Pod Insights 10% Happier with Dan Harris From Proxy: Mic Chooses the Wrong Life About this episode We're excited to share with you an episode of the new podcast Proxy, produced by Yowei Shaw. Today: the case of Mic, who feels like he defied his fate and now has no purpose in life. For her new podcast Proxy, Yowei Shaw finds someone uniquely able to help Mic break out of his regret loop. Proxy https://www.proxypodcast.com/ is a show that investigates niche emotional conundrums through conversations with strangers who have relevant experience. New cases every other Tuesday. You can binge episodes now in the Proxy feed https://pod.link/1746433334.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Dan Harris? It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:18 Dan Harris? Hey, everybody. As many of you know, I've been deeply interested in recent years by the practice of self-compassion, which sounds a little treacly, but actually, in my experience, is life-changing. There's a ton of scientific research to back this up. And one of the principal practices of self-compassion, developed by the great Kristin Neff, the researcher who pioneered the concept of self-compassion and then led much of the research into it, one of the primary practices is called the mindful self-compassion break. And the first step is to just wake up to the fact that you're suffering in some way or kicking your own ass. So, the first step is mindfulness. The second step, I'm going to hold for a second because it relates to everything else I'm going to say. The third step is to talk
1:02 Dan Harris? to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend, which is incredibly impactful. But back to the second step. The second step is something called common humanity. Just bringing to mind that whatever you're dealing with right now, no matter how bespoke, or odd, or idiosyncratic your issue is right now, there are millions of other people, odds are, who are dealing with the same thing at this very moment. So, it's that second piece of the mindful self-compassion break, this thing that Kristin Neff calls common humanity, that is at the heart of a new podcast that I want to introduce you to today. Here's the concept. If you've ever been in a situation where you have a problem, and you have this
1:45 Dan Harris? feeling that you're alone in the problem, that nobody else can relate, and that you wish you could talk to one person who really, really understands it from the inside. So, what if, in that situation, you had your own personal investigative journalist who would scour the world for the perfect stranger with just the right experience for you to talk to? I would have loved it back in 2004 if there was somebody else who could have talked to me about what it was like to have a coke-fueled panic attack on national television. But, anyway... Back to this podcast, I want to introduce you to, it's called Proxy, and it provides exactly the service I was just describing. It's hosted by Yowei Shaw, who you may remember as one of the hosts of the NPR podcast,
2:27 Dan Harris? Invisibilia, which was super, super popular, but sadly went away. Yowei is back, and on this new show, Proxy, Yowei investigates your niche emotional conundrums and puts you into conversation with a proxy, a stranger who's been in nearly the exact same situation, or has some expertise and can hopefully help you get unstuck. Yowei calls it emotional investigative journalism, a term I've never heard before, but I really like it. So that's what we're going to do for you today. We're going to bring you an episode of said emotional investigative journalism from Proxy, before we play you the episode of Proxy. I do want to tell you about something I'm doing over on danharis.com. All week at 4:00 PM Eastern, I'm going to be doing live guided meditations where I
3:09 Dan Harris? focus on specific forms of meditation that were designed by the Buddha as an antidote to anxiety. As you may know, there are four related meditation practices that are collectively known as the Brahma Viharas, or divine abodes. Not my preferred branding, but really, I found these styles of practice to be immensely helpful in my own life, and you can think of these four interrelated flavors of meditation as a way to take it easier on yourself and more skillfully navigate the world. These styles of meditation have stood the test of time, having been practiced for 2,600 years, and are increasingly being validated by modern science, which suggests these practices
3:51 Dan Harris? can have psychological, physiological, and even behavioral benefits. So again, I'll be doing live guided meditations all week over at danharis.com. Like any good drug dealer, I give you the first dose for free, meaning Monday's session is open to everybody, and then the rest of the week is really just for paid subscribers, so you know what to do. Again, head on over to Dan Harris and get all the details. All right, enough out of me. Let's check out a new episode of this new show from Yowei Shaw. It's called Proxy. Check it out.
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5:27 Speaker 04 Hello?
5:29 Speaker 01 Hey, Badragal Podcast spouse.
5:32 Speaker 01 What was your favorite thing about mixing this week's episode?
5:37 Speaker 04 Oh, my favorite part was that your PCOPS are way more under control.
5:42 Speaker 01 I guess I finally learned as an audio professional to not talk directly into the microphone.
5:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
5:49 Speaker 01 Did you learn anything that you're gonna put into practice?
6:02 Speaker 04 I don't know that I necessarily learned something that I could sum up in a single sentence, but it definitely...
6:10 Speaker 01 We're trying to sell the show here, Kyle.
6:12 Speaker 04 Oh, you didn't let me finish. Yeah, I said nothing I could sum up in one sentence because I'm tired because I was up till midnight mixing this fucking thing.
6:33 Speaker 01 This is Proxy. And I'm Yowei Shaw, your emotional investigative journalist. Today, the case of the man filled with regret for the life that got away. That's after the break.
7:15 Speaker 01 So there's this stereotype about Asians. The stereotype goes, Asian immigrant parent wants kid to be doctor or lawyer, while kid wants to do something that won't make money and won't bring honor to the family. Something shameful, like podcasting.
