(quirky music) – Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I’m Link. – And I’m Rhett. This week at the Round Table of Dim Lighting, ya got your boys. – Ya got your boys. – The businessman and the boy. (both laugh) – Can I be the businessman? – Okay. – I got to button up. – This week, the businessman and the boy. – I buttoned up the top button. I mean business. – Back at it again. Okay, we’re gonna be talking to each other today, but we’re gonna be also talking to you and with you, because many of you submitted your, we didn’t just go for questions. We actually went for your perspectives and opinions on the subject of stress, which is something that we are currently experiencing. – A heightened level, yeah. – And instead of going and seeking a professional’s help, we are just turning to you on the internet, because that seems, I don’t know, it seems cheaper. And actually, an interesting thing, instead of going– – There’s a lot of responses, so it wasn’t really efficient. – But instead of going and paying a professional like $200 an hour, again, to get back to what we talked about in the first Ear Biscuit, which was actually the lost episode, we can get them to give us professional medical advice and actually get paid to do it by monetizing our conversation. – Oh, we get paid to take advice? – Yeah, right, I mean this is– – But I don’t know that I would call it professional advice. – A beautiful, a beautiful arrangement. No, but seriously, because you guys are the community, the herd, of Mythical Beasts that we’re also a part of, we can have a conversation. It was mostly, I’ve been thinking a lot about stress lately just because I know we’re both experiencing it. – Yeah. – And I’ve been doing some things that I don’t think I’ve ever really, like, addressed it, addressed it well. I do some things, but it was like oh, wouldn’t it be interesting to get the Mythical Beasts’ perspective on this and see, and the answers that we got, some of the things that you guys do to handle stress, I think will be entertaining and informative, maybe applicable to us and applicable to other Mythical Beasts. I think we’re gonna have a good conversation. – I’m certain that some of these techniques are more healthy than the ones that I employ. So we can get into some of that. The reason why it’s such a stressful time is because there’s lots of things going on, but we’re not complaining. Those things are very exciting. – #Blessed, man, #Blessed, Link. – #Blessed, #StressedAndBlessed. – I do think it is always important to clarify that we’re not, you know, we love our jobs. That’s not what we’re talking about. It’s just we commit, we over-commit, we say yes. – Well, right now, even if you just take, yeah, there’s a lot of things going on, but, I mean, Buddy System being the main thing. We’re on the precipice of beginning to shoot. We’re like finalizing the scripts, and I wish we were closer to finalizing the songs at this point when we’re, like, weeks, if not just days away from actually starting to shoot this stuff. – As of recording this, we start to shoot two weeks from Monday. – And I wish you wouldn’t even have told me that. – Hold on, that’s news to you? – Well, I think one of my coping mechanisms is– – Not knowing? – I lose track of the timelines. – Head in the sand? – I’m just like I’m gonna do what I can do as hard as I, I’m gonna go as hard as I can, and it’ll all work out, because it always has. It’s very exciting to be at this point, but sometimes when it’s very exciting, it’s also very stressful, because we want this thing to be great. And I’m comparing where we are now with season two of Buddy System, in terms of writing and preparation, to where we were with season one, and I feel like last year, we had completed scripts. My main point of stress was like can I own this? Am I gonna be able to act this, am I gonna be able to memorize and act this stuff? But now we don’t even have something that I can study yet. So that kinda freaks me out. – You also do know, having done it for season one, that you can do it. – Yeah. – If that was an open question in season one, that’s no longer an open question. – I guess this is one of my stress coping mechanisms is that I find myself having to rationalize that to myself. It’s like okay, don’t worry about that aspect. That’s what you worried about last year, but then it all worked out. You demonstrated to yourself that you could do it. But that is literally the conversation that I have with myself, like, every few days, because I go back to man, last year, we were doing something different. – I also think that you may have a slightly incorrect view looking back, because some things were further along, but I also remember, I remember, very vividly, like a month out from shooting, like telling Stevie, who executive produces along with us, and worries about a lot of the, kind of all the details of who’s doing what and putting together the team and that kind of thing, telling her, “I do not see how we’re going to start in a month. “Like, that seems impossible.” And then I remember last week, so three weeks out, thinking there’s absolutely– – You said the exact same thing. – There is no way that we will be shooting in three weeks. And that’s what happened last year, and then we did start. I was like I’m sure it’s gonna slip. You know it’s gonna slip. But it didn’t slip, and it’s not gonna slip this time. We will be shooting. – Yeah, at a certain point, you just start doing it. You start shooting it. You start making it. It’s nice to have a schedule. And even if it’s really aggressive, or it feels overaggressive, you know, we want to make things perfect as artists, but you know, an artist’s work is never done. You just run out of time. And then you just get on with it. And then it’s okay. And it’s not the end of the world. It’s the beginning of a new phase. – Last year, I was thinking about this. We’ll talk about this a little bit more, and whether or not there’s a connection here, but I think that my back went out because of stress. – Absolutely. – And at least that hasn’t happened, because I’m kind of more on top of that, just physically the things that I’m doing to stave that off, but I also think that there is this, I felt so overwhelmed last year, and once we started shooting, I actually, we both remember saying, we had fun, which I think is good for people to know is like, typical television shows, the way that they work is you’re writing and shooting, kind of in a pattern, in a sequence, and so you’re writing, and the shooting starts, and usually, the people who are acting are not also writing it. That’s not normal for television shows. But because of our schedules, we have to do what’s called cross-boarding, or cross-shooting, all eight episodes, all at the same time. – So that everything is written. So then a producer– – Well, so I can just explain why we do that, ’cause people may not understand. So because we have a short window of time, relatively speaking to everything else that we do, we’ve got to be as efficient as possible, both for our schedule but also financially. In order to squeeze as much out of our budget and put as much on screen as possible, what we do is if you have a location, like a house where we’re gonna be living or whatever, or there’s a hospital, whatever, you want to shoot all your scenes at that location, all at the same time. If there’s an actor that’s coming in for that role, you have to shoot them two days in a row, or try to get all their scenes in one day. – ‘Cause you pay them by the day. – Which is more like in independent film. So you’re not shooting it chronologically. We may shoot the last scene of the whole season first. We probably won’t, but it’s completely out of order is the way that we’re shooting it. – If we happen to be in a motorcycle, I’m not saying we will be, but we might be– – There might be a motorcycle. – Might be a motorcycle that we’re on or in or a combination of both. – Kind of on. – Kind of in, a little bit of both. – Kind of next to. (Rhett laughs) – You don’t want to rent that thing for two months. You want to rent that thing for a couple of days. So then you find yourself shooting episode eight, episode three and episode four, the motorcycle scenes. It’s like well, oh no, you got to have blood on your face for this one. – You got to change into this outfit. – You got to change, and now the blood’s got to be gone. – And then you have to look at your script and know what is my emotion in this, ’cause the last time I rode on the motorcycle, I was super happy, and now I’m super mad. – [Link] Right. – So you go down the street, and you’re happy, good. Now you go down the street, and you’re mad. – And that’s why blood helps, sometimes. – It helps when you’ve been involved in kind of leading the creative process, because it’s not like we’re just an actor who’s like, “I don’t know why I’m being mad now.” It’s like no, I remember this, but I got to, okay, let’s look at the script. I got to get back to that place. – But I mean, we’re not directing this thing, but as executive producers and creators of it, at this point right now, we’re not just finalizing the script in our voices, but we’re also giving opinions on what that motorcycle looks like or how much blood is gonna be on my face at that point in the motorcycle. – So there’s some divide and conquer. So we don’t all do both things. There’s two of us. We try to take advantage of that. And we also rely a lot on Stevie, and sometimes, there’ll be like okay, well, I look at the schedule, and I see that, we’re doing right now what’s called tabling. Now that’s not table reading a script, which is something you may have seen in like