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Bryan Cranston: Getting Lost, Finding Your Craft, and Staying Present
Bryan Cranston: Getting Lost, Finding Your Craft, and Staying Present
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About this episode
Road-trip stories set the tone, from loving “car trips” to getting lost without GPS on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Bryan Cranston traces a turning point after feeling directionless in college, when he and his brother rode motorcycles across the U.S. for two years—funding it with temporary work—until a garage fire forced him to confront attachment. He then connects those lessons to acting craft: fear and attraction in roles, authenticity, preparation, and staying present before going on stage.
Topics:
getting lost
staying present
creative preparation
authenticity
fear and attraction
character vs self
persistence and reinvention
long-term craft
career competition
letting go
DRIVE welcomes celebrated actor Bryan Cranston to discuss his career, from Malcolm in the Middle to Breaking Bad, and his belief that success comes from doing the work and “getting lost” to discover who you are. He recounts a two-year-long motorcycle journey in the 1970s with his brother that helped him choose acting,and later losing his beloved Honda 550 in a fire. Cranston discusses portraying damaged characters, his research “funnel,” deadline-driven preparation, and a crash-course role as Buzz Aldrin. He stresses patience, persistence, luck, outworking others, committing fully to the craft, authenticity with fans, and valuing experiences over material things.
00:00 Introduction
02:22 Backroads And Big Loops
03:48 Two Years On Motorcycles
05:19 Carnival Jobs And Road Life
08:21 Getting Lost To Get Found
12:26 All In On Acting
13:24 Scary Roles And Damaged Men
15:48 Building Characters From Life
19:26 Crash Course Preparation
21:22 Patience Persistence Luck
23:48 Outwork Everyone Mindset
25:06 Reinvention Means Commitment
32:17 Authenticity Beyond Characters
38:03 Closing
DRIVE with Jim Farley is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Nuzum of Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi and Kristen Mueller with help from Lori Arpin, Angela Brewer, Max Owen-Dunow, Anne Roberts, Samantha Singhal, Darnell Macon, Brandon Kennedy, and Mark Truby.
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Introduction
Backroads And Big Loops
Two Years On Motorcycles
Carnival Jobs And Road Life
Getting Lost To Get Found
All In On Acting
Scary Roles And Damaged Men
Building Characters From Life
Crash Course Preparation
Patience Persistence Luck
Outwork Everyone Mindset
Reinvention Means Commitment
Authenticity Beyond Characters
Closing
Select text to request an explanation
Our business of entertainment is like the produce section of a market.
Today looks good.
Tomorrow, oh, there's a couple bruises.
Let's get rid of all that and bring in something new.
So you just have to be patient and persistent,
and you have to be talented and you have to be lucky.
I'm Jim Farley, and this is Drive.
Today I'm talking with Brian Cranston.
He's an actor whose career spans comedy and drama
and some of the most iconic roles in television,
from Malcolm in the middle to Breaking Bad.
But what makes this conversation so interesting
is how much of his success comes back to a simple idea.
You got to get lost, you got to do the work,
and figure out who you are along the way.
So let's start with some rapid-fire questions
like your favorite road trip song.
Born to be wild.
Nice.
Born to be wild.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Okay, car or motorcycle?
Oh, I do both.
I have a lot of memories on a motorcycle,
but I love, love, love car trips.
I really do.
All right, favorite car movie?
First one I would think of is Bullet.
Bullet?
What a great choice.
I love that choice.
Do you have a driving superpower?
I do drop little mental breadcrumbs wherever I go
so that I always know what direction I need to return.
So I kind of figure that out.
And I'm real, oh, my superpower, though,
I must say is that I have a lucky streak
of finding a parking place.
Really?
I'll pull into a parking lot and I'll say,
one's going to appear right away.
And sure enough, someone's pulling out
of a crowded parking place and I slip right in.
Yeah, I don't know why.
Now that's actually, that's a super superpower.
And then who is your dream road trip passenger?
My wife.
Excellent.
Yeah, we've been married 37 years now
and we're planning a road trip this year, actually.
She's never been to Mount Rushmore.
And so I thought, okay, we're going to do that.
We're going to incorporate Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone
and the Grand Tetons and that sort of do like a big loop.
Yeah.
There's nothing like it.
Nothing.
By the way, Jim, it's not to stay on the highways.
I get off the main highways all the time.
I'll go on highways like Highway 50, which runs,
it's a very small highway.
They call it the loneliest highway.
