The Daily Stoic - Timm Chiusano on Courage, Creativity, and Finding Your Purpose in the Corporate World

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Timm Chiusano was working as a creative executive at a Fortune 100 company in New York City when he decided to start posting daily videos on TikTok, documenting and sharing his appreciation for the little, almost mundane, moments of each day amidst his rigorous schedule. Now a few years later, Timm has over 1 million TikTok followers and just recently quit his corporate job. He is the online mentor for many when it comes to navigating career decisions, corporate politics, and creating a successful schedule to squeeze the most out of each day. Timm came to the Daily Stoic studio and talked with Ryan about the benefits of self-reflection, capturing daily life in real-time, lessons he has learned in the corporate world, overcoming imposter syndrome as a creator, the difference between appreciation and gratitude, and how you never really know when it’s the right time to make a career change. You can follow Timm on TikTok and Instagram @timmchiusanoSubscribe to Timm’s content on YouTube @TimmChiusano77Check out Timm’s podcast LONG WINDED BY NATURE✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. We've got a bit of a commute now with the kids and their new school. And so one of the things we've been doing as a family is listening to audiobooks in the car. Instead of having that be dead time, we want to use it to have a live time. We really want to help their imagination soar. And listening to Audible helps you do precisely that. Whether you listen to short stories,

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And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing right Now on Audible. You can sign up right now for a free 30-day Audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You'll get Right Thing Right Now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankenbaum. And in our podcast Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season we're exploring the life of Marilyn Monroe. From a tough childhood growing up in foster homes, she became one of the most photographed and famous stars of the 20th century. But off camera the real Marilyn was shrewd, vulnerable, funny and also full of surprises.

I've just come back from Hollywood. I was reminded how omnipresent Marilyn Monroe's image still is. You can barely turn a street without seeing a billboard or an ad imitating her image. It feels like she is still with us in the most visual way imaginable. She is so important as a cultural figure. And Marilyn Monroe is one of those people

who I've seen millions of times, but wish I'd known more about. So I'm really excited to be talking about her life, her times, and her legacy with you, Afua. Follow Legacy Now wherever you get your podcasts. Or binge entire seasons early at ad free on Wondery Plus. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life.

And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast.

I guess people see me now as a writer. That's what I do. But for a good chunk of the writing of my books and for my life, for almost all my 20s, I wasn't an entrepreneur, I wasn't a full-time writer so much as I was a guy with a job. I dropped out of college, I worked for Robert Greene, but I worked every day at a desk at a talent management agency.

That's what I was telling you about last week or whenever that was in the Francis Ford Coppola interview. I had to play office politics, or whenever that was in the Francis Ford Coppola interview. I had to play office politics. I had to figure out interpersonal relationships. I just had to manage like life in an office. And then I left there, I've told this story before, I think I told it on Roganite, left there.

Then I was at American Apparel and I worked at American Apparel. Not just work there, I ran a team at American Apparel where I had to think about not just like working in the system, but helping other people work in the system, the corporate world. This obviously isn't something that the Stoics talk a lot about because they didn't fully know about it.

I mean, Mark Sreelis talks about not being overheard, complaining at court, and he talks about some good lessons and habits that he learns from Antoninus, but I mean, just being the emperor is not the same as being a mid-level manager at a company or being a product designer at a company or being an executive or even a chief executive. These are just very different things. But what they all share, what all occupations share, present and past, is stress, anxiety, difficult people, trying to find fulfillment and happiness.

It involves things that are outside of our control, namely other people. That's what Bargazero was talking about when he said the obstacles away. And then also just appreciating, being grateful, playing the long game, you know, succeeding, growing, learning purpose. It just involves a lot.

There was a great piece I saw in Rolling Stone last year. It was about this guy, it said, who's teaching TikTok to chill the fuck out. And I read it, I was fascinated. I was talking to my podcast producer, Claire, about it. And I thought, oh, he might be good for the podcast. And she was like, you know, I actually follow him on social media and he shares stuff

from the Daily Stoke all the time. I said, oh, that's perfect. That guy is Tim Chuzano, and he posts these creative vlogs every day that put an emphasis on little moments, interactions, like sort of details that define the day, how to be intentional, how to be philosophical, how to be a good person, how to be a happy person. It actually kind of reminds me of like a TikTok version of Casey Neistat, who I've known forever.

And it turns out as we were talking, he's based a lot of what he does on Casey. He has now over a million followers on TikTok. He's a great follow. And he's writing a new book called How to Get Addicted to Appreciation, which is a lovely title that'll come out next year. He was an executive at a Fortune 100 company in New York City.

Again, like I've always felt it was stressful working somewhere and then I like visit an office building in New York City because I'm meeting someone or recording something and I'm just like, what is this? I just, I can't imagine that environment. I can't even imagine like the commute and all the people. It just stresses me out. I mean, there's a reason I live in rural Texas.

So anyways, Tim had just left his job to work on the book and he's now become sort of a consultant and an advisor and he's just going down a path that I'm familiar with, which is what happens when you leave that corporate job to become a creator and author to work for yourself. And he came out to the Daily Stokes studio, turned out we had a bunch of friends in common. That was really cool. We talked about that. When is the right time to leave that job? How do you be a creative person inside maybe a not so creative environment? How do you have boundaries? How do you listen to feedback and how the Stokes teach us to appreciate the mundane things in life. I was also interested in the difference between gratitude and appreciation and also how do we deal with frustration.

So a bunch of awesome stuff in this interview. I'll leave that with you now. You can follow him on Instagram at TikTok at Tim Choose-Ano and I'll just get into it. Thanks Tim. You're saying you and you're talking to yourself but you're also not talking to yourself. That's always what I've liked the most about Marcus Aurelius says meditations is he's he's talking to himself But if he was really just talking to himself, would he have written it down, you know, like there's kind of it's like a You but it means everyone. Yep. That's totally the intention here It was also it took the stress off of me having to talk about my day in a way that felt very

Look at me. Look at what I'm doing. Sure. I wanted to put the off of me having to talk about my day in a way that felt very, look at me, look at what I'm doing. I wanted to put the video watcher into the shoes of, here's what your day would be like if you were doing this, especially in a corporate space where it's like, who really gives a shit about the fact that I'm going into meet with finance and doing all these things. But knowing that there is so much anxiety around the workspace overall, and knowing that there's a lot of confusion

as to how you climb the quote unquote corporate ladder, the more I got comfortable by saying you, I could put the person in the shoes and be like, no, these are things that you can actually do. And this day might look crazy because of the alarm clock, because of all the rigor that goes into it, but it's really not. Like I'm just kind of a dumb ass

that's floating through this like everybody else to a certain degree. And therefore you should feel comfortable that if you have aspirations in any capacity around any of this stuff, you with thousand percent can do it. But is there something for you in breaking down your own day to yourself? Like, do you find, like, like, I have to imagine as you're doing it, the audience is benefiting, but that's almost like an indirect byproduct of you sort of just reflecting by repeating to yourself

what you did and why you did it. Yeah, that's kind of the real benefit. Yes, it also allows me to be self deprecating in a way that I'm more comfortable with. Yeah. And then I can take whatever angle that I feel like in the moment, especially because for the most part, with the exception of the past 60 days, they were all done off the side of my desk or literally at five o'clock in the morning off the top of my head, unscripted, just sitting there being like, what the hell happened yesterday and how do I describe it in a reasonable way? Yeah. being like, what the hell happened yesterday? And how do I describe it in a reasonable way? And so, yes, you're right.

