Speaker 1: There's an opportunity on social media to use it as
Speaker 1: a tool, but it really does, in some ways go
Speaker 1: back to the user again, taking a conscious stock of
Speaker 1: who am I following, how does it make me feel?
Speaker 1: And is there an opportunity here to start unfollowing the accounts,
Speaker 1: purge the accounts that make you feel down, and start
Speaker 1: to fill it more with accounts that inspire you, make
Speaker 1: you laugh, enlighten you, enlighten you, and allow you to
Speaker 1: go outside, offline and live your best life.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do, things that hold us
Speaker 2: back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good Wolf thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: We have two guests on this episode, Lucia Nell and Gabriel'reileck.
Speaker 2: Lucia is the vice president of Upworthy. She has spent
Speaker 2: her career championing the belief that the Internet could and
Speaker 2: should be used as a tool to unite people versus
Speaker 2: stoke division. Her expertise in social media has garnered millions
Speaker 2: of engagements and catalyzed a movement to combatant negativity online.
Speaker 2: Her work has been covered in The New York Times, Clamor, Vogue,
Speaker 2: Fast Company, and Mental health publication Made of Millions. Gabriel
Speaker 2: is the head of content and Innovation at Good and Upworthy.
Speaker 2: Devoted to his mission of spreading optimism. He believes the
Speaker 2: Internet can be a force for good and is dedicated
Speaker 2: to leveraging it to amplify the best of humanity. He
Speaker 2: has crafted impact campaigns for numerous respected brands, nonprofits, and
Speaker 2: non governmental organizations such as Google, gofund Me, and the
Speaker 2: World Food Program.
Speaker 3: Hi Gabriel, Hi Lucia, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi, Hey Eric, Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for ros so happy to be here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm excited to have you guys on. We're going
Speaker 3: to be discussing your book, which is called Good People
Speaker 3: Stories from the Best of Humanity, which is a title
Speaker 3: that I couldn't resist the minute I heard it, because
Speaker 3: we all need more good stories, and we're going to
Speaker 3: talk all about that. But before we do, we'll start
Speaker 3: with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's
Speaker 3: talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there
Speaker 3: are two wolves inside of us that are always a
Speaker 3: best What is a good wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 3: kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandchild stops, he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 3: looks up at their grandparents, says which one wins? And
Speaker 3: the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 3: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 3: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 3: you do.
Speaker 1: First of all, I love this parable, and I was
Speaker 1: excited to think about what it means to me. I've
Speaker 1: done a lot of thinking and work around how you
Speaker 1: treat yourself first, and I think it really matters how
Speaker 1: you talk to yourself. What kind of behaviors do you
Speaker 1: implement to show your self respect and show yourself that
Speaker 1: you love yourself, so that you can then be empowered
Speaker 1: to go out into the world and exhibit those behaviors
Speaker 1: towards others. And so to me, the one you feed
Speaker 1: again needs to start with being mindful and self aware
Speaker 1: of what kind of language am I using towards myself today?
Speaker 1: What sorts of behaviors have I set up to either
Speaker 1: show myself that, eh, I don't really care that much,
Speaker 1: or I actually really value myself and I'm treating myself
Speaker 1: like I would a friend. That's where I begin. I
Speaker 1: think it starts from that place before you can go
Speaker 1: out into the world and act from, you know, a
Speaker 1: place of love and kindness and bravery and respect, etc.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think it's a great parable and it really got
Speaker 5: me thinking as well. I think my first instinct, you know,
Speaker 5: upon listening to it, is to be like, Okay, we
Speaker 5: have two wolves here. I've got to ignore this one
Speaker 5: wolf and concentrate on the one that embodies more noble characteristics.
Speaker 5: But I think there's a danger in that, in that instinct,
Speaker 5: because you can't look away from the negative impulses. You
Speaker 5: can't look away from the difficulties because if you do that,
Speaker 5: you know that wolf might be gorging itself behind.
Speaker 4: You in gaining strength.
Speaker 5: So I think it's important, at least what I was
Speaker 5: thinking about it, to approach both sides from a sense
Speaker 5: of curio. You know, what is motivating these two wolves?
Speaker 5: Why am I drawn to one or another given what's
Speaker 5: going on in my life, and to take it from there,
Speaker 5: and then you know, I think it's a lesson in
Speaker 5: approaching things in a very conscious way. And then the other,
Speaker 5: you know, word that I couldn't help but think about
Speaker 5: in the parable is this the word feed. And this
Speaker 5: is a pretty prominent word in our culture right now
Speaker 5: and particularly in the work that we do in the
Speaker 5: space of social media and digital environments. You know, you
Speaker 5: are exposed to a feed all the time. Okay, so
Speaker 5: you open up the app and that's what it's called
Speaker 5: a feed, and it's constantly pouring out at you. And
Speaker 5: I think it is important to actually put it in
Speaker 5: that context of food as potential nourishment, as attention and
Speaker 5: where that is being directed and what kind of force
Speaker 5: and power that it has and how you are shaping
Speaker 5: that because I think that feed is also being directed
Speaker 5: towards those two wolves inside you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. So listeners, What resonated for you
Speaker 3: while listening to that? What came up for you when
Speaker 3: thinking about how you could be feeding your good wolf?
Speaker 3: This month, when I think about feeding my good wolf,
Speaker 3: I've been thinking a lot about relationships. Relationships really shape
Speaker 3: the quality of our lives in profound ways. When they're healthy,
Speaker 3: they bring joy and fulfillment, But when they're struggling, the
Speaker 3: impact can be deeply unsettling. It's a common struggle, but
Speaker 3: one that often goes unaddressed. The good news there are
Speaker 3: concrete skills we can learn to improve our relationships. Relationships
Speaker 3: are this month's theme and our weekly Bite of Wisdom
Speaker 3: for a Wiser, Happier You newsletter, and I'd love to
Speaker 3: send them your way. Every week we send a menu
Speaker 3: of a few small exercises you can put into practice
Speaker 3: to feed your good wolf, along with a reflection and
Speaker 3: a related podcast episode on the topic. If you want
Speaker 3: to go deeper, just head to Goodwolf dot me slash relationships.
Speaker 3: If you think you benefit from these useful reminders and
Speaker 3: small bite size exercises to help you feed your good wolf,
Speaker 3: I'd love to send them to you for free. Just
Speaker 3: head over to Goodwolf dot me slash relationships and I'll
Speaker 3: send them your way. Back to what you were saying, Luccia,
Speaker 3: I thought was interesting as I was listening to you,
Speaker 3: as I thought that your book is about finding the
Speaker 3: best stories about people, like finding people doing good things right,
Speaker 3: And it occurred to me that that can also be
Speaker 3: implied internally. We can look at the good things that
Speaker 3: we do and choose to focus more on those things
Speaker 3: than the things we do that are not as good.
