Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute)

We're going to talk about The Office, I promise. Stick around, folks. Rainn Wilson Actor, writer, producer you know as Dwight Schrute, assistant regional manager. One of the most iconic characters in TV history. HOLD ON, MICHAEL. I AM COMING. I EXPERIENCED A LOT of pain in my life. Neglect, abuse, abandoned, and then with anxiety and depression and addiction, I remember getting these anxiety attacks that would leave me shaking on the floor and sweating, and I thought I was dying. Waking up at 3:00 in the morning, why should I keep living? But, this is the curious thing. I'm grateful for it. There's a reason why so many comedians come from painful backgrounds because comedy shifts your perspective away from pain and trauma. Here's your choice, do you kill yourself or do comedy? And that was my path. It's my greatest dream come true. You said when I was in The Office, I spent several years mostly unhappy because it wasn't enough. I wanted more opportunities, I wanted more money, and as long as we want to promote the go satisfaction, we'll never be happy. We all have a shadow, and it's always there. It's self-important and righteous and entitled, but I'm not going to get rid of those aspects of myself by keeping that shadow at arm's length. You need to embrace and accept and love one's shadow. Sit the shadow on the lap, almost like a ventriloquist dummy. Hello. You, Irene, a CEO. Get a new T-shirt, idiot. That's a wrap. I think this is fascinating. I looked at the back end of our YouTube channel, and it says that since this channel started, 69.9% of you that watch it frequently haven't yet hit the subscribe button. So, I have a favor to ask you. If you've ever watched this channel and enjoyed the content, if you're enjoying this episode right now, please can I ask a small favor? Please hit the subscribe button. Helps this channel more than I can explain, and I promise, if you do that, to return the favor, we will make the show better and better and better and better and better. That's a promise I'm willing to make you if you hit the subscribe button. Do we have a deal? [Music] Let's start with your contacts. Um I always think the the earliest years are the most important. So, could you take me back to your earliest contacts and give me the factors that I need to understand to understand you? Sure. Uh couple of key pieces in my background that have made me who I am and uh led me to lead the life that I live uh are my mom uh took off when I was a year and a half. I lived with my with my dad, and we were members of the Baha'i faith, uh which in a nutshell is the newest of the world's religions. Uh there's about 6 million Baha'is around the globe. It's the second most widespread religion. So, wherever you go in the world, there's going to be Baha'is. You know, you go to Mongolia or Thailand or, you know, Botswana or whatever, there's going to be Baha'i communities. And after my dad had been kind of essentially abandoned or felt abandoned, they got divorced, uh we moved to the jungles of Nicaragua when I was 3 years old. Here was this abandoned kind of toddler kid living in the literally the jungle. Uh and my dad was an abstract painter and science fiction writer and Baha'i, and uh that's that's how I grew up. And then, when it was kind of around kindergarten time, first grade time, we moved back to Washington state. And um those are some key pieces, yeah. In your 40s, you started to look back at your childhood um and understand I heard this in an interview you did, I think with Chase Jarvis? Yeah. On his show. And one of the things you said is when I look back at my childhood, it was filled with depression and anxiety that you probably didn't It seems like you didn't realize at the time, but hindsight's given you that clarity. Yeah. What were the hallmarks of that? What were the symptoms of that? And what Do you Do you have any understanding of the causes of that at such a young age? Yes. Uh 22 years of therapy has given me a lot of insights into the causes of that. So, you know, you've got an abandoned toddler, that that'll that'll [ __ ] you up. Um I don't know if I can swear on your podcast. All right. Um Do uh do Brits swear? Mm. Yeah. Yeah. The funny ones. Uh and then um you know, it was this weird kind of uh gaslighting mindfuck cuz I just spent 5 minutes describing the Baha'i faith, right? And this these beautiful ideas and prayers and meditations and about world peace and finding love and connection and service. And then, in my family, my dad remarried uh my stepmom, uh who pretty much raised me, and they lived in a loveless marriage, a hollow, empty marriage. So, I come back from the jungles of Nicaragua at 5 or 6, my dad's remarried, we're living in suburban Seattle in Washington state, and we are going to all these Baha'i meetings, we're singing, we're doing Kumbaya, we're holding hands, we're praying, we're meditating, we're reading holy scripture from all over the world, and talking about love, and yet here's this loveless shell of a house. So, that's what I grew up in. So, you know, addiction is something that I've I've struggled with. I've struggled with depression, I've struggled with anxiety. Uh I've uh struggled on a lot of different uh levels in my life, a lot of uh alienation and uh it's born of this petri dish that I grew up in. Maybe I was also wired for it, you know, I have I have alcoholics that run on both sides of my family for generations, but uh that'll that'll mess you up. What have you learned about the nature of childhood trauma and how delicate children are? I've learned so much from speaking to people on this podcast about it and how, you know, it's if I listen to too many of these episodes, I might be scared to be a parent because it's so interesting how such a small interpretations can leave really um lasting impressions on a child about the nature of the world. I sat with Gabor Maté, and he's talked about how children are basically narcissists, and how they interpret everything as about them. So, there's an argument over there, a baby will think it's it's about the baby. But, what have you learned about through your years of therapy, but also your own experiences? Well, I experienced a lot of pain in my life and a lot of suffering uh with anxiety and depression and addiction, and as I kind of dove into recovery and to the therapeutic process, I can pin that squarely on a lot of, you know, gross imbalances and trauma that I suffered as a child. So, there's that. Um we all have that to some degree, and it's important to excavate and honor uh the pain that we went through and the and the lies that we were told, the gaslighting we might have undergone. Um there's there's religious trauma that we undergo as well. There's all kinds of different traumas that we suffer. And this is the this is the curious thing. I'm grateful for it because, you know what? If I had had a happy, well-balanced childhood, I, you know, I don't know what my career would have been, but it certainly wouldn't have been an actor, and it certainly wouldn't have been a successful actor. So, these these confluences of of pain and and difficulty and and abuse and neglect, um they caused me a lot of suffering later on, but at the same time, they caused me to be driven to try and be the best version of myself. They set me on a spiritual path uh to really deeply explore the world's uh spiritual traditions and to try and connect with my higher power and to go on a journey of self-discovery and then to take what I've learned and to share that with others, and they they made me funny. So, there's a really interesting thing I heard uh Dr. Arthur Brooks from Harvard University, who you should have on the show, uh speak about. Uh and he talked about how the opposite of pain and trauma is is humor. He's He was saying, like, for instance, if you're feeling uh depressed, let's say, we all know you fill that with gratitude. And when you have a gratitude journal and you share gratitude, experience gratitude, meditate on gratitude, it the other stuff evaporates when you when you shift your focus and your perspective to what you're grateful for, what brings you hope and joy and purpose and meaning, even if it's a small thing, like, you know, this delicious cup of tea right here. So, the same uh mechanism works in comedy. That and there's a reason why so many comedians come from painful backgrounds because comedy is what you plug in to shift your perspective away from pain and trauma. Just like gratitude takes you away from from depression. So, you'll see time and time again these amazing, you know, the great comedians of the age, you know, and how much suffering they underwent in their lives, but comedy became the the necessary uh thing to plug in to their perspective in order to carry forward. It's like uh here's your choice. You kill yourself or do comedy. And um and then they do comedy and and you know, you think about so many of of the great ones. Uh Jim Carrey, you think about Robin Williams. They talk about mental health and comedy. We did a for Soul Pancake, we did a documentary um called Laughing Matters about the intersection of comedy and mental health. And so in this sense, too, I'm grateful for what I went through because I wouldn't be here today having