Speaker 1: Pushkin. When we enter a new year, many of us
Speaker 1: start to feel inspired about making big changes in our lives.
Speaker 1: That new date on the calendar can motivate us to
Speaker 1: improve our careers, our health, our habits, and our happiness.
Speaker 1: But when we start to think about how to go
Speaker 1: about making all these improvements, that's when things start to
Speaker 1: get really, really loud. We start to hear all these
Speaker 1: outside cultural voices shouting at us about what we should
Speaker 1: be doing that number that we're really supposed to have
Speaker 1: on the scale, or the glossy gym we absolutely need
Speaker 1: to join, or the new productivity or dating app that
Speaker 1: all our friends are trying. These outside voices tell us
Speaker 1: there's one way to get fit, or quit biting our nails,
Speaker 1: or get that big promotion at work. It's a new year,
Speaker 1: they scream, and this is how things are going to
Speaker 1: have to change. These new year voices are all very
Speaker 1: well intentioned, but they can sometimes get so loud that
Speaker 1: we can't even hear ourselves things. So, in this new
Speaker 1: Year's season of the Happiness Lab, I want us to
Speaker 1: try something different. Instead of listening to all these loud
Speaker 1: outside voices, We're going to do the harder work of
Speaker 1: looking inward. Over the next few episodes, we'll try to
Speaker 1: pay attention to the wise voice inside us, our inner compass,
Speaker 1: if you will, that often gets drowned out by all
Speaker 1: the outside noise, and we'll see that carefully listening to
Speaker 1: the quiet voice of what our bodies and our minds
Speaker 1: truly need, maybe the real path to happiness in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. Our minds are constantly telling us what to
Speaker 1: do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong?
Speaker 1: What if our minds are lying to us, leading us
Speaker 1: away from what will really make us happy. The good
Speaker 1: news is the understanding the science of the mind can
Speaker 1: point us all back in the right direction. You're listening
Speaker 1: to the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos. In the
Speaker 1: coming episodes, we're going to take a closer look at
Speaker 1: the perennial urges we have in the new year. To
Speaker 1: work out more, to eat healthier, to throw ourselves into
Speaker 1: our jobs, and to push ourselves to the limit. At
Speaker 1: first glance, all of these seem like reasonable personal goals,
Speaker 1: but we rarely take a moment to stop and think,
Speaker 1: could there be something else underlying all these desires? Why
Speaker 1: are we putting so much emphasis on how much we
Speaker 1: can bench press, how much protein we eat, or what
Speaker 1: our new job title is. And the place where I
Speaker 1: want to start this deeper exploration may seem slightly unorthodox.
Speaker 1: I want to start with a children's book. Archibald's morning
Speaker 1: always started off the way it would end in an egg.
Speaker 1: My husband Mark and I have a ritual where he
Speaker 1: reads me bedtime stories at night. Sometimes we pick classic texts,
Speaker 1: but lots of nights these days we just go for
Speaker 1: a children's book. And that was how I stumbled upon
Speaker 1: the book that inspired this entire episode. It's called Archibald's
Speaker 1: Next Big Thing. Archibald up deeply frustrated that he hadn't
Speaker 1: figured out his next big thing. The book tells the
Speaker 1: story of Archibald, a cartoon chicken who's desperately trying to
Speaker 1: find what he refers to as his next big thing.
Speaker 1: I've got to find my next big thing, often missing
Speaker 1: out on exciting moments that were right there. If he
Speaker 1: just took a moment to notice a dinosaur writing a
Speaker 1: roller coaster is pretty big, So what you're searching for
Speaker 1: must be huge, it is, said Archibald, I know it.
Speaker 1: The book ends with Archibald realizing that big things are
Speaker 1: sometimes right in front of our noses or our beaks
Speaker 1: as it were. Of course, of course, Archibald clucked loudly,
Speaker 1: how could I have missed it? Archibald's Next Big Thing
Speaker 1: is a book for children, but many adults struggle with
Speaker 1: the same problem that this little chicken faced. Many of
Speaker 1: us spend a lot of energy looking forward to that
Speaker 1: next big thing when our new gym membership finally pays off,
Speaker 1: or how happy we'll be when we get that huge
Speaker 1: rays or promotion. We hear all these outside voices telling
Speaker 1: us how great it'll all be in the future, which
Speaker 1: makes it kind of impossible to hear the soft intuition
Speaker 1: that maybe telling us that what we need to be
Speaker 1: happy is right here in the present. The author of
Speaker 1: Archibald's Next Big Thing knows this lesson all too well.