Speaker 3: And yet we do exactly the opposite generally, right, We
Speaker 3: generally amplify our problems and don't pay attention to our
Speaker 3: good things. So I think this applies internally. And then
Speaker 3: you know, Gabriel, obviously to your point, the feed that
Speaker 3: we're getting fed to us has a tenancy to weigh
Speaker 3: over amplify the negative. That's nothing new. Media has been
Speaker 3: doing that as long as there's been mass media, and
Speaker 3: yet that is what we take in most of the time.
Speaker 3: And you guys, as a social media company, are actively
Speaker 3: going the opposite direction from that. You're actually trying to
Speaker 3: put some positivity into the feed.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. We have set out on a mission
Speaker 1: a noble mission there, I say, to inject points of
Speaker 1: light into a feed that otherwise feels pretty dark. And
Speaker 1: I think the difference between how news and media used
Speaker 1: to work is that you'd get the paper every day, Yep,
Speaker 1: you'd rifle through it, you'd sort of read the sections
Speaker 1: you want to read, put it down, and then move
Speaker 1: on with your day. And now we have an addiction
Speaker 1: to something that lives in our pocket, and we have
Speaker 1: this impulse where every time we feel bored, every time
Speaker 1: we are in line at the pharmacy, every time we
Speaker 1: are multitasking on a meeting, we're looking at this feed.
Speaker 1: And if the majority of what you're seeing and sort
Speaker 1: of this inundation fire hose of information you're getting all
Speaker 1: the time in real time is negative or is stressful
Speaker 1: or anxiety or fear inducing, of course you're going to
Speaker 1: feel that way. And so I think, you know, we've
Speaker 1: been able to step back and look at the reality
Speaker 1: a little bit and look at this behavior and sort
Speaker 1: of the state of social media as it were, and say, whoaa, woh,
Speaker 1: this is happening really quickly. So what can we do
Speaker 1: to actually act as a counterbalance to that sort of
Speaker 1: information that's being fed to Gabriel's point, constantly and we're
Speaker 1: really proud of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, to Licia's point, you know, social media
Speaker 5: and information in general, I mean, it's a force and
Speaker 5: it's a tool. You know, we're not completely passive in
Speaker 5: the way that we use it and our agency and
Speaker 5: how we engage with it. And interestingly, you know, in
Speaker 5: terms of the genesis of at upworthy on Instagram, it
Speaker 5: started in a simple way where we wanted to have
Speaker 5: more agency in what we saw. Lucia and I started
Speaker 5: building the account shortly before the pandemic, and the reason
Speaker 5: we started doing it was because we just wanted to
Speaker 5: see more proof points of human decency in the world.
Speaker 4: We knew they were out there.
Speaker 5: We thought it would be great to have a place
Speaker 5: to catalog them so that we could refer to them
Speaker 5: ourselves and that so others could as well. And at
Speaker 5: the time, you know, five years or so ago, this
Speaker 5: was a pretty novel concept to kind of create a
Speaker 5: feed in this way. Now there are you know, many
Speaker 5: more accounts that share positive news and vibes and ideas
Speaker 5: out there, and I'm so glad that there are. It's
Speaker 5: great to see the idea taking a foothold, and so
Speaker 5: we started doing it for ourselves in the sense of, like, well,
Speaker 5: what can we do with this tool, you know, even
Speaker 5: just thinking of it as a way to bookmark things
Speaker 5: that'll be beneficial to ourselves, because it's hard to, you know,
Speaker 5: be prescriptive about what the world needs necessarily, but it's
Speaker 5: easier to understand what you need as a person. And
Speaker 5: when we started doing that, and given some world events
Speaker 5: that happened shortly after, we found out that this was
Speaker 5: something that people wanted in their lives, and it grew
Speaker 5: really quickly, and it was a confirmation that you know,
Speaker 5: these stories aren't something to be dismissed, that people coming together,
Speaker 5: that moments of kindness and decency and love and joy
Speaker 5: and compassion are compelling and important and fulfill a fundamental
Speaker 5: need for people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you said prescriptive, And I think that's what's interesting
Speaker 3: about a lot of the quote unquote positive content that's
Speaker 3: out there is that it is prescriptive. I mean, this
Speaker 3: show has a huge prescriptive element to it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We're bringing people on talking about how to live their
Speaker 3: best life, with the idea then that people who are
Speaker 3: listening can apply that to their life. The challenge with
Speaker 3: prescriptive though, is there's a pressure in it to be different.
Speaker 3: What I love about what you guys do is that's
Speaker 3: not what this is. It's stories about basic goodness of
Speaker 3: people that all we have to do is take on board.
Speaker 3: There's nothing to be done. I think the term is
Speaker 3: moral elevation. It elevates us morally simply by hearing stories
Speaker 3: of people doing good and decent things. And I'm a
Speaker 3: big believer that for as much bad as there is
Speaker 3: in the world, and there's plenty of it, that there is way, way,
Speaker 3: way more good. We just never see it. You know,
Speaker 3: for every bad thing that's happening, there are tons of
Speaker 3: moments of just the smallest little kindnesses or love or
Speaker 3: decency that is never amplified. So I love the idea
Speaker 3: of using social media to amplify that. I'm curious why
Speaker 3: being a social media company and stepping into that phray,
Speaker 3: which I think is great to use the technology for good,
Speaker 3: you've now pivoted to a much older form of technology,
Speaker 3: a book.
Speaker 4: Why I'll start with this.
Speaker 5: It is interesting we can post something onto social onto Instagram, TikTok,
Speaker 5: Facebook and reach ten million people in a couple hours.
Speaker 5: You know, which is an incredibly powerful thing, and it's
Speaker 5: a little bit of the spider Man mentality, right. With
Speaker 5: the great power comes a certain amount of responsibility. And so,
Speaker 5: you know, pivoting to a book where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 5: you're going to be reaching one person out of time,
Speaker 5: maybe a couple if someone's reading it out loud, and.
Speaker 3: It's going to take you a couple of years to
Speaker 3: do it. I mean, the length of time in a
Speaker 3: book publishing process is hilarious compared to social media.
Speaker 5: And I think that's where the truth about this lies
Speaker 5: is the length of time. I mean, this book took
Speaker 5: a long time. This was a multi year long project
Speaker 5: of gathering stories, interviewing people our followers, each one of
Speaker 5: them came from a follower of the account, to understand
Speaker 5: their experiences, to learn more about them, and to share
Speaker 5: that with the world in a way that really mattered.
