Ryan and Comic Pete Holmes Talk Work-Life Balance and Why Joy Matters

On today’s Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with comedian and writer Pete Holmes about understanding your own brain, finding personal fulfillment when things are out of your control, and more. Pete Holmes has spent years as a touring comedian as well as a TV writer and actor. He was the creator and star of HBO’s Crashing and has appeared in a number of stand-up specials. Holmes has released four comedy albums as well as a book, Comedy Sex God. Holmes also hosts a podcast, You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business. And right now, LinkedIn is helping companies like yours find the essential workers that they need in these trying times. Visit http://linkedin.com/stoic to post your healthcare or essential job for free, or to post another job for your business. This episode is also brought to you by GoMacro. GoMacro is a family-owned maker of some of the finest protein bars around. They're vegan, non-GMO, and they come in a bunch of delicious flavors. Visit http://gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping. This episode is also brought to you by Felix Gray, maker of amazing blue light-filtering glasses. Felix Gray glasses help prevent the symptoms of too much blue light exposure, which can include blurry vision, dry eyes, sleeplessness, and more. Get your glasses today at http://felixgrayglasses.com/stoic and try them for 30 days, risk-free.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Pete Holmes: Homepage: https://peteholmes.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/peteholmesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/peteholmes/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peteholmesshow/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/peteholmesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Weekend Edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We reflect. We prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring.

• 0:54Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm really excited about today's guest. He's someone who I have had many, many long conversations with, but whose art and comedy I've been a fan of for a very long time. Talking about Pete Holmes, a stand-up comedian. You may have seen his show on HBO, Crashing, which ran for three seasons. I thought it was hilarious. I did his podcast maybe a year and a half ago, two years ago. We talked for three hours. Felt like we really connected. And then we sort of stayed in touch. I did it again when Stillness came out. We talked for another three hours. And in between there, he put out a book, which I really liked, called Comedy Sex God. It's supposed to be funny. That's sort of Pete's sense of humor.

• 1:39Ryan Holiday?

  Actually, I remember when I went to Pete's house for the first time. I walked in, and he had this dog. And I was petting the dog. And I said, "What's your dog's name?" And he just said, "We don't know." And then he walked out of the room. And it was very clear later, as I heard him do it to someone else. This is a running gag that he has. But I thought it was sort of very typical of Pete's humor. His show is hilarious. His stand-up is great. I really like his podcast. There are these sort of deeply in-depth interviews. It's usually 90 minutes in, or sometimes two hours in, that he starts to talk about God. So Pete's is kind of interesting, sort of spiritual seeker. He grew up very Christian, went to a Christian college,

• 2:22Ryan Holiday?

  got married early, then his life sort of blew apart when his wife cheated on him. And sort of, I don't want to say fell away from his faith, but began to open his eyes and explore other things. So he explored Eastern philosophy with Ram Dass. He's read all sorts of Christian and mystic texts. And then I feel like I was probably involved with introducing him to Stoicism, which he's now talked about on the podcast a number of times. And he and I have gone back and forth. If you remember the email we did several months ago about the similarities between some of the themes in Marcus Aurelius and Ecclesiastes in the Bible. We were asking, was there any way that Marcus could have come across this? So he and I have gone back and forth.

• 3:04Ryan Holiday?

  I rely on his insights and expertise about Christianity. And he sometimes asks me questions about Stoicism. So I've been trying to get him on the podcast for a long time. Actually, we started, we wanted to do an email interview for Daily Stoic about the new book. We ended up writing a really good email about the book. If you remember, it was about how easy it is to get in a pattern of depression or loneliness, almost something you come to wear almost as a coat or a piece of clothing. It just becomes part of you. And we talk a little bit about that in the episode. He and I bonded over our very similar parents, who are sweet, kind people, who did a great job raising two children into adulthood,

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  but have a lot of flaws and issues and things that have caused pain and turmoil and confusion. And he and I, I think, are both independently working through those issues. So we talk about that in the episode. One of my favorite quotes from Pete, it's something I try to think about often. He got this from Ram Dass, but it says, you think you're enlightened? Go spend a week with your family. So Pete and I have commiserated over the years about our parents, about issues we have. We're both parents of young kids ourselves. So it's about, this isn't just myopia. How do we, not just ruminating on our own pain and trauma from growing up, but which the Stoics would say is done and in the past and something you really can't do anything about. But the reason you have to do this work, you have to think about these things,

• 4:29Ryan Holiday?

  you have to try to get past it, is that you become a father or a mother yourself, and you don't want to carry that trauma forward. The Buddha Is called this samsara, the sort of cycle of suffering that goes from one generation to the next. And that's something I don't want to pass on to my children, or at least not. At least I would be quite embarrassed if I if I passed on the same issues that I experienced in my own childhood. I have no illusions that any parent can be perfect, but what we can be doing, as Epictetus said, is striving to be better, to do better, to not be stuck in that cycle, to at least be making progress towards something better for their sake. So I'm really excited about this interview with Pete. It's a little longer than our normal interviews, but that's Pete's style. And I love him. I think he's awesome.

• 5:14Ryan Holiday?

  Please check out his work. Check out his book, Comedy Sex God. You can check out his podcast, You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes. If you want two episodes to start with, there's like almost six hours of me out there on him, but he's got a number of great interviews. I really like his interview with Gary Shandling. I think it's really good. Pete's interview with Melania is quite good. I loved his interview with BJ Novak recently. It's one of the few podcasts that I listen to, so check that out. You can check out his show, Crashing, which was on HBO. And then he's got a number of really awesome comedy specials out there, too. Oh, and I forgot to say, one of the funny things about Pete's show is he just kind of starts recording. You hear the guest sort of walking in, getting down, sitting down. They ask if it started. He just sort of goes right into the show.

• 5:58Ryan Holiday?

  It was not intentional, but that ended up being how our interview started. We recorded it remotely separately, but he just was off to the races before I could even hit record. So I hit record halfway through a sentence from him. So it's only fitting that we we run this episode, just like Pete does, which is we get right into it.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Like, like, life to be like. And one of the strange things that I wouldn't, I wouldn't say on the record, you know, is like, I'm like, oh, I'm OK without stand up. Like, I thought I needed it. And I sure do love it. But um, and I, you know, I'm going to keep doing it, but like, I'm so much more okay without it than I thought.

• 6:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, to- to- totally. It's a, it's obviously a very privileged position to be in too, but I was just talking to my wife about this. I was like, okay, so let's, let's say our income takes a 50% hit, we'll still be fortunate compared to most people. We need to figure out like, who we have to hire and what decisions we have to make so that actually like, this is what our normal Monday looks like, like no real meetings, I don't have to go anywhere, like groceries are being delivered, you know, like, I just feel like, I'm just doing a lot less, I'm actually working the same amount, I'm just doing a lot less crap I didn't want, was reluctant to pay to do before.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's interesting. You mean like having your groceries delivered?

• 7:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, or, or just like, like if someone had offered me $20 to drive across town, I would have been like, oh, I need, I'll take 20 bucks. Do you know what I mean? Like I have trouble, I have trouble like not.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  It's really funny. I, I, I, I guess I have like a competitive part of me. It's hard for me to say because when I'm being conscious, which I'm being right now, you know, just being mindful or thoughtful, I don't feel competitive. But if you like left me like in like an animal, like my base emotions, there's something competitive in there. Does that make any sense?

