The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: E238: Josh Peck: The Surprising Truth Behind My 127lb Weight Loss Journey

With Drake and Josh, I felt pissed that I out-started this whole mess.

Josh backlighting the doorway.

He's an actor, comedian, one half of Drake and Josh.

A staple of my childhood.

Hark me brother!

The headline of the first 10 years of my life was single mom.

Never knew my dad.

Didn't have enough money for a slice of pizza.

15 years old, Drake and Josh.

One would assume that you'd be like set for life.

There was no residuals and I'm as worried about next year's financial status

as anyone else.

I don't have that security.

And I do want to say that I was not properly appreciated for my work.

If I wanted to, at will, I could blow that up.

18 years old, you lose 127 pounds.

Yeah.

One would assume that dropping 127 pounds would make you feel different about yourself.

I dealt with the effect but I didn't deal with the cause.

It was anger at my dad, it was anger at my circumstance.

Everything was going right and I still didn't feel like enough.

Substituting what I used food for with drinking and with other substance.

At 21, it all came barreling down on me.

I hurt relationships and work.

I worried the people that loved me and I realized that I needed to do something.

And what you do in that moment decides what's going to happen next for you.

You cannot think your way into right acting.

You have to act your way into right thinking.

Is there anything that's really helped you that you might recommend to someone listening at home?

Yes.

So...

Josh.

Having read through your story extensively, it's quite clear to me that the most pertinent

part of your story and really like the through line begins, the sort of dot in that through line

begins with this dynamic your parents had when you were very, very young.

Can you take me back to 1980s in New York to give me the context that I'll need to understand,

to understand the things we're going to talk about today?

Sure. I was born in 1986.

I was born to a single mom and I never knew my dad.

I was sort of the result of a, I guess, what you would call a fling.

My mom always says, you are a surprise, not an accident.

So I like the way she's the messaging.

She's attached to that.

But basically my mom and dad knew each other sort of through business.

They had a night and nine months later came me.

So sort of so many different, especially now having two kids of my own,

knowing how the process of creating life can be tenuous and random and arbitrary.

And it can be incredibly easy or incredibly hard to know that they were together once.

And it just sort of happened that way is kind of crazy.

Makes you believe like, oh, maybe I'm meant to be here.

At least that's what I tell myself.

But yeah, I was the result of that.

And my mom, who was 43 at the time knew that she'd always wanted to have a child,

but wasn't sure she ever would and immediately took it as sort of this gift.

And my father, who was in the sixties at the time and had a whole other family,

looked at it differently and decided not to be in my life.

And I wound up never meeting him.

And so my origins were very much my mom and I sort of navigating the world together.

At an early age, did you get a feel for what your mom's,

your mother's perspective was on your father?

Did you did you feel the emotion of that?

How her perspective on him?

My mom was weirdly unemotional about my dad.

And I would say it was almost like the fog of war.

Or I remember when I interviewed Laird Hamilton and I asked him the very corny,

cliche question of when you're on the 90 foot wave, what's going through your head?

And he's like, you know, your body will sort of give you a bit of amnesia.

So I really can't tell you when you're in extreme circumstance,

your body is a way of like washing your memory.

And we see that phenomenon too with like childbirth, right?

Because if those hours during childbirth really were as strong as as they are when you're experiencing it,

we'd all be only children, right?

But the brain has a wonderful way of washing that away.

So my mom did a really good job of presenting all the good qualities of my dad,

that he was a great business person, that he was charming, that he was handsome.

He was like the Jewish James Bond walking the streets of New York, this handsome raconteur.

I say in my book, you know, he seemed pretty sterling.

His only sort of negative was that he really didn't want anything to do with me.

So I think it wasn't until I got older that my mom sort of elaborated a little bit more with details.

What was the emotion between you and your mother and the emotion in the household at the time?

Growing up, earning money was tough and things were slightly difficult,

especially because your father had chosen not to be part of your life.

But what was the emotion in your household, you know, below the age of 10?

The emotion in my household growing up, if I had to find a headline, right?

Because sure, if you zoomed in on any moment, I could have been

bullied at school or feeling insecure or feeling less than my friends who had traditional family

systems or how come I don't get to experience that?

Surely there was plenty of that.

But if we're talking about a headline of the first 10 years of my life, it was

a very extremely loving childhood, not without its challenges.

And we would sort of isolate between moments of being extremely middle class

and then having not enough money for a slice of pizza between us.

But inevitably, even through the struggles, we were there was a level of comedic relief.

You know, we were always taking the piss out of ourselves.

My mom's a natural comedian, her being a self-made businesswoman, especially in the 70s

and 80s when she had to be forced her to be extremely funny and extremely savvy and sort

of puckish about the way in which she navigated the world and men and institutions.

And so I would say that most of the time we were laughing and there were certainly times

where we were we were crying, but but it was mostly laughter.

When you when you talk about your mother, the words you use almost make it sound more like

a partnership than a mother-son relationship.

It sounds like you were like, yeah, partners.

Certainly, we were partners.

I mean, a single mom and an only child.

You are immediately elevated to co-pilot, whether you like it or not.

I always say that traditional families growing up were more like I viewed them as closed corporations

and the kids were employees and the parents were upper management.

And the upper management was sort of beckoning down orders from the top.

And maybe there was seniority because there was an older sibling,

but inevitably everyone sort of had the same pace structure.

And then for my mom and I, we were more like a startup, right?

So one day I was pitching the clients and she was sweeping the floors and

most days it was the other way around.

So, yeah, I was I was the man in my mom's life.

Yeah.

Did you have any, you know, when you start talking in your book about the pain that you were experiencing,

that led you to food and that ultimately led to bullying and all of those things, what was that pain?

Well, I think I could make it, I'm going to speak generally as a reflection of something specific

that went on with me, but I dare I project that we're all in a certain level of pain. The veil

of adolescence falls for all of us at different times in our lives where we realize that the

world is unfair or we become more attuned to where we are not enough in certain areas and

the universe having a beautiful level of balance. It's inevitable, right?

I don't know of any of Tom Brady's shortcomings, but he's got to have one.

He's probably hiding it from the world. But there's always something that for us is a challenge or

something that's uncomfortable. And I think you'd be hard pressed to zoom in on any

kid and especially preteen and teen who doesn't feel like ultra sensitive that the world is unfair,

wrestling with their place in this world, their identity, forming their identity.

