- I actually raised my hand and I said, these patterns that you're talking about never heard the word before. They are who I am. I don't know that dealing with that. I don't want to be a different person or pretend like I'm a different person. And he pointed to a sign, a metal sign printed on the wall that said, I am not my patterns. And everybody laughed and I was like, oh, okay. I'd love that. I'd love to be unburdened of that.
- Welcome everybody. My name is Drew Horning and this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius. It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute and its stories and anecdotes and people we interview about their life post process and how it lives in the world. Radiating love. - Hey everybody. Uh, welcome. Matthew Weiner is here. Great to see you Matt. - Great to see you too. Drew, - I am looking forward to this conversation. Matt, you have, wow.
I mean writer, producer, director, showrunner of the television series, Madmen, and also writer and executive producer of the Sopranos. So much good content there that is so iconic now almost a part of our culture. Right. - Thank you very much. Yeah, I got to be part of a television at a time when it was very much related to people's lives and not just in an an escape, which hopefully it will be again. We'll see.
- We're so glad you're on the program here and looking forward to this conversation. So can you take us to your life pre-process? Like what had you sign up for this thing called the Hoffman Process? - Well, I have a wonderful therapist who is older than me, but very spiritually based, but also practiced mindful self-compassion. And I had heard the phrase I, I assumed we were doing that in therapy.
And a certain point, you talked about this, right when we got to the process, there's a thing called awareness hell, where you understand exactly what's going on. You have had all the breakthroughs to like, oh, that's why that's like that, or I think that's like that. But it doesn't make you feel any differently or behave any differently actually. You find yourself getting caught in these behaviors.
You get in this cycle of like having an experience that may be familiar, reacting in a thoughtless way without thinking in a way that you wish you didn't and then punishing yourself for a period after that. And you know, I had started seeing this therapist right when I separated. I, I was married for 27 years and I have a great divorce. We're friends, we have four children together. That is all there. But this was after Covid, OVID obviously.
I mean, we didn't know it was still, still during Covid, who knows how we'll remember that period. But she kept saying to me, have you thought about doing this? And the whole idea of it being a weak in, in Northern California there, there are so many, so many prejudices I had against it, including taking the time and being part of a group and all of these things. And I, you know, I'm a pretty private person.
I don't know if I come across that way because I engage differently, but I am very protective of my story, even though by the way, it is all over my work. It's just has the layers. You know, it's, I wasn't born when Mad Men starts, but my life is in that. And I actually, that was something I kind of realized as I was in therapy after my divorce is that everything in there, I mean I knew it was from my life while it was happening and that was my mom and that was my children and that was my world.
But so many layers, right? So much fiction in between that, that no one would even think that it was personal and other people's lives too, by the way. So she said, do you want to do this? Are you gonna try this? And I was like, great, yes, I'll do it. I apply. She obviously knew people there and it's happening. Suddenly it's happening. I get into the week, like right after Christmas, they have a spot and I get the paperwork and it says it's gonna take eight hours. I was not a good student.
My writer's assistant at that time, Madeline was super helpful to me. I dictated my answers, but the answers were not the problem. It was checking off the patterns. So I start looking at these patterns and I'm just like, oh, it's so obvious what's going on here. I have this quality. But there were so specific and there were hundreds of them, hundreds of them on this question and which one does your mother have and which one does your father have?
And I was like, oh, this is gonna be all about blaming my parents. And though I've been through this down this road and at a certain point I was so overwhelmed it was so unpleasant filling this form out. But I am, as you pointed out, never saw myself this way, but I am a rule follower and I did not know that because I'm kind of known as an iconoclastic person. I have a will of my own. I am kind of the identified rebel in my family.
And part of that rebellion is I thought we were all following this rule, . It was emotionally dark. I was obviously scared about going there, scared about sharing, but also scared about what I felt was, I don't even know how deep it goes. My answers to some of these questions and I had just written something that was like a memoir, remembering my childhood.
You get to a certain point and your childhood becomes very crystalline and clear and you start to remember events and you're like, and you start to check them with, with siblings and things like that. Is that, what was my fantasy and what was real?
Did that really happen? And by the way, hadn't spoken to my parents even though they live right across town in any meaningful way or even really seen them for about a year and had resolved even with my therapist, to not seek closure that I would do what was, what felt good to me. So calling them on their birthdays, father's Day, mother's Day, things like that. But the bare minimum because it was just too frustrating. And they still live in the house where I grew up.
So it's there's, there's a lot there. There's a lot there. And they're getting older. So I got to the process, saw the group and kind of went into my, it's so great. Nobody knows who you are or what you do because I'm in a world where that is the first thing. I think we all are, I think we all are. I've actually kind of just as a dramatist always found it fascinating that someone, you know, my father would say things like, well what do you expect the guy's a Harvard lawyer?
Like that is a personality. But you do realize that we put on the suit that goes with being a Harvard lawyer. So it actually kind of is a lot of your personality. So I got there and one of the first days we started talking about the patterns and I was devastated by this work. I couldn't even talk to people, my assistant who witnessed me telling a lot of my story and has heard a lot because it's in my writing.
And because we were, we worked during Covid together, we know each other very, very well. She traveled with me on the Romanoffs and she's a very smart person and now, now a writer, a really good writer. But there was a lot of empathy coming from her, A lot of like, why are you laughing when you're telling that story?
And I was like, well, you know, and I'd had this experience in writer's rooms my whole life, which are filled with people who are emotionally, I think everyone has a story like this but have that access to it. There's a kind of person that does it. Yes, you share your life, but I mean, you know lib soprano, right? That is David Chase's, that's based on David Chase's mother, Terry Winter is there, Robin Green and Mitch Burgess are there.
Every job I've had, there are people there and it's a competition to who has the better stories about their mom or their dad. So I've dined on this, but I'm so beyond it that I wanna do the Hoffman process, not realizing it was even gonna be about my parents, but of course my therapist knew that that was a big part of it. And it is, but it is about your childhood, which of course you are the star of your childhood. You don't know that, but you parents seem to be the star, right?
You, you are a supporting player to their life. Anyway, I got there and I actually raised my hand and I said, these patterns that you're caught, caught talking about, never heard the word before. They are who I am. I don't know that dealing with that. I don't wanna be a different person or pretend like I'm a different person. And he pointed to a sign, a metal sign printed on the wall that said, I am not my patterns. And everybody laughed and I was like, oh, okay.
I I, I love that. I'd love to be unburdened of that. I think one of the things about my divorce and this, you know, 27 year longer than that relationship was that I got married very young. We grew up together in a way, but I came to the realization and I had that before I got to Hoffman that I left the marriage with the same problems I went into it with. So here I am at this point in my life.
And then my process, then it became about the social aspects of the process, which were very hard for me and which you were extremely helpful with, which is that it's very private. Strangely, even then you're in a room with 38 people. I think it's not as private as I imagined because people were seeing what I was doing, but I wasn't paying attention to anyone else because if I felt inhibited at all, I wasn't gonna, you know, I'm all in. I'm like, I paid all this money I'm taking this time.
I'm a rule follower. You say that if I need to put a half a teaspoon of salt, I'm not gonna use the amount of salt that I normally use. I'm gonna actually follow your recipe. But it better work . It wasn't privation for me. I was a little bit worried about getting coffee in the morning. I had meditated to TM for a couple of years before that and I was asked to stop that. That made me a little bit anxious, although I had kind of had awareness fatigue of with TM as well.
- Just to clarify, we ask students to stop during the week so that they can practice the tools that we give them and then when they're done with the week, of course we encourage them to take up whatever practice. - For sure. I didn't feel that it was stopping it forever, but I have part of my, my Hoffman meditations, which are shorter, there's enough on the app and everything. I didn't used to have an iPhone because I'm an iconoclast.
I got an iPhone so that I could have the app so that I could get this in this. Because like I said, I'm a rule follower. I want as much rhythm as possible. Getting into that and starting to hear other people, I mean group therapy is group therapy. People are starting to tell their stories. There are questions being asked. I really didn't understand what was happening except for certain things. I committed to it, I surrendered to it. I said, I'm going to try this. I'm not going to try my own way.
But there is a lot of silence and no phone, no distractions. And you, if you're a ruminator, you, you are in a, it's not an echo chamber because you're getting new information. But it is all of the habits that we have to distract us from understanding certain basics of this. The habits that I have, I'm a big distraction person, of course I'm very capable of focusing and being in flow when I'm working.
But the rest of the time I'm in a distraction from a core feeling that I want to avoid or many feelings. And something about the Hoffman allowed me to live in that. And it's just like what you think it's gonna be feeling. It is horrible , but going through it is better than trying to avoid it. And on the other side, it's not complete cure. But I just felt so different once I was like, that's all that is. That's all that is, huh. So it's like dying but I the end, I won't be dead.
Interesting. Okay. - You're saying a lot there and I wanna just make sure I get it right. Coming from a guy who is easily distractible for very good reasons around that sense of unworthiness being unlovable and then you go into the process and they remove all of the distractions that have kept you from that feeling. And you really almost have no choice but to feel the feelings of unworthy, unlovable wanting to crawl out of your skin.
And there was something about staying in that through the work of the process that actually helped you get to the other side. And the other side turns out is full of life and wonder and not death. - Absolutely. It's so funny that you said unlovable because I would used the words before, the Hoffman unloved and unloved has some victim quality to it.
It's dependent on other people, but actually what you believe is I do not have of myself the things that make people be nice to me or uh, attract what I want. And to have that belief, we could say like how you got that belief, that's a big part of the process. But it's not humbling. It's actually a relief. Just the fact that other people are there and they have it. And people are very brave about expressing the worst things you could possibly say about yourself out loud.
And I come from a thing where like saying bad things about myself is like, you know, it's funny and it's like, you know, how many jokes and would I hate myself? You know, or whatever. I was in sitcom for a long time and that is like a kind of joke that you will always get a laugh or the character's like, oh I hate myself. Right? That is a message that is the stem of a lot of behavior. Behavior that is strangely enough. And for me, and I think this is what my therapist saw, not sustainable.
It's hard to believe, but it's not sustainable, not because you want it to be different. Even that negativity towards yourself is not a posture that you can sustain. It just starts to wreak havoc on every aspect of your health and your relationships. And you have a fantasy of being isolated or at a certain point and you're like, this is not gonna happen sharing this much, which is one of the great tools. And by the way, fortunately or unfortunately, it doesn't happen to you. You must do it.
You must engage, you must dive the tool that makes it better. And this for me is a good thing is curiosity. And I've greeted so many unpleasant things in my life since then with curiosity. And I don't mean saying like, well why? Why there's that, why. That's not curiosity. Curiosity is like, let's put it this way, doing the patterns and the paperwork.
I started already identifying the fact that there were feelings I was ignoring, that the questions were causing feelings in me that I didn't want to feel. And where is it in your body? Oh my goodness, am I like literally, am I a computer? Am I a machine that if you press here, I will feel that there. Yes, yes, I have been conditioned to be that way, who knows? But I don't think I came into the world that way. I came into the world hungry and probably cold and sensitive.
There were bargains that were made to get all of those needs met that I, that are different in every family. Although it's similar, I think that the mystery of why I am feeling this way, not why did that happen to me, those are very different things. I would've never separated that because you're telling your story in therapy and you're telling your story at the Hoffman a little bit also, but you're really, you get right past the details.
There was another time where there was this and you're like, oh no, no, no, that's not what that's about. And for me, and one of the things I wanted to talk about in your presence, the rule following, I would've never said that was one of my patterns. There are bigger patterns that were part of feeling like a sensitive person that was unarmed in some way in my life. And of course I'm very well armed. I have good words, I have humor, I've used charm in my life to placate various dangerous forces.
And none of that was really gonna matter there because I was dealing with myself. There was a certain point with this rule following, you know like vindictiveness, there's like lots of patterns that I, that I really do like work on. Still. I'm perfectly happy without revenge because I know how futile it is. On the other hand, there are things I let things go that are actually dangerous for me. Like, you know, everyone's like, just let it go. You don't need to think about it anymore.
And I'm like, I do it all the time. I could have somebody literally borrow money from me and never pay me back and have them come and borrow money from me again and be and and buy it a second time at a certain point. There was a moment when you said to me, did it ever occur to you that your need for validation has put you in a dangerous position in your life? Okay. And then you said you have let people into your life that are actually dangerous to you because they will pay with validation.
- What happened for you in that moment and then where did it go? Where did you go next? - Well of course I did the, my whole life flashing before my eyes. This is the extra piece that you cannot know until you have one of those realizations. I can't tell you how fast I got to acceptance of a truth. That was huge. Not why did this happen. Is that true? What's wrong with me?
I have let personalities into my life that are actually kind of manipulative because I'm easily manipulated, easily flattered, easily seduced. And I use all of these tools. You think I would recognize it. But you know, we used to talk about this, uh, on mad men, like a good salesman really appreciates good salesmanship, right? They are the easiest person to sell to. And I was like, you kind of were taken advantage of. And I could have gone to a place where like, you're a fool.
You're a fool. You've had the wool pulled over your eyes that will never happen again. You are stronger than that. You had put on your armor like man up, whatever the expressions are. And instead I was like, that is the truth. That is the way I am. I gotta watch out for that. I should be aware of that. I don't have to be that way. The forgiveness is the first part. You're like, Hey, what do you expect with where you came from? That is you survived with this.
You could be in the gutter with a needle in your arm if you did not have the ability to depend on the kindness of strangers or not judge people who are helping you or what would come with it or proving of you or building you up or flattering you or whatever. You give what you get in that. And that was a survival skill. So then you could go to like, well I'm not gonna do that anymore.
I don't need to do that anymore. And you're like, no, I think where we're at here is, there's a curiosity about it. But the fact is is I can accept that I'm not horrible. I'm not weak, I don't hate myself. That is the way I am, what I wanna do about that. - So I hear a lot of self-compassion. - Oh my God, I was so, uh, yeah, it happened right away. And the group does that for you. Seeing other people.
I had one of my goals, the, and I have this on a little card that I remind myself of once in a while. One of my goals was I would like it that when people said you're so hard on yourself that I didn't think it was a compliment. , it is not valuable. It is not valuable. It is valued in certain places in our world while the, he's being so honest and he's admitting this and I wish I could be that brave. But it's not being hard on yourself, it's it, it's a distortion.
First of all. It's so, it's so much distortion, this black and white thinking, which is in a lot of therapy. I am a product of that. And that was part of what I was worried about with the Hoffman is like, okay, so now I'm over here. Is the whole world gonna be that way? And Hoffman was really good at having a lasting acceptance again of the fact that this would, not that it would be a struggle, but that just like being hungry, there is a biological response.
Who knows if it's honed, if it's socialized or if it's nature or nurture. But you're gonna have to deal with that and you're gonna have good days and bad days. There's forgiveness of that. Acceptance of that. The self-compassion part of it. Kristin Neff was on the podcast, she said it. And I think that my therapist studied with her, I think she invented that term. And compassion in particular. Passion is not enthusiasm like we think. It's not an a fixation or an enthusiasm. It's my passion.
It means pain. It's so counterintuitive to think that okay, I'm gonna identify these things, then I'm going to intellectually go through them, then I'm going to feel them. And actually this will free me from being batted around by them. It won't free me from them. At least for me. Maybe there are people that have been freed from it completely, but for me, I'm not freed from it. I am freed from being batted around by it. And I will immediately say like, well why am I feeling this way?
Oh right, I don't have control over the world and everybody in it. That is a problem. - The being batted around by it as opposed to compassion, which teaches us to to be with pain. It doesn't make the pain go away. So many people are compassionate to themselves with the goal of trying to not feel pain anymore. And compassion doesn't do that. Eventually it might do that. But the the first step is to just learn and practice to be with the pain in tenderness and kindness.
- Yes. And tenderness is one of those words that is yucky to me. I mean I like it in the song try a little tenderness that's always sexual. But when it's like about being tender or you are tender, it sounds unprotected. One of the things that I have the power now to not have to trade on my story as bait for intimacy. - Share just a little more about that 'cause there's something big there for you.
- Yeah, I think that in your, in a certain kind of childhood, you are required to be exceptionally socially skilled. And that means to be seductive, maybe charming conspiratorial immediately. All of these are fake. All of these are motivated by like, I will survive this because you will like me and you will not be afraid of me because I am a friend, I'm a friend and I'm a fan. It's a survival skill.
It doesn't mean that I hate everybody and it doesn't mean that I don't believe in social graces, which I do actually. I'm kind of showing my age in the fact that I really feel right now and I'm not gonna get political. But there has been a wave of disrespect, social disrespect. I mean, having studied the sixties, that's the last time I think it was this flagrant that people would interrupt the president or talk crap about handicap people. I think you see where this is all coming from, from me.
And I do feel compelled to give my best face to strangers, which can sometimes be resented by the people who are gonna have to see the rest of you . And I've tried to even that out too, where the strangers don't get too much and the people who are close to me don't get too little For me, there's an honesty in, I guess these are all buzzwords, but they mean something different to me now. But authenticity, I do have a good sense of humor. I'm proud of it. I do see discrepancies.
I do laugh at a lot of things that people find horrifying. I also find humor in places I can release tension immediately. These are skills that I have. And the other thing is, is that whatever's coming out of me, I'm an incredible observer. I describe myself and this has to do with my childhood as a barometer of microclimate. I am never wrong about what the mood is. I am wrong about why the mood is 'cause I always think that I have caused it.
, something I did has made these people in a cranky mood or mad, but, and it usually has not, I say 90% of the time it has nothing to do with me actually. But if you live in a state of dread that you are causing unhappiness wherever you go. You can be a person who brings happiness. If you live in a state of dread that you don't know what's going to happen and it's unbearable, you might come in and try to control every situation. So now it's safe.
And these kinds of things didn't really occur to me and letting that go or seeing that I do that or seeing other people doing it and not having a sense of superiority, but having a sense of compassion for them. Like, I'm just gonna let you do your thing. I don't need to correct this. I know exactly what's going on. One of the things that was there, this is so incredible 'cause I've been talking uninterrupted here and you're so good at it interrupting people.
Why did it take me till I was 50 something years old to know that? Just because I know what you're gonna say and I do, turns out I'm pretty good. You need to say it. You need to say it. And to believe that I've heard it and I don't know what you're gonna say. - . - Wow, it's such a huge shift for you post-process, that interruption, that listening, that curiosity you mentioned. What else do you notice in life post process?
Because I keep thinking, Matt, about the left road, right roadmap when you're talking, because part of what you're saying is that life is still happening to me. There are still patterns that emerge. People still do things that are triggering. But what's different is I'm choosing the right road. I'm choosing a different way of being with it than I would have pre-process.
- Well, it's interesting about the left road, right road because there's a pun in there, which is that it is literally a right direction and a left direction is what it's talking about. But of course right means correct. And I think that that for me was a little not useful because being correct is very important to me because the punishment for being incorrect was severe. The shame of getting caught being wrong, saying, I don't know, would be a disaster.
It's so vulnerable. And of course, I don't know. And I always said, I don't know privately. And I was like, I don't know what I, I have no idea. But to get caught in that was actually a dangerous place. Being asked questions that you had in my childhood that I had, there were no answers for. There were just, just so the other person could ask the question. And in the world too, by the way, and my job is not that different than that also sometimes.
So the right road for me it was very specific to rumination. Do I want to take this experience that just happened and get into a cycle of, just try not to think about it. It's not like I was actually thinking about it. You go in, you do something embarrassing, whatever you do, go in there. There, there's a a faulty towers episode where they said, whatever you do, do not bring up the war.
So you go in there, you bring up the war, there's a moment and you just sit there and say like, why did I bring up the war? But you don't think about why did I bring up the war? You might tell them why you did, even though it's passed and everybody's already forgotten it. Or maybe they haven't, maybe they haven't forgotten it. Maybe it was really embarrassing, but you brought it up. I'm not thinking about why I brought up the war anymore. I am feeling shame.
Something for me that is in the pit of my stomach or in my throat sometimes. The idea that I could instead of that say, huh, you were nervous around those people you had on some level being a rule follower is also about being a truth teller. People saying, Hey, let's all agree that we're gonna lie. We're not gonna talk about the war even though it's on our mind. We're all gonna lie. That does not stand for you. So you're gonna go in there and immediately say like, Hey, how about that war?
Get a big laugh or really offend everybody. I'm a little rambunctious in that way. So for me, the right road is not about being correct. It's about not going into a place where there's gonna be a punishment session that could last for days. I think I can say this from memory on some level, but the goal was to take these patterns. The triggers are there, and when the pattern happens to decrease its intensity and its duration and there's one more thing, frequency that is the right road for me.
That simple like, hey, but you have to understand, I went into this process not even recognizing that there was such behavior. So there was this mind blowing wizard of Oz moment of like, oh my God, this is true. I know it's derived from human behavior, but how did I not notice this? How did I not notice that? Certain things make me feel this way? And I started protecting myself in a good way. So saying to somebody, do not text me. Can we talk ever? You can call me. I know that's old fashioned.
Or you can say, I'd love to talk to you, not a big deal. Or you can say, I need to talk to you. It's serious. That would be better for me than can we talk. Because where I'm a playwright, where my imagination goes, I may never get over it. . I may never get over it, but I do. I guess that's the truth of it. And I have to say again, along with tenderness, there are certain other words that I feel a little bit amused by. I wanna make fun of them, which means that I kind of am embarrassed by them.
One of them is bravery or courage. Is it courageous to admit that you are afraid? I guess so. I guess it is. I personally have never had trouble admitting that I was afraid. So I guess I must have some courageous qualities. There was a lot of positive qualities that I did not recognize in myself. Things about myself that I did not value. This is part of gratitude. And then I had one overreaching word that blew my mind that has really become my mantra.
Patience. I have not practiced a lot of patience because first of all, patience requires a real vulnerability. Forget about hope. I've always had hope. I have achieved things in my life that the odds are extremely against me. So I have won the lottery. So there are many validations to having hope and to having dreams. And I feel very blessed. Jewish people don't usually say that. I feel very lucky and, and I know that it's, I worked hard.
I took opportunities to, I have a lot of advice to give about how to break into a world where you, where nobody really has room for you. But of course there's, there's tons of room. That kind of patience is different. Patience requires living in a state of not knowing. And a vigilance is one of your patterns because you have had a lot of unexpected things, a lot of capricious behavior on other people's. You know, where you're just like, where did that come from?
That will never happen to me again. I will walk into this room, I will mark all of the doors so that I know how to get out. I will look at what I can use as a weapon On Sopranos, I was looking up to encounter criminals who had somewhat reformed enough that they could sit in a room with some writers and they explained this animal aspect. And I'm like, I identify, I identify with it. This is what it's like to not be in control. So patience number one requires giving up a certain amount of control.
And the other thing is, it requires real compassion because nothing is immediate. Someone once said, I think it was Barbara actually, she said, sometimes you just have to say ouch. And so saying ouch when something happens, that is patience because it will pass. The patience is the, actually becomes hope because you believe you know that it is temporary. That was a big part of the continuing part of it because there's, the challenges have not stopped. The challenges have not stopped at all.
But my, you know, this is the, the advertisement for Hoffman. My response to the challenges is very different. Who pays the price for my being in an insecure work situation? Who pays the price for being in a strike, a labor strike that mimics for every person on the line mimics the relationship of a parent and a child, and you are the child, you are outside. How come you have all the food? Why'd you send me to bed without dinner? That is the dynamic in a strike.
So challenges of change, challenges of humanity, feeling threatened, the weather, ai, you know, there are two different things. One is our existence will stop. And one is our humanity are literally the parts that are valued about us are gonna be in an echo chamber. That they're just gonna accentuate the worst parts of us. Or, and I'm somebody ironically who's extremely open to the new, just accidentally. I am, I'm a curious person. I am an adventurer.
I have a lot of pioneer in me, you know, and I mean like in terms of like, hey, we're gonna go over that rock. I don't know what's there. You know? And I actually think part of it's being in the moment. I know there's all of this about being present and so forth, but I have taken a lot of risks in my life because I'm not capable of actually imagining what it's gonna be like if it goes bad. . I always, I always use the the example of like, you could tell me the stove is hot.
I am the person who is going to touch it. I just will not believe it until I burn myself. Thank you for the warning, but I don't believe the stove is hot. Or let's see what hot feels like . - So there's the pattern in it of sometimes self-harm, but what you're also identifying on the right road lives, the quality, which is an adventure, the curiosity, the wanting to experience, - Right? And it's not black and white. You're like, this is actually a good part of me.
It's a good part of me that I am very much a caregiver and it's not all to keep people from hurting me. I get a lot of pleasure from giving and I always have. - Well there's the opposite of that black and white thinking is the both. And the caregiving brings you a lot of pleasure. The people around you get your support and your love. And it also originated from some patterns around self-protection, right? That's also true, - Yes. But it never feels to me like the way I received it.
I know that there are parts that are genuinely my nature there. I feel, uh, proud of it and love for it. And I see it, you know, it's like someone telling you a story about something good that you did that you don't remember doing. Of course you don't remember those things. , why would that be the right thing? So it has changed my relationship with my parents and there's some acceptance in that.
But what a relief has definitely changed my relationship with my children, with my ex, with my partner, who is a very psychological person, a very spiritual person who was kind of scared that I was gonna come back. I think people get scared. And I actually immediately gave her the forms that were given to us of how to speak to people in our life, especially a partner about the process. And for me, I was like, why don't you just read what they told us to say?
Because then you'll understand that I'm not working this in any way. And you could feel less scared. And I think she felt a lot of benefits from from that. - I'm curious about this word that you mentioned earlier, patience and how that continues to show up in your life. Today. I - Saw this tape to a guy's computer and it said, be patient and get what you want. Be impatient and get what you want now. And I would say that on the one hand, I've had to be very patient.
There's a story that people don't like to hear, but I'm fond of telling, which is that from when I wrote the pilot for Mad Men. And when I wrote the second episode, that means that it was going to be made. There are seven years. I don't think anyone wants to hear that story. Who has the dream of doing what I do? Seven years of rejection. So there's a magazine called De Sous that's a quarterly art journal, and they were doing a section on reject.
And the editor who I know asked it was all artists with their letters of like, uh, you know, this is what happened to me and look how I had the last laugh. What does that mean? And I was like, I don't have any rejection letters. I don't like to dwell on rejection, I don't wanna talk about rejection. It's just too much. And he said, well, why not? And I wrote him this email, which he ended up putting in the magazine.
This is what I said, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I don't have anything on paper. Despite years of constant rejection in showbiz, all bad news has come through agents. And in the form of phone calls, even early on, I don't know that I would've saved them if I had gotten them. They're like bad reviews for me, best Skimm through and then briefly obsessed over before being mentally discarded. I've come to realize rejection is now part of my process.
I'm not used to it by any means, nor do I expect it. But it both sharpens my resolve, that my ideas are new and also drives me to professionally outlive the resistance of the gatekeepers. If I wait patiently, they will either move on, reconsider, or become brave enough to try something new. Rejection as painful it is, as it is, is nothing more than a delay. So if you accept delay, you are patient.
If you can live and delay and in everything in life you wish that your pants fit well, I'm gonna have to, I'm cut down on my carbs, okay? That is not gonna happen in one day. Every day I'm going to have to remember to not eat carbs. And I'm a person who is literally like, I would rather like just starve me for like a week. Just lock me in a room, drug me, and wake me up and I'll, I've lost the weight.
It's not that I'm not disciplined, it's like the idea of having to actually nourish myself while not overdoing it. And it's not that I overdo it that much, it's just very black and white. And I have lots of, lots of food and body issues. Like most people who, like most people, period . So the rumination on patients is that it is in every aspect of my life. Whether it's waiting for someone to come to a thought, waiting for myself to have an answer.
I can't tell you. Every creative person in the world has said like, you know, you think, you think, you think, you think you think and then you go for a walk or you go to the store or you're get in the shower and all of a sudden the answer, like you cannot force any aspect of yourself. And then the interesting thing here is like, people get involved in this. We all want change, right? We don't like the way we feel.
We want to change, we wanna change our behavior, we wanna change our response, we wanna change this. I didn't change. I have accepted good days and bad days. Oh my God, the doom saying, the fear of the what good things are coming in. There's a mathematical formula of that. The bad things are gonna come right after that. The dread, the catastrophizing. I see it for what it is. Be patient with yourself that is self-love. Be patient with other people. That is self-love. But what is it? It's a ship.
If you turn a ship one degree, we just had this disaster in Baltimore. It's the first thing I thought of is that they had stopped the engines on the ship and it kept going. But here's the positive version. You turn a ship one degree every day in 90 days you will be at a right angle. We just don't see time that way. Time is so mysterious to us. A day can be a lifetime.
I think that having respect for myself in the passage of time and saying like, keep trying small things, make a difference and also be patient. Why am I gonna be miserable? I'm gonna be waiting a lot and I'm a very active person who's tried to force a lot of things, but I'm gonna be waiting a lot. Do I have to stand in line miserably? Do I have to just like, be like hot and thirsty and cranky and like keep looking at how many people are ahead of me and why is it taking so long?
Or can I, I don't know, talk to the person next to me have a snack, say it's not gonna go any faster. - A beautiful metaphor. Well, Matt, may you continue to cultivate patience and reap the rewards of patience in your life. - Yeah, you know, again, the motivation's not the reward. I've written about this a lot. We all think there's something wrong with us. What is wrong with me was like something, is this it?
