Josh Peck: The "Drake & Josh" Child Star Opens Up + Shares The Truth Behind His 127lb Weight Loss!

30:40And I mean that as we could move 3 ,000 miles, because it was just me and my mom, you know, we could uproot our whole life. I was an overweight kid, so I didn't get a lot of self -esteem from the traditional systems that people, the kids, gained it from. But I found this performing thing. So of course, my mom goes, well, I'm going to nurture this. the way I would if it were a little league or it was an instrument. So my environment, my upbringing allowed for me to go on this really nontraditional path. My kids don't have that. They have a very different experience. They have like a very rooted household.

31:21They have a huge family. They have a mom and dad. And it's not necessarily that one's better than the other, but it's just like their experience will be different. And if my son's 18 and he's like, I want to go to Juilliard or I want to do it professionally, that's great. But maybe his circumstance won't lend itself to start that early. It's so interesting, but it makes so much sense, you know, that circumstance and struggle are factors that orientate us towards our mission. And it's so, you know, I think we often understate how like trauma and things we'd never wish on a child end up creating their brilliance.

32:04You think about like the brilliance you've created, the work you've created that is brilliant. So much of it has a through line way back to things that you would never wish on your kids. Yes. Right. Fifteen years old, you start filming the pilot for Drayken Josh. One of the things I found really interesting when I was reading to your book is one would assume that that such a hit show, a show that we all knew very, very well in the UK. Off the back of it, one would assume that you'd be like set for life financially. Yeah. And you wrote about how that's like, that's, that was certainly not the case.

32:38Yes. And I do want to say that my first Kids Choice Award was won at the UK Kids Choice Awards in London. Now I had been nominated a lot. It's not sour grapes, but allow me to continue. I was not properly appreciated for my work in the American Kids Choice Awards, but it took you brilliant people in the United Kingdom to appreciate my overweight but wonderfully comedic work. I see you on the actor. So I want to thank you. Yeah, I think, look, I'm so pleased to talk about this stuff with you, someone who's like has wonderful insight into the book and is interested. And it felt like the book for me was sort of like, I don't do a lot of this anymore and because the book felt like sort of a chapter ending in my life.

33:43It was me editorializing my life. It was commenting on the things that I felt were perhaps misunderstood or didn't have enough clarification or description and also in an effort unknowingly to sort of say like, and now I'm not I'm going to talk about it less. And if someone is interested like they can you know read the book and it's now in the Library of Congress. And so to that point, I felt the need because over the years, people would either say it in a cheeky way like, oh, well, you don't have to worry because of the residuals. Or they would say just something random like, you know, it would actually be part of decision -making or something that it would apply to me.

34:28They're like, well, Josh doesn't have to worry. And I was like, well, I'm not complaining, but I'm as much worried about next year's financial status as anyone else because I don't have that security. So yeah, with Dracon Josh, there was no residuals. And kids see if he didn't have that at that time. And I got really honest and I sort of broke it down because Ryan Holiday, my friend and sort of advisor on the book, was like, he's like, it's gross to talk about money. But if you don't actually give a sort of exact picture of what it was and people won't understand. And so I sort of talk about that, you know, while doing the show, we made about $100 ,000 a year for the four years we were making it, which is great money in a lovely middle -class lifestyle, but no one would assume that once you stop working that you never had to work again.

35:22So I just wanted to give some clarity to that to sort of explain the choices that I made after and why I was so passionate about finding more work because I had some people to take care of. It makes perfect sense. I think it's really important context because you're right. It's very easy when you don't know entertainment contracts, especially for a young person that's 15 -odd years old to assume that they made millions and millions of perpeturously from that piece of work. And then a lot of the decisions and the choices there after don't have a lacking in context. So when I read that it was like I understood, of course, if you make $100 ,000 in the United States, you're living in California, whatever it is, for five years in a row, you do need to go back to work.