a BTS video. But tabling is when you’ve got a writer’s draft of the script, and then we sit in the room with our writers that we’re working with, and we all kind of, as a group, finalize the script. And it takes a very quick pace. It’s about a day for an episode, which is faster than you typically would go, but we just don’t have time. But then there’s those other little meetings like okay, well, what should the motorcycle look like, and what should this costume look like, and what is your hair gonna look like, and what is your shirt gonna look like? Stevie is handling a lot of those decisions, ’cause she’s intimately involved with knowing what the creative is. And then if there’s a specific question, she may pull us out to answer it. But it’s just a little bit of a free-for-all. – And it’s a little bit more difficult, because now I’m still on active dad duty. – Right. – Because Lily’s in recovery from her back surgery. – So your schedule’s kind of crazy. – Christy and I are like handing off the kids, and who’s staying up all night for medication purposes and all that type of stuff? So it’s difficult for me, because there’s some points when I have to check out of the process, when I really want to be involved, and I can only imagine that’s more difficult on you. And I’ll say it right now. I appreciate, you’ve stepped up, and you’ve done the work of both of us, ’cause half the time, I physically can’t be there or even work on it, because, and this was the best time for the surgery, but there’s never a great time for a surgery like that. – Right. – So, I mean, it’s made it a little bit more difficult, and when it comes to the songwriting process, like, I stepped in when you were working on something else, and I’m like listening to your demos, and there’s all these surprises in there for me that typically it would be much more collaborative and maybe more fun. It was nice to hear that it was done, you know, and that it’s good. And that I think I’ve got stuff for you that you’re listening to, and then at a certain point, we’re gonna collaborate on these songs. – Well, and that, I think that’s when, so again– – Now I’m starting to sweat right now. – Not complaining, it’s so much fun. I love every aspect of it. But I think that this lead up process is so stressful, because again, Buddy System’s not the only thing that we’re doing. There’s other aspects, you know. We’re still finalizing aspects of the book. We still continue to run a business, and we’re continuing to give input on merch and that kind of thing. There’s still ongoing things that we always do at Mythical Entertainment and just involved in running a business. – Well, side note, everything that’s going on on the This Is Mythical channel, that it’s still getting off the ground, we have a great team that’s doing great stuff over there, and we’re interfacing with them to give our two cents every now and again in order to help steer the ship, and as Good Mythical Morning is in the summer session, I’ll just make a quick plug, go to the This Is Mythical channel, make sure you subscribe. We got videos coming out every day over there. – Every day. – Maybe more than one a day, some days. – Yeah, and we’ve got, you know, every Friday, we’ve got guest hosts on Good Mythical Morning. That’s going great, and some of those guests make videos on the This Is Mythical channel, too, so support the work that our great Mythical crew is doing over there in the absence of more GMM episodes. You know, there’s all these moving parts. – Well, and I think, you get to a point where sometimes I, I think I had an idea of what it was like to work on a movie or a TV show, because our point of reference for that growing up in North Carolina as kids was the DVD behind-the-scenes, right, ’cause we didn’t know anybody who was involved in, I had a distant cousin who was in an Oscar Meyer wiener commercial, okay. – A distant cousin? – Distant cousin that I never met. – But you still bragged about him? – Oh, we talked about it with everybody. (Link laughs) – I never met the guy, but– – When he was a kid, he was in an Oscar Meyer wiener commercial. He dropped the wiener and the dog ate it or something. I don’t know what it was. – What a jerk. – But that was my– – Oh was that part, he was supposed to drop it? – Yeah, that was part of the– – Okay, not a jerk. – I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t. – He’s brilliant. – Anyway, but the DVD behind-the scenes, I remember seeing directors and writers kind of home in on these very specific details and spend all this time on like, “And then we went to London, “and we listened to the rain in London, “so we would know that the rain would sound like “when we created it on a stage in Burbank.” But that’s high-budget filmmaking, right. But when you get into doing what we’re doing, and you’re squeezing everything so tight, and you’re also doing all this other stuff, it’s just like there won’t be rain, okay. So when we’re going through the script, it’s like rain. We’re like no rain, it cannot rain, because that’s expensive. – Cut through that. – But the idea of being able to– – And if it does rain, when we’re shooting, then all of a sudden the scene has rain. – Yeah, you write it in retroactively. – But it’s in a different scene. – But the idea of, and I think, hopefully one day, we’ll be able to do this, ’cause I think, getting back to what I was saying at the beginning, I think the way that we work, and this leads to the stress in our lives, is we see something that we could do, ah, a book, bring the podcast back, do a new channel, take GMM to a whole new level, which is something we haven’t even talked about. It’s public that GMM is going to be even bigger and better in the fall. But we haven’t even talked– – Ah, don’t mention that to me. – We haven’t even talked about that. – La-la-la-la-la! I don’t want to hear it. – Doing Buddy System. – I don’t want to think about it at this moment is what I mean. – Doing the tour, we also have to come up with all the creative for the tour, and then travel to 16 different cities in the fall. You don’t even want to think about that. But we keep saying yes to things, right? And while we’re having a blast, it’s like piling things on to this plate. I’m hoping one day, maybe down the road, that we can be like all right, hey, let’s just do one thing (laughs), let’s just do one thing at a time really well, but right now– – It’s hard to say no, isn’t it? – It’s really hard to say no. – I mean, we got asked to be on– – Oh, you shouldn’t say the specifics. – What, why can’t you– – Because– – You just got– – No, no, it’s totally different. – You get asked to be on something, and then it’s like oh, that would be amazing. That’s an easy yes. And then we spend the next 20 minutes convincing ourselves that we have to say no. It’s like no no is easy. – And the reason that I said no is not just because of the time that it would take to do this thing, but the thing I told you and Stevie in the conversation was I don’t think I can emotionally handle taking advantage of this opportunity to be on a show that we can’t talk about. We probably could, but because I don’t know that we can, we shouldn’t, ’cause who knows what they’ve done public with that. So having to say no to that was just like emotionally, I can’t handle it. I think I’m doing pretty well. You seem to be doing well. You’ve had– – Oh I’m a pretender, baby. – You’ve had, no, but I’m saying I’ve seen you be very, very stressed out. – You can tell. – I know how your stress manifests itself. And you know how mine does, like mostly with physical things. I think, okay, it’s gonna be a crazy couple of weeks. It’s gonna be a crazy couple of months when we’re shooting, but I think it’s gonna be okay. But I also think that we can stop and think more strategically about what it is we’re doing to manage the stress levels. – And I think it’s one of those things. Saying no to stuff, I’m skipping ahead here a little bit, but also the things that we say yes to, knowing that our professional lifestyle is crazy, but there’s a mindset that I feel like, the thing I’ve been trying to do is adjust my mindset to where every single thing I’m working on is not life or death. I think for years, I threw myself into everything creative as if it was the most important thing ever. And I’ve had to adjust to like, you know what? Getting so worked up over that thing that didn’t happen wasn’t worth it, or that thing that didn’t go like I thought, or I didn’t have enough time to add that other harmony to that track, or get a third take in that scene, or I know that episode of GMM could’ve been, it has to be the best one we’ve ever done. Like, we don’t have a problem of having a standard of excellence. I think the problem is having such a high standard that it– – At your own expense, at your own expense. – It drives me crazy. So a lot of it is just the mindset. It’s like being cooler under pressure and not wigging out over anything. – Wearing more deodorant, like, doubling up on deodorant. – I think if I adjust my mindset, I won’t sweat as much. I don’t need to double up on the deodorant. – But currently, we both just wear deodorant. We don’t wear antiperspirant. You’re sure you’re not wearing antiperspirant, are you? – Okay, you’ve changed the subject. I’ll go with this. Yeah, I’m wearing just deodorant. – Yeah, me too. And I haven’t been sweating that much. I haven’t seen your pits, man. Your pits are completely clean. – I just put this shirt on. – [Rhett] Oh. – I mean, it feels damp. I said I was sweating. My back is sweating from talking about all this. – This is a brand-new shirt. – You just put that one on, so you could sell it. – (laughs) I