reality is not my thoughts my reality is not my feelings my reality is not even just my body and the sensations that my body takes in there is some kind of aspect of the eye that is the witnesser and it's getting in touch with that that allows us to get above the static so meditation is very important to me the next step of meditation for me is connecting with the ultimate Divine you can do it in prayer I have a chapter in the book called The Notorious God getting into God so um yeah that that's one way to rise above the noise and the static and the swamp is in that practice and then I mentioned at the very beginning like recognizing the sacred and the Divine um and we can do this it's certainly easy to do in the beauty of nature it's also when you have children and you're and
you're raising a kid you kind of see that the beauty in the in the kids Natural Curiosity and wonder and open-heartedness and then you experience it in in human interaction you know I think I view this conversation as sacred this is a this is a sacred conversation where seeking to understand each other um you're you're being a service to your incredible audience they want to learn about how to make themselves better people how to start a business how to maximize their health how to go on a on a spiritual journey as a human being they want to learn all this and you're providing the the the way in to them so we get to have this conversation people may not agree with what I'm saying but it might spark something and you know gratitude and witnessing the sacred and that meditative practice of kind of rising above our thoughts and feelings um that those are those are tools that we can use to make our lives better and and richer if someone is on the the outsides of this conversation and they they don't really understand what spirituality is and they've not really gone on the journey that you've been on what uh what kind of questions would you pose to them to help them open their mind so if someone's listening to this they find the word spiritual to be kind of hippie stuff and they they're not really you know they managed to get this far in the conversation but they don't really understand spirituality what it means they managed to get this [ __ ] don't turn off the party yeah yeah there's more good stuff coming we're going to talk about the office I promise stick around folks way too many cameras here is it I think there's nine or something um what would you say to those people that I just think of a guy driving his like Lorry up the country he's put the podcast on and he's he doesn't really know what spirituality is doesn't really understand it doesn't understand why that he would therefore need it in his life yeah that's a great question I don't know that I have an answer for that I mean I guess you know the dictionary definition of of spirituality that I use is uh a focus on the non-material aspects of life
so that's our heart that's our our soul it's our connection it's the light that we bring it's kind of a a connection to what I would call those uh Divine qualities that we all carry uh to some degree or another um spiritual virtues you could call them you know love compassion honesty humility these are qualities that don't necessarily serve us as human animals so there there's something uh they're not about the quest for power they're not about the Quest for status and comfort they allow us to kind of rise above uh our kind of humdrum Human Experience so that's what I would that's how I would Define spirituality something in that realm but I would say that um listen we all want more love in our life right and love is the most precious and beautiful resource and I would say maybe you don't believe in spirituality but or maybe you don't believe in God but you can focus on love and we can all focus on love that's something we all have an experience of and so we want to increase love in our life that's that's increasing spirituality it's the same thing like um I had a profound experience of love um when my son was born he almost died it was very traumatic birth an ER room with blood in the middle of the night and a you know really piss-poor Van Nuys California you know County Hospital in a hallway um emergency C-section and when I held my son like again I had one of those handful of truly Transcendent experiences one of those Cosmic experiences of looking into my son's eyes and they were bright bright blue and you just been ripped from the womb of his mother and I felt such profound love for him and it was just like waves after waves of of love and just almost I had tears but it was almost just beyond tears it was like this Transcendent like love orgasm that was minutes long as I as I held him it just with such gratitude and um and you know for a lot of materialists they could say well that's just neurons and
biochemicals in your brain that are causing that and that's true there are neurons firing and there's biochemicals but it's so much more than that you're never going to tell me that that's all it is and that is just some biological imperative to you know have the species move forward and that's why parents love their children like what I experienced I'm sorry it's just it's beyond that you can call me deluded but that's what spirituality is is just increasing that love connection I think that was a dating show in the 90s love connection but we want to increase that love connection and that is what a spiritual journey is about and we can increase that with ourselves with nature with with time with beauty um and with our with our fellow human beings how did the both of your son change your life well having kids uh is a paradigm shift uh because you have a creature that's in your care and is dependent on you and it was