From Proxy: Mic Chooses the Wrong Life

We're excited to share with you an episode of the new podcast Proxy, produced by Yowei Shaw. Today: the case of Mic, who feels like he defied his fate and now has no purpose in life. For her new podcast Proxy, Yowei Shaw finds someone uniquely able to help Mic break out of his regret loop. Proxy https://www.proxypodcast.com/ is a show that investigates niche emotional conundrums through conversations with strangers who have relevant experience. New cases every other Tuesday. You can binge episodes now in the Proxy feed https://pod.link/1746433334.

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

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:18Dan Harris?

  Hey, everybody. As many of you know, I've been deeply interested in recent years by the practice of self-compassion, which sounds a little treacly, but actually, in my experience, is life-changing. There's a ton of scientific research to back this up. And one of the principal practices of self-compassion, developed by the great Kristin Neff, the researcher who pioneered the concept of self-compassion and then led much of the research into it, one of the primary practices is called the mindful self-compassion break. And the first step is to just wake up to the fact that you're suffering in some way or kicking your own ass. So, the first step is mindfulness. The second step, I'm going to hold for a second because it relates to everything else I'm going to say. The third step is to talk

• 1:02Dan Harris?

  to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend, which is incredibly impactful. But back to the second step. The second step is something called common humanity. Just bringing to mind that whatever you're dealing with right now, no matter how bespoke, or odd, or idiosyncratic your issue is right now, there are millions of other people, odds are, who are dealing with the same thing at this very moment. So, it's that second piece of the mindful self-compassion break, this thing that Kristin Neff calls common humanity, that is at the heart of a new podcast that I want to introduce you to today. Here's the concept. If you've ever been in a situation where you have a problem, and you have this

• 1:45Dan Harris?

  feeling that you're alone in the problem, that nobody else can relate, and that you wish you could talk to one person who really, really understands it from the inside. So, what if, in that situation, you had your own personal investigative journalist who would scour the world for the perfect stranger with just the right experience for you to talk to? I would have loved it back in 2004 if there was somebody else who could have talked to me about what it was like to have a coke-fueled panic attack on national television. But, anyway... Back to this podcast, I want to introduce you to, it's called Proxy, and it provides exactly the service I was just describing. It's hosted by Yowei Shaw, who you may remember as one of the hosts of the NPR podcast,

• 2:27Dan Harris?

  Invisibilia, which was super, super popular, but sadly went away. Yowei is back, and on this new show, Proxy, Yowei investigates your niche emotional conundrums and puts you into conversation with a proxy, a stranger who's been in nearly the exact same situation, or has some expertise and can hopefully help you get unstuck. Yowei calls it emotional investigative journalism, a term I've never heard before, but I really like it. So that's what we're going to do for you today. We're going to bring you an episode of said emotional investigative journalism from Proxy, before we play you the episode of Proxy. I do want to tell you about something I'm doing over on danharis.com. All week at 4:00 PM Eastern, I'm going to be doing live guided meditations where I

• 3:09Dan Harris?

  focus on specific forms of meditation that were designed by the Buddha as an antidote to anxiety. As you may know, there are four related meditation practices that are collectively known as the Brahma Viharas, or divine abodes. Not my preferred branding, but really, I found these styles of practice to be immensely helpful in my own life, and you can think of these four interrelated flavors of meditation as a way to take it easier on yourself and more skillfully navigate the world. These styles of meditation have stood the test of time, having been practiced for 2,600 years, and are increasingly being validated by modern science, which suggests these practices

• 3:51Dan Harris?

  can have psychological, physiological, and even behavioral benefits. So again, I'll be doing live guided meditations all week over at danharis.com. Like any good drug dealer, I give you the first dose for free, meaning Monday's session is open to everybody, and then the rest of the week is really just for paid subscribers, so you know what to do. Again, head on over to Dan Harris and get all the details. All right, enough out of me. Let's check out a new episode of this new show from Yowei Shaw. It's called Proxy. Check it out.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Hot flashes, rage crying, forgetting words mid-sent-ten. Yeah, we know.

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• 5:27Speaker 04

  Hello?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Hey, Badragal Podcast spouse.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  What was your favorite thing about mixing this week's episode?

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Oh, my favorite part was that your PCOPS are way more under control.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  I guess I finally learned as an audio professional to not talk directly into the microphone.

• 5:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Did you learn anything that you're gonna put into practice?

• 6:02Speaker 04

  I don't know that I necessarily learned something that I could sum up in a single sentence, but it definitely...