7:37 Speaker 01 My parents immigrated to the US from Taiwan in the 70s. And I assure you, they are complex, multi-dimensional people. My mom loves to wear crop tops. My dad loves to talk about how hot my mom is. But this is one stereotype they did get informed to. Unfortunately, I was terrible at math and was still calling my dad to do my homework by the time I got to college. I also have a terrible memory and would never have passed the bar exam. No, I decided to follow my heart and pursue my passion of long-form audio journalism, only to now read articles every week titled, "Has the Podcast Bubble Finally Burst?" But still, no regrets.
8:20 Speaker 01 I never, ever think about being a lawyer or doctor. The regret that I mostly hear around this is from people like my dad, who was a doctor but really wanted to be an artist. Which is why I was really surprised to hear from an Asian with a version of the story I'd never heard before.
8:40 Speaker 05 Are you gonna use video? Because if you do, I'm gonna clean up a little bit more.
8:44 Speaker 01 Oh, I'm sorry. I should have told you. This is Mike Nguyen. He works in advertising, and he's also a comedian who's known on the internet for roasting himself for being a menswear dork. He calls his style "American prosperity core," how Americans dressed back when the middle class was prosperous. So lots of blazers with hand-sewn buttonholes and Alden Cordovan horse leather loafers. I don't know what that means, but apparently it signals, hello, I take menswear very seriously.
9:15 Speaker 05 I do love fashion. Whenever people find out I'm into fashion, they always make fun of me. My comics make fun of me, my friends make fun of me. I always want to tell these people, hey, I don't dress for you guys. I dress for black teenagers, okay?
9:26 Speaker 01 But here's the thing about Mike. Even though he followed his heart to pursue a creative passion, he's haunted by the life he didn't choose.
9:36 Speaker 05 So I feel, in my life, I was destined to fulfill the family fate of becoming a doctor. And for various reasons, I ended up not becoming a doctor. And ever since then, I've just been adrift. You know, sometimes people say, oh, you're chasing your dream. No, my dream is to be a doctor. That's the dream. The comedian thing? Everything else is second to that.
10:08 Speaker 01 Mike is the son of Vietnamese refugees. And growing up, he says, it was just understood. He was going to be a doctor.
10:16 Speaker 05 Okay, this is the thing that's going to make me happy and make my family happy and make my mom happy and make the stars align.
10:26 Speaker 01 Mike says in Vietnamese culture, there are only a couple jobs that bring prestige to the family. And for Mike, it felt good to be on this path, like he had a higher calling. Plus, he was good at school, he liked science, he cared about people. Everything made sense.
10:45 Speaker 01 He still remembers the day it all went south.
10:49 Speaker 01 He was a junior at Berkeley and he was struggling to keep up with his pre-med classes.
10:54 Speaker 05 I remember I had to take physics. And I was sitting outside the physics building and it was the last day before you could drop a class. It was like, you know, the second week of school. And I took out like a quarter and I said, if this is heads, I'm going to take physics. If this is tails, I'm not going to take physics. And it came up heads, which means I'm supposed to take physics.
11:20 Speaker 05 And I said, nope, not going to do it. And I just walked right down to the administration office and I dropped the physics course.
11:30 Speaker 01 It's like your body was telling you no.
11:33 Speaker 05 I think so. The idea of putting myself through that was just like, it was, it made me feel sick. So I didn't want to do it anymore.
11:44 Speaker 01 Mike switched majors to sociology. He graduated college. He got a job at a test prep company. He moved to New York and got a job in advertising and eventually started doing comedy to give him an edge over the other copywriters and liked it. He got married. He had a kid.
12:05 Speaker 01 Today, Mike is 45. And you know that meme about how often men think about the Roman Empire? That's what it's like for Mike, but with a career that got away. Even though he enjoys working in advertising, even though he loves doing comedy, he can't stop thinking back to that coin toss.
12:29 Speaker 01 What if he'd stayed in physics? What if he just gritted his teeth and gone to med school as planned?
12:36 Speaker 05 I was watching content on Instagram and I found this one guy and he's like a dad fitness influencer type. And I found out later on that he's also an MD. He's like, "I'm a doctor and I'm a dad and I work out a lot." And I was reading this and I was like, "Hey, you know, he's a content creator and a doctor. Maybe I should give it another go." And I legit looked up a couple of things and I at least give myself enough credit in that I am wise enough to know that I would quickly come to the reality that, "Holy shit, this would be absolutely crazy and I probably wouldn't enjoy it."
13:08 Speaker 01 When did this happen?
13:10 Speaker 05 That was like last week.
13:11 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
13:13 Speaker 05 Yeah, no, it's really always rattling in my mind all the time, constantly.
13:25 Speaker 01 Mike knows he doesn't want to go to med school, but he keeps looking into going to med school because he's stuck in a loop. He regrets not becoming a doctor and yet he doesn't actually want to be a doctor.
13:41 Speaker 05 I don't know, like if you've ever done this, but like, um, you know, you're playing an online video game and you sort of like mess up your one chance to, to like get the big score or like kill the boss and you just have to wait around until the game starts over again. It feels like that. It feels like, "Oh, I missed my chance. Well, guess I'll just float around and stuff until I get to go again or I die." One of the two, you know, like it's that feeling.
14:06 Speaker 01 And that's why Mike came to us.
14:11 Speaker 01 To find him a proxy to talk to, a stranger with just the right experience with his conundrum and can hopefully help him get less stuck.