• 8:09Ryan Holiday?

  Sure, sure.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  There's something going on that I'm not in control of and it is competitive. So when I've taken breaks from standup in the past, I've enjoyed them. I've always been very proud of the fact that I'm not a lunatic, that I can take two weeks off, or, or two and a half, three, whatever, I don't know how long I had gone, and not been like jonesing and talking about it and freaking out, like on vacations or whatever, or just like taking a break. But there was always a part of me that was like a little worried that other people I know were out there getting better. You know what I mean?

• 8:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Doing, it's not even like that I don't want them to succeed. That doesn't bother me. It's just, there's like an athletic like, well, they're out there running drills and they're improving and they're being disciplined. And that would sort of irk me. So the thing that I've liked about this is that it's not that I'm taking a break. It's that we're all taking a break.

• 9:12Ryan Holiday?

  No, I asked, I asked a friend of mine, like, who's, who's in, like, he's a, he's in professional sports. And I said, like, if there was some union that like mandated that the coaches could only work a certain number of hours, you know, in the way that like, you know, there's set rules on a movie set or a TV set or, or, you know.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:33Ryan Holiday?

  I was like, would the, would the quality of play diminish at all? And he was like, absolutely not. I would do the exact, none of the viewers would notice a single difference in the on-field product. And, and so, yeah, it's really hard when you actually like what you do. How do you regulate what's an appropriate amount of doing it or not?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  But that's, that's, that's a huge thing that really stuck with me. I've only heard Ram Dass say it once, uh, maybe twice. But he says, like, the, a really interesting question is, does meeting your needs, and when we're talking about needs, we don't mean food, heat, shelter. We're talking about the things you think you need. So for me, it would be like doing stand-up, uh, three times a week or whatever. And he's like, the question is, does meeting your needs make you any happier than not meeting your needs? And when, and when he said that, I was like, oh, wow. And we're really seeing in this time, it's just really calling forth the capitalistic mindset. It's really coming into challenge and question.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  And, and I think we're all sort of uncovering, or at least I am. How capitalist I've become. And now that we're not being capitalists, we can't really be capitalists, other than, you know, you're, you're still buying stuff. Uh, but we're not producing, not in the same way. And yet we still exist and yet I still have joy and I still have value and I still have meaning. And I'm not like doing all the things that I thought I had to do to create joy, value and meaning. And that's been really interesting for me. So I'm like, what do I take from this again? You know, if, if, if we use this, I always want to be careful to say that I first and foremost, I'm worried about, uh, people's safety and their sanity.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  And, um, I, I know that there are people in small apartments that, that this is no cakewalk. I know that there are people that are sick. I know that they're healthcare workers, uh, that this is just a, a full stop nightmare for. And I know that there are people that, uh, deal with stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, that this is really hard for. So with acknowledgement to that, um, my experience is very unique. Uh, I have a baby. I have a wife. Um, we have some space and I'm also able to write. I, I know you can too, Ryan. And that gives me, um, enough of a tinkering project satisfaction.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  I just didn't know that that could really fill up my life, uh, all the way.

• 12:10Ryan Holiday?

  No, totally. But do, do you, the, the other thing that I think about, so I sort of go back and forth is I totally agree. And then I go, okay, yes, so like I'm, I'm privileged. I have savings. I, I have space. I have like a lot of space. I, I could, you know, uh, we can go in our swimming pool. We can walk without leaving our property. There, there's all sorts of things we can do. And then I, I, I go and I go, isn't it nice that like I'm not having to travel? I'm not having to work that much. And then I think, but how much of that is a result of the fact that I worked really, really hard the last couple of years and said yes to everything. And so now, you know, like the difference between the, what is it? The cricket and the ant, the, the fable, it's like sort of head prepared for winter. I'm curious, like,

• 12:54Ryan Holiday?

  To get down to the specifics, like as a person in the entertainment business, like, one of the reasons you're probably able to take a break from comedy is that you you built a podcast for many, many years, which is a sort of independent income stream, and you don't have to, you know, tour constantly the way that another comedian would. So do you think about having kind of prepared diversified or prepared yourself as also being an advantage?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny, I think, you know, one of the tropes that we see in movies and even in video games, it was in Red Dead Redemption where the the outlaws are talking about one last job and then they're gonna go to, I think they're gonna go to Tahiti. And that and that's so common in movies and we know they're not gonna do it. And we know they're gonna die before it happens or whatever it is. And that is a real that the reason we like that story is that's the lie that the ego is always telling us, not to get too deep or anything, but it's true. That's what your brain, another way of saying, your personality is always sort of negotiating with this deeper part of you.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  It's so absurd. Sometimes I think about that, I'm like, why are there factions in my brain? Like, why, why does my brain make requests? Like, it'll request water, it will demand diarrhea, and then like, sometimes it'll like, insist on comfort or self-soothing or whatever it is. And I'm like, who's negotiating with who? Like, who is the command center that hears the thought you should have some water? And you say, I don't want to drink water before bed. I don't want to have to get up and pee. And so who are you negotiating with? It's just such a strange thing that's so ordinary that none of us are talking about. It's one of those things where I'm like, that is so fascinating, and yet it's so boring

• 14:46Speaker 01

  to most people. So what I'm saying is, there's a part of me that goes, I'm constantly laughing at myself because I go, okay, I'll do one more big TV project. And then I'll have the little Then I'm good. Yeah, then I'll be good. And, and there is a practical, there is a side in its defense. I want to be like, what we're talking about, that is the cricket. If that's the one that saves for winter, there is something about one more big project. Certainly making things easier to settle down or to stop working as much. So there's some logic to it, but that's what makes it sort of dangerous. It's really tempting to constantly get lost in those fantasies of like, uh, three more months and then I'll retire.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  But this is, this is a forced thing. So you and I have both been living as if we were planning on retiring. Yeah, sure. And then it was forced on us. Yeah. And then it was forced. So I mean, that you really hit it on the head. That's what happened is two guys, you and I bonded over the fact that like, I, I'm not a sneaker guy. I'm not a car guy. I'm not a wine guy. I'm not an art guy. I don't even know what the other things are, but I'm not any of those guys either. I like hanging out with my wife. I like hanging out with my baby. I like, uh, the thrill that I get from creativity, um, from writing and, and, and producing.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  I, I enjoy that, but that can be done on my own. I'm finding more and more. So the money, uh, is, goes into savings. You said that on my podcast. You're just like, I don't know what it is. I just want that number to go up. Well, that's the capitalistic myth. It's like, uh, uh, a corporation is a failure if it doesn't do better than it did the year before. There's no idea of it doing as well as it did the year before. That's called plateauing and it's negative and it freaks out shareholders, from what I understand of business. We're seeing that there is a plateau and it's okay. And it's not only okay, it's, it's beautiful. And you can, you can actually start spending that money. Sometimes like, It it sounds like I'm saying my, oh, my wife sure is good at spending my money.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  That is not what I'm saying at all. She has taught me how to go like, what is the point of having this imaginary number? It's an imaginary number. If you're not going to occasionally gonna go, whatever, on a vacation. Let's just say that, go on a vacation. So this is, this is what's happening is the rubber is meeting the road. The imaginary number becomes actually a useful parachute. And we can tinker and play with our, our, not just the quality of our life, but the style of our life.