• 6:10Speaker 01

  We're trying to sell the show here, Kyle.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  Oh, you didn't let me finish. Yeah, I said nothing I could sum up in one sentence because I'm tired because I was up till midnight mixing this fucking thing.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  This is Proxy. And I'm Yowei Shaw, your emotional investigative journalist. Today, the case of the man filled with regret for the life that got away. That's after the break.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  So there's this stereotype about Asians. The stereotype goes, Asian immigrant parent wants kid to be doctor or lawyer, while kid wants to do something that won't make money and won't bring honor to the family. Something shameful, like podcasting.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  My parents immigrated to the US from Taiwan in the 70s. And I assure you, they are complex, multi-dimensional people. My mom loves to wear crop tops. My dad loves to talk about how hot my mom is. But this is one stereotype they did get informed to. Unfortunately, I was terrible at math and was still calling my dad to do my homework by the time I got to college. I also have a terrible memory and would never have passed the bar exam. No, I decided to follow my heart and pursue my passion of long-form audio journalism, only to now read articles every week titled, "Has the Podcast Bubble Finally Burst?" But still, no regrets.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  I never, ever think about being a lawyer or doctor. The regret that I mostly hear around this is from people like my dad, who was a doctor but really wanted to be an artist. Which is why I was really surprised to hear from an Asian with a version of the story I'd never heard before.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  Are you gonna use video? Because if you do, I'm gonna clean up a little bit more.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sorry. I should have told you. This is Mike Nguyen. He works in advertising, and he's also a comedian who's known on the internet for roasting himself for being a menswear dork. He calls his style "American prosperity core," how Americans dressed back when the middle class was prosperous. So lots of blazers with hand-sewn buttonholes and Alden Cordovan horse leather loafers. I don't know what that means, but apparently it signals, hello, I take menswear very seriously.

• 9:15Speaker 05

  I do love fashion. Whenever people find out I'm into fashion, they always make fun of me. My comics make fun of me, my friends make fun of me. I always want to tell these people, hey, I don't dress for you guys. I dress for black teenagers, okay?

• 9:26Speaker 01

  But here's the thing about Mike. Even though he followed his heart to pursue a creative passion, he's haunted by the life he didn't choose.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  So I feel, in my life, I was destined to fulfill the family fate of becoming a doctor. And for various reasons, I ended up not becoming a doctor. And ever since then, I've just been adrift. You know, sometimes people say, oh, you're chasing your dream. No, my dream is to be a doctor. That's the dream. The comedian thing? Everything else is second to that.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Mike is the son of Vietnamese refugees. And growing up, he says, it was just understood. He was going to be a doctor.

• 10:16Speaker 05

  Okay, this is the thing that's going to make me happy and make my family happy and make my mom happy and make the stars align.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Mike says in Vietnamese culture, there are only a couple jobs that bring prestige to the family. And for Mike, it felt good to be on this path, like he had a higher calling. Plus, he was good at school, he liked science, he cared about people. Everything made sense.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  He still remembers the day it all went south.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  He was a junior at Berkeley and he was struggling to keep up with his pre-med classes.

• 10:54Speaker 05

  I remember I had to take physics. And I was sitting outside the physics building and it was the last day before you could drop a class. It was like, you know, the second week of school. And I took out like a quarter and I said, if this is heads, I'm going to take physics. If this is tails, I'm not going to take physics. And it came up heads, which means I'm supposed to take physics.

• 11:20Speaker 05

  And I said, nope, not going to do it. And I just walked right down to the administration office and I dropped the physics course.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  It's like your body was telling you no.

• 11:33Speaker 05

  I think so. The idea of putting myself through that was just like, it was, it made me feel sick. So I didn't want to do it anymore.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Mike switched majors to sociology. He graduated college. He got a job at a test prep company. He moved to New York and got a job in advertising and eventually started doing comedy to give him an edge over the other copywriters and liked it. He got married. He had a kid.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Today, Mike is 45. And you know that meme about how often men think about the Roman Empire? That's what it's like for Mike, but with a career that got away. Even though he enjoys working in advertising, even though he loves doing comedy, he can't stop thinking back to that coin toss.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  What if he'd stayed in physics? What if he just gritted his teeth and gone to med school as planned?

• 12:36Speaker 05

  I was watching content on Instagram and I found this one guy and he's like a dad fitness influencer type. And I found out later on that he's also an MD. He's like, "I'm a doctor and I'm a dad and I work out a lot." And I was reading this and I was like, "Hey, you know, he's a content creator and a doctor. Maybe I should give it another go." And I legit looked up a couple of things and I at least give myself enough credit in that I am wise enough to know that I would quickly come to the reality that, "Holy shit, this would be absolutely crazy and I probably wouldn't enjoy it."

• 13:08Speaker 01

  When did this happen?

• 13:10Speaker 05

  That was like last week.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 13:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, it's really always rattling in my mind all the time, constantly.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Mike knows he doesn't want to go to med school, but he keeps looking into going to med school because he's stuck in a loop. He regrets not becoming a doctor and yet he doesn't actually want to be a doctor.