14:24 Speaker 01 Mike wants to know if there's anything he can do to silence the rattling of this regret, or at least anything he can do to make this earworm less annoying.
14:34 Speaker 05 Is there a way to turn this into something healthy? Because I do feel like it's going to be something I have to live with. So I'm gonna have to just come to terms with it.
14:46 Speaker 01 Okay, Mike, thank you for bringing me this case. I will, I will try my best to find you a proxy. I do have one last question, though. If you had to vocalize the sound of this emotional conundrum, what would it be?
15:01 Speaker 05 Vocalize the sound?
15:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:04 Speaker 05 Gosh, it's probably, let me think here. Okay, what is the sound to this feeling? The first thing that comes to mind, I don't know if this is totally right. You know, the elevator muzak waiting sound? Waiting room music is what I would describe it as. Right, so.
15:35 Speaker 05 You know? It's not entirely unpleasant, but it's a little like boring and a little bit tedious.
15:51 Speaker 01 After the break, Mike has a proxy conversation. And we attempt to break Mike out of the emotional waiting room he's stuck in. Please hold, and Proxy will be right back.
16:32 Speaker 01 Six months go by after that first call with Mike. Six months of tedious hold music. And then finally, it's the day of the proxy conversation. I log into the video call with Mike.
16:46 Speaker 05 You're wearing a robe right now? I am wearing this awesome wrap knit cardigan.
16:52 Speaker 01 A lot has happened in the six months since we spoke. Some good things?
16:57 Speaker 05 My daughter was born in August. I can't remember if we talked since then.
17:01 Speaker 01 And some not so good things.
17:03 Speaker 05 Yes, I got lost. I lost my job.
17:07 Speaker 01 Oh, I'm so sorry, Mike.
17:09 Speaker 05 It's okay. It's okay. Yeah. That afternoon was definitely scary. It was like a gut punch. You know, I did the whole thing, the Asian thing was like, did I do something wrong? Should I have worked harder?
17:21 Speaker 01 Oh, yes, Mike. I know all about it. I made a three part series about getting laid off. Listen to the layoff trilogy wherever you get your podcasts.
17:31 Speaker 01 Anyway, Mike says after losing his job, he found himself scrolling through Reddit one day.
17:38 Speaker 05 I don't know how they know. Maybe they listened in on our conversations, but Reddit serves me up an ad for St. George University. Do you know this school? It is a Caribbean medical school. And it said, are you ready to make the leap to medicine? And I was like, I just got laid off. I need to provide for my family. Reddit is serving up this ad for Caribbean medical school. And I was like, is this it? Am I doing this?
18:08 Speaker 01 Did you look up what it would take to go to medical school again?
18:11 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, actually.
18:12 Speaker 01 You did?
18:14 Speaker 05 Not at the school. I just like talked to my friend and just the idea of having to like, take biology 1A again made my stomach sick.
18:21 Speaker 01 Wow.
18:22 Speaker 05 I do think this is a little bit of the grass is always going to be greener. And I know, you know, doctors have very tough lives, but it's like, I do want someone to kind of just give me a sense check. Even if it is like, hey, it's awesome, dude. You fucked up. At least somebody told me.
18:39 Speaker 01 Hold that thought because the proxy is here.
18:42 Speaker 05 Yes.
18:43 Speaker 01 Are you ready for me to let them in?
18:44 Speaker 05 I'm nervous.
18:46 Speaker 01 So the proxy.
18:51 Speaker 01 Now, on this show, our job is to help Mike investigate his feelings. We do that by finding him a proxy to talk to. That could be a stranger with shared life experience. It could be a researcher who's studied the issue at hand. In Mike's case, I thought about looking for another Asian who struggled with the same kind of regret. But then I thought, maybe it'd be helpful to talk to someone who's studied regret. Someone who could help Mike understand what he was feeling and maybe even reframe his relationship with regret. And then I came across a regret researcher who was nice enough to agree to this proxy conversation experiment.
19:39 Speaker 06 Hi.
19:40 Speaker 05 Hey.
19:41 Speaker 06 Hey, nice to meet you.
19:43 Speaker 01 Meet Amy Somerville, principal research scientist at Kairos Research and a social cognitive psychologist who used to run a whole research lab on regret at Miami University in Ohio.
19:56 Speaker 06 So I'm Dr. Amy Somerville. I have a PhD in social psychology. I've published one of the most cited papers on regret with my graduate advisor called "What We Regret Most and Why," and have done research on regret for, I guess, over 20 years at this point.
20:16 Speaker 05 No, I'm already getting very triggered by the fact that she introduced herself as doctor. So I was like, geez.
20:25 Speaker 01 I asked Mike to explain his case to Amy, and he tells her how he felt destined to become a doctor, how he couldn't keep up with his pre-med classes, and about that coin toss outside his physics class.
20:37 Speaker 05 And I flipped a coin, and I said, "If it's heads, I will take the class. If it's tails, I will not." And it turned out heads, and I said, "No, I'm still not taking it." And I walked down to the registrar, and I dropped the class, and it felt awesome. It felt amazing. And that was pretty much it. I never even looked back after that.
20:56 Speaker 01 Except, Mike did look back. He can't stop looking back. That's literally the point of this whole episode.