actually really profound when my son was a year and a half uh the same age that I was when my mom left to have the affair that was a really profound time in my life it brought up a lot for me emotionally because I saw this toddler kid and he would go out and explore the world and be like oh here's a cup and he'd play with some blocks and he'd oh tree and he'd had some words going and stuff like that and then immediately you'd see this look on his face like oh I'm out too far like oh I've swum out too far and then he'd run back to the shallow end to his mom and cling to his mom and like ah and mom was home base right and I was like oh that home base was stripped from me was taken away from me when I was that same age I was pretty profound but this idea that our um we're responsible we brought a life into the world and we're responsible for that life not just for five or ten years not just for the first 18 years but for eternity it's um it's profound I can't really say intellectually what that means but um it shifts the way you are alive in the world that example you gave of your son at one and a half years old being able to return to home base in that you can also see what what might have
happened to his development and his perspective if when he'd gone out too far and turned around there was no mother there yeah who we might have become and if there was no mother there and then if if I and but then he he had the Father which is a close second right but then my dad who was so traumatized by being abandoned by his wife and was so already emotionally shut down and he couldn't really access emotions in the best of scenarios he had been colossally abused as a kid and his mom died and his dad was abusive and beat him and left him and his sister alone in the house for weeks at a time it was very Charles Dickens um so this you know my dad's case he was he was the worst possible person to to have to bond to you know or to need to bond to so you know if Little Walter if my wife holiday had left or or died for some reason and Walter had to turn to me like it would have been okay but there's there's nothing that fulfills that um uh that that Primal human uh connection-ness then a child and the mom one of the things that really surprised me um was when I was reading about your time at the office which by the way I have to say is my favorite show of all time you should probably say that I'm sure that's the case for a lot of people wait are you saying right now that the U.S office is better than the UK office yes wow yes I know do you hear that it is maybe because there was more of them there's a hell a lot more of them so I've watched I watched honestly when I was going through a difficult part in my life and I was trying to building my businesses I was shoplifting food because I was just I was so broke at this chapter of my life it was the I had this beat up laptop where I had to like solder the charger because I couldn't afford the 10 pounds to buy a new one it was the only thing I watched and I watched it for about two years so obviously I I just kept going back and back and back it was you know you talk in chapter 10 about the Seven Pillars of spiritual Revolution and one of them being about spreading Joy it spread a whole lot of joy in my life a whole lot
of joy and I don't watch TV to be honest I don't watch TV movies don't really watch any of it these guys will know but the office I watched I didn't think there's anything else that I have watched um but when I when I read about your your experience on the show there was a real sense of unfulfillment especially in the early years when you were making the show you talked about that a little bit on Bill's podcast as well when I was in the office I spent several years really mostly unhappy because it wasn't enough yeah well first of all I'm so glad that you enjoyed the office and I just need to speak to How Deeply gratified I am and all of us are that the office has brought so much Serenity and peace and love and uh upliftment and inspiration to people I mean getting on a TV show is one of the hardest things in the world and then getting on one that lasts is a really hard one and then getting on one that lasts and is good and then one that lasts and is good and still has a cultural impact 10 years after it has ended is I mean talk about hitting the lottery I mean we had no idea we knew we were onto something really special and and funny and magical and of course Steve Corral is one of the great comedic actors that will ever live um but we had no idea I would have this kind of impact and more so deeply grateful and gratified around that and I going back to the English office it's always like it's so funny to me uh and the bassoon King the other book there I talk a little bit about that that competition is so absurd like the the anger and vitriol that you Brits brought to the fact that he that Americans were going to make remake the Beloved office it was so staggering I mean it was so enraged and vitriolic and it was like guys guys the English office isn't going anywhere you can watch it over and over again we're not going to take all the copies and burn them you know what I mean we're going to take a brilliant idea by you know by Ricky and Stephen and the BBC and God bless them um you know it's astonishingly brilliant and we're gonna