• 13:41Speaker 05

  I don't know, like if you've ever done this, but like, um, you know, you're playing an online video game and you sort of like mess up your one chance to, to like get the big score or like kill the boss and you just have to wait around until the game starts over again. It feels like that. It feels like, "Oh, I missed my chance. Well, guess I'll just float around and stuff until I get to go again or I die." One of the two, you know, like it's that feeling.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  And that's why Mike came to us.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  To find him a proxy to talk to, a stranger with just the right experience with his conundrum and can hopefully help him get less stuck.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Mike wants to know if there's anything he can do to silence the rattling of this regret, or at least anything he can do to make this earworm less annoying.

• 14:34Speaker 05

  Is there a way to turn this into something healthy? Because I do feel like it's going to be something I have to live with. So I'm gonna have to just come to terms with it.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Okay, Mike, thank you for bringing me this case. I will, I will try my best to find you a proxy. I do have one last question, though. If you had to vocalize the sound of this emotional conundrum, what would it be?

• 15:01Speaker 05

  Vocalize the sound?

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 05

  Gosh, it's probably, let me think here. Okay, what is the sound to this feeling? The first thing that comes to mind, I don't know if this is totally right. You know, the elevator muzak waiting sound? Waiting room music is what I would describe it as. Right, so.

• 15:35Speaker 05

  You know? It's not entirely unpleasant, but it's a little like boring and a little bit tedious.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  After the break, Mike has a proxy conversation. And we attempt to break Mike out of the emotional waiting room he's stuck in. Please hold, and Proxy will be right back.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Six months go by after that first call with Mike. Six months of tedious hold music. And then finally, it's the day of the proxy conversation. I log into the video call with Mike.

• 16:46Speaker 05

  You're wearing a robe right now? I am wearing this awesome wrap knit cardigan.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  A lot has happened in the six months since we spoke. Some good things?

• 16:57Speaker 05

  My daughter was born in August. I can't remember if we talked since then.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  And some not so good things.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  Yes, I got lost. I lost my job.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm so sorry, Mike.

• 17:09Speaker 05

  It's okay. It's okay. Yeah. That afternoon was definitely scary. It was like a gut punch. You know, I did the whole thing, the Asian thing was like, did I do something wrong? Should I have worked harder?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, Mike. I know all about it. I made a three part series about getting laid off. Listen to the layoff trilogy wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Anyway, Mike says after losing his job, he found himself scrolling through Reddit one day.

• 17:38Speaker 05

  I don't know how they know. Maybe they listened in on our conversations, but Reddit serves me up an ad for St. George University. Do you know this school? It is a Caribbean medical school. And it said, are you ready to make the leap to medicine? And I was like, I just got laid off. I need to provide for my family. Reddit is serving up this ad for Caribbean medical school. And I was like, is this it? Am I doing this?

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Did you look up what it would take to go to medical school again?

• 18:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, actually.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  You did?

• 18:14Speaker 05

  Not at the school. I just like talked to my friend and just the idea of having to like, take biology 1A again made my stomach sick.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 18:22Speaker 05

  I do think this is a little bit of the grass is always going to be greener. And I know, you know, doctors have very tough lives, but it's like, I do want someone to kind of just give me a sense check. Even if it is like, hey, it's awesome, dude. You fucked up. At least somebody told me.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Hold that thought because the proxy is here.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Are you ready for me to let them in?

• 18:44Speaker 05

  I'm nervous.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  So the proxy.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Now, on this show, our job is to help Mike investigate his feelings. We do that by finding him a proxy to talk to. That could be a stranger with shared life experience. It could be a researcher who's studied the issue at hand. In Mike's case, I thought about looking for another Asian who struggled with the same kind of regret. But then I thought, maybe it'd be helpful to talk to someone who's studied regret. Someone who could help Mike understand what he was feeling and maybe even reframe his relationship with regret. And then I came across a regret researcher who was nice enough to agree to this proxy conversation experiment.

• 19:39Speaker 06

  Hi.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  Hey.

• 19:41Speaker 06

  Hey, nice to meet you.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Meet Amy Somerville, principal research scientist at Kairos Research and a social cognitive psychologist who used to run a whole research lab on regret at Miami University in Ohio.

• 19:56Speaker 06

  So I'm Dr. Amy Somerville. I have a PhD in social psychology. I've published one of the most cited papers on regret with my graduate advisor called "What We Regret Most and Why," and have done research on regret for, I guess, over 20 years at this point.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  No, I'm already getting very triggered by the fact that she introduced herself as doctor. So I was like, geez.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  I asked Mike to explain his case to Amy, and he tells her how he felt destined to become a doctor, how he couldn't keep up with his pre-med classes, and about that coin toss outside his physics class.

• 20:37Speaker 05

  And I flipped a coin, and I said, "If it's heads, I will take the class. If it's tails, I will not." And it turned out heads, and I said, "No, I'm still not taking it." And I walked down to the registrar, and I dropped the class, and it felt awesome. It felt amazing. And that was pretty much it. I never even looked back after that.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Except, Mike did look back. He can't stop looking back. That's literally the point of this whole episode.

