YouSaid · the spoken record

Rainn Wilson

lines on the record: 83
first: 2023-08-28
most recent: 2023-08-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“This isn't him. This isn't my dad. This is the vessel that carried my dad. Robert Wilson and his beautiful heart and spirit and his dynamism and his creativity, his light, as it were, is no longer here. But that's his reality. This body is just a shell. It's a vessel. It's an avatar. And I also didn't experience it as oh he has, it's been snuffed out like.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's doctors and nurses walking around with their squeaky shoes and the linoleum floors. And I was like, wow, this is just like one of those hospital shows. I just kept thinking like, this is just like ER or Gray's Anatomy. Like, wow. I was like, it's so cliche But We had to unplug him. He was going to be dead within an hour. And we were sobbing. And I looked at his gray body there on the table. And, you know, I saw all these aspects of my dad that I loved. You know, the one eyebrow hair kind of poking out and, you know, the mole on his arm and the way his hands are and his hair kind of messy. And I was filled with such love and such heartbreak. And at the same time. seeing his lifeless body, I was like,”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My dad died of heart disease. He was getting a quadruple bypass surgery and he just couldn't make it. They didn't have. to repair the damage in his heart. We thought he was going to get through the surgery and he died. So we knew it was risky, but it was. It was not a predicted death. And my His current wife, his widow, and myself were in the hospital with him, and we had to essentially unplug him. And it was devastating and terrifying. And oddly enough, Strangely cliche at the same time, and I couldn't help but maybe this is that trauma-based comedic kind of aspect of my myself that I just kept witnessing myself in the situation where my father was dying and there was a heart machine going beep beep and there was a little oxygen machine going”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think if you're going to look at spirituality, one of the top three big questions is what happens when we die? And of course we don't know. But just because we don't know or we'll never know, does that mean that we shouldn't explore that question? Hint, no. It's something, it's a topic and a theme and a question I had thought about a lot. I had spoken about. I had researched. and pondered deeply, but obviously, and I had had, you know, some people that I knew that had died along the way, of course. But when my father died about three years ago, That made a profound impact and really prompted me to write the book Soul Boom. Because I had one of these key kind of transcendent experiences, spiritual experiences, which was in”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something's out of balance how are you going to bring yourself into balance? How are you going to make sense of all this? And at the time there weren't podcasts on positive psychology and there weren't I mean, I guess there were some self-help books, but I didn't really know about them because of my background, because of my childhood, I thought, well, perhaps because I've abandoned anything and everything to do with God and spirituality and religion, maybe that's where I have lost my way and maybe I need to re-explore those avenues and maybe I can find personal meaning and serenity By exploring spiritual ideas. So it was a long process. It was a good eight or ten year process, but I'm grateful that my pain was.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's hard to say. It came in waves throughout my mid twenties and early thirties. And that's what prompted me. And this is why pain can be such a valuable teacher. And in fact, Arthur Brooks just had a column today out in the Atlantic where he was talking about pain and anxiety and depression does not mean that you have a mental health issue. Those are normal, standard. Aspects of being a human being. So, but my pain prompted me to go on a spiritual quest, and I'm really grateful for that. Like I said.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a big leap to go from where I was. And yet I wasn't happy. So there was this odd disconnect because I think societally we're taught like, hey, you find the thing you love to do. You go study it. You put in your time. You work at it. You're going to start working and yeah, you're going to start slow, but it's going to build. And then you're going to find incredible joy and purpose and meaning in your work. And I was doing that work in the theater and I was getting to be an actor and I was getting paychecks as an actor, which is an incredible experience. But I was still chronically dissatisfied and it didn't make any sense because society had been telling me this thing for a decade or two. I felt like I shouldn't be this chronically dissatisfied, but I am”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, mm. And it wasn't at that point, and I've had some suicidal ideation over the years. That wasn't a time when I was actively thinking about ending it, but it really was kind of, again, one of these life's big questions, life's deep questions that I've been kind of poking at in my various books of like, why should we keep living? What is the purpose? Is it because one of the odd things, Stephen, was that I was in certain regards living a life beyond my wildest dreams. Here was that kind of abused and gas lit kid with low self esteem from suburban Seattle who kind of hated himself and really had trouble fitting in socially in any way, shape or form. Here I am living in New York City. Beautiful girlfriend, working as an actor in the theater, not making much money and it was only fitfully, but still”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What the fuck does life mean? Why am I here? Why should I keep living? What's the How do I find meaning and just that just anguish and disconnection at a really core level?”