kind of run with it instead of 12 episodes we're gonna make 200 episodes how's that if you don't like it you don't have to watch it but uh that was an interesting uh time frame but yeah so it's interesting that you bring this up because I was very frustrated because I was on Bill Maher and I was on one other podcast and I was talking about how there were times on the office that I really struggled because I really wasn't happy um because it wasn't enough here I was on the greatest job that I could ever imagine beyond my wildest dreams of that geeky chess playing bassoon playing kid from Suburban Seattle that you know walked around like a pimply serial killer um that I would be part of one of the great TV shows of all time I mean give me a break and here I was getting paid like millions of dollars and playing one of the most memorable characters in them getting nominated for awards and I'm working with the most beautiful family of of actors and writers imaginable and yet I was like how come I can't get more movies and why did my movie I did bomb and why won't they make a deal with me and I I just I want to have this and I want an office on Warner Brothers and why can't I get you know and I spent a lot of time uh unnecessary time and angst and anguish um in that anxious discontent um at a time when I should have just been like this it doesn't get better than this just enjoy it drink it in and be a part of this incredible artistic because it was artistic experience so but I think the reason I've been bringing that up and some interviews is I think it's important for people to understand that you know here's someone who you know 15 years into their acting career 20 years into their acting career because I was I started playing Dwight when I was 38 years old um is uh has officially made it yeah and they're still unhappy and that is so human it's so quintessentially human and to think that oh if I hit this end result then I am going to be happy and that's why I brought it back to that unhappiness that I experienced in my 20s like
I was an actor I was from Suburban Seattle here I was I had an apartment in New York I was doing acting and yet I was really unhappy and miserable and it didn't make any sense because Society had always told me like there's this if then proposition like if you achieve X Y and Z if you make a certain amount of money if you get a certain position if you're in a certain kind of relationship if you have a house at a certain level if you're a member of a certain club or whatever then you will be happy once I achieve this then I will be happy that's [ __ ] it's absolute and total crock of [ __ ] now certainly I'm not meaning to demean anyone that's struggling to pay bills and they're going like you know [ __ ] you Hollywood elitist you got millions of dollars in the bank and uh you don't have to worry about you know paying the bills I was there you know I was I was having to worry about you know paying the bills and it was it was a struggle for the you know first 15 years of my career so I've been there I know what that's like and I honor that so you certainly want to make enough money to it does take an incredible pressure off your shoulders once you have achieved that but to think that then you're going to be happy I mean you've interviewed a lot of millionaires and a lot of successful people like how how many of them are really fulfilled uh deeply fulfilled and happy what would I've had to have done to have gotten rain at the height and the peak of that success even when it was going to be in the moment and to enjoy it for what it was because it's not just you it's all the people that are listening now that are in jobs they've just got that promotion and now they're thinking about becoming a director or a CEO that they too are deferring their happiness off to the Future behind some goal what can we do in the moment to just like enjoy life today bring our happiness into the into the now um if you always think your happiness is somewhere in the future it always will be um what would I've had to have said to you to to get you to snap out of that um that that's a great question I don't know that there's anything that you could have said to me in a couple of
sentences or a couple of paragraphs but I think if you could have encouraged me to go back onto my spiritual journey back into my spiritual journey because you're absolutely right all we have is now all we have is this next breath is this breath that we're currently experiencing and this is where the joy is and if we're waiting for the joy to be 375 breaths from now or 3 000 breaths from now or 300 breaths from now um we're missing out a hundred percent and I think gratitude has a great deal because one of the cures for chronic dissatisfaction is the cure for dukkha is is gratitude and I would have been to Reign one of the things that would have been really helpful is like rain you need to start every day with 10 things you're grateful for it's like I'm grateful for Jenna Fisher and John Krasinski and Steve Carell and I'm grateful for a nice paycheck and a healthy son and a beautiful wife and I'm I'm grateful for you know the fans of the office and the fact that I get to you know I've trained as an actor my whole life and I get to use those skills and tell wonderful stories and make people laugh like if I could have been stayed hooked into that and I did get hooked back into that that was this was a I'm describing a period of like three years three to four years where I was really struggling with that and then and then I I came around um doesn't rub you of your ambition though this is a question I always used to mull with myself because that that rain that wanted more versus the rain I guess I'm grateful for what I have is one more or less ambitious than the other yeah that's a that's a great question and I don't know the answer to that because there is um did my chronic dissatisfaction fueled my spiritual drive and also fueled my career drive and my ambition um because I was so chronically dis disenchanted and disaffected uh that I I wanted uh I wanted more I wanted more opportunities I wanted more money I wanted more knowledge I wanted more wisdom
