Let’s Talk About Depression: Kevin Breel’s Confessions of a Depressed Comic — And What Happens When Your TED Talk Goes Supernova

Let's talk about depression. Kevin Breel didn't fit the adolescent persona you would expect to fall prey to this debilitating affliction. One of the popular kids in high school, he was team captain of his standout basketball team. A class clown who would later pursue a career in stand up comedy. The guy who could hold court around the party keg and always keep everyone else laughing. Everyone except himself. At the time, Kevin was leading a clandestine double life. A dark secret he kept well hidden behind his well attuned comedic timing. A confusing and dire mental state that would leave him bedridden and secluded in isolation for days on end. A fatal secret that culminated in a suicide attempt that nearly took his young life. What prevented Kevin from sharing his pain and reaching out for help when he needed it most? The stigma that still surrounds a mental disease that lurks in the shadows, feeds on isolation and goes unchecked due to profound misunderstanding and misplaced judgment. You might be shocked to hear that according to Save.org, depression is the 2nd leading cause of death for young Americans between the ages of 15-24. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), depression impacts 121 million people across the globe and is the leading cause of disability worldwide, claiming 800,000 lives annually. That's one death by depression-induced suicide every 40 seconds. Luckily, Kevin found a way out. A solution that began with the courage to directly confront his pain. It was a move that not only saved his life, but gave him newfound purpose — a quest to shatter the profound yet unwarranted stigma that surrounds his disease by becoming an ambassador of hope to teens everywhere that they need not suffer in silence. The message? That by embracing the darkness within and bringing it into the light, together we can heal. At age 19, Kevin reared his gangly 6'3″ frame atop a stage in a small nondescript auditorium to share his story publicly for the first time. The circumstance? A local TEDx event in Ambleside, a quiet neighborhood in southwest Edmonton, Alberta. Hardly an illustrious venue, he looked out upon a small crowd of no more than 80 and thought, I'll be lucky if more than a couple hundred people ultimately watch this when it goes online. What happened next was astonishing. Lauded for its immediacy, raw honesty, unbridled emotion and authentic vulnerability, Confessions of a Depressed Comic struck a universal cultural nerve and became an instant viral hit. Collecting over half a million views in it's first 30 days, it now clocks well over 3 million views, making it one of the most watched TED Talks of all time. Featured on more than 200+ media outlets, Mashable called it “one of the moments that brought the world together.” A 15-minute speech that forever altered the trajectory of Kevin's life. Today Kevin is an internationally recognized mental health activist. A large personality exuding warmth and humor channeled around topics people tend not to talk about, Kevin has become an in demand guest speaker at over 100 colleges and universities across North America, frequently sharing the stage with Governors, professional athletes and celebrities. He has written opinion pieces for major media and his work has been featured by The Huffington Post, MTV, CNN, The TODAY Show on NBC, Mashable and The Wall Street Journal. Not enough? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:04Speaker 01

  I just felt a little bit like isolated, I think, from peer groups, from fitting in. And I felt like someone who wanted to think about things. And you know, when you're a teenager, it's like, it's not, the culture isn't necessarily set up to have deep conversations about anything. It's very surface, and high school can be a lot about hiding parts of yourself to sort of fit in.

• 1:26Rich Roll?

  That's Kevin Briel, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:43Rich Roll?

  Hey, you guys, what do you know? What's happening? What's going on? You guys all right? Everything okay? Hope you're enjoying your day. It's gonna be all right. My name's Rich Roll. I'm your host. This is my podcast. It's the podcast that bears my name. It's the show where I sit down with the outliers, the big forward thinkers across all categories of positive paradigm-breaking culture change. And I've got a simple goal. That goal is simply to help all of us, myself included, unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. I appreciate you guys dialing me up today for subscribing to the show on iTunes, for subscribing to my weekly newsletter, for giving us a review on iTunes, and for always making sure to use the Amazon banner ad at ritual.com for all your Amazon

• 2:26Rich Roll?

  purchases. The banner ad's right there on the podcast page on my website. We have an option if you're in the UK or in the USA. And it's just a really simple, great, free way to support the mission of this show. Doesn't cost you anything extra. Amazon pays us a commission, I think it's somewhere between 2% and 3% out of their pocket. So if you're contemplating that next big purchase, you know, a laptop, I don't know what it is, that's significant. You know, that means a lot to us and it really does put some nice wind in our sails. You know, now that I'm doing two shows a week, it's a tremendous amount of work, not just for me, but for the guys that help me out, for my team. And this really helps take care of them. So I appreciate everybody who's made a habit

• 3:08Rich Roll?

  of it. Again, it really does make a difference. So I thank you. I'm very grateful for all the support and the help. I had a great time in Telluride this past weekend. I was speaking at an event called the Integrative Wellness Summit. It was the first year of this event and the turnout was amazing. I got to share the stage with some pretty influential and amazing people in the wellness space, which was really cool, including people like Deepak Chopra and T. Colin Campbell. Always good to see him. Guy's so amazing. And I was able to get some good runs in at high altitude, coughing a lung out. That was amazing. It's just a really great town. It was my first time there. I met some amazing people. It's a special place.

• 3:50Rich Roll?

  I'll definitely be going back there very soon. And I went from there, straight to where I am right now, which is Vancouver, British Columbia. It's my first time in this city as well. And as I always say, the best way to learn about a new city is to run it. So that's exactly what I did. I woke up this morning, got in about 10 miles, running through and around the city, through Stanley Park, along the water there. It's just, this is really an extraordinary city. I can't believe I've never been here before. I'm really impressed and amazed with the city's beauty. And I just wrapped a rather revelatory podcast with addiction, human behavior, and childhood development specialist, Dr. Gabor Mate.

• 4:34Rich Roll?

  Mate, I think that's how you say it. The inflection in Hungarian is on the first syllable. So I hope I got that right. Anyway, he just left and I'm kind of reeling. It was an amazing conversation, personally healing for me. I got emotional and I think you guys are going to dig it. It's coming up soon. I don't know exactly when, but of course I'll keep you posted. I got Kevin Braille on the show today, a young enterprising guy. Really enjoyed talking to him. He's a comedian. He's a mental health activist who sort of exploded on the scene a few years ago when

• 5:15Rich Roll?

  at a young and spry 19, he delivered his first TED Talks called Confessions of a Depressed Comic. And that talk really struck a cultural nerve. It was kind of a zeitgeist moment. It immediately went viral. It garnered over half a million views in its first month and it now clocks well over 2 million views and is one of the most watched TED Talks of all time. And the reason I think it went viral is because Kevin so courageously and openly shares his personal struggle with depression and contemplations with suicide in such an honest and vulnerable way. And it cast much-needed light on a subject that loves to lurk in the dark, that feeds on isolation, that doesn't get its proper due, and is so prone to misunderstanding and misplaced judgment.

• 6:00Rich Roll?

  He's a super cool kid. It's a great conversation. More on him in a moment, but first a little housekeeping. Today's episode is brought to you by Harry's. Look, you guys, you gotta shave, right? At some point, even if you're like a hipster with a super cool beard, or maybe you have like a bicycle handle mustache or something like that, you still gotta trim it. You still have to groom yourself. You might have to shave your neck or something like that. So you're gonna have to buy blades. Have to buy shave gel, foam cream, whatever it is at some point. So what are you gonna do? You're gonna go to the pharmacy, you're gonna go to the shaving section. It's all on lockdown, you can't even get into it. So you gotta go find the stone teenager, the disaffected youth who suddenly walks over,

• 6:43Rich Roll?

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• 7:28Rich Roll?

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• 8:12Rich Roll?

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• 8:56Rich Roll?

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• 9:37Rich Roll?

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• 10:20Rich Roll?

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• 11:02Rich Roll?

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• 11:46Rich Roll?

  So whatever that one was, I don't remember what it was, dispense with that and just make sure you use bonobos.com/richroll. All right, you guys, I like their stuff. I think you will too. All right, before I get into my wrap session with Kevin, I wanted to make a couple other really quick announcements. The first is that Cowspiracy, the documentary, is now officially up on Netflix and streaming worldwide. How amazing is that? In my podcast the other day with Kip and Keegan, I think it was Keegan who said it was only going to be available in English-speaking territories, but I just want to clarify that it is actually available everywhere. If you're in a non-English speaking territory, it's available with subtitles, or maybe you

• 12:30Rich Roll?

  have a relative there who might want to watch it. Well, they can. If you've seen the film, this is a new cut and thus a new reason to watch it or re-watch it. Plus, Leonardo DiCaprio is the executive producer, so that's pretty cool. Maybe that's another reason why you should check it out, because if he likes it, I think you guys will too. And I just want to say that it would be great if we could marshal all of our resources to send Netflix and the world a strong message that this is an important film to watch, and we can do that by kind of bum rushing the site, netflix.com. Watching the movie, giving it a review, sharing it with our friends, talking about it, the whole nine yards. And by doing that, I think it will really show Netflix that there is strong interest

• 13:12Rich Roll?

  in this movie, which will in turn help them legitimize or justify putting some emphasis behind additional marketing of it, so that the most number of people can be exposed to what I think is one of the most important, if not the most important documentary to come out in recent memory. And it's also entertaining. It's a fun movie. Everybody in the family can watch it and enjoy it. And I think it holds within it the power to really change lives and redirect the environmental conversation. And hopefully, it will lead to legislative and regulatory changes and just additional popular awareness of what is driving the environmental problems that we're facing right now. So that's my big speech about that.

• 13:56Rich Roll?

  The second thing I want to tell you guys is that my good buddy, Dr. Garth Davis, he's an alumnus of this podcast, episode 50 and 150. He's got a new book coming out the first week of October, and it's called Protein Aholic. And this book is a deep dive into what is driving our protein-obsessed culture. And he asked the question, is this focus on this macronutrient, this obsession that we have with protein, is it making us healthier? And the simple conclusion that he comes up with, based on an unbelievable amount of research that he has done, is no. Protein deficiency is a myth. And this is a really fascinating, amazing book.

• 14:39Rich Roll?

  I had the opportunity to read it in manuscript form several months ago, and I can tell you it's a game changer. So if you've enjoyed my podcast, Conversations with Dr. Garth, then you have an idea of why this fixation is not only unhealthy, but why it's making us sick, fat, and tired. So let's support Garth, show him some love. Pick up the book by preorder today, using the Amazon banner at retrol.com, of course. And I don't think you'll be disappointed. I'm hoping to get him back on the podcast in early November, when he's in Los Angeles, and we can really... Really get into the nitty gritty of the book then, but until then, pick it up by preorder.

• 15:17Rich Roll?

  All right. Okay. Kevin Breel. So this is a kid who by all rights really didn't fit the kind of person that you would expect to fall prey to debilitating depression. He was popular. He was team captain of his basketball team in high school. He had all his needs met, but he did. He did fall prey to this debilitating condition of depression, so much so that it almost took his life. It's a great story. It's an important story. It's a cautionary tale, but it's also a story of hope and redemption. Kevin was introduced to me by our mutual friend Josh Ship, who in his own right is an extraordinary guy, an alumnus of this podcast as well. Episodes 116 and 117, we did a two parter with him

• 16:01Rich Roll?

  because we just kept talking forever and ever because he was so amazing. So if you missed those, please check those out. Anyway, Josh told me that I needed to check out Kevin and what he's doing. So I did because Josh is the man. And if he says a guy is worth checking out, then he's worth checking out. So I'm glad I did. I'm glad I got to sit down with Kevin because this conversation really rocks. And Kevin, I want to also make an announcement, has his first book coming out like today. It's called Boy Meets Depression or Life Sucks and Then You Live. And it's a great read. It's a fun read. It's an easy read. So do yourself a favor and pick that book up, too. This conversation really focuses on the truth and misconception surrounding depression, the difference between depression

• 16:46Rich Roll?

  and sadness. It's a conversation about the teen suicide epidemic. It's a look at what is driving millennial culture, what it's like to be thrust into the spotlight suddenly via a viral hit TED Talk and what that did to his life trajectory. It's a talk about the power of vulnerability, the importance of facing shedding light and sharing our pain in order to heal, and the importance of helping others. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Kevin Breel. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

• 17:22Rich Roll?

  I love the fact that you brought me a juice, man.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. You gotta bring something, you know?

• 17:28Rich Roll?

  You know me well. I appreciate that very much.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:31Rich Roll?

  So it's super nice to meet you. This has been a while in the making and you first came across my radar because Josh Ship reached out to me, who, for listeners out there, he was on the podcast, I don't know, maybe a year ago.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Legendary episode, in my opinion.

• 17:47Rich Roll?

  He's a, I mean, I love that guy.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:50Rich Roll?

  And the work that he's doing with young people is super inspiring. And I know he's getting ready to give a TED Talk pretty soon.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah.

• 18:02Rich Roll?

  And he's like, you gotta check this guy out, Kevin, he's my man, you know, watch his TED Talk. So I checked it out. I was like, this guy's awesome, man. Like, I'd love to have this guy on the podcast. We went back and forth. I mean, I was like, yeah, but is he gonna come to LA? Like, how are we gonna make this happen?

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Of course I'm gonna come to LA for the Rich Roll Podcast, of course. No questions asked.

• 18:19Rich Roll?

  Forests of northern Canada, wherever it is that you're hailing from, in my center of America point of view, like trying to imagine your idyllic village in Canada.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're making it sound way better than it is, so I'm gonna let you do that.

• 18:36Rich Roll?

  Okay, I'll just continue to entertain.

• 18:40Rich Roll?

  So what brings you to LA?

• 18:42Speaker 01

  This podcast, man. That's one reason. But also, my book is coming out in a week or so now. And so I have a few friends here I wanted to give it to and a little bit of press as well. But just a quick, quick trip down here. I don't get down here much for someone who lives on the West Coast. So, yeah, it's nice, though. It's like raining all the time where I live because it's Pacific Northwest weather. So to come here and it's so hot, so it's great.

• 19:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool. You've been to LA before, have you?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. So we're like two weeks out from your book coming out.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Ten days, yeah.

• 19:15Rich Roll?

  Boy meets depression, or life sucks, and then you live.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then there's a, it says, "Life sucks and then you die," but "die" is crossed out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, and if you look at the cover of the book, it's, it's kind of got like this journal theme to it.

• 19:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Like, I was really, I really pushed super hard with the publisher to get the design and stuff that I wanted because the whole idea, I guess, or the whole concept of the book is if you track back to the TED Talk, and that was when I was 19, so I'm 22 now, so there's been some time there. And the thing I think people connected to with the TED Talk was just the kind of honest, vulnerable nature of it, I guess. And it wasn't, like, it was not trying to be, here's advice, or it's not motivational or anything. It was just kind of truthful. And I wanted to do the same thing with the book. And we had a few offers for book deals, and a lot of them were people coming and being like, hey, we want you to write this sort of like, advice laced book. And, you know, I do stand-up comedy. Like, I have no, I'm 22 years old, I have no advice, really, to give. And so I wanted it to be really honest. And so the

• 20:16Speaker 01

  book has this kind of like journal theme, and it's really written from this place of like, if you could have gone back in time to when I was a teenager and really struggling with some of this stuff, just this sort of like, really honest look at it. So, yeah.

• 20:27Rich Roll?

  I like that. I mean, there's a big difference between sharing your experience versus kind of, you know, when you, when you start giving advice, then it's, there's a separation between you and the audience, or whoever you're speaking to, as if like, I have it figured out, and now I'm gonna bequeath you my wisdom, you know?

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 20:48Rich Roll?

  And that immediately, sort of, I think that creates, it can, I mean, if it's very well done, and somebody has amazing insights, then more power to them. But I think that creates a barrier between you and who you're trying to reach, as opposed to just sharing your experience and letting the wisdom of, of, of, you know, what you, you know, have, have kind of weathered and gotten to the other side of, or continue to, you know, weather and confront. The power in that is that people can emotionally relate to that, and, and they can extract from that their own kind of idea about how to approach their problem, and perhaps, you know, find wisdom in how you did it. But you're, you're, you're coming from a place of like, here's how it went for me, like,

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:28Rich Roll?

  Draw your own conclusions in some respects.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, that's one thing that, I mean, not to just plug your book, but that was one thing I really liked about Finding Altraz. It's like, it's real, you know, it's a real story, and it's truthful, and it's not from a place, in my opinion at least, of being like, I know so much, and I want to tell you guys, you know? It was just this really truthful sort of account. And that's something that I think that is missing, in my opinion, from a lot of books nowadays, is it's just, there's this idea, I think, that to sell a book, you have to be An expert, you know, or you have to have this sort of, like you said, this guru effect where you're somehow removed from being a human or something. And I think that with the idea and like the topic of something like depression, for people who have been there and related to that,

• 22:10Speaker 01

  their BS meters like pretty finely tuned, you know, and if you come and start being like, this is my three step plan to

• 22:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  beating this, I just

• 22:19Rich Roll?

  And now I'm cured.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And exactly. And like, I did an interview on the phone this morning for a magazine. And they were asking me like, well, now is your life so much better that you've overcome this? And I was like, that's just like a huge misconception or like cultural perspective that I feel way different from. Like, I don't look at it as something like I've overcome it. Like, I really feel like it's a part of who I am. Like, I'm a sensitive guy. Like, I feel, you know, good things, bad things, heavy things, light things. So I think that it's a part of who I am. And that's sort of what I wanted to communicate in the book was that there's a lot of reasons that I'm grateful for that experience.

• 22:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Struggling and reaching this point where I was suicidal. I mean, there was a lot of transformation and personal growth for myself that came out of that. So I don't look back on it with regret or shame or guilt. You know what I mean? Like, that's for me. And that's really what I wanted to sort of communicate in the book was, obviously, I wish I could have been honest about it earlier. And I wish I could have talked about it earlier. And there's certain things I would have done differently, sure. But overall, the experience, I mean, it's sort of at the foundation of my perspective for life and how I see life now. So it's not something that I look at like, yeah, I overcame that and now I'm never going back, man.

• 23:28Rich Roll?

  Well, the media has to craft a narrative, you know what I mean? Like, oh, here's a guy who did this and now he's here.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:34Rich Roll?

  He succeeded. So

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:36Rich Roll?

  So that's what happens when you start doing a lot of interviews, which you have, you know? And I'm sure when you read about like how they characterize your story, you're like, yeah, it wasn't quite like that. You know, like, there's a lot, we're going to get into all of this, but I think there's a lot of parallels between depression and addiction in the sense that they're both highly stigmatized. I think addiction and recovery is kind of further down the line in terms of, you know, cultural acceptance and de-stigmatization of it.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  That's a big word.

• 24:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Rich Roll?

  But in terms of like what you have to live with, right? And so I've seen articles about me that say, oh, he overcame his addiction and then became this athlete.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:17Rich Roll?

  And some of them even like equate The dietary changes that I made as being instrumental in combating and overcoming addiction. And I'm like, that's not it at all. And that was one of the reasons among many why I, I don't know if you've listened to my most recent podcast I just put up like two days ago, but, but I related the story of, of relapsing in 2011, which I'd never talked about publicly before. It was a very, it was, it was kind of in certain respects, like it's, it was a super unsexy relapse. Like I was at an AA meeting that night and it involved like five or six beers, you know? So it wasn't like I went out and destroyed my life, but it was devastating to me personally

• 24:57Rich Roll?

  as somebody who had cultivated time and sobriety and, and had gotten to this place where, you know, I was kind of a guy with time, you know? And the ego association that comes with that, you know, carrying that mantle of somebody who's been sober for a long time and can kind of help new people and then to have, have that kind of decimated and have to reset the clock and, and really confront the truth, which is that, you know, I, I am an alcoholic and I will always be an alcoholic and I will never overcome it. I live with it. I combat it. I do the best that I can to live a sober life, but I'm hardly perfect in that regard. And there was a lot of shame over like not, you know, I was, I was always open with it

• 25:39Rich Roll?

  in AA, like my friends knew and all my friends in recovery and my, you know, everybody who like is sort of in that world with me, like I'm very open about it. I've shared about it from the podium at meetings and all that kind of stuff, but, but I'd never like talked about it on the podcast or with the media, you know? And I realized that was holding me back, you know? That's so interesting. I needed to like release myself of that shame. And one way to do that would be to get over my fear of talking about it publicly. So I did it on the podcast and I think it's, it's relevant to today's conversation in the sense that, you know, you had to get to that place in your depression where in order to kind of confront the shame and the, um, the isolation that, that, you know, accompanied

• 26:21Rich Roll?

  you in that you realized that you had to talk about it, you know, which I'm sure started off with a single conversation. Yeah. That ultimately snowballed into this, you know, viral TED Talk that kind of changed, you know, your, your life's trajectory, right? But, and we're going to get into all that. So why don't we start with just, you know?

• 26:40Rich Roll?

  Walking me through your life as a teenager in what would seem like a relatively kind of idyllic upbringing initially, like you're outgoing kid.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:51Rich Roll?