Speaker 5: When we could have just, you know, taken a screenshot
Speaker 5: of a comment that they left and shared it with people,
Speaker 5: and we do do that and it reaches a lot
Speaker 5: of people. The problem is the ephemeral nature content on
Speaker 5: the Internet. You can have something that really is profound
Speaker 5: and hits people deeply, but then it's on to the
Speaker 5: next thing, and the next thing in the next thing,
Speaker 5: and that is the nature of the beast. And I'm
Speaker 5: not putting a moral judgment on it one way or another,
Speaker 5: but it's just the reality of what we operate in.
Speaker 5: And some of these things that we would see, you know,
Speaker 5: we would ask a question to the audience, you know,
Speaker 5: tell us about a moment that you experience kindness from
Speaker 5: a stranger. What comes to mind, and we would get
Speaker 5: thousands and thousands and thousands of responses. We could maybe elevate,
Speaker 5: you know, one or two of those, and we wouldn't
Speaker 5: even read most of them, and we wanted to. And
Speaker 5: when we did, we saw that there was such a
Speaker 5: strong power that these had to influence people's you know,
Speaker 5: I'm not going to speak for other people, but for myself,
Speaker 5: to influence my perspective on the amount, as you said,
Speaker 5: the amount of untold decency and goodness that is happening
Speaker 5: out there, and it was a lot. And we thought
Speaker 5: that these stories deserve to be treated with the kind
Speaker 5: of respect that only a book can provide. You put
Speaker 5: it on the page, it's there, and it lasts forever
Speaker 5: in a way that things do not last forever on
Speaker 5: the Internet. I mean, how many times have you read
Speaker 5: a quote or seen something that somebody said or a
Speaker 5: post and you're like, oh god, I wish I could
Speaker 5: find that again, and you're, you know, frantically searching, and
Speaker 5: eventually you give up and you get fed the next
Speaker 5: thing that piques your interest. So the main goal was
Speaker 5: to bottle that feeling that people get from reading these
Speaker 5: and to synthesize it and put it in a place
Speaker 5: where people didn't need to look at a screen to
Speaker 5: get it and knew where they could find it at
Speaker 5: any moment.
Speaker 4: And Lucci, I know you like to speak about that
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean something I think about now. And
Speaker 1: maybe this is a controversial thing to say. Gabriel's like,
Speaker 1: don't it is. Reading a book has become a radical
Speaker 1: act in twenty twenty four. A physical book, I mean,
Speaker 1: no kindles, no offense to kindle readers. They're great sometimes,
Speaker 1: but being able to pick something up, touch it, smell it.
Speaker 1: You can't touch the internet, you know. And there's something
Speaker 1: to think about that. Where to Gabriel's point, something that
Speaker 1: actually we know has the power to resonate with people.
Speaker 1: We're able to give those stories what they deserve, which
Speaker 1: is to be able to preserve them and preserve the
Speaker 1: feeling they give people versus just watching them sort of
Speaker 1: tragically swept away. And these algorithms are now built to
Speaker 1: get you to keep moving and get you to keep clicking,
Speaker 1: and so they're actually built to have your attention for
Speaker 1: maybe you know, two three seconds, half a second, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, and then say bye bye on to the
Speaker 1: next thing and keep you hooked. And so I guess
Speaker 1: moving to a book format kind of from like a
Speaker 1: mindfulness perspective, which I would love to talk more about
Speaker 1: with you. Eric gives you the chance to get offline,
Speaker 1: take a deep breath, take a break from screens, get
Speaker 1: in bed, you know, read a couple stories of this book,
Speaker 1: and just breathe for a second. Give your eyes a break,
Speaker 1: give your brain a break, and focus in a way
Speaker 1: that social media does not afford us in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and we're really proud of that.
Speaker 3: That all makes a ton of sense. I will not
Speaker 3: get into the physical book versus kindle debate. It tears
Speaker 3: at my soul on a regular basis. Anyway, Kindles are
Speaker 3: okay for the type of reading I do. For this show,
Speaker 3: They're a lifesaver because I can highlight and export those
Speaker 3: highlights and work with them. And I love a physical book,
Speaker 3: and so I'm always sort of torn between the ability
Speaker 3: to capture things that I want to go back to
Speaker 3: which kindle gives me versus the desire to hold a
Speaker 3: book in my hand and the fact now that I'm
Speaker 3: old glasses right, and do I have the right lighting
Speaker 3: and all that we're a kindle. You just kind of
Speaker 3: adjust all that. So it's an internal battle.
Speaker 1: Okay, pro kindle, pro kendle.
Speaker 5: Whatever it is, you know, gives you the opportunity to
Speaker 5: stay with something a little bit longer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's exactly exactly. So, as you guys went
Speaker 3: out there and cultivated these stories, they were not new
Speaker 3: to you. You were seeing stories like this and posting
Speaker 3: stories like this for a long time, so that's not
Speaker 3: new to you. But you then chose to pick a
Speaker 3: subset of them and talk to the people who had
Speaker 3: submitted to them to get more information about the story,
Speaker 3: and I assume to rewrite it in a way that
Speaker 3: makes it sort of compelling for a book and while
Speaker 3: still honoring the person's voice and all of that. I'm
Speaker 3: curious what did you learn about people or something from
Speaker 3: this later process that you didn't already know from being
Speaker 3: expose to all these types of stories anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a hunger from people to tell stories about
Speaker 1: people in their lives that impacted them positively. You know,
Speaker 1: we have a chapter in the book about teachers. Who's
Speaker 1: that teacher who changed your life? And upon you know,
Speaker 1: asking people, can we hear more about this person you
Speaker 1: know from thirty years ago who impacted you in some
Speaker 1: way and then influenced you and encouraged you to, you know,
Speaker 1: take this program and now you're a lawyer and you
Speaker 1: want to talk about it, and you never got to
Speaker 1: thank them, et cetera. People were chomping at the bit
Speaker 1: to talk about these things. And so for me, it's
Speaker 1: like everyone has a story like this. If you think
Speaker 1: about who's that teacher who changed your life? Or what's
Speaker 1: the time you experience kindness from a stranger, or when
Speaker 1: you think of the term good good people, who comes
Speaker 1: to mind, you know, don't think too hard about it.
Speaker 1: Everyone has a person and everyone wants to talk about
Speaker 1: them and share that story. It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that hunger is a real thing out there.
Speaker 5: You know, and I think a lot of times, even
Speaker 5: though the tools are there to make it different, it's
Speaker 5: a one way communication that's going on in digital environments.
Speaker 5: You're putting something and you're talking at people, you know,
Speaker 5: broadcasting your life, you're broadcasting your views, what you think,
Speaker 5: your values, and there is a real desire for it
Speaker 5: to be a conversation and for people to be heard
Speaker 5: and a hunger to connect. And I think, you know,
Speaker 5: that was the initial thing that surprised me about what
Speaker 5: was happening on our account, which is that when we
Speaker 5: would ask a question or even when we would share
Speaker 5: a story that resonated with people, you know that so
Speaker 5: many folks would start commenting with experiences of their own.