It gave me that flexibility so that I could, you know, make something feel more elaborate when I needed to or dumb something down or just take whatever angle that I needed out of my own selfishness. Yeah, the Stokes talk about putting every day up for review. It seems like you're kind of, you're kind of capturing your day in real time.

And then is it weird for you to look at it the next day as you're editing it and putting it together? Like, I can't believe I did all that, or why did I do it this way? Like, what is that process like? A little bit of both. There was definitely an element of how many mistakes did I make?

And how can I learn from that today? You know, in any given meeting where I'm like, I should have said it this way, or I should have had this tone with whatever it is. That definitely allowed for some reflection. A lot of days where I looked at it, I'd be like, I don't remember what happened yesterday. Everything is just a whirlwind right now. So it did allow me to be more present, which is why I love stoicism,

because there's that element. If you're not here in the moment, then you're just nowhere. And it did allow me to just kind of grab clips randomly, but still be present in that moment, be thoughtful about angles and storytelling to a certain extent, but it wouldn't drive what I was doing. I was literally just sticking my phone up and like, letting it balance in a corner wherever I could have my like pseudo permanent tripods. And then the next day I look back and hopefully be like, oh, I didn't remember that part. Or like, oh, that was cool. That person in the purple jacket that crossed in front of me that I didn't even notice. But oh yeah, and I do kind of remember

that like, oh, that was a dope outfit that that person had. So it does wrap all of it together and has allowed for me to be a bit more thoughtful about how present am I actually on any given day and how can I also learn from my mistakes? Yeah, it's kind of like a video journal that you're doing instead of writing it down and having the discussion like, why did you do this? You should do this.

Did you notice that, you know, here you do that. You're sort of capturing it in real time and then like reflecting on it the next day, which is like what I try to do in my journals every day. Then you have to publish it, which must be weird. Oh, the whole thing has been so surreal, man. Like this has been the most bizarre four years. It's almost five years to the day since I posted my first tick-tock really and I'm 46 years old I'll be 47 in about a month and

To say this has been surreal would be a gross understatement, but obviously amazing I mean the fact that I'm here having this conversation with you at the end of this very surreal summer where I pulled the rug out From underneath myself relative to my corporate job real summer where I pulled the rug out from underneath myself relative to my corporate job and had been kind of like floating in the abyss trying to figure out who I am and what's going on and did I make a huge horrible mistake or is this all heading in the right direction? And then trying to be able to provide a bit of encouragement along the way. So it's like I did all of those things while trying to make the most of the opportunity in any given moment. while trying to make the most of the opportunity in any given moment.

And then, yes, now I'm here, I'm looking back and I'm like, what the fuck has happened? Like, this is so weird. Like, on what planet is this actually possible in the first place? And I just hope I don't screw it up along the way. Yes, yeah, I know that decision very well. So you sort of have this thing, it's going well,

it's interesting, you've gotten some encouragement. You clearly see other people have made a thing of their version of it. And then how do you know when to make that leap? Yes, which is the ultimate question that I don't know that there's a right answer. I don't know that I chose. You won't know for a long time later

if it was the right decision or not. Do you know if your timing was right? I assume you know it's the right decision. But yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah, in retrospect, it seems to have worked out. Should I have done it sooner or later? I guess that's the question. I think one of the things that I, so I, this would have been late 2010, early 2011. I decided I wanted to write my first book. So I went to my boss and I was like, Hey, I'm ready to leave. I'm going to do this book. I can give you as much sort of time as you want as far as a transition, but I got to do this probably within the next like six months.

And so I had to work myself up to the place of like making the leap for which I thought you could not undo. And then they were like, well, actually what if we just like kept paying you and you just didn't have to come to the office anymore? And we ended up working out sort of an arrangement, but like working myself up to that position, that sort of clarity and confidence was the hard part. And then I think in retrospect, leaving, and then you start to process

and you debrief what you went through. There were things that happened at that job that I wish, there were times that in retrospect, I wish I'd quit, but I was afraid to be without a job, you know? Or even though I was working towards getting to a place where I didn't have a job. So I think one of the things you take from it is like, you think, hey, if I like walk away from my job

and it doesn't work out, I'm gonna end up under a bridge somewhere. And then you only, by doing it a couple of times, that you realize, oh, this stuff happens to people all the time. Companies go out of business. People have to move. People make mistakes. And they figure it out.

I remember when I dropped out of college, I really felt like I was taking my life in my hands. And if I was talking to a 20 year old now, I'd be like, you can't screw this up. Like it'll either work and you'll be proud of yourself or it won't work and you'll just have to take a small step back. But I think making the decision feels

overwhelmingly terrifying at the time. How much of knowing stoicism as well as you do back then played into that decision? And how do you think that that can help somebody in those decisions? Because there's no way, obviously you were not the first person to go through it. I'm not the second person to go through it. This is a conundrum that people send me LinkedIn requests about all the time. It's like, how do you know when to leave, even if it's like making change? I remember when I was leaving or thinking about leaving that the person I was dropping out of college to work for I remember I was talking to him and I was like, you know, what if it doesn't work out something like this and he goes, he's like, you know, when I was in college, he got

something I forget what it was like to break some ridiculous thing. He was like, I was in the hospital for a year. And he's like, do you know how often it has come up that it took me five years to graduate from college? He was like, literally never. You know, it will not affect your life in any way. And the idea that like, I think what we do in our heads is we ratchet up the stakes of these decisions and so they feel existential.

And then, you know, there are people who screw up, there are mistakes. We're so worried about like regret or doing the wrong thing that we cut ourselves off from like a lot of upside. So I think what I learned doing that that then made, you know, leaving my corporate job to be a writer easier was just this sense that like,

if you screw up, you just go back a little bit. And I think that's really, like, you up, you just go back a little bit. And I think that's really, like, you only get that having done it a few times. And so like when people talk about courage, you know, it should be scary the first time you do it, but it becomes less scary the more familiar you get with it. And to me, that's a big part of stoicism is sort of like

thinking it through, but then also putting yourself in difficult, challenging situations. And what you take from that is a kind of confidence and a self-assuredness that's based on something real, not ego, but based on your own ability of like, I've leapt off things before and I figured it out on the way down, which is obviously what will happen for you. Were you cognizant of that when you made the decision to go write the book? Yeah, for sure. I was like, hey, when I dropped out of college,

it seemed scary. People didn't think it would work. And you figure it out day to day. And so I knew that's what would happen. I knew I would figure it out day to day. And I knew, I think sometimes when people think about risky things, they think entrepreneurs love risk. Actually, what entrepreneurs try to do is hedge against risk.