um there's there's a drive there that can be healthy in a drive that's there's an unhealthy aspect to it so I don't really know the answer to that I think for now when I look in my life like I still have great ambition like I still want Soul boom as a brand I'm just kind of starting to think about like how to expand that as a brand um I still want to act in movies you know I want to direct I want to maybe create companies you know I created Seoul pancake maybe create another company or something like that and there's a lot I want to do um but I'm hoping to bring the best aspects of myself towards that ambition and for me that has to do with service and um and God and um and utilizing myself my god-given talents and faculties and maximizing those um and living in God's will I'm sorry to get all hippie dippy religious now but to me that's what's driving me now but it's uh as long as we're in the battle of the ego and that's the most ancient bright human spiritual struggle it's the battle of the ego and psychologists talk about it and Prophets talk about it and gurus talk about it right so as long as we want to promote the self and the self-will and ego satisfaction we'll never be happy are you happy I am yeah Happy's the wrong word but whatever it is you mean by happy I have that thing what is that thing um I don't know what the word is and I I Ponder this a lot like what's the perfect word you know social scientists talk about well-being so I like that one a lot that works it's partially contentment but it's also partially meaning and purpose and vision and when I'm in alignment with meaning and purpose and vision um then I feel like I'm vibrating on the right frequency I discovered a product which has changed my life called Eight sleep and I'm so proud to say today that I had a chat with the founder of the brand and they are now a podcast sponsor and one of the things I've come to learn on this podcast from speaking with Sleep Experts like Matthew Walker
is how important temperature is when it comes to sleep the temperature of your room the temperature of your bed and also one of the big insights I had from speaking to some experts was that the temperature of the room should fluctuate throughout the night as you move through different stages of sleep so when you first get into bed it should be quite cool in bed it should then get a little bit cooler and then the temperature should increase near the end and that is a reflection of what would have happened in nature once upon a time you've probably come to learn that I have sponsors on this podcast that I use and products that I love my sponsors should be a reflection of the conversations I'm having but also a reflection of what I'm using in my life so to celebrate them being a new podcast sponsor I always want to get a discount for you guys and I've got one go to atesleep.com which is e i g h t sleep.com slash Stephen and if you do that you'll save a hundred and fifty dollars on the Pod cover that I have on my bed the one I'm talking about grab your pod cover send me a DM and let me know how you get on quick one you guys know that for years now my office is quite literally been everywhere on a plane in the back of my car in a terminal in an airport or on a train you name it I've probably worked there ever since I started my first business at 19 years old I've been working on the move all I need is Wi-Fi a desk and my headphones and I'm set and one of the places that has always had my back when I'm struggling to find an office is wework I've been using wework for years now whether it's in Manchester London Manhattan or La wework is easy it literally requires no thinking there's no stress of finding the perfect working location we work does it all for you plenty of desk space meeting rooms collaboration spaces drinks snacks it's all there so for your next remote working trip away from the office or if you want a new Fresh space to work in then don't just work anywhere wework might just be your answer you can get 25 off your first six months of wework all access by using Code CEO works that's one word CEO works and to redeem this offer visit we.com CEO works still struggle with because sometimes when we we read the books and stuff and
I've written a book myself it can sometimes exude the illusion of fixed or figured it all out I'm done right what so what do you still struggle with on an ongoing basis yeah uh I think that uh I can be a better husband um and I think I can be a Kinder father and a more compassionate friend um there's still some really basics of human interaction that I haven't quite gotten figured out well because I wasn't really I didn't learn these things from my parents right I didn't learn um you know connection and compassion in the household that I grew up in so I've had to you know a parent my adult self in that in that direction and you know to really I I struggle with um making sure that I'm again using the tools that God has given me to try and make the world a better place I think there's a lot more that I could be doing to uh try and make the world better and to help heal people that are disenfranchised and bring more joy to people's lives and um and try and bring spiritual tools to a young generation that I think will make their lives better there's there's more I could be doing to that end and I still have a big ego you know I'm still narcissistic and I still you know want ego satisfaction and it's always there you know it's it's uh it's uh you know they always say an addiction that your addict is in the basement doing push-ups you know even when it but I would say the same thing about the ego you know it's there in the in the basement doing push-ups just getting ready to come in and take the reins does it speak to you sometimes the the guy in the basement yeah absolutely yeah you know Jung talks about the shadow side and it's so important and part of the therapeutic process is to get to know one's Shadow because and to know and embrace and accept and love one's Shadow and I have a I have a dark shadow you know it's an addict Shadow and it's a miserable Shadow and it's self-important and righteous and entitled and this is this is part of who Rayne Wilson is you know and I'm not going to get rid of those aspects of Myself by keeping that shadow at arm's length or locked in a closet or something like that I have to you know