Speaker 1: He wrote the book for his daughter to help her
Speaker 1: learn what he'd gotten wrong so often before, that if
Speaker 1: you only concentrate on the next big thing, you'll miss
Speaker 1: the chance to be happy right now. Hello, hey Tony,
Speaker 1: I'm just realizing now I think I took your course.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it's a course right didn't have its
Speaker 1: called the Science of well Being on Coursera. Now this
Speaker 1: makes so much sense. Where I used talk so eloquently
Speaker 1: about happiness, That's what you taught me. That author whose
Speaker 1: voice you may recognize is Tony Hill, the star of Veep,
Speaker 1: the Mysterious Benedict Society, and the actor who played Buster
Speaker 1: Bluth and Arrested Development. Like many of his characters, Tony
Speaker 1: admits to having been deeply affected by anxiety, and just
Speaker 1: like Archibald the Chicken, Tony spent many years searching for
Speaker 1: his next big thing, including the next big role he
Speaker 1: thought would bring him the happiness he craved. I mentioned
Speaker 1: the story a lot, and I really believe in it
Speaker 1: a lot. And I don't know, I'm a guy that
Speaker 1: needs a lot of reminders, so I don't mind talking
Speaker 1: about it a lot. But when I was living in
Speaker 1: New York, I was an actor in New York for
Speaker 1: like seven years, and I was doing commercials, and I
Speaker 1: was actually doing pretty well in commercials. But there was
Speaker 1: something called pilot season where there was like a three
Speaker 1: month period during the year where they would audition for
Speaker 1: TV pilots, and if you missed that window, you probably
Speaker 1: weren't going to get on a show. And really all
Speaker 1: I wanted in life was to get on a sitcom.
Speaker 1: That was kind of my goal, my end goal. Every
Speaker 1: year would go by and I would miss pilot season,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, what is happening? But I was always
Speaker 1: anytime I would go through something, I was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, that day's coming, that day's coming. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get that sitcom. It's coming, It's coming. Finally I booked
Speaker 1: Arrest of Development, which was like the best cast, best scripts,
Speaker 1: incredible show. And when I booked it, I found myself
Speaker 1: that I wasn't as satisfied as I thought I was
Speaker 1: going to be, and it really scared me because you
Speaker 1: can't get better at the rest of development. So I
Speaker 1: had no excuse and I was like, wait a second,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm about. And it didn't satisfy me.
Speaker 1: And when it was canceled in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of a time during that season of
Speaker 1: like what's going on? What's happening? So when it got canceled,
Speaker 1: my daughter was born, and one thing that you have
Speaker 1: to do with a child is you can't be distracted.
Speaker 1: You can't. Because my thing was when I realized through
Speaker 1: the suggressive development experens. I just wasn't present for most
Speaker 1: of my life. And it wasn't just in New York.
Speaker 1: It was like whenever something was going on in my life,
Speaker 1: I would just check out. I would just really just
Speaker 1: kind of disassociates a strong word, but I would just
Speaker 1: check out. I was looking at the future, I would
Speaker 1: just think I would just kind of not be there.
Speaker 1: But my daughter was born, I realized, like, I can't
Speaker 1: check out. I've got to keep the child alive. So
Speaker 1: I've got to be present. And it really woke me
Speaker 1: up to just the many times of my life. For
Speaker 1: most of my life, I wasn't president, And so then
Speaker 1: began this journey of just waking myself up to where
Speaker 1: I was in my career. There's a lot of highs,
Speaker 1: Like there's big highs, and I was kind of putting
Speaker 1: my satisfaction for most of my life in those big highs,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't giving a lot of power to the ordinary,
Speaker 1: a lot of power to the present, a lot of
Speaker 1: power to the every day, and just didn't know how
Speaker 1: to find really joy and contentment in those moments. So
Speaker 1: I did something called CBT, which is cognitive behavioral therapy,
Speaker 1: and really just kind of allowed myself, like he would
Speaker 1: always say, hey, why don't you just activate the five
Speaker 1: senses where you're at? What are you hearing? Smelling, tasting, touching,
Speaker 1: and just like really grounding myself, like he would say,
Speaker 1: you have to wake yourself up one hundred times a
Speaker 1: day to where you are. And that's where this children's
Speaker 1: book came out that I did, called Archibald's Next Big Thing,
Speaker 1: about this little chicken who gets his card in the
Speaker 1: mail that says your big thing is here, and he's
Speaker 1: like where, And he goes on all these adventures. But
Speaker 1: every time he's on an adventure, he's like, I gotta
Speaker 1: get to my next big thing. And this bee comes along.
Speaker 1: It's like, you gotta just be a man. You gotta
Speaker 1: just be And he realizes that the car is right,
Speaker 1: that his big thing was right there. It wasn't somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And I had given that sitcome a lot of weight,
Speaker 1: and nothing can match the weight that I gave it.
Speaker 1: Now keep in mind I sound like I'm a professional
Speaker 1: with this. I'm not. This is something I struggle with.
Speaker 1: This is something it's very easy for me to check out.
Speaker 1: I think I talk about it a lot as a reminder,
Speaker 1: But it's just my default is to check out, and
Speaker 1: I have to daily find the power in the every day,
Speaker 1: in the ordinary, which is a challenge for me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's a challenge for everyone. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think you're in it an industry where like looking ahead
Speaker 1: is really you know, I'm sure every single interview you do,
Speaker 1: somebody's like, you know, what's the next big thing for Tony? Right,
Speaker 1: But it's also just a feature of human nature. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can talked about this idea of waiting for the
Speaker 1: next thing like this. This is a bias that psychologists
Speaker 1: call the arrival fallacy. It's kind of like the happily
Speaker 1: ever after fallacy, like I'll get this next thing and
Speaker 1: I'll be good, but you're always looking to whatever the
Speaker 1: next thing is, like totally, and I never want to
Speaker 1: give the impression that dreaming is wrong, or I never
Speaker 1: want to give the impression that ambition is wrong, or
Speaker 1: like having those moments of a creative like, oh, where's
Speaker 1: this going to go? I think that's great? My thing is,
Speaker 1: That's all I was doing. I always tell people that
Speaker 1: the value you have before success is the same value
Speaker 1: you're going to have after success, and I'm in a
Speaker 1: business that tells you your value will be with what
Speaker 1: you get. And I say that because it's okay to ambition.