So they take one big risk, and then they try to find ways to hedge against other forms of risk. So I kind of knew, like, okay, hey, I'm doing this thing, but I can always go back. Oh, actually, it turns out I'm not actually quitting my job. You kind of think about the ways that it's not so scary. Like when we opened this bookstore,

we're like, okay, we're doing this crazy thing, but we were already going to need to rent office space anyway. So 40% of the cost is something we already would have spent. And then so you just you kind of look for ways to like, go like, how do I take this thing that seems terrifying and without a safety net and realize that actually you have a bunch of safety nets that you're not even thinking about. Yeah, that makes sense. It's still terrifying. And then writing a book, like people go like, oh, just trust the process, safety net and realize that actually you have a bunch of safety nets that you're not even thinking about. Yeah, that makes sense. But it's still terrifying. And then writing a book, like people go like,

oh, just trust the process, right? Well, you're doing something that you can't trust because you've never done it before. So like, you don't actually know if you can do it. Like you have a sense that you can do it because you've done other hard things in your life. You know, you don't quit and you know, other idiots have done it, you know, but like, you don't know until you've done it.

And I think also just being okay with that is part of it too. Like if it's not scary, then one, you're probably not risking anything. And then two, like courage isn't, isn't involved. Like if, if I could tell you or anyone that, hey, you're gonna quit your job, you're gonna go in on this book thing, it's gonna turn out to be the greatest decision you ever made, it's obviously gonna succeed.

Let me like, well then, if life offered those kinds of guarantees, then everyone would take those kinds of risks all the time. And then there wouldn't be much upside in them because it would, the upside is in the gamble. Like that's what's creating the outsized gain. So I always just try to go with like, it's supposed to be hard, it's supposed to be scary.

And how else am I gonna learn if I can do this if I don't do it? Yeah, totally. And that's where the good stories are too, right? Of course. You're at this point where you've done this thing and it's right before your daughter's 12th birthday and you're freaking out about X, Y, and Z.

It's super boring if it's, oh, and this played out exactly as I thought it was going to and everything was great. And let me tell you about how amazing the party was when we celebrated the blah because the cheese plate was, like that's just not fun. I feel like I just slipped into one of the monologues

of your videos right there. I could see how you do it. Sometimes, it's like, you don't have to actually put the voice on when you're telling me what you're gonna do in the next one. I'm like, I don't mean to. It just kind of comes out at this point. It's probably a sign that the work

is sort of authentically you also. It really feels that way. It's funny now that I've gotten more comfortable with all of it, that it really is just this inherent part of me at this point that goes all the way back to when I was like five years old and some of the things that my mom exposed me to

that I'm like, oh, this makes perfect sense that my sense of humor and my perspective on the world would be here. And these are the things that I'm doing, and then if my wife puts up with it, then all the better. Well, that's the other thing is like we want our kids to take risks. We want our kids to try things. If your kid, you know, flash forward in the future, your kids in their 40s and they're, they don't love what they're doing. They have this chance to do something else. Should they do it? Should they not do it?

You'd be like, of course you should, you know? Like, and then, and then with ourselves, we'd come up with reasons to not do those things. And then, and then, so you have to think about, like when you think about mitigating the risk, but then also the risks of not acting, it's like, what message are you sending? Right, and these things that we would tell our best friends in these situations,

especially from like an encouragement and a reminder about what they bring to the table, that we struggle so mightily to tell ourselves. And that's so, I've found that so interesting, especially recently when I get into dark places, cause it's very easy to be like, and this summer in particular, has been extraordinarily difficult for me to go from

hard rigor and routine of the corporate world to feeling like I'm floating through things and all these amazing experiences being with my in-laws in Oregon a bunch, but then also this massive anxiety of like, I'm not working right now, but wait, am I working right now? And then the things to your point of that you would tell your daughter, your friend, et cetera,

about being okay with risk, believing in yourself a bit more, being able to see the upside of what you bring to the table that we as individuals have a very hard time, at least I think most people have a hard time saying those things to themselves to get them to that next place that they want to go when Everyone deserves that be it. It's something that we'll give away, but we can't give to ourselves Yes one of my favorite things from Senegal is saying like how do I know I'm making progress and as a philosopher and he goes I I have begun to be a better friend to myself. And yeah, we'll give things to our friends or we will encourage things in our friends. Like if your friend asked you for a favor

or wanted to like come to you with something that they were struggling with, like they were gonna be vulnerable and open about something, you'd be like so proud of them for doing it. And you would appreciate that they gave you a chance to be of service for them. And then we're struggling,

or we have this thing that we're secretive about or don't wanna share, and we somehow think it's like this enormous imposition and we would never ask anyone else for it. And so yeah, it's this weird thing where we'll give it to other people, but the idea of asking for it for ourselves is not just difficult, it's like anathema to who we are.

It's really kind of crazy. Yeah, why is that? I don't know, but it holds us back in so many ways. It's like, we will ask, like, here's a really practical one, like at work. If someone didn't understand, if you ask someone to do something and they didn't understand what you were asking,

and they said, I don't really understand, could you explain this to me so I could do a better job? You'd be like, yes, thank you. You were like, I actually have a bunch that I wanted to tell you about this, but I didn't wanna bother you with it. And so now I can really explain it, right? And then meanwhile, somebody asked us to do something

and we don't quite understand the instruction or we don't understand the term they mentioned or the analogy they made. And then we're like, I guess I'm just gonna have to figure this out on myself. I guess I'm just gonna have to guess what they want. And so what we would appreciate someone doing for us, we then don't do to someone else

thinking that it's selfish or annoying or waste their time. And then we promptly waste a bunch of their time by not doing the thing right. It's crazy. Yeah. Well, in the corporate world, I understand why that happens, because in a lot of places,

people will set bad precedence that you don't do that. You can't ask that follow-up question. And I think it's on leadership in those organizations in that department, your direct boss, to create an environment where you can say, you cool, are there any questions? And you build up that trust over time so they can- I can see that you don't understand what I'm saying.

So like, ask your question, please. I see the look in your eye. Tell me what's going through your head right now. And that's when you can have, I was actually talking about this with somebody that I worked with who picked me up at the airport yesterday and let me stay at their house so I could come down here. And she was saying we had lightning in a bottle for these handful of years, that it was me and four of my direct reports at the time. And it's because of what we're discussing right now, like that trust when you can put it on the table so that individuals do feel more comfortable saying,

I have no idea what the hell you just said. Like, you gotta tell me more about that. Or, you know, how do I make sure that we spread this to the rest of the team? So it's not just, hey, the top five people in the department of 240 are all cool and comfortable with each other. How do you really make... Because if you can do that and you can empower people, and especially in that relationship where it's, I need you to understand what's happening here so that we can go get these

company goals or whatever's happening, that's where you can really unlock. And people deserve that too. You shouldn't be scared to ask a follow-up question or you shouldn't be ashamed of like, oh, I don't know that off the top of my head. So it's remarkable what you can give to yourself. That's a strength. If you can bring that to the table and say, I don't know what you just said and have no fear, regardless of whatever kind of environment you might be in, then you're consistently learning and you're also kind of pushing yourself in regards to what's my comfort level with admitting

that I don't know everything all the time, which a lot of people struggle with. No, that's an idea from Epictetus, he says it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know. And so like, if you either think you know everything or you think you know nothing, like it's not possible for you to, like if you think you're an idiot and you can't learn things, both of those are kind of self-fulfilling prophecies. And so the ability to say like, I don't understand,