did. (Link laughs) I did. – Let’s be honest. Boiled For Safety, that’s a good lookin’ shirt. It’s catchy. – Okay, so we are gonna get into your advice to us or just your personal experience, and then we’re gonna try to make it into advice for us. But first, we are gonna take a short break to let you know about this T-shirt that I’m wearing that I put on so that you would see it on my body. – It looks good on you there. – Not because I’m proud of my body, but because I’m proud of the shirt. I love it when a ridiculous concept from the show, from Good Mythical Morning becomes, in this case, a mug and a T-shirt. – Something that you can purchase in order to support entertainment. – I’m gonna get out here and pose and really show. Why don’t you talk about it? – All right, if you’ll notice, he can’t resist rubbing it. You know you got a good shirt when you just can’t resist rubbing it. (Rhett sneezes) For those of you who are just listening, he just sneezed. – Wow, I’m sneezing. – You heard that. (Rhett sneezes) – Oh gosh! – We put something in his– – I rubbed it too hard. – We put something in the shirt that makes you sneeze. – It’s dander. – If you’re allergic to dogs, dander. – That’s not true. This is all not true. – If you’re allergic to anything, don’t buy this shirt (laughs). – Not true, that’s all not true. – No, not true. – It’s a 50, this one– – It’s a soft shirt. – It is a 50-50 blend. I love a 50-50 blend, because they hold their shape a little bit better. You know what I’m saying, a 50-50 blend. You got to get a little bit of poly. You got to get a little bit of cotton. – And of course, it goes without saying, the shirt is Boiled For Safety. – Yeah, all available at rhettandlink.com/store, along with some summer gear. We got some Good Mythical summer– – Good Mythical summer capsule, guys. Go over there and check it out. Oh man, you’re gonna beach it up in full mythicality. I won’t go into the details, but check it out over there. We’re gonna hook you up. – Wow, promises. – Rhettandlink.com/store. – Okay. – So what we did is we prompted you to tell us how you deal with stress. We didn’t ask you to give us advice. We just asked you hey, how do you do it? But then what we were hoping for is that oh, we’re gonna adopt some of this stuff. Let’s (sniffs), let’s read one. – Natasha Jennings says, “Corn starch fire breathing helps me relieve stress, do it.” – Okay, corn starch fire breathing. – The reason I wanted to bring this up is because I have done this. It’s potentially on my Instagram from way back. I don’t know. I feel like I would’ve put this on my Instagram when I did it. But it was back in North Carolina, and it was at my brother and sister-in-law’s house. – Corn starch is flammable? – Well, I don’t know what, I’m sure you guys can tell us, some of you science people can tell us. There is a phenomenon– – Those are called scientists. – Well, science people. Scientists means like you’re official, but science people are just people who know things. – Which is basically every other person on the internet. – Well, no, but for real, though. There’s a phenomenon, and it happens, you know how sometimes you’ll hear that there was like a silo with wheat in it, or a barn with wheat or some sort of substance that becomes very particulate, very small, and it just gets in the air, and then it blows up? – It combusts. – It’s a combustible thing. When you get very small things to suspended in the air, they become incredibly combustible, and that is a scientific concept that’s called something that I’m sure, you could be looking it up, but it’s not even worth it, because they’re looking it up, and they’re figuring it out. – I’m gonna do it. – But that happens with corn starch. And you can take corn, first of all, highly dangerous, do not suggest doing this. Although Natasha Jennings does it to relieve stress, and I did it at my brother-in-law’s house, and it was pretty cool. Put it in my mouth, and then blew it out like that into a lighter, and it just creates a huge fireball. You could probably die doing it, don’t do it. I’m just telling you that I did it. I didn’t die, and it did, I don’t know if it relieved my stress, but that’s what Natasha does. It’s not magic, in other words. This is a real concept. This is something that you can do. – A dust explosion is the rapid combustion of fine particles. This is Wikipedia, under the Dust Explosion entry. “Suspended in the air, often but not always “in an enclosed location, dust explosions can occur “where any dispersed powder combustible material is present “in high enough concentrations in the atmosphere “or other oxidizing, gaseous medium such as oxygen. “Dust explosions are a frequent hazard “in underground coal mines, grain elevators “and other industrial environments. “On the other hand, they are also commonly used “by special effects artists, filmmakers and pyro-technicians,” AKA, science people. – AKA, Natasha Jennings. – “Giving their spectacular appearance “and ability to be safely contained “under certain carefully controlled conditions.” – Well, and it’s safer than putting, again, not an expert, don’t take our advice. We’re just two dudes on the internet. But if you put lighter fluid or some crazy combustible liquid in your mouth, then there is the risk of it going back upstream and then lighting what’s inside your mouth. I’m sure that there’s some kind of circus performers who can do that, but if you do this particulate dust explosion thing, the chances of the thing going back into your mouth is really small, because it’s not in the same form inside your mouth. You can also choke on it, don’t do it. Why are we even talking about it? I shouldn’t have brought it up. – There’s a poster from World War I warning about grain dust explosions. “Prevent dust explosions, “save lives, save food, save property.” It doesn’t say anywhere on that poster, “Reduce stress.” – Okay, but I think that the point is that doing something that makes you feel like you’re a fire-breathing dragon is an experience that probably releases some endorphins, which I’m sure has a good effect on stress. – Or at least puts things in perspective. – Yeah, I’m a dragon. – You know, I got this big test comin’ up, but oh by the way, I’m a fire-breathing dragon. – Right. – So who gives a crap. – Right, yeah. I mean, dragons don’t need to be educated. They just fly around and mete out justice on people. – Well, then you get into a rationalization, at least, to life-fail. – All right, what else we got? – Bloody Grundle, if that’s an insult, or if that means something naughty anywhere. – It sounds like a condition. I got a bloody grundle. Well, you should go to the emergency room immediately. – Don’t Google that. I’m not going to. Says, “Karate chop pillow stacks.” (Rhett moans) Fat stacks of pillows being karate chopped. – I understand that. – I totally get it. You just got all this pent up aggression. You don’t want to lash out on your kids or other loved ones. – Yeah, don’t hit the kids. Don’t hit anybody else. – No, I mean, like, verbally. – Okay. – But just when things get stressful, it comes out sideways, in terms of like, oh, I might take it out on somebody verbally. And I’m not saying me. – Of course. – I’m saying other people. – Yeah, we don’t do that. – As a kid, I think I might have mentioned this somewhere along the internet path. When I was a kid, I would just get, maybe it was like puberty, but I would just get really– – Maybe it was puberty. – I’d get really angry, maybe get really stressed out. My mom would say, “Go punch a pillow.” – Your mom was right. – And I would literally do it. We had this velour pillow that was like, it was squarish. It wasn’t like a loser, sleep-on-this pillow. This was like a lounge during the day on a velour couch. – Loser, sleep-on-it pillow? – You know, they’re oblong, and they’re– – It was a decorative pillow. Is that what you mean? – This was a winning decorative pillow. It was velour with the fringe. And I would pummel the crap out of that thing. – Yeah, velour’s tough, man. – I don’t remember much about my puberty days, because your brain is disengaged. – Yeah, it’s detached. It’s actually completely detached. – Yeah, it’s like there’s no brain connection. – Yeah, if you look at a brain going through puberty, you go in there, and it’s attached to nothing. – Right. – It’s just floating. The brain stem is detached completely like the Matrix. – All your body’s blood flow is going to other places to like grow pubes and armpit hair and stuff. – Right, yeah, you got a lot of blood to grow pubes. – Right, right (laughs). – It’s like a farm down there. – You can’t think, can’t think when that’s happening. (Rhett laughs) Your body’s making a choice, and it’s making the right one. – [Rhett] Yeah, right. – But I distinctly– – Even though you don’t even need those. – I distinctly, well I– – Let’s no even talk about that. (both laugh) – I was about to Google it, man. I have my theories. – Do you need pubes? Not anymore. (Link laughs) – What do you mean not anymore? Don’t talk about it! – You needed them in the ’80s. – We’re talking about, okay. – Let’s just keep going. – I don’t know what that means, by the way, but I don’t want to know. I know you have something– – That’s why I’m the businessman. (both laugh) And you’re the boy. (both laugh) – I don’t want to know what that means. But I distinctly remember the moment my mom first told me to punch the velour pillow. – Yeah. – Because I did it out of spite for my mom. I was like, “Oh yeah, you think that’s funny?” I didn’t say any of this. In my mind I was like, “Oh yeah, Mom, you think it’s funny “telling me to punch a pillow? “Well, you know what, I’m gonna do