• 21:05Speaker 05

  And I always think, like, what if I had just done that? There's always that part of me that is like, should I just apply to medical school now?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  I'm curious, any initial reactions?

• 21:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, gosh, a lot. So I guess maybe a place to start is let me define how I think about regret, because I think people come to it with a lot of different ideas of like what regret means and like hashtag no regrets and all of that. So in my work, I use a definition from Tom Gilovich and Victoria Medvec that I think is awesome. And it says regret has three pieces. The first is that it feels bad. The second is that it's because you have a thought about how things could have been different. And the third is that it's because of something that you think you could have done differently. And so I think it sounds like we're check, check, check.

• 22:05Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:06Speaker 06

  And sort of the technical term for this like thought about how things could have been different is a counterfactual. So right, like literally contrary to the facts. So it's this imagined possible world of how things could have been different.

• 22:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:21Speaker 06

  Regrets in particular seem to be kind of this combination of I had a chance to do something different that maybe is now kind of a lost opportunity. I can't just like instantly fix it. But also, it still feels like really relevant to my goals and who I am. The sense of like, who am I as a person and what is my identity and role in the world? Like, I mean, that's like the big question for everyone. So like, of course, that's a thing we all keep wrestling with throughout our lives. So it makes sense that things that really touch on that are gonna be places we come back to.

• 22:59Speaker 05

  Yes. You're looking into my soul, doctor. This is...

• 23:03Speaker 06

  Not that kind of doctor, just to be clear.

• 23:05Speaker 05

  Not that kind of doctor, but still.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Amy is a psychologist. She doesn't treat people. But, once upon a time, Amy actually also wanted to be a doctor like Mike. She was in a pre-med program, and, just like Mike, Amy wasn't sure if it was right for her. So during a summer program where she was shadowing doctors, she asked them all a question.

• 23:29Speaker 06

  If somebody was on the fence about whether they should go to med school or do something different, what would you tell them? And every single one of them told me they should do something different. If you can imagine a life for yourself, doing anything other than this, you should go do that.

• 23:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, huh.

• 23:49Speaker 06

  Because it's too hard for too long.

• 23:53Speaker 05

  But this seems almost like a trick, you know? Well, only the real ones. You, you're a bit of a softie, so you should get out of here. So, you know, it's kind of like, also goes up against the way I saw myself.

• 24:06Speaker 05

  I always was the smart kid in class. And it took out one of the legs of my identity.

• 24:14Speaker 05

  Well, not only am I not smart, I clearly don't even have the wherewithal or the gumption to do this other thing. So now, what the hell? You know, I'm just some guy with great style? Like, what else can I do?

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Well, Mike, if it's okay, I want to go back to that moment with the coin toss.

• 24:37Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  It seems like you were very certain of how you felt about that decision in the moment. Like, it just felt bad to listen to the coin and stay in physics.

• 24:47Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  And that's why you dropped out.

• 24:50Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  And then you said it felt awesome.

• 24:53Speaker 05

  It felt awesome.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  And so, I'm just curious, why do you think you trusted your gut so much back then? And why aren't you trusting it now?

• 25:05Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 25:08Speaker 05

  I think a lot of it has to do with like, you're in college, you're like, kind of a hedonist, you know, you're doing a lot of things because it feels good. You know, it felt good at the time, and I think sometimes I frame it as, that's a kind of an immature response, that as a rational person, you should do the thing that may not feel good, but is the good thing, the thing that's right for whatever your family or yourself or what have you. And so I, I, I discount some of that action because, hey, we also grew up Catholic, you can layer that on top as well. And so, things which feel good are probably bad for you, things that feel bad are probably good for you, you know. So there is sort of that element as well.

• 25:54Speaker 06

  So there's work by a researcher called Tori Higgins, who basically says we carry with us, like, two self-guides of what we should be aspiring to. And one of them is, he calls the ideal self. So like, what is like, the aspirational version of yourself that you like, most want to be? And then what's your ought self? So like, what are the like, obligations and duties and the things you feel like you should be? The idea is that sort of like, in general, like, our aughts are kind of easier to repair. Like, if there's a thing you should do, you can just go do it. I got up last night at 11:30 to be like, oh god, did I close my garage door?

• 26:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 26:37Speaker 06

  It's that kind of, like, oh, did you do the thing? Okay, now I can forget it. And there's some work in the regret science, that actually for most people, the things that we regret most over time are related to our ideal self. And it's sort of interesting to me that, it sounds like, it's kind of like your parents' ideal, more than your ideal, but also, you know, it kind of became ingrained in you, both as an obligation and because of your vision of who you are in the family, that kind of like, meeting their ideal became your ideal?

• 27:16Speaker 05

  About 100%. I have a bunch of questions for you. I hope that's okay to pack.