And you go through cornfields and old, small towns.
And the only thing that is high are the water towers
with the name of the town on them.
And you pull into these places.
And I think Highway 50 runs from somewhere around Sacramento,
Northern California, all the way to I think like Baltimore.
But it's a really great highway to take because it's very slow.
You're not going to, you're often slowed down by tractors,
farming equipment, you know, maybe livestock
or moving across the road.
I'm ready to go.
Sign me up.
That sounds amazing.
Doesn't it?
Yes.
Well, speaking of that, I want to go back to that motorcycle
trip that you took all those years ago.
Because to me, it really captures something about you
and something about your life experience.
Tell us about this motorcycle trip you took with your brother
back in the 70s.
Well, I was a restless kid.
My parents had split up when I was 11.
I didn't really have a lot of guidance.
I didn't really know what I was going to do.
I thought I was going to be a police officer.
So I went to college to study police science.
And I was doing quite well in it.
And then my second year of college, I took an acting class.
And that changed everything.
From that point on, the idea of becoming a policeman
left immediately.
And it was like, how do I become an actor?
And that confusion created this indecision.
And I thought, I don't know what I want to do.
I talked to my brother.
He said, he didn't know what he wants to do either.
Why don't we travel and figure it out?
And so we hopped on our motorcycles from Los Angeles,
California, and we were gone for two years.
We traveled through all these states up and down the coast
and through the South, through the North,
the Midwest, and for two years.
And we would get odd jobs here and there.
We'd get jobs in coffee shops.
We'd get jobs in carnivals.
Carnivals are a great place.
You could always get a job in a carnival,
as long as you have a little bit of experience.
And it was terrific.
And so we would make enough money.
You worked in a carnival.
You guys worked in a carnival.
Yeah.
It's a very transient experience, right?
They move from town to town.
They need people when they're setting up.
And in the booths, the games of chance sort of thing,
or the ride operators need some help or whatever.
And you make cash.
And those days in the 70s here, here's $60.
And it's like, wow.
So we have enough to fill up our tanks,
fill up our stomachs, and some pocket money,
and then we'd hit the road again.
And where did you buy your motorcycles?
What kind of motorcycle?
Did you have to do maintenance by yourself?
Or, I mean, 70s going across the country,
that's different than today.
Yeah, it is.
I had a Honda 550.
Yup.
It was a 1976 Honda 550.
And I put well over 100,000 miles on it.
Are you kidding me?
No, because I had it for many, many years.
And then what was so interesting is that I was dating,
I was back in California now,
and I was dating a girl who had a car,
and I only had a motorcycle.
So whenever we went out for a night or something,
we took her car.
And one day, we went for a drive,
we did something I can't remember,
went back to my apartment,
and we flip on the news as we're making some food,
and we see a news report.
Well, the Beverly Hills arsonist has struck again.
You can see behind me, the garage is burning, dah, dah, dah.
And we're looking at this,
and we both lean in like this,
and she goes, that's my garage.
Oh, my God.
And I said, that's my motorcycle.
And my motorcycle was in this fire and basically melted.
Everything just melted on it.
And I sat there for a second, kind of dumbstruck,
because for four and a half years, five years,
That was your body.
That was my transportation.
That was my everything.
Everything I owned was on that motorcycle.
And I looked at it and I thought, it is tough,
but you know, Jim, it's one of those things where you go,
am I so attached to this material thing,
or can I just learn from this and move on?
Maybe, maybe this was the best way to say goodbye
to that motorcycle.
Interesting.
And when you look back on that trip,
do you see it any differently?
Was it like an escape, or was it a preparation?
Now that your life is unfolded,
is this incredible, iconic professional actor,
does the trip have different meaning looking backwards?
You know, that's a great question,
because I didn't really know it at the time.
It was just, I don't know what to do, so let's travel.
But in retrospect, I think I was,
I think I was allowing myself to get lost
so that I can be found.
So that I can really find what it is
I should be doing in my life, with my life,
to try to see if I can let a pathway come to me,
as opposed to really scratching to find my way,
just allow it to wash over me.
And over time, that's exactly what happened.
I remember we were camped out
on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia.
Gorgeous drive.
Except in 1977 when we were on that.
You know, there's no GPS,
so you're going on a map and you don't quite know
where I am from a map.
I could be here,
and that means that next town is 50 miles away
in a driving rainstorm.
Or it could be five miles away, you don't know.
So we were camped out at a place that had
a cement slab and a picnic table
and four posts and a roof.