it.” I didn’t say any of that out loud. – Yeah, but she was right, though. – I went over to the pillow and started punching it, and then I realized she was right. It worked. – It totally works, well, I mean, this– – And he said a stack of pillows, or she, Bloody Grundle, is even better, because I also remember punching so hard that I hit the floor. – And Taylor Rain Felt, which also sounds like sentence, says, “Definitely the best stress reliever for me is “either taking a baseball bat to a couch “or hitting rocks with one.” – A baseball to a couch? – A baseball bat. So this is, I mean, again, all of this is somewhat scientific. And this is one of the reasons we’re so stressed out in this culture is because if you go back hundreds of thousands of years, right– – A lot of physical exertion. – Even if you go back just, in some places, a few hundred years, or definitely a few thousand years, we were doing what? We were– – Fracking soil. – Fighting for our next meal. No, I’m saying pre-agriculture. So going back– – Ooh, okay, pre-ag. – 10,000 years. – Gotcha. – Hunter-gatherer days. – Survival. – And you’re basically just trying to survive. You’re trying to get to your next meal. You’re fighting over a lot of resources. There’s lots of death. And you can look at the animal kingdom, which is very informative to us, as our cousins, and you can look at them, and you can say well, they have this stress response that builds up, and then they exert the stress. But they have this cortisol buildup in their system, and then they exert it, but we don’t do that. We just build up those hormones, and we don’t exert them. We put them into our work, which doesn’t release them in the same way. – It’s like a gorilla snapping a giraffe neck. – Yeah, but gorillas are vegetarians. They don’t go after giraffes. – I’ve seen them ride one. – I’m sure they could. But this would be like taking, that pillow is like an antelope. You know what I mean? – Yeah, snap its neck. – You gotta snap that antelope’s neck, but you would be doing that like a couple of times a week back in the day. – Which explains why I then proceeded to eat the pillow. – Right (laughs), yeah, and the velour is a lot like an antelope pelt. – Yeah. – It’s all very tied together and very scientific. But it totally makes sense, and that’s why exercise is so helpful. But it’s also why they have that, what are those rage rooms? I don’t know what they call ’em. But we talked about this on GMM a while back, where they have, I think we did. They have these rooms that you can pay to go in, and they give you like a bat or an ax, and you just beat the living crap out of everything in that room. And it makes you feel better, because you get to destroy things. In some senses, we were created to destroy. We’re made to destroy stuff. That might just be like lifting a weight. It might just be like yelling. It might be hitting a pillow. – Angerroom.com. – Anger room. – This is in Los Angeles, Rhett. – Let’s go get angry, man. – Anger Room TM, they’re tagline is nothing you expect, everything you deserve. – You deserve to just go in there and beat something. – About Us, let me click on this. It’s a company started back in 2008, provides an alternative to seeing a head doctor or talking it out when you’re having a bad day. I’ll just say it. I wouldn’t say an alternative. Those are great things to do. I would just call this a cool supplement. – Well, I bet you there are some people who don’t need this. – “We believe that sometimes it’s better “to just do what you feel and lash out when you need to.” I’m not agreeing with their About Us. I’m agreeing with what they’ve got. But I’m not agreeing with their rationalization for getting there. – We should do this, though. – We should do it. – You know what we should also do? We should do what Shelly Austin says, while you’re on the internet. “If I’m stressing out at home or at work, “listening to the rain “at rainymood.com usually helps me find peace, “not an ad, ha ha.” So not an ad for us either. We’re gonna send people to Rainy Mood. What happens at Rainy Mood? – All right, I’m going. Helps you focus, stay– – Is there sound? – Relax and sleep. (rain patters) – Oh, there’s sound. – There it is. – It sounds like a rain, a rain storm. – And it’s different. It says Today’s Music. – Well, today’s storm. Ooh, that’s nice. I immediately feel calmer. I also feel like I need to urinate. (Link laughs) What is that? – The whole back of their website is a bunch of urine streaking down a window. – [Rhett] Yeah, it’s a rainy window, oh, urine. – [Link] Let’s sit in it a second. – [Rhett] That’s, I– – I asked you just to sit in it. Ever just sat in the rain? – Hey, I’m trying to sit in it. – I felt like that was long enough. – Okay. I’m not kidding, that’s very peaceful, very peaceful. – Rainy Mood. – Shelly Austin, thanks for the tip. You can go to Anger Room, or you can go to Rainy Mood. – I like Rainy Mood better. They got an Instagram feed that’s just pictures of rain. – [Rhett] And what more do you need, the sound of rain. – [Link] Well, to hear the rain. – [Rhett] Yeah, you probably can do videos. Is there videos? – Yeah, they do that. They do all kinds of stuff related to rain. Well, that’s good. See now, this is helpful. We’re getting there. Now how do I stop it? There it goes. – Stephanie Rene Quirnamanoyan. – Perfect. – Quirnamano. – Perfect. – Quirnamanoyan. – Perfect. – She says, “I fill my car’s gas tank, “pick a road I haven’t been on before, and just drive.” – The first thing you said, I heard feel my car’s gas tank. – You can feel it. It’s difficult though. – Like put your hand in there? – Because it’s covered with the rest of the car, fill. – I rub a gas tank. – “I fill my car’s gas tank, “pick a road haven’t been on before, and just drive.” Fill up and drive. – This sounds familiar. We not only did this in our younger days as fledgling automobilers, but we also wrote about it extensively in the Book of Mythicality. – Yeah, because this wasn’t something, and again– – We didn’t relate it to stress directly, but– – We related, well, interestingly, us doing that, and I’m not gonna give it away, ’cause I want you to read the book to get the full story, but we tell of how this was such a ritual for us in high school, as soon as I got my license. – Yeah. – This kind of defined our high school existence in a lot of ways. – And it mirrors– – Is this principle of driving. – Yeah, it mirrors our approach to all things creative even. – [Rhett] Yeah. – It wasn’t like we said, “Let’s emulate driving in our career.” But as we discovered in writing the chapter, that’s really, it’s what happened. – Yeah, so we talk about that and explain how it sort of informed our career, and how we think that this principle is actually a tenet of Mythicality. So that’s in the book. I can’t remember what chapter, one of them. There’s 20 of them, bookofmythicality.com – But, you know, and music was also a big component of that, that we talked about. When we were in the car, we’d play certain tracks of music, and we’d get into it. That’s something that I do now. If I’m more stressed, I actually won’t listen to a podcast in the car, which I do very frequently. I’ll listen to music. And it’s not in the way you would expect. The stress relief of music for me is not first and foremost that it’s directly relaxing. It’s directly a distraction, because most of the time when I listen to music, especially new music that I haven’t heard before, I very quickly get, I just, it takes 100% of my attention, well, not when I’m driving. It takes everything except my driving attention. – Yeah, at least 2% should be on the road. – I analyze it. I don’t listen to music, ’cause, like listening to that rain, it gives me something I can just pour my analytics into, instead of directing it toward my anxiety. Like, the thing I’m anxious about, I can think in cycles and circles, and it’ll spiral out of control, and I’ll just get really worked up. Instead, I’ll listen to music, and I’ll break it down in my mind, and that’s really helpful for me. – The only problem with that, I mean, you got to leave room– – It’s not relaxing. – You got to leave room for Spa Radio, man. I told you about that. – You mentioned it, and I forgot. I never tried it. – So sometimes it’s real, real bad. And sometimes, it’s real, real good. – Oh, this is like Google Play Music or Spotify? – This is Apple Spa Radio. So again, this is probably my number one, most reliable source of stress relief on a given, not Spa Radio in particular, but Spa Radio’s part of it. – You’re talking like– – Every Saturday– – Like Chinese flute stuff? – Sometimes they’ve got Chinese flutes. Sometimes it’s just rain. Sometimes it’s more electronic. Sometimes it’s like weird sitars and stuff. Again, I told you it’s like I got a freakin’ temple up there, (Link laughs) and just broadcasting– – So this is not in the car? This is at the home. – People are like, “Is there now a, is there a temple “in the neighborhood now? “This looks like a house.” But I go outside, and I lay down on the patio next to the pool. And the great thing about living in Southern California is that for most of the year, you can go out there on a morning, as soon as the sun comes up, ’cause the sun is out most of the time, and it’s usually warm enough, and I’m in a pair of shorts. I’m not nude. I’m just giving you a visual here. I’m in a pair of shorts on a yoga mat, and I have, like, a series of exercises and stretches that are basically yoga moves, and then like Pilates exercises and different things, that are all for my back, but I do them very slowly and methodically, meditatively, basically, and do some meditation, you know, some