Speaker 1: But am I changing my value with what I think
Speaker 1: I'm going to get? Or am I giving myself the
Speaker 1: same value that I have now? And that's the trick.
Speaker 1: But the cool thing about the rest of development story
Speaker 1: is that you had the realization right You kind of
Speaker 1: did realize you were chasing and chasing and were in
Speaker 1: the present moment. So what caused you to have that realization?
Speaker 1: Was there a moment when you're like, wait, this is
Speaker 1: never going yeah? Was that? Like? Honestly, I think it
Speaker 1: was the gift of getting my dream. I got it.
Speaker 1: And I mean you've heard stories of people getting oscars
Speaker 1: and then the next day they go into a depression.
Speaker 1: Mine was more and my anxiety has amped up because
Speaker 1: all these expectations were not matched and I just freaked out.
Speaker 1: Also another component of that is the guilt when people
Speaker 1: come out to me and say, oh my gosh, are
Speaker 1: you so excited? Are you so excited? And my insides
Speaker 1: did not match their expectation, and so then I walked
Speaker 1: away like what is wrong with me? What is it's wrong?
Speaker 1: With me, and that's when everything began to unfold and
Speaker 1: dissect and I was like, wait, I gotta go back.
Speaker 1: And I got to realize I'm just being presidents of
Speaker 1: a big struggle for me. And the fact is all
Speaker 1: these are very buzzwords right now, being present, all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, But for me, that is, it is,
Speaker 1: it is the it's it's a huge component for me
Speaker 1: is that it's being present. Because I say that because
Speaker 1: there's a part of me that fight. It's like, Tony,
Speaker 1: you're sounding cliche, but it's true. I just was not
Speaker 1: very present for most of my life. And we need
Speaker 1: to know what being present means. I think we think
Speaker 1: when we do the buzzwordy versions would just be present,
Speaker 1: but it's like, no, that means sitting with the awful
Speaker 1: voice that's screaming at you. That means noticing that your
Speaker 1: you know, your heart is freaking out and your chest
Speaker 1: wants to bust out, and you feel awful and you're
Speaker 1: saying really mean stuff to yourself. So it's one thing
Speaker 1: to just be present when it's unicorns and rainbows and
Speaker 1: ice cream codes, but it could be present feels awful.
Speaker 1: Like I love that you said that, because I never
Speaker 1: thought about that way that being present, there's there's a
Speaker 1: compassion element to it of I want to check out
Speaker 1: of this space right now. Hey, why am I feeling this?
Speaker 1: I'm sad or I've had a tough day, or I'm
Speaker 1: pissed off at my daughter? Why am I wanting to
Speaker 1: check out? So let me just hey, I hear you.
Speaker 1: And that's hard, you know. And that's something honestly when
Speaker 1: people have said I'm sure you've heard this before, but
Speaker 1: if my daughter comes up to me and says, Dad,
Speaker 1: I'm really sad, I'm having a hard time, I would
Speaker 1: be like, oh my gosh, honey, this is really hard,
Speaker 1: give yourself a break. We don't talk to ourselves that way.
Speaker 1: I don't talk to myself that way. So it's like
Speaker 1: beginning to talk to myself as I would my daughter.
Speaker 1: And I think we, you know, one of our many misconceptions,
Speaker 1: as I think we have this like drill instructor theory
Speaker 1: about motivation where it's like if I just scream at
Speaker 1: myself and just like call myself really terrible names obviously
Speaker 1: that I'll stop making me feel sad or scared, just
Speaker 1: like yeah, myself. Yeah, Because let me tell you, right now,
Speaker 1: that shame closet is packed like it is full. There
Speaker 1: is no more room. The grace compassion has got a
Speaker 1: lot of space. Let's start filling that closet. But it's hard.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what you're articulate so nicely, right,
Speaker 1: it's like and it's hard in part because I think
Speaker 1: we want to push ourselves. Yeah right, I mean, especially
Speaker 1: in the industry you're in, there's this like push push, push,
Speaker 1: don't admit vulnerability. Yeah, And I mean you had to
Speaker 1: fight against that kind of mantra a lot. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's what's the gift of life of
Speaker 1: when I remember years ago, I did a Pepto Bismo
Speaker 1: commercial in New York where I was having diary on
Speaker 1: the train and I was this is my first national
Speaker 1: commercial and my tenure reunion was coming out from high school.