So for me, I just feel like that was impressed upon me at a really young age. What's particular

to me is I was really young. And I think that was because of the dad stuff. I think that was

because I was overweight. So I just knew that life was going to be more challenging with

these set of circumstances that were at that point felt like sort of thrust upon me. I didn't know

that I was sort of eating in an unhealthy way. I just felt like I eat fruit snacks like every

other kid. I just do it in an excessive way. So I think that pain was just born out of

what we all feel is that it hurts to be different and it hurts to know that life is going to be

challenging. Earlier on, you said the word comedic relief when you were talking about

the relationship with you and your mother. Comedic relief, the word relief almost makes

it sound medicinal, like some kind of medicine in your household. What role did comedy play

in your early years? Comedy is, for my mom and I, it's everything. It's everything we loved,

watching movies and television together, sitcoms and stand-up comedy. It was a release. It was a

superpower. It was something that came to both of us naturally, I'm sure as a byproduct of my mom's

rearing and upbringing. And she even talks about her dad, who I didn't know, my grandfather,

who sounds like a pretty deeply imperfect guy, but was a showman and did love to tell jokes and be

funny and a bit of the center of attention. And so for us, it was a currency. It was something

that worked immediately and it could control the energy of a room. It could endure people to you,

so you could really use it to your advantage. But if anything, it was a wonderful distraction.

The other thing you describe as a distraction is TV. You referred to it as an escape for you at

that time in your life. And you said in your book, Happy People Are Annoying, that sitcoms were your

favorite. Why were they your favorite? Well, sitcoms, especially at that time, I talk about how my

best friends growing up were the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore and

and Happy Gilmore and sitcoms had some universal sort of qualities in my experience. It projected

a healthy family, right? So it was family matters. It was I guess full house was sort of was a healthy

sort of non-classic family, right? Because it was the dad and the uncles. But these were people

that these were families that I wanted to be a part of. And then there was a justice to the comedy

in the sense of you didn't have to interpret it. It wasn't objective or I'm sorry, it wasn't

subjective. It was objective. It was clear what worked and what didn't. It got a laugh. And at

that time it was a live studio audience, so you know something got a laugh. And I would just lose

myself in hours of watching these television shows. And I was absorbing the rhythms and the

qualities through osmosis. I didn't even know it at the time. But it also served as this wonderful

escape. And I say that becoming an actor was like for me going to work for the hospital that cured

my disease. You know, it felt like my way of saying thank you for taking care of me during that time.

What was the disease? Well, I know it's a metaphor. But yeah, it's just sort of a metaphor for my

discomfort for having a lot of time on my hands because I was an only child. Because my mom had

to work a lot to support us. Because there was some financial insecurity. Just sort of all of the

discomfort going on in between my ears was sort of muted when I was losing myself in those shows.

One of the other things that we've touched on briefly that you describe in a medicinal manner.

I think the quote in your book is actually, I didn't know it at the time, but obviously I was

definitely medicating something deep within. For me, when I think about my childhood, the singular

powerful and all-consuming memory that comes to mind as being fat, it wasn't a habit. It was

a love, my first love, when you're talking about food. Oh, yeah. Well, that's how you put on the

weight. Yeah. Food is great. I mean, you're a very fit person, but I imagine you're a fan of food.

I love food. Everybody does. The whole world does. You know who's not like the biggest food guy? Who?

John Stamos. And I don't mean to drop names here. But we did a show together and he's like, you know,

I could eat a turkey sandwich and be okay with it. Like most days and sometimes I'll forget to eat.

And yeah, I like a nice meal here and there, but I'm not too absorbed with it. And I'm like,

I don't identify with this. You and I are built differently, John. Well, we know John Stamos

is built different. But yeah, I mean, the whole world's obsessed with food. I was obsessed with

it in a way that led to me being very overweight. When you say very, very overweight, how much is

that in, I guess, the metric here is pounds, isn't it? I can give you kilos. No, I can't. But what's

kilos? About two and a half pounds? You're asking the wrong person. Two point two. Do you want to

do stones? I know you're from the UK. I'll do stones for 14, 15 stones. Yeah, I think, well,

like basically, it's funny because I was just kind of like a normal sized human till around eight

or nine. And then I got kind of chubby. And then I put on a lot of weight, but it was only from

about 13 to 18, where I was about 100 pounds overweight. I was about 290 pounds. Okay,

which is 130 kilograms. Probably. And you're nine or 10, you said? No, I really put that

weight on probably around nine or 10. I was probably 180, 190. But I was only, you know,

five foot. And then as I got a little bigger and older and also could, you know, go to restaurants

or grab fast food by myself, I put on the pounds. I've come to learn over the years, actually,

quite recently, the role, the link between how I feel and how I eat. Yes. You know,

it's, I mean, there's lots of these links in our lives. You know, one of them is how we feel

and money, how we feel and how we eat. I'm sure there's many, many more, but these are all like

psychological tools in many respects and medicinal tools often. Was there a point when you realized

that the link between your relationship with food and how you were feeling?

Yeah, I mean, it came later, understanding the nuance and the correlation. But I mean,

this is why actors smoke, right? Like traditionally, whatever you see movies where, where it's,

it's, it's about show business. And you see the actors sort of hanging outside of a soundstage

because you do a take, you do a scene. You're not sure how it went. You think you were good.

You hope, you know, there was one take that was good, but maybe they're going to use the take

where you kind of sucked and you're full of emotion and you're unsure and you're insecure.

And there's a table of food waiting for you, right? Beautiful craft service like you've never seen,

hot and cold. And then, but instead you're like, what can I do to give me that sort of dopamine

hit without, you know, giving me the calories? So, you know, people go outside and smoke. Obviously,

now smoking's not as in fashion. So you see less of it. But I remember once I was working with this

actor, Paget Brewster, she's just a gem, brilliant actor. And she played my mom on this TV show.

And I'll never forget once they were serving pizza as sort of like the late night meal.

She were working long hours. And, and I remember her pulling the cheese and like pepperoni off

the top of the pizza and eating it. And she just sort of said, this is the actress pizza,

right? Without the bread. And I was like, how perfectly said, right? And so, yeah, I think we,

we all run to food because it's represented to us as this, it's a celebratory thing. It's also

something you do when things don't work out. It's a cheat day. But like, think about those words,

right? We reward ourselves with cheating. Right? It's a funny sort of corollary. But,

and it's ubiquitous. It's holiday. It's pumpkin spice season. And at Starbucks, like all of these

every great event is accompanied by a meal. Even the worst events, right? Like, what do you hope

for after a funeral? Well, there'll be a nice spread. We'll go back and we'll have a nice spread.