breathing and kind of focusing on my breathing, while listening really loud to the Spa Radio. And I’ll be out there for, like, it’s like an hour of my time on the mornings on the weekend, and especially as we’ve gotten so– – Every weekend, you’ve been pretty consistent with that? – Oh yeah, yeah, and I tell Jessie, I’m like, “I really need that time.” I also do it every morning. But just next, I roll out of bed, and again, I have like 20 to 30 minutes of these exercises I have to do, or else my back will just lock up because of my herniated disks. – Which, that’s phenomenal. You’ve done this for over a year now, very consistently. – I’ve done it for 10 years, but I only started doing the correct exercises since I went to my physical therapist, and she explained to me, “You’ve been doing things that have been hurting you. “Now you’re doing the right things.” – Yeah, ’cause like you said last year, in prep for Buddy System, your back went out, not as bad as it did that time before we went on Conan, five years ago. – Almost the, almost– – When you were eating a sandwich? – Almost as bad, man. This was bad. – So you literally roll out of bed on to the floor, first thing you do, like, you don’t brush your teeth. You don’t talk to nobody. You don’t look at your phone. – I don’t brush my teeth in general. – [Link] Oh, good. – That’s overrated. – Well, it’s stressful, so stressful to brush those teeth. There’s so many of them. – It’s a myth that you have to do that. (both laugh) – I mean, if I took that advice, my stress level would go down so much. You don’t realize how much I stress about my freakin’ teeth being dirty, like literally. – Are you joking right now? – No, there are times when it’s like my teeth will feel dirty, after I’ve eaten something that, and I don’t mean something caught in my tooth, like a corn piece. – Like a film, a dirty film. – Like a dirty film. – Nasty tooth, they call it. – And until I brush my teeth, I’m very bothered. – You’re like a middle-of-the-day-brusher kind of guy? – No, but it’s interesting, ’cause I haven’t gone that far. It typically happens at night. Sometimes I’ll brush my teeth to make myself feel better. Sometimes I’ll take a shower to make myself feel better. But again, not in the hotness of a shower relaxes me, or the steam, it’s the process of feeling clean relaxes me. – I don’t think you know how to relax, ’cause I’ve been talking to Jessie. So in our upstairs bathroom, there’s a bathtub, and then there’s a shower. And we only use the bathtub for Barbara. And I found these walk-in steam rooms. It replace your bathtub with a little steam room, like a one-person steam room. I haven’t looked into cost or anything. I just know that they exist. – Okay. – And the idea of having a steam room that I can just go and sit in, not to get clean, but because if I go to a spa, and if I go into the steam room or go into the sauna, it’s so relaxing. That is so relaxing to me. You’re not using music. You’re just analyzing the music, which is cool and great and a distraction, but you got to use music to relax. You’re telling me that a hot shower doesn’t actually relax you. You’re just thinking about, like, washing yourself in some, like, pattern, the whole time. – Sometimes, sometimes I– – Well then what do you to relax? – When I take a normal shower, there are times when I take a shower for the relaxation of it. But there’s other times when I feel like, I feel so dirty now, I can’t go on until I clean myself. – Well, there’s nothing wrong with, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. – I think you may be right. – But what do you, like I said, this has become an indispensable part of my weekend, at this point. Like, I have to have that time. And then I feel, like, centered. – Like, in the times when I have been going to the gym consistently, on like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I’ll got there at like 6 a.m. That’s helped a lot. And then on the Tuesday and Thursday, I’ll still get up at the same time, like 5:30 in the morning, or maybe six, if I want to pamper myself, get up a little later on those two days, and take an hour to just sit and be mindful of, you know, meditate, maybe take the dog out there, a cup of coffee, but I quickly fall out of that. I do it for like one or two times, and then I fall out of it. – Well, it’s tough to make a routine out of things. – The thing that I try to do is okay, since that hasn’t been consistent for me, I’ve tried to adopt triggers. Like, I talked about peeing sitting down. – That’s a great one. (Link laughs) – As a moment to say all right, this is a reminder for me to just take a few cleansing breaths, which doing that on the toilet is not great, like breathe really deeply when you’re in there, but I do it. Another time is– – Oh my goodness. – You know on a fridge, you’ve got the place where the ice and water dispenser? – Yeah, I know that place. – Well, my water dispenser has like a hitch on it. – Okay, how is this gonna get to be relaxing? – (laughs) It won’t present water. – It won’t present water? – When I push it, but what I learned was, and I would like start hitting and hitting and hitting and try to force water out of it. Like, there’s got to be some hitch. I can feel something like click a little later. And then I realize if I just, if I take it and I push against it– – And wait. – And wait, after like, seven seconds, all of a sudden, something will go (tongue clicks), and then the water will start presenting itself. – Yeah, it’s like an old man, old man waiting to pee. – And so now I say you know what? I’m not going to get frustrated at this moment. I’m gonna now use this as a gentle reminder to breathe. (Rhett laughs) And think of nothing else. – “Dad, why are you (laughs), “why have you paused at the, “waiting for the water to present, once again?” – Yeah, I look like a, like the battery ran out of a robot. – Having a brain fart. – Like an android. – “Your dad’s having a brain fart again.” “No, he’s just waiting for the water to present.” – I’m cleansily breathing, man. – No, but I think you’re on to something. I think that the principle of mindfulness, which is just something that we had, growing up, where we grew up, nobody talked about that. It’s become much more of a thing in the West now, especially in Southern California. But I think one of the reasons is that it’s been, the idea of mindfulness has been so appealing is because we’re just not good, our culture has changed so quickly, and we’re still, you know, the way it’s been said before is that we are Stone Age hardware running modern day software, right. So we’ve got these bodies that are made as a process of evolution over millions of year, got to this place where we haven’t caught up with how much our culture has changed. And so we need to do things that kind of mimic the whole hunter-gatherer thing and the going out and killing things and that kind of thing. But we don’t have that. We just have this very, we’re in civilization. And so we need some other tools, and mindfulness is a great tool for kind of separating yourself and realizing that you’re not your thoughts. The things that are stressing you out, the things that are in your mind and the way that you perceive those things, it’s all just happening in your mind. It’s actually not, the thing that stresses you out, it’s not currently happening, but you spend what, 99% of your time worrying about things that are never gonna happen. – [Link] Mm-hmm. – Like during that– – It’s interesting, by the way, yeah, that reminds me of, I keep wanting to get back into using that Headspace app, because that was so great, and I do recommend that. But again, I fell out of it. – I think they’re sponsoring podcasts now, Link. – Oh, they should sponsor ours. – We should try to figure that out. – So we just preemptively plugged them. – Yeah, now we should– – Believing. – We should try to make that happen with Headspace, because we both have used the app and love it. – But I fell out of it. There’s ways to get back into it. And one of those is make them a sponsor. – (laughs) Yeah. – I don’t worry about, you mentioned worrying about things that will never happen. It’s interesting, because I think so much, maybe 90% of what I worry about are the things that I do have control over, yet I severely question my ability to complete it or knock it out of the park. That’s where I find most of my stress. I talk to Christy, I don’t know. I’ll use Lily’s surgery as an example, because it’s such a stressful thing, but for me, it’s like I was so stressed out about making the decision, whether she was going to have the surgery or not, but once we made the decision, a lot of my stress relieved. – Because now it was in someone else’s hands. – Because I wasn’t in control over, I wasn’t gonna perform the surgery myself. I’m a little offended no one asked, but no. – I know where you’re going with this. Jessie and I were talking about this and the way that we are, Jessie doesn’t get stressed out about the same things that I get stressed out about. But I tend to get very stressed out when we have to travel, especially when I have to travel with Jessie and the kids. And we have to get on the plane. And I get very stressed out about waking up at the right time, having all the stuff that we need, getting to the airport, and then I’m kind of, I’m a little neurotic about getting through the security, and then as soon as we get through security, my stress level goes way, way down. And then when I’m on the plane, and we’re taking off, like no stress at all, because I was in control of getting my family through all those checkpoints and getting everybody together, and I take on this