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking, I'm going to go back to
Speaker 1: that reunion and I'm gonna be like, guys, I'm just
Speaker 1: this feeling of like I'm on national television and a
Speaker 1: diary or commercial. And I gave that so much power
Speaker 1: because I wanted to go back to these people that
Speaker 1: bullied me or I didn't feel a part of or
Speaker 1: I wanted to feel superior to or I just wanted
Speaker 1: just mainly just to feel like the popular kid. I
Speaker 1: remember leaving that reunion feeling worse than when I came
Speaker 1: at and it was like, God, I gave a lot
Speaker 1: of power to wanting to redo trauma or whatever with
Speaker 1: these quote accomplishments, you know, and it was a diarrhye
Speaker 1: of commercial auditory. One of the first things you talked
Speaker 1: about when you're talking about arrested development and wanting to
Speaker 1: do more, just articulate that urge for more. You finally
Speaker 1: get a sitcom that's it's like one of the coolest
Speaker 1: characters and one of the most well regarded characters in
Speaker 1: like the last two decades of TV history. How did
Speaker 1: that not feel like enough? That's the but that's I
Speaker 1: think the curse we can fall into is and I
Speaker 1: do sometimes I can get a little dark because bringing
Speaker 1: up the fact that it is never enough if you
Speaker 1: don't wake up to what you're around. The sad truth
Speaker 1: it is sugar. You have sugar, and you're gonna want
Speaker 1: more sugar, and it's never going to satisfy. And then
Speaker 1: you're going to get to when you're in your eighties
Speaker 1: and you're going to still be going, I want more,
Speaker 1: what's next? This isn't enough, thinking the whole time the
Speaker 1: next thing is going to be what's enough? Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 1: The very simple truth that I would think I would get.
Speaker 1: But it takes that reminder of like I have been
Speaker 1: doing this and I still believe the next thing can
Speaker 1: be enough. It's very easy to go to that place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's what And that's with career. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: on the podcast day one of my favorite episodes of
Speaker 1: my own podcast was talking to this guy at clay
Speaker 1: Cockrell who's a wealth psychologist and so he works with
Speaker 1: the like you know, super infinitely wealthy, and they'll they'll
Speaker 1: say things to him like, you know, I thought it
Speaker 1: was the first billion, but it wasn't. It turns out
Speaker 1: it's the second billion. I need to be a multi billion. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he's like watching this being like, how how can that?
Speaker 1: You just had the data that that wasn't enough, but
Speaker 1: but we don't incode, like, oh the whole premise is wrong.
Speaker 1: Where you in code like I just didn't get there yet,
Speaker 1: you know I need Yeah, he hit sitcoms and that's
Speaker 1: when that happened. Yeah, and the truth is, I say it,
Speaker 1: but it's it's so easy to fall into that pattern.
Speaker 1: And also just all that and again not that money
Speaker 1: is bad or success is bad and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. But I remember, you know, honestly, I was
Speaker 1: watching an interview with Amy Schumer and it was a
Speaker 1: long time ago, and someone was asking about what advice
Speaker 1: would you get that's so exciting. You've got to be
Speaker 1: where I want to be. And I remember Amy saying
Speaker 1: something to this person's like, you have to understand I've
Speaker 1: gotten to the other side and I've seen behind the curtain.
Speaker 1: You're still thinking that thing is behind the curtain and
Speaker 1: it's not, or something to that effect that it was
Speaker 1: so wise. Oh and this was my favorite Jim Carrey's speech.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm talking about? Jim Carrey at
Speaker 1: the Golden Globes and I have the chance to meet
Speaker 1: him recently, and I rushed him and I told him,
Speaker 1: I was like, I've told this story so many times
Speaker 1: and I so appreciate you doing this. But he was
Speaker 1: with the Golden Globes years ago and he said something
Speaker 1: to the effect of, as a joke, he said, I've
Speaker 1: got two Golden Globes but a third will be enough.
Speaker 1: And it went to the audience and you can see
Speaker 1: half of them were laughing, and then you saw half
Speaker 1: of them like kind of like it will be like
Speaker 1: because we do tell ourselves that narrative. And he was
Speaker 1: making a joke, but what a profound statement, you know.
Speaker 1: I loved it. Yeah, this idea of never having enough
Speaker 1: is really, I think, such a problem. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I was not consulted when he minds were built, but like,
Speaker 1: you know, three golden globes, like you should cross it
Speaker 1: off your list, go hang out on the couch, right exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think another trick is kind of navigating all
Speaker 1: the other psychological biases we bring to the people. And
Speaker 1: I know this is something you've talked about too, about
Speaker 1: kind of having had a history of anxiety and things
Speaker 1: like that. You're known as an actor who plays anxious characters.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of one of my students once said,
Speaker 1: in the midst of midterms, she was like, I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm a Tony Hale character this week. Students to
Speaker 1: be saying that. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, so talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about like how this is played out even
Speaker 1: before being an actor in your early life. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that question. Hey, talking to you, which you're so
Speaker 1: intelligent and well read about psychology. I'm sure I'm sounding
Speaker 1: like a complete simpleton. But when it comes to anxiety,
Speaker 1: I man, there's so many things to say, because when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, I the word anxiety was not
Speaker 1: as much of a buzzword as it is now, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to categorize myself. I had a
Speaker 1: lot of feelings. I was very sensitive, a lot of panic,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of fear, and I think
Speaker 1: I was kind of very extroverted and wanted attention. But
Speaker 1: there was a way just to kind of get those
Speaker 1: feelings out, which is good. I'm glad I had those outlets,
Speaker 1: but just a lot of interferes And then I remember,
Speaker 1: I think it was my junior or senior year. I
Speaker 1: did a show a little Abner and I was at
Speaker 1: this character Mary and Sam and in the middle of
Speaker 1: the song, I had what I thought was an asthma attack,
Speaker 1: and it was a panic attack. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: it was then for the rest of my decades ahead,
Speaker 1: that became a marker of what I was terrified to
Speaker 1: have again. And I did have it other times, but
Speaker 1: there was this fear of like, oh my gosh, that's
Speaker 1: going to happen again on stage, that's going to happen
Speaker 1: again in an interview, that's going to happen when I
Speaker 1: have to speak in front of somebody. And it was
Speaker 1: just absolute terror. And then over time kind of getting
Speaker 1: back on stage and doing things I would I remember
Speaker 1: there's this famous preacher named Joyce Myers who would always say,
Speaker 1: many times, we feel like we have to be in
Speaker 1: this place of peace or strength in order to do stuff.
