The Daily Stoic - Rainn Wilson On How His Deepest Struggles Led To His Best Roles

Episode Date: September 2, 2023

Ryan speaks with Rainn Wilson in this second of a two-part conversation about the best entry points for the average person into philosophy and spirituality, why the serenity prayer applies to everyone, how the struggles he experienced in his early acting career led to him landing the role of Dwight Schrute, why he wishes that he enjoyed his time on The Office more, his take on the state of the writers’ strike, and more.Rainn Wilson is an actor, comedian, author, podcaster, writer, and director. He is most known for his role as Dwight Schrute on the NBC sitcom The Office (2005-2013), for which he earned three consecutive Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Highlights of Rainn’s extensive film and television credits include Galaxy Quest (1999), Almost Famous (2000), Full Frontal (2003), Six Feet Under (2003-2005) and Mom (2018-2021). Outside of acting, Wilson published his autobiography, The Bassoon King, in 2015, and co-founded the digital media company SoulPancake in 2008, and as an author and podcaster he spreads a message of building togetherness and community by way of spiritual and philosophical awakening within the global culture. You can follow Rainn on Instagram @rainnwilson and Twitter @rainnwilson, and on soulboom.com.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. So at the Daily Stove podcast, this is part two of my interview with the one and only Rain Wilson. We don't talk a lot about the office in this interview or in part one. Why? Because it's the middle of an actor's strike and a writer's strike. And I wanna support that.

Actually, I was with my kids when we were doing the launch for Daily Dad back in May in New York City and a march of writers walked by and got to sort of explain what was going on to him that the people who make the stuff, write the stuff like I do, but write the stuff that he sees on television and movies. These people are striking to get paid fairly and to participate fairly in the upside of the things that they create and to be protected and not exploited.

And then when we were in LA for the summer, we obviously passed a lot of different picketers and they always liked me to honk the horn as I went by. So anyways, we're not talking about the office and you might go, oh, well, how could you find two hours of things to talk about with Rain Wilson? Well, if you listen to part one, you'll know it's because Rain Wilson is a fascinating guy, a spiritual guy, a thinker, and his new book, Soul Boom, why we need a spiritual revolution is all about precisely that. And in this big, in-depth interview here, and I talk about his faith, putting yourself out there, you know, what does enough look like, what is happiness look like, what is contentment look like, what is presence look like, a bunch of awesome stuff.

I really enjoy this interview, as I said in my part one intro, I was just also just kind of blown away. It didn't feel real and, you know, he correctly spots me as a fan of the office before I've even said a word about it, which I'm sure he's quite well practiced in. And we had a great conversation, and I wish him all the best. This new book is actually quite good soul boom while we need a spiritual revolution.

He wrote another book called The Bassoon King, and then he is the creator co-founder of Soul Pancake, which makes awesome YouTube videos, and there's also a best-selling book about that. I think you're really going to like this interview. I definitely think you should check out the book, which was a Globe and Mail best-seller, a publisher's weekly best-seller, and a New York Times best-seller. And, like I said, it's great and enjoy my interview with the one and only, Rain, Wilson. only rain wasn't. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery's podcast Business Wars. And in our new season, two of the world's leading hotel brands, Hilton and Marriott,

stare down family drama and financial disasters. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. The more that we work on our own personal, spiritual, and philosophical selves, you know, finding meaning and hope and vision, then we can bring that to the world and we more we are of service in the world toward the quote unquote common good, then that feeds our soul even more and it makes us even more kind of wise and arrived. What do you think? You mentioned the word depression.

I do have to ask, isn't that just another word for feeling bummed out? Oh, wow. You quoted the office in my face. Oh my God. I'm so sorry. Was that a Michael Scott line? It's the always about to jump off the building to prove the point, you know? I think it's your line to be honest.

I think you say, maybe I think you might say it. I don't remember. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's awesome. I love it. I was like, I saw a very glint in your eyes. I was like, where is he going with this? No, no, I think it's interesting, right?

Because I get this from both sides. So on the one hand, like people who are academic philosophers or people who are much smarter than me and much more classically trained in philosophy, they'll get upset about what I write about stoicism because they'll say, oh, this is life hack philosophy or this is life hack stoicism that, you know, he's sort of just distilling it down into self-improvement principles. Then it's funny, the people who are just interested

in self-improvement, you know, principles get really mad when you veer off into the nitty gritty of the philosophy as in the sense of what it actually obligates you to do, the sort of ethical obligations that come along with it. But I actually do think both are really important, and you think you did a TED talk on this. It is really cool and empowering when people learn for the first time that, hey, these people who lived a long time ago, whether they're Eastern philosophers or Western philosophers, monks or thinkers or scientists, they are psychologists. They have come up with really cool tricks, exercises, you know, spiritual exercises, ways of thinking that can radically improve your life. And given the fact that the vast majority of people don't think there's anything usable

or applicable for them in philosophy, that can be such a powerful way into spirituality or philosophy, the idea that, hey, if you do this thing, it will make your life better. You'll be happier, you'll be less stressed out, you'll get along with people better, you'll lose your temper less. I think there's a lot of value in those sort of little self-improvement tricks and tips. Mm, yeah. And that's, it's funny, that's, I've been thinking about,

like, so, you know, my publisher's been asking, what's the next book? And you talk about hacks, and I did, you're right, I did a talk on spiritual life hacks because, again, if spirituality is a, just church, like, oh, I feel good when I go to church and I'm singing in the pastor, gives an inspiring sermon. And then I go about my day and my weekend, it doesn't affect me at all, it doesn't make my life better, it doesn't influence me for the better, then that's bullshit. And from the same token,

if it's all just woo, woo, kind of new age, kind of feeling crystals and incense and spirit worlds and stuff like that, and it doesn't make your life better when you're going to work and you're driving your truck and you're dealing with your kids and you know, then that's bullshit too. But I know that there are spiritual tools from the world's great faith traditions that tools from the world's great faith traditions that can make people's lives better, that can certainly address the mental, the current mental health crisis as well.