21:05 Speaker 05 And I always think, like, what if I had just done that? There's always that part of me that is like, should I just apply to medical school now?
21:17 Speaker 01 I'm curious, any initial reactions?
21:20 Speaker 06 Yeah, gosh, a lot. So I guess maybe a place to start is let me define how I think about regret, because I think people come to it with a lot of different ideas of like what regret means and like hashtag no regrets and all of that. So in my work, I use a definition from Tom Gilovich and Victoria Medvec that I think is awesome. And it says regret has three pieces. The first is that it feels bad. The second is that it's because you have a thought about how things could have been different. And the third is that it's because of something that you think you could have done differently. And so I think it sounds like we're check, check, check.
22:05 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
22:06 Speaker 06 And sort of the technical term for this like thought about how things could have been different is a counterfactual. So right, like literally contrary to the facts. So it's this imagined possible world of how things could have been different.
22:20 Speaker 05 Yeah.
22:21 Speaker 06 Regrets in particular seem to be kind of this combination of I had a chance to do something different that maybe is now kind of a lost opportunity. I can't just like instantly fix it. But also, it still feels like really relevant to my goals and who I am. The sense of like, who am I as a person and what is my identity and role in the world? Like, I mean, that's like the big question for everyone. So like, of course, that's a thing we all keep wrestling with throughout our lives. So it makes sense that things that really touch on that are gonna be places we come back to.
22:59 Speaker 05 Yes. You're looking into my soul, doctor. This is...
23:03 Speaker 06 Not that kind of doctor, just to be clear.
23:05 Speaker 05 Not that kind of doctor, but still.
23:08 Speaker 01 Amy is a psychologist. She doesn't treat people. But, once upon a time, Amy actually also wanted to be a doctor like Mike. She was in a pre-med program, and, just like Mike, Amy wasn't sure if it was right for her. So during a summer program where she was shadowing doctors, she asked them all a question.
23:29 Speaker 06 If somebody was on the fence about whether they should go to med school or do something different, what would you tell them? And every single one of them told me they should do something different. If you can imagine a life for yourself, doing anything other than this, you should go do that.
23:47 Speaker 05 Yeah, huh.
23:49 Speaker 06 Because it's too hard for too long.
23:53 Speaker 05 But this seems almost like a trick, you know? Well, only the real ones. You, you're a bit of a softie, so you should get out of here. So, you know, it's kind of like, also goes up against the way I saw myself.
24:06 Speaker 05 I always was the smart kid in class. And it took out one of the legs of my identity.
24:14 Speaker 05 Well, not only am I not smart, I clearly don't even have the wherewithal or the gumption to do this other thing. So now, what the hell? You know, I'm just some guy with great style? Like, what else can I do?
24:32 Speaker 01 Well, Mike, if it's okay, I want to go back to that moment with the coin toss.
24:37 Speaker 05 Yes.
24:37 Speaker 01 It seems like you were very certain of how you felt about that decision in the moment. Like, it just felt bad to listen to the coin and stay in physics.
24:47 Speaker 05 Yes.
24:48 Speaker 01 And that's why you dropped out.
24:50 Speaker 05 Yep.
24:51 Speaker 01 And then you said it felt awesome.
24:53 Speaker 05 It felt awesome.
24:54 Speaker 01 And so, I'm just curious, why do you think you trusted your gut so much back then? And why aren't you trusting it now?
25:05 Speaker 05 Hmm.
25:08 Speaker 05 I think a lot of it has to do with like, you're in college, you're like, kind of a hedonist, you know, you're doing a lot of things because it feels good. You know, it felt good at the time, and I think sometimes I frame it as, that's a kind of an immature response, that as a rational person, you should do the thing that may not feel good, but is the good thing, the thing that's right for whatever your family or yourself or what have you. And so I, I, I discount some of that action because, hey, we also grew up Catholic, you can layer that on top as well. And so, things which feel good are probably bad for you, things that feel bad are probably good for you, you know. So there is sort of that element as well.
25:54 Speaker 06 So there's work by a researcher called Tori Higgins, who basically says we carry with us, like, two self-guides of what we should be aspiring to. And one of them is, he calls the ideal self. So like, what is like, the aspirational version of yourself that you like, most want to be? And then what's your ought self? So like, what are the like, obligations and duties and the things you feel like you should be? The idea is that sort of like, in general, like, our aughts are kind of easier to repair. Like, if there's a thing you should do, you can just go do it. I got up last night at 11:30 to be like, oh god, did I close my garage door?
26:37 Speaker 05 Yeah.
26:37 Speaker 06 It's that kind of, like, oh, did you do the thing? Okay, now I can forget it. And there's some work in the regret science, that actually for most people, the things that we regret most over time are related to our ideal self. And it's sort of interesting to me that, it sounds like, it's kind of like your parents' ideal, more than your ideal, but also, you know, it kind of became ingrained in you, both as an obligation and because of your vision of who you are in the family, that kind of like, meeting their ideal became your ideal?
27:16 Speaker 05 About 100%. I have a bunch of questions for you. I hope that's okay to pack.
27:20 Speaker 06 Yeah.