I don't know, I have a question, and the ability to believe that you are a person capable of learning things. These are like the most important attitudes that you can have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I'd love about what you do, the daily Stoics, Stoicism in general,

is how it applies to so many different aspects of life. I was listening to your conversation with Gary Vaynerchuk and also your conversation with Matt Choi and how it applies to your ability to be the fact that you're complicit when somebody else says something and you're like, I take offense to that or like, I'm so annoyed right now. If you were able to actually accept that that is true, that you are complicit in those situations, do you know how much stress you would relieve

from yourself and corporate America on a day in and day out basis? Crazy. It's nuts. That's like a 90% lift of weight off of your shoulders. And that's just one example of all of these things that seem to span corporate America, running, entrepreneurship, writing a book, being a parent. That's what I've loved in, as I was connecting the dots for this conversation, I was like, man, there's so much that applies here, both in the nitty gritty of

hardcore corporate America, but then also why do you run every day incessantly and feel like you can't get away from it almost. The corporate example I think of being offended, where we're complicit in it, what the Stokes would talk about is that to me, the quintessential example is like you get an email and then you're offended by the tone. But the tone doesn't exist. You decided that three periods meant something or you decided that K meant something versus okay or yes, right? And look, obviously as human beings, one of our skills is we're good at noticing little things. We're incredibly perceptive animals, but we're so perceptive that we can often perceive things where it doesn't exist.

And I think that's one of the things you learn when you get in a position of leadership or you become a boss is now suddenly people are telling, you're hearing from people how they interpreted things that you did. And you're like, I was busy. I said K because it was the fastest response that I had. And I was running between two meetings. I meant literally nothing but you are making,

and I've had employees where it almost just ultimately came to a place where it didn't work because of what they brought to the table. They were so sensitive. I don't mean in a snowflake way, but they were just often intuiting or interpreting things as being negative about them. And it's like, I'm literally not thinking about you at all. Like, I was busy, and that's why I didn't notice you

in the hall, right? And so our ability to take an objective thing or a thing that's not about us and make it about us or make it hurtful or rude, or do they not think I'm a valuable member of the team anymore? Are they getting ready to move on from me? When you get in this whole thing,

you realize you've had a whole conversation with yourself about someone who has 50 of you that they're working with. And you're just not as significant as your ego is making you out to be and thus torturing yourself. There's such a small percentage that I've seen, percentage of people that have that awareness that I found the team operated best

when I understood that that was something that I had to carry for them. Yes. That especially in a, you know, the difference between a place where khakis may not be, you know, that's like the only thing you could wear when you show up on campus. Yeah. And 100,000 person company, lots of rules and regulations, not a lot of personality. lots of rules and regulations, not a lot of personality.

I've had to be fully okay with the fact that how I said good morning, the tone in which I would say good morning, could have an impact on someone's entire day. And especially getting into a larger role at 35, that kind of fucked me up in the head. But I would say in a good way, where I would start to carry that, I need to be super cognizant

of the fact that my number one responsibility is for people to go home at the end of the day and say, today was a good day. Because if they can do that on a consistent basis, all the complicated bullshit that goes along with corporate America and all the other policy and other stuff will start to sort itself out and like our KPIs and like our goals will be easier to hit if they're okay with that. And it did mean probably an unbalanced burden of that understanding that as much as I wanna be like,

okay, fine in this moment, that person is gonna potentially read it eight different ways. And then I might have to deal with whatever those ramifications are because they're going to spiral and this is going to be their next decision. And then they're going to go to somebody else and waste 10 minutes being like, Hey, is Tim mad at me about this? And I do think that there's in corporate, because of how much impact our jobs, corporate

America has on mental health. I do think bosses, especially when it comes to like higher level and the CEOs in the space need to be cognizant of the fact that what we're discussing now is not a strong skill set across the board to be able to understand that like, I don't need to overanalyze everything. Yeah, well, no, that's the tension, right? So you as the individual following the advice from the Stokes have to go look, if somebody says something, I'm choosing to be offended.

I control my emotions. I'm responsible for my feelings. And then you have to flip it when you're in the position of leadership or responsibility, even though you don't actually control how other people interpret what you say, and it's their fault if they take it this way versus that way, you still have to expend an immense amount of effort anticipating how things are gonna be interpreted. So it's like, I go through the world

trying not to be offended. And I also go through the world knowing that like, look, I'm not gonna please everyone and some people are gonna be offended by what I say, but it's still my obligation as both a boss who's trying to just get things done and then a human being who's trying to be decent to think about the weight of the words that I'm choosing

and make sure that I'm not unnecessarily offending someone. And if, hey, knowing this person can handle no bullshit straight talk and this person, you gotta sandwich it with a bunch of compliments. And this person, like if it's not in writing, they're not gonna be able to handle it. Understanding that you have a lot of, not control,

but you have to dial it just right or you're gonna needlessly hurt people or just not be effective if you're not thinking about the consequences of your words and actions on other people. Again, even though the end of the day, it's their responsibility and you don't control it. Yeah, sounds a lot like parenting as well.

Totally, yes. Just thinking about like, yeah, how you deliver the message, what is the message, what's the vibe of the message. It's much more complicated than, I think sometimes you can read the stoics and it seems very of the message? There's just it's a it's much more complicated than I think sometimes you can read the stoics and seems very straightforward, like, say what's true. And it's like, okay, but sometimes that's going to blow up in your face. That's not to say you lie, but you have to figure out how the best way to deliver that truth. Yeah. So it's actually heard by the flawed person you're delivering. Yeah. And that you're outcome oriented as well, right? Like if my objective here is to simply get the broccoli

to get eaten and to have there not be a lot of drama around that, what is the best way to make that happen? Yes. And then, you know, and whether that's, hey, we need a revision to this PowerPoint deck and the person's going to freak out because it's 4.45 and whatever day, but like here, the, you know, things that are happening

to make that a need right now. And then thinking about, okay, if I want the person to not freak out, I still need the thing to get done. Then I think that that kind of starts to encompass plus the understanding that they may interpret this in a certain way and be like, oh, you're just doing this to be mean because you don't like whatever about me and that's why I have to eat the broccoli or, you know, I'm in trouble because I messed up this PowerPoint deck. Those are the variables that, you know, sometimes we got to bring into our head and then... Well, every person needs a different message. Like one of my sons is like to get something through to him, I'm not saying you yell, because

he doesn't respond to yelling, but it's like, you really have to over deliver this message. And you have to deliver it multiple times for it to pierce whatever the sort of defensive bubble slash not paying attention slash, you know, just like determination of him. And then it wasn't until my youngest started to get to the age where he was doing some of the things that we have struggled with my oldest with a bunch. And then you're like, you can't do that. Like you cannot bite people. I don't know how to communicate this. You can't bite people.