Speaker 5: You know, that it would trigger a memory that they
Speaker 5: needed to share, that they needed to tell people that
Speaker 5: the world needed to know about someone in their life
Speaker 5: or an experience that they had that was like this.
Speaker 5: And that was interesting to me to know that there
Speaker 5: was such a well of desire to share these moments
Speaker 5: of human connection and pro found impact, and so to
Speaker 5: give people the opportunity to tell those stories in a
Speaker 5: way that would last forever, and then also for people
Speaker 5: to open up and be willing to do that. I
Speaker 5: think was something that surprised me and moved me a lot.
Speaker 1: There are one hundred and one stories in this book.
Speaker 1: Gabriel and I have our own stories, which is very exciting,
Speaker 1: but ninety nine people from our community opened up and
Speaker 1: shared their stories. It's a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure you had way more than that and
Speaker 3: had to select which ones actually go into the book. Yes,
Speaker 3: this might be a good time to pause and allow you,
Speaker 3: guys to read. Each of you read a story, not
Speaker 3: your story that's in the book, but a story that
Speaker 3: you really loved. So whichever one of you has a
Speaker 3: story first, can just jump in and read the name
Speaker 3: of the story and we'll go.
Speaker 1: This is a story in our chapter, A first chapter
Speaker 1: called the Kindest of Strangers. It's called Sky's the Limit
Speaker 1: by Brittany f I graduated from the University of Texas
Speaker 1: at Austin with a bachelor's and government so, as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, I had been rigorously prepared for my first
Speaker 1: job out of college, waiting tables at the cheesecake factory.
Speaker 1: I'm the oldest of four girls and spent the greater
Speaker 1: part of my life raising little sisters. When I was fourteen,
Speaker 1: my father was sentenced a ninety nine year prison sentence.
Speaker 1: Less than a year later, my mother, who struggled with
Speaker 1: substance abuse, left. Rather than let their failures deter me,
Speaker 1: I worked even harder, finishing high school and college. I
Speaker 1: wanted to show my sisters I could do it, so
Speaker 1: they would be inspired to do the same. Unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: graduated college in December two thousand and eight, write smack
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Great Recession, so jobs were
Speaker 1: pretty tough to come by. I was lucky to have
Speaker 1: any job. I knew that. Still, I wanted a bigger
Speaker 1: slice of that proverbial pie, not just a literal cheesecake.
Speaker 1: Desperate for advice, I visited an old ut professor and
Speaker 1: pled my case. He told me to go to law school.
Speaker 1: People in my family aren't lawyers. They need lawyers, I retorted, Brittany.
Speaker 1: He replied, you don't even need to practice law with
Speaker 1: that degree. Just having it already opens up so many doors.
Speaker 1: I thought of my sister's. We needed open doors. When
Speaker 1: I got home, I booked an alsat test. I studied
Speaker 1: hard on my own, and when I sat for the test,
Speaker 1: I scored one fifty eight out of one eight. It
Speaker 1: was an okay score, but I needed a great one
Speaker 1: to get into a competitive school. I looked into test
Speaker 1: prep courses. I knew they gave people an edge, but
Speaker 1: that came at a price, twelve hundred dollars to be exact,
Speaker 1: I'd need to clock in one hundred and sixty five
Speaker 1: hours to cover the cost. And that's not factoring in
Speaker 1: the living expenses. No way I could afford it. I
Speaker 1: went to bed feeling like I'd been stabbed in the heart.
Speaker 1: It wasn't fair. I wanted to go to school again.
Speaker 1: On one particularly glum Sunday morning, I wove through the restaurant,
Speaker 1: pitcher in hand, summoning up every ounce of will to smile.
Speaker 1: Among the tables, I noticed Sky, one of our regulars,
Speaker 1: sitting alone in an old dress, her gray hair swept
Speaker 1: into a low bun. I filled her glass and the
Speaker 1: smile we exchanged was genuine. It was nice not having
Speaker 1: to make the effort. I walked back into the kitchen,
Speaker 1: leaned against the walk in and closed my eyes. Britt,
Speaker 1: a coworker, said, I opened my eyes. Sky was just
Speaker 1: talking about law school. You want to do that, right,
Speaker 1: you should talk to her. It was a slow morning,
Speaker 1: none of the managers were working. I decided that it
Speaker 1: would be a good idea to have that conversation Sky,
Speaker 1: I said, can I see you with you a little while?
Speaker 1: Of course, sweetie, I heard you know a lot about
Speaker 1: law school. I was wondering, do you know anything about applying?
Speaker 1: Sky told me that some years prior she'd open an
Speaker 1: accounting firm with her husband. It was so successful in
Speaker 1: the last year that she decided to follow an enduring
Speaker 1: dream of practicing law. She signed up for an Elsat
Speaker 1: prep class, fully intending to take the exam, when tragically
Speaker 1: her husband died, so she decided to pursue an MBA instead,
Speaker 1: a skill more relevant to the firm. I recommend taking
Speaker 1: a prep course one hundred percent, she said. Her kindness
Speaker 1: put me at ease and encouraged me to open up
Speaker 1: about my childhood. I know I can't get into the
Speaker 1: best schools with the scores I have now, I said,
Speaker 1: but those courses are out of my league financially speaking.
Speaker 1: Sky nodded her head as I spoke. Everything will work out.
Speaker 1: I'm sure of it, she said. Recharged by her empathy,
Speaker 1: I got up and went back to work, refilling ice
Speaker 1: water and delivering factory specials. Here you go, sir, I chirped,
Speaker 1: presenting an enormous order of Feticini Alfredo. The dish clinked
Speaker 1: on the table, wide noodles sprawling across the plate, like
Speaker 1: my underutilized college educated brain. A few days later, Sky
Speaker 1: returned another old dress, same gray bun, sitting at her
Speaker 1: habitual booth. I greeted her with a big smile. But
Speaker 1: before I could speak, she interrupted, I want to give
Speaker 1: you my prep course. My eyes widened. I already paid
Speaker 1: for it. She put up a hand, shooting down potential protest.
Speaker 1: They're telling me it's not allowed for me to transfer
Speaker 1: it over to you, but I'll figure it out, and
Speaker 1: she did. I finished the prep course that summer and
Speaker 1: took the ELS at the following fall. My score jumped
Speaker 1: from a one fifty eight to a one sixty seven,
Speaker 1: which put me in the top ninety three percent, which
Speaker 1: in turn got me an in Boston College Law school.
Speaker 1: I graduated cum laude in twenty thirteen, moved back to Texas,
Speaker 1: passed the bar, leaving me with only one final hurdle.
Speaker 1: I had to choose between corporate law or public service law.