36:09And after Dracon Josh ended, was there like a pivotal moment where you realised that that show was big? It wasn't until much later, funny enough. I think because when we were making it, it was only popular with kids who were sort of younger, who I didn't, other than if I was at a mall or at a theme park, I didn't have a huge amount of interaction with. And then I would say that the power of the show to its credit was that it was slightly timeless because it had a very sort of classic through line of any sitcom. It was about a family. And a lot of kids shows can be more fantastical and have more of a sci -fi bent or something more fantasy or whimsical.

37:00This was just like very straight down the line. Two brothers who are very different trying to get along and an evil little sister. So because of how much it was rerun, more generations would come to the show and these people grew up. So it wasn't as though it was this moment in time. It was that every year we were picking up new fans. Because there was what 60 episodes or something? Yeah. Just like there was so much more. I know it's weird. Why is that? I guess we run reruns. Yeah. It played for so long. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead.

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38:16Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future -proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to NetSuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning, that's NetSuite .com slash Bartlett. After Drake and Josh ended and as you go into your like, you know, the next chapter of your life, 18 years old, you lose a lot of weight. I do. A lot of weight. 127 pounds. Yeah. How does that's not an easy feat? How does that happen? I certainly made a decision that I was ready to do it. I think I just, I always knew that I was going to do it.

39:02And also in writing the book, it's when you put pen to paper and I know you're a writer yourself. It's amazing how these, I feel as though we make these, everything in our brain is sort of shorthand, right? It's like these picture memories that are connected and sometimes they're connected by these really strong connections and sometimes it's just like short little hits. But when you're forced to actually explain it on a page, it makes you look at it differently. And I was like, wow, I was only heavy from like 13 to 17. Of course, they're the years that have been enshrined in television history forever.

39:41So it feels much bigger. But had I just been like a normal kid, I would have burned my yearbooks and sworn my family to secrecy and I'd never bring it up. So I think it was a number of things I was ready. I think naturally like my body was ready to let go of it. And I just knew that I I felt like because I was so insecure, I had missed out on a lot of my teenage years. It wasn't without lack of opportunity to go out and be a knucklehead and experience life. I just didn't want to do it because I didn't love the body that I was in. So I felt like if I didn't, if I didn't act now, I was gonna lose some really important years.

40:30Is there a process that helped you? Because I'm thinking about how you referred to it as being medicinal, your relationship with food. And that's deeply psychological. So to append that deep psychological force or that relationship with food is no easy feat. So what's the process? Is it therapy? Is it that makes you that kind of appends that psychological force or replaces it or? I think it was, I had been, I've had a therapist that I've gone to since I was 15 and I still see here and there. So my mom kind of knew I think she saw it in merely on that there was just a lot going on be at my dad or the weight stuff and then I think I was just In the way that that Changes born, you know pain is a great motivator.

41:18I was sort of sick and tired of being sick and tired And I I knew that I had to let go of something I don't think I knew exactly what it was But if I'm looking back at it now, it was like, it was this anger. It was anger at my dad. It was anger at my circumstance. And I just remember I was 17 years old. My mom and I would drive back to New York every year for like two months. And we would just go and see family and hang out in the city. And I just started to walk. And up until then, I would do these really intense, you know, attempts at keto or these extreme diets on a Monday and I would fail by Wednesday morning and then it would be back on again.

42:01But this time I said I'm just going to try to make a small change every day and I would walk the city for miles and I would listen to music and I would dream of what my life could be. And I started eating better and solely but surely that summer I lost like 40 pounds and then over the next year I lost another 40 and then over the next year I lost another 40. In chapter five of your book you say you had a new body but the exact same self -hating mind.

42:34One would assume that, you know, dropping 127 pounds, one would naively assume that dropping 127 pounds would make you feel different about yourself. Yeah. Well, it's sort of the themes that you've mentioned throughout the interview, it's cause and effect, right? Like, I dealt with the effect, but I didn't deal with the cause. And unfortunately, there were some issues at play. There was some unresolved pain and work that needed to be done that I wasn't even aware of, but it was all at play under the surface. So when I no longer had that thing that was helping to sort of keep those feelings at bay, they reared their head.