When you say you were medicating something deep within, it seems like your relationship with

food was a little bit more unique, shall I say? Yeah. So, I don't think a lot of people would say

that they are using food as a way to medicate something deep within. Well, they're probably

using it in some version of to medicate, but maybe not. I did it in excess. I did it to an extreme

in an extreme way. Yes. There's a paradox there, which you highlight in your book, where you say

that, like, you're doing it to ease pain, but it caused more pain, which is, I guess, is the

case with a lot of things where we have a unbalanced relationship with them, where like,

there's the short-term reward of the dopamine hit that you describe. But then the long-term

punishment is like the critique, right? And the self-talk, I guess, and the teasing,

as you refer to it in your book, you experience that, that they're kind of like short-term

pursuit of the dopamine hit. Short-term pain, or short-term gain, long-term pain. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's a paradox of addiction, right? It's us running to, I heard it said once,

someone in recovery said, my disease lies in my dis-ease. I become uncomfortable in my

coping mechanism. The thing that my brain is trained to do is to go to these things that numb

the feeling. It's another great term, numb and run. It numbs the feeling. It cauterizes it

temporarily, but inevitably, it never deals with the underlying issue. So that continues to grow

and push the boulder up. So it requires more and more medication. And thus, it makes you more and

more unhappy. So whether that's food or drug or drink or smoking, sex, gambling, debt, whatever

your thing is, it's just whatever's triggering. I would think that dopamine serotonin sort of

responds. It's pretty crazy that at like eight years old, you were already doing stand-up.

Yeah. That boggles my mind. At eight years old, I was doing nothing productive.

I bet you were doing. Probably the things eight-year-olds should do like times tables and

geography and stuff like that. Like kicking a ball against a wall on my own or with a friend.

You were doing stand-up at eight. I had a couple of comedians on this podcast and they all,

there's this ongoing kind of like stereotype that like a comedian is depressed or something.

One of the comedians said to me that, a better question to ask, I think it was Jimmy Carr,

he said, a better question to ask is like, which one of your parents were you trying to make happy?

Ah, Jimmy Carr is so funny. He's funny, isn't he?

What a super, like he's like a Jedi. He's on another level. Sure. What parent are you trying to

make happy? What girl are you trying to impress? I just think that we know that most assets are

born out of feelings of being not enough. How many great athletes were created because they

were trying to impress their fathers, right? Admonishing fathers helped make very ambitious

young men and young women. I don't mean to gender it. The problem is the duality of that

because inevitably, once hopefully you've achieved that, you realize that there's no there there,

that there's no perfect moment that's going to heal that relationship with that parent. Or worse,

you don't, you don't attain those things. And then you're left to wonder, well,

what could it have been? And I fell short. I wasn't enough. But comedy is one of those more

specific things because there is there's a justice to it. It's there's not a lot up for

interpretation. It's clear. It's more like boxing. I think Chris Rock had kind of akin to boxing,

which is why they call it a punchline. And you know, it's on the cards, that punch connected,

that one didn't, you get a point for that, you don't get a point for this. And yeah, I think

it's just born out of, you know, being funny usually comes from very unfunny reasons. And

growing up and I don't mean to say this even now, like when I'll meet someone who's like really,

I'll just name names. It's like, and he is funny, but it's like sometimes when I watch like Ashton

Kutcher go like in a really hard comedy and he's done some really, really funny things. I know

this is what you're going to clip me like a trashy. I want to be Ashton Kutcher. I look up to him.

I love you Ashton. I'm available for friendship. And I love your wife. I love them both. But it's

like, it's sometimes it's hard for me to reconcile how someone can be that gorgeous and handsome and

also funny, right? Like sometimes I do feel like, no, funny's got to be reserved for us,

you know, who, who, who weren't necessarily that because yeah, it was used as a defense mechanism.

Did you know you wanted to be a comedian or an actor? And if so, when did you, when did that idea

become cemented in your brain? That that's the path you were going to pursue? Being an actor,

professionally, didn't seem like a reasonable career path. Sometimes it still doesn't. But here

I am. It was ridiculous. I grew up in New York. I'm not a nepo baby. I have no connection to show

business other than a very sticky mother. Do you know this word, stick? Yeah. Okay. Like I have a

mom who loves a bit and she's a natural performer. It's a beautiful singing voice, but no, literally

no connections to show business in any way. So it was not reasonable to think that there would be any

opportunity to do it professionally. And then I was in sixth grade and my mom and I were having a

really tough moment financially. We're living in an apartment on the east side of Manhattan. It was

like a studio apartment and we would sort of switch off between the bed and the couch. One night I

get the bed, one night I get the couch. And, and I remember my mom saying, you know, there's a

performing arts high school that you should audition for. And I said, but I'm going to go to the high

school in my district, like where my elementary school was. She goes, you don't have a district

anymore. We don't live there anymore. And I realized, okay, well, yeah, maybe I'll give this, this

school a shot because I'm not going to be in high school now with my friends who I grew up with.

And I auditioned and I went and I got in and suddenly I'm walking the halls of this school,

the professional performing arts school, which is in the theater district in New York, New York Times

Square. And they had alumni like Alicia Keys and Jesse Eisenberg and Claire Danes. And they were

a little older than me, but all of a sudden I'm seeing kids who are in Broadway shows, TV shows,

and they're studying, but they're also successful on this like grown up level. And it seemed possible

that you could make a living doing this thing that I loved. So I remember that was the first time

where I had a suspicion like, oh, this, this might be a long term gig. And eventually then once I

basically, once it became a way out of my circumstance and it allowed me to sort of

contribute to the family financially, I was, I was all in. It just seemed like an escape.

And you were what age then like 12, 16? I think I was 12. Yeah. 12.

And then by 16, a chance meeting with someone from Nickelodeon

sends things in another direction. No, that was 12. Oh, when you were 12? I used to audition

like every other day. And Nickelodeon, their, their Viacom headquarters was in Times Square.

I've been, yeah. Yeah. Another one. Yeah. And I auditioned for a movie. I got it.

They fly me to Canada. I've never been out of the country now. If you're going to go out of the

country for the first time, make a Canada because it's lovely. And I'm sitting there one day in

Calgary, Canada, making jokes to some 40 year old guy with a great laugh in a huge parka.

And my mom sidles up to me and she goes, you know who that is? You were making laugh. That's,

that's the president of Nickelodeon, a guy named Albie Hecht. You should tell him that you want

to be on all that, which was kind of SNL for kids at that time. It was my dream. So I told him,

and nine months later, he called and said, Josh, I'm going to move you and your mom out to California

to go be on the Amanda show, which was the spin off for Amanda Bynes from all that. And that was

and that was kind of what changed my life and brought me out to LA and gave me my first TV show

and kind of started this whole mess. This whole mess. Interesting way to describe it. It boggles

in my mind that you were doing that at 12. I don't even know how that's possible for it, you

know, it feels like there's a lot of other things we're meant to be doing when we're 12.

You were working, essentially. Yeah. Yeah, I was. What did you miss? Did you miss anything?

I, a lot. I mean, you can speak to a better, I don't know what I didn't miss. I mean,

but you, if you had a more traditional sort of adolescence, right? Did you? Yeah, I did. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So like school stuff, like the prom and playing football and with the team and,

you know, primary school, primary school as well. Yeah. Figuring yourself out more than anything.

Uniforms. I wish I went to school in the UK. It seems awesome.