Speaker 1: I chose the latter because of Sky. Sometimes it feels
Speaker 1: like life is stacked against you, a tower of dirty
Speaker 1: dishes piled high and a restaurants sink. Other times, it
Speaker 1: feels like life's a friend you didn't know you had,
Speaker 1: a sweet older woman in a booth of the cheesecake
Speaker 1: factory who decides to help you achieve your dreams. Because
Speaker 1: of Sky, I'm no longer shackled to that restaurant, unable
Speaker 1: to move forward. Instead, I'm a lawyer working hard for
Speaker 1: the people. As a rule, I strive to emulate Sky
Speaker 1: by listening to and supporting my clients, giving them a
Speaker 1: fighting chance in this world.
Speaker 3: Thank you the Chia for that beautiful story. I'd like
Speaker 3: to ask you guys about a term that I saw
Speaker 3: in your press kit, and it's mean world syndrome. What
Speaker 3: is mean world syndrome? And how is Upworthy affecting that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 5: Mean world syndrome is one of those things that I
Speaker 5: can't remember how I came across it, Maybe just a
Speaker 5: random Wikipedia dive one day, but it's a term that
Speaker 5: was coined by media professor George Gerbner in the nineteen seventies. Basically,
Speaker 5: it posits that you know when people are exposed to
Speaker 5: violence related content to negative reinforcing narratives about the world
Speaker 5: and people around them. That increases fear and anxiety and pessimism,
Speaker 5: basically a heightened state of alert. You see more threats
Speaker 5: around you, you perceive more threats, so you are in
Speaker 5: a more anxious state. Basically, it states, well, if this
Speaker 5: is true, then the narrative that we are fed influences
Speaker 5: how we perceive the world. And so if all you
Speaker 5: see our negative narratives about the world around you, that
Speaker 5: it's dangerous, people are greedy, things are bad, you're going
Speaker 5: to start thinking that that is reality. And while you
Speaker 5: know it is certainly true that these things exist, that
Speaker 5: there are evil forces that work there, and there are
Speaker 5: bad people, it's not the whole story, right, So if
Speaker 5: you buy into it, then you start engaging in the
Speaker 5: world from a place where you feel that there is
Speaker 5: danger all around you, and that affects how you interact
Speaker 5: with people. So that got me thinking, you know, and
Speaker 5: I think this is something that we all inherently know
Speaker 5: to be true. This is this is the parable of
Speaker 5: the wolves, right, this is you know, what are you
Speaker 5: feeding the two wolves inside you? Which wolf are you feeding?
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 4: Know, but is the opposite also true?
Speaker 5: You know, if you shift your perspective, if you take
Speaker 5: a look at the good that surrounds you, the joy,
Speaker 5: the compassion, the decency, both far away you know, stories
Speaker 5: that don't affect you and also stuff that happens to
Speaker 5: you on a day to day basis, or reflecting on
Speaker 5: things that have happened to you through your life. How
Speaker 5: does that affect your perspective? If it allows you to
Speaker 5: see that there is more good happening, and you carry
Speaker 5: that feeling with you out into the world, it almost
Speaker 5: becomes a bit like a self fulfilling prophecy. Right, you
Speaker 5: are more likely to treat people kindly, You're more likely
Speaker 5: to engage with folks out there in a positive way,
Speaker 5: and therefore more of these moments are probably likely to happen.
Speaker 5: And so, you know, the perspective is kind of like
Speaker 5: the first step in crafting the kind of world that
Speaker 5: I think we would like to live in.
Speaker 1: I think it speaks to this idea of creating the
Speaker 1: space in your body and your mind for goodness to enter,
Speaker 1: and for the possibility that there's good all around you
Speaker 1: if you look for it, and so I think it
Speaker 1: enables you to operate from this mindset of giving people
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt that we're all doing our
Speaker 1: best day to day. And this could be in a
Speaker 1: micro sense too, right. It's like if you're open to
Speaker 1: noticing things like someone holding the door open for someone else,
Speaker 1: someone holding the subway door open as someone's running to
Speaker 1: the subway, if you're living in New York City, smiling
Speaker 1: at a stranger when you pass them on your street,
Speaker 1: little things that signal to you, you know, even in traffic.
Speaker 1: We're both based in Los Angeles, in traffic letting someone
Speaker 1: go in front of you and then giving the little wave.
Speaker 1: It's like, these are dare I say, like sweet cute
Speaker 1: human things that I think happen all the time, and
Speaker 1: they're lovely if you let yourself experience them and not
Speaker 1: overlook them of like yeah, yeah, yeah, and then focus
Speaker 1: on something you know, angry or mean someone did that day.
Speaker 1: And so I think there's so much positive energy and
Speaker 1: good energy around us. But for all the things we're
Speaker 1: based on, all the things we're talking about, we're so
Speaker 1: conditioned to focus on what's going wrong. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I thought of a couple things as you guys were talking.
Speaker 3: The first Gabriel, is something that you were talking about.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about another set of scientific studies that
Speaker 3: I've seen that show that the more people are socially isolated,
Speaker 3: the more they start to believe the worst about other people,
Speaker 3: which of course then causes you to be more socially isolated,
Speaker 3: which then causes you to believe the worst. Right, and
Speaker 3: it's a self perpetuating loop. And mean person syndrome, I think,
Speaker 3: is a similar thing. Right, once you've got a little
Speaker 3: of that orientation, right, we look for what we already believe.
Speaker 3: That's how we do things. And so for me, really
Speaker 3: actively going against that has always felt important. And it
Speaker 3: made me think of another phrase that I use a lot,
Speaker 3: which is is this useful? And I think about that
Speaker 3: a lot when I'm thinking about my thoughts, because oftentimes
Speaker 3: there's not a truth that people are good or that
Speaker 3: people are bad, or that there are good things in
Speaker 3: the world or they're bad things in the world. There's
Speaker 3: absolutely both. However, what's the more useful orientation for me
Speaker 3: to take to have the best outcome in life that
Speaker 3: I want and to be the person that I want
Speaker 3: to be? And my experience is that is a way
Speaker 3: of orienting to the world that sees the best in
Speaker 3: people and looks for that in people, and then I
Speaker 3: think you're often surprised because that's what you get, and
Speaker 3: not in a Pollyanna way. It doesn't mean that bad
Speaker 3: things don't happen. It just means if I have to
Speaker 3: think about how I want to orient, there's a conscious choice,
Speaker 3: I think, to orient away from mean world syndrome, and
Speaker 3: a conscious choice to say, if I'm going to be
Speaker 3: engaging in social media, can I be making sure that
Speaker 3: my feed is cultivated with things like Upworthy that are
Speaker 3: putting those things in front of me.
Speaker 1: I talk sometimes about healthy habits on social media and
Speaker 1: what you know I recommend to friends and family, which
Speaker 1: is to do what I call a social media cleanse,
Speaker 1: where it's sort of taking stock of what you're seeing
Speaker 1: often or what the algorithms are serving you based on
Speaker 1: what you're clicking and how are they making you feel.