  A lot of personality, team captain, you know, doing well in school, playing basketball, all this kind of stuff, you know, the idea that from the outside looking in, you're like, this kid's got no problems.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, and that's, you know, it's interesting you say that because that's almost exactly where you're just talking about part of the narrative that like the media kind of built around the TED Talk, like from the early press was this sort of very cliche story of like, this guy had no, his life was perfect, you know, he's grown up, upper middle class or something, and I did have issues, you know, at home and dysfunction and family stuff, like, just like anyone has, you know, and I think that that's an interesting thing that's sort of been attached to it is like, oh, man, I was so happy and so successful and then I was struggling with depression, you know, but to sort of bring it back around, it's like, yeah, I grew up in Victoria, B.C., where I still live currently,

• 27:42Speaker 01

  and my home life was, you know, nothing outrageous, but not perfect by any sort of stretch of the imagination, and I think more than anything, I just really struggled with identity, like I just had a hard time understanding where I fit in, like, I felt really sensitive as a kid, if that makes sense, like, I felt really different from other kids.

• 28:01Rich Roll?

  I relate to that completely.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, I felt things really deeply and things would really affect me, and even just things like seeing someone else get bullied, like, even if it wasn't me, it just like really, it would stick with me, and I would have a really hard time, like, putting things down, if that makes sense, like, I would just hold on to a lot of stuff.

• 28:19Rich Roll?

  You're an empath.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so I was like, that was kind of this thing that was going on, and I didn't know how to relate about that, I didn't know even how to talk about that at all, and I didn't even know what it was, I just, that was all I knew, that was who I was, and so I sort of had these small issues with identity like that, where I felt like I didn't fit into the typical standard of like masculinity also, and I know that that's something you've talked about, like redefining masculinity and that sort of thing, and I think that was a big issue for me where, yeah, I played sport. And I was somewhat popular and I was a class clown kind of outgoing person. But I didn't really feel like I fit in like culturally like with what other guys wanted to do and and I played sports, but I never was like, oh, this is my whole

• 29:04Speaker 01

  existence, or this is all I can see in the world. And so I just always felt sort of.

• 29:09Rich Roll?

  By the way, they play basketball in Canada.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. That's that's every every conversation with a yeah, someone who's driving a car for me in the States and says, yeah, I can't believe that you live somewhere in Canada where it doesn't snow. So.

• 29:21Rich Roll?

  Drive on the other side of the road.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, you know, I just felt a little bit like isolated, I think, from peer groups, from fitting in. And I felt like someone who wanted to think about things. And, you know, when you're a teenager, it's like, it's not, the culture isn't necessarily set up to have deep conversations about anything. It's very surface and high school can be a lot about hiding parts of yourself to sort of fit in. And that's what people want is belonging and fitting in. I didn't really feel like I had that. And so I started to sort of struggle with just like living a lot in isolation and I would remove myself from sort of like friends and whatnot and I was.

• 29:58Rich Roll?

  Was it was it noticeable? I mean, were people like, yeah, Kevin's a little left of center? Or were you able to do it well enough, like wear that mask enough where it's like, no, he's the popular kid. He's a happy kid.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little, a little bit of both. Like, I think, you know, maybe for my family, it was more obvious, but I would be so kind of happy or wear that mask when I was in front of people. They almost didn't really notice that I would sort of drift off or not really be there. You know what I mean? Like, I just had a way of sort of making it everything seem like it was okay when you were face to face with me. And when I disappeared, it was like, who knows where that guy goes. But when I see him again, it's always all good. And I would just spend a lot of time, like literally, you know, talk about this in the book, but it's like in my room and I would have these weeks that seemed to stretch on where I'd sleep until like noon or one and I would wake up and feel so anxious and like, obviously, I just missed half of the day and didn't want to go to school and would skip school and it would just sort of further this anxiety.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  And I just felt more and more like disconnected from what was happening like in high school. And I think school was really easy for me. Like I was sort of smart enough to get through it, but it wasn't challenging. It wasn't stimulating. I kind of knew that I didn't want to necessarily pursue like a traditional straight line of education of like high school, college, get a job. And I always felt this very creative and like very driven to do something different. And so I didn't really know where that left me. And so I sort of started to fall down this path that would be feeling like I was different, feeling like I was outcast. And that's when this sort of season of depression, when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, started to sort of creep in. And it was just like, you don't belong here. You know what I mean? Like you don't fit into this. You're not being

• 31:37Speaker 01

  authentic. Like when you, when you are having good connections, it's because you're hiding parts of yourself. And it was just like really devastating to feel like I was sort of playing this character. And that's sort of what I felt like. Like I was socially smart enough and aware enough to be like, I know how to act to sort of fit in. You know what I mean? To not stand out. But I wasn't being real. And you just, everyone just sort of intuitively knows that in themselves.

• 32:00Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, I think everybody, particularly in high school, everybody's doing that to some extent. And everybody's

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 32:06Rich Roll?

  trying on different masks to try to figure out where they fit.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:10Rich Roll?

  What, what works for them. But it sounds like this was a little bit more, you know, the volume was turned up a little bit more on you. I mean, that had to be, you know, confusing.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  It was extremely confusing. Yeah, it was extremely confusing. And, and everyone else just seemed so certain of like what their future would look like. Like everyone was just like, I'm gonna finish high school and go to college and do this. And, and there was this, this big gap there for me. And so I got into this sort of season of depression where it was like really, really, really, really heavy. And from there, it just kind of snowballed in the way that it does when you don't talk about it, you don't share it. And it became this hidden thing. And so then there was like this two-fold issue where there was myself personally dealing and sort of struggling with depression. But then the bigger weight actually became not wanting anyone else to know. There became almost this kind of like weird thrill or sense of accomplishment from like hiding

• 33:02Speaker 01

  it from people, if that makes sense, like not, like not letting people in to see that, being like, I can pull this off.

• 33:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, there's like a bizarre kind of like adrenaline adrenaline rush that comes with that living that double life.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:15Rich Roll?

  I mean, the parallels with addiction continue because this is what you the refrain in sobriety that you always hear is like, I felt different. Everyone else had a roadmap for life or the blueprint and I never knew what I was doing and I couldn't really I was a square peg in a round hole and I would isolate.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:31Rich Roll?

  You know, it's very, very similar. And I think that it's it becomes progressively isolating, right? And so it sounds like, you know, from your description, that this was kind of just a gradual progression. I mean, in a couple of articles I read about you, there were two kind of inciting events, right? Like you had a friend when you were 13 who died in a car crash and then your parents get divorced. Do you look at those as sort of formative catalysts in in kind of, you know, you know, creating kind of a snowball effect with the depression or is that overblown?

• 34:06Speaker 01

  No, maybe the.

• 34:08Rich Roll?

  It's not a cause.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  No.

• 34:09Rich Roll?

  You were gonna be depressed.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  I, yeah.

• 34:12Rich Roll?

  That happened or not.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  You know, in the book, like, the narrative really it goes from me being young to me being an early teenager to me being a late teenager. And I certainly talk about the family stuff and like, you know, my dad was a very troubled person who struggled with his own mental health and his own addiction issues. And so, yeah, not having a positive male role model, I think, definitely affects any young boy.

• 34:34Rich Roll?

  Right. So was he not around, like, not around physically or just emotionally?

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, not around physically. And when he was there physically, not at all there emotionally, like, you know, passed out on the couch at 2:00, 3:00 PM drunk, you know, and never abusive, like, never allowed mean drunk or anything. But as someone who clearly had his own demons that he was fighting through and he just, you know, layered them in alcohol. And so he just wasn't present at all and wasn't emotionally available.

• 35:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  In any capacity. And then my mom's the complete opposite where she's like the most supportive, the most empathetic. So it's sort of this, you know, thing where eventually my mom became like this big, you know, form of support for me. And the home life was something that was dysfunctional, but then manageable because my mom sort of loved me. My sister so much it it counteracted almost for the other things.

• 35:21Rich Roll?

  How and your sister younger or older?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Older, four years older, yeah.

• 35:24Rich Roll?

  How's she doing?

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Great, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:26Rich Roll?

  What's she do?

• 35:27Speaker 01

  She's actually, um, she's been going to school to become a counselor. So it's it's pretty interesting. So yeah, she's like really empathetic, really smart, really bright. So the thing, though, that was an inciting incident for sure, and this comes into the book as well, is um, my friend Jordan, uh, who is 13 and is my best friend, he passed away in a car accident. And part of it is that obviously the grief and just like the shock of losing someone, you don't even know what death is when you're 13. Like my grandparents had passed away before I was even born, so I never really met them. So I never really experienced any loss. I mean, our dog was still alive at the time. Like I just never gone through anything like that. And there was this amazing sense of shock and of hurt and of pain.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  But then there was also this other layer of sort of how it was dealt with and how it was discussed sort of in the community. And this sort of like almost just sort of wanting to, you know, sweep it under the rug and just kind of move on and not really discuss it and not really.

• 36:25Rich Roll?

  Let's repress it, let's deny it, deny, you know, yeah, it's a weird thing with death. It makes people so uncomfortable.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  So uncomfortable.

• 36:31Rich Roll?

  We default to this, you know, place of of wanting to pretend that it's not a reality for all of us.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Right. And without getting into like too many private details, like his, his mom and her partner had been in the car and they had both survived the crash. And he was the only one in the whole accident who had died.

• 36:48Rich Roll?

  That's horrible.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  And so there was this awful sense of like, why him? And you know what I mean? And all these sorts of things. And there was just some comments made at the funeral that were very sort of outrageous or disrespectful or sort of strange. And it made it harder, obviously, to internalize it and deal with it. I didn't really know where to go. And so him and I, that was when we were supposed to be going into grade eight together. So we were about to share a locker, we were about to do high school together, and then he passes away on July 19th. And so then basically summer is getting, you know, almost over, comes around, I'm in eighth grade and I'm just sort of missing my friend. But I'm around all these people who every day are going, hey, how are you doing, man? Which is genuine and great, but it was like this constant kind of reminder of like, wow, like. You know, everyone's asking because he really is gone and.

• 37:31Rich Roll?

  And he really was your best friend.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And so, and we'd been very close and there was also this sense of like his family, like him and his dad and his brother. Had kind of become the second family to me. And when I lost him, I felt like I lost a relationship with his dad as well. And that relationship meant a lot to me because I didn't feel like I had a strong father figure. So suddenly I sort of felt almost kicked out of his. Family too, you know what I mean? I went from being over there for sleepovers, you know, two, three times a week with another group of guys.

• 38:01Rich Roll?

  It's too painful. You're too strong of a reminder of what happened.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Of course, yeah, of course. And so that really was a triggering thing. And that was something that I think. Just inside I was holding on to and had no ability to make sense of. Maybe even up until just a couple of years ago. Like, I really think it took me that long. To really wrap my head around it. One intellectually, but just two on an emotional level of like acceptance. And so that really was a big. A big thing and a big part of the story was that I felt like this one person who had kind of understood me. And knew me for who I really was, had been taken away. And I felt kind of betrayed by life or something. And that was like this very heavy feeling to walk around with.

• 38:42Rich Roll?

  Right. So, so where does the depression go from there?

• 38:45Speaker 01

  So that's eighth grade. So I'm at a, I'm at a different high, I'm at the high school we were supposed to go to at that point. It's called Oak Bay High. And I did a year there and I go, I can't do this. You know, I mean, I can't be at this school. Around the same people and having these kinds of, the constant reminder. So I switch high schools. I go to a different high school. And at that point it'd be in ninth grade. And it really becomes like a very prevalent thing, late 10th grade. And then 11th grade and 12th grade, it's like unbelievable and just sort of. And not, and when I say unbelievable, I don't mean like every day. Like, I don't want to paint a picture that's like every day was just this dark despair. It was just that.

• 39:20Rich Roll?

  In waves.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And like, and, and for me, like the way I really think about it is like in seasons or just like in these moments where it'd be like. Three, four, six, eight, 10 weeks where I was like, wow, I can't get out from under this thing. And then I would for a little bit and I'd feel a bit lighter, a bit better, and then it would sort of swing back. And so when it really peaked out and really became. You know, extremely intense was when I was 17 and. I basically went through this phase where in the, so in around Christmas time of my senior year, I fell sort of into this, this downward spiral of like just being really pessimistic about life. And I was reading a lot of books that were about like new age kind of spiritual stuff and you know, the power of now and things like this and like trying to sort

• 40:03Speaker 01

  of like develop myself, but in that, all I could see was like glass half empty thing. And all it made me go was no one's awake, no one's aware. Everyone's just going through life, wearing these costumes.

• 40:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's having the opposite effect.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, the literal, yeah, the literal opposite effect. And I started watching these documentaries about how I watch food, Inc. And I am like, I'm a vegetarian now and I gave away almost all of my clothes. Like I almost went a little bit manic, you know, like seeing into this really negative, negative side of life. And so I remember after that Christmas, I, as a new year's resolution, as you know, this is really dark stuff, but I was like, if my life doesn't feel better in a year, I'm going to kill myself because I don't see the reason in, in being alive. Like I just don't see how this is meaningful.

• 40:46Rich Roll?

  But you're not announcing this.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 40:48Rich Roll?

  You know, this is all like on the inside, but.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Oh, completely.

• 40:51Rich Roll?

  But you know, how is this manifesting it in the, in the external world? Like is mom's freaking out?

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Not fully because she doesn't really fully know the depth because I kind of at this point, I'm deceiving everyone, including myself.

• 41:04Rich Roll?

  Right. But if you can't get out of bed, like, you know, or.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Well, that's the thing. She would leave, she would leave to work early in the morning, just assume that I was going to school. Like I became really good at like, I would beat her home to get the voicemail that would tell her that I hadn't been at school to delete it. And I would erase the caller ID. Like I was like.

• 41:22Rich Roll?

  Crafty.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Like I was taking it to an extreme level so that no one could see into this.

• 41:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So not only are you not communicating about what's going on, you're, you're going to extreme measures to prevent anyone from.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Extreme.

• 41:34Rich Roll?

  Knowing anything about it, which is making the opportunity to help you even. Uh, more distant.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I had a journal, which is sort of where the whole idea for the book came that I was like recording in through the whole time. And I would literally every day after I would write in it, I was so afraid that my mom or my sister might come into the room and like just see it and start reading it because there's so much honesty. It was like the only place I was honest in this journal. I would go into the closet and I had this shoebox in there filled with all this old writing from when I was like really young, just loose leaf paper. And I would open the shoebox, take the loose leaf paper and put it on the very bottom.

• 42:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  So that even if you were to go in there, you'd go, oh, that's just old loose leaf paper. And that's like where my journal was. So like, I was really be going out of my way to hide it. And so after the new year, uh, about a month and a half went by and it was the middle of February. And I just literally lost the will to even think about how to continue any further. Like, I was just like, this is, this is ridiculous. I'm wasting my own time. I think that I'm the only one maybe who sees that life is meaningless. Like just the most dark kind of low thoughts you could ever experience.

• 42:41Rich Roll?

  But you're still, are you still showing up for basketball practice?

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:43Rich Roll?

  And playing a game?

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:45Rich Roll?

  So.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 42:46Rich Roll?

  And where's the, where's the comedy at this point?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  The comedy for me?

• 42:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, like, like, you know, meanwhile, you know, you're harboring this dream of being a

• 42:55Speaker 01

  A comedian.

• 42:55Rich Roll?

  Entertainer, a stand comic, right? I mean, had you started to, um, you know, take measures to make that happen?

• 43:03Speaker 01

  No, that was like the spark that honestly kept me going. So like the, the, in my senior year, I got into this drama class and it was just to like really kill time and get some credits. And I didn't like acting. I didn't like reading lines, but then one day the teacher's name is Mr. Kemp is amazing guy. And he said, he's like, hey, he's like, you guys can do a scene where you just improv. And I didn't know what that was. Like, I didn't know what it was to just sort of make stuff up in the moment. And we started doing these scenes and making stuff up and I, I just found myself having so much fun and it was like this one little spark. And I was like, wow, that's really cool, but like I, I want to do that in a different way. And I started watching so much stand up. And so in that February, to sort of, this will all connect here. So in that February, on February 26th.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  We finished playing a tournament for basketball. My family stays up island. It's about a 90 minute, two hour drive from where we live.

• 43:53Rich Roll?

  Up island?

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, up island. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and I come back down on the team bus. Everyone's going out to like celebrate and to party or whatever. I go to a friend's house of mine. It was like two blocks from where I live. He was having just a, you know, a little get together. There's people there drinking. I go. And I'm standing in the corner of his house and there's all these kids my own age. I know all of them and they're all just having so much fun. And it really seemed authentic. Like it really seemed like they were really having fun and really in that moment and really enjoying it. And I just remember standing in the corner and watching that and just going, I'll never, I'll never get that. Like I'll never understand how we could just be here and like enjoy this. Like as weird as that sounds, I couldn't wrap my head around it.

• 44:34Rich Roll?

  Like you're watching some weird movie that you just can't connect to it.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'm a character who doesn't know what, where I fit into the storyline. Like I don't know what my subplot is. I'm just standing there being like, I don't know how I'm like these people. And so I literally left the party, went home, went into my room, took out a piece of paper, took out a pen, wrote a suicide note. And I just really planned to take an entire bottle of pills that night and just be done.

• 44:58Rich Roll?

  What kind of pills? Where'd you get the pills?

• 45:00Speaker 01

  I just, all I knew was that I thought you could take a bunch of Tylenol. And that was all I knew.

• 45:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that wouldn't have ended so well.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. All I had was vodka and, you know, a bunch of painkillers essentially, like pharmaceutical painkillers that were like T3s, like not just like over the counter.

• 45:14Rich Roll?

  The hardcore Tylenol.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. That my mom had like had in the back of the cupboard from like a dental surgery or something like that were old and that was all I knew. And so I was sitting there and I wrote out this note and it was just as, I mean, as cliche as it sounds, this moment of kind of awakening when I put everything onto the piece of paper. It almost seemed insignificant in some ways. Like it seemed like the stuff that I'd been so caught up in and so lost in was manageable or like changeable or like a shift of perspective could influence it because everything that was on the page was like, I feel like no one gets me. I feel like I'm so alone. I feel like, but I'm like, I put myself like I'm the one. Who's making like just staying in my room. You know what I mean? Like I'm the one who's like

• 45:59Rich Roll?

  Right. You had, you were able to, to have the objectivity to understand that you were the causal element in why people didn't understand. Yeah.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 46:06Rich Roll?

  Well, it's interesting because you were, you were journaling all along, but you weren't able to have that level of awareness.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  It was just angry. It was just angry. It was just like, this is why I'm right. And this is why the world's wrong. Like it was filled with angst and like frustration, you know, it wasn't just.

• 46:20Rich Roll?

  You're also a teenager.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's a big part of it.

• 46:23Rich Roll?

  It's parsing out like what's just being a teenager from what is something that's more critical.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  And that was the hard, that was like what you just said there actually hits it on the head so well because some of it literally was just growing up. And in hindsight, like understanding that like it literally was just like figuring out identity and who I wanted to be and all those things. And so there was all this confusion, but I was attaching it to that feeling of pain and that feeling of depression and going, this is why everything sucks. And so when I wrote out that note, everything on there, like you said, where I could finally look at it sort of objectively. And I was just like, this is, this borderline ridiculous. Like I've painted myself into this corner and now I'm painting myself as the victim. You know, like as if the world's out to get me. And really I had just, I wasn't living a real

• 47:11Speaker 01

  life. Like I was sleeping until noon in bed, not going to school, not talking to anyone. I had no sense of community. I had no sense of friendships. I just, I wasn't helping myself at all.

• 47:21Rich Roll?

  And you kept it so private that there wasn't enough indication to your mom or anyone else who could, so somebody could intervene and say, hey, let's go, I think you need to talk to somebody or let's go see a shrink or a therapist.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And certainly like when I was 13 and I had lost my friend Jordan, I had done a year of counseling at the high school and they'd made me do that. They're like, you gotta do grief counseling. And my counselor was named Alan York and he was this amazing guy who was like tough and made me accountable and all these things. And when I left, part of the reason I had left was to escape that accountability. And I let myself sort of fall through the cracks.

• 47:54Rich Roll?

  Was he able to identify though, at that point, that you had a depression problem that perhaps transcended some survivor guilt over your friend's passing?

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. One time him and my mom were in the office together. He called my mom in because he was so worried about me and he had never done that before. And he brought her into the office and he kind of asked me to leave so they could talk. And my mom told me later, um, he said to her, he's like, do you think that he wants to be with Jordan? And she nodded her head and was like, yeah. And so like it would, the signs were there and like my mom was clued in and my mom's very smart. And so she knew, but it was just when it got later, I was so piercingly convincing with sort of the deception that you sort of wanted to, I'm sure you just want to take your kid at their word. Like, I don't know, I don't have kids, but it just, I'm assuming.

• 48:40Rich Roll?