27:21 Speaker 05 One is, you know, I always wondered if it's like a, it's like a cultural thing. Cause the way the language I would describe is it's not just my family. I'm talking about like 1,000 generations of my family, you know, are pretty bummed out. It's a very Mulan situation. The ancestors are like, whoa, we sent this guy to America. And now this guy decided to go on this podcast. What's the deal with that? I don't know if there's anything where, I don't want to say like my regret is more enhanced than other people. I'm sure other people have a tremendous amount of regret, but it's like, I feel sometimes that there's a cultural thing as well.
28:01 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, so, so I've actually done some work on cross-cultural stuff and not specifically with Vietnamese culture. So I want to be clear, like I, I don't have like specific expertise there.
28:13 Speaker 05 Yeah.
28:13 Speaker 06 So I have a, a paper looking at Arab students compared to white Midwestern students. And they're right, like totally different understanding of fate. It's really this idea of like, your fate is written. So they actually basically don't report some of the patterns of counterfactuals that I was talking about earlier.
28:36 Speaker 05 Yeah.
28:37 Speaker 06 So if you ask, hey, there's this car accident. How much is he thinking, oh, I should have taken another route? And people say, well, no, because i- if God wrote for him to have this accident, it doesn't matter what road he was on. Like the accident was written, that was his fate.
28:53 Speaker 05 Right.
28:55 Speaker 06 Um, if it's his fate, you, you can't escape that.
28:57 Speaker 05 Yes.
28:58 Speaker 06 He probably feels bad that this accident happened, but that doesn't actually mean that he could have done anything different. So it's really interesting to me that for you, it's sort of this like, I defied my fate.
29:14 Speaker 05 That's really sort of the thing is that I always joke around again with my wife because you know, me and my wife, we live in Brooklyn. We have these kind of artistic jobs and I always joke with her that I'm supposed to be living in San Jose, driving a Tesla, married to a Vietnamese woman. We eat pho every single day. Maybe if I'm not a doctor, maybe I sell medical equipment. And I see this life over and over again. I'm not in it, but my cousins are in it. And every time I check in with them, I can't help but compare my life to their life. You know, it's like, who has a better life? And it gets complicated, but it is there, right? And I'm confronted with the other one, the other me, right?
29:59 Speaker 05 And I often say, I'm not supposed to be here. How many Vietnamese comedians can you even name? You know, like, there's only like three of us. And so I'm constantly grappling with this fact that I chose something different. My life turned out radically different.
30:15 Speaker 06 Yeah, so that, there's definitely like pieces of the regret literature that speak to that. I was like writing down all sorts of things as you were talking.
30:25 Speaker 05 It's a little embarrassing for me to say.
30:27 Speaker 06 No, not at all. So there's sort of two pieces of a counterfactual, right? There's the like, if I had done this, then this other thing would have been different. And so you can imagine all sorts of counterfactuals that you can have where, I don't know, like, if aliens had invaded today, then my son could have ice cream for dinner. Um, and it's like, well, okay, the first is so improbable that that doesn't even make sense as a thing. But you have this really clear, like, if I had made another decision, right? Like, it's really easy to imagine walking into the physics class instead of the registrar's office.
31:05 Speaker 05 Right.
31:05 Speaker 06 Like Frost writes this whole poem about the road I didn't travel. And I kind of don't know what was down there, but like, your cousins are walking that road.
31:13 Speaker 05 Yes.
31:14 Speaker 06 You can really clearly see like, here's what would have been different if you too had stayed on that path. But counterfactuals aren't the only comparisons out there. Social comparison also is a thing and has its own set of emotions that go with it. Like envy and pride are kind of the like cousins of regret and relief. And it's interesting to me that it feels like regret to you and not like, oh, I feel envious of this person who's living the life that I was supposed to have. It is about your decision and not about like, oh, I want their life.
31:51 Speaker 05 Yes.
31:53 Speaker 01 That's a question. Do you want their life?
31:57 Speaker 05 No. You know, I mean.
31:59 Speaker 01 That was an immediate answer, Mike.
32:01 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, I, there are some things I would enjoy for sure. I think I would like stability for my family, for my, my kids, but I don't want to drive a Tesla. I would love to eat pho every single week. That would be great. But as far as like actually being implanted in, into their life, it doesn't sound appealing either. You know what I'm saying? That's really interesting. I never thought about it, like envy versus regret. Huh?
32:33 Speaker 01 After the break, we get to the root of Mike's regret and how regret can be a hopeful, even useful emotion.
32:58 Speaker 01 Welcome back to Praxis. So picking up where we left off, Amy now wants to go back to the coin toss, the fateful day when Mike flipped the coin and dropped the class even though the coin told him to stay in pre-med.
33:14 Speaker 06 I wrote down that when you talked about like, it felt amazing, it felt awesome, and I never looked back. And it was like, but, but you, you're like, but, but jar. So.
33:29 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, no, that's a, that's a really good point. Yeah, you got me there, guys.
33:34 Speaker 06 Haha, problem solved.
33:36 Speaker 05 No, but you are on to something because there was a period of time where I didn't feel bad about it. I was still in college. I knew people who were going to med school. And actually, the woman who is now my wife, she was also in the track. She went really far. She took the MCAT, but she didn't go to medical school. And I remember when she was studying, I gotta take the MCAT tomorrow. And I was like, that sounds terrible. I don't know how to do it. So for a little while, it didn't bother me that much. But it wasn't very long lasting.