43:16And I needed to find something else. I didn't know that it was going to be in the form of drinking and alcohol's cousins. But I just knew that when I finally did find those things and I did sigh that bit of relief that I had been looking for, I think there was even a moment in that first night when I went out with some other kids my age and really tied one off and thought I was having like a proper teenage time. I remember this voice in my head being like, oh, this is it. Like this is what we've been looking for. Drinking. Yeah, the drinking and drugs. And I think I see something in the book of like, if you've been carrying this invisible bag of stones around your whole life, a weight vest with 50 to 100 extra pounds, I mean, I quite literally was.

44:14But let's just say it's like emotional weight vest and Eventually you almost forget that it's on you just know your knees hurt You know you're exhausted. It's like why am I so tired? Why did it? Why does the why things feel tougher for me than it does for my friends and Then if in an instant that weight vest is lifted off of you and your knees hurt less and you're walking around and you're like oh You wouldn't question it. You just be like, whatever just took that weight vest off, I'm in. And that was the reaction that I had. Such an interesting analogy. The weight vest, you know, you said the term self -hating mind.

45:00For someone that has an experience to self -hating mind, what is that like in detailed reality? Is it literally thoughts that you can recall that aren't saying being pessimistic. Hmm. I probably, if I could edit my book now, I would be probably less, I'd be less revealing. No, I would be less. I would be less, I would be a little harder on my self and say it, it's self -centered. If we're talking about the root of it, I remember when I got When I got sober, people would say, you're self -centered, and I would say, self -centered. That's reserved for people who think highly of themselves. That's reserved for the quarterbacks, the models, the good -looking, the self -absorbed people.

45:52To me, when you would see that in movies, it was someone who was staring in the mirror and perfecting their hair. And they would say, no, if you spend all your time thinking about how great you are, or how shit you are, all you're thinking about is you, and you are self -centered. It doesn't matter whether it's greater bad. So, I would, yeah, I would substitute self -hating with self -centered. I was obsessed with self. My trauma was real. My challenges were real, and that played a part in it. But I was just so wrapped up in my feelings feelings less than and uncomfortable and not proverbially not at the cool table.

46:39That I found myself in a place to numb my feelings because those thoughts were unrelenting. Nothing in life is free. And so even a temporary lifting of the the weight vest comes with a long -term cost, as we talked about with food. What was that long -term cost of temporarily getting to lift the weight vest once in a while? I just became a cliche quick. I hurt relationships and work. I worried the people that love me. I just started to accrue a lot of wreckage quickly. It's funny, I interviewed Hillary Duff on my podcast, Good Guys the other day. And we made a joke, I was asking her about like, we were, she brought up something about like, oh, I love an alcoholic beverage and she kind of looked at me and said, sorry, Josh.

47:34And I was like, no, I love an alcoholic beverage too. Unfortunately, whenever I drink, it leads to my other favorite beverage per cassette, which is a very popular pink color in this country. And I remember people sort sort of saying like they were so sort of, they just didn't know sort of my, they didn't know that part of my history, right? So it was something that I, it was this thing that I was sort of navigating and balancing kind of how much I would sort of talk about it and reveal. And then also sort of this balancing of like the things that I also wanted to keep private. When did you realize that you had a problem with alcohol or an unhealthy relationship with alcohol in drugs?

48:29Was there a... Oh. At the time, I imagine you don't... The first time you do it, you don't know, it's not a problem, then is it? But at some point, you must have... Maybe got some feedback or something indicated that this was not... Oh, and I'm sorry, I forgot the point I was trying to make with the Hillary thing. But oh, someone wrote a comment on that clip on that video said, damn, Josh Pet got sober at 21. He really went for it. So to answer your follow -up question. Yeah, I mean, I think that I basically was substituting what I used food for with these, you know, with drinking and with other substance, but it was all sort of connected.