  Well, it's interesting because you would think like if somebody's having this problem, you're going to be, A, you're going to be able to see it and B, at some point there's going to be a cry for help. Right. And, but what you don't expect is that someone's going to go to extreme lengths to prevent you from knowing about it. Like I can understand that in addiction because if you get caught, like, you know, it's like, oh, you know, oh, you're doing all these drugs or whatever, like there's repercussions to that. But I would not have expected that with depression. So that's super interesting.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Well, and I, and I don't necessarily think that that's a commentary at all on everyone. Like I think it has a lot to do with my own personality and my own maybe wanting people to think I'm more complete than I am, or you know, I mean, I think there's a lot of insecurity in that, or at least there was. Because very much so, I did kind of thrive off approval and off people going like, hey, you're really good at this. Or like, hey, you're a funny guy, you know? And that was something that I really needed. Like, I think I was so sort of maybe broken or confused or hurt that like I really did thrive off compliments. And people being like, oh, you're really funny.

• 49:45Rich Roll?

  Your identity, uh, you know, being propped up and constructed by externalities as opposed to how you feel about yourself.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause I had no internal compass. So it's just like, yeah, everything, all validation, all self-worth. Yeah. Was totally coming from the outside. And so, yeah, so in that moment, writing that suicide note, it was like this changing thing. And I mean, I know that maybe sounds cliche, but it was just a very eye-opening, raw moment where I was like, this is a definite, you know, if this is a parallel to addiction, like this is a definite bottom, you know? And this is a moment that like, this needs to change. And that was when I realized I needed to go back to counseling and to, you know, to talk. And just to really be honest about it more than anything, I think, was the thing that like I just needed to get out there.

• 50:27Rich Roll?

  Right. It was a window of opportunity. That's amazing. And you had enough awareness to actually take action on that.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think the main thing is, is not that like I was so deep or smart or anything, but just that I realized I was making myself the victim. And that was something that just didn't work with my psychology because I had always worked really hard at things. Like when I was younger, like 10, 11, 12, I'd played competitive chess, which some people don't even know is a thing, but like it is a thing. And I would, you know, study for hours and in sport I would train for hours. So I was used to like working hard and like taking ownership for my own life in a certain way. And I just had been so blind to the fact that I had been sort of making myself this victim of culture and of society and of what I thought other people might think of me. And when I kind of realized that that was enough for me to go, okay, like I can't do that.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Like if life's going to be hard and if life's going to be heavy, that's okay, but it can't be because I'm victimizing myself, if that makes sense.

• 51:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what did you do? Did you call Alan up or like what was the next thing?

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did talk to him and obviously like the first conversation was with my mom. It was just kind of like this come clean sort of moment on everything and all the stuff.

• 51:35Rich Roll?

  Did you tell her exactly what you had done? Like that, what you were, or did you just?

• 51:38Speaker 01

  I kind of skirted around it, to be honest, because of shame, maybe like I was more just like, you know, this has been going on for a while, blah, blah, blah. And it took a while for me to really come clean to her about just how intense like the suicidal sort of thoughts had been and even writing a suicide note and stuff. But it was, it was at least a big step forward to like have the conversation. And then I started going to a different counselor who I still see, whether I'm on the road, I do it on Skype and if I'm in town, I do it in person. And I met up with him and that was a huge changing moment for my entire life because one, like, yeah, he's a very bright, smart guy and I talk about him a lot in the book. But also he just became this mirror for me to like really see into myself and he just really would hold up

• 52:21Speaker 01

  these moments and be like, what's at the bottom of that? Like what's underneath that? And no one had challenged me like that. And I think the one thing that was difficult for me is I was. I was ahead of where a lot of my friends were intellectually when I was young. So I could win arguments. You know what I mean? Like just through intellect. And if someone were to challenge me or to go, here's maybe a flaw of yours or insecurity. I was very quick witted and I could come back and I had answers and excuses.

• 52:47Rich Roll?

  But that's all a defense mechanism.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Of course, it's a massive defense mechanism. And when I went to as counselor, Dr. Betts, he was the one who for the first time could break that down. Cause this was a guy who was not only smarter than me, but who knew psychology and who knew exactly what I was trying to do and let me know that.

• 53:02Rich Roll?

  You're in trouble now, right?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. No, exactly. But it was so refreshing. Like it was so refreshing to be in that environment because it was like, oh my goodness. Like I'm so happy that I can't just lie anymore. I'm so happy I can't just sort of like cheat my way out of situations. I'm so happy I can't just use words to sort of escape a deeper thing, you know? And it was actually really refreshing and it was really nice to be like, yeah, like call me out on my own bullshit. You know, like make me aware of like what's happening. And so it was a huge moment.

• 53:32Rich Roll?

  Well, that's the way that you can deconstruct the denial, right? So that you can see yourself more objectively. I mean, was there a specific like psychological philosophy behind it? Like Jungian?

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a, yeah, he's a Jungianist. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there was some stuff like where he helped me analyze some of my dreams and some stuff that was like a little bit more out there. But most of it honestly was just him using his background, doing it for 20 years. He's written a bunch of papers. He's, you know, lectured all over the world and just using that experience and what he knew to just sort of help guide me down these different avenues of my own, of my own mind. And that was really it.

• 54:08Rich Roll?

  So how often were you going to see him?

• 54:10Speaker 01

  I was going once a week when I really, you know, needed it a lot. And it was, it was extremely helpful and it was just something that it changed, it changed my mindset.

• 54:18Rich Roll?

  And how long did it take before at least like the intense part of the black cloud started to part?

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Honestly, like faster than I even expected possible, I think, because

• 54:30Rich Roll?

  Just the relief of like, like now I'm

• 54:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:32Rich Roll?

  The simple act of beginning to talk about it.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  And I can just be myself. Like, that was the thing that was missing the whole time, was I was just like trying to play this character or what I thought I should be doing. And then when I could come there and sit in his office, I was just in this space of like total freedom and like total acceptance. And I truly feel like he's never like judged me, like maybe inside, but he's never let me know that. And that was like the most powerful thing, like just to sit there and to be able to share all these things. And he just came from a place of no judgment. And it was so freeing. It was like, yeah, like I can just let go of this stuff now.

• 55:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  I don't need to hold on to it, like.

• 55:07Rich Roll?

  It's, it's a weird thing, too, when you go into a therapist's office or psychiatrist or whoever and because I've done this, like when I was in the throes of my addiction and, and not being so disconnected from myself that I didn't even know quite how to be honest. So I would tell them what I thought they wanted to hear about me.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:29Rich Roll?

  You know, it's like, and then I'm like, and then you realize like, I'm seeking the approval of this person who's trying to help me, who can't help me unless I'm willing to be honest, but I'm not willing to be honest.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that hits way too close to home. Yeah, no, no, because that's the thing is like, he would help me see something in myself and I would go, oh, that's the deepest layer. You know what I mean? Like, that's the deepest thing that I could find in all of this or whatever. And then he would sort of push me towards something else. And I would do that exact same thing where I'd kind of give an answer that I thought you'd maybe want to hear. And that's what I mean by like calling me out on my own bullshit. It was just like, he would know that like that wasn't really real. And he wouldn't push too hard, but we'd just come back to it and just come back to it. And it was so helpful to understand that like, I had some of these complexes where I really wanted approval and I really wanted acceptance and all these things. And maybe that came from, you know, not getting attention that I wanted at home or, you know, in early

• 56:24Speaker 01

  elementary school, being bullied or something, you know? And it was just like, there were some, there were some real good realizations there.

• 56:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, I think it presupposes, I mean, I think that the, the mistake that a lot of people make is that, I mean, how do I phrase this? When you said, you know, I could just be me.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:42Rich Roll?

  It pre, that presupposes that you had an idea of who that person is.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:46Rich Roll?

  But I would imagine that you probably didn't like that. The work goes into when you peel back those layers. That's when you start to connect with who that person is and get to getting to know who that person is, right? So, so when you're in there and you're bullshitting or you're running your program, you're not consciously aware that you're doing it and you think that you're being who you are.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  You think you're being authentic.

• 57:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:06Rich Roll?

  And it's a process of dismantling that to understand that there's a, there's a different guy underneath that.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:14Rich Roll?

  That maybe you haven't quite met yet.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that's a perfect way of putting it. And that, I think, is what I mean by it felt so freeing, because it felt like I'd been confined to the character of who I thought I was. And when I went to counseling and stuff and started to do some work on myself, I realized I didn't have to hold up to that standard. Like, I didn't have to live my life that way. I didn't have to pretend that way. I could just kind of be me. And even though it wasn't anything special or mind blowing, it was just amazingly freeing. And I think that that's something I've tried to sort of continue with me, is that I don't want to try and live up to my own expectations of like how I think I need to be. Like, I just really want to try and be actually who I am, or, you know? And I think that that's been extremely helpful. And maybe like the biggest takeaway from all of it is just,

• 58:00Speaker 01

  you don't have to be this character.

• 58:02Rich Roll?

  Right. And so, so how long was it before you could kind of take this into the world? Like, and, and just embrace it publicly, right?

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:11Rich Roll?

  It's one thing to go into this guy's office and, and start spilling all this.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Confidentiality.

• 58:15Rich Roll?

  It's another thing to show up at basketball practice and go, sorry, I was late. I was at therapy. It was amazing. I started, I started telling him about this.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great bumper sticker. I talked to my problems with a professional. Yeah, yeah. So here's the curve ball maybe in the story. Even though I felt like I was changing or evolving or becoming a better person, that culture and that community of being at high school still really didn't fit and still felt really inauthentic. And I, when I was going to counseling, like, and this is like, so, you know, February, March, April, kind of thing, I was watching so much comedy and I just fell in love with comedy. It's like, this is what I want to do. And so, the day the basketball ended was on a Saturday afternoon. We drove home Sunday. And on Monday, I dropped out of high school. And I was like, I'm gonna do stand up.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Which is just the most ridiculous thing you could ever.

• 59:09Rich Roll?

  What did your mom say?

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, right? Like, it just, it just has really no words for it, but at the same time, sort of was so empathetic and understanding that she was like, you know, I'm guessing in her mind, she was like, maybe this is just a phase and he's gonna, you know, like, I was like, three and a half months away from finishing my diploma. Like, it was just the most ridiculous.

• 59:32Rich Roll?

  Like, three months, just come on.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Just finish it. Right, exactly. But this is kind of also maybe a really weird personality trait I have, but I feel sometimes like if my back's not against the wall, like, if I give myself a plan B, I just feel like I'll take it. And so I really, in my mind, was like, I wanna not have a high school degree so that I literally can't get a job and I have to do this. Like, that's sort of how outrageous.

• 59:55Rich Roll?

  It would be one thing if you had been doing stand-up, even if in your bathroom mirror for the last five years, but this was just like a new idea.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  I mean, it was.

• 1:00:03Rich Roll?

  That could have easily just passed a month later.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Exactly. I mean, like, it wasn't like it just came totally out of nowhere. Like, certainly for maybe two or three years, I'd been like, whoa, that would be really, really cool. But it really wasn't until that senior year, doing that drama class with Mr. Kemp and like 20 other people that probably didn't want to be there, that I was like, oh, this is possible. And he gave me a lot of encouragement. He was like, you're really good, like, on the fly, and you, you can really think on your feet. And so.

• 1:00:27Rich Roll?

  So I assume there was no, uh, drama class happening in the last three and a half months, because had there been, you could have at least.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  No, that was first semester. No, you've got this whole thing figured out, man. You've got this whole thing figured out. So I drop out of high school and I start sneaking into this comedy club. And there's only one comedy club in Victoria, B.C., and it's called Hecklers, which is.

• 1:00:48Rich Roll?

  Of course it's.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And so what they would do is they would have something called Ratfish Open Mic on Tuesdays. This is the actual name of it. And there was the club to the right, and then there was this terrible, dirty, awful hotel to the left of it, and they would rent out the bar of this hotel, and they would do open mic comedy. There's only one problem, and that was that you needed to be 19 years old to do it. And I was 17, because you have to be drinking age, and drinking age is where I live, 19. So. I wasn't old enough, but I'm six, six and I, you know, would just pretend that I was. And so I would show up there and I, they would go, the person at the door, ask you, cause anyone can perform, like if you're an accountant or like whatever, you can go up there. So they go, are you here to perform or are you here to watch? And I go, I'm here to perform.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  And I would just say it really confidently and I'd sort of get through and, and whatever. And so you would, you would get a two minute spot and then the red light in the back of the room would come on. So I would follow, like, I remember one time I followed a math teacher who had brought like 15 of his students. He was like a university professor who brought like 15 of his students like to the club. And he was doing math based humor, like humor that was like so above like what you or I might know about mathematics. You couldn't even follow it. He was just pitching basically his math jokes.

• 1:02:05Rich Roll?

  Dimitri Martin kind of way or?

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Yes, like, you know, no, like, see exactly like that, like it's just a, a deadpan, one liner, witty, ironic jokes about math that 15 people out of maybe a hundred.

• 1:02:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Even understood. And then I would follow that. And so I was doing this for a few weeks and then one time I go up there and I was working on this like ridiculous bit about, um, why being a teenager was really hard. I can't even remember exactly where it went, but at one point I was like, and that's why being 17 is just so ridiculous. And the guy who like ran the thing comes up to me every, he's like, he's like, dude, like, are you 17 years old?

• 1:02:42Rich Roll?

  It's just part of my app.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  And so he asked to see my ID and so I show him my ID and he's like, you, like, you can't come here. Like, that's not cool. You can't, it's illegal. So I wasn't able to go back. And so I'm like, oh my gosh, I've dropped out of high school. The one place I thought I could perform, I can't. I'm making exactly no money doing this. Nobody even knows I do it. It's just in my head. I just go and perform for 40 people on a Tuesday night and then I drive back to my mom's house. And so I sort of had to figure something out and I started like, being like, how do comedians like make money? Who aren't super duper famous? And I found out a lot of them do college gigs. And so I started like emailing like 500 colleges, being like, hey, could I come like perform at your college? Finally.

• 1:03:24Rich Roll?

  I have a solid two minutes.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got a tight two. If you need a tight too, I'm your guy. And so finally, one of the mess were like, how much did you charge for that? I was like, I didn't even know that was like a thing. And so that was kind of like the entry into it. And so I started doing stand up at colleges. And then one time I saw that before I was doing, like I would do a show where it was like at a college would be like a variety show. And there'd be like some like acoustic guitar type guy and me doing jokes. And I found out that there was someone who was coming to speak on campus like a week later or something. It was like a really big deal. I forget who the guy was, but it was supposed to be this really big speech. And it's ironic because right after that, I read an article about who we were talking about at the beginning, Josh Ship. And it was in Ink Magazine. It was like this piece that had been in the magazine and then online.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  And it was a thirty under thirty list and he was on it. And it talked about how he had done really well in speaking. And I was like blown away by this. I'd never really knew that speaking was like a thing or whatever. And I see this guy at a college doing it and I read this article about Josh and how he's done it. And it was just sort of fascinated me. And so I had a conversation with my old English teacher and I was just talking about where I was at in life. And he's like, you gotta come back to high school, man. Like you just gotta like accept reality, like you can't just drop out at seventeen and become a comedian. And we started talking and we started talking about a bit about my story and a bit about the stuff with depression. And he stops and he goes, he's like, now that's really interesting. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, your personal story, like who you are, like the stuff that you really struggled with. And I was like, like to bring into my act?

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  And he's like, no, like just to talk about that, like that'd be really fascinating. And I was like, no, man, like I'm not discussing that. Like, like you said, it's one thing to go to counseling, sit in a room, but I'm not talking about that. And then literally four weeks later, a girl named Amanda Todd, who was seventeen years old and lived in Vancouver, just outside of my community, took her own life. And it was the most eye opening moment. She a friend of somebody you knew? No, not at all, not at all. But it was just the most eye opening moment I had ever had of that this was like bigger than me, that this affected other people. Like as ridiculous as it sounds, I never really thought about that. Like I just sort of thought about how it impacted me and how it impacted my life, but I never thought about.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  How it mattered in the world. And so she took her own life, became this news story. And then they found this YouTube video of her where she was sitting in her room and she doesn't talk, but she has these little cue cards of things that she's written about herself on them. And she sort of pulls one of them back after another in front of the camera. And one of them was, I feel so alone. And just the look on her face when she pulled back that card and looking at her and just remembering that feeling like not too long ago for myself. It just really hit me and I was like, wow, like this is something that people are really struggling with. And so I brought it up with a few of my friends at the time. And I was just like, hey, like, you know, what do you guys think about this conversation and depression, all this stuff?

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  And it blew my mind that like, if I had 10 buddies, nine of them were like, oh, I've struggled with this. Or like, I relate to that or whatever, right? And these are all guys who I had no clue that that'd be true for them. And so I really got it in my head at that point that I was like, wow, maybe my English teacher, Mr. Zatsmary is right. Like, maybe I should share this story in some capacity. And so there was a TEDx event happening in Vancouver and it was for young kids. And a friend of mine who's a little bit older and had done a TEDx himself, he was like, I'm going to nominate you for this. Like, you should do this, you know? And I was like,

• 1:06:49Rich Roll?

  Meanwhile, you've been, you've been up at Heckler's.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  Heckler's, killing it.

• 1:06:53Rich Roll?

  Pretty much.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Crushing it.

• 1:06:54Rich Roll?

  It's not like you had completed a college tour of speaking about depression and sharing your story.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  No, I had, I hadn't.

• 1:07:02Rich Roll?

  Have you given any presentations on it yet?

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Well, so this is what happened. So the TED Talk comes through and they're like, you should do it, right? They're like, we want you to do it. And I'm like, great. So then it's like a few months away. So I'm like, I gotta like, practice, right? So I went to like a community center and I like, spoke to like 10 people who were like drinking lemonade. And then I went back to my old high school and I talked to Mr. Zatsmary's class. And I did like three or four, you know, maximum sort of 10 of these sort of talks. And they were all really short and they were just terrible. Keep in mind.

• 1:07:31Rich Roll?

  Did you, did you get in touch with Josh at this point?

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. No.

• 1:07:35Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 1:07:36Rich Roll?

  But you knew who, you knew who he was.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Oh, he was just a massive inspiration. It was just like, oh, wow. Because, because the real reason, not just because he was a speaker who had like, Made some money doing it or something, but because he was a personal story speaker, like he was sharing stuff about like his upbringing, which was very traumatic and that just really inspired me. And so at this point, yeah, no, I have no connections to anyone at all. And I do it a few times and then I go to do the TEDx event and you do like a run through, you know, and you're supposed to do your talk in front of everyone. So I do it and they like finish it. And this was like a rough version of what it ended up being. And everyone in the room, everyone, all the event organizers just look at me and they're like, yeah, you can't do that talk. Like there is like, that's way too heavy. Like that's way too real. They're like, there's kids in the audience here. It was a TEDx

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  youth event, you know, like you can't do that. So like, you need to think about what you want to do. I'm like, well, what like could I talk about? And they're like, well, I got the time I had like Twitter and I'd like write jokes on Twitter and people would like sometimes retweet them. And that was probably the most successful thing I'd ever done in comedy at that point was have like a joke that's been retweeted a hundred times. That was like a highlight, right? So they were like, well, you're really funny on Twitter. So why don't you talk about social media? And I'm like, uh, what? So I didn't really know what to do. I go home, I think about it, talk to a few people and I'm just like, yeah, like I really want to do this talk. And they're like, well, we don't want you to do that talk. And so I literally, and this is like, I never actually shared this

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  story in a public format before. This is the first time, but I literally said I was going to talk about social media and went on stage and just gave the talk.

• 1:09:13Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  So if you

• 1:09:14Rich Roll?

  So how close was the talk that you gave to the one that you rehearsed in front of them?

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  It wasn't even that close. It was way lighter than the one that I actually did. Yeah. So picture this, if anyone's watched the TED Talk and you've seen it, you'll never see the camera go above my head in the video. There's a white screen behind me. You'll never see it go above because when I came out, there was a title on the screen for the talk I was supposed to be doing. Now the talk I was supposed to be doing was on social media, but get this, I had a fake title for that talk and I come out and I look at what's behind me and it says, "The Power of Learning in the Future with Kevin Breel." So they had fake titled my fake title. So I'm up there giving this talk about my story.

• 1:09:53Rich Roll?

  It is interesting because when I watch it, I go, yeah, the framing is all off on this and there's some weird cuts, but I just chalked it up because I'm like, what's weird about it is that Is that the talk is on the main TED Talk page, right?

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Rich Roll?

  Cause usually for people that are uninitiated, there's a million TEDx events.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:13Rich Roll?

  And they're all independently hosted.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:15Rich Roll?

  And then they can put up their videos on their own YouTube channel, their own, yeah. So it's very rare that a TED Talk from a TEDx actually gets kind of booted up.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Rich Roll?

  The chain and is actually on ted.com.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:29Rich Roll?

  Um, which yours is.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:31Rich Roll?