Speaker 1: So listen to your body, right, Are you getting a
Speaker 1: rapid heartbeat because you're looking at something and then it's
Speaker 1: activating some comparison culture or some comparison inside of you.
Speaker 1: Is it stoking fear and anger? Again, it's not about
Speaker 1: being Pollyanna and turning away from problems. But you have
Speaker 1: an opportunity on social media to curate a feed that
Speaker 1: inspires you, that uplifts you, that feeds your curiosity about
Speaker 1: the worlds, or encourages habits or hobbies rather that make
Speaker 1: you feel like you or make you feel excited to
Speaker 1: be you, or inspire to go out and take that
Speaker 1: dance class, or inspired to go out and garden because
Speaker 1: it makes you feel good. And so there's an opportunity
Speaker 1: on social media, to Gabriel's point, to use it as
Speaker 1: a tool. But it really does in some ways go
Speaker 1: back to the user and say, again, taking a conscious
Speaker 1: stock of who am I following, how does it make
Speaker 1: me feel? And is there an opportunity here to start
Speaker 1: unfollowing the accounts, purge the accounts that make you feel down,
Speaker 1: and start to fill it more with accounts that inspire you,
Speaker 1: make you laugh, lighten you, enlighten you, and allow you
Speaker 1: to go outside, offline and live your best life.
Speaker 5: And you know to what you're speaking about, Eric, You
Speaker 5: know you spoke about loneliness, right and the Surgeon General
Speaker 5: and others, you know they speak to the epidemic of
Speaker 5: loneliness that is happening in this country and throughout the world.
Speaker 5: And it's not an epidemic, and it's not a problem
Speaker 5: because it's sad. It's sad that people are lonely. I mean,
Speaker 5: it is right that we're all so hungry for connection.
Speaker 5: We have these wonderful tools at our disposal, and they're
Speaker 5: not necessarily giving it to us what we're actually looking for,
Speaker 5: but it is detrimental to the fabric of our society.
Speaker 5: Like you said, you know, the more that you are removed,
Speaker 5: the worse that you think about the world around you.
Speaker 5: And that's why it's so important to be plugged in
Speaker 5: and to be supported and to feel a connection to community.
Speaker 5: And there are ways that social media can give that
Speaker 5: in a really positive way. There are ways that social
Speaker 5: media gives that in a very dangerous way that reinforces
Speaker 5: the worse than us. And that's why I think it's
Speaker 5: important to take stock of our relationship to it in general.
Speaker 5: Is it giving you what you need in terms of
Speaker 5: how you want to feel about the world, And you know,
Speaker 5: I'm sure for any people it is. It's like you're
Speaker 5: sharing funny memes with people. That's a wonderful way to
Speaker 5: connect and it makes you happy and it's a great thing,
Speaker 5: but in other ways it could be reinforcing the worst impulses.
Speaker 5: And if that's happening, you know, I think there's an
Speaker 5: interesting thought experiment that you can do sometimes, which is like,
Speaker 5: what are the things that make me angry about the
Speaker 5: world or mad about people or distrustful? And where am
Speaker 5: I seeing that? How often am I experiencing that in
Speaker 5: real life in my interaction with people? And how often
Speaker 5: am I just being exposed to that through a screen?
Speaker 5: And if you find yourself saying, oh, I mean everything
Speaker 5: that's making me angry is coming through a screen, and
Speaker 5: sure head it's peppered around with good jokes and nice
Speaker 5: crafts and fun things and distractions, well that's something to
Speaker 5: pay attention to, because what really matters is what's happening
Speaker 5: in real life and your interactions with people in real life,
Speaker 5: because that is reality. What's happening on a screen. There
Speaker 5: are forces at work that are beyond your control. There
Speaker 5: is money to be made, there are narratives to be sold,
Speaker 5: There is attension to be gathered for whatever purpose that
Speaker 5: people wants it, sometimes wonderful purposes, sometimes not so wonderful.
Speaker 5: When you're out in the real world, you are the
Speaker 5: one in control, and so I think it's just important
Speaker 5: to keep that in mind.
Speaker 3: Now, Gabriel, let's have your story that you want to read.
Speaker 5: So this is a story called Curly Fries by John V.
Speaker 5: I was pretty bummed out. I've been driving for hours
Speaker 5: and wasn't much looking forward to the destination. I was
Speaker 5: twenty three and working for the Coast Guard. I'd enlisted
Speaker 5: three years earlier, just a few months prior to nine
Speaker 5: to eleven, and emerged from boot camp two weeks into
Speaker 5: a war. After training at forts across the country, I
Speaker 5: was sent to Port Aransas, just south of Corpus CHRISTI,
Speaker 5: to act as a sea marshal under the newly formed
Speaker 5: Department of Homeland Security. The majority of my time there
Speaker 5: was split between high risk boardings on incoming foreign ships
Speaker 5: and search and rescue missions along the Texas coast. The
Speaker 5: dangers were high, the hours were long, and sleep was inconsistent.
Speaker 5: We're talking seventy two hour on call shifts, filled with
Speaker 5: a whole lot of pressure and not much compassion. I'd
Speaker 5: get homesick often and would visit my parents nearly a
Speaker 5: full day's drive north of Erie, Illinois whenever I could.
Speaker 5: I was coming back from one of these visits and
Speaker 5: still half a day's journey ahead of me. The night before,
Speaker 5: I'd slept in my truck as usual, craving human contact
Speaker 5: as much as food, and I pulled into a diner
Speaker 5: just outside of Texarcana. I looked awful, but figured I'd
Speaker 5: be in good company here. I was sitting at the
Speaker 5: counter when a man walked in, long black hair, go tee,
Speaker 5: face full of scruff. He had dirty jeans and a
Speaker 5: chain wallet, classic trucker vibes through and through. What struck
Speaker 5: to me the most was his shirt. It depicted Curly
Speaker 5: from the Three Stooges holding a fork into a light socket.
Speaker 5: Underneath it simply read Curly Fries. Maybe I was delirious
Speaker 5: from the solitude, but it got me good. I started laughing.
Speaker 5: Cool shirt, I told him we got to chatting everything
Speaker 5: about me, screamed military coast guard shirt, high and tight, haircut,
Speaker 5: zero percent body fat, and mouth like a sailor. The
Speaker 5: trucker moved to sit next to me and revealed he
Speaker 5: was a Vietnam vet. Vets like him loved talking to
Speaker 5: a listed guys like me. Barring desert storm, most of
Speaker 5: them haven't had a chance to feel understood by the
Speaker 5: generations I came before us. There's a bond there that's
Speaker 5: difficult to describe, but easy to understand if you're in
Speaker 5: our shoes. He could tell we were part of the
Speaker 5: same brotherhood. I guess he could also tell that I
Speaker 5: see him down How are you getting back to Corpus Christi,
Speaker 5: he asked. I told him I usually took the I
Speaker 5: thirty five to San Antonio and then the I thirty
Speaker 5: seven east. Hell no, brother, I've been driving loads down
Speaker 5: there for years. Let me tell you how to go,
Speaker 5: he replied, leaving his eyes. It's a way better route.
Speaker 4: He told me.
Speaker 5: I needed to see the real Texas, not just the interstate.
Speaker 4: I was game.
Speaker 5: I grabbed the MapQuest print out from my truck and
Speaker 5: handed it over along with a pen. He took his
Speaker 5: time outlining turn by turn directions for me, noting the
Speaker 5: best restaurants, towns, and miscellaneous sites to take in all
Speaker 5: the way to Corpus Christi. It was a humble gesture,
Speaker 5: but his enthusiasm and care were contagious. I was already
Speaker 5: feeling less bummed out, even if my twenty three hour
Speaker 5: trip was about to turn into a thirty hour one,
Speaker 5: My turning point came at the city limits of Lagrange.
Speaker 5: Until then, I'd been contemplative, enjoying the sites, but still
Speaker 5: too aware of what I was driving back to. But
Speaker 5: something really shifted at Lagrange. The zz Top song of
Speaker 5: the same name for the uninitiated was a fave to
Speaker 5: play on the boat patrols, and now here I was
Speaker 5: just outside the real McCoy. I took a picture of
Speaker 5: the sign with my disposable Kodak and hopped back into
Speaker 5: the truck. I felt different after that. I noticed the
Speaker 5: miles and miles of open, untouched land, the deer in
Speaker 5: the fields, the pastors full of cows, the wild hogs,
Speaker 5: the enormity of it all, the state I lived in.
Speaker 5: It took me by surprise. For the very first time,
Speaker 5: I cranked up the music and a sense of peace
Speaker 5: washed over me that I still feel to this day.
Speaker 5: None of this changed the fact that I was now
Speaker 5: behind schedule. Of course, my brain was stressed, but my
Speaker 5: brain was always stressed. My soul was happy.
Speaker 4: That was different.
Speaker 5: When I finally got back to Port Oransis, I shared
Speaker 5: the story of Curly Fries, the first of many times
Speaker 5: I would do so. It was one of the first
Speaker 5: I told my wife when I met her in Corpus Christy.
Speaker 5: I can't even tell you why. I guess it just
Speaker 5: made me happy and brought me that sense of peace.
Speaker 5: Two months after I left the service, my first daughter
Speaker 5: was born. Her birth was complicated and she was diagnosed
Speaker 5: with cerebral palsy. The years that followed were filled with many,
Speaker 5: many trips to the children's hospital. When you live through
Speaker 5: something like that, you spend a lot of time looking
Speaker 5: to the past instead of living in the present. Curly
Speaker 5: Fries was a story and a feeling, so I went
Speaker 5: back often. Somehow it even got linked to another song
Speaker 5: somewhere down in Texas by Jason Boland. I'd sing my
Speaker 5: daughter that song, and inevitably the story would follow. She
Speaker 5: passed when she was six, but I'd spend her life
Speaker 5: sharing the feeling of that day with her. It's a
Speaker 5: simple thing to draw a new route for a stranger
Speaker 5: and shine a light on places they haven't yet considered.
Speaker 5: It's just as simple to take a leap of faith and.
Speaker 4: Follow that route.
Speaker 5: The result of that exchange is a little more complicated.
Speaker 5: To understand the trip Curly made for me. Eventually connected memories, songs,
Speaker 5: and people as much as it did places. I think
Speaker 5: of one and then another follows, all colored by that
Speaker 5: sudden sense of peace. It's become a roadmap for my
Speaker 5: mind away from chaos and sadness straight to a mysterious joy.
Speaker 4: Thanks Curly.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's beautiful and sad and yet that's great. Thank
Speaker 3: you for reading that one.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 5: I mean it's honest, you know, and uh yeah, that's
Speaker 5: why it hits me so deep. It's one of those
Speaker 5: stories that reminds you how sadness and joy are so
Speaker 5: intertwined inextricably, so you know that you can't have one
Speaker 5: without the other. You know, there's a I forget what
Speaker 5: the exact quote is, but it's something the effect of, like,
Speaker 5: you know, you can only fill your well with joy
Speaker 5: as deep as you've dug it with grief. Yeah, And
Speaker 5: that's one of those stories. And it really sticks with
Speaker 5: me too, because you know, it talks about it's a
Speaker 5: small thing and it just meant so much to him.
Speaker 5: And now I carry that feeling with me where I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 5: what is it that I'm going to do that might
Speaker 5: have an impact like this on someone you never know?
Speaker 3: Yeah, The other thing I loved about that story even
Speaker 3: more than you know, Curly and the kindness he offered,
Speaker 3: was how this gentleman was able to take a feeling
Speaker 3: of peace that he experienced and continue to go back
Speaker 3: to that. That's what really stood out to me. And
Speaker 3: I've had moments in my life. I've been a Zen
Speaker 3: student and studied fairly deeply, and I've had some of
Speaker 3: what they consider those sort of enlightenment moments, right where
Speaker 3: like everything comes alive and becomes one thing, and then
Speaker 3: those pass. And the challenge I found is how to
Speaker 3: live from that place even when the feeling isn't there.
Speaker 3: And that's what this guy was trying so hard to do,
Speaker 3: and he was connecting things in his life back to
Speaker 3: this thing. He was trying to start from an orientation
Speaker 3: of peace and latch things onto it. I just think
Speaker 3: it's really beautiful how he used that beyond feeling peace
Speaker 3: for two minutes as he drove through the Texas countryside
Speaker 3: and actually use that as an anchor for the way
Speaker 3: he navigated the world. It's really really impressive in that way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, those moments, and I think it's another
Speaker 5: thing that most of us have something where we've experienced
Speaker 5: a feeling like that, and those are gifts and to
Speaker 5: remember them and to use, you know, that mysterious power
Speaker 5: that they hold to like transcend time and space and
Speaker 5: transport you back to that moment where you felt that
Speaker 5: and then carry it with you in moments when you
Speaker 5: need it. I mean, it's a real thing, and it
Speaker 5: just takes some reflection sometimes to try to remember what
Speaker 5: they are.
Speaker 3: Yep, I'm going to pivot from childhood cerebral palsy to
Speaker 3: bipolar disorder. I am a bad laughs around here today.
Speaker 1: Honestly, that is funny. I genuinely find that funny to.