49:16So it wasn't this four year run. It was really like, since I was 9 or 10 years old, it just was, again, validating and reconfirming this idea of like, you overdue things. And nothing is gonna fill up this hole in the soul, no matter what you try to fill it with. And even like the things that our world tells us is a value, even success isn't going to do it. Even if girls like you, it's not enough. And so I remember at 21 having a moment like that when it all sort of came sort of barreling down on me. And I realized that I needed to do something. Now I think people have those moments and they don't do anything and they lose another four years or five or 10 or 20.

50:07But I do think the world and life, catastrophe, challenging circumstance, some version of a bottom, whatever you're going through, being fired from something, a health scare has a way of temporarily waking you up, and what you do in that moment decides what's gonna happen next for you. You said that happened for you at 21 years old. Was that in the wake of the film The Wackness? It was yeah, that was certainly a moment Tell me about that moment. Well again, I had a crude plenty of wreckage, but I remember I I Had done this movie the whackness that I was extremely proud of when my favorite actor Sir Ben Kingsley, you know and I mean literally my favorite actor like getting them, you know have my rookie season with Michael Jordan and It went to the Sundance film festival and I was so proud and we got a standing ovation and it just felt like such a confirmation for me as an actor that there was going to be opportunity and there was more to come for my career that it wasn't just this sort of anomaly that I did this one show and that was sort of going to be it.

51:18But I remember in that moment, all those similar feelings, that mind that had gotten me in So many times before it was still yelling at me and all those feelings were flooding in. They weren't there the night we got there. They weren't there during the 90 seconds of the standing innovation. They weren't there, you know, when I was smiling in front of the camera, but they were there when I got home. They were there when I got in bed. They were there when I was waiting in line for a coffee the next morning or whatever else I was doing. So it was like so short -lived. And it just confirmed this idea of like, oh, like even at your best, even when everything's kind of going right.

52:00Because it's easy to use when life throws you challenges. There's a reason to sort of, you know, co -sign your bad behavior. But everything was going right and I still didn't feel like an out. And I knew at that point that I needed to make a change or I might never do it. That next day after the standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival, you talk about you know, how you might have felt standing in the coffee line or the next day when you woke up, etc. Is this, are they specific thoughts or is it just an emotional state? You know, is it just like a loneliness? Yes, it's totally emotional and it's ugly.

52:43Like how we're all pitiful in those moments. I don't think you have to be suffer from addiction or it's just like when we realize that our way isn't working anymore and a change needs to occur. And so yeah, I certainly, it's taken 15, 16 years to articulate it correctly. I think it was just a feeling. Your solution to that feeling appears to be, you know, when you hit that proverbial rock bottom moment to be getting some help. And that's where you turn to AA, I'll call our colleagues anonymous. What is that pro, like what is our colleagues anonymous and like how did it help you turn things around and get sober?

53:32Well, you know, it's sort of in the name anonymous that there's an anonymity portion to it. So I always want to make sure it's in that I'm in no way sort of a representative or ambassador or in any way, it's just how I have found a way in which to get and stay sober over the last 15 years is through 12 step program. And it's just a way, it's ancient truths repackaged to make sense to a guy like me. It's the best way. It helps to mitigate the worst of my character defects. And it's just age old, it's just sort of for me, an age old way of cleaning up your past and looking at bad patterns and habits in my life and making amends and trying to implement things that through history we have known to work.

54:31gratitude, surrender, acceptance, you want self -esteem, do a steam of blacks, restraint of pen and tongue, you know, just like, you know, it's not, you know, your higher power is up to you as long as you know that you're not God. That one's helpful. It just presented some ways in which for me to apply things to my life that helped me to get and stay sober. So I think if if If the efficacy wasn't there, if I didn't see quickly that I started to feel better, then maybe I would have sought a different way. This was a way that happened to work for me. And you've been sober for some 13 years? 15 years?