responsibility, ’cause they don’t seem like, like Jessie doesn’t take it on, and she doesn’t demonstrate a sense of urgency in those moments, so I kind of take it on myself. But then I know Christy, she’s nervous when we’re on the plane, and the pilot, like she hears a noise, and she freaks out. Once we’re on the plane, I’m like the pilot is in control. And he’s either gonna crash or not crash, and there’s– – [Both] Nothing I can do about it. – And so I’m not gonna worry about that. – That position that we take and what stresses out, well, what doesn’t stress us out. – It’s not a choice. – It’s not a choice in the same way that– – It’s genetic. – There’s plenty of people that they’re most stressed out when control is removed. Now the other thing, what you said earlier made me think about was, you know, you told me, “I don’t think you know how to relax.” That resonated from the script, from what episode is that, two? – Episode three. – Episode, we moved at episode two. It’s now episode two. – No, we moved it to episode three, ’cause it was episode two. – Really? – I’m 100% sure, because I was just in the writer’s room, right before this. – Okay, of Buddy System, so it’s funny that everything that we’re talking about is something that, hopefully to success, we make it into comedy. So it’s like these things we’re talking about, that I think we’ve talked, on and off, we’ve certainly talked about this and understanding how we tick. And the observation you made about me not being able to relax into something that drives that episode. – Literally, just an hour ago, I was in there, and we were reading through, and I was reading my lines aloud, as we were fine-tuning some things, and I have a line where I say, “You just got to fully commit “to the relaxation, man.” I say that in the script. (Link laughs) And I’m saying that right now. You got to learn to relax. You got to commit to the relaxation. Now let’s talk about some other things, because you said animal. – I got a quick, yeah, so Monique said, “Animal therapy works every time.” Tilly Hendricks said, “Snuggle puppies or other animals.” – This is something that’s new for us. – Now that I got Jade, I make, like, what’s the word, an intentional decision to grab the dog and pet the dog to relieve stress. – [Rhett] Of course. – It’s great, she’s so soft. – Every single morning, so Barbara sleeps in the bed, and then every single morning when I get out of bed, the first thing I do is I lay on my back, and I move my legs, I put my knees in the air in tabletop position, they call it, and I rotate my spine back and forth, the legs going from side to side. As soon as I get on the floor, Barbara comes up– – You fart? – I fart a couple of times. And then Barbara comes up and gets on top of me. She lays on top of me in a very particular way. She puts each foot on each side of me, and just starts licking my face and lays down completely on me. It’s her spot. She’s like, “Daddy’s doing his thing.” – Really? – “And I’m gonna do what I do every morning, “and I’m gonna go lay on top of him.” – That’s great. – Every single morning. – I’m crying. (Rhett laughs) – Something about that made me cry. Look at my eyes. – [Rhett] Well, it is touching. It’s very touching. – That is so sweet. Why am I crying? I’m a wreck, I’m a freakin’ wreck! – (laughs) You’ve been touched, but you also just took a drink of something, so maybe you got some water in your eyes (laughs). – Yeah. – They went right through your glasses. – I was just trying to drink from my eyes for once. I’m not crying. – But this is something that I didn’t have, which again, I know we keep doing this, but when the touchpoint hits us, we’re gonna talk about it. But again, because this journey, getting to a place where we have dogs was such a long one, and a circuitous route, especially for me. You know, you had your, in the book, in the Book of Mythicality, Link talks about his experience with his childhood dog. I talk about my experience with my childhood dogs and then my adult dogs and all of this crazy stuff that’s happened, and then what led to us getting Barbara and Jade and then how they’ve impacted our lives and our families and how we think that interaction with an animal is key, is one aspect of Mythicality. So again, that’s in the Book of Mythicality. This is something that’s new and I know that significantly impacted and lowered my stress level, just having Barbara, without a doubt. – Jade has this look. Like, when you pet her, she gets this look on her face that’s like, “Oh that feels so good.” But it’s also like, she looks like a contented Snoop Dogg. I’m talking about the rapper now. – [Rhett] A contented Snoop Dogg. – That guy just looks so laid back. I don’t know why. I don’t know what makes Snoop Dogg so laid back. – Well, he did once turn into a Doberman in a video, and she kind of has a Doberman look, so I can see how you would think that. – Yeah, but her eyes will go like this. Like, they’ll narrow. – [Rhett] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. – And it’s just like– – [Rhett] Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg’s eyes narrow all the time. – [Link] It’s like Zen (laughs). – [Rhett] His eyes are probably narrowed right now. – Like, I just rub her right here. – He achieves that some other way, Snoop does. – I don’t know what it could be, but for Jade, it’s like me rubbing her right there. And it translates back to me, like seeing her just Zen out. – And we’re talking about somebody who, I knew that I wanted a dog, right, and was talking about it. You didn’t even think you wanted a dog. – I never got it. The therapy, like dog therapy thing, I understood it in principle. – And now you totally get it. – They brought a dog in for Lily, the first day of her surgery. They got like therapy dogs running around, and they put one in the hospital bed with her. – A puppy? – No, a full-grown dog. – Like a Great Dane? – No, a full-grown cocker spaniel. – Small dog. – Big, long– – [Rhett] Floppy ears. – Floppy ears, super soft, super content. – It makes a difference, man. And again, there’s some reason why that works. Okay, Shandra Hollands, I think, yeah, you’ll be able to relate to this. I know I can. “When I’m extremely stressed, “I write a detailed list of all of the things “that are stressing me out, no matter how minor in blue pen. “Then I take a Sharpie and write on top all the reasons “why those things don’t need to stress me out. “Then I make another manageable looking list “of the things that I actually need to take care of “so that I have a handle on things. “Lighting the original list “on fire offers additional stress relief.” – This sounds like something that a therapist would tell you to do. And I will take this opportunity to just say that’s great. – That is great. Moving along. – Going to a therapist or a psychiatrist is absolutely splendid. It’s not anything to be embarrassed about. I mean, Christy and I went to a therapist just to talk out relational things. Almost, I wouldn’t say it’s, not because we have issues, but just from a preemptive standpoint, I mean, we have the normal conflicts that couples have. We’ve been married 17 years. There’s no threat of, you know, anything undermining our relationship. – It’s an external person to talk through things. – It’s a health thing, but what I learned is that the amount of stress that comes off whenever you’re able to say something and then there’s a third person there to help you articulate things, it’s a beautiful thing. And I can only imagine that that also applies when you’re talking to a doctor or a therapist or whatever individually to relieve stress or deal with whatever you’re going through. It’s magic. – Yeah, well, and everybody in this town goes to a therapist. – Well, it’s not technically magic. I should probably say I don’t think there’s actual magic involved. – I bet you you can go to a magic therapist here. It’s called a– – A magician? – No, no, no. – (laughs) A psychic. – A psychic, yeah. – Well, I’m advocating therapy, not psychics, psychiatric professionals. – So I completely agree with that. – But back to this, the list. – But specifically, okay, so this is something, not his exact thing that Shandra’s been doing, but, shout out to Josh Sundquist, because I was watching one of his videos, a friend of ours who actually was here on Ear Biscuits. He signed this table somewhere, at some point. YouTuber, motivational speaker, author, and he talked about the different things that he does every, single day to help him manage stress. There was four things. I know one of them was meditation. One of them was journaling. And one of them was exercise. And then there was a fourth thing, and it’s an acronym, but sorry, Josh, I’ve forgotten it at this point. It was really good, though, and I wrote it down in my journal. Did I say journal? Journal is one of them. – Maybe it was journal twice. Maybe journal’s two times a day. Well, we can figure it out. J for journal, M for meditation, E for exercise. – Oh, JERM, reading, JERM, J, journal, E, exercise, R, read and M, meditate. He wants to do all four of those things, every single day. So we got it. – You know what? That’s why he’s a freakin’ motivational speaker, ’cause you remembered that. – Yeah, well, you had to help me. So I’m not– – Misspelled germ, by the way. – Yeah, don’t bring that up. I’m not great at doing, now all four of those things are things that I really like to do and try to incorporate into my life. If I have a good week, I’ve done all four of those things. It’s difficult for me, at this point, to do all four in a day, every single day, but specifically, journaling. So a lot of people are talking about this bullet