And then watching that just like crush my youngest. And you realize, oh, you're much more sensitive than your brother. So I have, for the first eight years of this person's life, been calibrating a severity and an intensity of message so it can be received by this one person who wants to hear it. And then this one over here is on a totally different frequency. And so if I only have one way of delivering messages, it's still not gonna get through over here

and it's gonna crush this one over here. And so yeah, with kids, you sort of learn how to dial in the message just right. There's some line, I think, from Confucius. This student comes to him, and he's like, you should do this. Then another student comes to him, and he's like, you should do this. And then this other student says,

but you just gave them very different messages. One, he told it to zoom in, and. One, he told it to like zoom in and the other he told them to zoom out. The third student is sort of perplexed by this, but that's life, right? That's what the Confucius says. It's like, some students need to hear this and some students need to hear that.

And I think that's how it goes for people. Like the message can be the same, but the angle at which it's delivered or how it's explained can have an enormous impact as far as which it's delivered or how it's explained can have an enormous impact as far as how it's received. Yeah, that sounds a lot like your conversation with Gary about I say the same seven things. I just say them in different ways.

And that's so interesting about everything that we do inherently, because there might be repetition in this. It's just a matter of who is the audience and then how does it get across? And I found that the self-awareness in that can really be the key. If you actually are cognizant of how you might be coming across and that that has a big of an impact on what the outcome is as much as like the person who is hearing it, that can be lightning and a bomb, especially from a career perspective, when I think people struggle with a lot

in an office environment, they don't understand how important that variable is of like understanding that the direction may sound very different, but it's because of the audience, and it's not necessarily because they're like, wanna send people in totally different directions. Well, yeah, and you're saying the same seven things and it might seem like repeating to you,

but if you understand that one person didn't hear the first six, they only heard the seventh, you go, oh yeah, you didn't repeat yourself at all because the message wasn't, the first six aren't appealing or attractive to that person. The seventh is what lands. And this is something you learn as a creator too. You go like, am I just doing the same thing

over and over again? Are people getting tired of hearing this from me? And there's a certain amount of ego and narcissism in that. That's why self-consciousness is so often the enemy of good art, is you're assuming that people are paying way closer to attention to you than they actually are. You're assuming this world in which there's someone

who watches everything that you do and they fucking don't. They're not paying close attention. Oh, you're not an important part of their life at all. And so when you don't say things in a new way or another way, you don't repeat yourself. What you're actually doing is depriving some new person who's never heard of you at all a chance to hear that thing. But I think the fear of repeating yourself

is often rooted in a narcissism or an assumption that people are playing really close attention. Just like imposter syndrome, people think, oh, they're trying to find me out. And it's like, they don't even know you exist. Like imposter syndrome implies, or, you know, are they gonna notice I wear the same shirt like eight days apart?

And it's like, no one is outfit tracking you. You don't exist to them. And so that sort of self-consciousness, that belief that people are following what you're doing very closely, it actually prevents you from doing good stuff that can resonate with people. Do you have family members that follow very closely?

Do you have anybody in your life that's like, watches everything and all of a sudden you're getting unsolicited advice from coroners who are like, I have to unhear that? Yeah, sometimes it's like, your mom is not representative of your audience. At this point, my wife, there's just too much of it. And the idea that she would read my 16th book, you know, is insane and delusional to ask.

So it's actually gotten into a nice place where like, we're finally like free of like, did you see this? And then I'm hurt that she didn't see it because we're just like, this is just too much. Like, it'll be like, hey, by the way, you should actually see what we posted today. I wanted your opinion on it, versus like the assumption that you're caring,

because it's just too much. You do it long enough, and it's just too much to ask of one person. Yeah, I'm still in that space where, because I'm still a solo artist, I need the feedback. I can't ask her to watch a YouTube and listen to a podcast and all these things I'm just trying to like scatter everywhere at this point. But I will get calls from my dad that's like,

hey, you probably don't want to hear this, but you know, be careful of the vocal fry on these things. When you like, I'm like, dude, I can't like, I appreciate it, but, and he knows it too, but like that, I feel like I get stuck in that conundrum of some people with all the best intentions will get into every single nook and cranny.

And some people in your life that you may not want to hear everything that you say, because there's some things you want to say that you don't want their permission for. Sometimes it's about them. Yes, or you don't necessarily need them to say that you don't want their permission for? Sometimes it's about them. Yes, or you don't necessarily need them to say, oh, I didn't know you felt that way the other day. I'm so sorry about this. Or, hey, are you okay because of this?

Like, do we need to have a serious conversation? Yeah, I don't want to process this with you. Me doing it was me processing it. Exactly. Exactly. We don't need to chat. And especially early on. And you kind of sometimes, you have to have a conversation sometimes with people,

particularly people in your life, parents, depending on your relationship with them, where it's like, hey, this is what I do. This is not only what I do, this is my life. And so you're not gonna like everything that's in it. And I definitely don't need your permission. So like, it might be better for you not to pay close attention.

Did you have that conversation with people? Yeah, you do. And I met, like for a comedian, it's, I think, a good example. It's like, look, I have to make fun of the things in my life, including the people in my life. So like, maybe this isn't a part of my work that you're a part of for both of our sakes

because it comes back to that self-consciousness. You want all the things that I, and I don't have a lot of examples, but there's just a few things here or there in my work that if I could do over again, I would. And a lot of them I can trace back to, and often it was people that I don't care that much about, like not just people I know,

as opposed to like people who I'm close with, where I was thinking in the moment what they were going to think about it. And the whole point of art is it's supposed to dispense with all of that. It's supposed to be truth, right? So not, hey, if I do this, what will you think and how will it go?

You're supposed to say what you want to say and capture what you're trying to capture. That how's this gonna play is not a helpful sort of layer to add on top of it. And so you wanna strip that out. And yeah, sometimes you have to have some not so fun conversations with people. And like not feel guilty about it. It's like, look, if they wanted to come off better, I forget who said this, but it's a,

who wrote Bird by Bird? Oh, Anne Lamont. She was like, if they wanted to come off better, I forget who said this, but it's a, who wrote Bird by Bird? Oh, Anne Lamont. She was like, if they wanted to come off better in your work, they should have been nicer to you. So feeling like the stuff that happened to you in your childhood or truth or experience is like, it is what it is. Yeah, I'm struggling with that a lot right now

for a couple of different reasons. One, on the comedy side, if I want to, or like almost comedy and beauty, I find can have this really interesting perplexing, how do I get this to come off the right way and not offend the people in my life? Where it's like, this is funny, but because we think life is funny,

not because I'm making fun of you, or I think I want to disparage something This is just the moment and I've gotten better at that I think especially just because the people in my world are still kind of like what the hell's going on Like this is all very odd that all of a sudden people recognize you in public and those kinds of things and they kind of get on the beauty side I'm still struggling with it a little bit where I want to be able to show my mother-in-law coming down the stairs and her curlers

in this environment of a home that she has created and lived in for decades. But I don't want her to feel self-conscious if I take out my phone to get a clip, because I find it to be this like beautiful slice of life moment. But then people I think understandably are like self-conscious of how am I being captured right now? And then how is that gonna come across? And even if I'm not paying attention to the comments,

that they, you know, like those types of things. Video and social media is harder because, you know, if you're a musician or if you're a writer or you're a filmmaker, you are recreating the experience in a new medium as opposed to capturing it as it's happening. So in that sense, you do need more permission because you're not using someone's likeness, you are using them, right?