• 17:30Ryan Holiday?

  No, I I to- I totally agree. And the wife thing is interesting because it's like for you, like what I, what, what has held me back in the past financially is like, I know what I had to do to get the money. I know how rare it is to get paid to write things, to just like pull thoughts out of your head and have to, not just have people pay you a lot of money, but I remember how many years I had to work for free before anyone gave me a dollar. Right, so it's, it's like you know that your profession is inherently insane and in economically irrational. So like that can make you very precious about the money. And I had two breakthroughs. One, yeah, my wife's like, no, we have the money. Let's spend it to her.

• 18:14Ryan Holiday?

  It's just, you know, it's the same as if I made it in the stock market or, you know, if it had been given to me by a rich relative. And, and then the other thing is I met some professional athletes and those professional athletes like do an even more economically insane thing. And we're not as precious about it. And so I think one of the weird things about this crisis is also like, it's somewhat freeing in the sense that like, like I can't even calculate how much money I've lost, like, you know, because I'm not checking my stock portfolio on a regular basis. It's impossible to know what opportunities would have been coming your way in May to do jobs in, you know, August that are not going to happen anymore.

• 18:55Ryan Holiday?

  So, but, but the point is the losses are so severe and so like.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  What's the point of thinking of them?

• 19:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, so, so in a way you just like stop thinking about money. You're just like, things cost what they cost. I need things to survive.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:09Ryan Holiday?

  And, and you said, it almost like, it's like when, when, when people get their arm cut off, they're not like, does that hurt? It's just like your whole body like takes care of the pain part. It just like shuts off that part of your brain.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. My therapist said something similar, like something was going bad in my life back when I was 28, my first marriage had fallen apart. And I was like, it's so weird that I don't care that this other major thing has gone wrong. And he's like, yeah, you just got bit by a shark. You don't care about the jellyfish sting. But there was, like, I even, I think I said something like this in the book, like, being depressed and being sad, there's kind of a snowed in comfort to it. I'm not saying it was pleasant, but there was, even when it was happening, and this is before all my woo woo spiritual stuff, there's still a simplicity to it where you go, all I have

• 20:02Speaker 01

  to do is be divorced guy. Divorced guy drinks, divorced guy eats Chinese food, divorced guy cries watching The Sopranos. Like, you kind of get your script delivered to you every day, and it's easy. Like, nobody expects anything from you. So there's kind of a weird equanimity to that. Similar here, there's a real forced surrender to it. Surrender, of course, being a huge part of my spiritual identity. Surrender and suffering is a big part of my spiritual identity. And suffering, I use Richard Rohr's definition, suffering is when things aren't in your control. So it doesn't just mean like, ow, ow, ow, or

• 20:44Speaker 01

  boo hoo, I'm sad. It just means things aren't in your control. And when you can't rely on yourself to solve something or change something, that's when you learn to, this is straight Richard Rohr, by the way, you learn to dig deeper and dig into a more infinite source that is a part of you. Some people call that God, some people call it consciousness, some people call it the universe, whatever it is, that is sort of where a lot of truth is hiding for me. But something you said, what I really want to say this to you, I, cause I think we're similar in this way. The thing that makes our addictions, money addiction, power addiction, influence addiction,

• 21:29Speaker 01

  being a good worker, even the addiction to honoring the time you've put in to get into your exclusive field. And that, that is a type of addiction. The problem, when I talk to that part of my brain that tells me how special it is that I'm a comedian, that tells me things like, well, you're playing pro ball and your salary is inflated, but it's not going to last forever, so you should do as much as you can. He's right. That's what's so fucking tricky about this puzzle is if you sit down and have a rational conversation with that part of you that wants to say yes to things and travel and book and, and get the jobs. They're right.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  And I'm a Enneagram three, that means it's an achiever. And one of the blind spots of the Enneagram three is that if it works, it's true. We don't really care about objective truth or big truth. If it works, it's true. And I can just hear my father, who I believe is also three, saying like, well, what's something that's true that doesn't work? I was just having this fake conversation with him this afternoon. And I was like, friendship? Friendship doesn't work. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't work. Like, you, you make a friend and yeah, they give you some good times, someone to watch a movie with. But then guess what? They call you when they're heartbroken and now they're like eating into your time. You know what I'm saying?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  I'm not saying this is how I feel. I'm saying that doesn't work. It doesn't like help. It doesn't make you produce. It doesn't enhance necessarily. It just becomes like a crying baby, like somebody that you have to feed and help and nourish. The same is true of love doesn't work.

• 23:18Ryan Holiday?

  They have no utility, but they're very valuable.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. And I struggle so hard. I thrive in utility. I thrive in things that work. I have a really hard time and maybe you do too. It's like I had plans to see my friend, Michael Gunger, and he's a musician. And we just kept putting it off because he was holding up finishing an album and I was holding up finishing a script. So the part of my brain that's utilitarian was like, that's right, that script could potentially delight millions, and it will make you money, and it will make you important, and it will make you feel good. He's right. But finally, I saw Michael last night, and I'm in an incredible mood. You know

• 24:02Speaker 01

  what I mean? Like, it was such a, it didn't work. It didn't make me money. It didn't even, like, I can't even say it lowered my stress necessarily, but it probably did, actually, now that I say that. It was friendship. And that is something that I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to learn how to be a better friend, try to be a more embodied person, all these things that don't necessarily make like economic or power or sense, but that makes sense what we say in the heart. And even though I like to be a spiritual person, I really struggle, you know, with like, if it works, it's true. And that's just not how the world is. It's how capitalism is. It's how the United States is. But there are parts of the world that are

• 24:47Speaker 01

  just like, what? Like, they wouldn't, they wouldn't understand. Like, we're weird aliens that are just going around going like, well, if I write nine books, I can make all this cash. And they're like, but I'm going to give them a Dutch accent. But when do you feed the cats? You know what I mean? And you're like, you hire someone to feed the cats. They're like, but then you do not hear the purrs. You know, it's like, I need to learn to be more, that was German, but Dutch German fantasy person.

• 25:17Ryan Holiday?

  No, I think, I actually think one of the things you and I connected over is our somewhat strange parents. It sounds like they had a similar dynamic between the two of them and then between. You know, us and them and us and our siblings and so on and so forth. I, I find that place of the like, you know, that, that I'm special. This is a really hard thing. You don't know what it took to do this. Like you don't understand the economics, like this is a tight rope. To me, part of that logic, if one, I think it's ego, but if I try to place that ego, it's, it's very sort of misunderstood teenager, like kid who is special, but parents don't think is special or don't fully appreciate how special the kid is. And so it's like, oh, that makes complete sense.

• 26:02Ryan Holiday?