this incredible conversation with you had I not gone through that those those difficulties, that neglect, that abuse, and that gaslighting that I underwent as a kid. When you say the word abuse, you mean the gaslighting? Yeah, you know, I don't want to get into stories. There was, you know, there was some there was there was lots of different kinds of abuse. Yeah. Yeah, so. If I'd if I'd met you 15, 16 years old, who would I who would be the man that I met at that point? When your mother came back into your life, you said you needed her at that point. At 15 or 16, I was uh gawky and self-hating and um uh innocent and completely cut off from my emotions and had my uh dad and stepmom had zero emotional tools. Uh the only kind of expression of emotion that I experienced in my household was rage. And uh and then either rage or like again, these spiritual Baha'i gatherings where we were singing and praying and meditating. So it was um but the idea of you know sadness, frustration, disappointment, uh all these quote-unquote negative emotions and how to navigate them. There were I had zero tools. So I'll never forget sitting down with one of the first meetings with my mom. And we I was at a Denny's restaurant in Yakima, Washington. And uh and she said Rain, you seem very tightly wound. What's what's going on? How is your heart? And I just started sobbing. I just started bawling. I mean it was pretty unsightly at the at the Denny's. Um uh waiting for the Grand Slam breakfast. And um there's a corporate sponsor for you, potential. Uh and just like the the kind of crying of the kind of the heaving sobs. And that's what I'm talking about. That's the kind of connection that I needed. Like finally, someone was asking me what was in my heart, you know? And that began a kind of a process of having conversations about human emotions um that I was so ignorant of. Um that we're all so ignorant of. And uh it helped me immensely. When you said that that the the only emotion you understood was like rage and then this real happiness at the spiritual gatherings it made sense, the gaslighting, because it's such a confusing message to send a young person. It's a this this juxtaposition between like and uh Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I remember I remember times uh and I don't really blame my stepmom for this because my dad was not a good husband to her and uh there was a lot that was out of balance and and he could be incredibly narcissistic and um but I remember having we would have a Baha'i gathering, let's say, at our house and people were going to come over and we were going to pray or we were going to study holy writings or whatever people do at Baha'i gatherings. And uh they would have a fight and she would be raging in the kitchen and slam dishes down and break the dishes and they would be fighting and then ding-dong, people would come over like, "Hi, I brought flowers and here's a here's some cookies." And and they would come in and my stepmom would then march across the living room gong gong gong gong gong to the bedroom door and go "So bam!" and slam the bedroom door and the people would be there in the doorway and my dad would go "Come on in. Thanks so much for coming." And there was never any kind of uh you know you know, acknowledging what had just happened. And that was And so for an 8-year-old, 9-year-old, 10-year-old being in that milieu, you're like "What the hell is going on? Is this how people act? Is this how we're supposed to act? We have all these emotions, but we don't talk about them and and then we go and we and we pray together?" So, you know, this led me to a very long period of time where I was completely alienated from my faith in my in my 20s and um I didn't want anything to do with religion or spirituality, certainly not morality. Um cuz I just saw the hypocrisy in it. And that's when I really started undergoing uh a spiritual crisis, a mental health crisis. Things started breaking down for me. And that's when I decided to kind of re-examine these ideas as a potential way out, as a potential path forward for my own transformation, for my personal healing. And and I was ultimately able to come back to the religion of my youth and find great peace and solace and meaning in it um after a long journey uh through my 20s and early 30s. That trauma and experience from your youth, how does that play into you becoming an actor? Because you said you wouldn't have been you're grateful because you don't think you would have been an actor or the actor that you are without that experience. What is the wh I'm trying to figure out where acting fit into that. You talked about comedians using comedy as a as kind of like a life raft away from their pain. Why was acting the thing that found Rain? I don't know and there's the genetic component as well that my birth mother was also an actor and interested in acting. I don't know exactly um even before I thought like "Oh, you could be an actor or you could make a living in an actor or you could train as an actor." Like I didn't even know like I wanted to do that, but it's like whatever that is is magical and amazing and I was drawn to it like a magnet. So I don't know and then, you know, I I took my first acting class. Um we had moved to Chicago from Seattle and I went to a a high school that had a really good theater program and I took my very first acting class. And uh I did uh a scene where uh you're supposed to pretend that you're in your bedroom and that no one's watching, right? So I put on this Elvis Costello song, Mystery Dance. I brought in my my record player from home and I brought in some stuff from my room and I put on the record of Mystery Dance by Elvis Costello and I started just thrashing around and just being ridiculous and lip-syncing and jumping around and flopping on the floor and stuff like that. And it I was a brand new student. This was like in the first week at this new school. And it brought the house down. And the the 15, 16-year-old that I said that was kind of pimply and gangly and emotionally cut off and self-hating um all of a sudden, people were patting me on the back back and punching me in the shoulder and saying, "Oh my god, that was so great." and high-fiving me and all of these like cute girls from junior year at in high school were like, "Oh, where are you from? You're from Seattle? Amazing. Will you come sit with us at our lunch table?" And like and and here I was, this kid from suburban where I had been on the chess team and played the bassoon and been on Model United Nations and I'd barely talked to a girl. And then I was like, "All right, I'm in. Whatever this is, I want this I'm good. This is it. Forget all that other stuff. Screw the bassoon. Screw the chess team. I'm in with the drama geeks. And uh and that was my path. So so part of it is not so noble. Part of it is um I went where there was acceptance, where there was love, where I had some skill. I could make people laugh. And where I got attention from the opposite sex. Hello. Tends to be the case most of us. Um 20 years old, you graduate with a degree in drama. Uh 20 23. 23. Close. And then you speak of 1991 when you're 25 25 years old, that's really when you had your, as you say, your spiritual crisis. Mhm. Was was there a catalyst for that? Seems to it seems that at that point in your life is when you started experiencing anxiety attacks in a really debilitating way. Was there a catalyst for that? Was there anything in your life that was was absent or was it just Do you think it was just things catching up on you from your earliest years? Um well I don't know about a catalyst, but I will paint the picture that I'm out of drama school. I'm getting a few little acting jobs here and there, but they're not paying anything. I'm living with a friend and in an abandoned beer brewery in Brooklyn. Uh essentially kind of legally squatting, but we didn't have heat, we didn't have a shower. There were rats scuttling around. And I was working in this bar where I'd get off work at 4:00 a.m. And uh I had a roommate and we were living out there and I was really directionless. I started really experimenting with a lot of drugs and alcohol and I was pretty rudderless and um uh and I started getting hit with really crippling anxiety attacks. So, I wasn't in the most healthy living environment, right? So, but at the same time, I remember getting these anxiety attacks that would leave me literally shaking on the floor and sweating and I would thought I was dying and I was like about to call 911 like five different times. And heart palpitations, sweating and um I I talked to a doctor at at at NYU about them and they said, "Oh, these are just anxiety attacks." So, I knew that that's what they were, but I didn't really know anything about them and uh I started getting really depressed and um so, there wasn't really like an event, but circumstances provided the perfect environment for kind of a mental health breakdown of someone who's 25 years old. And how long did that chapter that period of your life last where you were having anxiety attacks and you were rudderless? Um I would say five or six years. Yeah. There were some things got better. I started working a little bit more. Uh I had a relationship with my girlfriend who's now my wife. We've been together for 32 