• 27:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 27:21Speaker 05

  One is, you know, I always wondered if it's like a, it's like a cultural thing. Cause the way the language I would describe is it's not just my family. I'm talking about like 1,000 generations of my family, you know, are pretty bummed out. It's a very Mulan situation. The ancestors are like, whoa, we sent this guy to America. And now this guy decided to go on this podcast. What's the deal with that? I don't know if there's anything where, I don't want to say like my regret is more enhanced than other people. I'm sure other people have a tremendous amount of regret, but it's like, I feel sometimes that there's a cultural thing as well.

• 28:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, so, so I've actually done some work on cross-cultural stuff and not specifically with Vietnamese culture. So I want to be clear, like I, I don't have like specific expertise there.

• 28:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:13Speaker 06

  So I have a, a paper looking at Arab students compared to white Midwestern students. And they're right, like totally different understanding of fate. It's really this idea of like, your fate is written. So they actually basically don't report some of the patterns of counterfactuals that I was talking about earlier.

• 28:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:37Speaker 06

  So if you ask, hey, there's this car accident. How much is he thinking, oh, I should have taken another route? And people say, well, no, because i- if God wrote for him to have this accident, it doesn't matter what road he was on. Like the accident was written, that was his fate.

• 28:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 28:55Speaker 06

  Um, if it's his fate, you, you can't escape that.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 28:58Speaker 06

  He probably feels bad that this accident happened, but that doesn't actually mean that he could have done anything different. So it's really interesting to me that for you, it's sort of this like, I defied my fate.

• 29:14Speaker 05

  That's really sort of the thing is that I always joke around again with my wife because you know, me and my wife, we live in Brooklyn. We have these kind of artistic jobs and I always joke with her that I'm supposed to be living in San Jose, driving a Tesla, married to a Vietnamese woman. We eat pho every single day. Maybe if I'm not a doctor, maybe I sell medical equipment. And I see this life over and over again. I'm not in it, but my cousins are in it. And every time I check in with them, I can't help but compare my life to their life. You know, it's like, who has a better life? And it gets complicated, but it is there, right? And I'm confronted with the other one, the other me, right?

• 29:59Speaker 05

  And I often say, I'm not supposed to be here. How many Vietnamese comedians can you even name? You know, like, there's only like three of us. And so I'm constantly grappling with this fact that I chose something different. My life turned out radically different.

• 30:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, so that, there's definitely like pieces of the regret literature that speak to that. I was like writing down all sorts of things as you were talking.

• 30:25Speaker 05

  It's a little embarrassing for me to say.

• 30:27Speaker 06

  No, not at all. So there's sort of two pieces of a counterfactual, right? There's the like, if I had done this, then this other thing would have been different. And so you can imagine all sorts of counterfactuals that you can have where, I don't know, like, if aliens had invaded today, then my son could have ice cream for dinner. Um, and it's like, well, okay, the first is so improbable that that doesn't even make sense as a thing. But you have this really clear, like, if I had made another decision, right? Like, it's really easy to imagine walking into the physics class instead of the registrar's office.

• 31:05Speaker 05

  Right.

• 31:05Speaker 06

  Like Frost writes this whole poem about the road I didn't travel. And I kind of don't know what was down there, but like, your cousins are walking that road.

• 31:13Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 31:14Speaker 06

  You can really clearly see like, here's what would have been different if you too had stayed on that path. But counterfactuals aren't the only comparisons out there. Social comparison also is a thing and has its own set of emotions that go with it. Like envy and pride are kind of the like cousins of regret and relief. And it's interesting to me that it feels like regret to you and not like, oh, I feel envious of this person who's living the life that I was supposed to have. It is about your decision and not about like, oh, I want their life.

• 31:51Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  That's a question. Do you want their life?

• 31:57Speaker 05

  No. You know, I mean.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  That was an immediate answer, Mike.

• 32:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I, there are some things I would enjoy for sure. I think I would like stability for my family, for my, my kids, but I don't want to drive a Tesla. I would love to eat pho every single week. That would be great. But as far as like actually being implanted in, into their life, it doesn't sound appealing either. You know what I'm saying? That's really interesting. I never thought about it, like envy versus regret. Huh?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  After the break, we get to the root of Mike's regret and how regret can be a hopeful, even useful emotion.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Welcome back to Praxis. So picking up where we left off, Amy now wants to go back to the coin toss, the fateful day when Mike flipped the coin and dropped the class even though the coin told him to stay in pre-med.

• 33:14Speaker 06

  I wrote down that when you talked about like, it felt amazing, it felt awesome, and I never looked back. And it was like, but, but you, you're like, but, but jar. So.

• 33:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, no, that's a, that's a really good point. Yeah, you got me there, guys.

• 33:34Speaker 06

  Haha, problem solved.

• 33:36Speaker 05

  No, but you are on to something because there was a period of time where I didn't feel bad about it. I was still in college. I knew people who were going to med school. And actually, the woman who is now my wife, she was also in the track. She went really far. She took the MCAT, but she didn't go to medical school. And I remember when she was studying, I gotta take the MCAT tomorrow. And I was like, that sounds terrible. I don't know how to do it. So for a little while, it didn't bother me that much. But it wasn't very long lasting.

