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Bryan Hill on the Confidence to be Creative (Episode 21)
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Want to become more Stoic? Join us and other Stoics this October: Stoicism Applied by Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay on Maven
Bryan Hill is a television, film, and comic book writer. His work in comics includes writing for Batman and Buffy's Angel and his work in television includes HBO Max's Titans, and Ash vs. The Evil Dead. He is a practitioner of Stoicism, and has incorporated Stoic ideas into his craft of writing.
In this discussion, Michael Tremblay and Bryan cover using Stoicism to overcome the ego, imposter syndrome, and fear of rejection that comes both with being a writer, and with pursuing any craft.
They talk about learning to commit yourself to process of self-improvement, rather than seeking external validation. They also talk about how to overcome the fear of being bad at something by learning to give yourself permission to be a beginner.
This conversation is a must listen for anyone who has struggled with their own confidence and self-identity, and wants specific strategies to help.
(01:11) Intro
(02:14) The Impact of Stoicism
(15:10) Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
(28:25) Commit to the Process
(36:07) Seeking Excellence
(44:54) What Bryan's Struggled With the Most
(50:29) Stoicism in Bryan's Craft
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Stoa Conversations is Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay’s podcast on Stoic theory and practice.
Caleb and Michael work together on the Stoa app. Stoa is designed to help you build resilience and focus on what matters. It combines the practical philosophy of Stoicism with modern techniques and meditation.
Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): stoameditation.com/pod
Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/
Subscribe to The Stoa Letter for weekly meditations, actions, and links to the best Stoic resources: www.stoaletter.com/subscribe
Caleb Ontiveros has a background in academic philosophy (MA) and startups. His favorite Stoic is Marcus Aurelius. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/calebmontiveros
Michael Tremblay also has a background in academic philosophy (PhD) where he focused on Epictetus. He is also a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His favorite Stoic is Epictetus. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/_MikeTremblay
Thank you to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
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Transcript
The Role of External Validation and Skill Acquisition
00:00:00
Speaker
If one lives for and from validation, you are now handing your agency to external factors. And you're going to not work to become better at your pursuit. You're going to work to receive more validation.
00:00:20
Speaker
which then gets into the vicissitudes of pleasing the various personalities around you to make sure you get the smile or you get the attaboy or the attagirl, which you may indeed get for a little bit, but you're not necessarily getting better. But the only thing that, not the only thing, but one of the things that no one can take away from you is skill.
00:00:44
Speaker
that you've acquired. Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Caleb Antiveros and this conversation is a classic conversation from the Stoa app between Michael Trombley and Brian Hill. This Friday we'll release a conversation between myself and Nate Anderson. Michael and I will be back next week to share another conversation between the two of us.
Introduction to Brian Hill and Stoicism
00:01:08
Speaker
I'll let Michael take it away.
00:01:11
Speaker
Hi everyone, my name is Michael Trombley, and in this conversation I am talking with Brian Hill. Brian Hill is a television, film, and comic book writer. His work in comics includes writing for Batman and Buffy's Angel, and his work in television includes HBO Max's Titans and Ash vs. the Evil Dead. Brian is a practitioner of stoicism and has incorporated stoic ideas into his craft of writing.
00:01:35
Speaker
In this discussion, we cover using stoicism to overcome the ego, imposter syndrome, and the fear of rejection that comes both with being a writer and with pursuing any craft. In particular, we talk about learning to commit yourself to the process of self-improvement rather than external validation.
00:01:53
Speaker
We also talk about how to overcome the fear of being bad at something by learning to give yourself permission to be a beginner. This conversation is a must listen for anyone who has struggled with their own confidence and self-identity and anyone who wants specific strategies to help.
00:02:07
Speaker
Okay. So I'm here with Brian Hill. Brian, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. This is great. Yeah. Looking forward to talking to you. So one of the reasons I wanted to reach out to you and have this conversation is we talk a lot with philosophers, or I should say, you know, even academic philosophers whose primary art perhaps is studying stoicism, studying philosophy, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think of you more as a writer.
00:02:31
Speaker
who is applying stoicism, so you're kind of a craftsman, who's then using philosophy, using stoicism as one of those philosophies to improve your craft.
Personal Hardships and Stoicism's Influence
00:02:41
Speaker
So maybe get us started, if you could explain a bit about your relationship with stoicism, how you discovered it, how it's affected you.
00:02:49
Speaker
Well, I was a very disquieted young man for a number of reasons. My father died when I was a kid and that was destabilizing in ways that I didn't understand then, but you kind of come to look at your behavior and then realize that that destabilization was kind of part of it. And then for reasons of economic shame, I was a very poor kid growing up. I was lucky to get scholarships to very nice schools, have a very hardworking mother.
00:03:18
Speaker
who sacrificed a lot to provide those opportunities. But I grew up with a lot of shame because I just didn't have what everyone around me had, you know, was aware of that sort of lack. And from shame grew fear, and then from fear grew a lot of kind of rash action, right? A lot of bravado, you know, some self-destructive behavior who alleviate, I think, the pressure of that shame, the pressure of that fear.
00:03:46
Speaker
And so art was always an outlet for me, but I spent large portions of my life, that's about half of my life, kind of in a constant state of war against the world. And it seemed the proper way, it seemed that I was dedicated and I was doing the things I needed to do, but I was very unfulfilled and very unhappy.
00:04:06
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And so I had a good friend. I still have a good friend.
Stoicism in Hollywood and Philosophy as Discipline
00:04:08
Speaker
His name is Adam Hansen. And he is a business theorist, I guess would be like his title. But he's a very philosophical man. And I was interested in philosophy in academic terms. But I never really found pragmatic application outside the classroom. But Adam shared with me a book, a Seneca's book.
00:04:31
Speaker
And I read that, and it sort of resonated. It aligned with some of my martial arts experience, other lessons. It sort of felt like in a cosmic sense, the universe was delivering messages to me kind of consistently through different means, and I wasn't always listening. But it was comforting because it gave me a strategy to not cover up
00:04:58
Speaker
feelings with destructive mythologies, with bad mythos as it were, but rather to confront these things and get on a path of mastery so that you can alleviate those pressures, those tensions. And then as I started to succeed, it became more useful
00:05:19
Speaker
because I discovered that Hollywood is very much a business community where there's just a lot of, I don't want to say reckless behavior, but there are a lot of superlative personalities. And I started to understand that my, not my skill, because my skill is in storytelling, I think, but that my talent was to be called in the center of the madness.