And it also disintermediates you. It takes you out of the moment because you're experiencing the thing and then you have to set the camera down to recapture it or walk past it or whatever. There's something, that's why social media is I think a tough medium to be a creative in and not like start to live in a fake world.

That can be really tough. And one of the ways I think it was like I spend a lot of time with my kids are central to my life, but I've decided that like, I'm not going to use them on social media like their faces. So it just means that if I do want to show something, there's almost to capture the realness, I almost have to create a fakeness of like everyone turn away, you know, but, but it's just a decision I made to sort of have some boundaries. And I think I think you can kind of make some boundaries and then be clear about them and then just sort of have that there.

That's probably how I would think about it. Yeah, it's been, it depends on the moment. There's been times where it's like this is just happening and they have to give me benefit of the doubt at this point. Now that I've built up hopefully enough trust that they see that what I do is try to bring that, hey, this can be anybody in this moment. And the fact that it is raw and natural makes it what it is. And if I try to recreate this, it's going to be crap or it's going to look fake or they're just not going to see the authenticity in it and therefore it wasn't

worth recreating. And I can just stick those moments in my back pocket. The other conundrum in this space that I found is, and this actually happened yesterday, I got a text message as I was getting on the plane to come down here from an old friend in HR and it was about I did a post where I talked about compensation. And I knew that talking about compensation is you know somewhat of a- It's like a third rail, you're just not allowed to mention it.

And it's so funny too because you've got these platforms like LinkedIn that are supposed to create these open worlds for people to have an understanding of what their different career paths could be and they can learn a little bit and they can connect, et cetera. But yeah, compensation is kind of off the table overall. And I understand why it raised some questions,

but then I kind of go back to the complicit element of it of will you let that impact you? But then I go back and back to the complicit element of it of, will you let that impact you? But then I go back and forth where I will sit there and I'll think about, how can I take what I learned over the past 20 years in corporate America and help other people with that? But then what is so-and-so going to say about this story? Because they might, even if nobody can ever connect the dots between those people, if I talk about compensation, and then my team is like, you know, and apparently, well, if we're not gonna backfill his role,

look at how much he made, what are we doing with all those dollars kinds of things? And I'm like, I don't wanna fuck up their day by doing that, and then you kind of get stuck, and that can be its own spiral. Yeah, I think one of the things I learned, so I wrote for a long time and then in 2016 I started Daily Stoke. I think Daily Stoke started with a few thousand people. I'd put out the email and then people would reply and I kind of wanted to see what people were saying

and thinking. And then, then it was a hundred thousand, then it was a couple hundred thousand, and now it's like a million people a day. At some point you realize, oh, this is an unhealthy amount of information. That is the audience, their feedback, their thoughts on it,

it's just an inhuman amount of feedback, and you will be paralyzed if you access it. And so this is why, you know, if you'll hear like some huge celebrity or artists, they'll be like, I just don't read articles. And you're like, you really didn't read this front page piece about you in the New York Times. And sometimes they're lying,

but a lot of times they're actually telling the truth that they don't have a phone, they don't watch the news. They've had to create kind of a bubble around themselves because it's just not conducive to doing the thing. I have a quote on my wall from John and Cash's manager and he was, there was some period where John and Cash wasn't doing well. He's like, you gotta create like a vault around yourself

where you don't, like basically the critics can't get in, billboard charts can't get in, fans can't get in, even like other band members, no one can get in. Cause like what you do, you're a creative genius. That's the thing. And this random person that you used to work with, or this random YouTube commenter, or some weirdo gets your email address, you know, by looking around for it online. They're giving you information that's, that's important for

them to say, but is it actually important for you to hear? And is it conducive to you continuing to do what you do from a place of authenticity and honesty, and as opposed to a place of shame or self-consciousness? And you just realize, yeah, a lot of this information is only gonna have a harmful effect, and it's not gonna make doing this already difficult, awkward, weird thing, which is like detailing your life

or trying to give these kind of earnest, simple truths to people. It's already weird. You're already in your head about it. You don't want some person who watched eight seconds of it to be able to get in your head about it and say, you shouldn't be doing this, right? And so I think the more,

it's this tension between building up walls to protect yourself, but then also still being a regular person who exists in the world, who's not closed off. So you can keep making stuff that resonates with people. And that balance is something that I think every creative person has to figure out. Yeah, it's interesting for a couple of different reasons.

One I feel ties to a lot of people because this is like very much a new world, old world to a certain extent and it's super, super fresh at this point, like day 60, nine, 70, not that I'm counting on the other side of having left. And also something that I beat into my own head that I read in Harvard Business Review had this series of books called How to Be More Human at Work. And I think it was in the book of resilience,

there was a quote along the lines of, if you have the ability to learn from anybody that you come across, you become invincible or something along to that extent. And I've probably carried that around too much over the past several years. And I'm trying to sort through that balance now, which I think is probably a pretty common thing

to deal with, which is- There's a tension though, between learning from everyone, which is you deciding what to take from them and then them having direct access to your brain to insert unsolicited thoughts, criticisms, projections, you know, their own issues so that you want to learn from everyone. And as long as you are going out and seeking that information as opposed to invading your personal private space,

you and your vulnerable creative position, you do not want that voice of TikTok commenter 714 in there, they're not invited. That's what you have to figure out. And did you have to deal with that evolution? Yeah, because look, the numbers start to get very, very big. Like your TikTok things have done what? Like 70 million likes.

So just think about that. Like tens of millions of people interacted with what you did. So like how many comments is that total? Also in the millions and millions. So like, let's say you've gotten 10 million comments and 10% of them are just bad faith, crazy people who just wanna watch the world burn. Just probably a low percentage.

That's a million of those comments. Like if I was trying to break you as a person, a thing I might devise is like, I'm gonna throw 1 million horrible comments at you that no one could withstand. So you just realize like, okay, yeah, if you're just playing music at a cafe down the street, you don't have to worry that much about no one's going to come up in your face. If a hundred people are there, no one's gonna come up and scream in your face about how you suck and they hate you and whatever. But if you perform for a hundred thousand people,

there's a percentage of those people that are not well. And then there's a percentage of those people that are just going through something that day and a percentage, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you get to a place where, oh, a lot of this is like not good. And so you have to create some walls or you just won't make it. You won't make it.

When you transitioned and you started writing your first book, the people that you were, I won't say leaving behind, but the world that you were leaving behind, how much of that came with you in the early stages? Did you deal with any of that? Because I fully agree. And I've actually, I have not opened up TikTok to do anything but post since Easter, which is not a long period of time, but it has been super valuable for me for so many reasons. Instagram, different story. I like posting stories. It just, it feels like it's's a smaller scale so I don't have to deal with the numbers. And there's, I don't know, there's not as much pressure from a metrics perspective for

whatever reason. But the struggle of not necessarily like user number one, two, three, it's blank person that I may never have met in person, but I know that they were in my department. I know they're on the team. And then you start to get this association of, this is how this person saw me. Now what are they gonna think of me here? And I was overly paranoid when I was in the role of like, I just want people to do their best work and be the best version and be comfortable

and all that kind of stuff. But did you struggle with any of that when you transition of like- It's like when you transition? It's like when you would see like your teacher at the grocery store and you're just like, what? Yeah, yeah. Like, this is supposed to be separate, you know?