  Uh, because it went crazy viral, which we're going to talk about, but I'm watching it. I'm like, it's kind of a hacky thing. And I'm like, I'm like, where did, I was like, where did he do this? This is not at like the major TED conference. This is a TEDx kids Ambleside. The highly prestigious TEDx kids Ambleside. I'm like, where is Ambleside? Like, how many people were even at this event? You know, like.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Like 80, like 80 dude.

• 1:10:55Rich Roll?

  So it's like, the, the stars were not aligned for this TED Talk to do anything except see maybe a couple hundred people watch it.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the very first comment of the TED Talk, when it comes online is the first comment ever on the talk is someone just goes, this guy's a bore. And that's what I, so.

• 1:11:13Rich Roll?

  So it must've gone up on the TEDx page first initially, right? On their YouTube or whatever?

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Right. So, yeah. So like literally, yeah, I literally give the talk, I go off and the talk somehow gets a standing ovation. Like if you watch the video, there's like a weird kind of standing ovation that happens.

• 1:11:28Rich Roll?

  Did you lock eyes with any of the organizers?

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Yes, of course.

• 1:11:31Rich Roll?

  In the middle of the talk?

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  And the anger. Yeah. It was like so real, but then it got so personal and so real, and it was like almost so human that it turned everyone. And so this is the craziest thing. So I finished the talk, I go off, I'm like, I'm expecting to just get chewed out by these people. And they're like, that was amazing. Like one of the women has like tears in her eyes. She's like, I relate to that. Like, I can't believe you did that. So they kind of like weirdly respected it. So then it goes online, like you said, on the prestigious TEDx.

• 1:11:58Rich Roll?

  How long before, how long after the talk?

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  Exactly four weeks. So the talk was like May 17th, I think it came out June 17th.

• 1:12:04Rich Roll?

  And then, and in, before we get to that though, so, so when you have to go face to face with the organizers right afterwards, like what do they say to you?

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  They loved it. That was the most wild part.

• 1:12:16Rich Roll?

  They weren't holding on to this idea that you had somehow betrayed them.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  No, no. But when I like, when you asked, like, did you lock eyes with them? When I was like, two minutes into it, yes, that was the look on their face. Was like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe you're doing this for real. Like, that's ridiculous.

• 1:12:31Rich Roll?

  I mean, when it, when it was for kids, I mean, were there little kids?

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:12:35Rich Roll?

  Ten year olds?

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes, exactly.

• 1:12:39Rich Roll?

  How many people were in the audience?

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  Like eighty, man, like, yeah, but it's like, it's like a ten year old kid and his two parents. Then like another eleven year old kid, their two parents. Like, there was an eight year old who spoke at this event.

• 1:12:51Rich Roll?

  Well, this had to be the biggest thing going on in Ambleside that day, right?

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  The only thing, yeah. So, so, yeah, so then the talk comes out like four weeks later. The first comment on it is this guy's a bore. And that's literally where I thought the talk was gonna go. Like, I was like, oh, my gosh.

• 1:13:07Rich Roll?

  Because sometimes when the first person comments, that sets the tone for everybody who's gonna comment afterwards.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. And here's the other thing that I really was nervous about is TED Talks typically are like amazing, like life hacks. You know what I mean? Like, here's how to become an entrepreneur in thirty seconds, you know, like, there's just all these. It's very like achiever based. It's very like you guys gotta go out and be successful.

• 1:13:29Rich Roll?

  Or here's this counterintuitive idea that goes against everything you ever thought was true.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. But it's all highly intellectual. It's not emotional, you know what I mean? For the most part, there's only a few talks, like Brene Brown, and yeah, there's some exceptions. But those talks were like the massive ones. And so to me, I was like, uh, this could go really bad. So it comes online and at first it's like, you know, like you said, it's like a few hundred people watching it.

• 1:13:54Rich Roll?

  And, and most TEDx talks, because there's so many now.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  There's thirty eight thousand.

• 1:13:59Rich Roll?

  Yes, this was two thousand thirteen, so, you know, quite a bit, quite a, quite, quite a bit less. But still, most of them, you know, end up getting, you know, maybe a couple hundred, a couple thousand, you know.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  Like friends and family.

• 1:14:10Rich Roll?

  It's rare that there's a breakout, like, it's not, you know, everyone's like, oh, TED Talk, but like, a lot of them just are in obscurity on the internet somewhere.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  Of course, yeah, of course. And that's exactly what I thought this was gonna be. Because just, you know, from the whole arc of the whole thing and how it had gone. And so then weirdly, what starts to happen is people start to just watch it because TED does have a really big community. So it gets like a thousand views, two thousand, three thousand, whatever. And then. Progressively, people start to share the talk, but the thing that was interesting about it was when I would see them share it, they'd go, hey, this is my story, or hey, I really relate to this. Like, it was less about me and like more about them. And it started to have this really wild effect, because I think if you think about it, these are just normal people at first sharing it, right? So people with like 100 Twitter followers. But if you think about it, if you saw someone who's like your friend, share something and

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  go, hey, this is my story, kind of makes you want to click on it, because you're more interested in them than like the guy actually talking. You're like, whoa, this relates to my buddy now, right? So I'm gonna watch this. And so I started noting this, noticing this sort of like narrative that people weren't sharing it being like, what an awesome talk. They were just kind of being like, this relates to me.

• 1:15:19Rich Roll?

  Right, they're connecting to it in a human way.

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  And so then what happened is it just kind of tipped over from there, where it started going around, and then a few media outlets picked it up and sort of shared it with the same thing. And then Upworthy website grabbed a hold of it. You know, they're really great at like clickbait titles, you know what I mean? And so the title that they put on it was this kid thinks we could save so many lives if we were just able to say four words, and the four words were I struggle with depression. And they put that up. And so this is where it gets really interesting, goes back to the sort of TEDxAmble side, how the whole thing was done. The talk, if you watched it on your phone or on your tablet, had no sound. The sound didn't work on mobile or on iPads, only on desktop. So Upworthy has millions of fans, right? And so there's at one point, they put it on their Facebook,

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  and there's 2,000 comments under it, and I'm not kidding, a thousand of them are just, I can't hear this. There's no audio on this. And so it's like this nightmare. And so Upworthy like emails me, it's like, hey, like, this is making us look really bad. Like, we're gonna have to take this down, like, if we can't fix it. And so we were able to get this other version of the audio. So we put up a version that's still on there, it's called fixed audio. It's another version of my TED Talk. And when they put that back up, all these people who are almost curious as to what that clickbait type title had been, and not been able to hear the sound, watched it, and there was just this avalanche effect from there, where there's just, just went outwards.

• 1:16:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, I saw the Upworthy page, and I noticed they're like, Updated. Now we have the one with the, yeah, so I wonder what happened. So it was really Upworthy was kind of like the linchpin that like

• 1:16:54Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:16:55Rich Roll?

  catalyzed it into the stratosphere.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  No, for sure. And I'm super grateful for that because I think their audience was perfect for it. It was like millennial kids who want to change the world, you know? And so it was kind of ideal and it's kind of perfect. And then from there, it just kind of trickled down to other outlets. And then the next biggest thing was like Mashable called it one of the moments that brought the world together. And they put it in this big montage with like some really important stuff. And that gave it a lot of extra weight because it was like, whoa, like it seemed like a big thing.

• 1:17:22Rich Roll?

  Right. It's crazy. So to date, it's clocked over 2 million views, which puts it up there with one of the most watched TED Talks ever.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is wild. And the thing about the views that's really funny is no one really seems to have a good idea. Cause like on TED, it says 2 million, but if you look on the other pages, like there's people have put it in media being like, well, there's 4 million. Cause it's 2 million on TED and 2 million on YouTube. So it's like, this is no real.

• 1:17:45Rich Roll?

  Quite now. Well, some people just, they rip those videos and then put them up elsewhere. So it populates the internet in different places.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  But it's like, it's just those, once those numbers get that big, you don't even really know what they mean or how to quantify them. But it was just, yeah, like there was a lot, a lot of people who watched it around the time that it came out. And the thing that really connected with me the most, and the thing that I took from that to sort of try and parlay into the book, was it was just honest and it wasn't trying to be anything that it wasn't. And I think that's what made people kind of connect with it because it's almost like what we were talking about. People just want to be themselves. Like you just want to go into that counselor's office and have freedom. And I think that that talk for people gave them a little bit of freedom because for someone who maybe couldn't put words to some of their struggle or some of their confusion, they could now just share this link to this 10 minute talk. And it kind of helped explain them. Like, does that make sense? Like, yeah.

• 1:18:34Rich Roll?

  I mean, we've, we've said everything almost there is to say about your TED Talk, except what you actually talked about in your TED Talk. I mean, a lot of people will have already watched it and may have already seen it before this, but, but you know, let's break that down a little bit. I mean, essentially, you know, in a nutshell, you're telling your story in 10 minutes.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:54Rich Roll?

  And it's sort of a call to action or a plea for, for everybody to kind of, you know, bring this condition into the light and talk about it because, you know, the sort of isolation and the darkness, you know, breeds, you know, breeds this disease.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:12Rich Roll?

  And it's so stigmatized. And if we can just talk about it and like own it in a public forum and admit that this is a problem and encourage other people who are suffering to talk about it and make people feel comfortable talking about it, that we can solve this problem together.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Rich Roll?

  Is that a fair characterization?

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  It's really good. Like the quotable that kind of came out of it that seemed to stick the most, and we turned this into a poster with a really great nonprofit called To Write Love on Our Arms, who's helped like millions of people who struggle with depression and addiction and stuff. And the, the sort of thing that I think really summarizes, there's a quote in there that says, "The world I believe in is one where embracing your light doesn't mean ignoring your dark." And I think that that kind of summarized the talk, you know, was just to be like, yeah, like you said, like you can just own it and you can just be real about it and be honest and it doesn't diminish who you are. And I think that that was like the big takeaway for myself and maybe for a lot of other people or hopefully, was just that you can be like a multi-layered person, you know, like you don't just have to be one way. Like you can, you can feel both sides of life.

• 1:20:14Rich Roll?

  Right. And I think interlaced throughout that, and I think why the talk is so potent and powerful is not because you're giving advice, it's because you were sharing your story and you were doing it in a, in a, in a truly honest and authentic way. So much so that you're like, literally, I can see you fighting back the tears, like you're getting emotional.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:32Rich Roll?

  As you're talking about it.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:34Rich Roll?

  And it looked like something that you had spent a lot of time, you know, not, it didn't look rehearsed at all. It looked like you just got up there and was like, all right, how do I feel about this? And you just spit out this thing.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:46Rich Roll?

  But it was so well done and you hit all the points that you needed to hit. Like, it was like, this guy like knows how to give a talk, man. Like

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:20:53Rich Roll?

  You really were able to like, you know, get right to the heart of what was important to address without doing it in a, in any kind of preachy way whatsoever.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that was like the big goal because I didn't want to come across that way. And I think that part of that bleeds into sort of the comedy world, which is like a very real world and where guru type stuff is like not like seen as very good. And there's not really like people have tried to do like comedy classes and stuff before. And it just gets torn apart in the community because they're like, no, like that doesn't seem authentic. And so there was almost a part of that that worked out well. And that's why the talk is called Confessions of a Depressed Comic is almost because there is this parlay of like, that's what makes good comedy good, in my opinion, is just truth. And like Chris Rock has a quote, like, you can make people laugh if you just say the truth in an unexpected way. And I think that that was like a lot of what came into the TED Talk, even though it's not funny, is just serious,

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  was just to, yeah, be honest. And I think that that is cliche, or simple as it might sound, is tricky, you know, it's hard to do.

• 1:21:54Rich Roll?

  Well, I think as as someone who, you know, struggled with a sense of, you know, personal identity and and somebody who like was prone to isolating and all of that, to be able to get up on a stage, even if there was only 80 people and know that it's being filmed for TED, that's an intimidating thing, right? And you did you displayed zero indicia of looking nervous or stumbling or anything like that. Like, you really own the stage. I mean, does this go back to high school drama?

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  Goes back to hecklers, man.

• 1:22:25Rich Roll?

  And like I said, like, like Josh Schiff is a master. You know, he gets up and he can command an audience in a really poetic and beautiful way. But he's also put in a lot of hours, you know, to get to that place. But this was like your first speaking gig almost, you know, other than hecklers.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, or like a community center.

• 1:22:42Rich Roll?

  So what do you attribute that to?

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  Well, I did write the talk. Like, it wasn't just riffed like in the moment. I did write it because I knew I only had so much time. And that was what kind of freaked me out was being like you're working against hardcore. So I had 11 minutes and it needed to be tight. So I did write out what I wanted to say. But I think that for me, like, one thing that allowed me to do comedy was also almost, no one really ever told me when I was growing up that you should be afraid of being on stage. Like, I know that for some people, that's like a big thing. Like, they say like, oh, public speaking is like people's number one fear. No one really ever told me to like be afraid of that as a kid. So I was almost so naive that I was like, why would you be afraid of that? Like, it's like talking to one person times one person times like, that's really how I saw it. So I never really had any fear.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  When it came to doing stand up, when it came to doing the TED Talk, like it was almost because I didn't buy into it.

• 1:23:33Rich Roll?

  Stand up is terrifying.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was.

• 1:23:35Rich Roll?

  I think there's nothing more terrifying.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I, it's so weird, but I just didn't sort of buy into that fear at any point. So I was almost so naive that it worked in my favor, you know? I didn't think I had anything to be afraid of, even though I definitely should have felt like I did. And so it just kind of helped. And I think that that was sort of the same effect with the TED Talk, because I didn't really know to be afraid. And in hindsight, if I had known that many people would watch it, I probably would have never been that honest.

• 1:23:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? It's a catch 22 where it's like, when you do sort of thing, who's just 80 people in a room and a couple of people might watch it? It's a lot easier almost to be super honest.

• 1:24:07Rich Roll?

  Right, right. If you're like, 2 million people are gonna see this, you're gonna start editing yourself.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Like, there's a Bruce Springsteen quote, I think, where he's like, "The first album you write is really important because that's when it's just you and your songs and there's no audience yet and there's no one judging you yet," you know? And I think that that kind of factors into all of this, is I didn't, I didn't really think about people seeing it.

• 1:24:25Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:24:33Rich Roll?

  So what is it about depression and comedians?

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  What is it about, like, the link between the two?

• 1:24:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think there seems to be, you know, maybe it's incorrect, or maybe it seems like it's more than it is, but it seems to me that there is like a higher degree of depression among comics and comedians.

• 1:24:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:54Rich Roll?

  That relationship is real, I think.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  I think so too. But I also do think what you said is also accurate. Like, I do think the whole, like, sad clown sort of thing is really a media narrative that's like become really big with like the Robin Williams situation and those sorts of things. Because I certainly know lots of people who do stand up and they're just like, they don't relate to this at all. So I don't think it's everyone, but I just think that the idea is, for me, the way that it makes sense in my mind, is to find something that's funny, you almost have to find the weird things that we accept in day-to-day life that are kind of ridiculous. You know what I mean? Like, the sort of the double standards, or the hidden agenda, or the, you know, whatever you might want to call it. And in order to explore that, I think you do need to go to a really real.

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  Place. I think you do need to go to a place that's almost a bit dark, like to be able to find something that's when you're sort of mining a diamond out of the rough and then bringing it to people on stage and going, isn't it funny that we sort of all do this and don't notice it or whatever, telling a story that's so personal to you and your life that people are like, whoa, this guy's being really real or really authentic. But I think a lot of that, like discovery comes from pain to some degree, you know? And I think that that's maybe where it comes from. And also, a lot of communities are extremely introspective people. They judge themselves really intensely. I think I relate to that a lot. And I think that's maybe the link for myself between struggling with depression and then also feeling like really

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  creative and like a performer is I judge and sort of analyze life so much sometimes that it's not that hard for me to go and like, here's something that's a little bit funny and here's something that's a little bit funny because I live so much in my own head at times that it's not that challenging. And I think that's a big, a big thing that has to do with it is just in order to find things that are funny and that people are going to relate to, you do have to go inside of yourself a bit. And I think that can be a little scary.

• 1:26:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think comedy can be mined from, you know, an introspective perspective on something that is true. Right? And so you have to be hyper vigilant about the world, like very observant about what's around you and maybe see things that other people don't see. And then I think you, you have to be able to turn that telescope or that focus in on yourself and

• 1:27:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:04Rich Roll?

  And really like mine the human condition to try to figure out like certain, you know, universal truths about how we, you know, who we are as human beings that can be fodder for material.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  Totally. But when even like when you're saying that, like me just listening, you say it's like, that doesn't necessarily sound like so much fun. You know what I mean? Like that sounds hard.

• 1:27:24Rich Roll?

  But I think it's a natural state of being, you know what I mean?

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:27Rich Roll?

  I think comedians that that are good, like

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  That's where they are. Yeah, exactly. That's how they live moment to moment. But I think if you really think about that, I'm not sure if the, if there is an average person, but I'm not sure if the average person walks around like that. You know what I mean? Like, I think that that's a different kind of mindset that certain people have. And I think that, I think it does apply to almost all creatives though, like Writers, comedians, musicians, I think all of them have to have that like little switch that's like, I can go really deep into this thing. Like, I could go down the rabbit hole, you know?

• 1:27:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, listen, if an average person watches the documentary Food, Inc., they might think twice about their food choices and say, you know, I need to change it up, or, you know, maybe it might shift how they, you know, perceive their grocery store experience.

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:13Rich Roll?

  But it's not the average experience to watch that movie and then, and then think the world is a very dark, bleak place.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:28:20Rich Roll?

  And go into like some kind of despair over it.

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  No, no, of course, exactly. And that's not even healthy necessarily.

• 1:28:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And like, that's what I mean is that I'm not trying to, like, I don't even necessarily know if it's a good thing to be that introspective or that intense. But that's kind of like how my mind works, you know? And I think that that's how it's always sort of been for me. But I don't mind it because I feel like it helps me kind of make sense of things. And then it's a little bit easier for me to let go of them.

• 1:28:46Rich Roll?

  Right. So, the TED Talk blows up like crazy. And suddenly, you know, you're all over the place. You're on the Today Show, you're on MSNBC, and like wherever else. Like, there's interviews with you all. So, your life definitely changes. I don't know how long after the video occurred that that stuff started to happen.

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  No, it's really fast. Yeah, really fast.

• 1:29:04Rich Roll?

  But so, so, you know, that's a lot to take in for somebody who's also kind of walking a, you know, a mental health tightrope.

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was a teenager.

• 1:29:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  Nineteen years old.

• 1:29:14Rich Roll?

  Like nineteen, you know?

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, like nineteen, they're like, hey, come do the Today Show. And it's just like, yeah, it was a weird experience. And it was weird to run into people who I knew from high school or from my community. And now they know like my deepest, most personal story. And they're like, hey, I watched your video. But what that really means is, hey, like, I know that you almost took your own life. Like, you know, that's sort of a weird experience to just consistently have. And I'm sure you can understand that because so much of your story is public and good parts and bad parts. So, I'm sure you can relate. But yeah, it's, it's odd. And I really, to be honest, the media stuff when I was that young, it really kind of jaded me because I didn't like it. Like, I didn't like how they portrayed me. I didn't like how they told the story. I didn't like how they tried

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  to talk about people with depression as if they're these sad, you know, disenfranchised, victimized people who like, you know, it's too bad for them. Like, let's just be nice to them. Like, it was just this really weird thing. And it just, it was a hard experience because I thought I was doing something good. Like, I thought by doing the media and doing the interviews and all that kind of stuff. That I was doing a good thing, you know, I was trying to

• 1:30:18Rich Roll?

  You're shining a light on this condition and talking about it in a, in a public forum that would hopefully create a safe place for other people to have these conversations.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  That's what I thought. And then I did a bunch of these and I really didn't like how it came out and it had a massively devastating effect on me.

• 1:30:33Rich Roll?

  So what about like, how was it mischaracterized?