keep you keep your enemies closer you know keep that keep that shadow there you are buddy there you are right on the belly yeah you little you little mean little addict you know your little narcissistic entitled [ __ ] I love you I love you you're right here with me you're part of me let's go on this we're in this together I got you right where I want you everyone's got a shadow um a lot of people are trying to fight their Shadow I mean a lot of the prevailing narratives are that you can therapy your way out of the Shadow yeah no it's it's sitting there you gotta [ __ ] sit the shadow on the lap almost like a ventriloquist dummy you know it's uh that's why I love ventriloquist ventriloquist stories and horror films of like the dummies that come to life and attack you know because that's that's your Shadow is is that hello how are you [ __ ] you Stephen Diary of a [ __ ] CEO get a new t-shirt idiot that's gonna be the trailer um the 12-step program you and Russell have both spoken to me about this but Macklemore's talked to me about it as well and what I've since the conversation with Russell I've spent a lot of time talking to other people about um really like what makes us change so the 12-step program is has some principles which I think are applicable for all of our lives about how to how to create change um if someone's going through something in their lives now and they're they're struggling to change it how does that 12-step program help us to go to change what what is it about that program that causes that change in people do you know I love the 12-step program that's such a great question there's going to be people that are way more um knowledgeable than I but I will say there are some essential components of the 12-step program that you write are applicable to everyone and could make everyone's lives better uh I think society as a whole could benefit from a lot of the way that the 12 Steps work um I think it's the most profound spiritual movement of the last several hundred years uh it has transformed
millions of people's lives first of all there's the idea that there's this wonderful dichotomy at the center of the 12 steps which is if I Surrender if I admit defeat if I admit powerlessness I find great strength so there's a there's a beautiful spiritual koan at the center of that I give up I throw up the White Flag I can't do this on my own I need the support of a community I need to get vulnerable I need the support of a higher power and then I find great strength there's something just so beautiful about that and the community of the 12 steps is amazing too like sharing with like-minded alcoholics and getting the support of that Community the fact that their servant leaders that there's elections that it's it's a run it's the inmates running the Asylum you know there aren't these kind of leaders in fact there if there's someone who kind of presents as like a leader and 12 steps you should be immediately wary of them that they have any kind of answer at all the surrender Point really is the thing that's compelled me in fact it's when Russell was talking about this idea of um I think the kind of what he said was like he broke it down into three kind of processes awareness of whatever it is the belief that you can change the thing and then this third step this principle of kind of surrendering to it and and in an individualistic Society materialistic Society where we're becoming more and more isolated and individualistic in our approach to life we are living in full white walls alone more than ever before you know we we think we can do it ourselves right this idea of surrender and admitting that you need the collective and help with something that you might not have the answers I think is so powerful so so important as well I think we all need to surrender in many ways I think I need to surrender in terms of my ego I think I need to surrender um in terms of even spirituality I told you a second ago about my partner who is very s whatever anyone might call spiritual and surrendering to her way of living has brought me so much value in
my life so this idea of surrender being the solution to um the resistance we're encountering by the ways that we're living I think is something that everyone can consider like if you're feeling a deep sense of dissatisfaction in your life surrendering and saying I need help I don't know the answer um can can you help me yeah brings in everything you're Pro it's probably that the medicine that you're seeking but surrender feels like an interesting word it feels like powerlessness right but again there's great power in that powerlessness and what do you surrender to and that's why there's a higher power as well and uh boy there's so many things I wanted to say there uh but uh there's a humility in the process that is missing in contemporary Society right let's say we're the least humble that humans have been uh in in our history all eight billion of us sharing this planet so um and I think God or a higher power requires a certain humility like there is a power greater than myself the ego is the opposite of surrender the ego wants