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say five or six years. There were some things got better. I started working a little bit more. I had a relationship with my girlfriend who's now my wife. We've been together for 32 years. And that was great. But even that, even a better apartment and a nice relationship couldn't save me from. Some of what was going on and we didn't in the 90s we didn't really have words for a mental health breakdown or mental health issues or crisis. You know, it was, and people didn't really go to therapy, you can really afford it. That was like for rich people like Woody Allen or something. It stayed, things got nominally better, but I still was. Pretty depressed and frustrated and overwhelmed and just generally alienated the kind of waking up at three in the morning with just wide awake staring at the ceiling going like”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I started getting hit with really crippling anxiety attacks. So I wasn't in the most healthy living environment, right? But at the same time, I remember getting these anxiety attacks that would leave me literally shaking on the floor and sweating. And I thought I was dying. And I was like about to call 911 like five different times. heart palpitations sweating and I talked to a doctor at NYU about them and they said, oh, these are just anxiety attacks. So I knew that that's what they were, but I didn't really know anything about them. And I started getting really depressed. And so there wasn't really like an event, but circumstances provided the perfect environment for kind of a mental health breakdown of someone who's 25 years old.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I don't know about a catalyst, but I will paint the picture that I'm out of drama school. I'm getting a few little acting jobs here and there, but they're not paying anything. I'm living with a friend in an abandoned beer brewery in Brooklyn, essentially kind of legally squatting, but we didn't have heat, we didn't have a shower. There were rats scuttling around. And I was working in this bar where I'd get off work at 4 a.m. And I had a roommate and we were living out there. I was really directionless, I started really experimenting with a lot of drugs and alcohol and I was pretty rudderless and”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All of a sudden people were patting me on the back and punching me in the shoulder and saying oh my God that was so great and high fiving me and all of these cute girls from junior year in high school were like oh where are you from you're from Seattle amazing will you come sit with us at our lunch table and like and and here I was this kid from suburban Seattle where I had been on the chess team and played the bassoon and been on model United Nations and I'd barely talk to a girl and then I was like all right I'm in whatever this is I want this I'm good this is it forget all that other stuff screw the bassoon screw the chess team I'm in with the drama geeks and that was my path so so part of it is not so noble part of it is I went where there was acceptance where there was love”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had moved to Chicago from Seattle and I went to a high school that had a really good theater program and I took my very first acting class and I did a scene where you're supposed to pretend that you're in your bedroom and that no one's watching, right? So I put on this Elvis Costello song Mystery Dance and I brought in my record player from home and I brought in some stuff from my room and I put on the record of mystery dance by Elvis Costello and I started just thrashing around and just being ridiculous and lip-syncing and jumping around and flopping on the floor and stuff like that and I was a brand new student. This was like in the first week at this new school and it brought the house down and the 15 to 16 year old that I said that was kind of pimply and gangly and emotionally cut off and self-hating.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, and there's the genetic component as well that my birth mother was also an actor and interested in acting. I don't know exactly even before I thought like Oh, you could be an actor, or you could make a living in an actor, or you could train as an actor. Like, I didn't even know I want to do that, but it's like whatever that is is magical and amazing. And I was drawn to it like a magnet. So I don't know. And then, you know, I took my first acting class.