34:15 Speaker 05 I remember after I graduated, I moved back to Orange County in California where, you know, my parents lived. And I was living with them and I had a very hard time finding a job.
34:29 Speaker 05 I couldn't even really articulate what kind of job I was looking for. My parents were like throwing all sorts of hilarious job titles at me. Become a human resources guy. They were like literally just naming jobs that they had like seen on TV. They all sounded terrible to me. I was like, these jobs sound so boring. And so I was unemployed. I was in my twenties. I felt like a big loser. And I remember that's when I was like, oh, maybe I could go back to med school. And that's really where I was like, now I'm like kind of in this loop.
35:02 Speaker 06 Interesting. Yeah. And so it sounds like it was only when there was other stuff in your life that was kind of dissatisfying that then it was like, oh, maybe the thing that would have made all this better is if I'd gone to med school.
35:18 Speaker 05 Yes.
35:20 Speaker 06 I think sometimes we have regrets where it sort of comes from the negative emotion first, like something feels bad. And then we just sort of want to look around and be like, well,
35:34 Speaker 05 Right.
35:34 Speaker 06 what is it that could have changed this?
35:40 Speaker 06 When I talk to people about regret, it's like, oh, you're a regret researcher. Like, do you have regrets? I'm like, I don't, I don't have like a ton and I don't have a ton that I really want to talk about, but like. I will sort of broadly say I've had a traumatic loss.
35:54 Speaker 05 Hmm.
35:55 Speaker 06 And if you know people who have gone through that, whether it's losing someone to suicide or violence or addiction or whatever, that oftentimes, and in the data, right, you see people saying, like, oh, if I had just done something different.
36:11 Speaker 05 Yes.
36:11 Speaker 06 If I'd had a better intervention, then my friend wouldn't have OD'd.
36:15 Speaker 05 Right.
36:16 Speaker 06 Or if I had agreed to go to the party, then I could have been the DD and they wouldn't have driven drunk and been in the accident.
36:25 Speaker 05 Hmm.
36:26 Speaker 06 Certainly in your case, right, like, there really was this path and there really was this decision. But it's also the case that, like, what are the great secrets of adulthood? Is it actually, like, being right out of college kind of sucks?
36:39 Speaker 05 Yes, it does.
36:41 Speaker 06 Like, idyllic experience of, like, all of your needs were catered to as if you were a child.
36:46 Speaker 05 All your friends, yeah.
36:48 Speaker 06 All your friends were right there. And yet also, like, you had all this independence of adulthood. It's like, really, kind of the sweet spot.
36:54 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
36:54 Speaker 06 But at least at Amber's, like, someone else cooked for me, like, every day of my college career.
36:59 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah.
37:00 Speaker 06 And then suddenly you get out and it's like, oh, God, I have to go to the grocery store?
37:03 Speaker 05 Yeah.
37:05 Speaker 06 I have, like, more than, like, three hours of obligation a day?
37:08 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:09 Speaker 06 This is crazy. How does anyone live like this?
37:11 Speaker 05 Yeah.
37:12 Speaker 06 And so I do wonder a little bit about how much of it is being 23 sucks?
37:18 Speaker 05 Yes.
37:19 Speaker 06 And latching on to, here's the thing that I know could have been different and it would have put me in this totally different place. And like, if you didn't have that, is there some other counterfactual you would have generated in that moment? But for you, there was this clear, like, oh, yeah, maybe it was med school.
37:38 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
37:38 Speaker 06 Like, some people have the romantic one that got away from college and you have, like, the career that got away.
37:44 Speaker 05 The career that got away. It is interesting, because it almost feels almost sometimes like a, almost like a default excuse. I don't know, like, I was very interested in, you know, econ, maybe I could have become a finance guy, but I never think I'm like, oh, I should have become a finance guy, because I'm like, that seems so odd. I guess I could have become an NFL football player. There's all sorts of weird things you could say, but it defaults always to this, this one thing.
38:13 Speaker 01 Well, Mike, when the regret pops up, does it happen around times when like, stuff is hard and bad? Or is it just all the time, kind of like randomly?
38:26 Speaker 05 I mean, I would definitely say, I think it is definitely triggered by things where I need something.
38:32 Speaker 01 Hmm.
38:32 Speaker 05 Like, gosh, my wife and I are always like, we want to buy a house. And it's impossible to, because I'm not a billionaire. So it would be nice if I had a little bit more money, you know? Or during this layoff that just happened.
38:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:48 Speaker 05 And this is another thing I was gonna ask you about is like, this career that I have, whether it's in advertising or even worse in comedy, it is only setbacks. Comedy is almost entirely setback after setback, until you're either famous or you're dead. And that is it. And so you're constantly confronted with, did you make the right decision? Why did you spend so much time doing this thing? You know, I've been doing comedy for maybe, gosh, I don't know, like 10 or 11 years at this point? And I've sunk an immense amount of time into it. Going to open mics or writing, which generate absolutely zero income. Um, just doing this thing because I, I feel sometimes I have no other choice to do it. Because I feel I am a creative person and I'm, I have to do it.
39:33 Speaker 05 And I'm an idiot. But every single time I'm there, I'm like, I could be somewhere else.
39:41 Speaker 01 I'm wondering, is this regret around becoming a doctor, is it about success? And how you're feeling about yourself rather than like, this particular regret around becoming a doctor?
39:57 Speaker 05 I think it is definitely like, am I living up to my full potential? For lack of a better word. Am I doing, you know, the most I can do? And I was just saying like, I have to be a creative person. And it's led me to this point. And sometimes I feel guilty about that, you know? I have a lot of anxiety around like, well, I've chosen this life. And I hope my, my children don't have to pay for it later on. Because like, they didn't get into a great school or something like that. Well, that gets into a whole other thing, but
40:33 Speaker 05 I'm, I'm like tearing up a little bit, sorry. So like, it's, it's a, it's a lot. It's like, weird.
40:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:43 Speaker 05 I'm just kind of getting emotional, I guess. It's just like, for me and my wife, we're like creative people. And like, if I pay the price for it, it's my life. But I don't want anyone else to pay for my own weakness, or hedonism, or whatever you want to call it. You know what I'm saying? Like, my children didn't ask for that. That's a whole other thing.
41:04 Speaker 05 Yeah.
41:08 Speaker 06 Yeah, I'm a parent too. And so I totally get, like, I feel like so much of like parenthood is about, you brought this person into the world, you have this obligation to them.
41:16 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
41:17 Speaker 06 Am I meeting that kind of like role that I'm supposed to be fulfilling?
41:20 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
41:21 Speaker 06 But I think it's easy to think about, here's the things that would be better if I was a doctor.
41:27 Speaker 05 Yeah.
41:27 Speaker 06 Like, I might have more career stability, more financial stability. But also, there's stuff you'd be giving up. And
41:34 Speaker 05 Right.
41:34 Speaker 06 You'd be regretting that like, oh, like, my kid is sick, and I had to have the nanny pick them up. I'm in clinic right now, and I can't just drop it and go home and like, take care of my kid. And like, oh, I can't go to that game.
41:46 Speaker 05 Yeah.
41:46 Speaker 06 Oh, now I'm letting my kid down in all these other ways.
41:49 Speaker 05 That's absolutely right.
41:51 Speaker 06 I, I feel like maybe one of the things that I do want to say is that, in general, I come from like a academic tradition of thinking of regret as like a really useful emotion to us.
42:04 Speaker 05 Oh.
42:04 Speaker 06 Like, regret is telling us about how we should do things differently.
42:11 Speaker 01 Mike, why did your mouth open? When Amy said, regret is a useful emotion.
42:17 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, I, I've always thought of this as just like something I'm just gonna have to deal with for the rest of my life.
42:24 Speaker 06 For me, I think it can be really helpful to kind of think about, is this regret helping me?
42:31 Speaker 05 Hmm.
42:32 Speaker 06 Is there something here that I could learn? Is there something I could do differently?
42:36 Speaker 05 Right.
42:37 Speaker 06 And if not, is it really a regret? Or do I just sort of feel? Sad.
42:42 Speaker 05 Hmm.
42:43 Speaker 06 Again, with sort of examples of things like traumatic loss. I don't really think, oh, like, here's the one action I could have taken and everything would have been okay.
42:52 Speaker 05 Hmm.
42:53 Speaker 06 I'm, I'm just sad. I'm sad this thing happened and I wish there was something that could have made it different.
42:58 Speaker 05 Wow.
42:59 Speaker 06 Yeah, like, it really sucks to live in a high cost of living area where you can't buy a house.
43:05 Speaker 05 Yeah.
43:06 Speaker 06 It really sucks to live under capitalism with economic unseen instability. But even if you had gone to med school, what are the things that would be different? Maybe it's stable, but there are these other costs that come with it.
43:24 Speaker 05 I don't know, maybe this because I'm just a, of a straight man with toxic masculinity, but the idea that I'm just sad is so profound. Oh, I'm just sad, you know, next time I feel this coming on, maybe I'm just bummed out. And there is a lot of stuff to be bummed out about globally and in a micro sense. It sounds really silly, but I've never thought of it like just being sad. Wow.
43:51 Speaker 05 I mean, I've done therapy before where you take an emotion and you kind of look at it and say, well, this anxiety is because maybe it's, I need to pay attention to something in my life. But there is also emotions, I think, where there is nothing to do. This is just how it is. To kind of understand that there is no action is very freeing because you could just be sad. But I'm bummed out. I'm gonna have a candy bar now and just deal with it.
44:18 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, so Amy, you said that regret can be a useful emotion. Regret can tell us what is important to us. And what I'm hearing from this conversation again and again, Mike, is like, family is really important to you.
44:35 Speaker 05 Right, yes.
44:37 Speaker 01 Family, your relationship with your parents, your relationship with your community, your kids.
44:42 Speaker 05 Yeah.
44:42 Speaker 01 Like, family, family, family. And if you were gonna think about this regret you have, take away all the bad parts, all the anxieties, all the bad feelings. What do you think it's pointing at?
44:57 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, gosh, you think about the inverse of regret, which is like all the things which are awesome, you know, and I have a lot of awesome things. My amazing knitwear, for example.
45:08 Speaker 06 Right, you have to give that up and live in scrubs? Can you imagine?
45:11 Speaker 05 I hate scrubs so much. It's the worst thing in the world. Anyways, I feel the most fulfilled. The specific moment is when I am in the kitchen and my wife is feeding both my kids or one of my kids, and I'm like running food to them. I'm like cooking food. You know, my wife is like, okay, we need boiled eggs because that's the only thing he's gonna eat. I'm like, on it, boiled egg stat. You know, the front of house wants eggs. I gotta make eggs.