years. Um and that was great. But even that even a better apartment and a nice relationship couldn't save me from some of what was going on. And we didn't In the '90s, we didn't really have words for a mental health breakdown or mental health issues or crisis, you know, it was and people didn't really go to therapy. You didn't really you couldn't really afford it. It was that was like for rich people like Woody Allen or something. Um so uh it it stayed things got nominally better, but I still uh was uh pretty uh depressed and and frustrated and overwhelmed and just generally alienated. The kind of waking up at 3:00 in the morning with just wide awake staring at the ceiling going like what the [ __ ] does life mean? Why am I here? What you know, why should I keep living? What's How do I find meaning and um just that that that just anguish and disconnection uh at a really core level. You asked yourself that question, what why should I keep living? Yeah. Mhm. And it wasn't at that point I've and I've had some suicidal ideation over the years. That wasn't a time when I was actively thinking about ending it, but it really was kind of again one of these life's big questions, life's deep questions that I've been kind of poking at in my various books of like why should we keep living? What what is the purpose? Is it Because one of the odd things, Stephen, was that I was in certain regards living a life beyond my wildest dreams. Here was that kind of abused and gaslit kid with low self-esteem from suburban Seattle um who kind of hated himself and and really had trouble fitting in socially in any way, shape or form. Here I am living in New York City. Beautiful girlfriend, working as an actor in the theater, not making much money and it was only fitfully, but still that's a big leap to go from where I was and and yet I wasn't happy. So, there was this odd disconnect because I think societally we're taught like, "Hey, you find the thing you love to do. You go study it. You put in your time. You work at it and you you're going to start working and yeah, you're going to start slow, but it's going to build and then you're going to find incredible joy and purpose and meaning in your work." And I was doing that work in the theater and I was getting to be an actor and I was getting paychecks as an actor, which is an incredible uh experience. Um but I was still chronically dissatisfied and it didn't make any sense because society had been telling me this thing for a decade or two and I um I sh- I felt like I shouldn't be this uh uh chronically dissatisfied, but I am. When did that reach its peak? Um the it's hard to say. It it it came in waves throughout my mid-20s and and early 30s. And it that's what prompted me and this is why pain can be such a valuable teacher. And in fact, Arthur Brooks just had a column today out in the Atlantic where he was talking about pain and anxiety and depression does not mean that you have a mental health issue. Those are those are normal, standard uh uh aspects of being a human being. So, but my pain prompted me to go on a spiritual quest and I'm really grateful for that. Like I said, To go on a spiritual quest. Depression and pain and anxiety and those things were signals telling you something. Something's out of balance. How are you going to bring yourself into balance? How are you going to make sense of all this? And at the time there weren't podcasts on positive psychology and there weren't I mean, I guess there were some self-help books, but I didn't really know about them. Because of my uh background, because of my childhood, I thought, "Well, perhaps because I've abandoned anything and everything to do with God and spirituality and religion, m- maybe that's where I have lost my way and maybe I need to re-explore those avenues and maybe I can find personal meaning and serenity uh by exploring spiritual ideas." So, it was a long process. It was a good eight or 10-year process, but I'm I'm grateful that my pain took me along that path. One of the things that I think brings spirituality and some of these big questions into focus is death. Mhm. Something you talk about in your new book Soul Boom. And something you've spoken about previously as well. Something that I've often pondered about. Um I think it's one of the things that really made me go in search of answers, deep questions at a at a very young age. Um you talk I think it's in chapter three of your book, but I listened on the audio book, so it's chapter six on the audio book um about the passing of your father. Mhm. How did how did that bring into focus spirituality, meaning and some of these big questions of life? Well, I think if you're going to look at spirituality, one of the top three uh big questions is what happens when we die. And of course, we don't know. But just because we don't know or will never know, um does that mean that we shouldn't explore that question? Uh hint, no. So, uh it's something it's a topic and a theme and a question I had thought about a lot. I had spoken about, I'd researched um and pondered deeply, but obviously and I had had, you know, some people that I knew that had died along the way, of course, but when my father died about three years ago, um that made a profound impact and really prompted me to write the book Soul Boom because I had one of these key kind of transcendent experiences, spiritual experiences, which was in uh we my dad died of heart disease. Uh he was getting a quadruple bypass surgery and he just couldn't make it. He didn't they didn't have any way to repair the damage in his heart and anyways, it was we thought he was going to get through the surgery and he died. So, it was and we knew it was risky, but it was it was it was not a predicted death. And uh my his current wife, his widow and myself were in the hospital with him and we had to essentially unplug him and um it was devastating and terrifying and oddly enough strangely cliché at the same time. And I couldn't help but uh and maybe this is is that that trauma-based comedic kind of uh aspect of my of my uh of myself that I I just kept witnessing myself in the situation where my father was dying and there's a heart machine going beep beep beep beep and there's a little oxygen machine going and there's doctors and nurses walking around with their squeaky shoes and the linoleum floors and I was like, "Wow, this is just like one of those hospital shows." I just kept thinking like I this is just like ER, Grey's Anatomy. Like, "Wow." Um I was like, "It's so cliché." But we had to unplug him. Um he was going to be dead within an hour. And uh we were sobbing and I looked at his gray body there on the table and you know, I saw all these aspects of my dad that I loved, you know, the one eyebrow hair kind of poking out and you know, the mole on his arm and the way his hands are and uh his hair kind of messy and uh it was filled with such love and such heartbreak and at the same time at seeing his lifeless body I was like um this isn't him. This isn't my dad. This is the vessel that carried my dad. Robert Wilson and his beautiful heart and spirit and his dynamism and his creativity, his light as it were is no longer here, but that's his reality. This body is just a shell. It's a vessel. It's an avatar. And and I also didn't experience it as oh he has uh it's been snuffed out like a candle. It just seemed very clear like oh it has passed on. It's somewhere else now. And here is is his body and that was such a profound spiritual experience that I knew intellectually from my study but it's one of those learnings that kind of has to hit you in the gut to make you really understand it and go oh and I remember that amazing quote that I often pull out from uh Father Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest who said famously we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. And that quote, which I've always loved, I saw just evidenced with my father. Oh he's a spiritual being. He had a human experience for 79 years in this body. And now his spiritual reality has passed and moved on. And this is one of the essential messages of SoulBoom is that we are spiritual beings. We're having this incredible human experience. Look at us having this incredible dialogue right now. And then I'm going to go get an Uber and then I've got to go do some voice-overs and I'm going to go play tennis with a friend and I'm having this you know I'm having a relationship with my wife and with my son. I'm learning. I'm growing. I'm being challenged and uh it's magnificent. And here's my my fleshy somewhat corpulent 57-year-old body that has done I've done pretty well by. It's ridiculous enough so I get to take my shirt off occasionally as Dwight and people can laugh at my absurdly pale and oblong torso and I'm fine with it. It's all for comedy, right? And parts of my body are starting to break down. I've got like half hearing in my in my left ear and I've got mild sleep apnea and I have to wear a mouth appliance that juts my jaw forward and I wake up in the morning and I go and I place it on the side of the bed and here I am this spiritual being having a human experience as Rain Dietrich Wilson. It's this is fabulous, but this is part of what we need to recognize and this could help people. This can help people with their mental health struggles