  That was my childhood. And so there's a, I, I'm curious. One of my favorite things that you've talked about is that Ram Dass quote where it's like, you think you're enlightened, go spend a weekend with your family. How, how, uh, how are you managing that? Cause I remember you telling me there was some, some stress was like February or something. You were, you were telling me you were going through something. I'm just sort of curious how you are.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, my parents are really, really tricky and difficult for me. My pro, my good boy programming, if you ever hear me talk about my parents on my podcast, I'm always very careful to be like, I love them. I, I'll say it a million times. They'll be talking about some traumatic story or some difficult misunderstanding. And I keep, my therapist used to call them pop ups, like those ads that used to pop up in the early days of the internet. Like they do these pop ups where I'm getting too close to a true emotion. So I better say like, I love them and they sure did everything they could. They did the best they could. So like, I'm just going to say it once, hopefully I love them. They did the best they could.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  And honestly, if this is helpful to you, Ryan, whenever I think of them now, because I'm trying to make a new neural pathway, I say, I forgive you every time I think of them and I get a bad, I'm faking it till I make it. I do forgive them, but I'm really trying to get like a deep, like you guys did everything you did and everything you're doing because you want love, because you were afraid, because you were confused or whatever it was, you know what I mean? Like I'm trying to give them the same benefit of the doubt that I give myself. When I make a mistake, I'm like, well, P, you were scared or you were confused or you were whatever, uh, you were doing your best. I'm trying to give that to them.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  So I really am working on that, so much so that whenever I think of them, I say sometimes out loud, like, I forgive you, I forgive you. And by the way, this sounds, this is a pop-up. It sounds like they did something horrible. This is pretty standard, non-abusive. It wasn't even verbally abusive. This is just like people that. This is like emotional issues shit. Yeah, that's right. And I say that not as a pop-up. I say that just so people know what we're talking about here. I'm talking about, whenever I introduce my parents to people, I say, just so you know, they're not people. That's like, it's the only, it's the, I've, you know, I've known them my whole life. It's the only phrase that I've found that is at all helpful in prepping someone to meet them. Because usually people are like,

• 28:32Speaker 01

  oh, give them a break, you know, you probably, you should try and find some common ground or this or that. I'm like, everything you're saying makes sense for people. I know what you're talking about. Like, kooky parents? That's not what we're dealing with. We're dealing with like, a species of human that I just haven't seen anywhere else. So, when you, something that you just said, this is where I would tell you that I love them. When we write, and when I create, so the forgiveness and my accepting and trying to turn the volume down on my drive are related. I got in a fight, it was not even, it was like a weird,

• 29:14Speaker 01

  horrible, like a bad play or something. We, I remember I ordered pizza, Val was out of town, so it was me and the baby. And I remember being like, oh, this is perfect. I can, I can sort of frankly, like, spare Val. Like, it's not always easy to hang out with my whole family. And I was like, she'll be with friends. I think she, I don't know if she was in New York or somewhere else, but she was out of town. I was like, that, that works. Part of me was like, that works. I'll, I'll deal with it. You know what I mean? Like, I got it. Terrible idea. After that visit, I was like, we need to do it together. She

• 29:53Speaker 01

  said, we need to do it together. And my whole life, I've had this, maybe people can relate. It's like, you gotta feed my family. Like, we're, we're sort of like, reverse gremlins. You, you have to feed us after midnight. You have to keep feeding us. Like, the best times we've had, and I figured this out, is like, go get ice cream. Like, when they come, go get ice cream. Everyone will be like sugar high, fat, comfortable. Um, we'll have something to do. When we get hungry, we're so bad and I'm so bad. And I ordered, this is obviously pre-quarantine. I ordered from a pizza place I've ordered from a thousand times. Uh, it took three hours. It never came.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Like, so we were starving. Blood sugar was so low. It was just me, my mom, my dad and my baby. And I got real mother bear. The energy started to feel like it felt when I was growing up. I did, I, I couldn't even believe what a David Lynchian nightmare it was. That like voices were starting to get raised and like the, the frequency that only they can create. And frankly, only the three of us can create. Like I'm participating in this. I'm, I'm, I'm something to them. They're something to me and it's just creating this thick, horrible, shadowy nightmare of tension.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  And we're so hungry. And I had, I have on my mantelpiece, there's a, a, a little statue I have of Christ meditating, which I just thought was fun. So I got a little Jesus who's meditating. And then next to him is a Hanuman. Hanuman is sort of the Jesus of Hinduism, meaning he's, he's not the son of God, but he's similar. He's sort of like God's faithful servant. I just like both of those stories and they're in similar positions. So I put them back to back, almost just like action figures. It's not like super thoughtful. I, I mean, I like both of them, but I'm not like, isn't this perfect? I mean, do you get it? You know, it's not like, like fan fiction. It's just like, I like the way these look and I like what they make me think of.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  And, and frankly, they are, you know, seen from the rational mind. These are opposing religions. Seen from the heart, you go, these are exactly the same thing. How beautiful to put them together. It's literally what the mystics would call third way thinking. Uh, it's not exclusionary. It's, it's inclusive. It's, it doesn't make literal sense. It's, it's mythical. It's, it's something special. It, does that make sense? It's, it's like, it's putting two things that don't make sense together, together. And somehow they make sense and you can't quite, you couldn't even articulate it. So my mom. Who raised me evangelical and we really bonded over that was like, and I'm so hungry

• 32:50Speaker 01

  and I'm holding the baby and it's now at 7:30, which is the baby's bedtime and they're still there. You know what I'm saying? Like they should have. One of the things, and I would say this if they were in the room, not that they'll ever hear this, but it's just like, they don't have that like, oh, okay. Well, the pizza's not, here's my fantasy. Peter, we're so happy to see you. Thank you for having us over. Obviously, it's the baby's bedtime. It stinks that the pizza didn't come. We're gonna go. You know what I mean? We love you. This is clearly stressful. I'm sorry it didn't work out, but we got three hours together. We're gonna go. Good night to

• 33:32Speaker 01

  the baby. I hope you do okay with the baby. Good night. But instead, they're just sort of like waiting to be fed. I made a joke on, I forget if it was Colbert or Corden or one of them, whereas like they said, are your parents helpful with the baby? And I'm like, no, it's like three babies. I just have three, three things I have to feed. So my mom, at the worst moment, the baby is starting to like, need to go to bed. I'm feeling very protective of the baby and we're all starving and I'm basically a baby, holding a baby at this point because they've made me revert to my child self, which is a very scared, small version of myself. It

• 34:16Speaker 01

  doesn't even make sense that I'm holding this baby. Like if we shot this as a movie, it should be a 12-year-old holding a baby. Like, that's what it should be. And without getting any more into it, I could talk about this night for a million years. My mom starts grilling me about the Jesus and the Hanuman.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Yikes. And I'm just like, it's, I know, isn't this the worst story? This is like, one of the worst nights of my life, for sure. And that, what a great thing that it's just psychological trauma, but it, my shit is my shit, and this is my shit. So she just goes, I just don't understand, like, how do these make sense? And I thought I was being loving. I really tried my best. I said, it's okay to me that it doesn't make sense to you. That's what I said. Yeah, sure. I was like, that's, it's not important to me that you get that and that you like it. And I really meant it. I thought I was really being very zen about it. I was like, she was like, but it doesn't make sense to me. I was like, that's okay with me.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Like, that's all right. Like, instead of walking you through the seven hour lecture of like, why I can appreciate the two faiths at the same time, I'm just gonna say, I was trying to be loving. I was like, that's okay. Like, I don't need you to be me, basically, is what I was trying to say. I don't need you to believe what I believe. I don't need you to think how I think. If that's confusing to you, that's okay. But the, the, the, the real rub of this, by the way, Ryan, is, is that I've explained and talked about those things to my mom a million times. The thing that's so frustrating about my mom is that we've had these moments of, of

• 36:05Speaker 01

  two-person enlightenment. I'll send her a Richard Rohr CD and, and we talk, and there she is. I, I mean, like, the real her. Like, not, not neuroses, not fear, but like, we meet as souls and we're there together, and it's like the clouds part, and we're both free together. We've dropped the role of son and mother. We're just two pieces of the mystery and we can breathe fresh air together. And it's been so wonderful. It happened when I sent her Rob Bell's book, Love Wins. The punchline of that is then I took her to meet Rob and the first thing she Said to Rob was, I loved your book, but it's not biblical.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  I mean, like, she just went away.