55:14Recently, yeah, just February 15th. Congratulations. Thanks, it works for me. Yeah, it's incredible, incredible achievement. You know, everyone's got their own relationship with alcohol and whatever else, but it's always incredible to hear. Someone being able to turn a corner in the direction they wanted to turn it. That's the way I can describe it. Thank you. 2013, you kind of start from reading your book. It sounds like you start on a new journey and that's the journey to understand who your father is. You're 27 at this point. So almost 30 years old and your father passes away and you make the decision at that point, having not met him before and having not seen a picture of him until you were 24 years old to figure out who he was.

56:01What did you learn about him and how did that change your perspective of him? Well, I remember I'd always sort of toyed with this idea of meeting him. And yet I think I knew deep down. I never would because my creation of him in my head, the way that I sold him to my friends or the way I would portray him to people, felt like my weird cosmic consolation prize. Like, I don't get to have him in any way, but I can present him to people in the way in which I choose, not that I was telling people that my dad was, you know, the first man on the moon or anything like that. It just was like, you know, my mom knew that he was a, that he was Jewish and that he was Sephardic, which is a type of Jew that tends to be from even the Middle East or from Morocco or French or it can be South America, Mexican.

57:00And so for me, I would just like ping pong where he was from. You know, sometimes he was from Spain, sometimes he was from Israel, sometimes he was from Morocco. Like, I just would kind of present it as I so fit. And it felt like if I ever met him, well then I lost even the illusion or this creation of my dad that I wanted to make. So I, but when I found out that he passed away, it also felt like a little bit of this thing that I've been carrying around this emotional grenade that I could, you know, I had the power in the sense that I could show up and he had this whole other family and these grown kids and a wife.

57:42And if I wanted to at will I could blow that up for him if in theory he never had told them anything I was never gonna do it, but it was nice to know right like whatever version my head was telling me like to keep me warm at night So when he passed away I was like oh damn he won right perfect record He said his mind to something and he stuck to it. He's like I'm never gonna meet that kid and he did it I never got that moment to sort of say like how dare you I don't know if it would have been that probably wouldn't have been I probably would have been like hey, I'm your kid. It's up. Like do you want to get a coffee?

58:20But you know all of that was sort of taken away from me so I felt I felt pissed that I had to mourn this guy that I never knew and That I was mourning like mourning is in theory sort of the worst part of It's sort of the other side of love, right? It's it the gift is you get to love and the embrace of someone and Then what comes with that is that eventually if they're not here anymore, you have to mourn them You have to mourn what was and I was like there was nothing like and I still have to get the crappy side of this doesn't seem fair but It forced me to do something that inevitably led to my men's and my men's that I gave myself, which was I randomly looked up his kids on Facebook.

59:14My friend figured out a way to my friend, a buddy of mine basically was looking with me and was like, oh, there was a connection between him and my sister. They had attended a similar like workshop or some kind of like education program. He's maybe under the guise of that, I could become her friend. And like, then, you know, I could see if on her profile, she has any photos to your dad. I had never seen what he looked like. She accepts it. And I am immediately given this treasure trove of photos of his life. And I'm seeing him at their bar mitzvahs and weddings and all these events. And I'm seeing these beautiful tributes said his friends and family are making to him after he passed away.

1:00:06And it made me realize that like what my dad was for me wasn't the only part of him. You know, it certainly was a real part of him, but he also was this great dad, just not to me. And that's not valid. That's not valid. That's a part of this imperfect man. So it like gave me a little bit of forgiveness for this guy and it made me realize that he was probably scared and he probably had this great perfect record with his family and then this blemish occurred and he did the best that he could. So in a weird way, seeing that he was good to them made me a little more okay than maybe he wasn't great to me.