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  I felt like they made me sound, yeah, well, I don't know. I felt like they made me sound like I'm the all American kid. I had the Letterman jacket on and I was, you know, doing keg stands and then secretly I was super depressed. But then don't worry because now I'm motivational and now I'm awesome and I'm cured. And so don't worry because I'm gonna now sell you my 12 step formula. Like it just, I didn't like any of that. Like I was like, no, like, I'm just trying to be honest and real and like be a person. Like I'm not a salesman. Like I don't have a pitch here. Like it almost felt like they would set me up for that and be like, so like, you know, where do you download the free ebook? You know, like it was just sort of

• 1:31:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cuz it's all about like, how do we craft and position this story so that it will, um, you know, result in the most number of page views or, you know, ratings and all that kind of stuff. So they have to like come up with an angle on it that is something that will entice people to watch it. In order to do that in two minutes or whatever amount of airtime they're giving you, uh, you know, it, it becomes compromised.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  But this was my thing is I really liked how Upworthy did it. I really liked how I thought there was a way to do it with integrity. I thought there was a way to, like, I get it. You need to kind of do a little clickbait and you need to make it, like you said, interesting and you gotta package it. But I felt like some people had done it really well. And then when it got bigger and bigger to these, you know, morning shows and these, you know, MSNBCs and all that kind of stuff, I just felt like it, it got ridiculous. Like I felt like it got blown out of proportion and it put me into this really dark rabbit hole where I felt a little bit like a fraud. Like I felt like the thing that I, cuz it was all edited. Like I would do like an hour interview and they edit it down to two minutes. And I felt like they manipulated the story to some degree. Like they would take like the most emotional part of the whole thing

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  and make it sound like that's how I was talking to them for an hour when really they'd sort of led me down this path and I was just having a Conversation. And so it put me into this really dark space for a little while where I felt really sort of jaded and bitter almost about the whole thing. And the thing that pulled me out of it was all these messages from kids on my Facebook page where these kids would just write me and they'd just go like, hey, man, like this talk, like I've watched it multiple times on nights that I thought, you know, I was gonna take my life and kids sent me their suicide notes. And people sent me things that were just so deeply personal that it really pulled me out of it because for a while there I I went back into a season of depression. It was the most ironic thing of all time. It was you know, you give this talk that goes viral about your story. And then you start doing some media and stuff and you don't like it and you end up.

• 1:33:05Rich Roll?

  You can't get out of bed.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I was just really down about it because I was like, I thought I was doing something so good, man. And now I feel like a fraud to myself and that's the exact thing that I'm saying I don't want to do. And that's the whole point of the talk and you know, blah, blah, blah. So I just kind of felt like a liar to myself and I didn't like it because I felt like it was, you know, the stuff was out of my control. I didn't edit the pieces. And then these messages from these kids was what inspired me and that's what started me writing. And so I started blogging. And just sharing the stuff on my page. And that was when a few offers came in for a book deal. And I felt like this might be like the bigger version of the media stuff where it's like they're gonna blow this out of proportion even more. And like the, you know, they might manufacture my book and whatever. And I was like really wary about, you know, taking a deal or doing a book.

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  Then I would just stay up and I would read these messages from these kids. And I was like, I want something that they could hand to their friend, that they could have in their backpack, that it could be on their coffee table or their bedside table, like something that could actually be a part of their lives more than just this 10 minute video. And that was actually what pulled me out of this really dark place because like it got really weird there for a while. Where I just felt like I would just be in Victoria and I'd go to a grocery store and I have 10 people talk to me about this. I mean, like my friend put it to me one time. He's like, man, he's like, I'm really happy for you. It's like, but it's really annoying how everywhere this is. He's like, I just can't have a conversation with someone without them bringing up like, hey, did you see this thing? Like he's like, it's annoying, like because it was just everywhere and I just couldn't go anywhere without having these conversations and like.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  Like, I remember I went to New York, and it was my first time in New York. I'd been there ten minutes. I was staying at the hotel. I went to get food. I walked and people came out of a McDonald's and were like talking to me. And I'm just standing there in New York as like this teenage kid. And there's this woman in front of me who's like twice my age, telling me her story. And I'm like, what is going on? You know, like, what's happening?

• 1:34:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, the universe is pulling you in this direction, you know, putting you in this like, you know, Star Trek tractor beam.

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:02Rich Roll?

  To kind of step into, you know, some level of advocacy in this field. And yet, at the same time, you're having your own personal struggle with it. I mean, you're just a kid.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  Just a kid, exactly. And that was the, that was the biggest part of it all. And so, like, when time went on, I just kind of grew up a little bit more and it became easier. And then, obviously, like, anything that goes viral, it does pass. You know what I mean? It's not forever. And so, it did pass after a while. And then, it was really just those messages. And that was the thing that made me write the book and made me, you know, still talk about this stuff. It's just, those messages just mean so much to me. And that was the thing that, like, really gave me some fuel.

• 1:35:39Rich Roll?

  What is the relationship to your depression? The relationship between your depression and, you know, the act of being in service to, you know, this multitude of, of people, these kids out there that, you know, with whom your message is resonating? In other words, like, you know, this sort of realization, like, oh, like, me talking about this is having an impact on all these people that I don't know. At some point, you know, with the book or otherwise, there's this realization, like, oh, I can, I can serve this community.

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:10Rich Roll?

  And so, what is the impact of, like, that process on your actual, like, mental health?

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  Like, just in terms of, like, how much does talking about it, like, affect myself?

• 1:36:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, outside of the therapist's office.

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, sure.

• 1:36:24Rich Roll?

  To be talking about it publicly, to, like, be owning it, and to be in this place of, like, you know, writing about it and promoting a certain message, you know, tied to the idea that you're helping these people. I mean, does that impact, like, is your depression independent of that? Like, does it come and go independent of that? Or the more that you are kind of in, you know, selfless service to that, does that seem to quell, you know, the dark night of the soul?

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  Right. That's a great question. I'm not sure if I have a great answer. I think that, I think if anything, for me, it's just made me so much more aware. Of who I am and so much more honest and talking about it makes me accountable to the fact that I can't really run away from it or pretend that it's not there because it is so public, you know, and there are these people who know details about it. And that helps me a lot, like knowing that it's out there. Every time I feel like I'm struggling or I'm starting to go down that path, it's a lot easier for me to feel okay about it because I'm like, yeah, like this has been a part of my life and I have a way better toolkit now for how to deal with it. Like I know what to do. I have certain, you know, habitual patterns I'll use when I start to feel myself sliding

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  down and it's fine. So I think talking about it helps me be accountable because it's really hard to be like, hey, be honest or like, you know, have conversations and then you don't do it. You know what I mean? So if anything, I think the accountability factor is helpful. And I think that, you know, like the messages from the kids on my page and stuff was extremely helpful writing the book because it's like I would sometimes if I got stuck, I would picture like I was just writing a message back to these kids. So I always try and reply to whatever I could and I would just try and write, you know, like we were just talking to each other. And that was what I tried to do with the book. And so there was a sense of accountability as opposed to being like, I'm writing a book, who's going to read this? I was like, no, like Michael's going to read this, like, you know, this person's going to read this, like this is real, like that kid who wrote me and I've written back to

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  him, he's going to read this, so I got to write it for him. And so I think that that sense of accountability makes me be more honest, makes me be more vulnerable, makes me explore myself more. And I think that that's actually really helped because it's just like a reminder that like, yeah, it's, it's fine. And it's also just made it like not a big deal. Like as much as, you know, it's a part of like what I'm doing career wise and like my book has sort of like a shocking title to some people or whatever. It's, it's not that huge of a part of my life, you know what I mean? Like there's so much more to who I am and it's not something I wake up every day being like, I gotta find a new angle to talk about this.

• 1:38:52Rich Roll?

  But you're the depression guy. I mean, like, that's the thing, right?

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  To some people, yeah.

• 1:38:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that's, especially with the book coming out, like, you're gonna get, you're gonna have to, like, carry that a little bit, right?

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, exactly, exactly. But like, it's just to myself, like, that's, that's not who I am, you know what I mean? And so that's what I mean, is it's like, it's almost helpful to have that stuff out there, because it's just like, yeah, like, that's, it just makes me be like, yeah, it's not that big of a deal, like, and I don't see myself as like, quote unquote, the depression guy, you know, at all. And I just don't think that that's like, who I am, you know, on a work career level or on a personal level, but I just, that's my big thing, is like, it's so funny to me how we reward, um, like, my, my comedy and my book and stuff can be rewarded as this creative exploration and this creative work, but going up and sharing a personal part of your story, people see that as like, a whole separate thing, but to me, it's like the same. If there's ever been a great piece of like, performance art, quote unquote, I'd say it's

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  my TED Talk. I mean, it's like, what I wanna do with comedy is say the things that people are afraid to say, say the things that are uncomfortable, if I've ever accomplished that.

• 1:39:56Rich Roll?

  Right, like, in a Louis CK kinda way.

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. And like, my style's different, like, I play the piano and it's different, but like, the idea is the same, like, I wanna say the things that, like, people are afraid to say that's uncomfortable, I wanna explore the sort of hidden truths that's in our day to day lives that we have a hard time verbalizing. And if there's ever been a good example of me doing that, it's the TED Talk, you know what I mean? So it's like, to me, it is still creative, it is still art in some way, like, to do that, you know, I think the same thing about, like, what you do. And so, to me, like, when people box me into that, like, that's one of my, almost like, triggers that I don't like, is people being like, oh, like, you're the TED Talk guy. It's like, no, man, like, that's just, why can't I be a multi-layered artist who not only can, you know, be creative, but talk about something personal?

• 1:40:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, you can do that, and you do do that, but the human brain likes to categorize, right? So it's like, oh, you're the guy who does that, so, that's just natural for people.

• 1:40:52Speaker 01

  No, that's not a big deal, but...

• 1:40:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, let's talk a little bit about depression itself, right? Like, maybe we should define it and, you know, distinguish it from sadness, right? So, you know, it's, we're very cavalier in throwing this word around, like, oh, I'm depressed, but it's like, that's different from real depression, right? Like, so how do you define it?

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  I think there's a quote in the TED Talk that I think is maybe the best way I could put it, which is like, real depression isn't being sad when things are going wrong. Real depression is being sad when everything in your life's going right. And I think like, I mean, I don't know how much better I could put it. Like, to me, that's made a lot of sense, because I think there's been times in my life, especially after the TED Talk or something like that, where everything seems to be going right, or on surface, looks like everything's going right. And I feel that pain again. I feel that sense of depression kicking in. And I think that's what it is to me, is it's like, there's a way that a feeling, a state, a place that defies circumstance, that defies external reality, you know, that defies whether you're making a bunch of money or not, whether you're getting a bunch of

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  approval or not, whether you're living your dream or not, you know? And to me, that's what it is, is something that can counteract all of that. And I think that's very counterintuitive to our whole culture, which sells you this dream that's like, work hard, make a lot of money, you'll be so happy type of thing. And this is something that says like, no, like, this can still interact and be a part of your life, even if you are successful, or whatever your definition of success is.

• 1:42:19Rich Roll?

  Right. And when you're in the throes of it, I mean, what's the best adjective? Despair? Like, unmitigated despair?

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  No, I would say more like, empty, like, more like, I'm a shell of myself. Like, there's a line in the book that goes something like, I felt like I'd become a stranger to myself, simply renting the skin of someone who looked familiar. And I think like, that's maybe how I would put it. Like, you just don't feel, like, I just don't feel like I'm myself. And I don't want to speak for other people, but like, I just don't, I feel like, all the joy and the good stuff and the energy that I have in my life has like, been scraped out of me. And I'm just kind of this shell. And I feel, yeah, I feel empty in a lot of ways. Like, I still know who I am and maybe what's important, but I just feel deflated. Like, I just don't have the spark. I don't have the motivation. I don't have any of the sense of like, why does anything matter? And you just really start to go,

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  at least for me, down this like, rabbit hole of like, really pessimistic sort of negative thoughts. And it just sort of creates this force field around you that's really hard to snap out of.

• 1:43:23Rich Roll?

  And when was the last time it got super dark?

• 1:43:28Speaker 01

  It's a good question. One of the times was after all the the media stuff and after the sort of viral nature of it all. And there was like a few months where I was living in this really tiny condo and I was just staying in there and it was getting back to those old patterns. I mean, I wasn't sleeping in as late, but I just wouldn't leave for days. I just wouldn't leave. I would, you know, call my mom on the phone to talk to her or something. And I started getting into that pattern. She's like, how are you? And I'm like, oh, I'm good. Like, I'm writing a lot. I'm doing stuff. And I was just sitting there for days and not wanting to go out, not opening the blinds. You know, the place that had the bed came out of the wall. So you had to choose between your bed and your desk. And so I would just alternate between being in bed and just laying there and then flipping it up to have a desk for a bit and then going back to bed. And that was like my whole day. It was moving like 12 feet.

• 1:44:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  And that was like, you know, not not all that long. It was like two years ago.

• 1:44:16Rich Roll?

  Two years ago.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  But then also I-

• 1:44:17Rich Roll?

  It's not like every six months or?

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  No, but then I had another one where, um, and you know, like you could say this was more externally motivated, but I don't think it was. It was like, um, a year ago, I had this big problem where I couldn't work in the States anymore. Cause I'm a Canadian citizen. I needed to get a visa. And I was just not allowed to come into America anymore. And I had all these gigs for comedy and stuff that I wanted to be doing. And I had some speaking gigs as well. And I couldn't do them. And I had made commitments to people and I had to cancel them. And I was spending the most money I'd ever spent on lawyers and getting no results and nothing was happening. And I felt stuck. I had all this new material I wanted to work out, but I couldn't do it. I like literally don't work very much at all in Canada. I work 95% in America. And my manager and agent are calling me going,

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  what's going on? I had no answers. I'm at home. The weather's bad. And I just went to this really dark place again. And so like, you know, you could say like, oh, that's motivated by other things. But like, I don't think so. I think like there's something deeper underneath that that felt, you know, unexpressed. And like, I just, you know, and I went back into that place. And then, you know, even this year, I've gone to a place where maybe for a couple of weeks, it was like that. Like when I was writing the book and I had to like go back emotionally into some of this stuff, it wrecked me for a couple of weeks. Like, and that happened two or three times writing it. I was going back into all of it.

• 1:45:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, to live it again.

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  Think, yeah, exactly. And I just went into this state where I was like, whoa. And that happened. So like, you know, probably since the TED Talk, I'd say there's been five of those. So like, to be like, oh, I've overcome it or something. It's just ridiculous. Like, it's totally inauthentic.

• 1:45:48Rich Roll?

  What do you think the biggest misconception is that people have about depression?

• 1:45:52Speaker 01

  The biggest misconception?

• 1:45:55Speaker 01

  I think that it's a result that people think that it's a result of having a bad life, that there's something wrong with your life, like that there's a bigger issue like, oh, well, he just doesn't make enough money, or he's just like, he married the wrong person, or like, you know what I mean? Like that there's some real big rude issue that if you just fix that, you'd be fine. And I think-

• 1:46:14Rich Roll?

  Or just like, hey man, snap out of it.

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:17Rich Roll?

  Or like, time to man up.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  Oh, geez. Yeah, that's the absolute worst. Yeah. No, the idea that your gender should define your ability to be honest or vulnerable is absolutely hilarious, you know, in the worst sense. It's like, and yeah, no, and those are all the misconceptions, like snap out of it, like just, you can, it's just a mindset thing, man. Like, just go watch the movie, The Secret, you know, like just that sort of stuff and like man up and yeah. But I also do think there is this thing that like, and maybe this is just me and maybe I'm way off base, but I do think there is like a cultural narrative in North America that goes like, you'll be happy if you do the right things. And they define the right things as like, have a good job, do this and that. And I'm not saying that that doesn't add to fulfillment or happiness. Like, I love what I do for work, and if I did something I didn't enjoy,

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  I would be a very unhealthy person. So I definitely get how that's important. But I think it's outrageous to be like, if you have the job you like, and you know, you have a healthy relationship with a few people, your life's perfect, you know? And for me, that just doesn't resonate like at all. And I think that that's something that's really hard. And that's something that I hear from a lot of kids. Like, the kids who write me messages, people would probably think like, oh, you know, it's the kid who smokes after school, or like, it's the goth chick, or like, the skateboarder. It's not at all, man. Like, I have so many D1 football players write me, it's outrageous. And I have so many people who are, you know, celebrities write me, it's ridiculous. Like, it's just, it's not what you think.

• 1:47:38Rich Roll?

  Right. And I would imagine that there's an added amount of guilt when-

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:47:43Rich Roll?

  You are doing something that makes you happy, or you have all the things that you're-

• 1:47:47Speaker 01

  And people go, oh, your life's so good, like, that's so cool, man. So then you go, how can I be-

• 1:47:51Rich Roll?

  It makes it even worse.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly. So you, people would just be shocked to see some of these messages, that they're from the exact opposite person. You would think of like millionaires, like, I'm just, I've had every kind of person and the minority of people who write- Me are actually people who are like, oh, I'm I relate to being a skater, you know, this is our outcast group that we might think of. That's like 10% of people. 90% is like actually like quote unquote, high achievers, all that kind of stuff. And it's because of, yeah, the double standard that if you're going to achieve and do well and whatever, then you should just be happy and don't be ungrateful, man. And all those sorts of things.

• 1:48:26Rich Roll?

  Certainly don't admit any weakness or allow yourself to be vulnerable.

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  Especially for people who are like athletes or, you know, in the celebrity eye at all. And they are under other pressure. Yeah, they're like, no, like, you know, I've had people write me who, you know, people would know their name or whatever. And they've just said that like, the bottom line is that they've been told before by their publicists and other people that to talk about this would be to end their career. Like they, like one person put it to me is going to talk about my thoughts with suicide would be career suicide. And I thought that was so fascinating. I was like, what a backwards culture, you know?

• 1:48:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's sad too. You know what I mean? And that's part of your advocacy and your message is, you know, we're never going to get beyond this until we can talk about it without that shame component. You know, that keeps it in the dark, you know, the stigma, the stigma that is associated with it. And I think for the average person, they would say, well, there's no, there's no, is it really stigmatized? Like, you know, if someone's depressed, like, we all want them to be better and helpful. But, but, you know, when I heard your talk and, you know, the more that I read up on you, I was like, no, there really, there actually really is more of a stigma than I think most people would realize.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, like in, in Canada, like there was some study done recently by Bell Media, who has this campaign called Bell Let's Talk. And I'm a spokesperson for it. And it's basically this way where Bell Media is like a very big media conglomerate owns TV and radio. They have this day where they put all their spokespeople on TV and radio to like, talk about these issues for a day. And then every text message that's sent on their cell phone carrier and every tweet that goes out is five cents for mental health. And so so far it's raised over $72 million. So it's been really successful. I've been a part of it the last two years and it's been awesome. So they take some of that money that they raise and they use it to do like actual studies, like in the culture and in society. And the one that they were showing to us last year before we did the Bell.

• 1:50:15Speaker 01

  Talk day in January was that like three or four out of 10 people were like, they thought that depression and mental health was just a conven- quote unquote, a convenient excuse for bad behavior. And it's something that was so fascinating, you know, like, that's just such a weird like thought. And like you said, you'd be like, if you talk about it with someone over dinner, you're like, oh, no, like, I don't hold any kind of, you know, shame or problem to someone who might have a mental health issue. But then when it becomes more real and it's like someone you know, or whatever, there, there can be little things like that, you know, that come up. And it's just fascinating to go like, wow, like 30, 40% of people think that mental health issues can just be a convenient excuse for bad behavior. Like, that's just kind of odd. And I think that like, there's this big idea that like, some people have mental health issues

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  and some people don't. And like, to me, we all have mental health. Like, if you have a brain and you're can talk, like, you know what I mean? It's just, it's a varying spectrum, for sure. But like, everyone has it. And this idea that like, oh, some people are immune to this. And then some people are like, totally in the trenches of this.

• 1:51:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not a dualistic thing at all.

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:51:17Rich Roll?

  Right. And I think one of the examples you used is, you know, if somebody posts on Facebook, like, oh, I'm in bed because I broke my leg.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:51:26Rich Roll?

  Everyone's like, I'll feel better. And everyone will want to sign their cast.

• 1:51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:29Rich Roll?

  You know, give them a pat on the back and all of that.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:51:32Rich Roll?

  But if you say, I can't get out of bed because I'm depressed, you know, that's a different thing. Like, somebody's probably not going to post that.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  You have a good memory, man. Those are some quotables, right?

• 1:51:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so, so, so, and just in kind of like probing that or like thinking about that, I'm like, yeah, that's actually right. Even if it's a subtle thing, the decision to not share that is, is keeping it in the dark and keeping it quiet.

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, there's a big distinction in our society between physical injuries or ailments and, and stuff that's emotional, spiritual, mental, whatever you might want to call it. And whether you notice that or you don't, yeah, I think everyone with a cast, you, people want to sign it and want to have sympathy. And I think sometimes with other things and like with addiction, with any number of things.

• 1:52:15Rich Roll?

  No one's gonna post on Facebook, like, I don't want to leave my house because I just want to drink by myself all day.

• 1:52:20Speaker 01

  Seriously, though. Seriously, though. But seriously, that's a great point. Like, it's just, that's exactly what I'm saying. And so it's just, I think that that speaks to like a larger problem, though. And I think that like, to me, the conversation is a lot less about like, hey, we have to, you know, de-stigmatize mental health or whatever, but more just like, we need to be okay, like as a culture, embracing like total honesty, even when it's uncomfortable. And I think that's like what all great art and all great things that I like has done is is told the truth in a way, even if it's uncomfortable or awkward or painful or weird, it's telling the truth. And I think that that's the thing that in our society, because we can edit our lives on social media,

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  because we can portray ourselves in certain ways, because in interactions, we can shape our personalities, we have this really uncomfortable relationship with honesty. And it's just odd to me. And I think that that is a big part of it, because, yeah, why wouldn't you in a way, if the purpose of social networks and social media is to connect and whatever, why wouldn't you share both sides of your life? But no one does that, right? So it's, it's just very ironic in some ways.