You know, one of them, and I think you talk about this too, and the Stoics talk about it a lot, is suffering. And what is your tattoo again? Your tattoo is like the obstacle, right? The obstacle is the way. Yeah. So there's suffering, obstacles, tests and difficulties have been talked about from the dawn of time in both religious circles, spiritual circles and in philosophical circles. Why is life so damn hard? Why isn't it easy? Why is it hard? Why is there conflict?

Why do we not always get what we want? I think the Stoics really were the original inventors of the serenity prayer. God grant me this serenity to accept the fact, the things that I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can, you know, what is in our control and what is not in our control. And there's this daily battle in ourselves like, you know,

why can't I get cast and this lead role in this film? Gosh darn it, you know, that's well, that's not in my control. Well, what is in my control? Well, I can write a film where I play a lead role in it. And I can, with determination, encourage and fortitude and follow through, try and get funding for it and make that happen, right? So I'm just using an example, like from my own life or career, let's say. So there are these tools like dealing with suffering, dealing in overcoming adversity. That Lord Krishna was talking about. Yes. 3,000 years ago, 3,500 years ago, that is in the Talmud, that is in the Bhagavad-gita, that is certainly in the writings of the Buddha, that can help make our lives better.

And when you get a spiritual conception of like, we are souls, we are spiritual beings having a human experience, it can put everything into perspective about why there is suffering and what the purpose of that suffering is. And you know, what I always, when I talk to young people about, you know, suffering, anxiety, depression, mental health stuff, because it's all linked. Because I do think that a lot of young people today and maybe you've noticed this Ryan although you look I think you're like 40 but you look like 20 um

I have no idea how old you are. I mean I literally if someone said Ryan holiday is 23 I'd be like yeah, that makes sense if someone was like he's 47. I'd be like I could see that So 36 all right smack in the. 36 with a long baby face. But I do think that young people today have this kind of weirdly mistaken thing about difficulty and struggle. Like it shouldn't exist. Like, why am I not getting what I want? I should be just getting what I want. And I'm not. And I'm so overwhelmed by that and pissed off about it. And you know what? Guess what, Kitties? We're struggling and it works on a number of different levels. You know, animals struggle too, turn on a nature show, animals struggle, human struggle. But there are ways to overcome the struggling, to have an understanding of the struggling to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, life? Like, what can we, what struggles, conflicts, and obstacles, and suffering?

Have we experienced that? We're actually incredibly grateful for at the end of the day because it is brought us wisdom and meaning. So, that's just one example of drawing from the world's great faith and philosophical traditions to enrich our lives. There's a Freud quote that I love. He says, in retrospect, the struggle will strike you as most beautiful. And I think that's largely true. You know, in the moment, it's terrible and awful. And it doesn't change the fact that it wasn't your fault, that it wasn't fair, that it shouldn't have happened.

But as you move on, as it is integrated into your life, as it as it ceases to be such a big part of it, because you have additional experiences, because you make changes or you adjust or you opportunities come as a result of it. You look back on these moments that felt so devastating, a breakup, a bankruptcy, some scandal or a controversy, some mistake that you made. You look back on it and you see how it got you to where you are now, which you are happy with, which you are proud of, which you find meaningful. And then it also strikes you how much, in the moment you resisted the thing happening to you, how much you fought against it when you would have been better practicing a thing that I

think it's a knock unfairly in the Stoics, like when you would have been better practicing a little resignation or acceptance, embracing the suck or the unpleasantness of the situation and just allowing it to be integrated into your life and into your identity much more quickly. That's, I've told this story a few times before, forgive me if anyone's heard it, but to me, it really profoundly illustrates what we're talking about. And that is but to me it really profoundly illustrates what we're talking about. And that is when I was a theater actor in New York, which I did for 10 years before I came to LA,

and then it was another like four or five years before I got the office. So I had been acting professionally for 15 years before I played Dwight. And I got cast on my first Broadway play. This was around 1995 or so. And I, 10 years before the office. And, uh, I was so stressed out about it and overwhelmed. And I was like, in my head, in my head

about it, and in my head, I was like, oh my god, I could get a New York Times review and I could get a Tony nomination. And I could could I could get signed by the William Morris Agency. It was a huge opportunity for me. Sure. And I got very overwhelmed by it. And guess what? I sucked the pressure, the tension, the perfectionism, uh, just kind of rendered me really really tense and not pleasant. And I just was really stuck in my head and lost. And when that, and I suffered so much, there's nothing worse than doing a play that you know you suck in. Because you have to do it for four or five months, and you're doing eight shows a week, you just show up and you're like, fuck, I'm gonna suck again. Damn it. And you just do it again and again.

You know, if you do a movie and it sucks like you spent, okay, you spent a month or three months on the movie and then it's not a good movie and like, all right, moving on. And the audience isn't there in front of you. Yes, the audience isn't there not laughing at jokes you're telling, you know. Over and over and over. Yes, that you're trying to do. So it was, I really suffered a lot. You know, I was talking to my, my wife was going to graduate school at the time. I was talking to

her, sobbing on the phone in the middle of the night, not sleeping really in bad shape. And I'd not sleeping really in bad shape. And when I finished the play, I said, never again, never again, am I gonna do that? I'm gonna find my authentic voice as an actor. I'm quirky, I'm kind of weird. I'm gonna embrace that. I'm not gonna be try, try to be something to please someone else. That's a stoic thing too, right?

So I'm not going to jump through all these hoops to try and please other people, but I just need, I gotta be me, baby. And I fired my agents, and I really just changed how I was as an actor at that point. I was just like, you know, and not that I didn't have

struggles after that, but I had different kinds of struggles. So the, the point is that I never would have gotten Dwight in the office had I not gone through that suffering on that play not gone through that suffering on that play in on Broadway because finding Dwight was embracing my nerdy weirdness. And if I hadn't totally embraced that, I never would have gotten the role of Dwight. I would have been trying to be out of, I should be auditioning for Jim, you know, or something. And so I'm so grateful for like the most miserable six months of my life. I'm so grateful because it opens so many doors. One of my favorite metaphors from the Stoics is from Epictetus, who knew, I think, a bit about what it's like to get Delta shitty role in life. He's born a slave in Rome.

It's about as bad a hand as you can get. But he says, you know, we're all actors in a play, right? We didn't write the script. We're not the director. We can't just trade roles with whomever we want. We have to figure out basically he's saying to like just act the hell out of the lines we've been given, right? That that's what life is. Now thankfully we live in a society today where people have a bit more

agency, you know, Rome is a very hierarchical, stratified place. Thankfully there's not such a thing as, you know, a person being assigned to the role of a slave necessarily. But I think that the general idea, it's probably when you relate to, that to be great as an actor, you have to accept fundamentally the powerlessness of your situation in the sense that you don't control the material necessarily, you don't control the director,

you don't control the marketing budget, you don't control when it comes out, you don't control the director, you don't control the marketing budget, you don't control when it comes out You don't control if a strike intervenes or a pandemic happens and theaters are shut down All you control is when they say action and you have a handful of lines to say Do you show up and do you do the best job you possibly can and this idea of? Like you made it sound a little bit like you you felt like the life of an actor is not a relatable experience. But I do think fundamentally we all are actors in this play where we're not the main characters, no matter how much we would like to be. The material is not as good as we would like it to be. The role is a bit more constrictive than we would like it to be.

But we have an opportunity to do a really great job in the handful of, you know, minutes were on stage or on camera if we choose to step up and to be present for that. Yeah, that's very well said. That's really beautiful. How do the Stoics address kind of suffering and adversity in terms of character building and finding meaning and purpose? Well, the idea of the obstacle is the way. It comes to us, Mark Sirio sort of jots this passage down

in meditations, he says, the impediment to action advances action what stands in the obstacle is the way it comes to us. Mark Sirio sort of jots this passage down in meditation. He says the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way. And basically what he means is that stuff happens, right? You have this plan and then that plan is blown apart or you want things to be this way and now they're this way. That stuff happens to us in life and that's outside of our control. But what is inside of our control is how we respond to what's happened. So the idea isn't that, you know, you can magically turn every shitty situation into

a wonderful situation, but that even these shitty situations, the ones that involve suffering, are opportunities to practice philosophy or to practice better, to practice virtue, that there are chance to be patient, there are chance to forgive, it's a chance to be courageous, you know, it's a chance to be creative, you know, that in the obstacles that life throws at you, we, one path might be blocked, but in blocking that path,

it inherently opens up a different path. Might not be the one we want, might not be as good as the other one, but it is a chance to do that. I think Marcus Rios' life is a great example of this. I mean, this guy, he's the first and maybe only philosopher king, like that would, that ever got the shot, right?

Like the problem with leadership for two, like that that that ever got the shot, right? Like the problem with leadership for two, three thousand years has been like the right people never get into power, right? And here you have like a fundamentally decent person who's smart, who's trained. He has a 20 year apprenticeship under the the the the previous emperor, this his stepfather, Antoninus Pius. And and then it's his turn. He's finally the guy with the power. He has all these plans. And then there's a plague, there's a series of floods,

then there's an endless war. It's like he never gets the chance to do any of the things that he wants. And so in the one hand, it's this sort of missed opportunity in that 20 years of peace and prosperity disappear right as they hand him the the reins. And yet it's still an opportunity for all these other forms of greatness, you know, patience, forgiveness, strength, you know, moral leadership, not being corrupted by power. There's a coup, and Marx really has to respond to this coup without becoming a murderous dictator.

And so, I think the idea for the Stoics is like, you don't control when you're alive, you don't control most of what's happening while you're alive, but you control who you are, you know, how you act in that role that you've been assigned, and that that's where meaning and greatness and purpose really comes from. That's cool. That's amazing. That's amazing. So, the Buddha, of course, taught, you know, life is suffering.

And I've talked about this in the book. He really, the word is duka from the Sanskrit Pali. And duka means kind of anxious discontent. So life is anxious discontent. We're never just satisfied with what we have. And we're in that position because that's what's kept humanity alive throughout the Eons. If we were just always satisfied, we would have died out by now. So that's evolution. What's that? That's evolution, right? How can we have more offspring,

being more successful? Like that's the driving force of growth and change and survival. An anxious discontent of like, do I have enough food stored up for winter? Oh no, I want more food. I need more, more, more. So this contemporary materialism of feeling like, I'll be more sexually attractive. The more stuff I have, the nicer car that I have, that I'll be more sexually attractive, the more stuff I have, the nicer car that I have, that I'll be more liked if I have more stuff that I'll have a higher status as more stuff. It comes from our base, the amygdala, the base part of our brain, right?