Yeah. It's not bad. Yeah. I loved Matilda improvement. Matilda's dope. It's dope. It's

such a classic. Yeah. I missed out on a lot. Absolutely. You know, it's funny. People love

this question. It kills me. I don't know why because now I have two sons of my own and they're

always like, you're going to put them in show business. Like it's weird. I don't know why that

is. I don't know if people say to lawyers or carpenters like, is your son going to hit nails?

Like, are you going to like read your son depositions? I guess because the idea is that

why wouldn't you want them to? And while I would love for them to, if they love performing to,

to find some joy in it, my upbringing, my circumstance was so specific. It was inevitable

that if this was meant for me, that it was going to be meant for me. And I mean that as

we could move 3000 miles because it was just me and my mom, you know, we could uproot our whole

life. I was an overweight kid, so I didn't get a lot of self-esteem from the traditional

systems that people, the kids gain it from. But I found this performing thing. So of course,

my mom goes, well, I'm going to nurture this the way I would if it were little league or it was an

instrument. So my environment, my upbringing allowed for me to go on this really non-traditional path.

My kids don't have that. They have a very different experience. They have like

a very rooted household. They have a huge family. They have a mom and dad. And it's not

necessarily that one's better than the other, but it's just like their experience will be different.

And if when my son's 18 and he's like, I want to go to Juilliard or I want to do it professionally,

that's great. But maybe his circumstance won't lend itself to start that early.

It's so interesting. Yeah, but it makes so much sense, you know, that

that circumstance and struggle are factors that orientate us towards our mission. And it's so,

you know, I think we often understate how trauma and things we'd never wish on a child end up

creating their brilliance. You think about the brilliance you've created, the work you've created

that is brilliant. So much of it has a through line way back to things that you would never wish

on your kids. Yes. Right. 15 years old, you start filming the pilot for Drake and Josh.

One of the things I found really interesting when I was reading through your book is one would assume

that such a hit show, a show that we all knew very, very well in the UK, off the back of it,

one would assume that you'd be like set for life financially. Yeah. And you write about how that's

like. That's that's that was certainly not the case. Yes. And I do want to say that my first

Kids Choice Award was won at the UK Kids Choice Awards in London. Now, I had been nominated a

lot. It's not sour grapes, but allow me to continue. I was not properly appreciated for my work

in the American Kids Choice Awards, but it took you brilliant people in the United Kingdom to

appreciate my my my overweight, but wonderfully comedic work as a young actor. So I want to thank

you. Yeah, I I think look, I'm so pleased to talk about this stuff with you, someone who's like

who's like has wonderful insight into the book and and is interested. And it felt like the book

for me was sort of like I don't I really I don't do a lot of this anymore. And because the book

felt like sort of a chapter ending in my life. It was me editorializing my life. It was commenting

on the things that I felt were perhaps misunderstood or didn't have enough clarification or description.

And also in an effort unknowingly to sort of say like, and now I'm not I'm going to talk about it

less. And if someone is interested, like they can, you know, read the book and it's it's now,

you know, in the the Library of Congress. But and so to that point, I felt the need because

over the years, people would either say it in a cheeky way, like, Oh, well, you don't have to

worry because of the residuals. Or they would say just something random, like, you know, it would

actually be part of decision making or something that it would apply to me. They're like, Well,

Josh doesn't have to worry. And I was like, Well, I'm not complaining. But I'm I'm as much,

you know, worried about next year's financial status as anyone else, because I don't have that

security. So yeah, with Drake and Josh, there was no residuals and kids CV didn't have that at that

time. And I got really honest. And I sort of broke it down because Ryan Holiday, my friend and sort

of advisor on the book was like, if you don't, it's he's like, it's gross to talk about money.

But if you don't actually give a sort of exact picture of what it was, and people won't understand.

And so I sort of talk about that, you know, while doing the show, we made about $100,000 a year

for the four years we were making it, which is great money and a lovely middle class lifestyle.

But no one would assume that once you stop working that you never had to work again.

So I just wanted to give some clarity to that to sort of explain the choices that I made after

and why I was so passionate about finding more work because I had some people to take care of.

Makes perfect sense. And I think it's really important context because you're right, it's very easy when you don't know

entertainment contracts, especially for a young person that's 15 odd years old, to assume that

they made millions and millions in perpetuity from that piece of work. And then a lot of the

decisions and the choices they're after don't have a lacking in context. So when I read that,

it was like I understood, of course, if you make $100,000 in the United States,

you're living in California, whatever it is, for five years in a row, you do need to go back to work.

And after Drake and Josh ended, was there was there like a pivotal moment where you

realized that that show was big? It wasn't until much later, funny enough. I think because when

we were making it, it was only popular with kids who were sort of younger, who I didn't,

other than if I was at a mall or at a theme park, I didn't have a huge amount of interaction with.

And then I would say that the power of the show to its credit was that it was slightly timeless

because it had a very sort of classic through line of any sitcom. It was about a family.

And a lot of kids shows can be more fantastical and have more of a sci-fi bent or something more

fantasy or whimsical. This was just like very straight down the line, two brothers who are

very different trying to get along and an evil little sister. So because of how much it was

rerun, more generations would come to the show and these people grew up. So it wasn't as though

it was this moment in time. It was every year we were picking up new fans. Because there was what,

60 episodes or something? Yeah, just like there was so much more. I know, it's weird. Why is that?

I guess because reruns. Yeah, it's played for so long. Over the last couple of how long,

maybe four months, I've been changing my diet, shall I say. Many of you have really been paying

attention to this podcast. We'll know why. I've sat here with some incredible health experts and

one of the things that's really come through for me, which has caused a big change in my life,

is the need for us to have these superfoods, these green foods, these vegetables and then

a company I love so much and a company I'm an investor in and a company that's sponsored

this podcast and that I'm on the board of, recently announced a new product which absolutely

spoke to exactly where I was in my life and that is Huell and they announced Daily Greens.

Daily Greens is a product that contains 91 superfoods, nutrients and plant-based ingredients,

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Unfortunately, it's only currently available in the US, but I hope I pray that it'll be with you

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having it here in LA for the last couple of weeks and it's a game changer. Ladies and gentlemen,

our newest brand partnership will come. It's no surprise to regular listeners on this podcast.

The first episode of 2023, I was joined by the incredible Professor Tim Spector to hear more

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live more fulfilled, higher potential lives. Zoe was born from the truth that our overall health

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program at joinzoe.com and they've been kind enough to offer an exclusive 10% off code CEO10.

So you can put that code in it, check out CEO10. After Drake and Josh ended and as you go into

your like, you know, the next chapter of your life, 18 years old, you lose a lot of weight. I do. A lot

of weight. 127 pounds. Yeah. How does, that's not an easy feat. How does that happen? I certainly

made a decision that I was ready to do it. I think I just, I always knew that I was going to do it

and also in writing the book, it's when you put pen to paper and I know you're a writer yourself,

it's amazing how these, I feel as though we make these, everything in our brain is sort of shorthand,

right? It's like these picture memories that are connected and sometimes they're connected by these

really strong connections and sometimes it's just like short little hits. But when you're forced to

actually explain it on a page, it makes you look at it differently. And I was like, wow, I was only

heavy from like 13 to 17. Of course, they're the years that have been enshrined in television history

forever. So it feels much bigger. But had I just been like a normal kid, I would have burned my

yearbooks and sworn my family to secrecy and I'd never bring it up. So I think it was a number

of things. I was ready. I think naturally like my body was ready to let go of it. And I just knew

that I felt like because I was so insecure, I had missed out on a lot of my teenage years.

It wasn't without lack of opportunity to go out and be a knucklehead and experience life.

I just didn't want to do it because I didn't love the body that I was in. So I felt like if I didn't,

if I didn't act now, I was going to lose some really important years.

Is there a process that helped? Because I'm thinking about how you referred to it as being

like medicinal, your relationship with food. And that's like deeply psychological. So to like

append that deep psychological force or that relationship with food is no easy feat.

So like, what's the process? Is it therapy? Is it that makes you that kind of appends that

psychological force or replaces it or? I think it was, I had been, I've had a therapist that

I've gone to since I was 15 and I still see here and there. So my mom kind of knew. I think she

saw it in me early on that there was just a lot going on, be it my dad or the weight stuff. And

then I think I would just, in the way that change is born, pain is a great motivator.

I was sort of sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I knew that I had to let go of something.

I don't think I knew exactly what it was. But if I'm looking back at it now, it was like,

it was this anger. It was anger at my dad. It was anger at my circumstance. And I just remember

I was 17 years old. My mom and I would drive back to New York every year for like two months.

And we would just go and see family and hang out in the city. And I just started to walk.

And up until then, I would do these really intense, you know, attempts at keto or

these extreme diets on a Monday and I would fail by Wednesday morning and then it would be

back on again. But this time I said, I'm just going to try to make a small change every day.

And I would walk the city for miles and I would listen to music and I would dream of what my life

could be. And I started eating better and slowly but surely that summer I lost like 40 pounds.

And then over the next year, I lost another 40. And then over the next year, I lost another 40.

In chapter five of your book, you say you had a new body, but the exact same self-hating mind.

One would assume that, you know, dropping 127 pounds, one would naively assume that

that dropping 127 pounds would make you feel different about yourself.

Yeah. Well, it's sort of the themes that you've mentioned throughout this interview. It's

cause and effect, right? Like I dealt with the effect, but I didn't deal with the cause.

And unfortunately, there were some issues at play. There was some unresolved pain and work

that needed to be done that I wasn't even aware of, but it was all at play under the surface. So

when I no longer had that thing that was helping to sort of keep those feelings at bay, they reared

their head and I needed to find something else. I didn't know that it was going to be in the form

of, you know, drinking and sort of alcohol's cousins. But I just knew that when I finally

did find those things and I did sigh that bit of relief that I'd been looking for, I, I think

there was even a moment in that first night when I went out with some other kids my age and really

tied one off and thought I was having like a proper teenage time. I remember this, this

voice in my head being like, oh, this is it. Like this is what we've been looking for.

Drinking. Yeah. The drinking and drugs. And I, I think I say something in the book of like,

if you've been carrying this invisible bag of stones around your whole life, a weight vest

with 50 to 100 extra pounds, I mean, I quite literally was, but let's just say it's like

emotional weight vest. And eventually you almost forget that it's on. You just know your knees hurt.

You know, you're exhausted. It's like, why am I so tired? Why did, why does the, why do things

feel tougher for me than it does for my friends? And then if in an instant that weight vest is

lifted off of you and your knees hurt less and you're walking around and you're like, oh,

you wouldn't question it. You just be like, whatever just took that weight vest off, I'm in.

And that's, that was the reaction that I had. Such an interesting analogy.

The weight vest, you know, you said the term self-hating mind. For someone that has an

experience to self-hating mind, what is, what is that like in detailed reality?

Is it literally thoughts that you can recall that are saying being pessimistic?

Hmm. I probably, if I could edit my book now, I would be probably less,

I'd be less revealing. No, I would be less. I would be less, I would be a little harder on

myself and say it's self-centered. If we're talking about the root of it, I remember when I got in,

when I got sober, people would say you're self-centered and I would say self-centered.

That's reserved for people who think highly of themselves. That's reserved for the quarterbacks,

the models, the good-looking, the self-absorbed people. To me, felt when you would see that in

movies, it was someone who was staring in the mirror and perfecting their hair. And they would say,

no, if you spend all your time thinking about how great you are or how shit you are, all you're

thinking about is you and you are self-centered. It doesn't matter whether it's great or bad.

So I wouldn't, yeah, I would substitute self-hating with self-centered. I was obsessed with self.

My trauma was real. My challenges were real and that played a part in it. But I was just so wrapped

up in my feelings of feeling less than and uncomfortable and not proverbially not at the cool

table that I found myself in a place to numb my feelings because those thoughts were unrelenting.

Nothing in life is free. And so even a temporary lifting of the weight vest comes with a long-term

cost, as we talked about with food. What was that long-term cost of temporarily getting to lift

the weight vest once in a while? I just became a cliche quick. I hurt relationships and work.

I worried the people that loved me. I just started to accrue a lot of wreckage quickly. It's

funny. I interviewed Hilary Duff on my podcast, Good Guys, the other day and we made a joke.

I was asking her about like, she brought up something about like, oh, I love an alcoholic

beverage. And she kind of looked at me and said, sorry, Josh. And I was like, no, I love

an alcoholic beverage too. Unfortunately, whenever I drink, it leads to my other favorite

beverage, Percocet, which is a very popular painkiller in this country. And I remember

people sort of saying like they were so sort of, they just didn't know sort of my,

they didn't know that part of my history, right? So it was something that I, it was this thing that

I was sort of navigating and balancing kind of how much I would sort of talk about it and

reveal and then also sort of this, this balancing of like the things that I also wanted to keep

private. When did you realize that you had a problem with alcohol or an unhealthy relationship

with alcohol and drugs? Was there a, because at the time, I imagine you don't, the first time you

do it, you don't know, it's not a problem then, is it? But at some point you must have maybe got

some feedback or something indicated that this was not. Oh, and I'm sorry. I forgot the point I

was trying to make with the Hillary thing, but oh, someone wrote a comment on that clip on that

video said, damn, Josh Pet got sober at 21. He really went for it. So to answer your followed

question. Yeah. I mean, I think that I basically was substituting what I used food for with these,

you know, with, with drinking and with other substance, but it was all sort of connected.

So it wasn't this four year run. It was really like, since I was nine or 10 years old, it just was

again, validating and reconfirming this idea of like, you overdo things. And nothing is going to

fill up this hole in the soul, no matter what you try to fill it with. And even like the things that

our world tells us is a value, even success isn't going to do it. Even if girls like you,

it's not enough. And so I remember at 21 having a moment like that when it all sort of came

sort of barreling down on me and I realized that I needed to do something. Now, I think people

have those moments and they don't do anything and they lose another four years or five or 10 or 20.

But I do think the world and life, catastrophe, challenging circumstance, some version of a

bottom, whatever you're going through, being fired from something, a health scare has a way of

temporarily waking you up. And what you do in that moment decides what what's going to happen next

for you. You said that happened for you at 21 years old. Was that was that in the wake of the

film, The Whackness? It was. Yeah, that was certainly a moment. Tell me about that moment.

Well, again, I had accrued plenty of wreckage, but I remember I, I had done this movie, The

Whackness, that I was extremely proud of, my favorite actor, Sir Ben Kingsley, you know, and

I mean, literally my favorite actor, like getting to, you know, have my rookie season with Michael

Jordan. And it went to the Sundance Film Festival and I was so proud. And we got a standing ovation

and it just felt like such a confirmation for me as an actor that there was going to be that

that there was going to be opportunity. And there was there was more to come for my career,

that it wasn't just this sort of anomaly that I did this one show and that that was sort of going

to be it. But I remember in that moment, all those similar feelings, that mind that had gotten me

in trouble so many times before was still yelling at me. And all those feelings were flooding in.

They weren't there the night we got that they weren't there during the 90 seconds of the

standing ovation. They weren't there. You know, when I was smiling in front of the camera,

but they were there when I got home. They were there when I got in bed. They were there when

I was waiting in line for a coffee the next morning or whatever else I was doing. So it was

like so short lived. And it just confirmed this idea of like, Oh, like, even at your best, even

when everything's kind of going right, because it's easy to use when when life, those who challenges

is a reason to sort of, you know, cosine your bad behavior. But everything was going right. And I

still didn't feel like enough. And I knew at that point that I needed to make a change or I might

never do it. That next day after the standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival, you talk

about, you know, how you might have felt standing in the coffee line or the next day when you woke

up, etc. Is this are they are they specific thoughts? Or is it just an emotional state?

You know, is it just like a loneness? It's totally emotional. And it's ugly like the way like how

we're all pitiful in those moments. I don't think you have to be suffer from addiction or it's just

like, when we realize that our way isn't working anymore, and a change needs to occur. And so,

yeah, I certainly it's taken 15 16 years to articulate it correctly. I think it was just

the feeling you your solution to that feeling appears to be, you know, when you hit that proverbial

rock bottom moment, to be getting some help. And that's where you turn to AA alcohols,

Alcoholics Anonymous. What is that pro like what is what is Alcoholics Anonymous? And like,

how how did it help you turn things around and get sober?

Well, you know, it's sort of in the name Anonymous that there's there's an anonymity portion to

it. So I I always want to make sure it said that I'm in no way sort of a representative or ambassador

for it in any way. It's just how I have found a way in which to get and stay sober over the last

15 years is through through a 12 step program. And it's just a way it's it's ancient truths

repackaged to make sense to a guy like me. It's the best way it helps to mitigate the worst of

my character defects. And it's just age old. It's just a sort of for me an age old way of

cleaning up your past and and looking at bad patterns and habits in my life and making amends

and trying to implement things that through history, we have known to work gratitude,

surrender, acceptance. If you want self esteem, do esteemable acts, restraint of pen and tongue,

you know, just like, you know, it's not, you know, your higher power is up to you as long as you

know that you're not God. That one's that one's helpful. It just presented some ways in which

for me to to apply things to my life that helped me to to get and stay sober. So I think if if

the efficacy wasn't there, if I didn't see quickly that I started to feel better, then

maybe I would have sought a different way. This this was a way that happened to work for me.

And you've been sober for some what 13, 13 years, 15 years recently. Yeah, just February 15.

Congratulations. Thanks. It works for me. Yeah. It's incredible, incredible achievement. You know,

everyone's got their own relationship with with alcohol and whatever else, but it's always incredible

to hear someone being able to turn a corner in the direction they wanted to turn it.

That's the way I can describe it. Thank you. 2013. You kind of start from reading your book. It

sounds like you start on a new, a new journey. And that's the journey to understand who your

father is. You're 27 at this point. So almost 30 years old. And your father passes away.

And you make the decision at that point, having not met him before, and having not seen a picture

of him until you were 24 years old, to figure out who he was. What did you learn about him?

And how did that change your perspective of him? Well, I remember I'd always sort of toyed with

this idea of meeting him. And yet, I think I knew deep down, I never would because my creation of him

in my head, the way that I sold him to my friends or the way I would portray him to people felt

like my weird cosmic consolation prize. Like, I don't get to have him in any way, but I can

present him to people in the way in which I choose not that I was telling people that my dad was,

you know, the first man on the moon or anything like that. It just was like, you know, my mom

knew that he was Jewish and that he was Sephardic, which is a type of Jew that tends to be from

either the Middle East or from Morocco or French or it can be South America, Mexican. And so for

me, I would just like ping-pong where he was from. You know, sometimes he was from Spain, sometimes

he was from Israel, sometimes he was from Morocco. Like, I just would kind of present it as I so fit.

And it felt like if I ever met him, well, then I lost even the illusion or this creation of my dad

that I wanted to make. But when I found out that he passed away, it also felt like a little bit of

this thing that I've been carrying around, this emotional grenade that I could, you know, I had

the power in the sense that I could show up and he had this whole other family and these grown

kids and a wife. And if I wanted to, at will, I could blow that up for him. If in theory, he never

had told them anything. I was never going to do it, but it was nice to know, right? Like, whatever

version my head was telling me like to keep me warm at night. So when he passed away, I was like,

oh, damn, he won, right? Perfect record. Like, he set his mind to something and he stuck to it.

He's like, I'm never going to meet that kid and he did it. And I never got that moment to sort of

say like, how dare you? I don't know if it would have been that. Probably wouldn't have been. It

probably would have been like, Hey, I'm your kid. What's up? Like, do you want to get a coffee?

But, you know, all of that was sort of taken away from me. So I felt, I felt pissed that

I had to mourn this guy that I never knew. And that I was mourning like mourning is

in theory sort of the worst part of it's sort of the other side of love, right? It's that

the gift is you get to love and the embrace of someone. And then what comes with that is

that eventually if they're not here anymore, you have to mourn them. You have to mourn what was.

And I was like, there was nothing. And I still have to get the crappy side of this doesn't seem

fair. But it forced me to do something that inevitably led to my men's and my men's that I

gave myself, which was I randomly looked up his kids on Facebook. My friend figured out a way to

be my friend, a buddy of mine basically was looking with me and was like, Oh, there was a

connection between him and my sister. They had attended a similar like workshop or some kind

of like education program. He's like, maybe under the guise of that, I could become her friend.

And like, then, you know, I could see if on her profile, she has any photos of your dad,

I had never seen what he looked like. She accepts it. And I am immediately given this like treasure

trove of photos of his life. And I'm seeing him at their bar mitzvahs and weddings and all these

events. And I'm seeing these beautiful tributes that his friends and family are making to him

after he passed away. And it made me realize that like, what my dad was for me wasn't the only part

of him. You know, it certainly was a real part of him. But he also was this great dad, just not to

me. And that's not valid. There are that's not not valid. That's, that's a part of this imperfect

man. So it like gave me a little bit of forgiveness for this guy. And it made me realize that he was

probably scared. And he had probably had this great perfect record with his family. And then

this blemish occurred. And he did the best that he could. So in a weird way, seeing that he was good

to them, made me a little more okay that maybe he wasn't great to me. And, and then of course,

having the son of my own and being the dad to my two boys now that I wish my dad was for me was

sort of like the ultimate amends to eight year old Josh. What's that journey been like, you know,

from I almost view it as like an emotional journey on like some kind of like graph or something,

almost like a roller coaster from when you were young to where you are now in terms of the perspective

of your father and the relationship, you know, was there was their resentment at one point,

you seem to have gotten to a better place with it now. But what's that journey like?

The resentment I think at its, at its highest is showcased in me being 100 pounds overweight,

right? Or, you know, my struggles after that, I think that was certainly

it was all that resentment and anger and frustration and unexplored feelings presenting

itself as, as whatever that was, as those addictions, right? They were in the manifestation

of a deeper issue. They were a symptom of a deeper issue.

I was just pondering because I know people that haven't had a relationship with their father,

obviously nothing is definitively causal, like doesn't necessarily mean you're going to turn

it any other way. But one of the trends you tend to hear about is when is that connection between

not believing you're enough and your father not being around? Are they connected for you?

Like, do you know what I mean? I'm saying, does the absence of your father, did that ever leave

a thought that said he left, you know, that means I'm not enough because he chose not to be here?

It must. I don't see how it couldn't be. But what we, what I've also learned in being sober

this long and hearing a lot of other people's experiences is that my, my story, my feelings

are not rare, but they're not a monolith. They're not singular. I've heard plenty of stories of

people who had like pretty idealic uprains and they just happen to suffer from this thing where

they do too much. And this particular mental bend that makes them look at life or makes them seek

out a way of numbing their feelings. So what I know now is that certainly I think you're right,

it was part of my story, but it's, it's not the only way.

I think I've kind of grown in that trend in my mind has grown a little bit because I, I spoke

to Gabel Maté, who's, there's a lot of childhood trauma stuff. And one of the things he said is

that as children, we're narcissists. I've never been able to forget that. And we think everything

is about us. So, right. If the, you know, if the father leaves, for example, instead of thinking,

well, that's because he has another family or because he's scared or whatever it's,

that's about me. When you're younger. And then you, as you said, you had your own boy.

Yes. Now two boys, crazy. Two boys. You have kids? Not yet. I can tell because you're in such

good shape. Were you scared to become a father of your own? Terrified. Because I just didn't,

I didn't have any work life experience. I just didn't know, look, I'm, I'm a,

I'm a formerly chubby musical theater kid from New York. Like I don't, I never thought,

anything that was masculine, I never thought I had the prerequisites for that. That was like

inherently dude-ish. I've always been like a guy. Like I love boxing. Like I've always brod down.

I've always, you know, had all those inherent qualities, but those things that felt felt like

presentationally macho or dude-esque. I was just like, oh, I don't, I don't have that. And, and so

yeah, I wanted to have a girl. And then when my son was born, my wife and I didn't find out the sex.

And so, you know, at nine months and nine months and a couple of days when the doctor was like,

what is it, Josh? And I got to announce to the room, like it's a boy. I was like, oh, of course,

because it was required for me, you know, my life turned into

a man's school, you know, especially in sobriety. I had to learn and, and I don't mean to make it

this blanketed definition for me, what it meant to be a man and the qualities that I had had to

sort of accrue the things that no matter how great my mom was, couldn't give me because she was just

limited by what one person can do. The things that I learned from my big brother, Dan, I've had a

big brother in the sanctuary of the Big Brother Foundation. I've had a big brother since I was

eight years old and things that I learned from him. And then eventually my father-in-law, who I

really look up to and all the great men in my life and all these, these assets, these tools that I

had learned, you know, when I had my son Max, I was like, okay, here's my opportunity now to

implement that and see everything that I've collected, what I can give him. And it just

felt perfect. It felt like God's way of like having a laugh and be like, you knew this was

going to happen, right? You married Paige. Yes. You had the two wonderful children.

I had a guest on the podcast quite recently who said, who described somewhat of a similar

upbringing where the father wasn't around and him and his mom acted almost like pilot and co-pilot.

And he, one of the terms he said to me, I can't remember, it was something,

something incestuous or something. I know that sounds strange, but it was something to do with

the fact that when you have such a close relationship to your partner, to your mother,

and they end up indirectly or inadvertently offloading some of the emotional energy around

the parent and that's not there, it can make your own personal relationships difficult.

Yeah. Can you relate? I can accept that. I think that everyone is bad at relationships.

And I think just like, I believe that even if you have a perfect parental structure,

we will self parent. There's always going to be gaps in our rearing. There's always going to be

spots that were missed as a result of your upbringing and your circumstance and the

way in which you've experienced life up to a certain point and it's incumbent on you to fill

in those gaps. That's growing up, right? To even know what those gaps are. For you,

what were those gaps you had to fill in? Well, I think it was with the dad stuff,

it was about in relationships up into my wife, I had this like, I would call it like the Tony

Montana approach to life, which was like if anything went wrong, if there was any sort of

adversity or any kind of, I mean, at this point, I've dealt with the dad stuff and then I've been

in showbiz till, since I was 10, which is the ultimate rejection. You're going on a job interview

at best, even if you're on a TV show. You're interviewing for a job once or twice a year

and if you're an out of work actor, you're interviewing for a job four times, five times

a month, sometimes more during pilot season, right? So you really have to calcify or calcify,

yeah, like you have to become callous to rejection. It's like, if you ever talk to a doctor,

like about death, they have a very interesting bent on it because they can't be overly emotional

about it because it's a part of their job. So until this point in relationships, if anything

went south, I just would go, this is a preview of more bad to come. This isn't natural growing

pains. This isn't natural discourse or just like the natural arguments that you get in

and then you get through them and you become closer. I would just go, this was great. I'll

be fine without you. Thanks. And I would just go leaving people in my wake to feel like,

what the hell happened? How did you reverse that to the point that you were able to find

someone and get married? Luckily, I was in a state of doing the work. I was willing to be,

I was not doing that specific work, but in general, because I was in a recovery program,

because my mom had put good people around me and because I had done therapy since I was a kid,

I knew I was self-aware enough to know like, oh, there's certainly work to be done here.