• 36:51Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Like, the mom that I, maybe you've had experiences like that. The converted mom, the free mom, always kind of gets sucked back in by her, I don't know what it is, by her fear, by her church friends, by her community. What I, I happen to think it might be her, her fear. But she goes away. So the next time I talk to her, there's no continuation. It's not like, well, we made it to that rung of the ladder last time. So next time we talk, even if it's two, three days later, we should still be on that rung, right?

• 37:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you want to build and you're, you're sort of craving a connection and you're having expectations. And then it's like Groundhog Day.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  It's, it's beyond Groundhog Day because not only, let's say, when we talked, she was on rung three, and then we got to rung six. Oh, my God, how the, how did we get to rung six? We're having like a real conversation about a loving presence and, and, and grace and mercy and everything being okay. That, that's what, like a lot of enlightenment, you can say, you feel one with everything, right? Uh, uh, an easier way to say that is, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt, which I believe is Vonnegut, or just everything is okay. I'm okay, you're okay, the world is okay, everything is forgiven, including reality itself, is forgiven for being as horrible as it can be.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  We are forgiven, everything, and we're just in the moment and everything's in sunlight and it's great. But then the next time you talk, you go from six, now you're on, you're on the ground. You're not even on the ladder. Like, you go lower than you were the last time you talked and got to six. Now you're on rung zero. And so there's that pain. And as I'm talking about that, you're helping me get in touch with how much that hurts me. It's, it's not that I don't like explaining to my mom how I've grown. But you have to keep in mind, this is the mom that comes over and I have a Buddha in my garden. She knocked it over. She went over and toppled it. The first time she came over, she toppled it.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  And she was kind of half kidding, but she said, I cast you out in the name of Jesus. And she pushed Buddha onto his face. Like, and I'm just like, no, why do you like this? What is it about Buddhism that you like? It was just. So like, I've tried, and in my mind, there have been moments where I'm not even gonna say I did the impossible. It really did feel like a moment of grace, like something happened where we both opened, just like, you know, a flower doesn't open itself. The sunlight opens the flower, gives the prompt to open the flower. So the sunlight opened us both. But then, like I said,

• 39:37Speaker 01

  it always reverts. So she's asking me about Hanuman and Christ. And buddy, this goes back to exactly what we were talking about, and forgive me, I've been talking so much. But in that moment, I felt so hurt. I remembered that I wrote a book about it.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  And Ryan, I hope this is of some use to you, because this was a breakthrough for me, just like all the great moments of suffering afterwards are these great moments. I realized how much me writing books, writing TV shows, I just had the episodes of The Simpsons air that I wrote, so much of what I'm doing is trying to get my parents to understand who I really am. So it's not even just religion. That happens to be this area that we disagree on. But like, that's, that's when I kind of snapped. And when I say snapped, I mean that in a very WASPy way. We're, meaning,

• 40:39Speaker 01

  we're not like a, we're not colorful people. We're not having like a screaming match. Maybe it would be healthier if we did. But my heart just broke when I thought, I wrote a book about it. And she read it. And I realized in that moment, it doesn't work. So we're back.

• 41:00Ryan Holiday?

  This is never gonna happen.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  We're back to surrender. Weren't we saying just 10 minutes ago, I was like, surrender is a huge part of it. So is suffering is a huge part of it. And in that moment, I really had my nose rubbed in it, just how badly I need both of those. Like, fucking stop it. Don't write a book so your parents will read it and go, there you are, Peter. Like, fucking hook. There you are. I see you now. There i- i- it's sad, but like whether or not they ever update the file on 15 year old me, 14 year old me, and see me as 41 year old, this, that,

• 41:41Speaker 01

  and the other, that is so out of my control. And brain science is not in my favor when it comes to the neuroplasticity of minds as we age. Like, there comes a time to go like, you know what? I have a, I have a post-it on my desk here that says, because joy matters. You're a big why guy. Like, why do we do things? I'm trying to do things now for a more pure reason. What, what would happen if we didn't do it for money? If we didn't do it for power? If we didn't do it to get our parents to understand us? What if we did it because joy matters? Like, your joy and me sharing truth and joy and light and what's helped me with

• 42:25Speaker 01

  you, and if that lights your candle, that's a beautiful thing. We can get some, some real shit going instead of playing this. There's, I'm sorry, I'm really ranting here, but Eckhart Tolle has this great thing. Eckhart Tolle is one of my great teachers. Obviously, The Power of Now is, is one of the greatest books ever written. If the people listening, read one book, don't read mine, read The Power of Now, absolutely, hands down, that's not false humility. He says in it something like, people say, I need my parents to understand me, to be happy. And he goes, really? He just, like, he says, really? Almost like Seinfeld or something. It's like, you need your parents to understand you to be happy? Like, what are

• 43:10Speaker 01

  we doing? Like, wake up from the dream. You do not need that. That is, that is something that you've come to believe that you need, when really, the surrender and the suffering can take you in and drop your anchor into the perfect present, where that story is irrelevant to your general contentment. But that, I hope that answers your question. That is the kind of torment I can experience with my hungry parents.

• 43:40Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, I totally get it. And I weirdly, I wonder how much of what's been happening is sort of have sort of brings it all into stark relief. But I had a sort of similar breakthrough. It was like, man, I thought I was doing this stuff because I was good at it. I thought I was doing it because I loved it. And I both those things are true. But there's the third thing, which is how convenient it is that I also ended up being a thing that if logic was true, and if people were rational, would perfectly align me with what I should need to impress my parents.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:19Ryan Holiday?

  And get get them to love me and get them to treat me with respect and.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:24Ryan Holiday?

  You know.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Can you imagine if your parents treated you how I do? When I'm just like, oh, my God, you wrote all these books and like, I read them and I understand them. And like, how do you do it? Like, it's just, it's all of us. It's our sad little fantasy.

• 44:37Ryan Holiday?

  It would be, it would be hilarious if it wasn't so heartbreaking.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  I know.

• 44:46Ryan Holiday?

  Tender and sad. And, and, and so you sort of come to this conclusion, oh, wait, you're trying, you're, you're trying to earn something that was never yours. There's a, there's a David Brooks quote that I heard that that doesn't line up perfectly, but it sort of similarly expresses the hopelessness of that. He said, you know, like, God is, God is giving us a gift and we try to buy it. And, and I think it's like, you're trying to earn this thing that you should have had from birth. That's sort of painful in my situation because like, it appears to me that my parents have it with other people, including other siblings of mine, which, you know, could be a projection. But the point is, you, you come to this sort of rock bottom moment where you realize you're never going to get it.

• 45:30Ryan Holiday?

  And then I think what that leaves you, if it's this distinction as the Stoics make between what's in our control, what's not in our control, then it's like, how do you just not pass this on to the other, to another generation?