• 1:53:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, I just lost my train of thought, but I do have one thing I wanted to ask you, which is,

• 1:53:34Rich Roll?

  you said that now you can feel when it's coming on.

• 1:53:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:39Rich Roll?

  Right? Like, so you have a sense of when it's starting. So I'm interested in, you know, what that is emotionally, like what's going on with you, like what are the indicia that is, that are, that's, that's triggering you to realize that something's happening? And what your protocol is now, you know, for getting ahead of it or getting on top of it and dealing with it on a daily basis?

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I mean, for myself, like, I think that there's something kind of just intuitive for me about like, knowing when it's coming on. That's just from like experience. Like, I would be hard pressed to think about like what a, what a tangible thing would be. But when I feel that coming and there's like that heavy feeling in my chest and like, oh, man, like, I can see where this is going. For myself, it's like, there's just a few foundational things. And it's like, one of them, and this is for me, is like to wake up early. Like, that really helps me in a lot of ways, just like to have a healthy like sleep pattern and to feel like I'm sort of starting the day and, you know, that sort of stuff. And then the other thing is how I eat. Like I really, when I'm, if I'm struggling at all, like with depression or feeling that way,

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  like diet is like a huge thing that will just really affect how I feel. But then the other two things is just really having conversations with two groups of people. One of them being like three or four people who I'm like super, super close to in my life and know me through all of this stuff and know me way beyond like what my personal brand, quote unquote, might be or something. And then having a conversation of a similar nature in counseling. And those things for me, it's just like, and I guess with diet would also be exercise. But those are kind of my things. It's like if I can get up early, if I can eat right, get some exercise, like sweat and have like two honest conversations in the day. It sets me so far ahead of where I would be otherwise. And it sounds so simple and redundant and almost like maybe what everyone said before.

• 1:55:24Speaker 01

  But there's something about just having a path to walk when you know, you know, that your, your lower self is maybe about to kick in.

• 1:55:32Rich Roll?

  Just three or four, like really simple.

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, like those are so simple.

• 1:55:36Rich Roll?

  And just actually doing that.

• 1:55:37Speaker 01

  And you can control them and they're easily winnable. And that's the big thing for me is it needs to be winnable and needs to be definable. So it's like if I go to the end of the day and it's, you know, midnight and I'm about to go to bed and I go, what time did I wake up and I didn't get up early and what did I have today? And I didn't eat well. Did I exercise? And it's no. And did I have an honest conversation? It's really easy for myself to go like, okay, this is why you're feeling this way. Change it. You know what I mean? And so there's something tangible about that that works for how my brain works. And those are just like the four kind of like foundational things that are really, really helpful for me. And I think that it's important to have that.

• 1:56:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Do you still keep a journal every day?

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  I don't journal every day, no, but I write so much that I feel like I get some of that out, like in that way. But like meditation has been something for me that's been really helpful. Like I've been really inconsistent with it lately, which is a little bit upsetting. But when I'm, am struggling, I just have like an app on my phone. You can set a timer, but I just literally do it for five minutes because for me it's so hard to be like, oh, I'm going to do it for 30 minutes or an hour or something. I get nervous about it. And I'll just do it for five minutes and it's amazing just like how going out of your way to set little things for sort of self-care or like to sort of prevent against your lower self or kicking in is amazingly powerful. To give you just momentum and if you do three or four of those things in a row, that's when I feel like you get a lot of momentum and you get this feeling of sort of like, okay, I got this.

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  And that's what I mean by like having a better toolkit to kind of navigate this stuff with.

• 1:57:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, even, you know, to continue the kind of addiction sobriety parallel, you know, it's, it's a list of like very simple things that get annoying after a while. It's like, really, that's it. I have to do that thing again. Like, give me the, where's the behind the velvet rope? Like, secret VIP solution that I can like, or the advanced, you know, it's like, no, it's the same thing. Pick up the phone, call another alcoholic, see how he's doing, you know? Oh, did you, you know, do a gratitude list? Like, stuff that's like annoyingly stupid, but actually highly doable, doesn't take that much time and is bulletproof in, in its ability to like shift your consciousness.

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I think that's what everyone needs to some degree when it comes to dealing with this stuff. Cause if you don't have a roadmap of what to do in your sort of like worst case scenario, you're just headed for a bad place. And that's what I really didn't have as a teenager. Now, obviously you could attribute that to just like growing up and not having a lot of awareness at the time. But like, if you think about everything I said in the beginning, I was sleeping in super late. You know what I mean? Like, this is all the signs are there to not being healthy and not being balanced. And that's the biggest thing for me is just if you take care of those few things, it, it just gives you a baseline to operate off of. And that's all I've ever wanted with this stuff. It's just to have a sort of an even place where I can be like, okay, I know I can get there. And, you know, that baseline isn't amazing, but it's just a baseline to work off of.

• 1:58:22Speaker 01

  And I know if I do a few things, I could get there. And that for me is really important because now like with what I do, I can't always have sort of, I don't want to say the luxury of like allowing myself to go down these week long paths of like, you know, feeling really depressed, but like I do 140 road dates a year. Like I can't sometimes just go for two weeks like living in my room, nor do I want to. But I'm just saying like, it's sometimes is literally not even an option. It's like, I gotta perform that night. So it's like, I need to have things that can help me. And I think for anyone who has some sort of. High stress situation or something they need to do performance wise or work wise, that having those things is so helpful because it takes away the fear of being like, what's gonna happen? You know what I mean?

• 1:59:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  Because you actually have something.

• 1:59:08Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. Um, I also think it's interesting that, you know, with your dad being an alcoholic, that you never got, it seemed, well, maybe you did, but it doesn't sound like you got into trouble with drugs or alcohol.

• 1:59:21Speaker 01

  Not really. I mean,

• 1:59:22Rich Roll?

  Because they like, wasn't the, I mean, when you're in a dark place like that, that, that like drive to like shift how you feel like, you know, you know, drugs can be an escape for that, right?

• 1:59:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, definitely like I, you know, did drugs and drank alcohol and stuff in high school, like for sure. But it was just something that never became like out of control. And I think a lot because of my dad, to be honest.

• 1:59:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:44Speaker 01

  Like it was just like, it was just so obvious. Like, yeah, if you drink 12 beers a day.

• 1:59:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  That's what happens. So it's just sort of, it was just obvious in a way to me. And obviously like, yeah, I did drugs and I drank and was like a high school kid, but it was just so clear, like what that did to you.

• 1:59:58Rich Roll?

  Where that was gonna lead.

• 1:59:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, like it's, it's just, yeah.

• 2:00:00Rich Roll?

  I'm not gonna be that guy.

• 2:00:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna mess up in other ways, man. I'm gonna creatively mess up. So yeah, so that wasn't like a big thing really. But to be honest, like here's my other point in all this, like sometimes people talk about like self harm um, in this conversation, like people sort of use mental health and they'll go, that's addiction, anxiety, depression, self harm, suicide. That's like a common thing for people to say.

• 2:00:20Rich Roll?

  Lopping it into all one big thing.

• 2:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Umbrella. And um, one thing that's interesting though, is people only talk about self harm really in terms of like, oh, you cut yourself. You, you know, you do something to your body. You inflict pain upon your body. And to me, like, isn't self harm just like going out of your way to not be healthy or like not have proper habits or like whatever? Like, I feel like, you know, maybe I wasn't a drug addict or an alcoholic or something like that, but I feel like.

• 2:00:44Rich Roll?

  Just generally being self loathing.

• 2:00:46Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like, I feel like I did a lot of those things. So it's not so clean and simple to just be like, oh no, I was just depressed, but everything else was fine. It was like, no, I did a lot of things like self loathing and not wanting to like communicate with people and isolate that were also harmful. So it's like, there's a lot, I think, that goes into it. Once you start to sort of sink to that place.

• 2:01:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's snowballs. I mean, if you don't feel good about yourself, then you're not likely to take actions that cultivate self-esteem, right? Like, you're gonna eat the bag of Cheetos and not have the green juice, you know what I mean?

• 2:01:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:01:14Rich Roll?

  So that, you know, one perpetuates another, because then it becomes a vicious cycle.

• 2:01:18Speaker 01

  Exactly. No, exactly. And that's really the best way of putting it. And then the reverse side, to me, like what I've seen on the other side of this, because, you know, someone listening to this might go like, well, you know, this all sounds just heavy and terrible and like, whatever. There is a reverse side to me where it's like, if you can experience some of those moments, like, I don't know if you relate to this or agree with this, but if you can find yourself in some of those moments, some of those lows, and find something in there, there's an amazing amount of perspective, like, on the other side. And there's an amazing amount of like upward spiral momentum that comes.

• 2:01:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it works both ways.

• 2:01:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does work both ways. But there's an amazing power of like, not just being like, oh, it gets good and then you're fine again. To me, like, when I'm really on top of all this stuff and I'm in a good flow, and then I have like, a day or two where I'm like, whoa, I could see myself sliding back the other way, but then I get on top of it. There's this amazing momentum that shows me like, my personal growth and all these things. And it makes me legitimately inspired and legitimately grateful, you know what I mean? Because it's like, there was this small group of people at one point in my life, who cared more about putting my life back together than I did, you know? And that was my mom, and my family, and my counselor, and a few friends, right? And I feel really grateful for that. And when I'm on the other side of it now, it's an amazing thing to experience, you know?

• 2:02:31Speaker 01

  And it's a gift that I want to give someone else one day, is to care about them when they can't even care about themselves, you know? And I think that there is something really positive that can come out of all of this for people, where there is a big perspective shift. And I think that that's been really cool for me to see, because at one point, I did think it was like, it's either really bad, or it's just okay. But I didn't know there was like, this other side where it could get really good, you know? And that's, that's been really cool to see.

• 2:02:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I, I feel like gratitude's a big part of your story too. Like, I feel like you've owned this, you know, trajectory for yourself, and you are in a place where you're grateful for these things that have happened to you. Like, you can say, I'm grateful that I've had this problem.

• 2:03:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:07Rich Roll?

  And it's given you this opportunity to be in service, um, you know, to a lot of people who are suffering quietly.

• 2:03:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I mean, and I hope that that is. A positive thing for those people, you know, like certainly people have written me and said that, but like, I really do hope that that can be something that someone else will see, like some 13 year old kid will see, and one day he'll give a talk at TED or do something himself that is his own story. And whether it has anything to do with depression or whatever, it doesn't matter to me. But just like being able to do that, I think is really, really cool. And yeah, I am honestly, super grateful for it. And like, writing the book and stuff like that almost just helped drive that home to be like, yeah, like some of that stuff was really hard, but I think it kind of laid the foundation for, you know, obviously your experiences shape who you are. But I do think that that laid the foundation to just have a little bit more empathy for people, because it's like, I get it. You know what I mean?

• 2:03:58Speaker 01

  To have a problem or to struggle with something that other people might go like, what are you talking about, dude? And I can kind of be like, no, like, I get that, you know?

• 2:04:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:12Rich Roll?

  Well, I want to shift gears a little bit here. Parade magazine called you one of the most influential millennials. First of all, how'd that happen?

• 2:04:20Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 2:04:22Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 2:04:22Speaker 01

  People always ask me, who's your publicist? And I was like,

• 2:04:25Rich Roll?

  That's some good press, right?

• 2:04:26Speaker 01

  It is. Yeah.

• 2:04:26Rich Roll?

  Parade seems like a weird magazine. Like, I would never read Parade magazine. I know, I'm sure you wouldn't. But like, like, I was surprised to find out, because you learn about all this kind of stuff when you have a book coming out. They're like, oh, Parade has the biggest circulation in the world of anything.

• 2:04:41Speaker 01

  They've got four billion readers.

• 2:04:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What? Who reads that? Like, my grandma reads it. You know what I mean?

• 2:04:46Speaker 01

  Where do you even buy that? I don't even know.

• 2:04:48Rich Roll?

  Well, millennial is certainly not reading Parade, you know? But anyway, cool nonetheless, right?

• 2:04:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:53Rich Roll?

  And so I'm interested in, I mean, I'm fascinated by the millennial generation, because that's not my generation.

• 2:05:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:01Rich Roll?

  And, you know, I'm old enough to be your dad. I have a 21 year old son.

• 2:05:05Speaker 01

  Do you really?

• 2:05:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I do.

• 2:05:06Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 2:05:07Rich Roll?

  So I'm around a lot of millennials, and I've had the good fortune to interview some really compelling millennials for this podcast. And, you know, the sort of traditional kind of characterization of the millennials is, oh, they're entitled. And, you know, like, there's all this sort of memes on the internet about like, the millennial generation. My experience has been very different, because I'm meeting incredibly dynamic, you know, people that are very highly motivated and are doing amazing things for the betterment of the planet and all of that. And it's a very self-selecting group, because these are people that inspire me that I'm having on the podcast.

• 2:05:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:05:40Rich Roll?

  But- I am interested in understanding, like, I want to better understand the generation gap in the sense of, you know, how you, as somebody who's a member of this generation, perceives my generation, like, what are we not seeing, or where is the kind of paradigm shift in terms of priorities and perspectives? Like, can you speak to that? Can you articulate that a little bit?

• 2:06:04Speaker 01

  I hope so, maybe. I think that the interesting thing, like, is the millennial generation, like, quote-unquote, is kind of, lives and dies on the internet in most people's eyes, you know what I mean? Like, it's a, it's a generation of people on social media and all that kind of stuff. And the thing that's sort of fascinating to me is that because of that, like, I did kind of grow up in the internet age, you know? Like, I remember when I was going through stuff, like, with counseling and stuff like that, when I was seventeen, eighteen, like, Joe Rogan's podcast had just started, and it was, like, in the early episodes, and I was, like, listening to it and, like, loving it, and it was very inspiring to hear these comedians talk about their life and all that stuff. So, I've just had such a crazy access to information that I think that it has really

• 2:06:48Speaker 01

  helped me and sort of, like, shaped what I do, because I just have this library of resources available to me on the internet.

• 2:06:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine being in high school and holding something in my hand that would answer any question I ever had that I was too afraid to ask somebody.

• 2:07:01Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. And so, that's what I grew up with, more or less, you know? Like, when I was in high school, we had still had, like, flip phones and stuff, but, like, it was going towards that place, like, Facebook was around, blah, blah, blah. And so, I think that for myself and for others, like, growing up with all that, it almost is really helpful to be able to see, like, hey, I connect with this, I don't really connect with this, like, hey, these people's perspective, like, really fits with me, these people doesn't. And it allowed me to sort of have this almost library of, like, life experience, none of which that I actually lived, but I just got to sort of witness and observe. And that really kind of helped, has helped shape me in every way, like, as a writer, as a comedian, like, stuff I do, like, activist work for mental health, because I've got to see so many other people's work and so many other people's creative expression.

• 2:07:44Speaker 01

  And I think that's something that was, like, that is maybe you didn't have growing up. And so, for myself, like, I think that just Gives you such a distinct, maybe upper hand or a head start or like a kick of motivation. Because there's so much out there and you can read these inspiring stories and you can sort of self select what you want to, you know, find on the internet. And so for myself, like I self selected to find people who I felt like were doing cool things in the world and were, you know, doing something that was creating a positive shift. And I just obsessively consumed that. And so as a, in a weird way, I felt like when I was like eighteen, nineteen, like dropped out of high school, trying to do comedy, blah, blah. I sort of positively brainwashed myself, if that makes sense, like with so much positive content.

• 2:08:28Speaker 01

  And I look back on it and I go, if I never had that, like, I don't know if any of this happens, you know what I mean? I don't know if this is possible. And so I think in a way like millennials and, you know, kids my age are a lot more driven and sort of like self aware than people might give credit for. Because like you can open up the podcast app and you can choose a bunch of podcasts, but like what ones are you going to choose? Like with all that freedom to do things, what are you actually going to self select? And I think that, to be honest, I have lots of conversations with people my age and my friends and staff who are using all this stuff, not to just be on Twitter, talking about what they just had for lunch or something, but to like selectively follow people they look up to, to digest podcasts and information that is valuable to them, that they think is going to influence them. I think that's amazing.

• 2:09:13Rich Roll?

  It's free and it's twenty four seven. You know, I mean, like just reflecting on my own experience in high school and even in college, like, you know, when I was in college, it was the the earliest days of even, you know, consumers having computers. I didn't have a computer in college, but I could go to the library and use the first Apple Macintosh. You know, and he like to type up my paper. I would use it for word processing. That was it. It was pre internet.

• 2:09:37Rich Roll?

  And in high school, it's like your access to information was so like, I don't think that you could even conceptualize how limited it was by comparison. Not that that information didn't exist, but the ability to access it, there were so many barriers. So you have your textbooks. Uh, you have the newspaper, uh, Dan Rather on the, on the evening news. That's how you got your news.

• 2:09:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:57Rich Roll?

  And like, that's pretty much it, unless you were so industrious that you were going to go to the library and start. Pulling out microfiche.

• 2:10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:02Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 2:10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:03Rich Roll?

  And so, yeah, like in the career center would be like, well, here's your four career options.

• 2:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:08Rich Roll?

  You know, like, and so it's impossible to think bigger, you know,

• 2:10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:12Rich Roll?

  Or to think creatively about the potential for your life. When you have this, this device.

• 2:10:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:19Rich Roll?

  That allows you to explore wherever your imagination or your creativity might drive you. And that's not always good. That can take you to some pretty negative and dark places, of course. But it's hard for me to understand the impact of that on a young mind.

• 2:10:35Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:10:35Rich Roll?

  Right? And so.

• 2:10:36Speaker 01

  I mean, from the accountability level, like almost having that, though, to me is maybe more accountable. Cause like, look how many people my age are doing cool stuff. Like, if you look at that.

• 2:10:45Rich Roll?

  See, that's what I think.

• 2:10:46Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:10:47Rich Roll?

  Like, I look at, I look at millennials and I see a highly industrious group of people. And I see people that have a, a social awareness and a concern for the greater good in a way that my generation lacked.

• 2:11:00Speaker 01

  Right. And I think that.

• 2:11:01Rich Roll?

  But I don't know if that's just because of the millennials that I'm exposing myself to, or whether that is a fair characterization for your, you know, generation, your age group in general.

• 2:11:10Speaker 01

  I think it's somewhat fair because if you look at the people like on that parade list or whatever, there are six people on it. One of them's Mark Zuckerberg, obviously is like an outrageous outlier in terms of his success. But then there's Malala on there who's like an 18, 19 year old girl, you know what I mean? Who with a book and her story is like literally shifted an entire culture potentially.

• 2:11:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, there's always going to be extraordinary people in every age group. But I'm just saying like, if you look at, if you canvass like the, just average kids your age.

• 2:11:36Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. I'm just saying that to make a bigger point of saying that with that out there, like with those stories out there, like people like, of course, that's an outlier. Of course, there's always going to be that. But I'm saying with it being so real, where you could read everything about Malala if you want to. You could read everything about Mark Zuckerberg if you want. You could case study these people. And I, I've done this myself in my own life with people I look up to. And that ability to do that, I feel like builds in an inherent motivation and ambition and drive and a weird sense of accountability to actually live your dream, to actually do your thing, to actually try and create your change, because you're like, look how. Real it is for these other people and you almost don't just want to be a bystander. You want to sort of get in the game, if that makes sense.

• 2:12:17Speaker 01

  And I think that's the big difference is like when you can follow these people on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and all that kind of stuff. You're so involved in the, you know, day to day storytelling of their life that it's inspiring. You know, like you've had Casey Neistat on here. I always mess up his last name, but he is someone who has like a daily vlog that people can watch. And it connects you to him in this way that's unbelievably personal, like unbelievably personal. And it's it's gotta be inspiring to a young filmmaker. You didn't have that necessarily, you know what I mean? So if you wanted to make films, like maybe you go see a movie every couple of weeks, but like it's not the same. It's not just there for you all the time. And so like for myself, as a kid, like when Joe Rogan's podcast was coming up, listening to comedians talk to each other every day and talk about sold out shows and the road and all that stuff.

• 2:13:02Speaker 01

  It motivated me to a crazy level because it was like.

• 2:13:05Rich Roll?

  It's like getting a graduate degree in, in, in, at a school that doesn't exist.

• 2:13:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:13:10Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 2:13:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:13:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's amazing. By the way, did you bring your hoverboard to LA?

• 2:13:14Speaker 01

  I did not.

• 2:13:17Rich Roll?

  I saw that on Facebook.

• 2:13:18Speaker 01

  That's funny. Yeah. No, we just made a, we just made some funny videos actually with that for, for my book. I'll show you them after.

• 2:13:23Rich Roll?

  I saw one of them.