00:05:49
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You know, and I never really thought about things that way. And so that's why I started putting it into practice.
00:05:54
Speaker
And I would meditate in martial arts practice, but never really considered it a daily practice. It was something that I would do, train, it was kind of built around that. But yeah, so these things I was interested in began to line up and become a better resource for me, a method to kind of carry me through.
Applying Philosophy to Real-World Challenges
00:06:15
Speaker
And it's been of great use to me, stoicism. Since then, I've read Aurelius and still read Aurelius.
00:06:23
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Ryan Holiday's work has been fantastic, just the contemporary, you know, kind of catalog of these thoughts. And I found that initially Stoicism was a rod and shield against the fear of failure, you know, against the fear that I would not be able to achieve things. But then as I started to achieve things, it became an equally important rod and shield against the inflation of ego.
00:06:52
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Right. And maintaining a true sense of identity throughout, you know, a process where suddenly now you're being told a lot of things that feel good, but may not necessarily be true by people who are telling you things because they want something from you. Right. And so that's why I talk about it often on social media, you know, and I tried to show the pragmatic application of philosophical ideas, because I think it's important for people to
00:07:23
Speaker
know that philosophy isn't just something that you read and you get a grade on or it's not just something that you experience while you're absorbing it and then muse about it and then carry on with your life. No philosophy is meant to be practiced. And all of us can practice it. So that's kind of where I am today.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, fantastic. I think it's great because I think, as you said, your skill is as a storyteller. So even when talking about your own life, there's this progress or this kind of arc that I really like. So I want to go back to that, what you were saying. So there's this idea of you started with a battle. You were battling against the world. I guess I'm wondering what you were battling against. And so you hit fear of failure. That's one thing. And then maybe a bit about how stoicism helped you overcome that and then stoicism helping with the ego as well.
00:08:11
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For sure. So, you know, one of the things that I had to work through was the feeling that adversity was going to be a natural part of my existence in a negative and destructive way. So in my life, specifically, I felt very isolated as an African-American in a mostly white environment when I was growing up in these educational systems.
00:08:38
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I also felt that because I was an African American, I would have far more challenges to build a career, the career that I wanted, you know, because of that. And I had adopted that adversity, but not in an empowering way.
00:08:51
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I always felt I was disempowered, right? And so the universal aspect to this is regardless of whatever the fact pattern of your circumstances are, whether it's race, gender, class, sexual orientation, whatever it is, or a combination of all of those. What I learned was not to fret what could happen, but rather just deal with what did happen.
Mentorship, Adversity, and Identity
00:09:21
Speaker
And so there were many times in my life, I have many mentors, and I'm a huge proponent of finding mentors. And for those listening to this, when I say find mentors, what I mean is you may not be able to find someone who will take you to Dagobah and teach you all of the lessons of course. Mentorship can happen in a moment. If you have a sincere moment with someone who is sincerely trying to teach you something, I'll give you an example.
00:09:48
Speaker
So there was a, some kind of speaking engagement. James Cameron was speaking and I was able to attend this and you know, he was talking about, it might've been like pre avatar or something. I don't even remember it was years ago, but Cameron had allowed for some questions. I remember reading that one of the most useful things, I don't know where I read it, but one of the most useful things you can do is ask someone who knows more than you to tell you something that they want you to know.
00:10:15
Speaker
And then see what you receive from that. So I went up to Mr. Cameron, I was like, Mr. Cameron, I'd like to be a writer-director, so on and so forth. Tell me something that I need to know, that you don't believe I do, right? And so he sort of looked at me for a second, and he took it very seriously. And he said, you should always work on multiple things at the same time.
00:10:39
Speaker
That way, you'll always have something to work on. You'll always be making progress so when you get stalled out on one thing, you can move to another thing. Never let yourself have nothing to work on. You know, and then he went his way and I went my way. But that's an example of mentorship. And so, even if it's just a moment, I strongly suggest
00:11:01
Speaker
that people seek out people who are achieving the things they want to achieve, and just get the nuggets of information you can. And sometimes that turns into an enduring relationship, and I've had some of those as well. Sometimes that's just a momentary conversation that leaves an imprint on you and that gives you things you can practice. I didn't realize that I was doing it for a while. It only became a strategy later. So taking it back to where the conversation started,
00:11:30
Speaker
I was so focused on all of the monsters that I thought were going to appear that I don't think I was giving value to the assistance that I had around me, to the positive experiences around me. If I was convinced, and I was for a while, that every relationship that I would have with a white authority figure would be adversarial in some way.
00:11:56
Speaker
not necessarily combative, but that would always be fighting through a deficit, that would always be fighting through a judgment, that I would never be able to come in and start at zero and move up, that I'd be coming in at some sort of negative quotient, trying to get to zero to get to where I wanted to go. And that may have been true in some circumstances, but it wasn't true for all. And so many times I would carry in
00:12:21
Speaker
previous experiences in a negative way into new experiences, and because I was approaching them that way, I was creating another negative experience, but it wasn't really happening, right? And then I was interpreting action, not objectively, but subjectively. Because if you're looking for villainy, you're going to find it anywhere.
00:12:42
Speaker
in the drink someone orders in a conversation, right? Like, you're going to find it, if you're looking for it, you're going to find it. But it doesn't mean it was actually there. And so, you know, those were a lot of things that I was sort of struggling with. And now I'm more of a happy warrior, as it were, right? Like, I don't focus so much on only the result that I have in mind, but I focus on the quality of the journey.
00:13:06
Speaker
And I understand the importance of experience and the cumulative effect of experience that leads to success, right? So if I sell a screenplay, it isn't just that story of me and this executive in the studio and this idea that it resulted in me selling a screenplay. There's also the cumulative experiences that brought me to that point would all have value even if I didn't get the result that I wanted.
00:13:33
Speaker
I did get stronger because I was pressing, I was mindful, right? And so, you know, those are the things that I had to work through with like, you know, reading and meditation. And so now I'll do daily meditation, meditation in the morning just to reset myself so that I can prepare for what is to come. But I also do evening meditation, almost like an audit of what happened during the day. Conversations, you know, mistakes I may have made and how can I make them better? I try to
00:14:03
Speaker
glean a lesson from every day, the experiences of every day in some way, so that I might move forward and not make the same mistake. You know, one of my, one of my sayings is, don't make the universe teach you the same thing twice. Right? It's okay to learn at once.
00:14:23
Speaker
But don't make the universe teach it to you twice. And I think one of the most effective ways to do that is to take a moment to get off of the mechanism of living, to take a step back and reflect.
00:14:39
Speaker
And think about, like, what did I learn today? You know, oh, you know what? I could have said that in a better way. And then perhaps that person would have received that better. Or that thing that that person said to me that triggered a defensive response in the moment, let me really consider it and divorce myself from the initial feeling of vulnerability and think about what was their intention in saying,
00:15:03
Speaker
probably not to enter, there was probably something good there. What can I learn from that? So it's like those sources. It's also interesting talking to you because you're very much a practitioner. You're giving a lot of strategies and techniques and particular examples of how those work, which I really appreciate that. I'm a practitioner, but also a scholar. And it's interesting to see you've kind of, in my eyes, refined or taken all the bits of value and employed them and used them. So one of the reasons
00:15:32
Speaker
I wanted to talk to you is you have this, this, this wonderful piece, this wonderful YouTube video about overcoming imposter syndrome and fear of failure. And that goes over some of these strategies. So I want to go through those one by one, but just in that conversation or in what you just mentioned, there were some interesting things I was thinking was first is this kind of stoic idea of attention, right? So if you're looking for villainy, if your attention is on villainy, you're going to find it. And another was this idea of kind of framing, which is a thing I've been thinking about a lot.
00:16:00
Speaker
And I've been thinking about humans as kind of storytellers and our value system is kind of this story we're telling about ourselves, about what matters, about what's going to happen. And I mean, so one thing that you're hitting on with this meditation, I think is this kind of opportunity to reframe things. It's opportunity to get kind of autonomy back over the story you're telling of what's gone on. I think that's all really cool. So to get to this, to get to this video and we were talking about, so
00:16:27
Speaker
I don't know if you want to introduce or talk about it a bit. This is the one that you did on overcoming fear of rejection, overcoming imposter syndrome. And yeah, maybe just frame why you thought that was important to talk about. We'll get through the strategies. Absolutely. So for listeners, I am a screenwriter, comic book author, television writer, producer, and I'm pretty active on Twitter, at least in terms of social media. And I often get questions about writing, but sometimes I get questions that are a bit more personal.
00:16:53
Speaker
career advice, people who want some perspective on an experience they've had, that kind of thing. And one of the questions I would get a lot was about, when do you know you're good enough?
00:17:06
Speaker
When does that click happen? And I would get it often and I would respond in DMs or I respond to my timeline, but I would get questions of that sort so often that I felt like maybe just having a resource that was up there for anyone to access would be better. So I have this YouTube that I don't do very much on. It's not a revenue stream. It's just, you know, when I feel beat and I haven't felt the need in a couple of years, but I put a video on my YouTube that was all about imposter syndrome.
00:17:32
Speaker
how to deal with it, move through it, the recognition of it and that sort of thing, you know, and just try to, in very simple terms, not prescribe, but essentially just share the techniques, the practices that I use to move through the threshold of imposter syndrome in the hopes that it would help other people. And it seemingly has been a benefit to a lot of people.
00:17:55
Speaker
And that's great. You know, I appreciate it. I still get the occasional retweet out of the occasional, you know, DM of gratitude from some. So yeah, that's the nature of that video. And what struck me about it was how stoic it was or how I felt like there was this stoic ethos running through it. So the first kind of exercise or the first method or idea, I guess that you presented was you are what you do.
00:18:21
Speaker
And this resonated with me because, you know, there's these wonderful lines in Epictetus about how if you want to be a runner run, or if you want to be an architect, build houses, if you want to be a philosopher, kind of do philosophy like people are, if you want to become anything, you must practice that and participate in it, build that skill. So I mean, maybe you could talk a bit about more about that.
00:18:42
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, Evitidis was certainly an influence on that concept, right? And so, what we're really talking about is an empowering identity, right? How to forge an empowering identity, especially now in these days. Because these days, I see a lot of people placing so much of their identity into things that they could not control.
00:19:09
Speaker
whether it's gender, race, the societal cultural differences that we have that do have their importance. But many of those were things that we were simply born with, which we can use and they can be empowering with the right perspective. But I strongly feel that identity is action.
00:19:31
Speaker
Like, if you wish to have the identity of a carpenter, then one must perform carpentry. And I would rather be the worst carpenter in the kingdom than one who dreams of working with wood. Because the worst carpenter can get better.
00:19:53
Speaker
You know, if you make something on Monday and it's not good, you can make it again on Tuesday, it'll be a little better, so on and so forth. By the end of the week, you're much better at making the thing you tried on Monday. If you simply dream of working on wood, you have not changed. You know, you have not gotten better, you know, in the journey. So I think what prevents a lot of people from beginning attack is the sense that they will only be the thing
00:20:21
Speaker
once they accomplish the great work, right? Once the magnum opus is done, then you're crowned the thing. And that's just not how I choose to look at it. I think that identity is action. And, you know, you can always improve, but in order to improve, you have to start. So for someone that wants to be a writer, my prescription is right.
Empowering Identity through Action
00:20:48
Speaker
And then you'll want to be a better writer, a more successful writer, but carrying that definition of yourself as a writer will help empower the action that you're taking. Don't wait for your identity because of some arbitrary success metric that you may not be able to control when it comes. Because, give you a pragmatic example, because I'm very much about the pragmatic application of this thing.
00:21:15
Speaker
So I know now that if I go to a bar and I get a cocktail napkin in a big pit and I start jotting down an idea, well, I'm a professional writer with some shiny fancy credits and that napkin has value because of all of these different things, you know, one would say. But
00:21:37
Speaker
I had to do that at the beginning of my journey when I didn't have any of the fancy credits, when I was still living in Missouri, when I didn't have any real connection to LA, but I needed to believe in the sanctity of work. So I needed a definition of being a writer. And the other benefit of adopting that and making really the only kind of measure of that identity being action itself is once you take that action, you're not on the legacy of whatever that identity is.
00:22:08
Speaker
So now instead of looking on the other side of let's say, let's say Ryan, for example. So instead of looking at Ryan as, wow, he's a really successful writer.
00:22:19
Speaker
I'd like to be like him. I'd like to have that. I'd like to be a writer. But if I haven't started writing, we're always on two other sides of things, right? There's a fence between us, an arbitrary fence. But if I'm a writer, I'm the same as he is. Now, I'm not as accomplished or as successful, you know, if you're at the beginning of your journey, what have you, but you're on a scale now.
00:22:39
Speaker
And then a library, a bookstore, isn't simply a place where you can purchase the work from people who are doing something you want to do. It's like a dojo, right? That you can walk into as a martial artist. Even if you have a white belt, you can enter the dojo, you know? And that just for me,
00:23:02
Speaker
really helped me in those moments where I had to have the candle flame of belief against the winds of inner and outer doubt, right? And so I think just deciding that you are a thing, you know, like if a person's out of shape, for instance, don't say, well, I'm gonna get in shape and I'm gonna be an athlete. Say you're an athlete right now, and you might be out of shape, but athletes get back into shape all the time.
00:23:31
Speaker
But if you just make that mental switch of I'm an athlete, and yeah, I might have to start with 25 pounds instead of 45 pounds, but it's amazing what that gateway, just by lifting that, by allowing yourself, giving yourself permission to have that identity, it opens up so much possibility in the mind. Yeah, wonderful. So I'm a martial artist myself, so I'm very partial towards the martial arts analogies.
00:24:00
Speaker
I think about this idea of, you know, what's the difference between some, a white belt and somebody who's not a white belt. There's no difference. Both of them, like, or let's say a white belt on their first day, you know, they, both of them have never done the martial art before. Both of them has zero skill. But what it is, is it's a, as you talked about, it's an identity difference. It's because, well, I am, uh, I'm at the beginning. I'm at the first step of this journey. So I'm putting on this belt. I'm a white belt at this, at this art.
00:24:28
Speaker
That's a profound difference. And there's, there's these, these memes that go around about like the white belt is the hardest belt. And I'm not sure if that's, if that's true, but there's certainly something to be said about that is a big jump of kind of clearing that. Purdle of a, of an identity shift. And you hit on kind of two things, which is one is like.
00:24:45
Speaker
There is an incredible motivating power to giving yourself permission to think of yourself that way. And then the other is kind of this, I think this anti imposter syndrome thing of like, if you are writing, if you are exercising, you already are a writer. It doesn't have to be, I guess for writers, maybe it's the first book or first script, or maybe when you're living, doing nothing else. I'm sure there's these kinds of benchmarks that people measure against each other, but.
00:25:09
Speaker
The idea being, I guess your idea is that in so far as you are participating in that task, you are at the very least a white belt. And in that sense, you are a martial artist, you are a writer. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's we tend to undervalue or completely devalue the level of beginner. But the level of beginner is no less valid than the level of master. You cannot be a master without becoming a beginner.
00:25:37
Speaker
So the path to mastery begins by being a beginner. So it has equivalent value. And especially in Western culture, we tend to be so result-oriented.
00:25:51
Speaker
that we just undervalue any of the journey steps to get there. I remember when I was a white belt, I studied Taekwondo for a bit and got a black belt there. Then I kind of learned some other stuff here and there and what have you. And so it's been more mixed. I don't practice the martial arts as intensely as I used to, but I still carry it with me. And I remember I was going to spar this black belt, right? I was a white belt. And my Kwon Young-nim, the Korean equivalent of Sensei,
00:26:20
Speaker
want to be to spar this black belt." I was terrified. I was like, I'm going to spar a black belt. And Kwang and Im said, no, no, no. You don't want to spar a white belt, right? Because there's no point in having two beginners sparring each other. You want to spar a master.
00:26:38
Speaker
because you'll learn, because the master has mastered the art of not hurting you. And I looked at it like that, and I was like, oh, because in my mind, I'm thinking, well, I'll never be able to defeat this black belt in a spar. But then I realized that isn't the point. The point isn't defeating the black belt. The point is getting the experience from the match. And from there,
00:27:07
Speaker
I've kind of applied that to life across the board. Like I'm always looking to work with people that I know are better, that I know I can't quote unquote beat because coming through that, I'll have more skill. Rather than getting a victory as it were against someone that would be at my level where I would likely learn nothing, probably reinforce some bad habits, it's much better to push yourself.
00:27:36
Speaker
to get the experience of, you know, going head to head with an individual or a system or a project, what have you, that will be a very, be a very difficult experience initially, because you'll come out of that learning more, you know, and those minutes will have more value. So, so yeah, so, you know, it's like, I didn't realize that a lot of these things were stoic principles until I did the reading and I was like, Oh, there's a whole, you know, school thought.
00:28:02
Speaker
here because before then most of my experience in philosophy was listening to Tool album which I still do big fan but I was like oh you know and so there's a continuity of this and so then I knew that was the kind of thing and that's when I started digging dip and digging deep I mean with like you know and and and so reading meditations and and and so much of it realized like oh okay cool
00:28:26
Speaker
Yeah. And this, this connects really well to the second kind of principle or strategy for becoming a writer, I guess, really developing any craft. Cause it really resonated with me as well, which you said, which was to commit yourself to the process, not the results. Right. And for me reading that, that really reminds me of the stoic idea of the dichotomy of control, this idea, you know, that we have our own internal development. We have our own progression and then.
00:28:51
Speaker
We can focus on that, or we can focus on, you know, beating the other person or being better or kind of the external accolades that come with that. But so, yeah, speak a bit to that idea. We must be cautious of victories as much as we are cautious of defeats. Because a victory can be a defeat if you're not, you know, analyzing it properly and thinking through it properly. And by that, I mean,
00:29:17
Speaker
If we are able to succeed, but we sort of know that the reason we succeeded was we may have gotten lucky. You know, we might've been able to find a loophole, and we got a result. And the world around us praises the acquisition of the result, but we don't want to turn that into a life strategy.