It's just weird. Totally, I remember, so I wrote my first three books while I still had a corporate job, which was unusual, obviously, but worked out nicely. But I remember I'd written an article about stoic philosophy in 2009, and it got published, and sort of people were talking about it,

it's going around, and somebody decided they wanted me to do a book about it, and they emailed like the press inquiry email at American Apparel where I was the director of marketing, which I was not the only recipient of. So it was like this, I sort of had this like private, like artistic thing and then my job. And then one day that was just shattered

and I had to be like, guys, you know, but that's the kind of self-consciousness. You kind of have this separation of church and state, and then at some point, either you screw up and they come together, or you succeed and they come together. And you have to, just part of the job, part of being the professional is being able to deal

with the discomfort, awkwardness of the kind of performative you and then actual you and understanding that there's a handful of people for whom that's weird and they still see you more this way and not that way, or maybe they really don't like you because you got out and they did, there's just that. And again, I think the more, I'm not saying you just pretend it doesn't exist,

but I'm also saying kind of pretend it doesn't exist. Because the more it's in your head, the less you're in there doing actual work and the more you're just thinking about what other people are thinking about you. And that just tends not to be a great place of, I mean, you talked about this, what did you say? You said, everyone deserves the freedom of a clear mind.

So like when you're thinking about that stuff, your mind is not clear, right? You're thinking, you're not thinking about doing it, and then you had another one, be your best hot mess, right? So like, you just have to sit with the weirdness of it. It's fucking weird. It's weird to make videos about yourself. It's weird to write poetry.

Imagine you're like this inner city kid and you fall in love with rap. Now you're like having to like get involved in poetry battles with other types, you know? Like it's fucking weird. And if you think too much about it, it feels lame and awkward. And then you have, yeah,

if you have your notions of masculinity or you have your like, you don't feel like you should be in the spotlight. You know, we all have these preconceived notions that being an artist inherently challenges. And you kind of just got to blow that apart and just do the thing. That's why I try to focus a lot,

like I've gotten better at just not thinking about how stuff does at all. I'm just thinking about like, is this good or not? Am I proud of it or not? Did it say what I was trying to say? Did I do a good good or not? Am I proud of it or not? Did it say what I was trying to say that I do a good job or not? And then you just kind of decouple, like it got a million views, it got no views.

Like that can't be, unless you wanna turn yourself into an algorithm, you can't let how something does become your proxy for whether it's good or bad. Yeah. Yeah, I've gotten past the metrics part. What I'm struggling with is that balance of, I do this because I love to do it and this is what I want to say,

or this is the most useful thing that I can say based off of what I bring to the table. Yeah. And that distinction, I'd like getting stuck there right now because I think it's a healthy place to exist in the short term to figure out, I've got this syllabus in my head. And I am very confident that I could get somebody from you don't know what to do with your career to being super comfortable and having an understanding as to how far in their

career they may want to go. But doing that and having it be that balance between here's the most useful way to get that information across that's going to have the biggest impact versus I'm here because there is even that has an artistic element to it to a certain extent. And I do want to create this almost like Mr. Rogers meets corporate America kind of thing. Because I think that there's a huge need and you see how much stress and how much people are beating themselves up in the space and they feel like they're stuck and it's like it's pervasive.

And so it's like this super interesting back and forth in your own head of like, is it hardcore Rick Rubin? Is it hardcore Gary V? Are you creating this because you're like, oh, this is the most useful thing that I could say today, or I just have to say this because this is where my brain wants to go creatively. I don't know what the answer is, but like that's a, it's a fun place to be stuck, but you can get stuck.

No, it's the Venn diagram be stuck, but it can get stuck. No, it's the Venn diagram of like, what's most useful? What am I most interested in and where they overlap? And part of it, especially early on is just like, there's certain things you're going to get out and then be done with. And then that allows you to move on to stuff you don't even know you're interested in or that your audience is interested in. And so it's kind of just like crossing that stuff off.

Like you have this like sort of archive of experience that you're gonna excavate and sort of get out. You only have to do this one time and then you kind of move on, move on to the next thing. That's kind of how I think about it. Yeah, it's a weird journey. And there's not a lot of like, not a lot of people have been through it.

So it's hard to like really figure out if you're doing it well, what you don't know. It's strange. There's probably the reason why I was excited about this conversation because, you know, there's not a lot of people that came from a corporate background and then made a jump and did, you know, started to write books

and make content, et cetera. And at the same time too, you were late 20s when that started. Yeah. And didn't get married until after that, if I'm not mistaken, or were you already married? Yeah. But I've been with my wife since before all that. So we've been together since we were 19. But yeah, so you're kind of developing as a person, you're developing as a professional,

and then you're also developing as an artist. And ideally at some point, they all kind of come together into a singular person. You don't have these distinct sort of personas, but for a while you do. And that's just kind of how it goes. Yeah, I mean, I'm lucky. I've been with my wife,

it'll be 20 years since we met in October. Seven months from the day we met until wedding day. Wow. It would have actually been four months had the courts been open when we tried to elope back in January of 2013. But having this happen at 46 again is like where some of these complexities start to feel like they compound. I don't know if it's just like all in my head,

but it does create this like interesting conundrum of how much of this should be natural and just a part of what an evolution could look like in this space. And then also making sure that I do my best to pay it forward in the right way to be like, okay, I just have to get out of my own way at some point and just make stuff for the purpose of helping because that's what I'm arguably put in this position to do. Not arguably, like I know that that's my purpose is to have gone through these experiences

or I can pay it forward, which means getting past awkwardness, which means actually adhering to some of the things that I'm putting out there and then letting that come to fruition. Yeah, that's the hard part. Again, it's easy to say these things to a friend, and you could have total clarity and confidence in if someone was coming to you with all these questions. And then when it's ourselves, then it's like suddenly, we managed to make a very simple thing quite complicated.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, so talk to me about gratitude or appreciation. Because I think on one level, it's easy to be grateful for the obvious things, sunset or your health or whatever. But I feel like the practice you've talked about is, incisive is not the right word. You're trying to be grateful

for smaller, less obvious things. And it's a distinction between gratitude and appreciation that I'm really trying to call out in particular. Distinction is gratitude is almost transactional, where you're getting something to then have that feeling of gratitude to be able to express it. Where I would argue appreciation is a foundational element that you can have regardless. I can have appreciation for this table. I don't need to have gratitude for it. I can be grateful for the fact that it's holding this up and it's here in this

moment and it's being a part of this conversation, but it's much more likely that I can just appreciate it. I can appreciate the fact that it looks like it's got a couple of leaves on it and it folds in. And I can appreciate the fact that it looks like it's got a couple of leaves on it and it folds in. And I can appreciate the fact that it's probably quite old and was probably handcrafted. And like, to me, that starts to create these levels of understanding that gratitude won't let you get to because you just see it as like, okay, cool.

Here's this thing, thank you. But because I got something in a lot of cases where appreciation allows you to start to unlock these layers, and the more that you can do that on a consistent basis, the book I'm in the process of writing and the overall thought is if you can get addicted to that train of thought, then you can unlock so much in your world on a day-to-day basis that can allow you to have more gratitude, that can allow some of the smaller things.