• 2:13:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:13:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:24Speaker 01

  So, yeah, but it's just, I don't know. I think that there's something really fascinating though about the idea of like, I don't want to say it's like voyeurism, like being able to like look into someone's life that intensely. But there is something really weirdly motivating about it, just seeing like the impact they can create. Because you realize that they're, they're similar to you, you know what I mean? Like they're in the similar circumstance, similar age, similar boat, similar life experience. And they're able to create these things. And it's just amazing to be able to, to sort of study that. And for myself, like that was a big part of like everything for me that happened was studying different people from comedians to writers to whatever. And that just wouldn't be possible without this. So I really think that, yeah, millennial kids are, are driven, like for the most part, at least people I'm around.

• 2:14:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, I think the jaded kind of perspective from my generation is, oh, these people are chasing their dream. Who cares about their dream?

• 2:14:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, sure.

• 2:14:17Rich Roll?

  Who's gonna, who's gonna pick up the garbage, you know, like they all just want the dream career. And it's like, no, I see people that are actually, you know, we're in an age where for the first time in history, you can like sort of self style your career. If you have something to offer that is valuable to somebody else, then you can cultivate cultivate a way to, you know, make a living doing that. And it may be in a freelance capacity. It's not going to be like, you know, you go and you get a job and you have a 401k. But, you know, my observation is that people like you, they don't care about that. Like that's, that doesn't even factor into the equation.

• 2:14:52Speaker 01

  No, that doesn't factor in for me at all. I do though, think that there is something you brought up there where it's like, everyone wants to live their dream. I do think there is a slight problem with that. You know what I mean? Like, I do think that success is so easily digestible and consumable now on the internet. Like, you can just go to someone's Instagram and see these like, cool quotes and their sweet car and their sweet house. And you're like, man, that's what I want. And people almost, my one knock on millennials would be, they want the dream more than they want the work. You know what I mean? They want the lifestyle more than they want the kind of the journey.

• 2:15:21Rich Roll?

  The kind of the work ethic gets lost in that.

• 2:15:23Speaker 01

  And also just a love for the craft.

• 2:15:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, like, it's like, how can I hack my way to this or shortcut my way to that? And like, I'm always kind of, you know, speaking in, you know, in contrast to that to some extent.

• 2:15:34Speaker 01

  No, exactly.

• 2:15:35Rich Roll?

  Because you can, you can, you know, achieve your dream. Your, the life that you want has never been more accessible.

• 2:15:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:15:42Rich Roll?

  But that does not, you know, negate the, you know, amount of work that is going to have to be, you know, undertaken to get there, right?

• 2:15:51Speaker 01

  But you should want to do it. Like, that's my thing. It shouldn't just be a means to an end to be like, this is how I get a porch.

• 2:15:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah. When you watch Casey's videos, like, that's one of the things he always says, like, you know, he works, he works harder than anybody.

• 2:16:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. But he loves it.

• 2:16:04Rich Roll?

  He has this life that you, you see, and, and, you know, I can see a young person saying, I want to have that life. But he's also very clear to like, make it understood that like, you know, he's the hardest working guy in the room.

• 2:16:16Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 2:16:17Rich Roll?

  And it doesn't, it doesn't happen overnight. And, you know, his videos are so impeccably edited because he's edited a bazillion videos. And he still stays up all night, every night doing it.

• 2:16:27Speaker 01

  And that's, and that's what I mean though, is like, I think not only is it about work ethic. It's that people want to pursue a path with the least resistance to their goal of being publicly successful. Like, that's my problem, is when you, some people that I've met of my age group, and they are exactly that. They want to quote-unquote "growth hack" and all these sorts of things, and "life hack" and blah blah, and use whatever they think is the trendy idea at the moment to sort of ride a wave and be able to, you know, be successful or make money or whatever. But they don't genuinely care about it. Like, they're not trying to sort of, you know, get ahead in the thing that they love, or find like, "Hey, what's the best practice for doing this thing?" Like, that's great, you know what I mean? But if you just want to find hacks and shortcuts and these

• 2:17:11Speaker 01

  things, it makes me feel like you don't really love it. You know what I mean? Because if you really loved it, why would, like, obviously you want to do it in an intelligent way and be intentional, but just the idea that you just want to minimize the time that you have to do it, it's like, do you even really like it?

• 2:17:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that the hacks and the shortcuts are appropriate at curtailing the amount of time you spend on other stuff that is preventing you from doing the thing that gives you the most fulfillment. But I think, you know, in counterpoint to that, though, I would say that I also observe that young people are much more dialed into and attuned to trying to find a career path that gives them a sense of satisfaction that is also contributing and giving back, in a way that is much more substantial than, I think, would fairly characterize my generation when we were 22 or whatever.

• 2:18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:02Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 2:18:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:03Rich Roll?

  And I find that to be inspiring and uplifting.

• 2:18:05Speaker 01

  No, for sure.

• 2:18:06Rich Roll?

  You know, it's like people that are getting graduate degrees in permaculture and, you know, working for environmental groups and like, you know, certain things that like, that didn't even play into the equation of most of the people that I knew when I was of that age. And so I think that that's, that's pretty cool.

• 2:18:21Speaker 01

  No, definitely. No, and that's my overall, like, if I had to narrow it down into like a sentence, I totally agree with you. But just to play the contrarian, like, that is my other side of it, is just being like, I do feel like I've met a fair amount of people who I'm like, "Yeah, I feel like the internet has almost crippled you because it makes you think that success is right around the corner and that you should also..." So just pick what that guy's been successful with like you should just follow that.

• 2:18:45Rich Roll?

  Well, and it's fueled by reality TV culture where we're celebrating and rewarding financially and otherwise. People that have no discernible talent or skill.

• 2:18:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:18:55Rich Roll?

  That we just somehow henpecked and decided that these people should be on television.

• 2:18:59Speaker 01

  No, but seriously, but seriously, like that, I feel like that was missing, obviously, from the way you grew up. And it should be missing from how everyone grows up like that shouldn't be a thing in my opinion, you know? And that's a big issue that I have is when people associate like of my age group. Associate like fame or notoriety or celebrity with doing something good. Like that's not, those two aren't always linked, sometimes, usually, but not always. You know what I mean? And like back, you know, and my mom talks about how, you know, like she used to watch the Johnny Carson show. And that was like how Seinfeld came up and that was like the only show you could do. And people who were on there had a talent, you know what I mean? And now you do watch some of these late night shows and, you know, if there's 10 people who go up there. I don't know if even six of them, I would say, you know, or have that discernible talent.

• 2:19:42Speaker 01

  Like you would say they're more like mogul type presence or reality show stars and this sorts of thing. And that's what I think does create a weird boundary or dissonance for kids who are young as they go like, that's what I want. I just want a bunch of people to like my photo and I want a bunch of people to know me, but I don't care about why.

• 2:20:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:20:02Speaker 01

  And I think that's a huge, huge problem that almost no one talks about.

• 2:20:05Rich Roll?

  You don't have anything to offer, really.

• 2:20:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:20:07Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 2:20:08Speaker 01

  So it's like, what are, what's your craft?

• 2:20:10Rich Roll?

  No work on the thing that actually would contribute, that would make somebody pay attention to whatever it is you have to say.

• 2:20:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that's like, that's is my big problem. And I do think that people don't talk about that enough. I do think in a weird way millennials get too lumped into like, everyone's just changing the world, you know? If you're just in your twenties right now, you're changing the world. And it's like, no, like.

• 2:20:30Rich Roll?

  It's all about me and like, you know, I'm going to be me and don't tell me what I'm going to do. You know what I mean? Like.

• 2:20:35Speaker 01

  There's no rules, man. There's no rules. Yeah, no, exactly.

• 2:20:38Rich Roll?

  You know, that's not a great message and that message is definitely fueled through advertising.

• 2:20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, for sure. And that's what I mean. It's just like the the sort of whole culture around success, like especially in Western culture, is almost a little bit crippling to me. Because like if you like, there's this great documentary that Jerry Seinfeld made called Comedian. And it's when he's, I don't know if you've seen it, but it's when he's finished Seinfeld, and he's trying to work on a new hour. And he's with this young comedian who they sort of parallel Ornie Adams in the whole movie, right? And there's this one scene where they're talking, and Ornie's going to him, he's like, he's like, you know, he's like, I'm just like worried that it's not happening. He's like, I'm about to turn 30. He's like, I got friends on Wall Street who are making all this money. And Jerry goes, what? He's like, what are you talking about? And he tells him this story about these guys on the road and how they're like, they got all their gear and they're treading through the snow. And they walk and

• 2:21:26Speaker 01

  they see this house and they can see inside the house. And these people are like, sort of sitting there just really quietly reading a newspaper and a book. And this is this band whose bus is broken down. They got all their gear on their back. They're treading through the snow trying to get to the gig. And the band looks at each other and goes, huh, how do people live like that? And that's Jerry's story. Like, that's his parallel. Just, I think that just means like, they just love it so much, they couldn't imagine doing anything else, you know? And I think that's how everyone should feel about what you do. Like, I wouldn't leave what I do really for anything. You know what I mean? And I want to follow it through. And I want to go through all that stuff. And I think like in Seinfeld's day, like what he's saying is like, he did stand up for 10, 15 years in New York before anything happened for him, before there was a show. And now, like, just with media and stuff,

• 2:22:10Speaker 01

  there is almost a double standard being like, if you're any good, you're gonna go viral right away. You'll be famous in a week. And if you're not famous in a week, it's because you suck. And I think that's ridiculous. You know what I mean? Like, I just think that's so...

• 2:22:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, unquestionably, unquestionably. And, you know, I think that to be great at anything, yeah, it's like, it's stupid as it sounds, like the 10,000 hour rule, like, you know, it it still holds true. Like, you can't be expected to be, look, you're a freak of nature. You get up, your first public speaking gig, you get 2 million views on your TED Talk. Like, that is not like something that anybody else could ever hope to copy or mimic, you know? It just, it was a freak circumstance of of timing and, you know, as beautiful and as poetic as your talk was, there was like, the the stars aligned for that to happen. You know what I mean?

• 2:22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:22:57Rich Roll?

  And I'm sure after that, you've continued to learn to be a better and a better and a better and a better speaker. And now you speak all the time, right?

• 2:23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:23:05Rich Roll?

  But you know, this idea that that you're just gonna come out of the gate strong, you know, and you're gonna blow up your Instagram or something like that.

• 2:23:14Speaker 01

  It's ridiculous.

• 2:23:14Rich Roll?

  It just makes no sense to me.

• 2:23:15Speaker 01

  And it's the wrong goal.

• 2:23:16Rich Roll?

  No, it, yeah, it isn't. It's, it's, it's, it's falling in love with the process. And you're very, I think, you know, I want to acknowledge that you're in a privileged place in the sense that you do know, you know, what your life is about and, and you have a great passion for what you're doing. And I do too. It's something I came into much later in my life, and I know what it's like to be on a career trajectory that's not fulfilling and to not know what it is that's gonna make me happy. And I understand, and I'm very empathetic to that, to that kind of confusing place of going, you know, I want to feel like that about my career, but I just don't. And I don't know what I would need to do to get, I don't even know what it would be that would make me feel that way, right? And I think that that is the more common sort of condition.

• 2:23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, no, certainly. No, definitely. And I don't want to, you know, try and pretend like I know very much about any of, you know, that necessarily. But I just do think there is something.

• 2:24:09Rich Roll?

  You're 22, dude. You don't know anything.

• 2:24:10Speaker 01

  No, exactly. So just take it all with a, you know, a pound of salt, not a grain. But like, I just think that, you know, for myself at least, like these kids and people my age, we do have a unique opportunity. You know what I mean? Like there is, this is a unique time. And I think in 20 years from now, all this media stuff online will be a lot more saturated and harder to break into, blah, blah, blah. So I just think that there's an amazing ability where if you are, if you do have something that you love, or you do have something that excites you, you can hone that craft and you can find a way to package it, to put it out there for people, to make an impact, to make an income even, all those kinds of things. And that that should just be what people focus on as opposed to some end result. And I know, and I only say that because for myself, like I've gone through that multiple times even, you know, like being like, well,

• 2:24:56Speaker 01

  I want it to be even bigger now. And if I did another TED Talk, I'd want it to be like this. But it's all, I know that's a trap. You know what I mean? Like, I know that holds me out of creating my best work. Like, the second I think you start being like, what are people gonna think is the second it maybe isn't.

• 2:25:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, when you're trying to anticipate an audience reaction as opposed to what is the thing that's stirring inside of me that I feel the need to express?

• 2:25:17Speaker 01

  Right. And like, the, the writing advice that I've always loved is write the book you want to read. You know what I mean? Like, that sort of stuff. And I know that, like, follow your passion. That's very cliche and overused. But I just mean, like, if you do have something in your hands that is a skill set, or something that you just, you think about it every day, and you can't stop thinking about it, the same way I couldn't stop thinking about stand up when I was a teenager. You do have this unique avenue now to pursue that, and to pursue it intelligently, and to have the access and the, the ability to put it out online, and for people across the world to see it. And I do think that is kind of a responsibility, and kind of a privilege that my generation, people my age, should hold on to a little bit tighter and go like, hey, I really want to be good. Because why do you want this big audience if you can't even serve them yet? You know what I mean?

• 2:26:00Speaker 01

  Like, if you're not even really ready to create your best stuff, why do you want that?

• 2:26:04Rich Roll?

  Because, yo, you don't know me, man. I got mad skills.

• 2:26:09Speaker 01

  Oh, man. No doubt. No, exactly. But I, yeah, I don't know. I just think that there's, there, there's so many people doing so many good things that it's, it's a bit silly to focus on who's not doing what are, how things are negative, or people who aren't doing it the right way. But just, I do have, like, I follow a lot of entrepreneurial type people on social media, like, sort of the Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss type world. And I love it.

• 2:26:36Rich Roll?

  Well, Gary's big on hard work.

• 2:26:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:26:37Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 2:26:38Speaker 01

  No, exactly.

• 2:26:38Rich Roll?

  He's, he's not down with the whole life hack thing.

• 2:26:41Speaker 01

  No, not at all.

• 2:26:42Rich Roll?

  He's big on hustle, and I work harder than you.

• 2:26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, and so is Tim, even though he wrote a book called The Four Hour Work Week. But like, um, you know, Gary put out this video a few days ago, I tweeted at him, and I was like, man, I love this video. And it was about passive income. And just like, this big idea, you know, on the internet that like, you can just sort of create this website, and then the money's just gonna flow in. And there's, Gary had this quote where he's like, you know, laying on the beach in Jamaica. Smoking weed while the money just keeps rolling in isn't as realistic as you think, partner. And it just really hit home being like, yeah, like, there's way too much of that. Like, there's way too much of that. That idea where it's like, I just want the success. I just want the result, and I don't actually want to have to do anything, because why would I? You know, and that sort of idea, I just think is really weird. And there's so much of it out

• 2:27:28Speaker 01

  there, like, all these articles you see being shared around, where it's like, five things you're not doing, and blah, blah, blah.

• 2:27:33Rich Roll?

  The internet is propagated with these internet marketing experts that

• 2:27:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:27:37Rich Roll?

  Throw in so much bullshit at people.

• 2:27:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:27:40Rich Roll?

  The problem is, a lot of those tactics work, but they're just so unpalatable. And I feel like, you know, maybe somebody in my generation can like, fall into that, you know, sort of trap, or that, you know, get caught in some kind of, you know, email chain labyrinth, where you can't escape until you buy somebody's ebook. But I feel like your generation is much more attuned to, you know, your bullshit meter is very, very strong. And you can see kind of all that stuff coming at you from a million miles away.

• 2:28:08Speaker 01

  For sure. But I just do think there's a weird ability now, where it's like, it's almost easier to sell the idea of success than just like, be successful. You know what I mean? Like, there's, there's

• 2:28:17Rich Roll?

  Well, a lot of that stuff is cultivated around like, like, marketing tactics to, you know, sort of get people to part with their wallet. And there's zero discussion of, of the actual quality of whatever content it is.

• 2:28:31Speaker 01

  Oh, that comes dead last.

• 2:28:32Rich Roll?

  That would actually, you know, merit somebody parting with a dollar.

• 2:28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:36Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 2:28:36Speaker 01

  That comes dead last.

• 2:28:37Rich Roll?

  That's even part of the discussion.

• 2:28:39Speaker 01

  Who cares about that?

• 2:28:39Rich Roll?

  Completely backwards. And, yeah, so I, when I see, like, I subscribe to some of these newsletters, just because I get fascinated by

• 2:28:47Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 2:28:47Rich Roll?

  How these people are doing this.

• 2:28:48Speaker 01

  Same way.

• 2:28:49Rich Roll?

  I'm, I'm like, appalled by it, but I'm like, I can't

• 2:28:52Speaker 01

  Fascinating.

• 2:28:53Rich Roll?

  I have to like, watch the car crash.

• 2:28:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:54Rich Roll?

  And go like, what are they doing? And like, I'm like, oh, wow, people are actually like, subscribing to this stuff. That's fascinating. Like, what is really going on here? And I try to like, do a forensic analysis on it.

• 2:29:03Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:29:05Rich Roll?

  I just can't stand any of it.

• 2:29:06Speaker 01

  Well, that's

• 2:29:07Rich Roll?

  Stop doing that.

• 2:29:07Speaker 01

  Well, like for me, like that situation, like to my generation, I think, is like these inspirational quote pages. And I think it's this really fascinating thing where I was reading this article recently by this guy who had been studying what reading like inspirational or motivational quotes does to your brain. He was saying, gives you the same almost release of happiness that does from like accomplishing a small, meaningful task. Like something that you needed to do, but had been putting off. And then you do it and you get that feeling of like, ah, I'm out from under that weight. And he was saying, there's that same sort of like little quick hit of that when you read like an inspiring quote. And I think it's just so fascinating where there's so many of these pages and people who are putting this stuff out. And it's like some picture of like a lion and it's like surround yourself with those on the same mission as you.

• 2:29:50Speaker 01

  And it's just so cheesy and like ridiculous, yet people seem to like really of my generation, especially like eat it up and really love it. And it's just interesting because it's like, to me, that stuff doesn't have very much to do with the work. And if you need that much external motivation, maybe you're not that motivated to do the thing in the first place. You know, I just feel like personally, I want to, I'd rather like work from a big mission of being like, this is what I really want to create overall. This is the body of work I want to leave behind and then take small sort of intentional, but like incremental steps to like actually making that happen. I don't really actually feel like I need a lot of motivation. I don't feel like I really need a pep talk to like sit at my computer and

• 2:30:32Rich Roll?

  Well, you have a, you're driven and you have a trajectory and you have a solid, you know, grip on like where you want to go and how to get there.

• 2:30:39Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Do you really think that those quotes and stuff like help someone who is in your situation?

• 2:30:43Rich Roll?

  No, I'm completely with you. When I had Ryan Holiday on the podcast, we talked about this very subject. I don't, I don't know if you listened to that interview, but we, yeah, we were like, cause I have that same thing. I see that stuff on Instagram and I'm like, God, like that, like, like they get tons of likes, like people love that stuff.

• 2:30:59Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 2:30:59Rich Roll?

  For me, I'm like, Like, I just can't imagine doing, like, posting something like that on my feed. Like, it just feels, it feels like a false note to me. And Ryan was talking about that very thing, where it's like, there's those studies that show that, like, when people read that and it gives them that feeling, and then they're almost tricked into believing that they actually did something, like, whatever that impulse is to go out and achieve, or whatever that feeling that they're seeking through actually taking in action, is served by, you know, whatever the dopamine response is by reading that.

• 2:31:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:31:30Rich Roll?

  And then, it actually can work against you because it prevents you from taking the action because you've already gotten the reward.

• 2:31:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:31:37Rich Roll?

  The good feeling from reading that. So it's actually working at odds with, yeah, so it's really interesting, I think.

• 2:31:43Speaker 01

  But that, that to me is like, a small case study example of like, a bigger thing that I do think is happening with millennials, is just like this motivational society, and this motivational kind of like, movement that doesn't necessarily have much substance to it. Like, it's great in principle if everyone is like, yeah, like, I have my thing that I'm really focused on, and it helps motivate me, whatever. But I do feel like there is this like, false motivation, sort of like what I was saying, like, the idea of like, you can just sell success versus being successful, that's kind of counterproductive to how much potential some of these kids have. And that's what I really think is that it's limiting in a sense because it's, it's so cliche and it's so obvious, that it makes them go like, ah, it's so easy, and that's all there is to it. You know what I mean?

• 2:32:26Speaker 01

  Just grind, man, just grind, you know, and all these sort of buzzwords. But they don't necessarily have substance behind them, and it doesn't necessarily blend in well with the narrative of like, what they want to do or what they're seeking to find, but it's just so shareable.

• 2:32:39Rich Roll?

  And it's not completely honest. I mean, to kind of like, use your, you know, it's, it's an, it's indicia of like, how we live our lives on social media in the sense that we, you know, position ourselves to, you know, to reveal the person, you know, that we want other people to see. You know what I mean?