• 34:15Speaker 05

  I remember after I graduated, I moved back to Orange County in California where, you know, my parents lived. And I was living with them and I had a very hard time finding a job.

• 34:29Speaker 05

  I couldn't even really articulate what kind of job I was looking for. My parents were like throwing all sorts of hilarious job titles at me. Become a human resources guy. They were like literally just naming jobs that they had like seen on TV. They all sounded terrible to me. I was like, these jobs sound so boring. And so I was unemployed. I was in my twenties. I felt like a big loser. And I remember that's when I was like, oh, maybe I could go back to med school. And that's really where I was like, now I'm like kind of in this loop.

• 35:02Speaker 06

  Interesting. Yeah. And so it sounds like it was only when there was other stuff in your life that was kind of dissatisfying that then it was like, oh, maybe the thing that would have made all this better is if I'd gone to med school.

• 35:18Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 35:20Speaker 06

  I think sometimes we have regrets where it sort of comes from the negative emotion first, like something feels bad. And then we just sort of want to look around and be like, well,

• 35:34Speaker 05

  Right.

• 35:34Speaker 06

  what is it that could have changed this?

• 35:40Speaker 06

  When I talk to people about regret, it's like, oh, you're a regret researcher. Like, do you have regrets? I'm like, I don't, I don't have like a ton and I don't have a ton that I really want to talk about, but like. I will sort of broadly say I've had a traumatic loss.

• 35:54Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 35:55Speaker 06

  And if you know people who have gone through that, whether it's losing someone to suicide or violence or addiction or whatever, that oftentimes, and in the data, right, you see people saying, like, oh, if I had just done something different.

• 36:11Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 36:11Speaker 06

  If I'd had a better intervention, then my friend wouldn't have OD'd.

• 36:15Speaker 05

  Right.

• 36:16Speaker 06

  Or if I had agreed to go to the party, then I could have been the DD and they wouldn't have driven drunk and been in the accident.

• 36:25Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 36:26Speaker 06

  Certainly in your case, right, like, there really was this path and there really was this decision. But it's also the case that, like, what are the great secrets of adulthood? Is it actually, like, being right out of college kind of sucks?

• 36:39Speaker 05

  Yes, it does.

• 36:41Speaker 06

  Like, idyllic experience of, like, all of your needs were catered to as if you were a child.

• 36:46Speaker 05

  All your friends, yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 06

  All your friends were right there. And yet also, like, you had all this independence of adulthood. It's like, really, kind of the sweet spot.

• 36:54Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:54Speaker 06

  But at least at Amber's, like, someone else cooked for me, like, every day of my college career.

• 36:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 06

  And then suddenly you get out and it's like, oh, God, I have to go to the grocery store?

• 37:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 06

  I have, like, more than, like, three hours of obligation a day?

• 37:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:09Speaker 06

  This is crazy. How does anyone live like this?

• 37:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:12Speaker 06

  And so I do wonder a little bit about how much of it is being 23 sucks?

• 37:18Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 37:19Speaker 06

  And latching on to, here's the thing that I know could have been different and it would have put me in this totally different place. And like, if you didn't have that, is there some other counterfactual you would have generated in that moment? But for you, there was this clear, like, oh, yeah, maybe it was med school.

• 37:38Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:38Speaker 06

  Like, some people have the romantic one that got away from college and you have, like, the career that got away.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  The career that got away. It is interesting, because it almost feels almost sometimes like a, almost like a default excuse. I don't know, like, I was very interested in, you know, econ, maybe I could have become a finance guy, but I never think I'm like, oh, I should have become a finance guy, because I'm like, that seems so odd. I guess I could have become an NFL football player. There's all sorts of weird things you could say, but it defaults always to this, this one thing.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Well, Mike, when the regret pops up, does it happen around times when like, stuff is hard and bad? Or is it just all the time, kind of like randomly?

• 38:26Speaker 05

  I mean, I would definitely say, I think it is definitely triggered by things where I need something.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 38:32Speaker 05

  Like, gosh, my wife and I are always like, we want to buy a house. And it's impossible to, because I'm not a billionaire. So it would be nice if I had a little bit more money, you know? Or during this layoff that just happened.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 05

  And this is another thing I was gonna ask you about is like, this career that I have, whether it's in advertising or even worse in comedy, it is only setbacks. Comedy is almost entirely setback after setback, until you're either famous or you're dead. And that is it. And so you're constantly confronted with, did you make the right decision? Why did you spend so much time doing this thing? You know, I've been doing comedy for maybe, gosh, I don't know, like 10 or 11 years at this point? And I've sunk an immense amount of time into it. Going to open mics or writing, which generate absolutely zero income. Um, just doing this thing because I, I feel sometimes I have no other choice to do it. Because I feel I am a creative person and I'm, I have to do it.