1:00:53And then of course having the son of my own and being the dad to my two boys now That I wish my dad was for me was sort of like the ultimate amends to eight -year -old Josh

1:01:09What's that journey been like you know from I almost view it as like a An emotional journey on like some kind of like graph or something almost like a roller coaster from when you were young to where you are now in terms of the perspective of your father and the relationship. You know, was there was their resentment at one point? You seem to have gotten to a better place with it now. Yeah. But what's that journey like? The resentment, I think, at its highest is showcased in me being 100 pounds overweight. Right. Or, you know, my struggles after that. I think that was certainly, it was all that resentment and anger and frustration and unexplored feelings presenting itself as whatever that was as those addictions, right?

1:01:58They were in the manifestation of a deeper issue. They were a symptom of a deeper issue. I was just pondering because I know people that haven't had a relationship with their father. Obviously nothing is definitively causal. Like, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to tell it any other way, but one of the trends you tend to hear about is when, is that connection between not believing you're enough and your father not being around? Are they connected for you? Like the, do you know what I mean? I'm saying, does the absence of your father, did that ever leave a thought that said he left, but you know, that means I'm not enough because he chose not to be here.

1:02:34It must. Right. I don't see how it couldn't be. Right. But what we, what I've also learned in being sober this song and hearing a lot of other people's experiences is that my story, my feelings are not rare, but they're not a monolith. They're not singular. I've heard plenty of stories of people who had like pretty idealic upregings and they just happen to suffer from this thing where they do too much. And this particular mental bend that makes them look at life or makes them seek out a way of numbing their feelings. So what I know now is that certainly I think you're right, it was part of my story, but it's not the only way.

1:03:21I think I've kind of grown in that trend in my mind has grown a little bit because I spoke to Gabel Matte who's, there's a lot of childhood trauma stuff and one of the things he said is that as children we're narcissists, I've never been able to forget that and we think everything is about us. So, if the father leaves, for example, instead of thinking, well, that's because he has another family or because he's scared or whatever it's, that's about me, when you're younger. And then, as you say, you had your own boy. Yes. Now two boys, crazy. Two boys. You have kids? Not yet. I can tell because you're in such good shape.

1:03:58Well, you scared to become a father of your own. Terrified. Because I just didn't have any work life experience. I just didn't know, look, I'm a formerly Chubby musical theater kid from New York. I never thought anything that was masculine, I never thought I had the prerequisites for that was inherently doodish. I've always been like a guy, like I love boxing. Like I've always brought down, I've always, you know, had all those inherent qualities, but those things that felt like presentationally macho or dude -esque, I was just like, oh, I don't have that. And so yeah, I wanted to have a girl. And then when my son was born, and my wife and I didn't find out the sex.

1:04:58And so, you know, at nine months and a couple days when the doctor was like, what is it Josh? And I got to announce to the room, like it's a boy. I was like, oh, of course, because it was required for me, you know, my life turned into man school, you know, especially in sobriety. I had to learn and I don't mean to make it this blanket of definition, for me, what it meant to be a man. And the qualities that I had had to sort of accrue, the things that, no matter how great my mom was, couldn't give me, because she was just limited by what one person can do. The things that I learned from my big brother Dan, I've had a big brother in the States where the Big Brother Foundation.

1:05:46I've had a Big Brother since I was eight years old, and things that I learned from him, and then eventually my father -in -law, who I really look up to and all the great men in my life and all these these assets, these tools that I had learned, you know, when I had my son Max, I was like, okay, here's my opportunity now to implement that and see everything that I've collected, what I can give him. And it just felt perfect. It felt like God's way of like having a laugh and be like, You knew this was gonna happen, right? You married Paige. Yes. You had the two children, wonderful children. Um, I had a guest on the podcast quite recently who said who described somewhat of a similar upbringing where the father wasn't around and him and his mum acted almost like pilot and co -pilot.