And oh no, this tiger is going to eat me. I hear a rustling in the branches outside of my cave. Oh no, that could be a bear that's going to eat my face. So there's a constant anxious discontent kept us alive and we're wired for anxious discontent. So in a certain way, our work is to contradict the anxious discontent of being alive for the Buddha and the Buddhists, all billion of them. It's hard to lump them all into one thing, but essentially, the second noble truth is that the suffering is optional and it comes from

desiring, from hankering, from cravings. That's expectations. Yes. And you can eliminate suffering by eliminating the craving by, you know, looking at that, you know, if you're like, oh, I want more stuff and I want a nicer TV and I want a nicer car, I'm so miserable because I don't have it, you can examine that in your life. And if you can release that, then you can release a lot of the suffering around that. And there's all kinds of tools to be able to do that. I mean, probably your listeners kind of know this. It's kind of Buddhism 101. But

from a from a behind perspective too, to another level of suffering, we are souls having a human experience, and we move on to another planes of existence in the divine realms under the auspices of an all-knowing, all-loving creative force that I call in the book The Notorious G-O-D. And The Notorious G-O-D has differentiated from a lot of contemporary ideas around God as Sky Daddy. So it's not Sky Daddy. We're talking about the notorious GOD. So something altogether much greater and wilder and more encompassing than a guy with a beard with an agenda. But the suffering and obstacles that we,

that hit us and we overcome, they grow our spiritual qualities and our spiritual virtues. I don't know how you would relate that from a philosophical standpoint, but kindness, humility, compassion, creativity, joy, love, honesty, all of these qualities of the divine from a high perspective, you know, from a, I'm not sure, from a stoic perspective, that's just like

our leadership qualities or character traits that we develop, but that we take these with us on our journey after our body falls away. So that suffering is there for a very good reason. It's to sharpen the knife. It's in the fire of adversity that the gold is purified, that the blade is sharpened in the fire of test and adversity. And we take this with us as we move through our spiritual journey. And this is also in every kind of, to some degree, or not in every faith tradition. When we think of sports stories, we tend to think of tales of epic on the field glory. But the new podcast Sports Explains the World brings you some of the wildest and most surprising

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free on Wondering Plus. It's certainly in stoicism, Marks really says, you know, he says, a strong stomach digest what it eats. He says, a fire takes anything you throw into it and turns it into flame and brightness and heat. And the idea is that we, that life is sort of testing us constantly, giving us raw materials constantly. And it's our job to kind of convert them into energy or fuel. We don't have to.

We can be sort of snuffed out by it, I guess, if we choose. But we can also choose to take, you know, the experiences that we have and be made better, stronger, wiser, more compassionate, more experienced as a result of what we've gone through. That's amazing. That's great. Do you have all these memorised or do you have, do you have like a professor of stoicism texting you these like, here Ryan, you know how Joe Rogan has the guy that like pulls up the jamie on this.

Hold this up, Jamie. No, you know what's actually been really cool about my study of stoicism and maybe you've experienced this in yours. I think it's more a testament to the power of journaling and philosophical work, which is the process of writing about Stoicism, like the Daily Stoke, I wrote the book, The Daily Stoke, in 2015, it came out in 2016, but the month that came out, it was like August or October, I started the Daily Stoke, the website, and so I started with this daily email.

So I've done the daily email now for almost eight years. Oh wow. And then now also, you know, we try to do a video every day and I've had these conversations on a weekly basis. So the result is I've talked about the stuff so much in communicating them that they've sort of been inserted into my brain and my muscle memory. I'm not saying I'm perfect at applying them. I'm saying the exact opposite.

I'm not, but I do have both a kind of a recall and then also kind of a deep connection with the ideas because I've gone over them so many times, which is actually the stoic practice. Like, you would say that for Eastern philosophy, sort of meditation is where it's at. That is the sort of philosophy practice. Well, for the stoics, it was writing and Mark's really says, Meditations was not intended as a publishable philosophical work. That was his philosophical practice that happened to just not be destroyed.

And it's pretty remarkable. I mean, some people go, oh, it's a little repetitive. It doesn't always make sense. It seems to revisit the same themes over and over again. And it's like, yeah, that's because it's not for you. It was for him. He was writing, that's what meditation translates to to himself in Greek. It's actually funny He's a Roman writing in Greek because that's the the the language of philosophy in the ancient world

He's trying to practice it and it's it's kind of come for me this sort of repetitive practice of I'm always thinking and talking about them Again, that's not the same as being able to to to draw them out You know in the big moments of my life, but I do feel like I've gotten better at it as time has gone on. That's interesting. Are you familiar with the artist's way, Julia Cameron's work? Yeah, of course, the morning pages. Yeah, so that whole idea of morning pages is so similar in a way. And what it does,. So it all connects, right? So meditation

connects to psychology of Freud and Jung, especially in the idea of the subconscious. I've been doing a lot of hypnotherapy recently, which I find fascinating because it's essentially like when we go about our days, we are consciousness is the tip of the iceberg. We think of our consciousness as everything, we think of it as being just a brain activity. But our whole reality, and this is backed up with innumerable psychological testing, up with innumerable psychological testing, our subconscious is the rest of the iceberg that the Titanic ran into. Yes.

And you can access the power of that subconscious in so many ways. Meditation is in some ways, you could look at it just from a psychological lens as a way to just tap into the resilience wisdom and serenity of your subconscious self. There's that wonderful aspect of meditation where you kind of separate from yourself. meditation where you kind of separate from yourself. You know, as Michael Singer talks about in the untethered soul, you know, you realize, oh, I am not my thoughts. And I'm not even have feelings. And you have this one blowing. You have this awareness of yourself. Oh, it's like yourself, you're looking at yourself from a 20,000 foot view. Oh my gosh, there's me. And look, I'm having thoughts and feelings, but I'm also witnessing myself having thoughts and feelings.