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A spiritual crisis, a mental health crisis, things started breaking down for me. And that's when I decided to kind of re-examine these ideas as a potential way out, as a potential path forward for my own transformation, for my personal healing. And I was ultimately able to come back to the religion of my youth and find great peace and solace and meaning in it after a long journey through my twenties and early thirties.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Come on in, thanks so much for coming. It was never any kind of Acknowledging what had just happened. And that was, and so for an eight year old, nine-year-old, 10-year-old being in that milieu, you're like, what the hell is this how people act? Is this how we're supposed to act? We have all these emotions, but we don't talk about them. And then we go and we pray together. So, you know, this led me to a very long period of time where I was completely alienated from my faith in my twenties, and I didn't want anything to do with religion or spirituality, certainly not morality, because I just saw the hypocrisy in it. That's when I really started undergoing”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In fact, I remember times, and I don't really blame my stepmom for this because my dad was not a good husband to her, and there was a lot that was out of balance, and he could be incredibly narcissistic. But I remember having, we would have a Baha'i gathering, let's say, at our house, and people were going to come over and we were going to pray or we were going to study holy writings or whatever people do at Baha'i gatherings. And they would have a fight and she would be raging in the kitchen and slam dishes down and break the dishes. And they would be fighting and then ding dong. People would come over like, hi, I brought flowers. And here's some cookies. And they would come in and my step bomb would then march across the living room. to the bedroom door and go so bam and slam the bedroom door and the people would be there in the doorway and my dad would go”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“waiting for the grand slam breakfast. And there's a corporate sponsor for you potential. And just like that kind of crying of the Of the heaving sobs. And that's what I'm talking about. That's the kind of connection that I needed. Like finally, someone was asking me what was in my heart, you know. That began a kind of a process of Having conversations about human emotions I was so ignorant of the that were also ignorant of, and it helped me immensely.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“15 or 16, I was gawky and self hating and innocent and completely cut off from my emotions and had my dad and stepmom had zero emotional tools. The only kind of expression of emotion that I experienced in my household was rage. And then either rage or like, again, the spiritual Baha'i gatherings where we were singing and praying and meditating. So it was, but the idea of, you know, sadness, frustration, disappointment, all these quote unquote negative emotions and how to navigate them. I had zero tools. So I'll never forget sitting down with one of the first meetings with my mom. And I was at a Denny's restaurant in Yakima, Washington. And she said. You seem very tightly wound What's going on? How is your heart? And I just started sobbing. I just started. I mean, It was pretty unsightly at the Denny's.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, I don't want to get into stories. There was, you know, there was some lots of different kinds of abuse. Yeah. Yeah.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just like gratitude takes you away from depression. So you'll see time and time again these amazing, the great comedians of the age, you know, and how much suffering they underwent in their lives. Comedy became the necessary thing to plug in to their perspective in order to carry forward. It's like, Here's your choice you kill yourself or do comedy. And then they do comedy and you think about so many of the great ones. Jim Carrey, you think about Robin Williams, they talk about mental health and comedy. We did a for soul pancake. We did a documentary called Laughing Matters about the intersection of comedy and mental health. And so in this sense too, I'm grateful for what I went through because I wouldn't be here today having this incredible conversation with you had I not gone through that.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Speak about and he talked about how the opposite of pain and trauma is humor. He was saying, for instance, if you're feeling depressed, let's say, we all know you fill that with gratitude. And when you have a gratitude journal and you share gratitude, experience gratitude, meditate on gratitude, the other stuff evaporates when you shift your focus and your perspective to what you're grateful for, what brings you hope and joy and purpose and meaning, even if it's a small thing, like, you know, this delicious cup of tea right here. So the same mechanism works in comedy. And there's a reason why so many comedians come from painful backgrounds because comedy is what you plug in to shift your perspective away from pain.