to control outcomes the ego wants to control other people right as long as we're trying to control other people and control outcomes we're going to be unhappy so there's something about surrendering like you know your your partners you know Journey you surrender to that you don't know what she's gonna go live on a commune or worship a mushroom or something like that okay you're on your journey she already knows babe you know so it's it's again that Central spiritual struggle is is the is the is the ego is the premises the Primacy the Primal C of I the self as being separate from everything else and the essential spiritual teaching at the center of every Faith tradition is that we're all connected we're all United we're all one this is an illusion of self so surrender eliminates that illusion of self but there's so many other nuggets in 12 steps like one of them just in the middle of the steps is when we are wrong promptly admit it like that's just a
really good piece of advice and you know what we could all benefit politicians could benefit CEOs could benefit um people in relationships parents with their children people in in Partnership could benefit like when we're wrong promptly admit it promptly being the word not eventually you know um as soon as you know say you're sorry and do it faster you know and do it better and uh the world would be a much better place if everyone around said when I'm wrong I'm going to promptly admit it that's just one little gem there's so many dozens more holiday yeah she's been with you through a lot yeah yeah when I was looking at the timeline of when you you guys got together I think you met in an acting class right yeah it's been a long time almost four decades right hell a long time yeah we were an acting class together in 1985. we weren't together as a couple till 1991 really when she moved to New York but uh yeah I wasn't even born then you've grown a whole Stephen in that time [ __ ] I was born in 92 so what is she what is she what does she mean to you are you gonna make me cry aren't you you're gonna try and make me cry I don't know I don't know you might hate her um she's everything to me I mean I am so blessed to have her in my life um she's dealt with me when I've been a raging [ __ ] and she's dealt with me when I've been depressed when I've when I've let my anxiety get the best of me um we've had a lot of ups and downs in our marriage and I think that that's really important for people to hear like uh I we're soul mates um and uh I really wouldn't have achieved anything that I've achieved without her help and guidance and love and support and it you know it all sounds like a cliche but it's just it's just the truth and she's really the wisest person that I know she has a deep deep wisdom and she knows me better than anyone so I'm just grateful and I tell her every day I tell her every day what she taught you about the nature of what love is you know it's interesting she also had a very traumatic childhood and a difficult her parents had a very difficult situation and she she had a lot of issues in her own way and her own
Journey I'll let her tell that story but um she loves very naturally in a way that it's a lot more work for me so she just has a big heart and is just able to love our son and other people and animals and uh you know I I always felt like is an analogy I use in uh in my in my books where because I had such a weirdly fractured childhood I would observe how humans interacted and uh try and emulate that because I didn't understand it so if I would like observe people in the lunchroom at my school and they'd come in and someone would say like hey buddy how's it going you have a good weekend good to see you and I would I would watch it and I would I'll be like oh that's that's how normal people interact and so I would I would literally copy it and I would try it out and I'd go up to someone like hey buddy uh how you doing you have a good weekend you know so for me I felt like I was an alien like I was literally like a science fiction film where I was like this alien like learning about human behavior and interaction and like studying humans and and seeking to to fit in and I bring this up because holidays uh does this stuff so naturally you know she just has a natural warmth and and Grace uh so and sometimes I emulate her about oh here's what it means to be loving and and warm and uh and live life with with Grace you and me both my partner sounds exactly the same and I feel like I've learned how to love someone by emulating the things she does so naturally the things she says the things she admits when she says sorry how open she is the her ability to tell me her feelings all of these things I've I've learned from just watching that she seems to have no issue or no resistance in doing it that makes sense I've learned that a parent from her so well and our son uh bless him Walter is 18 and a half about to go off to college um but I always wanna maybe lecture or react a little too much or say the thing I feel that needs saying and and my wife is so good and like she'll see me starting to do it and she'll just be like just just this little thing and I'll be