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:42Ryan Holiday?

  And, and I, there's the, in the Judd Apatow thing about Gary Shandling, and I love your interview with him, you know, he has, he wrote in his diary, he said, you know, sort of, you have to give what you, what you didn't get. He says, drop the old story.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:56Ryan Holiday?

  So I'm curious, how are you thinking about this as a father now, not doing what was so transparently done to you?

• 46:04Speaker 01

  I mean, that is the real gift of it. And, and, and I'm going to say it one more time. I really do love my parents.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  One per rant, I'll say. And they really did, and are doing their best. And, and every once in a while, I catch themselves growing. That, that being said, the gift of the dysfunction is that it showed me where to zag. You know, they're zigging and, and we're going to zag. And like, my fantasies for my daughter, I have so many fantasies of how to love her as abundantly and as non-unconditionally as possible. And I don't think that would happen unless I had exactly the precise traumas or experiences that I had. Something that

• 46:57Speaker 01

  you were saying, that I, only during the quarantine have I gotten in touch with, is that there's a part of me that loves performing, right? I call it my silly side, because it's the effortless side. I love being silly. There's no part of me that is like, why are you asking me to be silly? I feel the same way about being deep or thoughtful. Like, I like those things. Those are natural and, and good for me. But performing, like turning it on, when you don't feel like doing it, is what I did my whole life.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  And when you bring in, like, I was talking to Mike Birbiglia about this. It's like, there's something kind of beautiful about this and there's something kind of sad about it. Alcohol was a part of my childhood and learning to control tense situations by making people laugh is how I survived my childhood. And again, nothing physical, nothing overtly abusive. I'm just saying, two parents that didn't necessarily like each other, alcohol is involved and you're a confused kid. So there's this part of me that I really have been trying to get in touch with. That's like, there's a part that resents having to perform, even though it's what I do. And it's what I've tried really hard to do.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  I remember even being a kid, I'd go to kids' birthday parties and the first time I mashed my face into the cake and ice cream and got a big laugh. I remember that making me feel good. And then I remember the second time I was at a birthday party and I did it and it made me feel good. And then the third time the kids like expected me to do it. And I, I don't remember much from my childhood, but I remember very distinctly going like, now I have to do this?

• 48:44Speaker 01

  So there's, I'm trying to like uncover some of these cobwebs. And I think my best work is going to lie in me getting in touch with the part of me that really loves it. It's doing it because I love it, not doing it to reenact and recreate the, so nightclub is drunk people, you know, that outnumber me. Hostility. And I will go up and I will win them over. What part of that is just a fucked up old record? The same script that I'm playing out over and over going, well, I don't have to have dinner with my parents anymore, but I'll do late Friday at Hilarities. You know what I mean?

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Can we strip some of that away to just be a more liberated performer, a more pure, I do this, like my post-it, because joy matters, because pain is real, because disconnection is real, because despair is real, let's get together and create something positive, instead of just what I've done so much in my career going, well, that felt good, that works, so it must be true. That doesn't mean it's true, just because you've become an addict, an affirmation addict, and a power addict. When I say power, by the way, I don't mean I use my fame to get into restaurants, I just mean the feeling of superiority, which is way more dangerous, subtle, and toxic to any sort of-

• 50:11Ryan Holiday?

  We're not being bossed around. Like, I have this intense reaction against, like, what I project to be like, middle-aged men having control over what I can and can't do, which is so, almost Freudianly preposterous.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  I completely agree. We had a homeless guy living on our street for a really long time, who was just yelling, "Fuck!", and it was just a male voice that was bleeding into my house, and I was like, "Why doesn't this bother Valerie as much as it bothers me? Hey dipshit, Dr. Freud could fix this in five seconds!". It's a male voice invading your home, like, it's different for you, and you need to have some compassion for yourself in that situation. But anyway, I mean, when I think about Leela, my fantasy today was, I was like, "Well, if we do somehow, you know, get some houses and have friends, you

• 51:08Speaker 01

  know, like a little commune, like a little bit of a collective, and we just get to a place where our life is simple enough that we don't have to fly around and do all this and that, and we can do things that we love, like the podcast, and write books, and write scripts, but like, mostly, we just chop wood and carry water." My fantasy would be saying to Leela, "You don't have to ever get a job. Who says you have to get a job?". And you know what I learned that was Rob, Rob Bell, um, his son is actually incredibly high functioning now. There was a time when he seemed a little unmotivated. I don't want to get into their business and I'm not. But there was a time when I remember asking Rob,

• 51:53Speaker 01

  I don't know why I thought of this, but his, his, his son sort of reminded me of my brother. And my brother is not, he's not like a go out and kick ass, take names, make a billion dollars. He's, he's a beautiful, a little bit more simple guy, you know? And I said to my, I don't mean intellectually simple. I just mean he's not a capitalist whore. Um, and I said to Rob, I was like, what happens if, if your son just wants to live with you? Like he doesn't want to go to college. He doesn't want to do this. And he's like, he's welcome to stay as long as he wants. He goes, that would be a dream if he just wants to stay. And it just broke my heart in a beautiful way where I was like, you

• 52:36Speaker 01

  can love your kids like that? You can say, if you want to stay here, my family would be like, that's embarrassing. You are a failure. Therefore I am a failure. What will people think? What will people say? You're not contributing. You're not making a product to sell. You're not making money to buy other people's products. How are you an American? Is basically what we're saying. So I had this fantasy today, and I know Val feels the same way. I'm like, and, and by virtue of this, by the way, if our attitude is you don't have to do anything, chances are they're gonna thrive in that rich, beautiful soil,

• 53:17Speaker 01

  find what they actually want to do and do it with no fear, with just like, I do what I do because it's what I want to do. It's what's written on the marrow of my bones. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna dance. I'm gonna, she could, she could do whatever she wanted. And I mean that, like, things that are not exactly my values, meaning like an athlete, or a general, or something, you know what I'm saying? Like things that aren't in my experience. We just want to look at Leela. As something we're gardening, we protect it, we shine light on it. But this whole trip of like, her success is my success. How many movies where the dad freaking out at the Little League game do we need to see?

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Like, and fuck movies, how many times did we see that? You know, naming our children our names is like, it's one of the weirdest. My, my brother is my father's name, the third. It's like, it's so transparent and I'm, I'm just like, I'm grateful that I have Rob in my life. These examples of these unconditionally loving parents, who by the way, the son that I'm talking about, couldn't be more impressive and, and more achieving. There was just a, there was a pocket there where he was like, I don't know if I want to go to school. He did go to school and he killed it. And now, who knows? I'm like, this kid could be president. I mean that, I'm like, this kid could be the president.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  And it came from, you know, we love you, you're good.

• 54:50Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's kind of, it's, it's ironic that it's sort of a generation that grew up watching Mr. Rogers, never actually got from our parents that idea, which of like, you make the world special by being you. You, I like you the way you are. You don't actually have to earn this. You have intrinsic sort of dignity and value as a human being. And like, I feel cheesy and weird every time I say that to my son. But I feel like it needs to be said, I feel like in saying it to him, I'm not only telling him something, but I'm also telling myself something.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:27Ryan Holiday?