• 39:33Speaker 05

  And I'm an idiot. But every single time I'm there, I'm like, I could be somewhere else.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  I'm wondering, is this regret around becoming a doctor, is it about success? And how you're feeling about yourself rather than like, this particular regret around becoming a doctor?

• 39:57Speaker 05

  I think it is definitely like, am I living up to my full potential? For lack of a better word. Am I doing, you know, the most I can do? And I was just saying like, I have to be a creative person. And it's led me to this point. And sometimes I feel guilty about that, you know? I have a lot of anxiety around like, well, I've chosen this life. And I hope my, my children don't have to pay for it later on. Because like, they didn't get into a great school or something like that. Well, that gets into a whole other thing, but

• 40:33Speaker 05

  I'm, I'm like tearing up a little bit, sorry. So like, it's, it's a, it's a lot. It's like, weird.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:43Speaker 05

  I'm just kind of getting emotional, I guess. It's just like, for me and my wife, we're like creative people. And like, if I pay the price for it, it's my life. But I don't want anyone else to pay for my own weakness, or hedonism, or whatever you want to call it. You know what I'm saying? Like, my children didn't ask for that. That's a whole other thing.

• 41:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm a parent too. And so I totally get, like, I feel like so much of like parenthood is about, you brought this person into the world, you have this obligation to them.

• 41:16Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:17Speaker 06

  Am I meeting that kind of like role that I'm supposed to be fulfilling?

• 41:20Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:21Speaker 06

  But I think it's easy to think about, here's the things that would be better if I was a doctor.

• 41:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:27Speaker 06

  Like, I might have more career stability, more financial stability. But also, there's stuff you'd be giving up. And

• 41:34Speaker 05

  Right.

• 41:34Speaker 06

  You'd be regretting that like, oh, like, my kid is sick, and I had to have the nanny pick them up. I'm in clinic right now, and I can't just drop it and go home and like, take care of my kid. And like, oh, I can't go to that game.

• 41:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 06

  Oh, now I'm letting my kid down in all these other ways.

• 41:49Speaker 05

  That's absolutely right.

• 41:51Speaker 06

  I, I feel like maybe one of the things that I do want to say is that, in general, I come from like a academic tradition of thinking of regret as like a really useful emotion to us.

• 42:04Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 42:04Speaker 06

  Like, regret is telling us about how we should do things differently.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Mike, why did your mouth open? When Amy said, regret is a useful emotion.

• 42:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I, I've always thought of this as just like something I'm just gonna have to deal with for the rest of my life.

• 42:24Speaker 06

  For me, I think it can be really helpful to kind of think about, is this regret helping me?

• 42:31Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 42:32Speaker 06

  Is there something here that I could learn? Is there something I could do differently?

• 42:36Speaker 05

  Right.

• 42:37Speaker 06

  And if not, is it really a regret? Or do I just sort of feel? Sad.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 42:43Speaker 06

  Again, with sort of examples of things like traumatic loss. I don't really think, oh, like, here's the one action I could have taken and everything would have been okay.

• 42:52Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 42:53Speaker 06

  I'm, I'm just sad. I'm sad this thing happened and I wish there was something that could have made it different.

• 42:58Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 42:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, like, it really sucks to live in a high cost of living area where you can't buy a house.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 06

  It really sucks to live under capitalism with economic unseen instability. But even if you had gone to med school, what are the things that would be different? Maybe it's stable, but there are these other costs that come with it.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  I don't know, maybe this because I'm just a, of a straight man with toxic masculinity, but the idea that I'm just sad is so profound. Oh, I'm just sad, you know, next time I feel this coming on, maybe I'm just bummed out. And there is a lot of stuff to be bummed out about globally and in a micro sense. It sounds really silly, but I've never thought of it like just being sad. Wow.

• 43:51Speaker 05

  I mean, I've done therapy before where you take an emotion and you kind of look at it and say, well, this anxiety is because maybe it's, I need to pay attention to something in my life. But there is also emotions, I think, where there is nothing to do. This is just how it is. To kind of understand that there is no action is very freeing because you could just be sad. But I'm bummed out. I'm gonna have a candy bar now and just deal with it.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, so Amy, you said that regret can be a useful emotion. Regret can tell us what is important to us. And what I'm hearing from this conversation again and again, Mike, is like, family is really important to you.

• 44:35Speaker 05

  Right, yes.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Family, your relationship with your parents, your relationship with your community, your kids.

• 44:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Like, family, family, family. And if you were gonna think about this regret you have, take away all the bad parts, all the anxieties, all the bad feelings. What do you think it's pointing at?

• 44:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, gosh, you think about the inverse of regret, which is like all the things which are awesome, you know, and I have a lot of awesome things. My amazing knitwear, for example.

• 45:08Speaker 06

  Right, you have to give that up and live in scrubs? Can you imagine?