So we are the witness, we are the witness. So what is that? What is that consciousness? You can access this in hypnosis and hypnotherapy. I've found a really fascinating and morning pages access that part of that creative flow part of yourself that left brain part of yourself that doesn't play by the rules and can just kind of come up with like incredible stream. People do the morning pages and do her work and they're like,

oh my god, I'm an artist. You know, you can be an accountant your whole life and you're and you're just writing stuff like, where did this come from? You know, and that going to Rick Rubin and the creative circle, you know, and the origins of creativity and the mues, you know, from ancient Greece that this is coming from something other than me. I didn't write this, you hear that all the time. I didn't write this song. The melody just came to me. I didn't write this poem.

It just came out. I didn't write this novel. Just, it came out. I've had that, I've literally had that experience many times while acting, where it's like, I, this isn't my conscious brain. There's something else guiding me. You can look at it as amuse. You can look at it as amused, you can look at it as the Holy Spirit, you can look at it as the unconscious and accessing

the unconscious. This is a very long-winded way of saying that journaling as a form of meditation meditation is just as relevant as, you know, sitting on the floor across Lego for an hour. It's, it's all about tapping into something deeper and more true than our very busy little calculator brains. And there is, there is much more to the experience of being a human being than that. I think in meditation, you're sitting there and you're noticing these thoughts sort of coming in, you know, the Buddhists talk about sort of like clouds. They're just sort of rolling in and you can watch them. You realize there's, you try to touch them. They're sure to not really anything to them.

You're getting some distance from your thoughts. And then in journaling, you have a similar experience, which is, you know, you're writing. And so you're physically creating distance, like this thing was in your brain, and now it's on the page. So you have a foot, even a foot and a half of distance allows you to to see and think about your own thoughts with a little more objectivity. And then also there's this sense of like, whoa, where did that come from? That's not me. I don't agree with that. I don't like that. I don't have to do that. And so in both exercises, you're fundamentally getting

a disconnect in a positive way from your own thoughts or realizing that you have the power to say just because I think it doesn't mean I have to be it or doesn't mean I have to act on it or doesn't mean I have to continue to carry it around. And I think that's why both those exercises are at the root of two very different, very distant philosophies that are kind of coming upon in their own way, the same type of exercise or experience. Yeah, and I think, you know, we're talking about you and I coming,

maybe from two very different perspectives, but doing a similar kind of work, which is, hey, young people who might feel a little lost right now overwhelmed or anxious, there's a lot of different tools out there. Yes, there's tools. Tried and true. Tried and true, millennial. I don't mean millennials, but through the millennia and some come from spiritual traditions and some come from philosophical traditions. Of course, they were all influenced by each other. That's one thing we don't really know. So the Greeks who influenced the

Stoics, how much were the Greeks, the ancient Greek philosophers, influenced by the Torah and the Talmud and the Jewish philosophers. And how much were the Jewish philosophers influenced by the Zoroastrian philosophers? Because when you look at some, anyways, it gets very esoteric, but some Greek ideas really seem to come directly from Zoroastrianism, because all of a sudden, Zoroastrianism because all of a sudden

Zoroastrianism was all about like a heromazda and there's good and evil and you're just angel and devil and there's there's light and darkness and that's inside of us and it's outside of us and people if you give into the, you go to a fiery kind of hell existence. And then the Greeks were talking about it. And it's interesting because Jesus and the Bible really wasn't talking about it. And the whole idea of like burning in hell as some kind of kingdom that exists

after our bodies die, with a presided by a devil. Like, that's a Zoroastrian idea that went to ancient Greece that was put into practice in the Christian church about 300 years after the death of Jesus. He did talk about Gehenna. Anyways, it gets very esoteric, but it all influences itself. And I, and I,

it totally does. I mean, one of my favorite ones I like to point out to people is like, before he became known as Saint Paul, he was known as Paul of Tarsus, which is. Yes, all of Tarsus, yeah. Yeah, which is, was at the time, the home of stoarsus, which is. Yes, all of Tarsus, yeah. Yeah, which is, was at the time the home of stoic philosophy, where he almost certainly was introduced to those ideas, if not sort of deeply interested in them.

And so it's all kind of, it's all kind of in the water. You know, it's like, who was the first person to take a rock and chip away at it and make it into something sharp? You know, it's both something that was probably independently discovered, but also, as soon as it was discovered, it spread around. And I think I have trouble making much of a distinction between any of the spiritual traditions, which you also make this point in the book, when they all kind of boil down at some level to the same fundamental truths about the human experience, because at the end of the day, they're all dealing with the same fundamental humans. It doesn't matter when you lived or where you lived, like the fact that the vast majority of things

are outside of our control, the fact that we have this anxious desire to achieve and do things and procreate that we are mortal, you know, that there's people who have different moral compasses than us, people that do bad things and then we wonder, you know, are they going to get what's coming to them? You know, these are just fundamental parts of the human experience that all the philosophical and spiritual traditions are reckoning with at some level. So it shouldn't surprise us that they come to some shared conclusions. And the point I really want to, that I make in my book and that, and I think you and I share this idea is like, the stakes are really fucking high.

So this is not rain and Ryan having fun with philosophy and talking about these ideas that are kind of like, here's our little hobby and you know, there's, you know, these are like fun and interesting little quotes and stuff as some kind of academic game or something like that. Like our world is on the verge of collapse. We can pretend it's not, but it really is.