And that's it.
And so we brought our motorcycles,
my brother and I, onto this cement slab
to try to wait out the rain.
Well, it's now four o'clock in the afternoon.
It's the fall.
So, you know, it looks like we're going to stay here tonight.
So we move things around, put our pup tents up,
you know, had our little camp stove
that we opened up the valve to get gasoline
out of our carburetors.
To fuel your stove to make your food.
For the stove, exactly, right.
And we would cook, you know, just water and bouillon
and, you know, just had soup or something,
whatever we had stashed on our, you know,
saltine crackers from the last cafe or whatever.
And I thought, well, we'll stay here tonight.
But it never stopped raining.
For five days, we were at that place
because it was just pouring for five days.
And we didn't know exactly where we were.
And it was during that time that I was reading a play
called Head of Gabler.
And on a motorcycle, you know,
they'd be very careful about how many items you take with you.
Carry, yeah.
Yeah.
And everything's weight.
And so I was reading this book, this play,
and I recall having the experience
of going from daylight to darkness without noticing.
That's never happened to me before.
Yes.
Sure.
Because you were so immersed in the play.
I was so immersed in it and I was leaning.
And I found myself finishing the play,
leaning towards something and I get a crook in my neck
and I didn't know why and I realized,
oh, there was a sodium lamp in the camp area
that I was leaning to try to get light to.
And I looked up and it was nighttime
and I remember starting to read that play.
It was daylight.
And I went, how did that happen?
Interesting.
I went, this is amazing that a play can just take me away.
And it was at that moment that I went,
I think that this is what I should do,
that I'm this attracted to this experience
of telling stories and maybe,
and that's when I came up with an axiom that I lived by.
From that point on, I was 21 years old and I said,
I am going to go after something that I love
and hopefully become good at as opposed to
going after something I'm good at but not in love with.
And so I thought, okay, as card players know,
I'm all in, this is what I'm going after
and I better really start working hard to get good
at this acting profession.
And so I just was very determined to do everything I could
to get better at every step of the way.
It's a beautiful experience and story
because like you said, it kind of came to you.
You had to be patient.
Was there a role that ever kind of scared you
or you had a lot of apprehension?
Because every role that I've ever seen you in looks effortless.
Well, I think every role scares an actor to some degree
because you're both attracted to them and intimidated by them.
I've played Lyndon Johnson both on stage
and in a movie, Howard Beale from Network on stage.
And now I'm in London playing a character
that's very troubled in an Arthur Miller play called All My Sons.
I go outside after each performance
and I talk to the fans and sign autographs
and take pictures and stuff
and try to stimulate interest and encouragement,
especially with a younger generation,
into attending and supporting live theater
because our community needs to regenerate interest
from younger generations.
And I'm out there and they're asking,
why do you seem to do Walter White from Breaking Bad?
It was just a troubled man.
And I said, I guess I'm just attracted to very damaged characters,
men who are cracked in some way.
And perhaps they recognize it, perhaps they don't.
But at least the goal of every actor is not to be liked,
but it's to be understood and to deliver something
in an honest way that the audience may choose
to dislike your character and that's okay,
especially if that's the intention of the playwright
or the screenwriter.
It's just to portray someone as authentically
as you possibly can.
I'd like to explore that idea a little bit more,
which is kind of relevant to all of us
to learn from you is the diversity of your characters
and the credibility you bring to them
is so kind of breathtaking.
It begs the question to your point
about what is the character versus what is you?
What do you bring?
Is there a thread between those characters?
Well, the common denominator, of course,
is that all the characters I played are played by one actor, me.
Yes.
It's still my voice, my form.
And I could adjust my voice.
I can adjust my posture the way I walk.
The way I gesture.
The way I present myself or comport myself.
Those need to be all considered
when you're taking on a character.
So there's that.
But you touched upon something that's really important
and that is life experience.
As you experience various things
and you travel, you become a parent perhaps
or you're married and you experience loss
and gain and hopefully wisdom.
You incorporate all those things
from time to time in the appropriate proportion
into the character.
So it starts off like a blank slate.
You don't really know who the guy is
that I'm going to be playing next.
And I call it like it's the way I prepare for it.
It's like a funnel.
And I start my research
and I start putting things in the funnel.
Over time, it kind of shakes down
to the small portion of the funnel
and out comes a nugget
that you can actually use.
That this is the essence of the character here.
That I can use this to then springboard
into other things.
A follow-up in that.
What's the variability of the time it takes
to follow that process, to get the nugget?
What's the fastest you could do it
and what is the ideal state?
Well, that's interesting.
You know what it's like, Tim?
It's more like when we were in school
and your teacher is saying,
this report is due on such and such a date.
Nothing like a deadline, huh?
A deadline.
You have a deadline.
You're constantly dealing with deadlines.
And so that's no different.
And just like students, you either get to it,
you know, most of us wait
and then we, oh, we have to crash course it.
We have to just go
and we just have to put, you know,
work on a 24-7 for the next two weeks
in order to get something together.
Like for example,
I was doing a guest star role
many, many years ago, almost 30 years ago,
on a situation comedy
where I was playing this hapless kind of
foppish character
and I got a call from Tom Hanks
and he said, he said,
hey, can you be on, this is a Friday night.
And he said, can you be on a plane tomorrow morning
for Orlando, Florida?
And I said, yeah, I'm finished with this job tonight.
He goes, good, I'll call you back with you.
I said, Tom, Tom, Tom, wait, wait, what am I doing?
He goes, oh, you're going to play Buzz Aldrin
on From the Earth to the Moon
for HBO, our 10 episode series
on the Apollo Moon Project.
And that's what I said.
And I said, when do I start?
He goes, Monday.
And so immediately I start cramming.
I'm reading, and this is 97.
So there really isn't, I can't Google it.
There's no, it's like, I'm encyclopedias.
I'm falling asleep with books on my face
and waking up and drinking coffee and reading
and trying to figure out who this man is
in a crash course right away right now.
And so as exciting as I'm saying that,
it's also trepidatiously approachable.
It's like, oh, am I going to mess this all up?
This is a man who is heroic
and he led a very notable life.
And I don't want to mess that up.
I want everyone to be proud of it, especially me.
I want to be able to say, I'm glad I did that.
So I had to work really hard to be able to get that together
in such a short period of time.
Well, listening to you carefully
and watching all your work,
it's kind of almost mind-boggling
that the first character that winds up really sticking
and at least I could see was the father and Malcolm Middle
because of all the characters, all the diversity
of all the things you've done in your career,
it seems like that funnel process would go a little quicker.
And that's just how life works, I guess.
We just have to accept the fact
that we may have all this gift inside of us,
but sometimes life just gives us these great gems
that maybe are a little more straightforward.
Did you feel that way when you got that part?
No, because I had gotten a lot of parts
and I had done a few series
that didn't last more than three or six or nine episodes.
I see.
And they come and go and come and go.
It's like the expiration date.
I often say that our business of entertainment
is like the produce section of a market.
Today looks good.
Tomorrow, oh, there's a couple bruises.
Let's get rid of all that and bring in something new.
It's like, oh my gosh, what just happened?
It's very fragile and there's never, ever going to be
a shortage of actors in our world.
So the competition is fierce,
that there's plenty of people.
So you just have to be patient and persistent
and you have to be talented and you have to be lucky.
Sometimes you can catch a foot in the door
and you're able to get in,
but when you get in,
you better be able to know what you're doing and deliver.
So people go, yeah, you belong here
and you just have to get lucky.
I love that wisdom.
I think it really is wisdom.
I see in business so many, even my younger self,
I would have said to my younger self to that vein,
stop worrying about what your next job is.
Start preparing so that when you get it,
you'll better at anyone else at that job.
I spent way too much time obsessing
what the next opportunity was.
It actually didn't really matter
because almost any job would have prepared me
for the thing that I really wanted.
And maybe life would never get me that opportunity,
but if I did, I would want to be able to walk
through that door better than anyone.
And boy, I wish I would have been able
to give that advice to my younger self.
That's great wisdom.
I think, Jim, is that that came to you
at the time it was supposed to come to you.
That's our lesson.
We don't know what our journey is going to be
or when we're going to learn these.
Every single person on earth says,
boy, I want to learn my lessons early
so that I can play.
Oh yeah, sure.
But that's just not the way life works.
And I knew that similar to your experience,
I knew that in your business, in my business,
there's plenty of people vying for roles that you want.
And I knew that.
And I also knew there are people
that are more talented than me.
There are people that are less talented than me.
I can't control that.
The only thing I can control is I feel I can outwork them.
So when I was doing my survival job,
waiting tables, and someone said,
why are you working every single weekend?
I said, I worked every Friday night, all day Saturday,
lunch and dinner, and a lunch and dinner on Sunday nights.
Those three days, I worked every single weekend.
Why?
Well, because friends are saying,
you're missing this party and that party.
And I go, I'm not interested, not interested in a party.
I'm here to make money at this restaurant
so that I can pay my rent so that I can be free during the week
so that I can audition and go to my acting classes
and my comedy improv classes and my voice classes.
And that's what I'm here for.
That's my purpose.
And that's like, I can't lose track of that.
Part of persistence, I believe, is reinvention as well.
And when I look at your career,
I think of reinvention as a real thread.
What advice would you give all the rest of us
around reinventing ourselves
or whatever that concept should mean?
My experience has been as an actor for,
she's getting close to 50 years now.
I can only say to young people who want to be in the arts
that you have to commit to this
like you're committing to a personal relationship.
Because sometimes I hear nonsense comments
coming from younger generations
who are more interested, I will say,
in the glitz and glamour that they think this business will get them
and not necessarily the hard work that is ahead of them.
They'll say things like, I'm going to give it two years.
I'm going to try being an actor for two years.
And if I don't make it, then I'll do something else.
And I say to them, I can save you two years of frustration.
Do the something else.
Don't try to be an actor because you're looking for an end result.
You got to get into this business because you'll love it.
I said, would you talk to a potential romantic partner
and say, I'm going to give you two years.
If we make it in two years, then good.
If not, I'm out.
It's like, well, no smart person would even spend in a moment with you.
So you have to say, I'm going in.
Let's see if we can make this work.
And you got to give it everything.
You got to fall in love with it.
You have to love what you're doing.
And if you do, then you can find the creative juices
to that flow that what makes you get up in the morning.
Why can't you sleep?
People, I guess, got a great idea of marking down ideas at night.
And that's what is fun regardless of whatever business you're in.
That's the fun part.
Boy, does that resonate with me.
I guess you and I were lucky.
So many people are lucky because they know what that is.
You founded on that road trip or maybe before,
but for me, cars have always been that thing.
And what a gift because a lot of people know what that answer is,
but they don't give that gift to themselves for a lot of different reasons,
good reasons often.
And when I think about young people,
I have to say I'm completely enamored with your daughter Taylor
and her character on pit like of all the young intern doctors
who make it look completely effortless.
I'm completely convinced she's the only one on that show
who's actually an upcoming doctor.
That must be kind of...
Did you want her to go into your profession?
Because does she have that same love?
Well, here's the key, Jim.
I mean, I think I can speak for all loving parents.
I just want my kids to be invested and love what they're interested in.
I don't care what it is, but what's interesting is that,
and my wife was an actor as well.
We met 40 years ago, I think, now on a TV show.
And I was like, oh, you're cute.
And we'd been together since then.
And so it's the family business.
Taylor, who's on the pit, like you said, she's amazing.
She, in that show as an actress,
it looks like she was born with a stethoscope draped around her neck.
I mean, she's literally, she oozes that character
and honestly makes it so effortless.
It's like, there's no friction when I watch her do her job.
That's the magic trick.
Because, and I will say this and she's my daughter
and Noah Wiley, the star is a friend of mine.
What they're doing on that show is one of the hardest things
you can do as an actor.
It's really hard.
Because that, those six and seven syllable medical terms,
it's learning a new language all the time.
And understanding what it means to what you're saying
and memorization, and it's got to go like this really quick.
The camera spins on you and you're ready.
It's really hard.
And so I give them all huge kudos
because when they make it look like it's part of their DNA
and effortless, it means they've worked really hard
to get to that point.
Those actors are really exceptional.
Well, pulling the onion back a little bit from that
is something that I just revere about your career,
which is the ability to make other people, humans like us,
laugh.
Your humor, your capability, the psychiatrist and curb,
or of course the dentist that probably you did so well
that they kept asking you to come back like the godfather,
they just keep pulling me back in.
But I have to say, your humor, your ability to make people laugh,
even your coworkers is just fantastic.
My cousin was Chris Farrow, the comedian,
and maybe I have more acuity towards humor,
but Chris was always in our family.
He had that.
No matter what happened, he could all get us to laugh
in a genuine way.
I saw the story of the guy who suggested,
well, maybe you should take the hit of laughing gas
before you give it to Jerry.
And you were open to that.
Like, you knew that was funny.
That takes real skill.
Well, you know, Seinfeld was a great experience.
I ended up doing six episodes as their dentist over the years.
And they kept calling me back,
not because they wanted to write for me.
No, no, they used it correctly,
is that they had a reason for my character to appear.
I see.
Because as a catalyst to propel the plot.
I see.
Now, if I wasn't any good,
they would figure out some other way to do it
and then let those go by.
But being on Seinfeld and watching Jerry Seinfeld
and Larry David work was like watching sculptors
just carefully chiseling away at a piece of marble.
And just like, oh, I wouldn't have thought of that.
And they're just, you know, I mean, they're so exact.
It's like, Jerry would say, you know,
if you pause just a second more before that line,
it's going to get a bigger laugh.
And sure enough, you pause, bigger laugh.
So I had a front row seat to watch those guys.
Okay, that makes sense.
Oh my God.
That talk about, it was like going to comedy boot camp.
It was fantastic.
That may be true, but I have to tell you,
your facial expressions, I cannot,
you get me almost every time.
You have such command of like subtle changes
that are really funny, but on a kind of more,
not a serious note, but like a lesson of life
for all of us through your eyes is this kind of irony
of playing different people.
But then if you do it so well,
fans can't disassociate you, Brian,
with Walter or Tim or Hal or Dr. Templeton
or whoever it may be, you know,
and living with that, like as a person, you know,
I'm the CEO Ford, but I'm actually a guy
who works on his cars on the weekend,
rides motorcycles like you.
But that's not what people see.
And actually they're not very interested in that person.
And I wanted to understand for those of us
who have this kind of difference
between our personal and professional lives,
and the better we do our professional lives,
the more people see us as that professional only.
What advice would you give all of the rest of us
on how to deal with that?
I think the most important thing is authenticity.
So when I finish, like I'm here in my dressing room now
and in about another hour, I'll be on stage performing in a play.
After that, I will go outside by the stage door
and I will talk to everyone who wants to be there.
And I'll sign autographs and take pictures,
but I also ask them questions like,
how did it affect you?
And they also say,
well, you must be tired and I go, I'm exhausted.
And you just admit that you're human.
But it's a little, and I understand it,
they've seen me on television or movies or now on stage,
and it's a little strange to see me in person,
but it's important to make that connection with them
and to see that I have feelings
and I have interests and I want to be a well-rounded person
and I want to be respected and to respect others and be kind.
And I guess, Jim, I'll be 70 soon
and I think it's probably also due to age.
I want to enjoy the experience.
It's not enough for me to enjoy the moment I'm acting.
I want to enjoy the people around it.
I want to enjoy and have mutual respect for the cast and crew
and the fans and the people who work in the theater
and just have a good day.
And that's what I'm after.
I think it may be an oversimplification,
but I guess as you get older,
I'm just looking for simpler things.
I think I want less in my life, less material things.
I don't want to be, it feels more and more like a ballast
if I'm carrying too much.
I'd rather have more experiences than material things.
So that's what I'm looking for.
Last question for you that I asked all my guests,
but maybe coming from you,
I'm more excited about your perspective
than almost anyone I've talked to,
which is what advice would you give me as the CEO of Ford?
I don't think there's anything more important
than valuing the people you work with.
I really don't.
And not just for what they produce for the good of the company,
but as them personally.
When I do a show, like I was doing Breaking Bad,
we were together for seven or eight years, all told.
And through that eight years,
I got to know this cast and crew extremely well.
And we went through births and deaths
and graduations and marriages and divorces.
We went through life.
And so it's important to wrap your arms around
and embrace that moment.
Thinking about the future is good.
And in your position,
thinking about the future is essential.
But it's also essential to be in the here and the now.
And just, I think for us who are busy,
I think it is just the essence of slowing down
and taking some deep breaths and just be present.
Every time before I go on stage, I'm behind the curtain.
The audience, I can hear them talking and shattering it
right before we're about to go up.
And I'm breathing right behind the curtain.
I'm close to them, but they can't see me.
And I'm breathing in their energy.
It's like, here I am.
I'm here right now.
My feet are planted.
I'm taking three deep breaths.
I'm in this moment right here, right now.
No other place is more important than right here.
And that repetitiveness of doing that
really helps me be in the here and now.
I would recommend it.
Wow. Brian, that is incredible advice or wisdom.
Thank you for sharing that.
And most of all, have a wonderful show tonight.
Connecting with all those folks.
And thank you for all the joy and human experience
you shared with all of us.
And especially thank you for taking time to talk
to our listeners about your life experience
and your perspective.
Thank you, Jim. I appreciate it. We'll talk again.
Thank you.
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