Speaker 3: You, Lucia, because your story in the book, and I
Speaker 3: mean by your story, it's not the one that you
Speaker 3: read us, it's the story that you wrote for the
Speaker 3: book about you talks about being diagnosed with bipolar and
Speaker 3: I was wondering if you could a share the kindness
Speaker 3: that came out of that for you. But then I'd
Speaker 3: also just love if you're open to sharing what managing
Speaker 3: that in an ongoing way has looked like for you
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think it's important
Speaker 1: to recognize the stigma around in my case by polar two.
Speaker 1: I think that was a huge part of my journey
Speaker 1: was just being able to accept it, you know, accept
Speaker 1: and grieve in my case, that this is a disorder
Speaker 1: that I was diagnosed with and it's one that's hard
Speaker 1: to swallow for all of those reasons. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of mental health issues and diagnoses, the folks, beyond
Speaker 1: having to suffer from the effects of the disorder, also
Speaker 1: have to grapple with the stigma, the shame, the perceived
Speaker 1: judgment from people from society. Talk about you know, social
Speaker 1: media feeding into harmful stereotypes and media in general feeding
Speaker 1: into harmful stereotypes around mental health issues was a huge struggle.
Speaker 1: To Gabriel's point, you know, with grief comes joy. A
Speaker 1: joyful piece of this journey for me was my community
Speaker 1: coming out in droves when I was suffering, and so
Speaker 1: in the moments where I was unable to get out
Speaker 1: of bed because I had a depressive episode that lasted
Speaker 1: six months. The story depicts my brother flying out from
Speaker 1: New York to LA the same day I called him
Speaker 1: saying I can't get out of bed, and he ended
Speaker 1: up living with me for six months. My family, my
Speaker 1: friends coming out to you know, while I was going
Speaker 1: through various treatments, calling me saying, hey, hey, I'm going
Speaker 1: to come with you to Cambridge, Massachusetts while you're going
Speaker 1: through this, and me saying, what are you talking about,
Speaker 1: and a friend of mine saying, I wouldn't think twice.
Speaker 1: And so looking back now that I've recovered and being
Speaker 1: able to recognize how profoundly moving it is that my
Speaker 1: community rallied in the way that they did is profound
Speaker 1: I feel so lucky. And also, you know, Gabriel really
Speaker 1: came through, not that I wouldn't expect it, but as
Speaker 1: my colleague and friend we were going through this book
Speaker 1: process literally when you know, this all happened to me
Speaker 1: in the middle of the book process, like really bad timing,
Speaker 1: and he was the one to call me when I
Speaker 1: was literally at a treatment center towards the end of it,
Speaker 1: saying hey, I need you to work on this with me.
Speaker 1: I need you back, And that was everything to me
Speaker 1: in fact, that helped me get through this in many ways.
Speaker 1: And so there's like a deep connection to this process
Speaker 1: for me and you know, my community that came from
Speaker 1: a moment in my life that was deeply painful as
Speaker 1: far as managing the diagnosis and mental health experience. A
Speaker 1: lot of it is actually really relevant to this conversation
Speaker 1: where I practice a modality of therapy called DBT Dialectical
Speaker 1: Behavioral therapy, and it's really rooted in mindfulness. So taking
Speaker 1: moments away from screens, going outside, noticing smells, noticing colors,
Speaker 1: listening to birds. It's like very sensory and it really
Speaker 1: helps me to ground myself. Day to day routine is
Speaker 1: huge for me of being able to self regulate of
Speaker 1: it for me is about self regulation. Also medication like
Speaker 1: please believe, and so huge advocate for meds, huge advocate
Speaker 1: for therapy. Again, community, It takes a village feeling supported
Speaker 1: and heard and being able to check in with people
Speaker 1: when I'm not doing well and knowing that they have
Speaker 1: my back. And it's hard and joyful and weird and
Speaker 1: scary and exciting and it's kind of become a huge
Speaker 1: part of my life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So listener in thinking about that and all the
Speaker 3: other great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going
Speaker 3: to isolate just one top insider gem that you're taking away,
Speaker 3: what would it be? Remember, little by little, a little
Speaker 3: becomes a lot. Profound change comes as a result of
Speaker 3: tiny actions, not huge efforts. I mentioned earlier that I've
Speaker 3: been thinking about relationships and how to improve the quality
Speaker 3: of them because they're the quarnerstone of our well being.
Speaker 3: Thriving connections light up our world, while strained ones can
Speaker 3: dim even the brightest days. Too often we face relationship
Speaker 3: hurdles alone, feeling lost and powerless. But here's the key.
Speaker 3: Building strong relationships isn't just about chance. It's about mastering specific,
Speaker 3: learnable skills. And here's a quick exercise you can do
Speaker 3: to improve your relationships. Establish small daily or weekly rituals
Speaker 3: that foster connections, such as shared meals or walks. Every
Speaker 3: small effort to connect with a friend or family member
Speaker 3: can lead to a deeper or more meaningful relationship. For example,
Speaker 3: Chris and I have a weekly ongoing social night commitment
Speaker 3: where one week night every week we get together and
Speaker 3: do something and having it scheduled just keeps us connected.
Speaker 3: So if you found this helpful, this tip came from
Speaker 3: this week's newsletter, and you can sign up for free
Speaker 3: and get more just like it at Goodwolf dot me
Speaker 3: slash relationships. I think you're similar to me in that
Speaker 3: I sort of my phrases, I throw sort of the
Speaker 3: kitchen sink. Get my depression right. It's been everything. It's
Speaker 3: not one thing. It's not just medicine or it's not
Speaker 3: just therapy. I'm significantly older than the two of you,
Speaker 3: so I've been in this for quite a long time,
Speaker 3: and so what those things are have changed over time.
Speaker 3: But I've found a way of by sort of stitching
Speaker 3: all these things together to be relatively symptom free.
Speaker 1: Amazing. I love to hear that. I also think going
Speaker 1: through something like this or any trauma, once you get
Speaker 1: to the other side, brings a real sense of gratitude
Speaker 1: where regardless of what's going down, you know, day to day,
Speaker 1: I kind of look at it and say, I've been
Speaker 1: through a lot worse, and I'm actually grateful that these
Speaker 1: are the kinds of problems I'm dealing with our challenges
Speaker 1: rather thanly not too bad, you know, like a bad
Speaker 1: day at work, a bad day in this It's like
Speaker 1: I can get there. Yeah, So I'm very grateful.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you for sharing that with us. I think
Speaker 3: that's a great place for us to wrap up. Gabriel Luccia,
Speaker 3: thank you both so much for coming on the show,
Speaker 3: for the work that you're doing. With Upworthy of putting
Speaker 3: good things out into the world. We'll obviously have links
Speaker 3: in our show notes to Upworthy and to the book.
Speaker 3: So and congratulations on your first book.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Eric, It's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thanks Eric, It's great.
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