Preparing for Success and Philosophy in Film
00:29:36
Speaker
I mean, embrace luck when it comes, but don't factor luck into your strategy, right? And I've known a lot of people, this happens in my business often,
00:29:45
Speaker
where someone will, a bartender, writes a script for the first time. And because they just have an instinctual understanding of movies, or they just really understand the story, or Brad Pitt really wants to play an assassin, and you have a script about an assassin, you know, the planet's a line, and now you've sold the script for a bunch of money, and you're the two-week toast of the town, and all of that,
00:30:11
Speaker
But it's easy to lull yourself into thinking that, oh, well, I'll just do it again the same way I did this without remembering this is still your first script. So perhaps the first visit shouldn't be to the Ferrari store.
00:30:28
Speaker
maybe it should be to the Writers Guild of America to see if you can meet with other writers who have done it multiple times so that they can teach you about the business that you don't understand, teach you about some technique that you might need, or if you're in that meeting with a celebrity who responded to your script,
00:30:49
Speaker
don't just absorb the praise. Remember, you're speaking to a person that has read hundreds of scripts. They may not be a writer, but they've read a lot of scripts. And you have an opportunity to ask that person a question and get real wisdom. But if we are lulled into passivity through victory, then it's easy to convert a victory to a defeat. A lot of people in my business are defeated by victory.
00:31:19
Speaker
because there tends not to be a gradation of success in Hollywood. There tends to be none and then too much. That's just how it sort of goes. So preparing yourself for victory is really important.
00:31:35
Speaker
If you get one, you know, again taking the time to meditate on it, audit it, be very honest with yourself about exactly how that came to be. You know, if it was a lot of luck, be grateful for the luck, but see how you can learn to eliminate the necessity of luck from your strategy, right?
00:31:55
Speaker
So if an agent walked into the bar and they happened to like the shirt I was wearing and we had a conversation and oh, I'm a writer and someone's looking for a script, the lesson from that is I should probably talk to more agents. You know, I happened to be in a situation where I had a conversation that led to an opportunity. It doesn't mean go back to the bar. It doesn't mean buy the bar.
00:32:19
Speaker
What it means is put yourself in the position to have more of those conversations because the more of those conversations you have, the more opportunity you might find, right? So it's like, you know, it's like that sort of thing. And stoicism is incredibly important to me because it keeps me even through these processes.
00:32:38
Speaker
And for someone listening to this, if you're interested in a career in the performing arts, or really any industry where it's a feast or famine economy, we tend to strengthen ourselves against famine, but we also don't prepare for feast. And it's very important to prepare for success. It does two things.
00:33:02
Speaker
One, when success comes, you've already thought through what you would do, so you're not blindsided by the opportunity that you have. You know how to explore it because you've thought about it at least. The second aspect is, if you prepare yourself for success subconsciously, you're making a commitment to the idea that you will succeed.
00:33:27
Speaker
which reinforces your sense of identity and can help you do the work during the hard time. So it's that sort of thing. These things aren't really taught in film school. Unfortunately, there isn't a necessary philosophy requirement for film school, and there really should be.
00:33:44
Speaker
Like I've gleaned far more day-to-day from the study of philosophy than I have from a lot of academic rigors I've had to go through. Not that they didn't have value, of course they had value. But I do think that we undervalue the necessity of philosophy. And it's one of those things that I'm constantly talking about because I think it applies to those at the very beginning of their journey and also those who've already achieved a lot of things because we still struggle with the same thing.
00:34:13
Speaker
practice Stoicism with Stoa. Stoa combines the ancient philosophy of Stoicism with meditation in a practical meditation app. It includes hundreds of hours of exercises, lessons, and conversations to help you live a happier life. Find it available for a free download in the Play Store and App Store. Yeah, I think for myself, perhaps, because I'm kind of
00:34:35
Speaker
I don't know at the beginning of my own journey is correct, but I don't know if I've hit the feast point yet. I've always conceptualized it as a way to deal with the famine. And this is quite insightful. And I was thinking about the stoic idea of negative visualization, which is like walk through a potential bad things that might happen so that you're prepared for them to come. And you're almost presenting a kind of positive visualization. We feel like imagine yourself being successful and imagining, you know, not succumbing to the temptations or not becoming egotistical or not letting yourself
00:35:05
Speaker
It go to your head. I've never heard of that discussed before, but it does strike me that that's quite important, right?
Pursuing Excellence over Validation
00:35:11
Speaker
Because the stoic view as, as we were talking about is this focus on process, not results. And it's just as easy to be knocked off by a bad result as it is to be kind of, you know, tempted by a good one. Absolutely. And I, and I think that both are very important. I think that negative and positive visualization are equally, I seek out balance and all things.
00:35:32
Speaker
I certainly practice negative visualization because it gives me a dry run of preparation, which is very important. But I also practice positive visualization for the same reason, so that I am not without an idea of how I want to act regardless of what comes my way.
00:35:56
Speaker
Not that I am married to that idea. That idea is always malleable, right? But it's good to have a strategy, I think, in both cases.
00:36:07
Speaker
Awesome. And I think this connects well with the third point. So they keep leading into, it's, it's this nice coherent, consistent system that feeds into each other really well. Cause the third point you had was the quote was to seek excellence, not validation. And it's, you know, so it's not a kind of evenness, like it's not a kind of numbness. It's not like, Oh, I don't care if bad things happen. I don't care if good things happen because I don't care about anything. It's not a nihilism, but it's an attachment to.
00:36:36
Speaker
and perhaps the excellence of the process, the excellence of the art, rather than an attachment to a validation of external things. Is that correct? Yeah, it's the retention of agency, right? Because if one lives for and from validation, you are now handing your agency to external factors.
00:36:58
Speaker
and you're going to not work to become better at your pursuit, you're going to work to receive more validation.