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be the best version of myself, they set me on a spiritual path to really deeply explore the world's spiritual traditions and to try and connect with my higher power and to go on a journey of self-discovery and then to take what I've learned and to share that with others. And they made me funny. So there's a really interesting thing I heard Dr. Arthur Brooks from Harvard University.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We all have that to some degree. And it's important to excavate and honor the pain that we went through and the lies that we were told, the gaslighting we might have undergone. There's religious trauma that we undergo as well. There's all kinds of different traumas that we suffer. And this is the curious thing. I'm grateful for it because you know what? If I had had a happy, well balanced childhood, I, you know, I don't know what my career would have been, but it certainly wouldn't have been an actor, and it certainly wouldn't have been a successful actor. So these confluences of pain and difficulty and abuse and neglect, they caused me a lot of suffering later on, but at the same time, they caused me to be driven to transfer.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I experienced a lot of pain in my life and a lot of suffering with anxiety and depression and addiction. And as I kind of dove into recovery and to the therapeutic process, I can pin that squarely on a lot of gross imbalances and trauma that I suffered as a child. There's that.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what I grew up in. So, you know, addiction is something that I've struggled with. I've struggled with depression. I've struggled with anxiety. I've struggled on a lot of different levels in my life, a lot of alienation. And it's born of this petri dish that I grew up in. Maybe I was also wired for it. I have alcoholics that run on both sides of my family for generations. That'll mess you up.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then You know, it was this weird kind of gaslighting mind fuck because I just spent five minutes describing the Baha'i faith, right? And these beautiful ideas and prayers and meditations and about world peace and finding love and connection and service. And then in my family, my dad remarried my stepmom, who pretty much raised me, and they lived in a loveless marriage, a hollow, empty marriage. So I come back from the jungles of Nicaragua at five or six. My dads remarried were living in suburban Seattle and Washington State, and we are going to all these behind meetings. We're singing, we're doing Kumbaya, we're holding hands, we're praying, we're meditating, we're reading holy scripture from all over the world, and talking about love, and yet here's this loveless shell of a house.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, twenty two years of therapy has given me a lot of insights into the causes of that. So, you know, you've got an abandoned toddler. That'll fuck you up. I don't know if I can swear on your podcast. All right.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here was this abandoned kind of toddler kid living in literally the jungle and my dad was an abstract painter and science fiction writer and Bahai and that's how I grew up. And then when it was kind of around kindergarten time, first grade time, we moved back to Washington State. And those are some key pieces.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. A couple of key pieces in my background that have made me who I am and led me to lead the life that I live are my mom took off when I was a year and a half, lived with my dad, and we were members of the Baha'i Faith, which in a nutshell is the newest of the world's religions. There's about six million Baha'is around the globe. It's the second most widespread religion. So wherever you go in the world, there's going to be Baha'is. You know, you go to Mongolia or Thailand or Botswana or whatever there's going to be Baha'i communities. And after my dad had been kind of essentially abandoned or felt abandoned, they got divorced, we moved to the jungles of Nicaragua when I was three years old.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wanted more opportunities. I wanted more money. And as long as we want to promote the ego satisfaction, we'll never be happy. We all have a shadow. And it's always there. It's self-important and righteous and entitled. But I'm not going to get rid of those aspects of myself by keeping that shadow at arm's length. You need to embrace and accept and love one's shadow. Sit the shadow on the lap almost like a ventriloquist dummy.”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I experienced a lot of pain in my life, neglect, abuse, abandoned, and then with anxiety and depression and addiction, I remember getting these anxiety attacks that would leave me shaking on the floor and sweating, and I thought I was dying, waking up at three in the morning, going, why should I keep living? But this is the curious thing. I'm grateful for it. There's a reason why so many comedians come from painful backgrounds, because comedy shifts your perspective away from pain and trauma. Here's your choice. You kill yourself or do comedy. And that was my path. It's my greatest dream come true”
2023-08-28 · The Diary of a CEO · Rainn Wilson: "I was so unhappy during The Office!" (Dwight Schrute) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT