Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 97: How Do You Manage Stress? ft. Rhett & Link | Ear Biscuits Ep. 97

Episode Date: June 5, 2017

A conversation on managing stress, Rhett's fire breathing experience, Buddy System Season 2, and more on this week's episode of Ear Biscuits. SUBSCRIBE to This Is Mythical: https://goo.gl/UMXvuW Listen & subscribe at: Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/29PTWTM Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2oIaAwp Art19: https://art19.com/shows/ear-biscuits SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/earbiscuits Follow This Is Mythical: Facebook: http://facebook.com/ThisIsMythical Instagram: http://instagram.com/ThisIsMythical Twitter: http://twitter.com/ThisIsMythical Other Mythical Channels: Good Mythical Morning: https://www.youtube.com/user/rhettandlink2 Good Mythical MORE: https://youtube.com/user/rhettandlink3 Rhett & Link: https://youtube.com/rhettandlink Credits: Hosted By: Rhett & Link Executive Producer: Stevie Wynne Levine Managing Producer: Cody D'Ambrosio Technical Director / Editor: Meggie Malloy Graphics: Matthew Dwyer Set Design/Construction: Cassie Cobb Content Manager: Becca Canote Logo Design: Carra Sykes To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Link. And I'm Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, you got your boys. You got your boy. The businessman and the boy. Can I be the businessman?

Okay. I gotta button up. This week, the businessman and the boy. I button 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. Yeah.

And actually, the 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 a beautiful. 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 mean, I've been doing some things that are, I don't think I've ever really addressed it well. I do some things but it was like, wouldn't it be interesting to get the Mythical Beast perspective on this

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. But you know, the reason why it's such a stressful time is because there's lots of things going on, but I mean, we're not complaining. Those things are very exciting. Hashtag blessed, man. Hashtag blessed, Link. Hashtag blessed.

Hashtag stressed and blessed. 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 have even told me that.

Hold on, that's news to you? Well, I think one of my coping mechanisms is I just, Not knowing? I lose track of the timeline. 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, but it's very exciting to be at this point. But sometimes when 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 like writing and preparation to where we were with season one and I feel like last year, we had completed scripts and we were, you know, I was just,

my main point of stress was like, can I own this? Am I gonna be able to act this stuff? Am I gonna be able to memorize and act this stuff? But now we don't even have something that I can study yet. But you, but, but. 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. But 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 and you know,

you demonstrated to yourself that you could do it. So 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 right now. 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, 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, 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, it's just, you just start doing it. You start shooting it, you start making it. You know, it's nice to have a schedule, and even if it's really aggressive or it feels over aggressive, you know, we wanna 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. You know, 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 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. So I can just explain why we do that because people may not understand. So because we have a short window of time, relatively speaking to everything else that we do,

we've gotta 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 wanna 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. Because you pay them by the day. It's more like an 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 on a motorcycle. Might be a motorcycle that we're on or in or a combination of both. Kinda on. Kinda in. Kinda next to.

You don't wanna rent that thing for two months. You wanna rent that thing for a couple of days so then you find yourself shooting episode eight, episode three, and episode four in motorcycle scenes. It's like, well, hold on, you gotta have blood on your face for this one. You gotta change into this outfit. You gotta change, now the blood's gotta be gone. And then you have to look at your script and know, what is my emotion in this? Because the last time I rode on the motorcycle,

I was super happy and now I'm super mad. Right. So you go down the street and you're happy, good. Now you go down the street and you're mad. And you don't... And that's why blood helps. It 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 gotta, okay, let's look at the script, I gotta get back to that place. But I mean, we're not directing this thing, but as executive producers and creators of it,

we're, 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 scene. Yeah and 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 they'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 a room

with our writers that we're working with and we all kind of, as a group, finalize the script. And it takes 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 because she's intimately involved with the, knowing where 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 I'm still on active dad duty because Lily's in recovery from her back surgery. So your schedule is 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 wanna 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 because half the time I physically can't be there or even work on it because, this was the best time for the surgery but there's never a great time for a surgery like that.

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. But you know, 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 I think that's one, so again, not complaining. 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, the 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 is 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 and check out, we got videos coming out every day over there. Maybe more than one a day some days. Yeah and we've got, you know, every Friday we got guest hosts on Good Mythical Morning and that's going great but it's,

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, but you know, there's all these moving parts. Well and I think you get to a point where, I mean 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? Yeah. Because we didn't know anybody who was involved in, I had a distant cousin who was in an Oscar Mayer Wiener commercial, okay? A distant cousin?

That was that distant cousin that I never met and that was what- But you still bragged about it. Oh, we talked about it with everybody. I never met the guy, but. When he was a kid, he was an Oscar Mayer wiener commercially dropped, he dropped the wiener and a dog ate it or something, I don't know what it was.

What a jerk. But that was my understanding. Oh, he was supposed to drop it? Yeah, that was part of it. Okay, not a jerk. Maybe it wasn't. He's brilliant. Anyway, but the DVD behind the scenes,

like 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 what The Rain would sound like when we created it on a stage in Burbank. And then, 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 just. And if it does rain, then when we're shooting,

then all of a sudden the scene has rain. There's 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, because 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, 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 about that. I don't wanna hear it. Doing Buddy's system.

I don't wanna think about it at this moment. And I'm 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. I mean, you don 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 think about that. But we keep saying yes to things, right? And while we're having a blast, it's like piling things onto 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 at a time really well. But right now. It's hard to say no, isn'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 to ask to be on a. Oh, you shouldn't say the specifics.

Just as a saying. Why can't you? Because you just got it. 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 I said no was 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 I can emotionally handle being taken 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 because who knows what they've done public with that. Yeah. 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, mostly with physical things. And 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,

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, it's 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 have 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 drives me. At your own expense. At your own expense. It drives me crazy. So a lot of it's just a mindset. It's like being cooler under pressure and not wigging out over anything. Wearing more deodorant.

Wearing more, like doubling up on deodorant. I think if I adjust my mindset, I don't have to, 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 any perspirant. You're not, you're sure not wearing any perspirant, are you? Okay, you're changing the subject.

I'll go with this. I'm, 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. Oh.

I mean, it feels damp. I said I was sweating, like 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. I did. I did. Just to be honest.

Boreal for Safety, that's a good looking shirt. Okay. It's catchy. 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 wanna show some love to our sponsor, Tile, the tiny Bluetooth tracker that makes finding your things easier than ever.

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And then it made my phone make that magical ring that helps me find it if I lose my phone but have my keys. And then I said, and you know what, listen to this. And then I picked up my phone and I stopped it. I said, see the tile helps me find my phone. And then I activated the keys and then the tile itself made the chime chimey that lets me know where they're hiding because my keys like to hide from me a lot.

Blew his mind. So you created like a magic show for your children with the tile. And then I said, and check this out. And then I went on my phone, clicked another tile, and all of a sudden my laptop bag across the room started to chime, chime, chime and tell me where she was hiding. Are you going to give tiles to your kids now?

Because now that you've demonstrated that technology to them, they're going to want them. Yeah, and you know what? I lose all types of stuff and I want to put it on it. Including the children. Yeah, put it on the kids. I can tile the kids. There's one that'll fit in your wallet too.

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This episode of Ear Biscuits is also brought to you by Casper mattresses. Now I've been sleeping on a Casper mattress for about 18 months now. Mm-hmm. And I can honestly say, you know I have a bad back, I've struggled with it for a really long time. Yeah, I don't say it to your face a lot

because I don't want to hurt your feelings. A lot of times I wake up with a sore back but since sleeping on this Casper mattress, I have not been waking up at my home on my Casper mattress with a sore back. But when I travel, when I have to sleep in a hotel bed or stay with relatives and sleep in the bed that they provide.

Your relatives provide beds? Yeah, I don't sleep on the floor. Well you shouldn't complain. But I always, without fail, if it's not the first night, might be the second night, I get this back pain and I'm just like, I want to get back home to my bed, my Casper mattress. It's become something, I depend on it.

Well. I wanna take it camping with me if that's possible. Well it's possible. I could put it in the back, I could put it in the back of a truck. You could, well, do it. Here's why what you're saying makes sense, is because Casper has obsessively engineered their mattress,

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If you don't love it, they'll pick it up and refund everything. And you can get $50 towards any mattress purchase by visiting casper.com slash biscuits and using code BISCUITS. That's casper.com slash biscuits, code BISCUITS. 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 read one. Natasha Jennings says cornstarch fire breathing helps me relieve stress, do it. Okay, cornstarch 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. Cornstarch 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. Is it called scientist? When, well, science people, scientist means like you're like official, but science people, just people who know things. Which is basically every other person on the internet.

There is a, well, no, 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 has, 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 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. But that happens with cornstarch. And you can take cornstarch—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 relieved, I don't know if it relieved my stress but that's what Natasha does and 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 powdered combustible material is present in high enough concentrations in the atmosphere or other oxidizing gaseous mediums such as oxygen.

Dust explosions are a frequent hazard in underground coal mines, grain elevators, and other industrial environments. On the other hand, they're also commonly used by special effects artists, filmmakers, and pyrotechnicians, aka science people. Aka Natasha Jennings. Giving their spectacular appearance

an 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 like 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. I mean there's a. You could also choke on it, don't do it.

Why aren't you 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

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 coming up, 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 that leads to life failure. All right what else we got?

Bloody grundle, which if that's like an insult or if that means something naughty anywhere. 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. Fat stacks of pillows being karate chopped. I understand that.

I totally get it. You know, you just got all this pent up aggression. You don't wanna lash out at your kids or other loved ones. Yeah, don't hit the kids. No, I mean. Don't hit anybody else. No, I mean like verbally. Okay. But I mean. Don't hit anybody else. No I mean like verbally. Okay.

But I mean just when things get stressful, you know 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 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. I would literally do it.

We had this velour pillow that was like, it was squarish. It wasn't like a 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 is a winning decorative pillow. It was velour with the fringe.

And I would pummel the crap out of that. Yeah, velour's tough, man. I remember, I don't, I was, you know, 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. 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. It's like a farm down there. Can't think, can't think when that's happening.

You gotta do, your body's making a choice and it's making the right one. Yeah, right. But I distinctly. Even though you don't even need those. I distinctly, well I you don't even need those. I distinctly, well I. Oh, let's not even talk about that.

Well I was about to Google it now. I have my theories but. Do you need pubes? Not anymore. What do you mean anymore? I mean you needed. 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 wanna know. I know you have something in mind. That's why I'm the businessman. I'm gonna ask you. And you're the boy.

I don't wanna 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. But I went over to the pillow and I started punching it. And then I realized she was right. Yeah, it works. It totally works. Well, I mean, this is- And he said a stack of pillows, which, or she, Bloody Grondahl, is even better because I also remember punching so hard

that it hit the floor. Yeah, well, and Taylor Rae Feltz, which also sounds like a sentence, says, uh, definitely the best stress reliever for me is either taking a baseball bat to a couch or hitting rocks with one. So... A baseball to a couch? Yeah, a baseball bat. So, this is I mean again, all of this is somewhat scientific but this is, we, and this is one of the reasons that we're so stressed out in this culture

is because if you go back hundreds of thousands of years, right, or even. 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 fighting for our next meal. No, I'm saying pre-agriculture. So go back 10,000 years.

Got you. 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 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 build up in their system and then they exert it, but we don't do that. We just build up those hormones and then we don't exert them, we put them into our work which it doesn't release them in the same way.

It's like a gorilla snapping a giraffe neck. Yeah, 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. Yeah, snap it, 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, 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 them. 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 axe 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. And that might just be like lifting a weight. It might just be like yelling. It might be hitting a pillow. AngerRoom.com. This is in Los Angeles, Rhett. Let's go get angry, man. Anger Room TM.

Their 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. Is 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, 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 all should 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 over to Rainy Mood. What happens at Rainy Mood? Alright, I'm going. Helps you focus, stay, relax, and sleep. Is there sound? Oh, there's sound. There it is. It sounds like a rain, rainstorm.

And it's different. It says today's music. Well, today's storm.. Oh that's nice. I immediately feel calmer. I also feel like I need to urinate. What is that? Well the whole back of their website is a bunch of urine streaking down a window. Yeah it's a rainy window, man, it's not urine.

That's true. Hold on, let's just sit in it a second. That's, I'm. I asked you just to sit in it. You 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. And what more do you need? The sound of rain.

Well, to hear the rain. Yeah, but you probably do videos. Is it videos? Yeah, they do that. They do all types of stuff related to rain. Well, that's good. See, now, this is helpful, we're getting there. Now how do I stop it?

Okay here it goes. Stephanie Renee Quindemanoian. Perfect. Quindemanoian. Perfect. Quindemanoian. Perfect. She says, I feel my car's gas tank.

Pick a road I haven't been on before and just drive. The first time you said, I heard feel my car's gas tank. You could feel it. Like put your hand in there? It's difficult though because it's usually just covered with the rest of the car. I just rub. Fill. I rub a gas tank. I fill my car's gas tank.

Pick a road I haven't been on before and just drive. Fill up and drive. Well, this sounds familiar. We, I mean, 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 don't wanna. We didn't relate it to stress directly, but.

We relate, well, interestingly, us doing that, and I'm not gonna give it away because 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. Yeah. I think it's, it wasn't like, oh 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 tenant 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.

You know, 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 that,

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. At least 2% should be on the road. To analyze it, I don't listen to music

as like listening to that rain. It's like it gives me something, it's like I can just pour my analytics into instead of pouring it, like directing it toward my anxiety. 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. Well you can't, I mean, the only problem with that, I mean, you gotta leave room. It's not relaxing. You gotta leave room for spy radio, man. I told you about that. You mentioned it, I forgot, I never tried it. So sometimes it's real, real bad

and sometimes it's real, real good. This is like Google Play Music or Spotify? This is Apple Spa Radio. Okay. So again, and this is actually, this is probably my number one most reliable source of stress relief on a given, but not spa radio in particular,

but spa radio is part of it. So. You're talking like. Every Saturday. Like Chinese flute stuff? Sometimes they 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 frickin' temple up there and just broadcasting. So this is not in the car, this is at the home. People are like, 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 because 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 and on the weekend and especially as we've gotten so. Every weekend you've been pretty consistent with that? Oh yeah, yeah, it's like, and I tell Jessie, I'm like, I really need that time. I mean, because I also do it every morning but just next, I roll out of bed and then, 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 discs. Which that's phenomenal. So you've done this for over a year now, very consistent. 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 these are what you,

you've been doing things that have been hurting you, now you're doing the right things. Yeah, 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. When you were eating a sandwich. Almost as bad, man. But so you literally roll out of bed onto 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. Oh good. That's overrated. Well it's stressful, it's so stressful to brush those teeth, there's so many of them. It's a myth that you have to do that. You know, 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 freaking 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. And I don't mean something caught in my tooth like from 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? But it's interesting because I haven't gone that far. I typically, it typically happens at night. Like sometimes, 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 a, 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. Like you're telling me, like, because I've been talking to Jesse, 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 that you can just 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 when I go to a spa and if I go into like the steam room or go into the sauna, it's so relaxing. That is so relaxing to me. Like you're not using music, you're just analyzing the music, you have to, which is cool and great in a distraction, but you gotta 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 do to relax? When I take a normal shower, there are times when I take a shower for the relaxation of it. But what is your.

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, but I do, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, 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 go 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 wanna pamper myself, get up a little later

on those two days and take an hour to just like sit and be mindful. Of you know, meditate. Maybe take the dog out there, 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. And using that as a moment to say all right, I'm gonna, this is a reminder for me to just take a few cleansing breaths.

Because doing that on the toilet is not great, to 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 a hitch on it. Okay. How is this gonna get to be relaxing?

It won't present water. It won't present water. It won't present water? When I push it. But what I learned was, and I would start hitting it and hitting it and hitting it and try to force water out of it, like there's gotta be some hitch that I can feel something like click a little later. And then I realized if I take it and I push against it.

And wait. And wait. After like seven seconds, all of a sudden, something will go and then the water will start presenting itself. Yeah, it's like an old man. And then, yeah. Old man waiting to pee. And so now I've said, you know what? I'm not going to get frustrated this moment.

I'm gonna now use this as a gentle reminder to breathe. And think of nothing else. Dad, why are you, why have you paused at the, waiting for the water to present once again? Like a, like a, like a, Somebody who's, Like a, the battery ran out of a robot. Having a brain fart. Like an android.

Dad's having a brain fart again. No, he's just waiting for the water to present. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm cleansily breathing, man. No, but I think, I think you're onto something. I think that the principle of mindfulness, which is just something that we had, you know, growing up where we grew up, nobody talked about that. It's become much more of a, of a, of a thing in the west now, especially in Southern California, but I think one of the reasons that it's become much more of a thing in the West now,

especially in Southern California, but I think one of the reasons 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.

So we've got these bodies that are made as a process of evolution over millions of years 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 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, 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. You're not 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, 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. Mm-hmm. And so, like, during that. It's interesting, by the way, I don't,

yeah, that reminds me of like, I keep wanting to get back into using that Headspace app because that was so great and it's like, 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. Because we're 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, you know, there's ways to get back into it and one of those is making them a sponsor. Yeah.

I don't worry about, you mentioned worrying about things that'll 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 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. You know, I talked to Christy, I don't know,

it's like if you, you know, I'll use Lilly 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 gonna have the surgery or not, but once we made the decision, a lot of my stress relieved. Because now it was in somebody 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. You know I think this is, 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 like 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 a 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 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 because 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. Like once we're on the plane, I'm like the pilot's in control and he's either gonna crash or not crash and there's nothing that I can do about it. And so I'm not gonna worry about that. But it's not some, that position that we take and what stresses out, well what doesn't stress us out

is not a choice. 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 told me, I don't think you know how to relax, which that resonated from the script,

from what episode is that, two? Episode three. Episode, we moved it to episode two. It's now episode two. No we moved it to episode three because it was episode two. 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 we're talking about is something that hopefully to success we make it into comedy. Right. So it's like these things that 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. Literally. It is 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 out loud as we were fine tuning some things and I have a line where I say,

you just gotta fully commit to the relaxation, man. I say that in the script. And I'm saying that right now, you gotta learn to relax, you gotta commit to the relaxation. Now. I say that in the script. And I'm saying that right now. You gotta learn to relax. You gotta 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 Hendrick said snuggle puppies or other animals. This is something that's new for us. Now that I got Jade, I make, what's the word? An intentional decision to grab the dog and pet the dog to relieve stress. Of course. Well, it's great. She's so soft.

Every single morning when I, 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 there 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 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 her each foot on each side of me and just starts licking my face and lays down top of me. She lays on top of me in a very particular way. She puts her 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 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. I don't know, something about that made me cry. Look at my eyes. Well it is touching, it's very touching.

That is so sweet. And so. Why am I crying very touching. That is so sweet. And so. Why am I crying? I'm a wreck! You've been. I'm a freaking wreck! You've been touched. Well you also just took a drink of something,

so maybe you got some water in your eyes. Yeah. They went right through your glasses. I was just trying to drink from my eyes for once, I'm not crying. But no, but this is something that I didn't have, which again, I know we keep doing this, but when the touch point 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, and 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 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. But we, this is something that's new and I know that's significantly impacted

and lowered my stress level just having Barbara, without a doubt. She, Jane has this look, like when you pet her, she gets this look on her face, it'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. Like you know how, that guy just looks so laid back.

I don't know why, I don't know what makes Snoop Dogg so laid back, but I. But he did once turn into a Doberman in a video and she kinda has a Doberman look, so I could see how you would think that. Yeah, but her eyes will go like this, they'll narrow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg's eyes narrow all the time.

It's like a zen. 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.

Big, long, floppy ears, super soft, super content. It makes a difference, man. And again, there's some reason why that works. Okay, Chandra Hollands, I think you'll be able to relate to this, I know I can. When I'm extremely stressed, I write a detailed list of all 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 say that's great. I mean. That is great. Going to. 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 and we've been married 17 years. There's nothing, there's no threat of, you know, anything undermining our relationship.

You've got, it's an external person to talk through. 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 that 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... it's called a. A magician.

No, no, no. A psychic. Psychic, yeah. I know, well I'm advocating therapy, not psychics. Psychic, yeah. Psychics, psychiatric professionals. So I completely agree with that. But back to this.

But. The list. Specifically, okay, so this is something, not this exact thing that Shondra's been doing, but shout out to Josh Sundquist, because I was watching one of his videos. Friend of ours who actually was here on Your Biscuits, he signed this table somewhere at some point.

YouTuber, motivational speaker, author, and he talks about the different things that he does every single day that help him manage stress. See if I can, there's 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's 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 germ, reading, germ.

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 freaking motivational speaker, because you remembered that. Yeah, well you had to help me. But, so I'm not. You misspelled germ, by the way.

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. So 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 can go and access their thoughts. Now, I thought, once the internet happened, and once Google Docs and Evernote happened, 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, 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 couple of years. But there's something about tactile interaction

with something, literally there's something that happens in your brain when you are 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. So and I wrote down germ in my journal when I watched this 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 that is, 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 nonfiction,

especially nonfiction 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'm 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 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? Like what do you, do you write, you write out what you're stressed about or you write a to-do list? I don't, I mean, I do some to-do lists. Like have you written anything about Buddy System?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like 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 kinda 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, but I'll also. Then you burn it? No, I don't burn anything, but that's what Chandra 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 turn stress into something, an insight.

Yeah, and so you, it's like Casey Neistat says, do what you can't, right? And 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 making, the 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 is it 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 ride 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 kinda see whether or not, if it's even something I should be worrying about because I've processed it. I mean, 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. But you're saying, I don't. You're saying indirectly. I don't know. By putting it on the page, you're reducing stress that then doesn't build up in your back. Yeah, it's not, I mean, it's not.

But it's not a magical. Well, 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 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. 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, 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 germ 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. The gaps, you're worried about the gaps.