These are questions that were literally, I would talk about in the writer's room at Madman and even before madman. I was 35 years old when I wrote that. And I was already saying like, is this it? And then what is wrong with me? Living in those questions has helped me produce art, recognize art, enjoy art. And you know, I just kind of stopped asking those, that question that I'm not curious about. I kind of, and as nobody to blame, I just don't worry about it.
- What's, what's it been like to reflect on your life and your process and your post-process over this last conversation? What do you notice as you talk about what you've learned and what you're integrating, what's it like for you? - Uh, first of all, it's nice to see you again. I have very positive memories of our interactions. Second of all, it's nice to speak the language, if that makes sense because it is, it is its own language like anything else. People love that about it.
They always want a new language when it comes to feelings. You look at Freud trying to map the brain, right? And saying, there's this section here, there's this pressure going the I ego, the it and the super ego, just that alone derived from trying to get a language for why we were acting the way we do or why we feel the way we do or what our thoughts are. I also feel like I benefit from sharing this. It's a summarization, if that makes sense.
Every once in a while you want to just like get a, you want to give yourself a report card. , if you do the Hoffman processor, do anything that's drastic like this. It's drastic. It is a drastic thing. And people, you could try and keep it a secret if you want to. That's also something that, that might be appealing to people. But what you're really looking for afterwards is the validation of the fact that this, that you feel so differently. Do you seem different?
Well, people told me that my voice changed after this, for example, I was like, oh wow. Well I do feel really different. I love hearing that you're softer. You're kind of, I don't know. Oh, but then, then I failed and I lost it and I can't have it back. None of that. Hoffman is never, that is one of the most distinctive things about this is that I can wake up every day and start over, which I do anyway. Right? Get that coffee machine going and you're like, here's another shot, .
Oh right, I left the fridge open last night. Well that is something that happened yesterday that I'm gonna have to deal with today, but I got another shot, right? That is a big part of the process. So for me, checking in on this and saying like, yeah, it was a big deal. Yeah, I use it every day. Yeah, no one gave me a cream to put on my soul. I actually exposed my soul. And I look at it pretty carefully and say like, let's try and, uh, let's try and take care of this thing.
Let's just, just let's give some care to the part of yourself that is giving you everything. It's giving you everything. I, there's one last thing we need to say because this is, this is, this is very important and I'm, this is, I'm saying to anybody who's listening to this, who's thinking about doing it, what was my big fear? But I was actually way more worried about losing my creativity if I was healed. . What if I lose this part? That's me. I'm not gonna be able to write anymore.
All my art comes from this trauma. What we can't mess with that, can we? That's a bad idea. That turned out to actually not be true at all. It actually exposed that my art has been part of healing. It doesn't come from trauma. It is a part of healing trauma. And that my insight into other people and myself, my ability to create character or to recognize character or to recognize the truth, be beneath all of our socialized or behavior.
That's all from a sensitivity that the trauma was a gift, but it will never stop giving it. And I don't need to be in pain and have turned my success into another trauma. Turn my, you know what I mean? I don't need to sustain that. And good or bad, this is my personal belief when I talk about acceptance. What fantasy did I have that I think that I would erase trauma or erase creativity. That is so me, right? That is actually who I am. It's like breathing for me.
As long as I'm breathing, that's what I'm gonna be doing. I've been bald since I was 30. I can go and get a wig. I am still bald. There's nothing to do about that. And that is good and bad for me. It's really good. 'cause now everybody's going bald and I'm like, ah, I'm already there. Not a big deal. But , I use that as an example because who you essentially are and what is unique about you, what is not unique about you. That is the work of a writer. That is the work of an artist.
And it's the work of living. I got an incredible validation, which I need from myself. That my pursuit of the truth is just who I am. It's made my life richer. And by the way, still plenty of pain, still plenty of challenge, still plenty of, you know, patience is needed and patience is, is not always rewarded. But guess what? It's a better state to live in. - Matt, I'm grateful for this conversation. Thank you. - Me too, me too. You, you, you always hold the space.
I appreciate it and I'm very grateful to you and and grateful to the process. And I am grateful to the people that I was in in my cohort, I guess they're called. We did not go through a war together. I feel like we had a concert, a really good concert that was a once in a lifetime thing. - Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza in Grassi. I'm the CEO and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
- And I'm Ra Rossi Hoffman, teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation. - Our mission is to provide people greater access to the wisdom and power of love - In themselves, in each other, and in the world. In find out more, please go to hoffman institute.org.