648 Live to Serve with Rainn Wilson

“Gratitude is always the best place to start with anything.” If you enjoyed this episode, check out the video, show notes, and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/648 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:11Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to this very special episode with the one and only Rainn Wilson. That's right, Dwight from The Office is in the house today and I'm extremely excited to dive deeper behind who this human being actually is and wow, did he blow me away with everything he shared.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  The number one life's big question, and I know this isn't a spirituality webcast per se, but the, I'm sorry to go here, but I'm gonna go here.

• 0:42Lewis Howes?

  This is greatness.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  The number one big question is, is there a God or not? Because as Thomas Merton says, who's a fantastic, one of my favorite writers of all time, Roman Catholic writer, he says, "Either everything is all spiritual or not spiritual at all." So, there either is a creative life force that created us, has a purpose for us.

• 1:05Lewis Howes?

  Or it's random.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Or we're all a random assemblage of molecules bumping together and for some reason, evolutionarily, you and I developed these brains and we have these little headsets on.

• 1:15Lewis Howes?

  Eyeballs.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  And here we are having this conversation. And this is all just random chance and it doesn't have any meaning whatsoever. And whatever meaning happens is because we put our meaning onto it and then we're dead and boom, lights out and that's the end of the show. So it's either that or there's an all-loving Creator and this physical realm is just a way stop. You know, we were in the womb for a while and then we're in our physical bodies in the world for a while and then our souls move on to whatever is the next phase and then the next phase and the next phase of essentially, I suppose, maybe meeting this Creator. And so that- If that's what you believe, that puts your life in a very different context.

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Not to say that atheists or agnostics and people of faith can't and shouldn't work together and that there's so much that we share. We want to make the world a better place. We want to bring joy and love and inspiration to people's lives, for the most part.

• 2:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  And I think that the whole debate of, I never want to get into a debate with an atheist, you know, it's just so pointless. Like, it's not going to convince anybody of anything. It's, but I think we have to find a commonality and a way to move together. But I do think that everyone has to go on that journey of deciding whether or not there is a creator.

• 2:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, what they believe in.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  What they believe in.

• 2:36Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Because it's going to inform your life choices.

• 2:40Lewis Howes?

  I just find it's going to be hard to, I don't know, if you don't believe in anything, you're going to feel very unfulfilled, I think, throughout. You're going to have a lot of those moments of unfulfillment. And then maybe that's what you were feeling when you were kind of even not just connected to spirituality. It's like, what's the purpose? What's the meaning? What's the reason?

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Well, what I believed in was self, and that's not enough.

• 2:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's tough.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  If you just believe in yourself, it's a lot of ego. And that's what I wanted. I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to make money. I wanted people to like me and see me in plays. I wanted to make, play great roles and be seen and remembered for it. And that's just a lot of self, self, self, self, self. And then it's not about anybody else. And it's, I think it's hollow. And I think for me, what it did is, four or five years into my career, it just kind of rang hollow. It's like, here I am, I'm doing the plays.

• 3:27Lewis Howes?

  Draining as well, right? It's like exhausting, probably.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, just focusing on yourself all the time and self-promotion and trying to get a better agent and trying to get a better job. And it is, it's pretty exhausting. So, what I try to do now, what I try to do, and fail a lot, because I still have a lot of ego tied up in all of this, you know.

• 3:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh, you mean you're a human being?

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:48Lewis Howes?

  You're not perfect yet?

• 3:50Speaker 01

  I'm not. I haven't achieved bodhisattva yet. I'm not a saint. I am, is, I'm trying to look at things as more as service. Because you started the conversation with gratitude. And I think gratitude is always the best place to start with anything. And I think that... You know, what I always say to people who are lost is, what can you do to be of service to someone else? Yeah. And you told me out in the lobby when we were before doing this podcast, that you really started this as a service to have great conversations and to help people. And I feel that. And I felt that in listening to your podcast. This was not just you self-promoting. You're really trying to help people with ideas. And I appreciate that.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  And that's been, it's a tricky thing for an actor because, oh, I want to act, want to be in front of the camera and play great roles and get this attention at me. But I really do want to be a storyteller that makes a difference in the world. And even doing The Office, as silly as The Office was, my favorite stories of when someone would say like, my sister was dying of cancer and we would sit in the hotel, in the hospital room and watch episode after episode of The Office and we would just laugh together. And we'd laugh till we cried. And the fact that we were able through that show to bring laughter to people. Yeah. And bring joy to people was very fulfilling.