Speaker 1: And she's like, you know what, you just gotta do
Speaker 1: it afraid. You just got to keep walking and do
Speaker 1: it afraid. And I found myself constantly having this mantra
Speaker 1: of like Tony, just do it afraid, And so I
Speaker 1: would just keep walking because I can honestly say that
Speaker 1: I felt like I was a victim to my thoughts,
Speaker 1: to my feelings. I was so drowning in my thoughts
Speaker 1: and my feelings. I'm never going to work again. There's
Speaker 1: that thought that I'm gonna have a panic attack. There's
Speaker 1: that thought that my daughter's gonna get kidnapped or anything.
Speaker 1: There's just these thoughts and feelings that are going by
Speaker 1: like cars on a highway and when I became more
Speaker 1: of an observer of them, it took a seat and
Speaker 1: didn't identify with them so much. Again, this is something
Speaker 1: I do with all the time, but it was an
Speaker 1: angle I never thought about, and I was just incredibly
Speaker 1: grateful to have that new and I'll never this other
Speaker 1: This therapist I worked with who was really just a godsend,
Speaker 1: and actually he just gave me tools that I so appreciated,
Speaker 1: one being I want you to close your eyes for
Speaker 1: ten minutes a day, and if a picture came in
Speaker 1: your mind, say image. And if you find yourself going
Speaker 1: over a conversation, just say words. And the fact is
Speaker 1: we cannot control our thoughts and feelings, we cannot control
Speaker 1: what goes in our heads. But there's some about putting
Speaker 1: a name to these thoughts in these images that you're
Speaker 1: never going to be fully in the driver's seat, but
Speaker 1: it felt like I was a little more in the
Speaker 1: driver's seat. And just simple things like that. That was great.
Speaker 1: And to your question of kind of characters that I've played,
Speaker 1: I do. I do anxiety very well because I know
Speaker 1: what it feels like. But I think it is so
Speaker 1: cool to be in a stage of my life where
Speaker 1: all the stuff that I've walked through, and you know,
Speaker 1: not nearly what other people have walked through, but what
Speaker 1: I personally walk through. I can bring them into comedy.
Speaker 1: I can show a more authentic version of anxiety. I
Speaker 1: can talk about it openly, like it's it is cool
Speaker 1: how something that was so broken in my life, how
Speaker 1: it can be used for restoration and others, And that's
Speaker 1: a that's a cool equation that happens. I think Tony's
Speaker 1: portrayals of anxious characters have made a lot of us laugh,
Speaker 1: but they've also gotten a lot of us to think.
Speaker 1: When we get back from the break, we'll hear more
Speaker 1: about how Tony learn to listen to the anxious voice
Speaker 1: in his head. We'll see how really hearing that voice
Speaker 1: and show at some compassion allowed Tony to make peace
Speaker 1: with his thoughts and fears and feel a little happier.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will return in a moment. Many of
Speaker 1: us experience a little social anxiety now and then, but
Speaker 1: we don't usually have to perform in front of a
Speaker 1: theater full of paying customers, or to step out before
Speaker 1: a live TV audience of millions. After Tony Hall loved
Speaker 1: being a performer, but his mind was often filled with
Speaker 1: terror that he'd freeze or panic when the stakes got high, which,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, is a scary and lonely place
Speaker 1: to be. So how did he overcome it? People who
Speaker 1: have had panic attacks can understand this. It feels like
Speaker 1: you're never going to get out of it. It feels
Speaker 1: like the tsunami is coming towards you and it's just
Speaker 1: going to eat you alive, and nobody understands what you're
Speaker 1: going through. I'll never forget. I was about to do
Speaker 1: Conan O'Brien and when you're on a talk show, you're
Speaker 1: about to go on and they have a they opened
Speaker 1: the curtain, you walk out, and there was two guys
Speaker 1: about to open the curtain. I was going to walk out,
Speaker 1: and I felt a panic attack coming on. There was
Speaker 1: this moment of I'm either going to run because what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do was just bolt, or what I did,
Speaker 1: by the grace of God, is I started asking these
Speaker 1: two guys questions that we're holding this curtain, and I said,
Speaker 1: so where are you guys from? Oh my gosh, how
Speaker 1: long have you been doing? This? Wouldn't be crazy if
Speaker 1: there was like a documentary back here about people about
Speaker 1: like I just started to ask them questions to get
Speaker 1: my eyes off the anxiety, and then the curtain open
Speaker 1: and I went, but it's there's just this, there's this
Speaker 1: cross roads you hit where it's like it's coming and
Speaker 1: you so want to fight it. You so want to
Speaker 1: be like no, no, no no, no no, don't don't, don't
Speaker 1: it's overway. What you don't want to do is give
Speaker 1: yourself over to it. But that's kind of what you
Speaker 1: have to do. Like there's something about surrendering to the
