From Chronic Depression to Unwavering GRATITUDE | Rainn Wilson EP 405

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11I've been playing a lot of tennis and I'm on this like USTA tennis team and we compete and stuff like that and taking lessons with this tennis teacher named Zach Kleiman and he's here in LA and we actually interview him in Geography of Bliss and he said like every mistake you make like you know you've got a clear ball and boom you hit it in the net or something like that Like, grieve it. Grieve the loss. Grieve the loss. The miss. Grieve the miss. Really? And he's like, feel it. And then you're through it. And then you're on. And then you're like, okay, what can I improve next time? And then you're on to the next thing.

0:46But if you skip the grief, you can get stuck. You can get blocked in a kind of like a muscular self-will. But there's something about like, oh, I got it. I got it. Okay, what did I do? Oh, I took my eye off the ball. Or, oh, I didn't go low to high. Or I got ahead of myself. You know, just keep breathing. Okay, I got this one. And then you're back and you're ready to go. You understood how to grieve when you were rising into fame with The Office and kind of those years with those seasons? Did you understand grief? How did you process frustration, pain, anger? Not very well. Yeah, I didn't process it very well.

1:20I had a lot of addiction issues in my 20s and went through drug and alcohol phase, porn phase, kind of anything that could kind of help me cope and help kind of medicate discomfort and pain I used for a long period of time until I really have been in active like therapy and recovery for a good while now and it's so interesting because when you choose to be an actor you're signing up for disappointment so if you're an accountant not much disappointment every every life comes with disappointments but you're going to have your 27 clients or your 12 clients or whatever and And you can have a successful business for 50 years and just be a good accountant.

2:00But an actor, you're constantly putting yourself out there like, hey, I'm auditioning for this. Pick me. Choose me. Pick me. Here's the script. Or, hey, can we get this? And then you do get to make, you know, a movie or something like that. And then it gets canceled or it bombs. It's been an interesting learning dance. And it took me until, oh, I don't know, my mid-late 40s to kind of learn how to live with kind of constant disappointment and frustration. This lesson comes back, which is grieve the disappointment, feel disappointed, feel frustrated. And then how do we fix it? And then move on.

2:40What was it like not being famous and then being famous? and were you happier before or happier after? For someone who has had addiction issues and alcohol issues and messed up family situation, essentially spending most of my adult life feeling unlovable, and then you get on a TV show, and then the weirdest thing happens, Louis, all of a sudden, I'll never forget it, like getting famous from the office, like people coming up and going, I love you. They're touching you. and they're grabbing like hugging you. I love you. Take photos of you. Oh, I love you. My daughter loves you. My son loves you.

3:20We love, but it's not really love. They really love getting entertained by the character that I play, which is one small cog in this big machine called The Office. If you are unhappy and you are wired for unhappiness and you are making life choices that kind of keep you in an unhappy mode, ungrateful mode, uncontent mode, a discontent mode, it doesn't matter what the circumstances are, you're going to be unhappy and discontent and imbalanced. Even if you're famous and have money and people want opportunities with you and you have more followers and all that stuff. We think that that's going to solve our problems, and guess what?

3:59That kind of contentment, that kind of, like, true, that solidity of well-being, it can't be fixed from anything outside of yourself. So I was discontent and unhappy being a scrappy, unemployed, broke actor, you know? Yeah. And trying to make my next rent. In fact, nine months before I got cast on The Office, like, we were so broke that I had to pay rent by putting it on my credit card. Mm-hmm. So if you're discontent, you'll be happy no matter what the circumstances. So then I become famous, and then I have all this money and movie opportunities and lots of doors opening for me all of a sudden for the first time in my life, you know, heads of movie studios are like, we want to really meet with Rainn Wilson.

4:40and we love his stuff, and maybe there's a movie he can do. But if you're in chronic discontent, feeling like, I don't have enough, I am not enough, and I don't have enough, it doesn't matter what comes at you. Someone can come up and say, by the way, you're the king of Scotland. We just found the paperwork. Here's your own kingdom, and here's a billion dollars. Good luck. You would find a way to be unhappy. Right. So were you more unhappier before when you were paying rent on a credit card, or happier after? I was equally unhappy. Wow. I tell you, it was nice to pay off my student loans. Yeah.

5:14It was nice to have a little money. And I'm not going to lie, that's an important part of the deal. When you don't have to worry about when and how you're going to pay bills. And I know you've been there. That's nice. That is a big deal. I would say if you looked at me, you know, 2001, 2003, I was pretty unhappy and dissatisfied. And then I got the office and there was a big rush. But if you cut into me in 2006, 7, 8, right in there, 9, those were some pretty unhappy years at the same time. When do you feel the most loved and the most enough? I think in my contemplation practice, I view meditation as something like when your computer is acting all funky and you have to reboot it.

5:59And like the apps aren't working right and the pages and then you reboot it and go. and then all of a sudden, like, it's moving smoothly again. Like, my meditation practice allows that. I also combine that with a prayer practice. I do believe in God. I believe that there is an incredible divine force out there for us to tap into. That is the source of love itself. I would equate God much more to just the force of love, which is synonymous with the force of gravity, than any kind of, like, guy or dude or deity. You know, Annie Lamont, she wrote a book called Help, Thanks, Wow. And those are the three prayers, help, thanks, and wow.

6:40I think it's so brilliant. I love that book so much. So simple. When you're connecting with that great spirit, like help, like, hey, I could really use help with this. I'm struggling with this. Perfectly okay. Thank you for what I have. Thank you for the gratitude. And then just wow, like the miracle of being alive, the miracle of everything. Wow. What do you wish people knew about money, fame, and success, and also how to create and feel enough and happy with all three of those as well? Do you feel like anyone in Hollywood or any celebrities with, you know, fame and money and success who have mastered this?

7:21And also finding, like, true deep sense of I am enough. Some of the most unhappy people I've met have been multimillionaires in Hollywood. There is a lot of struggle going on, and people might really present well on social media and on talk shows and in books and whatnot, but people are struggling. I feel like the road to self-love is just a road through struggles. This brings me to this Buddhist idea, and I talk a lot about this in Soul Boom. The Buddha has, as you know, the Four Noble Truths, which are kind of the foundation of Buddhist thought and the elimination of suffering. Not the only thing the Buddha came for, but the Buddha came to help relieve suffering.

8:08So life is suffering. That's the number one truth. Life is suffering. It's interesting because in Sanskrit, the word is actually dukkha. Dukkha means dissatisfaction. It means struggle, conflict, overwhelm, the pain of being alive. I would interpret it as saying, like, life is about the pain of being alive. And when you know that, I find that very helpful to me. When I come back to that, I'm like, I'm struggling, I'm disappointed here, I wish this outcome had been different, oh, I didn't get that job. But when I can come back to like, oh, but that's what life's all about. So what do I do now? Am I clutching?

8:46Am I grasping? Am I wanting to control outcomes? Am I wanting people to like me? Am I wanting all this stuff outside of me? And I'm desperately grasping at all that stuff. Oh, that's the source of my suffering. Because when you're in that kind of Zen mode, you can be like, oh, life is suffering. And guess what? All these things didn't happen. And I get to feel disappointment. It's like a breath. You know, it's like in the tennis game. It's like, oh, disappointment breath. And then a new breath. Yeah, next play. And then the next, exactly. And then you're on, you're on to the next play, but you don't carry that disappointment with you, but you don't stuff it down somewhere and stick it in the closet.

9:23You don't acknowledge it and you acknowledge it. And then you move on. Exactly. You refocus your attention. You breathe it, you experience it, and then you move on and you heal in the doing.

9:43Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

10:33Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.