Because first you have to notice it before you can be grateful for it. It's noticing it and at least understanding it a little bit more to see it from a slightly different angle. The subway pulling up that's packed and you're like, fuck, I don't want to get on that thing. Everyone's going to be sweaty. It's going to be gross. It's going to be gross.

I'm going to be late again, et cetera. And if you can get into this train of thought, and there were these times where I struggled with like, why is my brain going to this place? It doesn't make sense. I wonder how many people a subway car actually holds. Yeah. Because I appreciate the fact that it was super complicated

for them at some point to be like, let's start to dig up the streets and put these crazy tunnels down there. It's crazy, this is a hundred years old. It costs $2. Right. And I think that there's a huge distinction between, I get upset about these things that happen in my life

on a daily basis, milk is wrong in my coffee, it rained today, my paper on my desk got wet for, like whatever the stupid little things are that throw people off kilter. And the element of not necessarily gratitude, because again, I think that that forces somebody into a position of how can I be thankful for these things around me? And I need to stop and be very cognizant and like make sure that this is also received on the other side versus let me just appreciate some of the basic elements, which will make any inconveniences not only less stressful,

but I can also look at them from a different angle. Why did the milk get messed up in the coffee for the fourth straight day? Is it bad process? Do they have the thing labeled incorrectly in the back? Did that person just not get trained well? And it's like this weird space where curiosity and gratitude and understanding,

at least at a high level, all combine. And if you can see that on a consistent basis, I think it can unlock not only more happiness on a day-to-day basis, cause you're just kind of like, cool, everything is, everything's pretty dope. Like I could never design that light. That light is nuts.

But I know that people sat around in meetings for God knows how long, we're like, is this the right size for it? How many watts does it need? Like all this kind of stuff that I would never fathom. And I can just see that out of the corner of my eye and I'm cool with that, but I don't need to have gratitude for it. And so I think that there's this untapped area of appreciation, even though it's potentially an overused word, that can get people to look at things differently.

No, I totally agree. In Meditations, Mark Surielis has a bunch of different passages where he notices these things that are like kind of ugly, but he's finding what's beautiful about them. He's talking about like, you know, a grain of wheat that's sort of heavy because it's grown out. He talks about the way an olive sort of grows ripe and then it falls down and then it sort of decay. Like he's talking even the process of like decay

which can stink and is dirty, just how that works. And then he's like, you know, he's like, why does the bread when you put it in the oven, why does it like crack open when it's finished baking? Like he just kind of, if he's going through the world like a poet and he's noticing things that like, yeah, maybe only a child would notice

or someone high on mushrooms would notice. But like, we just take for granted. And so we see the world as ugly because we're looking for like traditionally beautiful or wonderful things instead of appreciating the absurdity of existence, the wonder of existence, the ordinary of existence, just sort of cultivating. Yeah, like first off, how crazy is it that like

the things you want at a grocery store are there without you having said that you wanted them? Like they just know, not like they just know the right amount in the right time, just like the coordination of that with, even though there actually is no coordination. And so the ability to yet notice these things. And I think appreciation, I like the distinction

between appreciation and gratitude. Cause you don't need to appreciate that the drink is there in the cooler at the grocery store. It's supposed to be there and yet it's there. And that's nice. And to sort of see it that way is- And it can also unlock your own brain, your brain's ability to see the world around you

and understand it in ways where that drink and that cooler, if you have that pause of like, oh, that's cool. You're like, I wonder how many they sell in a day. I wonder who that distributor is. I wonder how long that one's been sitting on the shelf. All of a sudden, especially as people are trying to navigate, like, what the hell do I do with my life? What do I do for a living?

And especially if you're floating in the corporate space, you're like, I don't know marketing or sales- That was somebody's job. Right, exactly. That was somebody's job. And also you're understanding, you're starting to ask questions in your head that are going to unlock answers like, who manufactures the cans versus the beverage? And like, where might that actually be happening? And then how far does it have to get transported? And does it need a cooler truck? And if you can

at least start to think that way, you don't have to go get those answers. But then your curiosity starts to unlock this entire world that's existing around you on a consistent basis. It can take the person that's like, I want to be in sports for a living and thinks player, manager, agent, work for a team. And they're like, holy shit, I could work at a place that makes the seats for the stadiums. It gets those massive construction grants to go and do these things.

All the hidden parts that go into the thing that you were taking for granted. Totally. I think this is helpful as a parent, too. Someone pointed out once to me that this room wasn't dirty. It was well played in. The distinction between seeing it as like a bug or a feature, like it's supposed to be this way.

This is why we bought the toys, right? Like is the house supposed to be clean or is the house supposed to be used? And so like this sort of, the Stokes talk about like what handle you're gonna grab a situation by. And so the decision to grab it by like the one that's positive that affirms how things are instead of the one that wishes they were otherwise

or resents how they are. And then also when your kids do things, even things that they're not supposed to do, I'm never not fascinated by their explanations as to why they did it. And a lot of times there's a perverse logic to it. Like it's logic to a seven-year-old and it's logic that will get you thrown in jail

if you're older, you know? Like it's not socially accepted logic, but I get why you think you doing this thing is actually your brother's fault. That's interesting to me. And it takes the edge off of it. And then I at least have empathized with you and connected with you and you feel a little bit hurt.

And so yeah, there's something like, I appreciate what you're saying, does not mean I accept what you're saying or condone what you're saying, but like, I get it. And that's like the first step. Yeah. And it also just allows you to look at things through this lens of You're not going to it's like what is outside of your control, right? There's that entire distinction of you can only worry about what's in your control versus

But you can have that awareness and curiosity Yeah and so when my daughter goes and plays with makeup and comes downstairs and I have a thousand questions about what happened in her room and all these kinds of things, I just, I want to take a step back

and just appreciate the fact that like, you must have had fun. Yes. And you came downstairs and you're proud of the way that this turned out. And God, do I love you for a million years just for this one moment alone. And same for the bread in the oven

where you don't quite know, like, why did that, can't control that. But if you can understand that you can't control it and you can still just kind of, then like all of a sudden all these things that are outside of your control are just these like interesting nuances to daily life versus like I'm not quite sure what to do

because all of these things are happening and where do I grasp for control, where do I not? No, I just exist. And if I can make the most out of this moment right here and now, but still be cognizant and not let it become so overwhelming that it then burdens me, but appreciate and be cognizant, then I feel like you can be in a more, especially in a batch of crazy world like we are in right now where there's just a bazillion things all the time and horrific

and beautiful all happening simultaneously. That distinction of it's there, I can appreciate it, I don't have to let it too far in, I can dive deeper if I want to, but I better be fucking present right now or else the rest of it doesn't matter. To me, that's where I try to come back to answer all the questions we were going through earlier in regards to how many views did this get, What's my voice? Do I need to worry about the text message from HR six weeks after I left the company kind of thing? And then just be like, cool, I'm here in Bastrop. Like it's all good. Do you want to check out some books? I would love to check out some books. 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 would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on Wondery.com slash survey.