But it wasn't until I had a woman like my wife and my life who taught me a better way, who came

from a family that doesn't leave and she reiterated that. So when we get in these fights and I would

look at her and be like, so I guess we should call it. Like this was great. Right? She'd be like,

what? Like, no, like, I'm not going anywhere and neither are you. We can be mad at each other.

We can be mad. We can go to bed mad. I love that when people go, you don't go to bed mad. I'm like,

I don't know, not in my experience. Like you can go to bed. You can be mad for a couple of days.

Usually it doesn't last that long. No one wants to be that pissed that long. But it's like,

but when we work this out, I'll be here because I'm not going anywhere because my siblings never

went anywhere. My mom and dad never went anywhere. Like we stick around through the good and the bad.

And that was a revelation for me. I can so relate in so many ways. I have the same

avoidant attachment stuff for various reasons. And then I met a person I always say that like,

got over the wall, you know, like, you know, and changed you from the inside.

Definitely. So I can totally, totally relate. That's why you have to have a that's why if it's

for you, you have to have a kid because in my experience and I say it in the book,

you don't, we all work on ourselves and especially with incredible podcasts like this. And we're in

the age of optimization and self realization and everyone's listening to a dozen podcasts at a time

and wants to be their best version of themselves. And that's great. But we can't be Fabergé eggs,

right? Like we can't be these perfect pristine things. And then we get jostled around a bit by

life and we shatter. And so to me, I think there's only so much work you can do on your own.

And then it has to be like applied into life. And then you put some skin in the game and you get

in a relationship and that forces you to go deeper. And you're like, I don't want to. And they're

like, well, you better. Otherwise, this thing's not going to work, but you meet someone of value

and you do the work and it reveals itself to be worth it. And it gives you a deeper understanding.

And then once you guys get really perfect, you throw a kid in the mix. And that little jerk

makes you go even deeper and work even harder and become even more selfless, hopefully in less

self centered. And again, new truths are revealed and new ways of living are revealed. So yeah.

On all the things we've talked about today, the the mental talk, the voice in your head, the feelings

of, you know, quote unquote self hatred, self esteem, happiness. Where are you as you sit here

today on that journey? I'm in a wonderful place. My life, you know, is a reflection of

how do I say it? My life is is that of a good man's. Now, I say that not in like some big self

congratulatory way, but I just did the things that I was told to do by people whose life I wanted.

You know, I surrounded myself with the people who weren't telling me the things I wanted to hear,

but their life looked attractive. And it wasn't because they had a nice car or they had an

impressive job. Those things don't hurt. But it was because they seem deeply decent that they had

a good spiritual life and that they were good partners, they were good fathers, they were good

sons. And that was attractive to me. So I implemented that into my life on a regular basis.

And the byproduct of that was a really good life that I'm completely overpaid to have today.

And I still it just as much as I say, I rarely wake up in the morning in the mood for a salad.

I usually want friends toast. I wake up in the morning most times. It's usually not the morning.

I am a morning person. It's usually at four, four a.m. at night or two a.m. or five in the

afternoon when I'm overtired and I had too much sugar when my mind starts going, just remember

it's all going to be bad. You know that, right? But I have tools, you know, I have ways in which

of dealing with that to get out of those thoughts to break that bad cycle. So it's just the voices

are never gone, but the volumes turned out. I have to ask you one last question here in the

diary that the last guest has left for you. But when you said you have tools, I was compelled

because I know that there's someone at home who can completely relate. And they're sat there

thinking, Josh, what are the tools? Is there anything that's really helped you sort of turn

down the volume on that that you might recommend to someone listening at home?

I would just say, and my friend John, a.k.a. wheels, his model was action is the magic word.

And you cannot think your way into right acting. You have to act your way into right thinking.

And I always felt like I'm reasonably articulate. And I've, you know, I've prided myself on having

what I thought was a good mind. I got to be able to think my way out of this thing. Like, I have

to be able to impress my will on this thing and wrestle it to death. Like, I just can't believe

it. And it's the duality of these things because didn't I get myself this far? Didn't me taking

my life and my will into my hands? Didn't I get all this success and notoriety and blah, blah,

blah, blah? And it's like, well, there was a part of it that that, but maybe you got that in spite of

it. You know, maybe the truth is, is that these things, you know, they need to be governed,

they need to be throttled because inevitably they'll pervert, they will, they'll ruin, you know,

that I just learned this, they say a couple of bad apples, but the next part of that is a couple

bad apples ruins the barrel. Right? So it's like, I have to be careful with those thoughts and those

feelings because they can ruin everything. So what I would say is when, when I take the action to get

out of self, when I become in service to others, when I do some reading, when I listen to a great

podcast like this about people who are seekers who are trying to better themselves, if you take the

action, something will change. If you sit and you try to wrestle it, in my experience, it'll, it'll

never work. Amen. The question left for you. Who is the one person in your life that deserves

the greatest thanks? And if you were to give them the thanks today, what would you say?

Well, I, I, I almost don't want to because it almost like, because she loves, she loves her

flowers. But yeah, I got to give it to my mom. It all starts and ends with my mom. And we have a

deeply imperfect relationship because we're two deeply imperfect people. But at its core, she

did more than I could have ever imagined. And especially being a father and seeing what, how

challenging it can be with all the help in the world. And she did it all by herself.

And I just give her all the credit in the world. So much of why I'm here today is because of her.

So thanks, mom. I hope you don't watch this. But thank you. I love you. Josh, thank you so much.

It's been an honor, an honor to meet you and learn about your story. And I'm a big

follower now of your YouTube channel. So please do post a lot more because it's,

it's enjoyable to watch you bring an important energy to the world. And your book is one of the,

the most vulnerable, revealing, but wisdom-laced books I've had the privilege of reading in my

research for a podcast. So I, I recommend everybody to go grab a copy. I love the title,

Happy People Are Annoying. It's a truly important book. Thank you, Josh.

As you might know, the show is now sponsored by Airbnb. I absolutely love Airbnb. Always have,

always been a, you know, saved my life on so many occasions. And my team, when we first got in touch

with Airbnb, we're talking about how most people don't realize that their place where they currently

live could become an Airbnb. And I guess the second question there is how much could your place be

worth? And it turns out you could be sitting on an Airbnb gold mine without even knowing it.

Some people Airbnb their entire homes when they're away. That's what I did in New York. When I

left New York, my place was on Airbnb and people rented it out sometimes for a day, sometimes

for two days, sometimes for a week. And it's a great way to cover some of the bills while

you're away. So whether you're looking to go on holiday, or you just want some extra cash for

bills, or you want to buy something nice for a Valentine that you love, whatever it might be,

head over to Airbnb.co.uk slash host and you can find out how much your current property

where you live can earn while you're not there. I suspect it might blow your mind because it's

certainly blue mine.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.