1:06:37And he, one of the terms he said to me, I can't remember it, something, something incestral, something. I know that sounds strange, but it was something to do with the fact that when you have such a close relationship to your partner, to your mother, and they end up indirectly or inadvertently offloading some of the emotional energy around the parent that's not there, it can make your own personal relationships difficult. Yeah. Can you relate? I can accept that I think that everyone is bad at relationships. And I think just like I believe that even if you have a perfect parental structure, we will self -parent.

1:07:16There's always going to be gaps in our rearing. There's always going to be spots that were missed as a result of your upbringing and your circumstance and the way in which you've experienced life up to a certain point. And it's incumbent on you to fill in those gaps. That's growing up, right? To even know what those gaps are. First, right? What for you, what were those gaps you had to fill in? Well, I think it was with the dad stuff, it was about in relationships up into my wife, I had this like, I would call it like the Tony Montana approach to life, which was like, if anything went wrong, if there was any sort of adversity or any kind of, I mean, at this point, right, like I'm dealt with the dad stuff and then I've been in showbiz till, you know, since I was 10, right, which is the ultimate rejection, right?

1:08:11You're being, you're going on a job interview at best, even if you're on a TV show. You're interviewing for a job once or twice a year, and if you're an out of work actor, you're interviewing for a job four times, five times a month, sometimes a more during pilot season, right? So you really have to calcify, or calcify. Yeah, like you have to become a callus to rejection. It's like if you ever talk to a doctor like about death, they have a very interesting bent on it because they can't be overly emotional about it because it's a part of their job. So until this point in relationships, if anything went south, I just would go, this is a preview of more bad to come.

1:08:56This isn't natural growing pains. This isn't natural discourse or just like the natural arguments that you get in and and then you get through them and you become closer, I would just go, this was great, I'll be fine without you, thanks. And I would just go, leaving people in my wake to feel like what the hell happened? How did you reverse that to the point that you were able to find someone and get married? Luckily, I was in a state of doing the work. I was willing to be, I was not doing that specific work, but in general, because I was in a recovery program, because my mom had put good people around me and because I had done therapy since I was a kid, I like knew.

1:09:39I was self -aware enough to know like, oh, there's certainly work to be done here. But it wasn't until I had a woman like my wife and my life who taught me a better way who came from a family that doesn't leave and she reiterated that. So when we get in these fights and I would look and be like, so I guess we should call it. Like this was great, right? She'd be like, what? Like, no. Like, I'm not going anywhere and neither you. We can be mad at each other. We can be mad, we can go to bed mad. I love that. You don't go to bed mad. I'm like, I don't know, not in my experience. Like you can go to bed.

1:10:20You can be mad for a couple of days. Usually it doesn't last that long. No one wants to be that pissed that long. But it's like, but when we work this out, I'll be here. Because I'm not going anywhere because my siblings never went anywhere my mom and dad never went anywhere like We stick around through the good and the bad and that was a revelation for me I can so relate in so many ways. I have the same avoidant attachment stuff for various reasons and then I've I met a person I always say that like got over the wall You know like yeah, you know and changed you from the inside definitely. So I can totally, totally relate.

1:10:59That's why you have to have a, that's why if, if it's for you, you have to have a kid because in my experience and I say it in the book, you don't, we all work on ourselves and especially with incredible podcasts like this and we're in the age of optimization and self -realization and everyone's listening to a dozen podcasts at a time and wants to be their best version of themselves and that's great. But we can't be Faberier eggs, right? Like we can't be these perfect pristine things and then we get jostled around a bit by life and we shatter. And so to me, I think there's only so much work you can do on your own and then it has to be like applied into life.

1:11:38And then you put some skin in the game and you get in a relationship and that forces you to go deeper and you're like, I don't want to. And they're like, well, you better, Otherwise, this thing's not going to work, but you meet someone in value and you do the work and it reveals itself to be worth it. And it gives you a deeper understanding. And then once you guys get really perfect, you throw a kid in the mix and that little jerk makes you go even deeper and work even harder and become even more selfless, hopefully, and less self -centered. And again, new truths are revealed and new ways of living are revealed.