like and I think Walter well we'll we'll talk about it later I just I take my cues from her little Alexis she's a conductor with my she's a conductor of my parenting too rain thank you so much we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving the question for they leave it in the Diary of a Seer that's good the question they have left for you I didn't get to read it until so give me a second handwriting isn't always great can you recall a time when you observe he reads it observed someone being treated badly and could have intervened but didn't uh so what might you have done differently if you could go back to that moment that's such an exceptional question I was reading a uh someone was writing about bullying and they were talking about how bullying is a three-step process like you stop the bully you say hey that's not okay speak up to the bully maybe don't get in a fight but speak up to the bully tend to the bullied and then report it to an authority and we often just kind of view bullying as like that first step process of like trying to shut down the bully and you know back in the 70s and 80s when I was growing up uh there was a hell a lot of bullying going on and um and I I feel bad that I didn't bully myself because I was far too nerdy um to partake in bullying but if that's any reason why well part of it was part of it was because I wish that I could have been a part of that process of especially people that had been bullied to uh I I guess I just didn't have the tools to give them empathy and compassion and support and then to take an active part in you know reporting this whole dynamic to the authorities because I when I go back uh and replay my high school years in junior high in elementary school years it's non-stop bullying I mean it was it was taunting and teasing and you know taking the piss out and and demeaning and belittling and
um and hierarchies and uh we may be going a little too far in contemporary Society about what qualifies as bullying because it's not criticism and it's not even necessarily like having some good-natured fun you know but uh I wish I had been uh I'm more actively a participant in kind of a part of the three-step process it's super interesting never heard about that three-step process before this particular individual I don't usually give Clues but uh but um they're writing a book about adult bullying as well um having been on the receiving end of that they think adult bullying is something we don't really talk about a lot which is like the workplace stuff and um you know as we get older Wayne thank you so much um thank you for so many things my there's two real really incredible things that um changed my life in a really important way the first was obviously the office you know you were by far my favorite character and I think that I just can't understand how a human can be could have been so good at acting and I really mean that like I don't [ __ ] people but you're so good at acting playing that role of Dwight I think there was occasions where I tried to do it like I tried to so it's almost it's it comes as a shock to many people that and you know this because you kind of allude to it in the first chapter of the book that someone that could embody Dwight can also write such a great book like this about something that is so far from what I think Dwight might be interested in and it's actually all a testament to your ability to your ability to act really really unbelievable I think your role as Dwight is one of the all-time great performances in any show like that it's it's incredibly incredible and you talk about as I said in the 10th chapter of the book about spreading Joy you gave me so much joy and then you came out with this app called Soul pancake back in the day which caught me at the perfect moment where I was a young man that was really obsessed with these big questions still am um and it allowed me to find this community where I just peppered people with really profound questions about whether dogs have you know a soul and
all these kind of things that I was struggling with at the time so thank you for both of those things because you helped me in ways that you'll never know and I live tens of thousands of miles that way and it changed just nudged the the direction of my life and so many important ways and it's led me to this moment now which you can understand for me is an incredible absolutely incredible one so thank you means a lot and everyone should go check out this book it's it's wonderful it's super accessible it's it kind of I don't know how to describe this but it as as it relates to books that are confronting this idea of the spiritual Revolution it takes it easy on you and it holds your hand across the bridge you know and that that I think is important because that person in the Lorry or the truck that's exactly what they need if they are going to access the wisdom in this book so thank you rain Stephen what a profound pleasure thank you for having me on the show congratulations on all the incredible work that you do and um thank you for acknowledging the fact that you owe everything to me [Laughter] and that's a wrap foreign as you know they're a sponsor of this podcast and I'm an investor in the company one of the things I've never really explained is how I came to have a relationship with huel one day in the office many years ago a guy walked past called Michael and he was wearing a heeled t-shirt and I was really compelled by the logo I just thought from a design aesthetic point of view it was really interesting and I asked him what that word meant and why he was wearing that T-shirt and he said it's this brand called heal and they make food that is nutritionally complete and very very convenient and has the planet in mind and he the next day dropped off a little bottle of fuel on my desk and from that day onwards I completely got it because I'm someone that cares tremendously about having a nutritionally complete diet but sometimes because of the way my life is that falls by the wayside so if there was a really convenient reliable trustworthy way for me to be nutritionally complete in an affordable
way I was all ears especially if it's a way that is conscious of the planet give it a chance give it a shot let me know what you think [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music]