  And, and it's still a weird, I can tell it needs to be said because it's weird coming out of my mouth. Because I never would have heard anything like that from my parents.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  It just didn't make sense. So to get into the forgiveness, my father and mother grew up in very different circumstances. They had a lot more to overcome. You know, there was a lot scarier of a landscape. I won't get into, get into it, but they did what they did because it's what they needed to do. And they needed to steel themselves. They wanted to be like, you know, fucking John Wayne or whatever it is, and get themselves to a better place. And they did that. So that's the forgiveness and that's the love and that's the acceptance. I think, because I'm watching Mr. Rogers with my daughter now, I think there's a real opportunity here that this generation, the generation that was raised with Mr. Rogers by people who didn't agree with Mr. Rogers,

• 56:21Speaker 01

  are now people who agree with Mr. Rogers, raising children on Mr. Rogers. Like, he, he may not have known it, but this might be the heyday of Mr. Rogers. Cause you see the movies and the documentaries, there's this resurgence of interest in Mr. Rogers. And no joke, people without kids, throw on some Mr. Rogers. It's on Amazon Prime. You can watch it. And I watch it with my daughter. She gets up and goes to the kitchen or something. I keep watching it. I love it. And he is so fucking right on when it comes to my understanding of God and the universe, where he's saying, wake up.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  You said the thing about we're trying to buy, God's giving us a gift and we're trying to buy it. The story that I love is the beggar that's sitting on the box and, and someone finally says, what's in the box? And the beggar says, I've never looked in it. He looks in it and it's filled with gold. There's countless stories of this that are pointing to people's inherent, God given, you could say, although that might turn people off. But your dignity, you're born not an outsider to this reality that needs to earn his or her worth, but you are an intrinsic and valuable and dignified part of this, of everything that is, of the infinite mystery that hung the stars and set the universe in motion.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  You are a piece of it. And that is that. That is it. The rest, that's what Leela means, is a dance. Leela means the dance of the universe. Meaning it's just a game. When we're at our best, we should be writing books and doing shows and selling TV shows or whatever it is, knowing that it's just play. It's a dance. It's what the universe is doing to... Dream, basically. What would it be like to be an author in Austin, whose parents seem to like his siblings or appreciate them more? That's your dance and you dance it. But everything that you think you need to earn is already here.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  But that sounds like lip service until you actually have an experiential becoming. It's something that you can't know. You can only become it. But I've done that lots and lots and lots and lots of times. It sounds like I'm talking about drugs. There's been drug times and there's been a lot of non-drug times. I had one this morning when I was meditating. You just go, Richie Rohr says, when you're present, you will know the presence. And the presence, which we call, some call it Hanuman, some call it Christ. I got both. It doesn't matter what you call it. It's what's looking at your eyes right now. And your involvement to that mystery that we call consciousness is the full thing, signed, sealed, delivered. It's done.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  The rest is just Leela. The rest is just dance.

• 59:19Ryan Holiday?

  That's so beautiful. I was thinking, because unfortunately, we can't do Pete Holmes level length here and just be getting through the first third of the episode. I had, but I do want to continue the therapy session. So I had a question and I'm sure this can go as long as you want it to go. But I'm curious. So I'm fascinated by your career. I think you and I are sort of related because we're in similar places. Career wise.

• 59:51Ryan Holiday?

  And I've experienced this with a few people that I've known. Although authors, this sort of success and quantification of the success of an author is a little bit more private. But I'm fascinated with your relationship with John Mulaney. You know, you guys sort of started at the same time. You're both hilarious. You both had, you know, you've had a slow build in both of your careers. And then one of the careers sort of just takes off stratospherically. You know, he's probably the, one of the most famous and successful comedians in the world right now. How do you, given the pattern that you learned from your parents, given the duality that you have inside yourself? How do you? How do you deal with that?

• 1:00:36Ryan Holiday?

  Because it's something I struggle with. There's part of me that's happy for some, for people. There's part of me that says, you know what I mean? Like, you have this weird, it touches all the buttons that we're talking about. And, and I think it's, it's, it's a timeless issue. You know, we're talking about it here and as authors or, or, or comedians. But like, I've got to imagine, you know, generals were jockeying about this 2000 years ago. And, you know, Seneca was comparing himself to other published philosophers. Like, it is a timeless thing.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:12Ryan Holiday?

  That we're not able to enjoy. Yeah, yeah, we're not able to enjoy absolute success. We, our success matters to us only relative to how other people around us are doing.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, I hear that. I actually just wrote down last night, because I said it, Michael Gunger was over and he's such a great laugher. And Val laughs at me constantly, but I sort of joked to her, I was like, poor Val is stuck with me. Like, I love being silly. She loves being silly. This is not code for my wife can't stand me. That is, it's quite the opposite. I assure you, we love each other. But having a fresh person in the audience, he was laughing so much. I was like, oh, right. Like, if you're not constantly with me, I guess I am sort of a novel guy. Like, I say funny things. I forgot. So, one of the things that I said that I wrote down, I was like, it's hard for me to go on Netflix because it's sort of like my Facebook.

• 1:02:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, yes. That's exactly what I'm talking about.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Ryan Holiday?

  Which is actually why I had to quit, I had to quit Facebook professionally was all the people that I knew.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Ryan Holiday?

  And I was in, you know, groups for public speakers and authors. And it was like, I'm, I'm just waking up and my, you know, keeping up with the Joneses is what car is in your neighbor's driveway? But, but, you know, if you don't actually care about that, what you care about is how you're doing in your career. Yeah, Netflix would be a rude reminder of that, or Twitter is a rude reminder of that. It's just like, I'm sure for, for some people, it's, you know, the front page of the New York Times or, you know, whatever. For Trump, he wakes up and he's like, why is someone else the lead story on CNN and not me?

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  That's right. I, I, nothing is gained by not being honest. I'm trying to be more honest about my darkness. And when I go on Twitter, I'm not, I guess this is what I should say as a caveat, so I don't come off as a scumbag, but I'm not proud of this. I catch myself, when I see somebody who's less successful than me, my brain will immediately give a one-line summation as to why. It'll be, they're an alcoholic, or, it'll be so stupid, it'll be, well, they're really into sports, and you can't be really into sports and also really into comedy. It's one or the other.

• 1:03:32Ryan Holiday?

  These are dad judgments, right? These are things you probably would have heard your dad say offhandedly to dismiss people.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  What it is, is it's dad binary thinking. It's toxic, capitalist. There's this Leo Colom, a cartoonist for The New Yorker, the late, great Leo Colom, he's one of my favorites. He had this cartoon, maybe people have seen, it's these dogs and they're in a board meeting, they're wearing suits. And it says, "It's not enough that dogs win, cats must also fail."

• 1:03:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  And I was like, that is the best encapsulation of what I'm talking about here. And it's a part of what I'm going to call my false self. It's a part of my psychology. It's a part of my conditioning. I don't own it, and I work on quieting it. Meaning now, I go through Twitter and I literally practice loving kindness. I see people and their names, and I send them positive, not to change them, to change me. I'm trying to change me. I'm trying to really get a new groove going. Richard Roy says, "Everything you do is practice. People don't want to practice, they don't want to meditate, they don't want to do that." That's a practice. Going through someone else's Twitter, going through your own Twitter and being like, "This sucks, this guy sucks, this person sucks, that's why they're failing."