1:12:15So yeah, on all the things we've talked about today's the mental talk the voice in your head the feelings of You know quote -unquote self -hatred self -esteem happiness. Where where are you as you sit here today on that journey? I'm I'm in a wonderful place my life You know is a reflection of How do I say it my life is is that of a good man's. Now I say that not in like some big self -congratulatory way, but I just did the things that I was told to do by people whose life I wanted. You know, I surrounded myself with the people who weren't telling me the things I wanted to hear, but their life looked attractive.

1:13:05And it wasn't because they had a nice car or they had an impressive job. Those things don't hurt. But it was because they seemed deeply decent that they had a good spiritual life and that they were good partners There were good fathers there were good sons and that was attractive to me So I implemented that into my life on a regular basis and the byproduct of that was a really good life that I'm completely overpaid to have today um and I still it just as much as I say I I rarely wake up in the morning in the mood for a salad. I usually want friends toast. I wake up in the morning most times. It's usually not the morning.

1:13:46I am a morning person. It's usually at 4 a .m. at night or 2 a .m. or 5 in the afternoon when I'm overtired and I had too much sugar when my mom starts going, just remember, it's all gonna be bad. You know that, right? But I have tools. I have ways in which of dealing with that to get out of those thoughts, to break that bad cycle. So it's just, the voices are never gone, but the volumes turn down. I have to ask you, but one last question here in the diary that the last guest has left for you, but when you said you have tools, I was compelled because I know that there's someone at home who can completely relate and they're, it's that they're thinking, Josh, what are the tools?

1:14:32Is there anything that's really helped you to sort of turn down the volume on that that you might recommend to someone listening at home. I would just say, and my friend John, aka Wheels, his model was Action is the magic word. And you cannot think your way into writing acting, you have to act your way into writing thinking. And I always felt like I'm reasonably articulate. And I've, you know, I've prided myself on having what I thought was like a good mind. I gotta be able to think my way out of this thing. Like I have to be able to impress my will on this thing and wrestle it to death. Like I just can't believe it.

1:15:19And it's the duality of these things because didn't I get myself this far? didn't mean taking my life and my will into my hands, didn't I get all this success and notoriety and blah blah blah and it's like well there was a part of it that that but maybe you got that in spite of it you know maybe the truth is is that these things you know they need to be governed they need to be throttled because inevitably they'll pervert they will they'll ruin you know So I just learned this, they say a couple bad apples, but the next part of that is a couple bad apples ruins the barrel, right? So it's like I have to be careful with those thoughts and those feelings because they can ruin everything.

1:16:05So what I would say is when I take the action to get out of self, when I become in service to others, when I do some reading, when I listen to a great podcast like this about people who are seekers who are trying to better themselves, if you take the action something will change. If you sit and you try to wrestle it, in my experience it'll never work. Hey, men. The question left you, who is the one person in your life that deserves the greatest thanks? And if you were to give them the thanks today, what would you say? Well, I almost don't want to because it almost like she loves her flowers. But yeah, I got to give it to my mom.

1:16:56It all starts and ends with my mom. And we have a deeply imperfect relationship because we're too deeply imperfect people. But at its core, she did more than I could have ever imagined, and especially being a father and seeing how challenging it can be with all the help in the world and she did it all by herself and I just give her all the credit in the world so much of why I'm here today is because of her so thanks mom I hope you don't watch this but thank you I love you Josh thank you so much it's been a I'm not honored to meet you and learn about your story and I'm a big follow -in -our -of -your -youtube channel so please do post a lot more because it's enjoyable to watch you bring an important energy to the world And your book is one of the most vulnerable revealing but wisdom -laced books I've had the privilege of reading in my research for a podcast So I recommend everybody to go grab a copy.

1:17:51I love the title. Happy people are annoying. It's a truly important book. Thank you Josh

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