00:37:09
Speaker
which then gets into the vicissitudes of pleasing the various personalities around you to make sure you get the smile or you get the attaboy or the attagirl, which you may indeed get for a little bit, but you're not necessarily getting better. But the only thing that, not the only thing, but one of the things that no one can take away from you is skill.
00:37:34
Speaker
that you've acquired, right? You mean, you know, if you take the greatest blacksmith in the kingdom and remove him from the castle and then drop them off into a forest, well, he can still forge his own weapon and make his way back to Camelot, right? Make her way back to Camelot, right? Because it wasn't the pat on the shoulder from Arthur that gave this person agency. It was the skill to forge the sword.
00:38:01
Speaker
And so validation is nice. I don't, you know, don't reject validation. I'm grateful for it. I think living by gratitude is one of the most important things you can do, but I always make sure to delineate validation from excellence, you know, like, and so daily meditation, kind of the, the daily objective as objectives, you can be consideration of your actions, the effect of your actions, where you could have done better, you know, where you've improved.
00:38:29
Speaker
When you develop that and you really practice that in a daily way, you can trust your inner sense of, you know what, I need to get better at this thing. Even though I made a ton of money on this project, I never really felt like I knew what I was doing.
00:38:44
Speaker
So I'm going to take the time that I can convert the money to, right? The exchange rate of things, right? I'm going to exchange some of this money, not for goods, but for time and take this time to work on those aspects of my practice that I could be a little better, you know? And maybe because I did this cool thing and I'm getting this validation,
00:39:10
Speaker
I can use that validation to gain access to someone that I know is excellent at the thing that I know I need to improve. So comedy in my work is not a natural thing for me. My work is not naturally funny, but comedy is a very important part of storytelling. Even if you're not telling a funny story, you want to balance out the experience for the audience. If something is always scary, for instance, all the time,
00:39:35
Speaker
Well, it's going to stop being scary because you get diminishing returns. So you need to let the audience breathe. And that's when, you know, comedy is useful. But if you don't feel very good at doing it, then take the moment where you've received the validation and you've got that momentum and then seek out someone who's excellent at comedy. Say, hey, I have some questions. This thing I wrote worked.
00:39:58
Speaker
I kind of know why seven of these 10 things work. These three things worked and they were funny, but I'm not sure how they work. Can you help me understand how they worked or help me understand if they could work better? What have you? So that's, that's what I mean. Validation is very seductive. Like for me, validation wears an excellent black dress designed by Tom Ford. Impossible to resist.
00:40:22
Speaker
But I always make sure that I don't let the validation replace the pursuit of excellence because ultimately that's what's going to allow me to maintain my agency because validation will come and validation will go. There's an ebb and flow to all of that, but there isn't an ebb and flow to your gained ability.
00:40:46
Speaker
You know, like regained ability can stay with you as long as you practice daily and you know, you're always seeking to strengthen that skillset. Now change is constant. So if you don't do anything, then it'll actually feel like anything else will, but if you have the ability to maintain and grow your excellence and to, so don't let validation distance you from that because the short term gain from, you know, wrapping up in the, in the call of the sirens.
00:41:13
Speaker
Ultimately, that's not going to bring Odysseus back home. Which is ultimately the goal, right? The goal is for Odysseus to go back home. So that's what I mean by that.
00:41:24
Speaker
I'm thinking even too about this idea of like mentorship and kind of checking your ego and because it seems to me, one of the big things I'm taking away from this conversation, which I'm really, really enjoying is we always talk about stoicism in terms of like hardships, bad things. And you're talking about it as this way to navigate success or positive transformation, you know, gracefully or well or suitably. And I think that's really interesting and empowering.
00:41:51
Speaker
And I'm thinking even just this idea you brought about like, seek out a mentor and it's one thing.
00:41:55
Speaker
When you're a total novice, there's this idea of seeking out, like talking to James Cameron when you're a total novice is probably just hard because you feel embarrassed, you feel like you don't deserve to talk to him. But then there's kind of this opposite problem where now you're a successful writer, but now you have to admit you're not good at comedy and you have to go and talk to the comedy person. So it's the same process of seeking out a mentor, but it's on different sides and it's kind of a different ego obstacle. Correct. Yeah. And, you know, the way I've kind of looked at it for a very long time is
00:42:25
Speaker
If someone is harsh in response to an earnest question about their life passion, their work ethic, their practice, well, that's got nothing to do with me. That's about their relationship through their own skill set, right? They know and it is not my task to ascertain people's intention, but just to remember that
00:42:50
Speaker
all intentions are possible and to not internalize the event of it. So a person may not feel like they really have gained mastery. And so when you ask them a question, they might have a defensive response.
00:43:04
Speaker
because they don't really have a good answer to your question, which might manifest as rudeness or a dismissive moment, but again, nothing to internalize, right? Yeah, I mean, again, you have to be like, it's like really, when I say you are what you do, that also means really define that identity too, right? Like don't put ego in status because status is relative, right? And so once again, we're handing over agency.
00:43:32
Speaker
I let my ego live in the discipline itself, like the discipline of the discipline. And so I have a requirement, if I believe I have an opportunity to gain knowledge, I feel like I have a requirement to make the attempt to get it, which is far stronger than my need to protect myself against what I don't know.
00:43:58
Speaker
A lot of it is, which master do I not want to fail?
00:44:03
Speaker
You know, there's the master that says you must protect your ego at all costs. Okay, cool. But then there's the other master that says you have a responsibility to your discipline to take these moments to be better, right? And then I think about what is the nature of each master's kingdom, and then it's pretty easy to make the choice of which one to serve, you know? So then the samurai goes to the other emperor who's like, pursue excellence, not necessarily the emperor that's like, we should get more praise.
00:44:31
Speaker
And yeah, that's, that's, that's kind of how, cause you know, the elimination of ego is impossible because of human psychology. But I do think the understanding of where it lives and then moving it somewhere else that is more directly productive for you is, you know, something that we can kind of move to do every day.
Committing to Identity Amid Doubts
00:44:52
Speaker
Sure.
00:44:53
Speaker
Yeah. Awesome. And so when we're talking about these ideas, we're talking about these strategies, one thing that I'm thinking, or I'm just wondering in your own experience, which of these have you struggled the most with or which of these, you can see other people doing it and you were like, I was there. I also had trouble getting there. Hmm. I think honestly the first, because once I, once I, I don't know, I won't say I mastered it, but once I made a commitment to
00:45:20
Speaker
making my identity what I was doing, everything else became easier. Not that the task itself became easier, but the act of approaching the task became easier, right? So the first was the hardest one for me, because I felt so very not what I wanted to be, right? I was in the Midwest, I wasn't in the West Coast, I wasn't gamefully employed in this business, so it all just felt like fantasy.
00:45:49
Speaker
And that was reinforced by people in my life, you know, both people who like cared about me and were genuinely concerned that I would be wasting my time pursuing something that they didn't understand and certainly didn't think was possible or people that.
00:46:05
Speaker
didn't care about me that were offended by the burgeoning, you know, sense of confidence that I would have and, you know, felt a need to kind of pull that down into their insecurities and all of that, right? So you have all these different things that are happening around you influencing you at the same time. And so stepping into the identity of storyteller, of writer was very, very difficult. And what helped was I started a blog.
00:46:34
Speaker
And I would just write short stories on the blog. It was years ago, back when like blogger was a thing. And then I would just share these stories.
00:46:43
Speaker
And I would go to forums that were interested in the same subject matter I was writing about, and I would just post a link to the stories and share with people. And these were all strangers, because they were strangers. They didn't care about Brian Hill. They didn't care about Brian Hill's estimation of his ability. They wanted to read like a cool story. And if it was cool, they'd be like, this was cool. And then they would share it. And that, you know, my relationship to readers was through the work itself.
00:47:09
Speaker
But if someone is reading your story and having an emotional experience with the story that they believe is valid, that, you know, they're grateful to have your writer, you told the story, well done. And so just taking that step of doing that, of being a writer kind of outside of my daily sphere.
00:47:26
Speaker
online where I had the power of the anonymity that helped reinforce that. So kind of conquering that first threshold, it makes everything else kind of like part of the practice at that. Like the hardest thing to do is to sign up for the karate class. Everything else is easier than that. You know, the hardest thing to do is to sit down, talk to the sensei, observe the class, go in, sign the contract, and then show up.
00:47:57
Speaker
Like once you do that, a lot of it gets dignified. You know, like that first day you go there, you know, maybe you have Karate Kid on the mind, you're worried about John Kreese is going to show up and are you gonna punch wood into your knuckles, bleed, get carried out in the stretcher. Like you've got all of these, these, these imagination things happening in your head, right? All those, all these things that haven't happened yet that now you're terrified about because they could happen. And then you go.
00:48:23
Speaker
And you have a pleasant day at your martial arts class. You meet a couple of people who you're like, oh, I like this person. This is cool. You know, you start to see like, oh, wait a minute. I'm not the only white belt here. There's far more white belts than there are black belts.
00:48:38
Speaker
All of these things get demystified, and it's easier to keep going. And from then, the push-ups, the sit-ups, the stretching, the kata, the sparring, the technique, the belt tests, all of it, that gets a lot easier. They just become tasks that you're set to accomplish. So the first thing is just making that commitment to putting the key on, tying the white belt, standing in the mirror, and saying you're a martial artist, even if all you know how to do is sit cross-legged. Still a martial artist.
00:49:07
Speaker
Right? And then you'll learn something on Tuesday. That will make you a little better, right? You know, it's like a phenomenal martial artist friend of mine told me that all you really need is a good front snap kick. And, you know, and by that he meant was, I know a lot of stuff. You know, I, you know, he has like multiple degrees. And so he was really telling me, yeah, sure, I know all these techniques and they're really great.
00:49:30
Speaker
but you have a good front snap kick, you know, that's 70% of the game. Unless you're fighting someone else who has a better front snap kick or better defense, but if they do, you guys should probably talk it out. Why are you fighting? That was kind of the philosophy, like, yeah, like. Sure, a better martial artist might be better than you, but if you guys will practice well, you shouldn't be fighting anyway. What's the problem?
00:49:56
Speaker
Well, I like that. I like that idea of the, the mystification. You were talking about this at the start about like thinking of yourself as a writer. And as you said, a lot of that becomes demystified. And as you were here on the end, you know, a lot of it's pretty basic. A lot of it as the front snap kick or just the pushups and the sit ups are just showing up.
Stoic Themes in Writing and Creative Process
00:50:12
Speaker
But it's that first kind of jump that really resonates with me.
00:50:16
Speaker
So this has been really, really interesting, but one thing I wanted to ask about looping it back to your, to your actual writing. So I was wondering if, if stoic ideas or this philosophy, is this manifested in kind of the stories you choose to tell, or how does philosophy work itself into the kind of narratives you think are interesting?
00:50:34
Speaker
Well, you know, in terms of thematics, I think it shows up a lot. You know, I often write about characters that are unmoored and find their foundation through purpose, which, you know, certainly speaks to strong aspects of stoicism. I mean, Aurelius kind of speaks about that. But, you know, it also, it also helps the practice itself. You know, like just making that daily commitment to making pages happen.
00:51:01
Speaker
Right? Like, that's an important thing. Or if I'm like, I recently, semi recently wrote a graphic novel about white supremacist movements in California, it was like a crime thriller, it's called American Carnage. Right? Now in order to do that, as a writer, I had to be everybody in the story.
00:51:22
Speaker
I have to be characters that I would personally loathe. I would have to invest them with heart and soul. And so to gain a bit of stoic distance from the personal feelings around these things, and again, reframe to the task on it, incredibly, because I think it makes the storytelling better. It allows me to, without any fear,
00:51:49
Speaker
fully realize a villain in a story without feeling like I am sloppily taking on sympathetic aspects of these characters I'm writing. And so, yeah, it helps in many ways. I think it shows up in the work. I show up in some of the characters I choose to write when I'm on the assignment writing that I do. I mean, you're bat bands and that kind of thing. I kind of gravitate to
00:52:15
Speaker
to those characters for sure. But yeah, you know, it's both in the thematics that I'll engage in the work and it's also in terms of how I approach the work itself and, you know, how I see the nobility of the task and kind of understand it as such. So, you know, it yields many, many, many benefits. Yeah, I hadn't really thought of that before, kind of the emotional weight or difficulty of
00:52:41
Speaker
writing a compelling villain and I guess a kind of radical, I don't know, radical empathy. I don't know how you'd say it, like getting in that mindset, adopting a different paradigm. Yeah. And, and it also helps in terms of research. I mean, for the kinds of stories I write, I'm often talking to, you know, I'll use a pleasant adjective, unsavory people, because I need that experience for the storytelling. And when you are
00:53:07
Speaker
willfully inserting yourself into a potentially combative situation. I don't mean physical combat, I mean psychological combat, what have you. Having a little bit of a stoic focus helps. If I'm meeting with someone who thinks that I'm a tourist of their world and will seek to trigger me as an amusement, almost like a test.
00:53:32
Speaker
You know, like, if you're meeting with a professional criminal who's reformed but now willing to meet with you, or I've met with murderers who were in prison to do research, I've met with current members of
00:53:47
Speaker
white supremacist movements for that graphic novel. I've met with police for stories and some of them had assumptions about how I felt about them, based on external factors.
Words, Hesitancy, and Bold Action
00:54:00
Speaker
And you get into these situations where people will try to trigger you. And to be able to anticipate
00:54:07
Speaker
what someone may say is very helpful. So when they say it, you've already thought through how you're going to respond to it. Now, it's like that, it's like that sort of that classic thing you sort of see on Twitter a lot, you know, about how, you know, being offended is a choice. And it is, right? One of the ideas, current ideas, I wish we would challenge a little bit and just kind of see where the challenge goes is the concept that a word in and of itself
00:54:36
Speaker
will always cause injury because I don't believe that's true, but I do believe it can be true in practice if you acquiesce to that concept.
00:54:51
Speaker
And if society keeps telling you that a phrase or a word is injurious to you, and if you hear it, then you must respond as if you are threatened. Eventually, you'll believe that, and you'll reinforce that, and you give insults way too much power. You're handing the trolls a flaming sword and then wondering why they keep using it.
00:55:17
Speaker
And so all of those things help frame my action. And it keeps me bold. I'm praising Mr. Holiday a lot on this because I'm a big fan of his work and I'm really happy to see how he's made dusty books accessible to a lot of people. I think his work has real value. And yeah, there's so much now that we
00:55:41
Speaker
we sort of assume to be true that's taking away our power, but being told that it's giving us more power, but it's not really. And so that leads to a hesitancy. And I think hesitancy is the enemy of success. I believe in strategic action, but oftentimes strategic bold action. And we've got to be able to do that. So that's another aspect I think is incredibly important, especially when you want to carve a life less ordinary for yourself.
00:56:11
Speaker
Because a life outside of a pattern is bold action by definition. And timidity, an over emphasis on self preservation, when it's not necessary to think about the complete preservation of self, will hinder your progress. It'll hinder yourself artistically, you're directing an actor and the actor is very combative.
00:56:39
Speaker
you'll be hesitant to engage. Not that you should argue, but you'll be hesitant to engage at all because, you know, you've sort of adopted a strategy of timidity, but you might need bold action. It's okay to stand in front of someone and say, I will speak to you, but I will speak to you once you recall. That's fine, right? That's an okay thing to say rather than this person is angry and upset and saying harmful things. So now I need to run to a third party.
00:57:08
Speaker
I'll say finally on this point is there's one thing that I wish modern society would re-examine closely is the idea that feeling as if you are in danger is the same as actually being in danger because it's not.
00:57:48
Speaker
And most of the time you'll find that a lot of that list you can mitigate
00:57:53
Speaker
those events with some choices. There might be two or three things that are genuine risks, but it's all about qualifying it. When you're uncomfortable, you're not unsafe. That's my theory. And I wish that we as a society would examine our relationship to comfort because I think that is hindering a lot of our individual progress. And then also by effect, the collective progress of society. Well, especially because of the point you're saying where
00:58:22
Speaker
when you want to do kind of unordinary things or extraordinary things, then you have a lot greater issues with, there's a lot more situations where comfort becomes an issue, right?
Conclusion and Where to Follow Brian Hill
00:58:33
Speaker
Absolutely. Because you break from these established patterns, as you were saying. That was great. I think that's a really nice spot to end off. But before we go, and I wanted to kind of see, so you mentioned having an active Twitter.
00:58:45
Speaker
You have a YouTube, which, you know, I, so where if people want to hear more, they want to interact with your work, they want to, they want to learn more about what you do, where should they go? And maybe some recommendations about, you know, if they want to read some of the work you've done, they want to watch some of the shows you've written on, which ones do you recommend they start with?
00:59:04
Speaker
I'm most active on Twitter and my Twitter account is very easy. It's just my name. It's at Brian Edward Hill. Brian with a Y. At Brian Edward Hill, I talk to a lot of readers and viewers of, you know, my content there and have really, really great conversations with also like, you know, other writers and other creators will have threads that are great. So that's probably the best place to find me.
00:59:27
Speaker
The YouTube is the Hill administration, which doesn't get a lot of updates. I may indeed put something on it new at some point in the near future, but there's some stuff on there that might be of interest. If you're curious, you can kind of play through those. In terms of work, well, currently I am a writer and producer on a HBO Max series called Titans, superhero show about Nightwing Dick Grayson, who was the first Robin of Batman and his group of superhero friends.
00:59:55
Speaker
battling bad guys and saving the day. But there's a lot of stoicism in it, honestly, because the journeys that those characters have to take, the darkness they have to go through, they have to rely on personal philosophy to get there. In terms of writing, I've written works for DC Comics. That's probably best saved for Google. If you just type in Brian Hill Comics, a bunch of things will come up. But yeah, that's me in a nutshell. Awesome. It was great talking to you. Thanks so much for coming on. Fantastic talking with you as well. Have a good day. Thanks, Brian.
01:00:23
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Story Conversations. If you found this conversation useful, please give us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast platform you use, and share it with a friend. We are just starting this podcast, so every bit of help goes a long way.
01:00:39
Speaker
And I'd like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. Do check out his work at ancientliar.com and please get in touch with us at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback or questions. Until next time.