Speaker 1: feelings and be like, you know what there it is,
Speaker 1: this is what this feels like, I know this feeling,
Speaker 1: and I know this feeling is going to pass. I
Speaker 1: remember Bill Hayter was talking about his anxiety one he
Speaker 1: talked about just how he would have He would name
Speaker 1: it as like a funny little friend that would kind
Speaker 1: of crawl all over him. And I was doing a
Speaker 1: play two years ago in San Francisco and it was
Speaker 1: practically a one man play. There was another character that
Speaker 1: came in towards the end, but most of it was
Speaker 1: just me talking for forty five minutes. And every night
Speaker 1: before going on, I would think tonight's tonight that I'm
Speaker 1: going to lose it on stage in front of a
Speaker 1: thousand people, and I would that little voice would come
Speaker 1: up and say, you know what, tonight's to night. And
Speaker 1: I've never had compassion to that voice. I've never looked
Speaker 1: to the voice and say, hey, I really appreciate you
Speaker 1: being here. I know you're trying to protect me, and
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how much that means to me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go out and do the show, but
Speaker 1: I'll be back. And there was something about having compassion
Speaker 1: to that voice. It dissipates the power. Rather than fighting
Speaker 1: that voice, which I had done from most of my life,
Speaker 1: but really giving it the love and care that it
Speaker 1: needed because it is a part of me, and my
Speaker 1: anxiety is a part of me, and why not begin
Speaker 1: to embrace and have love towards it, because that's what's
Speaker 1: going to release the power of it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I really love that suggestion for two reasons. Right. One
Speaker 1: is we know psychologically this idea that what you resist persists. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: if you try to like squish the beach ball under
Speaker 1: the water, it's gonna come flying back out at you. Right,
Speaker 1: So it just doesn't work, the resistance. But also recognizing
Speaker 1: that that voice is there, it's trying to tell you something,
Speaker 1: and listening to it. I think all too often we
Speaker 1: think of our emotions, whether it's anxiety or anger or whatever,
Speaker 1: as this annoying thing that's rumbling around in our brain
Speaker 1: that we want to shut off. But it's really just
Speaker 1: like a signal. Like it's like an alarm bell that's
Speaker 1: telling us something. It's like when your microwave beeps, when
Speaker 1: the yea the pubcorn's done. It's like it's just telling
Speaker 1: you something. And if we listen to it, say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, thanks for telling me this. I do have
Speaker 1: to go on stage right now, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to listen to you right now, but thank you for
Speaker 1: trying to look out for me. It's just such a
Speaker 1: different relationship with that voice. I love that because the
Speaker 1: fact is, if you really think about it, this voice
Speaker 1: has been trying to protect me since I was a kid.
Speaker 1: So the motivation of this voice is really begins. Is
Speaker 1: it from a loving place like wanting to help, and
Speaker 1: it has got distorted and it was crippling, But the
Speaker 1: motivation is they just want to protect me, and I
Speaker 1: want to give it that love. I think also, especially
Speaker 1: you know, for you as a kid, you had this
Speaker 1: secondary thing that I think went along with the anxiety,
Speaker 1: which probably you know, the voice was really trying to
Speaker 1: protect you from. I know you've talked before about your
Speaker 1: history with asthma, and there's such a connection just physiologically
Speaker 1: between what happens and anxiety and with your breath and
Speaker 1: what happens in asthma. And so because if anything, I
Speaker 1: imagine the asthma made you a little bit vigilant in
Speaker 1: a very anxious way. Ye child anyway, Yeah, because there's
Speaker 1: a I would also get really really nervous on elevators
Speaker 1: because I would think, if I have an asthma tack,
Speaker 1: I can't get out if there's a hospital nearby, And
Speaker 1: that just kind of triggered the anxiety, and many times
Speaker 1: it became a psycho where the anxiety then triggered the asthma.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people don't talk about they they
Speaker 1: talk about asthma, they don't they don't talk about the
Speaker 1: anxiety associated with asthma. And our breath is our life
Speaker 1: for us, So it feels like you're breathing through a
Speaker 1: straw like it is a terrifying feeling, and the thought
Speaker 1: of that coming back and not knowing because anything could
Speaker 1: trigger it for me. It could be environmental, it could
Speaker 1: be anxiety, it could be anything, so you never when
Speaker 1: it's going to come, which is very similar to kind
Speaker 1: of panic stuff. So there's a real kind of similarity
Speaker 1: between the two. I'm glad you're talking explicitly because I
Speaker 1: think people just think asthma, Yeah, just the big thing.
Speaker 1: But it's like, no, it comes with all the psychology,
Speaker 1: but just really quick. Like something I've mentioned I don't
Speaker 1: give like details, but there's been addiction issues in my
Speaker 1: family growing up, and there's a hyper vigilance of being
Speaker 1: around addictive cycles and it puts you in kind of
Speaker 1: high alert a lot, and so there's kind of a
Speaker 1: perfect storm that can happen with that high alertness, the asthma,
Speaker 1: all that can kind of like create a lot of fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: talk about hyper vigilance, You're like, what the heck is
Speaker 1: going on? Totally totally, And I think that the kind
Speaker 1: of what I wanted to dig into about the anxiety
Speaker 1: is that it's related to this vigilance that takes you
Speaker 1: out of the present moment, right, Like all these voices
Speaker 1: are talking about things in the future, What might happen
Speaker 1: if you know, you're kind of fast forwarding, and so
Speaker 1: has this kind of practice of being in the present
Speaker 1: moment also reduced your anxiety, Like it's good to just
Speaker 1: be in the present moment generally, But has that also
Speaker 1: helped you with some of these emotions? It has, if
Speaker 1: I'm honest, It's just hard, man, It's really, it's really
Speaker 1: it's really hard to be present. You know. I just
Speaker 1: admire a friend of mine, Natalie, her and her husband does.
Speaker 1: They just moved to la and Natalie meditates every day
Speaker 1: and she really practices it. And I just it's something
Speaker 1: that I so wish came naturally and it just and
Speaker 1: I know she's worked at it and started. Look, but
Speaker 1: it's I want to do that more because it's amazing. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, it really works if I if I'm still
Speaker 1: and I sit in that stillness and I allow that space,
Speaker 1: it always works. But man, my body fights to do it,
Speaker 1: Like it is just not a default. It is not
Speaker 1: a default for me. And I know the more I do,
Speaker 1: I get better at it. But jumping into it it's
Speaker 1: really tough for me, really tough. Yeah, I think you're
Speaker 1: not alone. My colleague Dan Harris, who talks about this
Speaker 1: stuff talks about. The meditation is kind of grabbing a
Speaker 1: goldfish in your hands and trying to keep it still
Speaker 1: while you're like holding it out of the water. That's
Speaker 1: what we do with our minds. God, I wish I
Speaker 1: could like be in your cool circles you guys talk
Speaker 1: about this stuff. I bet if you want to talk
Speaker 1: to Dan Harris you can be on his podcast. But
Speaker 1: one of the things we want to do, and one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I love talking to you today is
Speaker 1: that despite the fact that this is so hard for you,
Speaker 1: you've also come up with this toolkit you can use
Speaker 1: whenever the stuff comes up. And they're so evidence based
Speaker 1: and so straight out of CBT, and you know, such
Speaker 1: a great way of talking about how they work for you.
Speaker 1: So I kind of wanted you to walk through some
Speaker 1: of these. You know. One of these techniques that you've
Speaker 1: talked about is the not now technically. Yeah, so explain
Speaker 1: what this is and how you might a situation in
Speaker 1: which you might use it. Yeah. I feel like I
Speaker 1: use this a lot. It is very easy for me
Speaker 1: to live in the what if. My daughter just started driving,
Speaker 1: so the what if kicks in big time. There's a
Speaker 1: job that I might be getting in the spring that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of uncertainty to the location, so there's
Speaker 1: a what if there. Again, this is the first time
Speaker 1: I've thought about this, but I really think these voices
Speaker 1: are coming from a place of protection. You know, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you every scenario you can think about
Speaker 1: so that you can prep for whatever emergency situation happens.
Speaker 1: I think it's motivated really by a place to help
Speaker 1: and I need to have compassion. Like I hear you,
Speaker 1: I hear that what if? Not now? Right now, I'm
Speaker 1: having a great talk. This is where I'm now. She
Speaker 1: has a better zoom background than I do. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's just like that is where I am now, and
Speaker 1: and I and during that moment, let me just touch
Speaker 1: the table, let me smell the smell. Oh. Somebody said,
Speaker 1: oh gosh. They use something like five four three two one,
Speaker 1: where it was like start, have you heard this? It's
Speaker 1: like you seeing what five things? Are you seeing? Four things?
Speaker 1: Are you? And you? I don't remember how it went down,
Speaker 1: but it was such a great tool. Yeah. So this
Speaker 1: is one that's often called the five senses technique, where
Speaker 1: you just force yourself like what are five things you see.
Speaker 1: What are four things you hear? What are three things
Speaker 1: you smell? What are two things you taste? One thing
Speaker 1: you touch? And when you get down to like taste,
Speaker 1: you're kind of like, I guess when, well, maybe that's
Speaker 1: the one, that might be the one yet. But the
Speaker 1: key is that you can't be thinking about the what
Speaker 1: if at that point, because you're just kind of scanning
Speaker 1: for like, well, I guess I smell you know, my hate,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know it's yeah, yeah. And so
Speaker 1: it's a powerful technique to just ground you in the moment.
Speaker 1: That's the big thing. It's grounding. And I recently got
Speaker 1: into rope bowl making. Wait wait, wait, what is rope
Speaker 1: ball making? It's a rope I make these rope bowls
Speaker 1: and they this friend of mine, Sean, I gave me
Speaker 1: a rope bowl after I wrapped this last season of
Speaker 1: the first season of Mysterious been anxiety. And I've always
Speaker 1: wanted to paint. I've always wanted to do this kind
Speaker 1: of but I'm not a painter. And you make these
Speaker 1: rope balls on the sewing machine like pottery, and then
Speaker 1: you paint the rope and it's just and I give
Speaker 1: them as gifts and I just can't get enough of it.
Speaker 1: But it's this, it's a focused practice for me because
Speaker 1: I'm watching this rope going through the sewing machine, I'm
Speaker 1: painting this rope, I'm listening to something and and it's
Speaker 1: really it's a tool I need because maybe for me
Speaker 1: at this point in my life, I'm getting better at meditation,
Speaker 1: but doing a rope boll is my form of meditation.
Speaker 1: Right now. I'm not sitting in a room quiet with
Speaker 1: my legs frost, but I'm doing something that's a little
Speaker 1: more focused. So that definitely that's a tool that really
Speaker 1: has helped it. But the way to your question is
Speaker 1: I find myself just saying not now a lot, not now,
Speaker 1: And many times I don't want to be in the now.
Speaker 1: Many times I don't want to be in that space.
Speaker 1: But I not force myself, but I try to ease
Speaker 1: into it a little more and just remember. I think
Speaker 1: one of the things I love about this mantra of
Speaker 1: not now is you force yourself to remember that you
Speaker 1: have a choice, right that you know it's not easy,
Speaker 1: but you can kind of shift back to the now,
Speaker 1: right that there's a sort of choice to our thoughts.
Speaker 1: And I think that is such a powerful realization. Man
Speaker 1: comes from therapy, it comes from CBT, but it's just
Speaker 1: powerful to realize like, Okay, thank you thought, but I'm
Speaker 1: not going to listen to you. We'll come back later,
Speaker 1: Like you have a choice whether it feels like it
Speaker 1: or not. Do you know what's crazy though, is I
Speaker 1: don't know if you can if you relate to this.
Speaker 1: But when I do say not now, if I'm living
Speaker 1: in kind of a fearful what of space and I
Speaker 1: say not now, my body does not want to be
Speaker 1: more in a comfortable space. My body wants to be
Speaker 1: more in the fearful space. And that is something really
Speaker 1: interesting to analyze, like why do I why is my
Speaker 1: default to go to this fearful space for creating this
Speaker 1: emergent situation which is clearly a lot of anxiety and
Speaker 1: I don't want to be in the silence space. I
Speaker 1: am now around my family and you're like, what is
Speaker 1: that about? You know, that's wild to me. This is
Speaker 1: a problem. I mean, you know, I wasn't consulted on
Speaker 1: the design features of our bodies and our brains. But
Speaker 1: one of the things that that has good features but
Speaker 1: in this case is not very good, is it. Our
Speaker 1: thoughts are connected to our bodies. Race. You could be
Speaker 1: not now, not now, not now, but your fight or
Speaker 1: flight systems activated. You know, you have like you know,
Speaker 1: court us, all the stress hormone rushing through your body.
Speaker 1: You know, you might be like not now, but your
Speaker 1: body's like no, like fear, like like the future, like what.
Speaker 1: But the good news is that your thoughts, there's lots
Speaker 1: of evidence that your thoughts actually can hack your body. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you just start saying no, not now, oh,
Speaker 1: let me talk to the guy at the curtain instead,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to pretend like things are fine. Then
Speaker 1: your your body reacts to because your body's like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's talking to the guy at the curtain. I guess
Speaker 1: there's not an emergency, like you know, shut everything down,
Speaker 1: like shut it down. So it's harder because your body
Speaker 1: is connected to your thoughts. But you can also use
Speaker 1: your thoughts to hack your body too, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: That is cool, And I think the rope bowls is
Speaker 1: good for that to me too, because it's doing something
Speaker 1: it really does divert the attention from me big time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: chatting with Tony was an absolute blast. I enjoyed every
Speaker 1: single minute. We even ran over our scheduled interview slot
Speaker 1: because we were having so much fun that we lost
Speaker 1: chack of time, which kind of felt nice. This was fantastic,
Speaker 1: Thank you for doing this. Leaning into the present moment
Speaker 1: like that isn't always easy, and it's especially hard in January,
Speaker 1: when we feel like we should be planning out the
Speaker 1: entire year ahead in the hope that that next big
Speaker 1: thing on the far horizon will finally make us happier.
Speaker 1: Tony learned the hard way that big things don't always
Speaker 1: feel as good as we imagine, and that they don't
Speaker 1: fundamentally change who we are as people. So this new year,
Speaker 1: why don't we commit to being a bit more like
Speaker 1: Tony's children's book Creation Archibald, the brave little chicken who
Speaker 1: decided to stop being so obsessed with big ticket changes.
Speaker 1: We can stop worrying about the new jobs, new romances,
Speaker 1: and new bodies and instead just be. Next time on
Speaker 1: the happiness Lab, we'll look at them many loud and
Speaker 1: competing voices telling us to change what we eat in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, we'll see that we may want to
Speaker 1: shut them up a bit so we can listen to
Speaker 1: a more compassionate voice that's telling us how to eat
Speaker 1: for ourselves. The Happiness Lab is co written by Ryan
Speaker 1: Dilley and is produced by Ryan Dilley and Courtney Guerino.
Speaker 1: The show was mastered by Evan Viola and our original
Speaker 1: music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to Shanebeard,
Speaker 1: Greta Kone, Nicole Morano, Morgan Ratner, Maggie Taylor, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: my agent, Ben Davis, and the rest of the Pushkin team.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries
Speaker 1: and by me, doctor Laurie Sanchez.