All the systems are breaking down, healthcare system, agriculture system, education system, the Union, and certainly the political system. This next election is going to be a doozy. But then we've got war in Europe that we haven't seen since World War II. And we've got China arming the South China seas and we've got climate change. And we've got mental health epidemic that is affecting the good half of the young people today. So and they're dying in droves and suicide has become the number one cause of death for young people. So the stakes are high. This is not some academic exercise on the side. We need to put into practice these ideas and especially fundamentally ideas, practical ideas that can help us serve one another, love one another, be compassionate

to one another, build community at the grassroots with one another, and strive to make ourselves better people so that we can help others. Martin Luther King said, you know, the most pressing issue is what are we doing for others? The most pressing question. So, you know, what are we doing for other people? And so that's why I wrote Soul Boom. I really, now I need to, like you did, I need to kind of move. And actually, I'd love to get your information, because I want to talk to you about your experience and the, with the Daily Stoic newsletter and, and website and now social media and, and video and podcasting and, and whatnot, because I just think these ideas are, their life and

death ideas. And it's, this isn't about what's the best political candidate. This isn't about what's the best political candidate, this isn't about what's the best legislation. We'll figure that out and hopefully make good solid, reasoned choices there, but it's much bigger and broader and more pertinent than that. I think you're right that philosophy is fundamentally a matter of life and death, right?

The Stoics called it the open door, but then later, you know, in the 20th century, some of the existentialists are sort of, they basically just, you know, to put it out there, they go, why shouldn't you just kill yourself, right? Like that's the stakes of philosophy, right? Philosophy is sort of asking yourself, doing the work, getting down to finding the meaning, the reasons to carry on, finding out how to cultivate a good life because the alternative is, why have a life at all, right?

And so I think they are trying to fundamentally answer these really important questions. And I think I take hard in the fact that this is a two, three, four thousand year old struggle that, you know, smart people have been thinking about this for a long time. They come to different conclusions, but they all are coming fundamentally to the conclusion that you should stick around.

Life can be good. You can find meaning amidst suffering and, you know and pain and frustration, but that it's not just gonna be handed to you and it's not necessarily obvious. And yeah, this is, you talk about people dying deaths of despair. Dispair is a killer.

And if you don't have meaning and values and a sense of what it's all about and why, it's really hard to endure the blows of fainting fortune and just waking up every day in the 2020s. You're exactly right. And I go back to that kung fu and Star Trek idea that, you know, unless we work on the kung fu part of ourselves, our inner wisdom, our serenity, our vision, our morals and values, yes, I said morals. That's right. Right and wrong.

Believe it or not, there is right and wrong. That exists, you know, from the Platonist, it would be the forms, right? But I do believe that it exists beyond just what our civil society views is right and wrong. You know, in Eastern Africa, genital mutilation of, you know, preteen girls is de-regor and totally accepted. I don't think it's just my Americanness that kind of says, no, that's wrong. That's not just because I'm living in contemporary California. That's just wrong.

It's just wrong. It's wrong. It's wrong. And invading a sovereign nation because you want to colonize them is wrong. When Russia does it, it was wrong. When we did it, it's wrong. It's just wrong.

So we work on the Kung Fu part of ourselves so that we can make the world better. And that's where I think, again, so much of the spiritual and philosophical discussion falls short of, you know, we make ourselves wiser so that we can work on justice from a stoic perspective. Yes. From a spiritual perspective. All the virtues are related. Yes. From a spiritual perspective, we make ourselves, we seek to become compassionate, wise, and serene, so that we can serve others, so that we can make the world a better place, and spread the light wherever we go. That's beautiful.

Mark Serely says that which does not transmit light creates its own darkness. I don't know exactly what that means from a scientific perspective, but I have always thought that at some level means like you have to sort of be what you want to see in the world. You have to sort of take what's good and reflect it outwards. And if you're negative, if you have bad values, if you see, you know, only what's wrong in the world, that also kind of becomes its own thing. Mike Tyson said, that which does not kill you makes you stronger. Michael Scott said you miss 100% of the shots, the goals you don't make.

And Wayne Gretzky also said that. Yes. Michael Scott quoting Wayne Gretzky. Thank you. I wanted to ask you about that actually. We talked about sort of anxious desire, and then we talked about sort of expectation. What is it?

I imagine you wanted this thing for a long time. You wanted to be successful. You wanted to be famous. You wanted to do great work. You wanted to break out. And that happens. What does it actually feel like to get there? Was it a delivery of every delivery on all your hopes and dreams and expectations? Or was there a little bit of a letdown? Yeah, it's interesting because this became front page news a week or two ago because I did, I think Bill Mars podcast. And I was talking about this idea of suffering and you know the human struggle for

happiness, finding happiness. And I mentioned like I spent a great deal of time on the office, really unhappy. And of course, it was misquoted and taken out of context and said, rain Wilson miserable on the set of the office. Rain Wilson spent the entire office unhappy. You can Google it. It's incredible how the media works. Head headline after headline making it seem like I'm this ungrateful miserable fuck and The fact is is that No matter how well things are going for us as human beings we have a tendency towards anxious discontent and my my Duka My suffering my anxious discontent on the set of the office was, you know, I wanted to be a bigger movie star.

I had a crack at doing a bunch of movies. They didn't turn out very good and people didn't really watch them. Or actually some of them, they are pretty damn good, but people didn't watch them and they didn't work at the box office. And okay, that's fine. But at the time I was just pulling my hair out like, ah, damn it, I want this movie deal and why can't I have this and why can't I have that and how come he's getting offered this and I'm not. And, you know, envy and pettiness and, you know, self-seeking. And, you know, again, I'm so grateful for that test because I look back on it now and like, you dipshit.