45:39 Speaker 05 But I feel awesome because I feel like I am, you know, providing for my family, literally. You know, I'm the perfect like thing in the machine that is making this happen. It's very actionable and doable.
45:54 Speaker 05 But, you know, with my children, I'm trying to think about values I want to give them. And I think that it is worthwhile to try hard. It's not a good thing, I think, to just do the minimum. And so I think I do regret maybe not giving my all.
46:12 Speaker 05 Maybe I didn't want to be a doctor, but I do think there was probably a little bit of me I left on the table as far as like I didn't work as hard as I could have. I think I corrected that later on in life, but I want to be able to say that I gave it my all.
46:29 Speaker 01 Okay, we are near the end. Thank you both so much. This was such a roller coaster. Okay, final question. Mike, I asked you to vocalize the sound of your niche emotional conundrum way back when.
46:43 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
46:43 Speaker 01 Many, many months ago. And you told me it was elevator music, like waiting music.
46:49 Speaker 05 Ah, yes, I did.
46:52 Speaker 05 Yes.
46:52 Speaker 01 I'm curious, what is the sound of the niche emotional conundrum now? Has it changed at all?
46:59 Speaker 05 No, this is different because now I forgot that I had said muzak. And I totally remember why I said muzak because it was sort of like, I feel like my life is like on hold or waiting, I'm waiting for something. Now it just feels like, ugh. Now I gotta do work on myself. Oh, that's so much, that's so much harder.
47:20 Speaker 05 I think med school is probably easier than working on myself. I don't want to do that.
47:26 Speaker 01 So it's a groan.
47:28 Speaker 05 Oh, yes.
47:42 Speaker 05 Thank you, Dr. Amy. This is awesome.
47:44 Speaker 01 It's been so great getting to meet you and getting to talk to you.
47:56 Speaker 01 Thank you to Mike Nguyen for being our special guest today. You can listen to Mike every week on his podcast, Asian Not Asian, and you can check out his American Prosperity Core outfits on Instagram, at Nice Pants Bro. And thank you to Amy Somerville for being our proxy today. As Amy pointed out to me, much of the social science research that informs today's episode is now the target of massive funding cuts across several government agencies. But she said, there is something you can do about it. You can let your elected officials know about the impact this research has had on you. You can find out more by going to the website for the Consortium of Social Science Associations, coss.org.
48:40 Speaker 01 That's the show we have for you this week. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday, May 20. New episodes every other Tuesday for the rest of the year, which Chrissy, a listener from Philadelphia, is thrilled about because she loves gossiping about proxy episodes with friends.
48:57 Speaker 07 Hi.
48:58 Speaker 01 Hey, Chrissy. What do you have over there?
49:01 Speaker 07 This is an apple. My friend Andrew got it for me at the Wegmans.
49:07 Speaker 01 So you like eating apples, huh?
49:09 Speaker 07 Yeah, I love apples.
49:10 Speaker 01 And what about proxy? You like proxy?
49:13 Speaker 07 I love proxy. I love feelings and talking about them.
49:17 Speaker 01 Okay, so if you had to do some proxy math, how many golden delicious apples is a proxy episode worth to you?
49:25 Speaker 07 Nine.
49:29 Speaker 01 Nine golden delicious apples? If we're talking organic, that's like $13.50 she's willing to pay per episode. But because she's a Patreon member, for just $5 a month, Chrissy's getting a steal. Proxy is an independent podcast, and we rely on listener support. We need to get to at least 3,000 subscribers this year to keep making the show. And we are at about 300 right now. Thank you to everyone who's already signed up. For just $5 a month, you'll get ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus interviews. So be thrifty like Chrissy. Sign up at patreon.com/proxypodcast. That's patreon.com/proxypodcast.
50:13 Speaker 01 As always, you can follow us on Instagram at @proxypodcast, and I'm at @yoweshaw. We also have a free newsletter. Sign up to get dispatches from the emotions beat, behind-the-scenes content, and the latest proxy gossip. We'll have those links in the show notes. This episode was edited by John Delore and Tim Howard, produced by me, and mixed by Kyle Cooley. Proxy is also produced by Kim Natervein-Petersa, with help from Anika Ransantana and Mick LeBlanc. Our newsletter editor is Juliana Feliciano Reyes. Music in this episode by Tim Howard, and theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder. Special thanks to Audrey Martovich, Yori Lozordo, Laura Starcheski, and Mattilde Urbelino.
50:54 Speaker 01 Proxy is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm. And if you have a niche emotional conundrum you'd like investigated by Proxy, get in touch at [email protected] . We're taking cases.
51:24 Speaker 01 Kyle, how often do you regret marrying a podcast host?
51:29 Speaker 08 Uh, I think it's a good counterbalance to marrying a music producer. So anytime I have complaints, I realize they're the things that ex-girlfriends would complain about me.
51:46 Speaker 01 Oh, like all your complaints about me? That's what your exes would say about you?
51:52 Speaker 08 Yeah.
51:53 Speaker 01 So it's karma, in a way. It's poetic justice.
51:57 Speaker 08 Yeah, except I didn't make them mix my podcast.
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