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Or, if I see somebody that's more successful than me, I'll click on them to see if they follow me. Like, what the fuck am I doing?

• 1:04:52Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  Like, this is not natural. It's not good, it's not right.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  So when you, to answer your, your John Mulaney question, I do sometimes catch myself. There's a part of me that when I see his face, all the specials or the sack lunch bunch, or all these things seem to be coming out, he's hosting SNL for the third time. I'm very happy to say that it's not, I was talking to another friend of mine. I realized that it wasn't my goal, I don't think my true goal, to be the biggest. I really think that you need to really, really want that. And you also really need to have the talent.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  John is just one of those guys that you talk to him for five minutes and everything he says, you say, is that a bit? Like, you should do that. You like, write that down. Like, he just talks in bits. I don't want to compare and contrast our lives too much, but I wouldn't trade it. And that's not lip service. Because what we're talking about, this whole conversation has been about, like, what are we learning from the quarantine? What's really valuable to us? And when I think about Michael Gunger coming over last night, I'm like, that filled me up in a way that me ringing the success bell again, I can't speak for John,

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  but I'm saying that that gets a little bit old. You know, like, I, I don't know. I think about other people like Dane Cook selling out Madison Square Garden or Chappelle. And like, Chappelle's a good example because he bought that farm in North Carolina. He called it his fuck show business farm. You can see it on his episode of 60 Minutes. And at a certain point, a lot of us start to realize that the game that we were sold, you know, the ladder was against the wrong wall. We've been climbing it because it's what we were told to climb. It's, everything was a game. Even, I, I was talking to somebody recently about how even a guy having sex is called scoring. Like, everything is, I got lucky and I scored and I closed the deal.

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  Everything's a deal. Everything's getting something for you. And again, I'm not saying that of Dane or John. I'm just saying, and in my...

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Forty-one years, I'm starting to see, thank God, by the grace of God, we could even say, I'm starting to see that there's a far more beautiful or more subtle game going on. And the part of me that's scrolling through Twitter and judging everybody, he needs to go. You know, like, that's why you replace him with something else. Like, we're grateful to my ego for helping me get food, shelter, and savings. But at a certain point, you go, buddy, you don't have to leave, but I'm asking you to either A, not steer the car, or B, be quiet. Just be quiet. Like, I love you, but you can't, you can't steer the ship anymore.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Like, your way, my, okay, here's, here's a great example. My favorite movies used to be There Will Be Blood. I love the movie Drive. These are all movies about quiet, successful men. Meaning, whatever they do, they do it better than anybody. Ryan Gosling is a little less clear, but he drives and kills people better than anybody. There Will Be Blood, obviously, is a story of an ego left unregulated. And what happens to them? They're in a mansion. It's the, all the story, it's vampires. You're in a mansion, alone. Your son isn't your son. No one cares about you. You have, there's a great line, actually, in The Avengers,

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  where Doctor Strange burns Tony Stark. He says, unlike, unlike everyone else in your life, I don't work for you. Which I, I just thought was a great line. I was like, that's, that's the American model, is you become a person who your friends are your gardener and your assistant. It's like, completely unnatural. And you end up alone. And I'm a big believer that on our deathbeds, we're not gonna say, I wrote this many books, in your case, or I had this many specials, in my case. I don't think that's what it's gonna be. And the, the whole message of spirituality in a deeper way is to die before you die, is to have that realization and that revelation,

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  or to use Christian language, to have that conversion before you die. This is what Christ is saying when he's saying, if you want to find your life, you have to lose it. He's talking about ego death. It sounds so new agey. But he also says, the, the, the, I guess it's the grain of wheat. Doesn't become anything unless it breaks its shell, unless it dies. And then it becomes a stalk. It grows. You see it in the seed. The seed has to die and be buried. We're surrounded by metaphors. For us, I don't think that's a flaw. This is how energy moves in reality. And you are a part of this reality.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  And you, like the grain of wheat and like the seed, need to die, need to be converted. Like a butterfly, you need to go away. Butter, as Ram Dass says, butterfly-ness cannot occur until you let go of caterpillar-ness. And that is me going, it's not my bank account. It's not my achievements. Mr. Rogers was right. It's not even whether or not I was good or bad or this or that. It's letting that stuff go, realizing that it's an illusion, that it's a story, that it's a series of synapses firing in my brain. And the true reality isn't the slide. It's the light that's shining through the slide.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  That's, that's your true identity. That's who you are. And that's where peace is. That's where equanimity is. That's where joy is. Not just on your deathbed, which is where a lot of people put it off to. And a lot of them don't even get it. Have it now. Drop it now. Realize it's lela now and, and step into your true self.

• 1:11:14Ryan Holiday?

  Have you read What Makes Sammy Run, the novel?

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:11:18Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, you gotta read it. It's like the quintessential Hollywood novel. It's written in the twenties about this sort of Ari Gold type, like ambitious, like start at the bottom, ends up running the studio. And it's, it's one of the most influential books I've ever read. It's one of my favorite novels. But basically, to spoil the ending, there's this scene. And so basically, you sort of watch Sammy's rise from like a, an errand boy at a newspaper to the, to basically like the head of MGM or something like that. And it's sort of observed by this older, like in this analogy, it'd be more like me and you, successful, but not the, the main guy, the guy who can't quite figure out why it's never Happening for him guy.

• 1:12:02Ryan Holiday?

  And and or not happening to the same degree, sort of watching Sammy's rise with a mix of fascination and horror. And the the big scene is, you know, Sammy gets married and the day, the night of his, uh, after he gets married, he calls this guy to his house. And it's like, he's already found out that his wife hates him, you know, his life. Anyways, the the scene, this, that's one of my favorite paragraphs in all of literature. He goes, you know, I've been waiting my whole, this whole time, he says, for a cancer to sort of rise up and smite Sammy down and to punish him for his excesses and his dishonesty and all these things. And then he's like, and it was in this moment, I realized that being Sammy was the cancer.

• 1:12:46Ryan Holiday?

  And that he, he wouldn't have been able, like, basically, he realizes that this thing that you think maybe isn't fair is in its own way. It's sort of form of an eternal endless punishment because Sammy can never change, nor does Sammy have the realization to, to know that his lack of changing is what's making him unhappy. And I, I think back to this all the time. I think, I think you would love it.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  That's great. I mean, we're back to surrender.

• 1:13:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  I mean, most of the major religions that I've studied all have the idea that it happens to you. You can't do it. It's so unsatisfying to the ego that wants to buy it, that wants to achieve it. And I, of course, have been guilty of this in the past, but you have to realize that you already, you are made of enlightenment itself. Like this, and everything that's in the way is, is, if you want to say that's the problem, but that's stopping you from perceiving it. That's the reason I wanted to write my book and the thing that I'm most proud of in my book is that I say, there's nothing you can do to increase or decrease the infinite love of God or the mystery or the universe.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  There's only things you can do that increase or decrease your awareness of that love or your experience of that love. So everybody, you know, any good Buddhist koan is basically trying to point you to the idea that there's nothing you can do. Yet there is, as Ram Dass would say, but get to it. You know, it's, it's like a paradox. It doesn't make any sense, but that's sort of the fun of it.

• 1:14:21Ryan Holiday?

  No, I love it, man. Thanks so much.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. I'm sorry it took so long to finally sit down and do it.

• 1:14:28Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, this is the best.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

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