journaling craze that’s happening. – I haven’t heard about this. – And I’m speaking out of school a little bit, but my really rudimentary understanding of it is that you’re basically creating a journal where you’re recording your thoughts and observations, things you want to remember, and you are, there’s a format to it, and at the beginning of the journal, you’re basically creating like a system of a table of contents that helps you locate where the information is. People use lots of different systems so that they then can go and access their thoughts. Now I thought, once the internet happened, and once Google Docs and Evernote happened, I was like well, clearly this is a superior way than the archaic writing with a hand. I mean, it’s like my hand gets cramped, and I got bad handwriting. And if you do it digitally, you can access it. – [Both] You can search it. – You can search it, so all those are advantages. But mounds and mounds of research have suggested that retention of information is way more effective when you write things down than when you type things out. – Yeah. – And I’ve been doing this for the past– – This is fascinating. – For the past couple of years. There’s something about tactile interaction with something. Literally, there’s something that happens in your brain when you are– – You make the letter as opposed to pushing just another button. – Making the letters, and you’re creating a physical expression of that idea that then is stored in a part of your brain where then you can associate it. And I wrote down JERM in my journal, when I watched his video. – That’s ironic. – And so I’ve got this system now that I have a journal that I keep with me at work, and I have one that’s at home. And usually the one at home is like I’ll be reading a book. I’m reading a book by somebody I hope we can have on the podcast someday, Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy, great book, and it’s just chock full of this information that for years, I would read a book, and then I would be like that’s really awesome, and then you kind of retain like a kernel of that truth, and you can kind of remember it and keep it, but now when I read I take notes, not in the book, but in my journal, and there’s something about taking the information that I’m receiving, especially when it’s like, I like to read a lot of, I don’t read a lot of fiction. I like to read a lot of non-fiction, and especially non-fiction that you can immediately kind of apply to your life, like the Ego is the Enemy thing. And I’ll take notes on it, and then I find myself actually remembering what each chapter, like the main points about each chapter. So I recommend journaling or bullet journaling, if you’re gonna do the official way. I don’t even know what the official way is, but people do. Science people do. But the act of, another thing that I do in the journal is if I am stressed out about something, or if there’s a worry, if there’s something that’s particularly getting to me, the act of writing it out is a way of like feeling like I’m defining it, and I’m setting it aside, and I’m making it external. It’s almost like I’m taking it out. – Do you have an example? Do you write out what you’re stressed about, or you write a to do list? – I do some to do lists. – Have you written anything about Buddy System? – Yeah, yeah, yeah. – What would you write down? – I would write, like, I feel like what we are doing is impossible. I feel like what we have signed up to do in the amount of time is impossible. And so I write that down, and it’s just like I can kind of like– – I think that was a text to me and Stevie. – Yeah, I probably did that as well. And then I feel like I’m removing it from my brain and putting it in this journal. And somehow it’s just like oh yeah, it is impossible. – Then you burn it? – No, I don’t burn anything. But that’s what Shandra does. I also write things like but it’s probably the case that feeling like something is impossible means you’re doing exactly what you should be doing, because if you’re not doing something that makes you feel like you’re doing something impossible, if you’re not doing something that you think that you can’t, you’re probably doing something that isn’t worth doing at all. – You turned stress into an insight. – Yeah, and it’s like Casey Niestat says, do what you can’t, right. There’s just something incredibly therapeutic, and this is not systematic at all. I’m not prescribing anything in particular. I’m just saying that just beginning the act of journaling has done this, first of all, retention of things that I want to know and apply to my life has gone way up, but also just this time of actually thinking about what it is that’s stressing me out, because there’s a lot of science that suggests that you store stress and tension in different places. You know that your muscles get crazy. And there’s actually a whole school of thought that you store certain kinds of emotions in certain places. I don’t know anything about that, and I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the idea that I got all this tension from my stress that I’ve put in my back, and then my back is predisposed to injury, because I’m tight, the idea of, instead of just thinking that I’m okay and letting that tension be stored in my back, if I take it, and I write it out, I feel like there’s an act of releasing it and defining it and saying it’s out there. I know that I’m actually stressed out. I’ve admitted it, but I also can kind of see whether or not if it’s even something I should be worrying about, because I’ve processed it. – You would agree that you don’t think by putting it on the page, you’re literally not placing it in your back. That sounds like magic. – Well, I don’t know. – You’re saying indirectly. By putting it on the page, you’re reducing stress that then doesn’t build up in your back. – Yeah, it’s not– – But it’s not a magical– – I think, even magic is ultimately scientific, right. I think there are lots of things that we don’t understand about the world that I think one way– – So that is what you’re saying? – The history of the past few thousand years, especially the last 500, is that everything that we thought was magic turned out to be something that we could define and understand if we just kept at it long enough, and so many– – I know, but I just gave that explanation. – Yeah, but I’m saying, but it wouldn’t be magic. If that is true, if they find out that there’s something legitimately, physically happening when you do, that somebody will explain that at some point. All I know is that it seems to work for me. – Well, something psychological is happening, and then it has a physical benefit. – But there could be some energy involved. We don’t understand it all, man. But I’m not gonna say one way or another, whether that’s true. I’m just saying, basically I’m just saying thank you, Josh Sundquist for telling me to JERM it every day. – It’s interesting when I’ve, the reason why I don’t journal is because I feel like a journal becomes a record of how often I don’t journal. And I can’t get over it. – Hm, the gaps, you’re worrying about the gaps? – Yeah, like for me, it’s like well, I got to put a date. And then I got to– – I put dates in. I got lots of gaps, man. But you just got to keep going back. – But it seems like a defeat, like when I go back and saying when I go back, I’m gonna see that date. And that was three months ago That was a year ago. – You’re thinking of it like a blogger from like 2007. – Yeah, it’s so broken. I wish there was a nother way I could do it. I can’t get over that. Like, the fact that it’s, like if I don’t do it every day, I’m a failure. That’s stupid. – Yeah, because– – Who cares? – If you do it at all– – Who am I trying to impress? – Well, I’m sensing a pattern here. Again, I think that this is a little bit of a therapy session for both of us. – I’ll take it. – But I think that when you say, “I listen to music, “and the reason I’m doing it is so I can analyze it.” It’s like well, that’s cool. – It’s a distraction. – And it’s a hobby of yours. – It’s a distraction. It’s like– – And I’m not saying that’s bad. But if you can’t listen to music to relax, then you’re missing a side of music. Journaling, if you’re just thinking about the task of journaling, and the routine of journaling, and you’re like, “I’m doing this, because I have to do it,” then you’re– – ‘Cause I’ve committed to it. – Then you’re missing the point of it. The point being that this is actually, it’s therapeutic. – Like, I literally– – You’re not thinking about yourself. – No, when I’ve journaled in the past, I’ve thought about who’s gonna read it later. Like, maybe when I die, my kids are gonna read this. – Well, I definitely think that. That’s why I say really poetic things like maybe when you think you’re about to do something impossible, you know you’re doing the right thing. And then I put a box around it and a star, so the historians will find it. – The historians? (both laugh) Shoot. – I’m joking. – You were joking, but, well, are you joking? – No, I think my, I mean, my kids are gonna read it at some point. I mean, I’m sure people are gonna read it. – Okay, well, that makes me feel better. – I’m not gonna, “Just bury me with my journals, man. “I don’t want anybody to see the mess that I wrote.” – That impedes the point. – No, I’m very honest in them. If there’s something that I would be, is not something that I wouldn’t want read publicly, ’cause you know, people could find a journal at some point, I write about it in code, you know, in a way that’d be like okay, people wouldn’t know. – And the chief thing on your mind is not an audience. It’s not the