• 45:11Speaker 05

  I hate scrubs so much. It's the worst thing in the world. Anyways, I feel the most fulfilled. The specific moment is when I am in the kitchen and my wife is feeding both my kids or one of my kids, and I'm like running food to them. I'm like cooking food. You know, my wife is like, okay, we need boiled eggs because that's the only thing he's gonna eat. I'm like, on it, boiled egg stat. You know, the front of house wants eggs. I gotta make eggs.

• 45:39Speaker 05

  But I feel awesome because I feel like I am, you know, providing for my family, literally. You know, I'm the perfect like thing in the machine that is making this happen. It's very actionable and doable.

• 45:54Speaker 05

  But, you know, with my children, I'm trying to think about values I want to give them. And I think that it is worthwhile to try hard. It's not a good thing, I think, to just do the minimum. And so I think I do regret maybe not giving my all.

• 46:12Speaker 05

  Maybe I didn't want to be a doctor, but I do think there was probably a little bit of me I left on the table as far as like I didn't work as hard as I could have. I think I corrected that later on in life, but I want to be able to say that I gave it my all.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Okay, we are near the end. Thank you both so much. This was such a roller coaster. Okay, final question. Mike, I asked you to vocalize the sound of your niche emotional conundrum way back when.

• 46:43Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Many, many months ago. And you told me it was elevator music, like waiting music.

• 46:49Speaker 05

  Ah, yes, I did.

• 46:52Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  I'm curious, what is the sound of the niche emotional conundrum now? Has it changed at all?

• 46:59Speaker 05

  No, this is different because now I forgot that I had said muzak. And I totally remember why I said muzak because it was sort of like, I feel like my life is like on hold or waiting, I'm waiting for something. Now it just feels like, ugh. Now I gotta do work on myself. Oh, that's so much, that's so much harder.

• 47:20Speaker 05

  I think med school is probably easier than working on myself. I don't want to do that.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  So it's a groan.

• 47:28Speaker 05

  Oh, yes.

• 47:42Speaker 05

  Thank you, Dr. Amy. This is awesome.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  It's been so great getting to meet you and getting to talk to you.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Thank you to Mike Nguyen for being our special guest today. You can listen to Mike every week on his podcast, Asian Not Asian, and you can check out his American Prosperity Core outfits on Instagram, at Nice Pants Bro. And thank you to Amy Somerville for being our proxy today. As Amy pointed out to me, much of the social science research that informs today's episode is now the target of massive funding cuts across several government agencies. But she said, there is something you can do about it. You can let your elected officials know about the impact this research has had on you. You can find out more by going to the website for the Consortium of Social Science Associations, coss.org.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  That's the show we have for you this week. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday, May 20. New episodes every other Tuesday for the rest of the year, which Chrissy, a listener from Philadelphia, is thrilled about because she loves gossiping about proxy episodes with friends.

• 48:57Speaker 07

  Hi.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Hey, Chrissy. What do you have over there?

• 49:01Speaker 07

  This is an apple. My friend Andrew got it for me at the Wegmans.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  So you like eating apples, huh?

• 49:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, I love apples.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  And what about proxy? You like proxy?

• 49:13Speaker 07

  I love proxy. I love feelings and talking about them.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Okay, so if you had to do some proxy math, how many golden delicious apples is a proxy episode worth to you?

• 49:25Speaker 07

  Nine.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Nine golden delicious apples? If we're talking organic, that's like $13.50 she's willing to pay per episode. But because she's a Patreon member, for just $5 a month, Chrissy's getting a steal. Proxy is an independent podcast, and we rely on listener support. We need to get to at least 3,000 subscribers this year to keep making the show. And we are at about 300 right now. Thank you to everyone who's already signed up. For just $5 a month, you'll get ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus interviews. So be thrifty like Chrissy. Sign up at patreon.com/proxypodcast. That's patreon.com/proxypodcast.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  As always, you can follow us on Instagram at @proxypodcast, and I'm at @yoweshaw. We also have a free newsletter. Sign up to get dispatches from the emotions beat, behind-the-scenes content, and the latest proxy gossip. We'll have those links in the show notes. This episode was edited by John Delore and Tim Howard, produced by me, and mixed by Kyle Cooley. Proxy is also produced by Kim Natervein-Petersa, with help from Anika Ransantana and Mick LeBlanc. Our newsletter editor is Juliana Feliciano Reyes. Music in this episode by Tim Howard, and theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder. Special thanks to Audrey Martovich, Yori Lozordo, Laura Starcheski, and Mattilde Urbelino.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Proxy is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm. And if you have a niche emotional conundrum you'd like investigated by Proxy, get in touch at [email protected]. We're taking cases.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Kyle, how often do you regret marrying a podcast host?

• 51:29Speaker 08

  Uh, I think it's a good counterbalance to marrying a music producer. So anytime I have complaints, I realize they're the things that ex-girlfriends would complain about me.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Oh, like all your complaints about me? That's what your exes would say about you?

• 51:52Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  So it's karma, in a way. It's poetic justice.

• 51:57Speaker 08

  Yeah, except I didn't make them mix my podcast.

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