You were on the get- You had it all. It was the greatest job ever. Why couldn't you have just enjoyed it more? And I wasn't a spring chicken. I was, you know, I got cast in the office. I was 38, I think when I started playing Dwight, you know, so well into my 40s. And I was, you know, by this last several years, I was in a much better place. You know, it was kind of earlier on year 3, 4, 5 right in that area of the office. And um, but yeah, I had, I mean, it was, it was beautiful. It was a great group of people and a beautiful job and nice pay.

And we got along great. And I was playing one of the great TV characters of all time and, you know, lots of doors were open to me and getting invited to festivals and hotels and this and that and the other thing and just enjoy it, getting nominated for Emmys, like revel in it. It doesn't get better than this. It really doesn't. Oh, you're a TV star, but oh, you need to be a movie star. We want more. We're never satisfied. Never satisfied. What did the Stoic say about that? They said that exact thing. I think Sennaka's line was, and I don't think he's being glib here, obviously,

real poverty exists, but he said, poverty isn't having too little, it's wanting more. I think he wasn't speaking of the people who are actually in Poverst. He was looking around at the other rich, powerful, famous people in Rome of which he was one. And he saw how poor all of them were because they were comparing themselves to the people who had more, or they wanted everything. They weren't content with having a lot. They need the world was not enough.

And I think that's what we do ourselves, you know, we tell I think about this all the time I go my dream was to write one book that I thought if I could write a book that's that's what I that's what I wanted to do more than anything. And so, you know, I am well beyond playing with house money at this point. So, I am well beyond playing with house money at this point. I wanna keep doing good and I wanna keep doing more because I get enjoyment and satisfaction and meaning and I think it helps people, but I do try to remind myself, like if it sucks while I'm doing it, like what is that about?

What a fundamentally dumb way to do it if doing it is torture I don't have to do it anymore. I've already won like why not just have fun while I'm doing it And by the way that does seem to actually create better work Yes having fun while doing it and enjoying It's the the Bhagavad Gita says you are not entitled to the fruits of the labor, just the labor, entitled to the labor, but not to the fruits of the labor. So good. And wow, I love that you're going to, you outquoted me. I love it. I know the. I know the Gita. It's amazing. Of course. So, um, I'm going to read from the second greatest book next to the Bhagavad Gita and next to the

Daily Stoic. Soul Boom. Soul Boom. Because I just want to read this one thing. I say we end up with a culture that mirrors the famous quote by John D. Rockefeller, who when asked by a reporter, how much money is enough responded just a little more. And that's how we live. How much is enough? Just a little more. Oh, if I just get a little more, then I'll be happy. How much is enough?

And can I make a little bit more? That pretty much sums it up. To quote the esteemed philosopher David Lee Roth money can't buy happiness, but it can buy a yacht that sails right next to it. Maybe I don't know. I'm watching succession right now. They didn't seem too happy. They were on a nice boat.

I don't know. Is this going to be this blow people's minds, but I don't know a lot of happy people in Hollywood and I've met a lot of multi-multimillionaires and billionaires and not terribly happy. There's not an inverse. What is it? No, there's not a correlation between money and happiness. That's not to say that I don't really enjoy the

fact that I don't have to worry about how I'm going to pay my rent because I did spend years and years and years and years in that situation and it sucks. And if you're thinking about that, it's really hard to have these conversations. Sure. If you're like, shit, how am I going to keep my lights on? How am I going to keep my cell phone? How am I going to keep my car insurance? So I want to be sensitive to that, but it is absolutely true

that this is an essential part of the human condition that we need to address no matter what strata we're at. That's something that was very, very helpful to me. I too, because my work has sort of had some unique fans. I've met very successful athletes or business people or billionaires or whatever. And you know, you go, oh man, they must have like the life. It must be so cool.

I remember this one guy, he was like, oh come meet me in New York for lunch. And he met me, he was like, gave me this address. The address is his yacht on Chelsea Pears. And you know, it takes me and his yacht around the Statue of Liberty and back. And you're like, what imagine how cool it would be to be that successful? And then invariably, every one of the conversations I have with this people, at some point comes

down to they want to write a book and they want to ask my advice about it. And I go, they have everything in the world. They have all the money in the world. And what do they want to write a book and they want to ask my advice about it. And I go, they have everything in the world. They have all the money in the world. And what do they want to do? They want to do the thing that I get to do. So it comes back to the idea of, I better appreciate and be grateful for the fact that I get to do it. Right? That I get to do it. And I'm sure you, Hollywood is one of those industries also where the most powerful,

important people in the world in every other line of work, deep down what they'd really like to be is some of the, they'd like to be some of the things that you take for granted and get to do some of the things that you take for granted. And the fact that everyone else wants it in jealous of it doesn't necessarily mean that it's good, but it should give us some perspective and make us appreciate, you know, what we're lucky enough to get to do. Indeed. Yep. Absolutely. Speaking of which I interviewed your colleague Michael Schur a while ago, I think it's funny that multiple philosophical books have come out of that show.

Actually, you know, BJ's books are pretty great too. My kids are obsessed with them. Oh, yeah, that's great. That's interesting. And yeah, there could be a lot more written. I mean, Mindy Killing is a brilliant writer and great Daniels are showrunner. He's he's a fantastic thinker. He's got an incredible mind. So hopefully one day we'll be met with some philosophical work from from from Greg Daniels. And hopefully soon we get Creed Bratton's memoir because his life story is zonkers.