is an understanding that we're we're radiant, luminescent, precious shards of the divine inhabiting these these fleshy meat suits for hopefully 80, 90, or 100 years and struggle and suffering and anxiety is just comes with the game, baby. It's just part of the game. You talk about a friend called Dave. Yeah. David or Dave who also passed quite suddenly. Um and his handling of that in particular um surprised you in many ways. Uh Dave uh one of my best friends um David Von Ancken who was a television director, film director. Brilliant guy uh wonderful human being. And he just got diagnosed out of out of nowhere with stage four stomach cancer. I mean just like out of nowhere. Mid-50s and uh essentially a death sentence. So I got to spend a lot of time with him in his last year and a half after that diagnosis and we did weekly beach walks and he said to me several times and he would just grab my arm and he would say Rain it's just static. It's all just static. You've got to get the static out of your life. The emails, the meetings, the the career, the the appointments, the the driving, the traffic, the phone calls, the Zooms. It's all just static. It's all noise. And that really resonated with me and I know a lot of people have mentioned that in the book because we do experience our life as this kind of like buzz of like appointments and shoppings and and Zooms and appoint and and bills to pay and and whatnot. And uh that was profoundly impactful. Um and I would always encourage David to it would it's a tricky situation, you know, when someone's dying I don't want to like God forbid lecture him on on death or thinking about it, but I would always just turn it a little bit toward a more profound discussion about you know, the soul and the journey of the soul and the and the movement of of the spirit, you know, beyond our this corporal 3D uh surround sound experience of being a human being to the realms beyond um But he like many people um he he he got a little stuck in a way that made me sad because he really just focused on fighting the cancer, which is super super important, right? So he devoted all of his waking time and energy to to research and treatment and diet and everything to fight the cancer, which is super important and I don't blame him, but um it was pretty terrifying for him to consider mortality and the implications thereof. He had a daughter and um but I'll never forget him talking about static in that way and uh I find that very to be also very clarifying, you know, in my daily meditation practice like how can I again, the Buddha uses the image a lot of the lotus flower, you know, it's floating on top of the swamp, you know, these beautiful lotuses. And there's the swamp and the mire and the bugs and the dirt and the and and this beautiful uh flower rising above and how can we in our own little way be a lotus flower and the rest of the swamp is is our daily static. The rest of the swamp, the alternative way of living to everything you've just described. What is the alternative way of living? So you know, you've got the the the realization that everything is static and the understanding that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Yeah. What is the opposite of that that you see when you walk the streets or you observe people? What is the opposite way of living to that? And why is it causing suffering? Thoreau talked about the unexamined life is not worth living. Why did he say that? And what did he mean by that? Well, it's been a long time since I read Walden Pond um and the night Thoreau spent in jail, but I loved the transcendentalists because that is really kind of the first authentic uh American spiritual movement. And uh this idea that uh we're seeking uh transcendence that were that was kind of the first movement that really acknowledged like we're spiritual beings. So I think you know, it's the unexamined life. I think um living in the static and living in the swamp is not taking the time to uh honor the sacred divinity of aspects of our life. And you know, I I have a When you study meditation and you and you participate in meditation there's this strange thing that happens where you realize that you the reality of you is the watcher, the observer. When you meditate your thoughts are still bouncing around, you know, the Buddhists call it the monkey mind, right? So your bound your thoughts are bouncing around. You might have some anxiety and worry like oh is that person going to accept my offer on this or is this thing going to work out or oh is my wife still mad at me or whatever. So you have this emotional dissonance and you have this kind of intellectual uh dissonance. And then in the meditative state you're just witnessing that. It's almost like you're floating above it and looking down. And then you realize like oh my reality is not my thoughts. My reality is not my feelings. My reality is not even just my body and the sensations that my body takes in. There is some kind of aspect of the I that is the witnesser. And it's getting in touch with that that allows us to get above the static. So meditation is very important to me. The next step of meditation for me is connecting with the ultimate divine. You can do it in prayer. I have a chapter in the book called the the notorious G O D. Um getting into God. So um yeah, that that's one way to rise above the noise and the static and the swamp is in that practice. And then I mentioned at the very beginning like recognizing the sacred and the divine um and we can do this and it's it's certainly easy to do in the beauty of nature. Mhm. It's also when you have children and you're and you're raising a kid, you kind of see that the beauty in the in the kids' natural curiosity and wonder and openheartedness. And then you experience it in in human interaction, you know? I think I view this conversation as sacred. This is a This is a sacred conversation. We're seeking to understand each other. Um you're you're being a service to your incredible audience. They want to learn about how to make themselves better people, how to start a business, how to maximize their health, how to go on a on a spiritual journey as a human being. They want to learn all this and you're providing the the way into them. So, we get to have this conversation. People may not agree with what I'm saying, but it might spark something. And you know, gratitude uh and witnessing the sacred and that meditative practice of kind of rising above our thoughts and feelings. Um that those are those are tools that we can use to make our lives better and and richer. If someone is on the the outsides of this conversation and they they don't really understand what spirituality is and they've not really gone on the journey that you've been on, what are what kind of questions would you pose to them to help them open their mind? So, if someone's listening to this, they they find the word spiritual to be kind of hippie stuff and they they're not really, you know, they managed to get this far in the conversation, but they they don't really understand spirituality, what it means. They managed to get this far. Don't turn off the podcast yet. There's more good stuff coming. We're going to talk about The Office. I promise. Stick around, folks. Way too many cameras here. Is it I think there's nine or something. We should do Um what would you say to those people? That I just think of a guy driving his like lorry up the country. He's put the podcast on and he's he doesn't really know what spirituality is, doesn't really understand it, doesn't understand why he he would therefore need it in his life. Yeah. That's a great question. I don't know that I have an answer for that. I mean, I guess, you know, the dictionary definition of of spirituality that I use is uh a focus on the non-material aspects of life. So, that's our heart, that's our our our soul, it's our connection. It's the light that we bring. It's kind of a a connection to what I would call the divine qualities that we all carry uh to some degree or another. Um spiritual virtues, you could call them. Uh you know, love, compassion, honesty, humility. These are qualities that don't necessarily serve us as human animals. So, there there's something uh they're not about the quest for power, they're not about the quest for status and comfort. They um allow us to kind of rise above uh our kind of humdrum human experience. So, that's what I would That's how I would define spirituality, something in that realm. But, I would say that um listen, we all want more love in our life, right? And love is the most precious and beautiful resource. And I would say maybe you don't believe in spirituality, but or maybe you don't believe in God, but you can focus on love. And we can all focus on love. That's something we all have an experience of. And so, we want to increase love in our life, that's that's increasing spirituality, it's the same thing. Like uh I had a profound experience of love um when my son was born. He almost died. It was very traumatic birth. An ER room with blood in the middle of the night and a in a really piss-poor Van Nuys, California, you know, county hospital in a hallway. Um emergency C-section. And when I held my son, like I I again I had one of those handful of truly transcendent experiences, one of those cosmic experiences of looking into my son's eyes and uh they were bright, bright blue and he'd just been ripped from the womb of his mother and I felt such profound love for him and it was just like waves after waves of of love. And just almost I had tears, but it was almost just beyond tears. It was like this transcendent like love orgasm that was minutes long as I as I held him just with such gratitude and um and you know, for a lot of materialists, they could say, "Well, that's just neurons and biochemicals in your brain that are causing that." And that's true. There are neurons firing and there's biochemicals, but it's so much more than that. You're never going to tell me that that's all it is and that it's just some biological imperative to you know, have the species move forward and that's why parents love their children. Like what I experienced, I'm sorry, it's just it's beyond that. You can call me deluded, but that's what spirituality is, is just increasing that love connection. That I think that was a dating show in the '90s, Love Connection. But, we want to increase that love connection and that is what a spiritual journey is about. And we can increase that with ourselves, with nature, with with time, with beauty, um and with our with our fellow human beings. How did the birth of your son change your life? Well, having kids uh is a paradigm shift uh because you have a creature that's in your care and is dependent on you. And uh and it was actually really profound when my son was a year and a half, uh the same age that I was when my mom left to have the affair. That was a really profound time in my life. It brought up a lot for me emotionally because I saw this toddler kid and he would go out and explore the world and be like, "Oh, here's a cup." And play with some blocks and he'd "Oh, a tree." And he'd had some words going and stuff like that. And then immediately you'd see this look on his face, like, "Oh, I'm out too far." Like, "Oh, I'm I've swam out too far." And then he'd run back to the shallow end to his mom and cling to his mom and like, "Ah." And mom was home base, right? And I was like, "Oh, that home base was stripped from me. Was taken away from me when I was that same age." It was pretty profound. But, this idea that our um we're responsible we brought a life into the world and we're responsible for that life, not just for 5 or 10 years, not just for the first 18 years, but for eternity, it's um it's profound. I can't really say intellectually what that means, but um it shifts the way you are alive in the world. That example you gave of your your son at 1 and 1/2 years old being able to return to home base, in that you can also see what what might have happened to his development and his perspective if when he'd gone out too far and turned around, there was no mother there. Yeah. Who he might have become. And the and if there was no mother there, and then if if I and but then he had he had the father, which is a close second, right? But, then my dad, who was so traumatized by being abandoned by his wife and was so already emotionally shut down and he couldn't really access emotions in the best of scenarios. He had been colossally abused as a kid and his mom died and his dad was abusive and beat him and left him and his sister alone in the house for weeks at a time. It was very Charles Dickens. Um so, this you know, my dad's case, he was he was the worst possible person to to have to bond to, you know, or to need to bond to. So, you know, if little Walter if my wife Holiday had left or or died for some reason and Walter had to turn to me, like it would have been okay, but there's there's nothing that fulfills that um uh that that primal human uh connectionness than a child and the mom. One of the things that really surprised me um was when I was reading about your time at The Office, which by the way, I have to say is my favorite show of all time. Should probably say that. I'm sure it's that's the case for a lot of people. Wait, are you saying right now that the US Office is better than the UK Office? Yes. Wow. Yes, I'm I know. Do you hear that? It is maybe because there was more of them. There's a hell of a lot more of them. So, I've watched I watched honestly, when I was going through a difficult part in my life and I was trying to I was building my businesses, I was shoplifting food cuz I was just I was so broke at this chap in chapter of my life. It was the I had this beat-up laptop where I had to like solder the charger cuz I couldn't afford the 10 pounds to buy a new one. It was the only thing I watched and I watched it for about 2 years. So, obviously I I just kept going back and back and back. It was, you know, you're talking in chapter 10 about the seven pillars of spiritual revolution and one of them being about spreading joy. It spread a whole lot of joy in my life, a whole lot of joy. And I don't watch TV, to be honest. I don't watch TV, movies, don't really watch any of it. These guys will know. But, The Office I watched. I don't think there's anything else that I have that I have watched. Um but when I when I read about your your experience on the show, there was a real sense of unfulfillment, especially in the early years when you were making the show. Um you just talked about that a little bit on Bill's podcast, as well. When I was in the office, I spent several years really mostly unhappy because it wasn't enough. Mhm. Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm so glad that you enjoyed The Office, and I just need to speak to how deeply gratified I am and all of us are that The Office has brought so much uh serenity and peace and love and uh upliftment and inspiration to people. I mean, getting on a TV show is one of the hardest things in the world, and then getting on one that lasts is a really hard one. And then getting on one that lasts and is good, and then one that lasts and is good and still has a cultural impact 10 years after it has ended is I mean, talk about hitting the lottery. I mean, we had no idea. We knew we were onto something really special and and funny and magical, and of course Steve Carell is one of the great comedic actors that will ever live. Um, but uh we had no idea it would have this kind of impact and we're so deeply grateful and gratified um around that. And I going back to the English Office, it's always like it's so funny to me uh in The Bassoon King, the other book there I talk a a little bit about that that competition is so absurd. Like the the anger and vitriol that you Brits brought to the fact that that Americans were going to make remake the beloved Office. It was so staggering. I mean, it was so enraged and vitriolic, and it was like, Guys, guys, the English Office isn't going anywhere. You can watch it over and over again. We're not going to take all the copies and burn them. You know what I mean? We're going to take a brilliant idea by you know, by Ricky and Stephen and the BBC, and God bless them. Um, you know, it's a astonishingly brilliant, and we're going to kind of run with it. Instead of 12 episodes, we're going to make 200 episodes. How's that? If you don't like it, you don't have to watch it. But uh that was an interesting uh time frame. But yeah, so it's interesting that you bring this up because I was very frustrated cuz I was on Bill Maher and I was on one other podcast, and I was talking about how there were times on The Office that I really struggled because I really wasn't happy. Um, because it wasn't enough. Here I was on the greatest job that I could ever imagine, beyond my wildest dreams of that geeky, chess-playing, bassoon-playing kid from suburban Seattle that, you know, walked around like a pimply serial killer, um that I would be part of one of the great TV shows of all time. I mean, give me a break. And here I was getting paid like millions of dollars and playing one of the most memorable characters, and I'm getting nominated for awards, and I'm working with the most beautiful family of of actors and writers imaginable, and yet I was like, "How come I can't get more movies? And why did my movie I did bomb? And why won't they make a deal with me? And I I just I want to have this, and I want an office on Warner Brothers. And why can't I get a you know, and I spent a lot of time uh unnecessary time and angst and anguish um in that anxious discontent um at a time when I should have just been like, "This, it doesn't get better than this. Just enjoy it. Drink it in, and be a part of this incredible artistic, cuz it was artistic, experience." So, but I think the reason I've been bringing that up in some interviews is I think it's important for people to understand that, you know, here's someone who, you know, 15 years into their acting career, 20 years into their acting career, cuz I was I started playing Dwight when I was 38 years old, um is uh has a officially made it, Yeah. and they're still unhappy. And that is so human. It's so quintessentially human. And to think that, oh, if I hit this end result, then I am going to be happy? And that's why I I I brought it back to that unhappiness that I experienced in my 20s. Like I was an actor. I was from suburban Seattle. Here I was. I had an apartment in New York. I was doing acting, and yet I was really unhappy and miserable, and it didn't make any sense cuz society had always told me like there's this if-then proposition. Like if you achieve X, Y, and Z, if you make a certain amount of money, if you get a certain position, if you're in a certain kind of relationship, if you have a house at a certain level, if you're a member of a certain club, or whatever, then you will be happy. Once I achieve this, then I will be happy. That's [ __ ] It's absolute and total crock of [ __ ] Now, certainly I'm not meaning to demean anyone that's struggling to pay bills, and they're going like, you know, [ __ ] you, Hollywood elitist. You got millions of dollars in the bank, and uh you don't have to worry about, you know, paying the bills. I was there, you know, I was I was having to worry about, you know, paying the bills, and it was it was a struggle for the, you know, first 15 years of my career. So, I've been there. I know what that's like, and I honor that. So, you certainly want to make enough money to it does take an incredible pressure off your shoulders once you have achieved that. But to think that then you're going to be happy? I mean, you've interviewed a lot of millionaires and a lot of successful people. Like how how many of them are really fulfilled uh deeply fulfilled and happy? What would I have to have done to have gotten Rain at the height and the peak of that success, even when it was going, to be in the moment and to enjoy it for what it was? Because it's not just you. It's it's all the people that are listening now that are in jobs. They just got that promotion. And now they're thinking about becoming a director or a CEO. They they too are deferring their happiness off to the future behind some goal. What can we do in the moment to just like enjoy life today? Bring our happiness into the into the now. Um, if you always think your happiness is somewhere in the future, it always will be. Um, what would I have to have said to you to to get you to snap out of that? Um, that that's a great question. I don't know that there's anything that you could have said to me in a couple of sentences or a couple of paragraphs, but I think if you could have encouraged me to go back onto my spiritual journey, back into my spiritual journey, because you're absolutely right. All we have is now. All we have is this next breath. It's this breath that we're currently experiencing. And this is where the joy is. And if we're waiting for the joy to be 375 breaths from now, or 3,000 breaths from now, or 300 breaths from now, um we're missing out 100%. And I think gratitude has a great deal cuz one of the cures for chronic dissatisfaction, the cure for dukkha, is is gratitude. And I would have been to Rain, one of the things that would have been really helpful is like, Rain, you need to start every day with 10 things you're grateful for. It's like, I'm grateful for Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski and Steve Carell, and I'm grateful for a nice paycheck and a and a healthy son and a beautiful wife, and I'm I'm grateful for, you know, the fans of The Office and the fact that I get to, you know, I've trained as an actor my whole life, and I get to use those skills and tell wonderful stories and make people laugh. Like if I could have been stayed hooked into that, and I did get hooked back into that. Those This was a I'm describing a period of like 3 years, 3 to 4 years where I was really struggling with that, and then and then I I came around. Um, Does it rub you of your ambition, though? This is a question I always used to wrestle with myself, because that that Rain that wanted more versus the Rain that goes, "I'm grateful for what I have." Is one more or less ambitious than the other? Yeah, that's a that's a great question. I and I don't know the answer to that because there is um did my chronic dissatisfaction fueled my spiritual drive, it also fueled my career drive and my ambition um because I was so chronically dis- dis- disenchanted and disaffected uh that I I wanted uh uh I wanted more. I wanted more opportunities. I wanted more money. I wanted more knowledge. I wanted more wisdom. Um, there is there's a drive there that can be healthy, and a drive that's there's an unhealthy aspect to it. So, I don't really know the answer to that. I think for now, when I look in my life, like I still have great ambition. Like I still want SoulPancake as a brand. I'm just kind of starting to think about like how to expand that as a brand. Um, I still want to act in movies. You know, I want to direct. I want to maybe create companies. You know, I created SoulPancake, maybe create another company or something like that. And there there's a lot I want to do. Um, but I'm hoping to bring the best aspects of myself towards that ambition. And for me, that has to do with service and um and God and um and utilizing myself, my God-given talents uh and faculties, and maximizing those um and living in God's will. I'm sorry to get all hippie-dippie religious now, but to me, that's what's driving me now, but it's uh as long as we're in the battle of the ego. And that's the most ancient right human spiritual struggle. It's the battle of the ego. And psychologists talk about it, and prophets talk about it, and gurus talk about it, right? So, as long as we want to promote the self and the self-will and ego satisfaction, we will never be happy. Are you happy? I am. Yeah. Happy's the wrong word, but whatever it is you mean by happy, I have that thing. What is that thing? Um I don't know what the word is, and I I I ponder this a lot. Like, what's the perfect word? You know, social scientists talk about well-being. So, I like that one a lot. Mhm. That works. Uh it's partially contentment, uh but it's also partially um meaning and purpose and vision. And when I'm in alignment with meaning and purpose and vision, um then I feel like I'm vibrating on the right frequency. I discovered a product which has changed my life called Eight Sleep. And I'm so proud to say today that I had a chat with the founder of the brand, and they are now a podcast sponsor. And one of the things I've come to learn on this podcast from speaking with sleep experts like Matthew Walker is how important temperature is when it comes to sleep. The temperature of your room, the temperature of your bed. And also, one of the big insights I had from speaking to some experts was that the temperature of the room should fluctuate throughout the night as you move through different stages of sleep. So, when you first get into bed, it should be quite cool in bed. It should then get a little bit cooler, and then the temperature should increase near the end. And that is a reflection of what would have happened in nature once upon a time. You've probably come to learn that I have sponsors on this podcast that I use and products that I love. My sponsors should be a reflection of the conversations I'm having, but also a reflection of what I'm using in my life. So, to celebrate them being a new podcast sponsor, I always want to get a discount for you guys, and I've got one. Go to eightsleep.com, which is e i g h t sleep.com/steven, and if you do that, you'll save $150 on the pod cover that I have on my bed, the one I'm talking about. Grab your pod cover, send me a DM, and let me know how you get on. Quick one. You guys know that for years now, my office has quite literally been everywhere. On a plane, in the back of my car, in a terminal in an airport, or on a train. You name it, I've probably worked there. Ever since I started my first business at 19 years old, I've been working on the move. All I need is Wi-Fi, a desk, and my headphones, and I'm set. And one of the places that has always had my back when I'm struggling to find an office is WeWork. I've been using WeWork for years now, whether it's in Manchester, London, Manhattan, or LA, WeWork is easy. It literally requires no thinking. There's no stress of finding the perfect working location. WeWork does it all for you. Plenty of desk space, meeting rooms, collaboration spaces, drinks, snacks, it's all there. So, for your next remote working trip away from the office, or if you want a new fresh space to work in, then don't just work anywhere. WeWork might just be your answer. And you can get 25% off your first 6 months of WeWork all access by using code CEO works. That's one word, CEO works. And to redeem this offer, visit we.co/ceoworks. What are the things that you you you still struggle with? Because sometimes when we we read the books and stuff, and I've written a book myself, it can sometimes exude the illusion of fi- fixed or figured it all out. I'm done. Right. What So, what do you still struggle with on a on a ongoing basis? Yeah, uh I think that uh I can be a better husband, um and I think I can be a a kinder uh father and uh more compassionate friend. Um there's still some really basics of human interaction that I haven't quite gotten figured out. Really? And well, because I wasn't really I didn't learn these things from my parents, right? I didn't learn um you know, connection and compassion in the household that I grew up in. So, I've had to, you know, a parent my adult self in that in that direction. And you know, to really I I struggle with um uh making sure that I'm uh again, using the tools that God has given me to try and make the world a better place. I think there's a lot more that I could be doing to uh try and make the world better and to help uh heal people that are disenfranchised and bring more joy to people's lives and um and try and bring spiritual tools to a young generation that I think will make their lives better. There's there's more I could be doing to that end. And I still have a big ego. You know, I'm still narcissistic, and I still, you know, want ego satisfaction, and it's always there, you know, it's it's uh you know, they always say an addiction that your addict is in the basement doing push-ups, you know, even when But I would say the same thing about the ego, you know. It's there in the in the basement doing push-ups, just getting ready to come in and take the reins. Does it speak to you sometimes, the the the guy in the basement? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, Young talks about the shadow side, and it's so important and part of the therapeutic process is to get to know one's shadow, because and to know and embrace and accept and love one's shadow. And I have a sh- I have a dark shadow, you know, it's an addict shadow, and it's a miserable shadow, and it's self-important and righteous and entitled and this is this is part of who Rainn Wilson is, you know? And I'm not going to get rid of those aspects of myself by keeping that shadow at at arm's length or locked in a closet or something like that. I have to, you know, keep your keep your enemies closer, you know? Keep that Keep that shadow. There you are, buddy. There you are. Huh. Goon goon goon goon Right in the belly. Goon goon goon goon goon. Yeah, you little you little mean little addict, you know? You little narcissistic entitled [ __ ] I love you. I love you. You're right here with me. You're part of me. Let's go on this We're in this together. I got you right where I want you. Everyone's got a shadow. Um a lot of people are trying to fight their shadow. I mean, a lot of the prevailing narratives are that you can therapy your way out of the shadow. Yeah. No, it's it's sitting the You got to sh- sit the shadow on the lap, almost like a ventriloquist dummy, you know? It's That's why I love ventriloqu- ventriloquist stories and horror films of like the dummies that come to life and attack, you know? Mhm. Because that's that's your shadow is is that. Hello. How are you? [ __ ] you, Steven. Diary of a [ __ ] CEO. Get a new t-shirt, idiot. That's going to be the trailer. Um the 12-step program, you and Russell have both spoken to me about this, but Michael Mosley talked to me about it as well. And what I've since the conversation with Russell, I've I've spent a lot of time talking to other people about um really like what makes us change. So, the 12-step program is has some principles which I think are applicable for all of our lives about how to how to create change. Um if someone's going through something in their lives now, and they're they're they're struggling to change it, how how does that 12-step program help us to go to change? What what what is it about that program that causes that change in people? Do you know? I love the 12-step program. That's such a great question. There's going to be people that are way more um knowledgeable than I, but I will say there are some essential components of the 12-step program that you're right are applicable to everyone and could make everyone's lives better. Uh I think society as a whole could benefit from uh a lot of the way that the 12 steps work. Um I think it's the most profound spiritual movement of the last several hundred years. Uh it has transformed millions of people's lives. First of all, there's the idea that there's this wonderful dichotomy at the center of the 12 steps, which is if I surrender, if I admit defeat, if I admit powerlessness, I find great strength. So, there's a there's a beautiful spiritual koan at the center of that. Mhm. I give up. I throw up the white flag. I can't do this on my own. I need the support of a community. I need to get vulnerable. I need the support of a higher power. And then I find great strength. There's something just so beautiful about that. And the community of the 12 steps is amazing, too. Like, sharing with like-minded alcoholics, um and getting the support of that community, the fact that there's servant leaders, that there's elections, that it's it's run It's the inmates running the asylum, you know? Uh there aren't these kind of leaders. In fact, there if there's someone who kind of presents as like a leader in 12 steps, you should be immediately wary of them and that they have any kind of answer at all. The surrender point really is the thing that's compelled me, in fact. It's when Russell was talking about this idea of um I think the kind of what he said was like, he broke it down into three kind of processes. Awareness of whatever it is, the belief that you can change the thing, and then this third step, this principle of kind of surrendering to it. And in and in an individualistic society, materialistic society, where we're becoming more and more isolated and individualistic in our approach to life, we are living in four white walls alone more than ever before. You know, we we think we can do it ourselves, right? This idea of surrender and admitting that you need the collective and help with something and that you might not have the answers I think is so powerful. So so important as well. I think we all need to surrender in many ways. I think I need to surrender. Mhm. In terms of my ego, I think I need to surrender um in terms of even spirituality. I told you a second ago about my my partner who is very whatever anyone might call spiritual and surrendering to her way of living has brought me so much value Mhm. in my life. So this idea of surrender being the solution to um the resistance we're encountering by the ways that we're living, I think it's something that everyone can consider. Like if you're feeling a deep sense of dissatisfaction in your life, surrendering and saying I need help. I don't know the answer. Um Can Can you help me? Yeah. brings in everything you're It's probably that the medicine that you're seeking. Mhm. But surrender feels like an interesting word. It feels like powerlessness. Right. But again, there's great power in that powerlessness. And what do you surrender to? And that's why there's a higher power as well. And uh boy, there's so many things I wanted to say there. Um but uh there's a humility in the process that is missing in contemporary society, right? I'd say we're the least humble that humans have been uh in in our history, all 8 billion of us sharing this planet. So um And I think God or a higher power requires a certain humility. Like there's a power greater than myself. The ego is the opposite of surrender. The ego wants to control outcomes. The ego wants to control other people, right? As long as we're trying to control other people and control outcomes, we're going to be unhappy. So there's something about surrendering like you know, your your partner's you know, journey, you you surrender to that. You don't know what she's going to go live on a commune or worship a mushroom or something like that. Okay, you're on your journey. She already does, babe. Babe. You know. So it's it's again that central spiritual struggle is is the is the is the ego, is the primacy, the primacy, the primalcy of I, the self, as being separate from everything else. And the essential spiritual teaching at the center of every faith tradition is that we're all connected. We're all united. We're all one. This is an illusion of self. So surrender eliminates that illusion of self. But there's so many other nuggets in 12 steps. Like one of them, just in the middle of the steps, is when we are wrong, promptly admit it. Like that's just a really good piece of advice. And you know what? We could all benefit. Politicians could benefit. CEOs could benefit. Um people in relationships, parents with their children, people in in partnership could benefit. Like when we're wrong, promptly admit it. Promptly being the word. Not eventually. You know. Um As soon as you know. Say you're sorry and do it faster, you know, and do it better. And uh the world would be a much better place if everyone around said, "When I'm wrong, I'm going to promptly admit it." That's just one little gem. There's so many dozens more. Holiday. Yeah. She's been with you through a lot. Yeah. Yeah. When I was looking at the timeline of when you you guys got together, I think you met in an acting class, right? Yeah. It's been a long time, almost four decades, right? Hell of a long time. Yeah, we were in acting class together in 1985. We weren't together as a couple till '90, '91 really, when she moved to New York. But uh I wasn't even born then. You've grown a whole Stephen in that time. [ __ ] I was born in '92. So What does she What does she What does she mean to you? You're going to make me cry, aren't you? You're going to try and make me cry. know. I don't You might hate her. Um She's everything to me. I mean, I'm so blessed to have her in my life. Um she's dealt with me when I've been a raging [ __ ] And she's dealt with me when I've been depressed, when I've when I've let my anxiety get the best of me. Um we've had a lot of ups and downs in our marriage, and I think that's that's really important for people to hear. Like uh I we're soulmates um and uh I really wouldn't have achieved anything that I've achieved without her help and guidance and love and support. And it you know, it all sounds like a cliche, but it's just it's just the truth. And she's really the wisest person that I know. She has a deep deep wisdom, and she knows me better than anyone. So I'm just grateful, and I tell her every day. I tell her every day. What What has she taught you about the nature of what love is? You know, it's interesting. She also had a very traumatic childhood and a difficult Her parents had a very difficult situation, and she she had a lot of issues in her own way and her own journey. I'll let her tell that story. But um she loves very naturally in a way that it's a lot more work for me. So she just has a big heart and is just able to love our son and other people and animals. And uh You know, I I always felt I as an analogy I use in in my in my books where because I had such a weirdly fractured childhood, I would observe how humans interacted and uh try and emulate that cuz I didn't understand it. So if I would like observe people in the lunch room at my school and they'd come in and someone would say like, "Hey buddy, how's it going? You have a good weekend? Good to see you." And I would I would watch it and I would I'm like, "Oh, that's that's how normal people interact." And so I would I would literally copy it and I would try it out. And I'd go up to someone like, "Hey buddy. Uh how you doing? Do you have a good weekend?" You know. So for me, I would felt like I was an alien. Like I was literally like a science fiction film where I was like this alien like learning about human behavior and interaction and like studying humans and and seeking to to fit in. And I bring this up because Holiday is uh does this stuff so naturally, you know, she just has a natural warmth and and grace. Uh So and sometimes I emulate her about oh, here's what it means to be loving and and warm and uh and live life with with grace. You and me both. My partner sounds exactly the same, and I feel like I've learned how to love someone by emulating the things she does so naturally. The things she says, the things she admits, when she says sorry, how open she is, the her ability to tell me her feelings. Mhm. All of these things I've I've learned from just watching that she seems to have no issue or no resistance in doing it. That makes sense. I've learned how to parent from her so well. And our son, uh bless him, Walter, he's 18 and a half, about to go off to college. Um But I always want to maybe lecture or react a little too much or say the thing I feel that needs saying. And And my wife is so good and like she'll see me starting to do it and she'll just be like Just just this little thing and I'll be like, "And I think Walter, you Uh we'll we'll talk about it later." I just I take my cues from her a little like she's a conductor of my She's a conductor of my parenting. Yeah. Brian, thank you so much. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving the question for. They leave it in the diary of a CEO. That's good. The question they have left for you. I don't get to read it until So give me a second. Handwriting is not always great. Can you recall a time when you Observe He reads it. Observed someone being treated badly and could have intervened but didn't. Uh So what might you have done differently if you could go back to that moment? That's such an exceptional question. I was reading a uh Someone was writing about bullying. And they were talking about how bullying is a three-step process. Like you stop the bully. You say, "Hey, that's not okay." Speak up to the bully. Maybe don't get in a fight, but speak up to the bully. Tend to the bullied. And then report it to an authority. And we often just kind of view bullying as like that first step process of like trying to shut down the bully. And you know, back in the '70s and '80s when I was growing up, uh there was a whole hell a lot of bullying going on. And um And I I feel bad that I didn't bully myself cuz I was far too nerdy um to partake in bullying, but I That's any reason why. Well, part of it was Part of it was because I wish that I could have been a part of that process of uh especially people that had been bullied to uh I guess I just didn't have the tools to give them empathy and compassion and and support. And and then to take an active part in, you know, reporting this whole dynamic to the authorities. Cuz I when I go back uh I replay my high school years and junior high and elementary school years, it's it's non-stop bullying. I mean, it was it was taunting and teasing and you know, taking the piss out and and demeaning and belittling and um and hierarchies and uh we may be going a little too far in contemporary society uh about what qualifies as bullying cuz it's not criticism and it's not even necessarily like having some good-natured fun, you know, but uh I wish I had been uh I'm more actively um a participant in kind of a part of that three-step process. It's super interesting. Never heard about that three-step process before. This particular individual, I don't usually give clues, but uh but um they're writing a book about adult bullying as well. Mhm. Having been on the receiving end of that, and they think adult bullying is something we don't really talk about a lot, which is like the workplace stuff and Mhm. you know, as we get older. Rainn, thank you so much. Um thank you for so many things. My There's two real really incredible things that um changed my life in a really important way. The first was obviously The Office, you know. You were by far my favorite character, and I think the I just can't understand how a human can be could have been so good at acting. And I really mean that. Like, I don't [ __ ] people, but you're so good at acting. Playing that role of Dwight. I think I there was occasions where I tried to do it. Like, I tried to So, it's almost it's it's comes as a shock to many people that and you know this cuz you kind of allude to it in the in the first chapter of the book that someone that could embody Dwight can also write such a great book like this about something that is so far from what I think Dwight might be interested in. And it's actually all a testament to your ability to your ability to act. Really, really unbelievable. I think your role as Dwight is one of the all-time great performances in any show like that. It's it's incredible, incredible. And you talk about, as I said, in the 10th chapter of the book about spreading joy. You gave me so much joy. And then you came out with this app called SoulPancake back in the day, which caught me at the perfect moment, where I was a young man that was really obsessed with these big questions. Still am. Um and it allowed me to find this community where I just peppered people with really profound questions about whether dogs have, you know, a soul and all these kind of things that I was struggling with at the time. So, thank you for both of those things cuz you helped me in ways that you'll never know, and I live tens of thousands of miles that way, and it changed just nudged the the direction of my life in so many important ways, and it's led me to this moment now, which you can understand for me is an incredible one. Absolutely incredible one. So, thank you. Means a lot, and everyone should go check out this book. It's it's wonderful. It's super accessible. It's it it kind of I don't know how to describe this, but it as as it relates to books that are confronting this idea of the spiritual revolution, it takes it easy on you, and it holds your hand across the bridge, you know? And that that I think is important because that person in the lorry or the truck, that's exactly what they need if they are going to access the wisdom in this book. So, thank you, Rainn. Steven, what a profound pleasure. Thank you for having me on this show. Congratulations on all the incredible work that you do. And um thank you for acknowledging the fact that you owe everything TO ME. SO. AND THAT'S A WRAP. [Music] A QUICK WORD ON HUEL. As you know, they're a sponsor of this podcast, and I'm an investor in the company. One of the things I've never really explained is how I came to have a relationship with Huel. One day in the office many years ago, a guy walked past called Michael, and he was wearing a Huel T-shirt. And I was really compelled by the name. I thought I'd just thought for a minute a design aesthetic point of view it was really interesting. And I asked him what that word meant and why he was wearing that T-shirt. And he said, "There's this brand called Huel, and they make food that is nutritionally complete and very, very convenient and has the planet in mind." And he the next day dropped off a little bottle of Huel on my desk. And from that day onwards, I completely got it because I'm someone that cares tremendously about having a nutritionally complete diet, but sometimes, because of the way my life is, that falls by the wayside. So, if there was a really convenient, reliable, trustworthy way for me to be nutritionally complete in an affordable way, I was all ears, especially if it's a way that is conscious of the planet. Give it a chance. Give it a shot. Let me know what you think. [Music]