Yeah, like for me it's like, well I gotta put a date. And then I gotta like. I put dates in, I got lots of gaps, man. But you just gotta keep going back. But it seems like a defeat, like when I go back, when I go back I'm gonna see that date. And that's three months ago, that was a year ago. You think of it like a blogger from like 2007.

Yeah, like it's so broken, it's like I wish there was another 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 if you do it at all. Who am I trying to impress?

Well, I think 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. And it's a hobby of yours. It's a distraction. 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. Because 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?

Shoot. I'm joking. You're joking. But are you joking? No, I think, 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, but that.

I'm not gonna, just bury me with my journals, man. I don't want anybody to see the mess that I wrote. people are gonna read it. Okay well that makes me feel better but that. I'm not gonna, bury me with my journals man. I don't want anybody to see the mess that I wrote. You know I want. But that impedes the point. No I'm very honest in them. And if there's something that I would be, is not something that I wouldn't want read publicly because you know people could find a journal at some point.

I just, I write about it in code. In a way that it would be like, okay, people wouldn't know it. But it's not the chief thing on your mind is not an audience, is not the reader. No, it's for me. Yeah. It's something I need.

Something I need. Yeah, and that's what I have trouble getting to. You need more, Link. I think, Sidi Sidi 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. Lily. The first thing I said was, I need to take a nap. I was very happy that we were having a baby because we were trying, but that's how I was like,

I just gotta check out a little bit, because 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. Because we feel like if you wake up, you'll be removed from the problem. Well, and I feel like 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. I think that's something about mindfulness or like writing something down or talking about it with loved ones or a professional. It's 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 that and move on or move through it or at least begin to. So I do think it's like doing things to escape or erase it.

I mean turn to country radio and they'll talk about how to do that at the bottom of a bottle. They still do that. Oh, it's country radio? Country radio talks about. Apple Country Radio. They romanticize, you know, drinking away. Turning to sex.

A lot of Merle songs about drinking away her memory. But you know, 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 getting really fatigued and like,

Jessie never relates to that, but sometimes I'll just be like, I just wanna sleep. She's like, how could 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. Not an, so it would be. I'd be pumped up for this game and be nervous about my performance and 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 absolutely, like, you know, when I came into the office the other day, the first thing I did,

you were in there working and you know, I spent the morning away and then I came in and I felt late to the game and like I was very anxious to get going, first thing I did was turn the mats, like I was like, they moved us back into our office and the rug was upside down. The tag was out. 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 because the tag on the rug

was visible and I turned that over and I, and it's like I instinctively start cleaning and organizing. Like my desktop on my computer, I went through stuff and I realized that I started cleaning that off. It made me feel better. Well. 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. You know, 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, and 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 we think making a list is progress when all it is is making a list. Now sometimes organizing and making a list is actually, it's, I mean, even though I'm not a clean freak, I totally relate to that. Like if I like spend a day cleaning up our closet or the room or Jessie and I organize something, there's this feeling, there's this like,

there's an endorphin release without a doubt. There's a reward, you feel good about doing it. That's why I'm not advocating against that. But I'm saying that sometimes, especially when you're 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 breaking out a whiteboard and making a list.

Studies show that, I wanna 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 if you make it, making a list will make you feel better and cleaning a house will make me feel better. Then you gotta act on the list. But then you gotta cross things off that 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.

But yeah, the whole idea of not confusing a plan with progress, that's, I think, it's a pretty novel idea. It's interesting that I do not make lists, period. I don't. 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 never made me feel better.

And I think that cleaning stuff, or whatever your coping mechanism, as long as it's not 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 going, it's not the ultimate solution. Unless you're doing it to 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 I just think that. 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. And it doesn't ultimately solve it. Ironically. It's a bandaid. Ironically, we need to wrap this up because we have to go back to the writer's room.

Yeah. Because we gotta 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 listened to Rhett's Massage song, which that brings me joy. And maybe it will bring you joy because let's just go, you wanna just go out on that? You just wanna go out on the massage song? I'm so tired, so stressed, need someone to rub my neck. Oh yeah, that's the spot.

I like the way you work my muscle now. Yep. Put some oil on my back. A little awkward for me. Give me a two-handed attack. I had a really hard week. Who knew that this song would keep popping up as much as it has.

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 that's fine, I got somebody that works on my booty knots. The way you rub our booty knot is using hashtag Ear Biscuits to let us know. Join the conversation with hashtag Ear Biscuits. 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. I mean, that's all. 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. 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 booty knots.