Well, as we wrap up here, I had one sort of question just and I thought it's worth sort of clarifying for the listeners. They might be wondering why we haven't talked a ton about the office, which I am a huge fan of. Talk to me about the position you guys are in and what's going on. the position you guys are in and what's going on. As an author, I look at the writers guild and the actors guild and I'm jealous because the authors guild is basically non-existent. We're all sort of lone wolves. We don't have any collective real ability to come together and fight for, you know, fight for sort of the

successful offers don't or just get to go on and be successful. They don't really get to or think much about the other people that are struggling and vice versa. So talk to me about that just as I think it's it's always worth communicating, you know, what a what a group is taking a stand about? Well, yeah, and you should get Mike sure to he's on the negotiating committee. Yeah, you should get him involved in this conversation. I don't know all the details, but I will say this that so the writers and actors are on strike. Essentially, this is very different than any other strike that's ever happened because this is a different than any other strike that's ever happened because

this is a completely different business model. In the past, strikes have been like, oh, our contract is up and we want 10% raises and the studio is only going to give us 5% raises and so we're going on strike and blah, blah, blah. But this is different. This is like, when you started watching the office, it was a very different television landscape than it is different. This is like, when you started watching the office, it was a very different television landscape than it is now.

So streaming services, subscriptions, and DVD. I've watched the office on DVDs. That doesn't exist anymore. That's crazy. Someone sent me a DVD of their favorite show. I don't think I have a DVD player in that. I don't know how to watch it. Yeah, yeah.

So my computer doesn't have a slot. Yeah, that's what she said. But yeah, so there's a number of different things on the table. With the new streaming model, of course, the streamers have gotten greedier. If you knew how little we made in residuals for our run on Netflix, your jaw would drop even though the office was watched something like seven billion hours of the office watched worldwide or something like that. It was crazy. We just got a pittance.

So there's not a correlation between streams, viewers, and pay, and there always has been. And so you're not rewarded for your efforts to make a hit show. And that's why there's so much, one of the reasons why there's so much crap on these streamers. But yeah, so it's fair pay and they're trying to get, you know, it used network shows had 22 episodes and large right, we had a writers room of 13, you know, and they were employed for 10 months out of the year and made a really good living. Now, they want to do, you know, eight episodes on Netflix, but they still want to own you

for 10 months out of the year. But they only want to do eight episodes. They don't want you on the set and they want to pay you less and have a smaller writer's room. So it's all kinds of issues like that. Like it's a whole new landscape. The problem is is that none of them

are really doing that well except Netflix and Apple and Amazon. They're a whole different beast because they sell widgets and they happen to have a side business, a side hustle with some content hoping that if they have good content, you'll buy more widgets from them. So that's a different business model. You can't compare what Apple does to what Sony does. And so that, how do you get them all on the same page?

And some of the other streamers are just not working. The business model for Paramount Plus, for peacock, some of these things, it's not working. And they're burning through money. There's this gold rush to trying to get subscribers. It's an unsustainable system. It's not, how do you find growth? Once everyone has decided what they're subscribing to,

you know, maybe a few people switch from, I'm gonna switch from peacock to Paramount Plus, or I'm gonna switch from HBO to Disney, and I can only allocate X amount of dollars for these subscriptions. But once you've maxed out, then there's no growth. So it's, and when they buy rights, it's worldwide. It's very complicated.

I'm not even doing it justice, but needless to say, we're up against a lot of greedy bastards. And, you know, you talk about justice and the Stoics fighting for justice. This is not about me. I've got enough money. This is not about me. I've got enough money. This is not about the stars. This is about middle-class actors and writers trying to put their kids through school and

pay their mortgages. I was in that boat for many years before I was on the office. I understand what it's like to be there. This is about a fairness for work in class,, middle class artists in Hollywood. Well, I think that actually ties pretty well into what we're talking about, which is, you know, there is a divergence of interest, right? The super successful actors, the people who have made enough

and then the people who are struggling, and what is beautiful, whatever you think politically about sort of unions or labor, is when a group of people sort of come together and sort of all decide to sacrifice even though they bear that sacrifice differently and it costs different amounts. But when people come together and sort of get engaged politically, they get engaged in sort of the economy, and they try to set rules or standards or sort of use that they come together to be stronger as a group than any

one individual would be. And we're all sort of, I think it's important that we remember that we are all the lucky recipients of groups coming together and doing that in the past. that we remember that we are all the lucky recipients of groups coming together and doing that in the past. That's why there's a eight hour work day, that's why there's a weekend, that's why all those, some of these laws are being overturned,

it's why children don't have to work in minds or factories. Like we're all the lucky recipients of people, that's why you have a pension fund or whatever, you know, health insurance. It's because people came together and took stands and took risks to hopefully sort of go, Hey, here's what we'd like the future to look like. We don't have complete control over it, but we can try to set set the rules to be at least fair or sustainable. That's very well said. And let's draw a larger line there to a soul boom. rules to be at least fair or sustainable. That's very well said.

And let's draw a larger line there to a soul boom. Sorry, I'm going to bring it back to my book. Yeah. But what the hell? We need a spiritual revolution because we need to do that on a global scale. For a lot of issues. For a lot of big, big issues. And this isn't about Democrats and Republicans. This is about human

beings sharing the limited resources of this planet, acting as if those resources are unlimited. And living together in peace and harmony and cooperation, and fighting for justice on a global scale and seeking ever greater wisdom, not just individually, but collective wisdom. Beautifully said, and you say it beautifully in the book, and I'm so glad that we got to have this. It was a total honor for me. I really did enjoy the book. You can see I took quite a few notes.

Wow, look at that. Impressive. There we go. This was awesome. Well, I took quite a few notes. Wow, look at that. Impressive. There we go. This was awesome. Well, I really appreciate it. Ryan, it was a pleasure, a big fan of yours. I'm so happy for your success and the work that you do. And I hope we can speak again and meet in person in high five

and wrestle for charity. Yes, yes. Well, wrestle over our, that's how we'll settle our philosophical differences. I love that through Mortal Kombat. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.

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