• 2:32:55Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:32:55Rich Roll?

  Not the real person. And, you know, part of your kind of call to action and through your TED Talk and the work that you do is to like, pull covers on that and go, look, this is who I really am. Like, dark and light, you have to embrace both.

• 2:33:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:33:07Rich Roll?

  And, you know, when you see that kind of stuff, it's so one dimensional.

• 2:33:09Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:33:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, just do, you know, do this.

• 2:33:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:33:12Rich Roll?

  Whatever. It's like, no, actually, we all have these like demons and we all have these dark knights of the soul and and we all have our struggles and our pains and, you know, let's look at that because that's ultimately, you know, if we're willing to invest in the work to kind of work through all that stuff, that's how we can get to a healthier place where, you know, your goals might actually be much more accessible than just, you know, sort of, capitalizing on a, you know, a catchphrase.

• 2:33:37Speaker 01

  Well, exactly. And that's, I think that's exactly it is. It's just you should have something bigger in your life or something more, a bigger driving force than just sort of motivation or inspirational. You should have something you, someone you seek to serve or someone that you, you know what I mean? That you tangibly want to reach and that you tangibly want to connect with. And that can drive you. And I think that like one of my favorite things I've ever read of yours is a sort of blog post elaborating on that tweet that you had that everyone's loving, like about not, like not going for life hacks, you know what I mean? And you wrote a post somewhere on your blog, I think, about just sort of like the summary of that. And I think that it's very compelling and very important for young people because

• 2:34:17Speaker 01

  there is just, there's so much stuff like that, that it's almost debilitating and it's almost drowning because you go, oh, I don't think anyone else has fears like me. I think everyone else is just type A, very motivated. And like, wouldn't you agree though, like talking about what you just said, like the fears, the demons, the dark knights of the soul? That's the stuff that to me at least, and maybe I'm just a total weirdo, but like that inspires me. Like that makes me feel more human, like that makes me feel more connected to the person who's sharing that. That makes me feel like it's going to be okay, like I'm not alone, like some really good positive feelings that make me go like, no, I'm going to keep going on this path, you know, like it's okay because people have been there. But when you only show, like you said, that one dimensional side, is it not incredibly crippling to the kid who's like sitting there being like, I don't know how to get started.

• 2:35:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't identify with that. Like, yeah, yeah, like I can't get on board with that because the, and nobody feels the way that I feel, right?

• 2:35:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:35:07Rich Roll?

  So you're immediately isolating that person.

• 2:35:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. And the, and the intention behind it all is obviously good. It's to get people to do the thing that they want and to create value in the world and have a meaningful life. But I just think it's a really scary culture. And narrative when we start going, you should just always be inspired and you know, just never sleep and all these sorts of things. It's like, it's really bizarre. It just doesn't blend in well to being like, have a good, balanced, like sort of a healthy lifestyle, you know?

• 2:35:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:35:36Speaker 01

  And that's what I think is ironic though, is people look up to Gary Vaynerchuk, people look up to Tim Ferriss, but they somehow find these amazing ways to sort of misinterpret a lot of what they're saying. And like, like you said, when I first brought up Gary, the number one thing he talks about is hard work. And the thing he puts before that is his family. But nobody wants to like, talk about that. You know what I mean? Like, everyone just wants to be like, well, this is how you invest in the next Uber and you know, just work 25 hours a day. And it's just like, that's not even what he's saying. You know what I mean? Like, you're just sort of selectively taking what it is that you want that kind of fits into this motivational type world. And that's always been my big problem with like, speaking and conferences. And those are some of the only gigs I'll turn down is like, big conferences where there's like, a lot of quote unquote, like motivational people. Cause I'm like,

• 2:36:19Speaker 01

  I just don't fit in here at all. And like, I'm going to ruin the whole mood because like, my thing is not to be like that, you know? And I feel like it's a really, cause you'll see that too with like, speakers or guys who are like, speaking about motivation and success, but the way that they've been successful is by speaking about success.

• 2:36:33Rich Roll?

  Right. It's a weird cycle. You know what I mean?

• 2:36:35Speaker 01

  It's a really weird cycle.

• 2:36:36Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of that with like, who, people who are offering online courses and how to like, build your career or build your business, your online business.

• 2:36:43Speaker 01

  And they only sell online courses.

• 2:36:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So it's like-

• 2:36:45Speaker 01

  About online courses.

• 2:36:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. It's like, Ouroboros, you know what I mean? Or like a snake eating its tail. It's a very weird thing.

• 2:36:52Speaker 01

  But that's exactly what I mean. And to me, that's not being connected to a bigger thing. That's not actually caring about your craft. That's just about wanting an end result. And that's what I think is the antithesis of what millennials should be about. Cause if you look at the people like, on the parade list of top millennial influencers, all those people have like, really created big value for someone outside. Like Mark Zuckerberg's connected millions of people. Malala's like, freed a whole gender from how they should be confined. Like, there's some pretty powerful stuff there. And I think that's why it's meaningful. It's not just because Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire. You know what I mean? Like, there's something deeper than just like, hey, you made a lot of money or a lot-

• 2:37:30Speaker 01

  A lot of people know your name, but I do think some of that gets lost because the way that we put out content and we story tell now is so micro and it's so tiny and it's so needs to be so digestible that it sometimes lacks depth. Because it's just like, hey, I just did this good thing, but there's no room in that hundred and forty character tweet to be like, and this is everything that went into it.

• 2:37:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:50Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And almost like people don't even sometimes want to hear that. Like you'll see people's tweets, they'll do really well when they're short, but then Tim Ferriss will drop an eight thousand word blog post. And it's just not as cool, you know, this is a little bit more dense.

• 2:38:04Rich Roll?

  I can't read this in two words.

• 2:38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 2:38:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:07Speaker 01

  And I think that that's like for myself, I've just never identified with that mentality. I've just always felt like, yeah, really compelled to learn about the people I like. And that's what I would recommend like to anyone if is listening to this who's a young person is like, just find people that like you really connect with and like obsess over their content. Like, you know, like when I first discovered your podcast, I must have blasted through like thirty, forty episodes, you know, and it's just because the conversations were real and honest and they didn't have an agenda. Like that was what I liked about it. It was just a real conversation. And same thing when I first started listening to Joe Rogan's podcast, like just find that stuff and connect with it. Cause that's the real power of like the internet is to self select and self curate your own like news feed. Because I think the stuff that other people might want to curate.

• 2:38:49Rich Roll?

  And it requires a little responsibility because it's easy to just like have your, your feed be BuzzFeed.

• 2:38:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:38:55Rich Roll?

  Or, or Gawker or whatever, you know, whatever else that's like.

• 2:38:58Speaker 01

  You have to be intentional about it.

• 2:38:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you have to like, you have to exert yourself to make sure that what you're exposing yourself to is actually going to raise your consciousness as opposed to, and that's, that requires discipline because most of the stuff on the internet is not, is not raising your vibration.

• 2:39:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:39:13Rich Roll?

  If you're not, if you're not judicious about it.

• 2:39:15Speaker 01

  And that's what I really liked about, you know, you and Josh Ship's episode was talking about like, you know, being on social less, like being on your phone less, like setting boundaries. Like, I think that's a conversation people need to have. Like, nothing actually makes me more rattled or more like sort of angry than when I'm with a friend and it's like, we're just looking at our phones. Like, this is so mind blowing to me. Like, I read this article by John Acuff, who's a writer recently wrote something for Time. And he was saying that none of us would ever say, hey, want to go to dinner and stare at our phones, but that's what we do. You know what I mean? Like, we take these actions that if we were to verbalize them, wouldn't make complete sense, or we'd be like, yeah, that's a bit weird, but then we do them. And I think that it's just so ridiculous that we feel this need to be like hyper plugged in all the time. And that was something that I really resonated about with that episode with you and Josh.

• 2:40:00Speaker 01

  I was going like, maybe it's not even that good to always be on social. Like you were saying, like you can sort of lie to yourself and go, ah, it's for work. Oh, it's for my business. But is it really? You know what I mean? I think everyone kind of has that. And when you remove that from yourself or just set a boundary around it, it does create like a little bit of silence or a little bit of space. Be like, what's the important work that I should be doing? Right? Like, what's the thing that like, one inspires you, but two is actually going to serve your audience more than a clever tweet?

• 2:40:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And I feel, I feel like it's, you know, there is that like backlash, you know, like the, in the same way that like, you know, vinyl is back and like analog culture is now cool. Like, you know, my 21 year old, he's not on Facebook. He's not on Instagram. He's not on Twitter. He took email off his phone. You know what I mean? Like, he's been very intentional about like not falling into that trap. And I've, you know, as a result of my conversation with Josh and with other people, you know, I'm on social, but I have some, you know, clearer boundaries around it. And I try to be more intentional and conscientious about it and not like waste time on it. But I find myself on my phone more than my son. You know what I mean?

• 2:41:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:41:07Rich Roll?

  So it's weird. Like I'm, I'm the older guy, but he's the one who's like, actually has a healthier, you know, boundary around it than I do. And I do fall into that trap of like, yeah, but it's like, this is what I do, whatever.

• 2:41:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:41:17Rich Roll?

  But that's, you know, that's convenient and

• 2:41:20Speaker 01

  It is convenient.

• 2:41:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So it's like, it's kind of BS, right?

• 2:41:23Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:41:25Rich Roll?

  And I think it goes to, anyway, whatever. We could talk about this all day.

• 2:41:29Speaker 01

  No, it's interesting though.

• 2:41:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it is. It is.

• 2:41:31Speaker 01

  Just because I do feel like, to a large part, there is this thing where there's so much information, there's so much content that you can become a little bit ungrateful for like your real life and the moments you're actually given. And for me, that's been a thing because I could just read messages on my Facebook page for hours. You know what I mean? It's like, I do need to get back in touch with that. And I think it's worth talking about is, you know, it's cliche or lame as it sounds, but put down your phone, man. Go live your life. But it's like, you know, I just think, like you said, wasting time. To me, that's been a big like thing in my life since those really dark years of like, when I was a teenager and really struggling with depression and like sleeping in so late and stuff. I just don't like that feeling. You know what I mean? Not that I feel like I always need to be productive, but I want to feel like I'm at least engaging

• 2:42:15Speaker 01

  and like experiencing real life to some degree, you know? And that's important to me. And I think that sometimes the phone stuff gets in the way of that.

• 2:42:23Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. All right, well, we've got to lock it down here in a little bit, but I can't let you go without like two kind of final inquiries. And the first one is, you know, just some sort of words of wisdom, or encouragement, or advice for, you know, somebody who's listening to this right now, who is stuck in the throes of depression and maybe can't find their way out.

• 2:42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's a loaded question, but I'll give it my best shot. I think that, you know, I can only speak to my own experience. And for me, what's been most helpful is like a lot of stuff we've hit on a bunch already. So I'm sorry if it sounds redundant, but like, just something about being able to be like really honest with a close group of people. And for myself, I gave a TED Talk, and I'll write about it, and I've got a book and stuff. But you don't, it doesn't need to be that public for you, obviously. You know, like for someone who's listening to this and is struggling, literally a conversation with one to two people who are close to you and you really trust, can give you so much more freedom over your own identity than you ever really thought. And there's something just really amazing about being able to be transparent and to not have to sort of hide.

• 2:43:28Speaker 01

  And that was something that, for myself, was the most exhausting part. It was like playing the character, putting on the costume, wearing the mask all the time, and just not being real. And so like, that's for me, the first thing. But the second thing is also just to understand that I really, I really do deeply believe like there is an upside to these experiences. And whether you want to believe that things happen for a reason, or you have some sort of faith in your life, whatever it may be, I do think that there's something really powerful that can come out of those moments. And there's something that's really amazing that come out. And for me, it's been the most transformative part of my life is to be able to explore that stuff and to be able to continually explore. And like, like I said, I still go to counseling. Like, when I get home on Monday, I have an appointment, and I'll go. And I'm not just going to talk about like, hey, have

• 2:44:11Speaker 01

  you been depressed recently or not? Like, I talk about every aspect of my life. And I think there's something really good about just exploring that and just, you know, being there and sitting in those moments. And like you said, not feeding someone the thing that you think they want them to hear, but saying like, what's actually real. And then the third thing is like, if you are stuck in that place, though, and those things seem too hard, and you feel like you can't get an inch out of bed, and you're really in that moment, the place that I was, you know, in When I was seventeen years old and writing that suicide note, I think the best thing you can do is just ask one person for help. And I think that that is actually not an act of cowardice, but an act of like actual courage and bravery, because it's really saying that you're not in a place where you can put the pieces back together. Like, you're gonna

• 2:44:56Speaker 01

  need support and community and help. And for me, that's like what I said earlier, but I really, this is why I feel most lucky and most grateful is because I genuinely believe I had a small group of people who cared about putting my life back together more than I even cared about it. And I think that that's, you know.

• 2:45:11Rich Roll?

  Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

• 2:45:12Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 2:45:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah. If somebody feels like they, they don't have anyone that they can trust, is there, is there, are there online resources that are, like, I'm sure there's a million online resources, but like, what are some of the good ones?

• 2:45:26Speaker 01

  I, I only really recommend one, and it's just because of the personal relationship I have with them. They're in the back of my book, and it's the group I talked about earlier, To Write Love on Our Arms. And it was started by my friend Jamie Torkowski about eight years ago now. And they're a nonprofit out of Florida. They've responded to literally hundreds of thousands of messages. You can write them an email. They're not a suicide hotline if you're in a moment of crisis. That's definitely not the right place to turn to. But if you want to be heard, they're there for that. But more than anything, they have millions, literally millions of fans on Facebook, social, whatever. And it's a real community. People post stuff on there and people reply. You know what I mean? And there's conversations that happen there. And it's a place to be seen and to be heard and to be acknowledged. And it doesn't have to come at the cost of opening up to your

• 2:46:11Speaker 01

  neighbor, you know? Like, you can go there and you can have these conversations. They have an amazing blog. They put out content three to four times a week. I mean, they just really do incredible stuff. And I would, I would suggest someone to plug themselves into that community, because there's a like-minded group of people who are there to really support each other and to be there for each other. And it's got a great mission. So yeah, I would recommend that, To Write Love on Our Arms. And you can find them easily through Google and their website and stuff. But I think that that is really important. And if it's not, if it's not that for you, if it's not an online thing, then try and find a group of people that you can really connect with like that in real life, like the same thing you're talking about, like with your, you know, people you'll talk to when you're in a weak moment for addiction and that sort of stuff, like having those conversations is like really awesome.

• 2:46:53Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. And, and the final thing is...

• 2:46:57Rich Roll?

  How do you effectively communicate with somebody who in your life who is suffering, maybe suffering quietly, like, let's say, you're a parent, you have a teenage daughter, or your brother, or like, your buddy at work, or somebody that you can see, you're like, yeah, something's not right.

• 2:47:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:47:16Rich Roll?

  They're struggling. Like, how do you broach the subject? You know, how can you be of maximum service to that person? Because I think what happens is, people just, they don't know how to deal with it.

• 2:47:27Speaker 01

  So they do nothing.

• 2:47:28Rich Roll?

  They either avoid it, or they don't know what the right thing to say is, and they feel like, well, maybe it's not my business, but I'd like to help this person, but I wouldn't even know where to begin.

• 2:47:35Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, well, as a 22-year-old with no kids, I feel extremely qualified to give parenting advice, so let me start there. No, just totally kidding.

• 2:47:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but you know, you know, like, on the receiving end of that.

• 2:47:46Speaker 01

  No, for sure.

• 2:47:47Rich Roll?

  Like, what will be received and what will be rejected.

• 2:47:48Speaker 01

  Well, I heard, this isn't, this isn't my idea, this is borrowed from a guy named Andrew Solomon, who wrote a great book on, on depression, and it's really fascinating. But he said, "If depression is anything, if it's a disease, if it's anything, it's one of loneliness." And I thought that was really interesting, and he gave the metaphor of just being like, if you can't be there for someone, if someone won't let you talk to them, if someone won't let you into their world, then just sit outside their door. And I thought that was a really powerful metaphor, like, for this whole thing, it's just to let someone know that you're there for them.

• 2:48:15Rich Roll?

  You're there, right.

• 2:48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that that's like, the number one thing, and I talked about this a little bit in the book, but being like, when I was writing that suicide note, there was these feelings of like, guilt, and like, you know, some very strong impulses to not go through with it, and maybe the biggest one was my mom and my sister, because even though they had only known glimmers, or little pieces, or little things about what was going on, I knew that they were the kind of people who would sit outside the door. You know what I mean? And that just makes you feel less alone, like you're loved, like you're cared for, like you're known by someone. And I think that that's something that all of us can do, even if you've never struggled, even if you feel like this whole conversation doesn't necessarily apply to you, but there's someone in your life who you feel like it does. You don't have to have anything good to say to them, you don't need any advice, or anything like that, you just need to be there for them.

• 2:49:00Speaker 01

  And I think that that's really, you know, powerful, and any element of grief or pain, but it's like, that's for me, it's like, that would be the number one thing I would say, and that's the thing that my mom really did a good job of, she's like, always knew, I always knew that she was the kind of person who would sit outside my door, so, yeah.

• 2:49:14Rich Roll?

  Good advice, man.

• 2:49:15Speaker 01

  Hey, man. I don't have much of it, but hopefully that's something.

• 2:49:19Rich Roll?

  Thanks for talking to me.

• 2:49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, no problem.

• 2:49:20Rich Roll?

  We did it.

• 2:49:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:22Rich Roll?

  It's pretty good, right?

• 2:49:23Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 2:49:23Rich Roll?

  You all right?

• 2:49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:24Rich Roll?

  You rocked it. You don't seem depressed today.

• 2:49:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, no. It's a good day.

• 2:49:29Rich Roll?

  Cool. That was awesome, man. Thank you. It's inspiring what you're doing, and I have nothing but mad love and respect for you. And I can't wait to see the book come out and light the universe on fire.

• 2:49:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Well, you got your copy sent right there.

• 2:49:44Rich Roll?

  I know. I can't wait to crack it. So, cool. If you're digging on Kevin, he's pretty easy to find. KevinBriel.com and @KevinBriel pretty much everywhere on the internet, right?

• 2:49:54Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:49:55Rich Roll?

  That's it.

• 2:49:55Speaker 01

  Simple, clean.

• 2:49:56Rich Roll?

  And where are you? You have a bunch of speaking gigs coming up?

• 2:49:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got a book tour coming up, like 25 cities.

• 2:50:02Rich Roll?

  Full on.

• 2:50:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, Boston College, Harvard, some cool places. So, we're going to be releasing that soon. But yeah.

• 2:50:08Rich Roll?

  How many colleges have you spoken at?

• 2:50:10Speaker 01

  Over 100.

• 2:50:11Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 2:50:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:50:12Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 2:50:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like it, though. You know, there's these millennials, you know?

• 2:50:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very cool. I've only done a couple. I want to do more.

• 2:50:19Speaker 01

  We got to get you out there.

• 2:50:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I need to talk to you.

• 2:50:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:24Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Thanks.

• 2:50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:25Rich Roll?

  Peace. Plants.

• 2:50:31Rich Roll?

  Big love for Kevin Breel. I really enjoyed that conversation, and I hope you guys did too. He's kind of an exceptional guy, and I wish him much success. And along those lines, your assignment for this week: Pick up Boy Meets Depression. You'll be glad you did. Watch Cowspiracy on Netflix, because you got to do it. And preorder Dr. Garth Davis's book, Proteinaholic. Why don't you do that? Good stuff, right? For all your plant power needs, go to RichWorld.com. You can check out our new cookbook, The Plant Power Way. You can get signed copies of Finding Ultra. We got Julie's Meditation Program. We got nutrition products. We got organic cotton garments. We got Plant Power Tech Tees. We got sticker packs. We got temporary tattoos. We got limited edition art prints.

• 2:51:13Rich Roll?

  All kinds of cool stuff. Basically, everything you need to notch up your health and your life to the next level. What else can I tell you? I think that's it. Oh yeah, I've got online courses at MindBodyGreen.com. The Art of Living with Purpose and The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition. Multiple hours of streaming video content, online communities. Really great, very affordably priced, under a hundred bucks each of them. And the price varies depending upon what MindBodyGreen is doing. But you can learn more about it and find out all that kind of information by going to MindBodyGreen.com and clicking on "Video Courses." Thanks so much for all the support, you guys, for sharing this show with your friend and on social media and all that kind of good stuff. I really appreciate it. This podcast means everything to me and the fact that you guys are such an engaged

• 2:51:57Rich Roll?

  audience really just puts it over the top for me. I do this for you guys and I'm really happy. I've been getting all the emails from you guys and I really, really appreciate you guys reaching out and letting me know what you think about the show. So, thank you so much. I'll see you guys in a few days. Make it a great week and we've got lots of good shows coming up, so don't go anywhere. Alright, you guys. Peace. Plants.