reader– – No, it’s for me. – Yeah. – It’s something I need. – Yeah, that’s what I have trouble getting to. – You need more, Link. – I think Sighty-Sighty said she relieves stress by sleeping. “I remember once Link said how when he’s anxious, “he’s so anxious and such, which allows him “to fall asleep really fast.” I remember when Christy took her pregnancy test, and we found out that she was pregnant with our first child, Lily. – What’s her name? Lily (laughs). – Lily. The first thing I said was “I need to take a nap.” It’s like, I was very happy that we were having a baby, ’cause we were trying, but that’s how I, I was like I just got to check out a little bit, ’cause I have the gift of no matter how stressed I am, I can just fall asleep. But I think that can be a problem, because I think that that’s escaping. – ‘Cause you feel like if you wake up, you’ll be removed from the problem, but you’ve actually done nothing. – When I sleep, I’ve escaped the problem. But I wake up, and it’s still there. I haven’t faced it or gone through it, and I think that’s something about my mindfulness or like writing something down or talking about it with loved ones or a professional is helpful, because it helps you. There’s not an element of denial. There’s an element of okay, this is here. It’s like when you write it down, it’s like all right, I’ve written this down. Here it is. It’s not me. It’s separate from me. I can do something about it. Or I can have a perspective on it and move on or move through it or at least begin to. I do think, like, doing things to escape or erase it, I mean, turn to country radio, and they’ll talk about, you know, how they’ll do that the bottom of a bottle. – Oh, country radio. – Country radio talks about– – Apple country radio. – They romanticize drinking away– – Turning to substances, escaping. – A lot of Merle songs about drinking away hurt memories, so to speak. It’s not healthy. – There’s an interesting phenomenon that some people, and I’m one of them. This never happens to my wife. You, in the middle of a stressful situation, you get really sleepy. So not sleeping to escape, necessarily, but– – Oh yeah. – Getting really fatigued and like, Jessie never relates to that, but sometimes I’ll just be like, “I just want to sleep.” And she’s like, “How can you be wanting to sleep right now? “Aren’t you freaking out about,” whatever? And I’m like, “No, I just get really tired.” I used to get super tired before high school basketball games, because you know– – Your body would get so worked up? It would be a physical thing? – I’d be nervous. I’d be pumped up for this game and be nervous about my performance. I wouldn’t be jittery. I would just be like, “I could so take a nap, right now, “like a 15-minute nap, and I’d be, like, ready.” – But that is not the main thing I do. The main thing I do is this thing that Bray Gotham does. She says, “I know this is crazy, “but I manage my stress by cleaning the house. “For some reason, it soothes me. “And then I end up with a nice, clean place to relax in.” I absolutely, like, you know, when I came into the office the other day, the first thing I did, you were in there working, and I spent the morning away, and then I came in. I felt late to the game, and I was very anxious to get going. The first thing I did was turn the mats, I was like, they moved us back into our office, and the rug was upside down. The tag was out, like, first thing I saw. – The big rug? – No, the little rug behind your desk. Well, first, I was like that rug doesn’t go there. But it’s okay to be there. That was my way of not giving in. – It’s okay, Link. It’s okay that it’s there. – And then I looked at the other one, in front of the fridge, and it was upside down, ’cause the tag on the rug was visible. And I turned that over. I instinctively start cleaning and organizing. My desktop on my computer, I went through stuff, and I realized that, I started cleaning that off. It made me feel better. It gave me a sense of control. There was stuff from Buddy System from last year. It was actually a nice reminder. – It also gives you a sense of progress, which incidentally– – I can do this. I can control something. I can organize something. – Incidentally, in this book, in Ryan’s book, Ego is the Enemy, he has a chapter about how one of the tendencies that we have is we substitute planning for doing. And so, actually, people in this, this just made me think about this. Sometimes we think making a list is progress, when all it is is making a list. Now sometimes organizing and making a list is actually, even though I’m not a clean freak, I totally relate to that. If I spend a day cleaning up our closet or the room or Jessie and I organize something, there’s this feeling. There’s an endorphin release, without a doubt. There’s a reward. You feel good about doing it. So I’m not advocating against that. But I’m saying that sometimes, especially when you’re doing what we do, and sometimes you’ve got, and anybody can relate to this. You’ve got some task ahead, and you’re like, “Okay, well, I’m gonna organize my thoughts “about that by bringing out a whiteboard “and making a list.” Studies show that, I want to get this right, but people actually begin the more you do it, the more you do that, the more likely you are to begin confusing that for progress and begin to think that I’m making progress, because I have a whiteboard, and I made a list, when you actually didn’t do anything. And you can get to a place where you feel like you’re making all this progress, and all you’ve done is plan for progress. – Well, I mean, as long as you cross things off the list. I think, making a list will make you feel better, and cleaning a house will make me feel better– – Then you got to act on the list. – But then you got to cross things off the list. – Yeah, you have to act on the list. – And you can’t just cross them off. You have to do them first, before you can cross them off. – The whole idea of not confusing plan with progress. That I think is a pretty novel idea. – It’s interesting that I do not make lists, period. – Yeah, that’s true. – You would think, I think, people might guess that I’d be a list-maker, because it seems the same as cleaning. But I don’t know exactly why, but I don’t make lists. I feel better if I do the first thing, and then I get to a point where I feel like okay, the thing I was stressed out about, which is something that I had to do, which is maybe the top thing on a list that I never made, I feel better doing that, but I’ve never made a list. That made me feel better. And I think that cleaning stuff, whatever your coping mechanism, as long as it’s not– – [Rhett] Harmful. – Harmful, is okay, as long as you know why you’re doing it. Like, I don’t think it’s a big problem that I clean in order to deal with stress, even though the stress is not about things being dirty. – No, there’s nothing wrong with it. – As long as I know that, like, okay, this gives me a little relief, but it’s not the ultimate solution. – Unless you’re doing it substitute solving a problem that you do have control over, which I don’t think is what you’re saying. – I think that happens sometimes. – But that can become something, too. – I think you can, you shouldn’t fool yourself into believing that it’s not a symptom of a problem. It doesn’t ultimately solve it. – Ironically– – It’s a band-aid. – Ironically, we need to wrap this up, because we have to go back to the writer’s room. – Yeah. – Because we go to keep– – And we’re late. I think we told them we were gonna be there– – Like five minutes ago, more, 10 minutes ago, more than that. So let’s hit this one. Justin Morgan says, “To lower my stress levels, “I just listen to Rhett’s massage song, “which that brings me joy.” And maybe it will bring you joy, because let’s just go, you want to just go out on that? You just want to go out on the massage song? ♫ I’m so tight, so stressed ♫ Need someone to rub my neck ♫ Oh yeah, that’s the spot ♫ I like the way you work my muscle knot ♫ Put some oil on my back ♫ Give me a two-handed attack ♫ I had a really hard week ♫ And I want you to rub my feet ♫ I’m so stiff, so stressed ♫ Need someone to rub my chest ♫ Oh yeah, that’s the spot ♫ I like the way you work my booty knot – Oh, man, what an ending there. – Booty knot, massage is important, too. – I love massages. I’m not gonna help you out with that booty knot. – No, no, that’s fine. I got somebody that works on my booty knots. – The way you rub our booty knot is using #earbiscuits to let us know, join the conversation with #earbiscuits. – Thank you for all your perspectives. I’m sorry we didn’t get to that many, because we just got to talking like we do, but thank you for everybody who submitted your perspective. And I think this was helpful. Hopefully, it was, I know it was helpful for me. – Yeah, I feel better. I mean, we delayed getting the stuff we needed to get to, otherwise, but you know what? This was, boy, this is life, man. – Well, that’s what therapy is, man. It’s really just talking, just talking to somebody. The best therapists just sit there with their legs crossed and say, “Tell me more.” And that’s what we did today. – We told each other more. – Yeah. To hear this Ear Biscuit in its entirety, so you don’t miss a thing, follow the links in the description to ART19, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere else podcasts are available. – [Link] To watch more Ear Biscuits, click the video on the left. – [Rhett] To watch more from This Is Mythical, click the video on the right. – [Link] And don’t forget to subscribe by clicking the circular icon. – [Rhett] Thanks for being your mythical best. (quirky music)