Transcript of Transform Anxiety into Creative Fuel: Insights from Josh Pais

What if I told you that your favorite teenage Mutant Ninja turtle could help you overcome fear and anxiety? Well, that's what this conversation today with Josh Pice is about. We go into a little bit of the history of him starting acting, but then we go into what he's doing with Committed Impulse, Helping People Overcome Fear and Anxiety. And then we end it with his book, Lose Your Mind. And we're going to talk about why being back and saying, I'm back, can solve a lot of problems. Ladies and gentlemen, I present my good friend, your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle, Josh Pice.

You're listening to Mic Unplugged, hosted by the one and only Mic Hunt. This is where purpose meets power and stories spark transformation. Mic takes you beyond the motivation and into meaning, helping you discover your because and becoming unstable. I'm Rudy Rush, and trust me, you're in the right place. Let's get Unplugged.

Josh, how are you doing today, sir?

I'm good. I'm good. Better now after that intro.

I should have also said he's a technical consultant who can fix all technical issues as well, but I don't want that huge bill, so I'm just going to let that go.

Okay. Yeah, we had a little glitch to get us going, but yeah. Absolutely. It just bonded us.

There you go. Josh, man, again, huge fan of you, of all the body of work that you've done. I mean, the things that you're doing now, I can honestly say I'm really passionate about, and we're going to get into that in this episode, man. But just honored to have you on, man. Your body of work is literally something that others can't say they've done, man. I want to give you your flowers while you're here, Josh.

Thank you, man. I really appreciate that. I really appreciate that.

I always ask my guests about something that I call your because, that thing that's deeper than your why. If I were to say, Josh, what's your why? You tell me. And then I say, Well, why are they your why? And you'd usually start that sentence with, Well, because, A, B, and C. I care about the because. So if I were to say, Josh, all the crazy cool things that you're doing to impact society, to give the betterment of people. What's your because? What's your purpose today?

My because is to have people get out of listening to how screwed up they are, to get people out of listening to how they're not good enough, out of listening to how that person wronged me and spending in mental traumas And because I want people to access their aliveness, their creativity, their playfulness, and really access what they have to offer the world, whether it's cooking a hamburger or solving a major scientific breakthrough that would handle global warming. Whatever it is, it's whatever that person wants to express is in them to bring forward. That's where my passion lies in everything that I do.

I love that, man. And hearing that, warms my heart because I'm just going to say it and go there. With your background, the things that you've done, a lot of people don't have that be caught. I don't mean this in a bad way when I talk about Hollywood at all, but people don't understand the grind of Hollywood and the competitiveness of Hollywood. And so a lot of times it's a me, me, me because it has to be me, me, me. And you're the complete opposite of that. When did you realize that this was your mission, that this was your purpose? When did you say, Oh, I'm different?

I remember telling my dad that I wanted to be an actor, and he was a physicist, a well-known theoretical physicist. We went away for the weekend. We were in Upstate New York, and he said, That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. And he said, But why? And it may have been the first time I really articulated it, but I just said that by creating different characters, even characters that are really dark or really elevated, that it's going to make the world better. Even if someone can see a dark side in a character, and if they have that in themselves, maybe they'll be like, Yeah, I have that, too. It's also one of the powers of acting, of watching a movie, of watching theater, when it's good, the audience, all their stories cease to exist. An audience comes to a performance hoping that the actors will engage them so much that they will leave their life and they'll enter another world. There's something really beautiful about that. I told him that and he was like, Okay, I'll pay for some acting classes.

Then you took over the world, right? Talk to us a little bit about you take acting classes, and then you get your first role. What was that moment like for Josh Bites?

The first movie I ever did was a movie called Jack Knife, and it was with Robert De Niro, who was... Especially for a young actor at that time, it was like, he's... Not that he's not still, but a God of this art form. I remember prior to that, I had done theater in little East Village basements where there was hard There were maybe 12 people in the audience, and the director was like, always speak loud enough so that the back row hears you. They were often boilers running, so we had to speak over that. I I auditioned, I got this movie, and we do a rehearsal with me and De Nero in front of the whole crew just so they can see how to light the scene. He says his line to me, and then I say my line to him so loud so that everybody, the people making coffee 50 feet away could hear me. And then he just spoke right to me, and then I spoke to everybody. And slowly, he started pulling me in to... Going from an amateur and a master to two people talking to each other. He pulled me in.

That was, seems obvious, but that was just a profound lesson of film, that it's just you and that other person. And it It was very simple, but it was a big learning lesson. I feel like that I'm such a student of this art form. Every job, I try to learn. I'm just trying to learn something. So much of this craft is unlearning, is getting out of your way, knowing how to step into the unknown. Because when actors step into the unknown and create In that moment, that's what engages an audience. The trap is to come in preset of how you're going to do something and then do it. It's like selling yesterday's bread at the It's just nobody's interested in that.

Talk to us, to the listeners and viewers. I talked earlier about the competitiveness of Hollywood. Talk to us a little bit about that because I have friends and I I've had guests on, and I've got to learn. You just think, Oh, you go for a role, and if they like you or you got enough resume, it's yours. You don't even have to audition. You just get those things. But tell us about the competitiveness of Hollywood.

Well, in a sense, I feel like I'm competing with myself. How can I bring... Because the idea of competing with someone else for a role is just... It doesn't make any sense, almost.

Because you don't physically compete. Yeah.

I mean, it's not like we put us both in the room and battled. Then that would be... But it's really like, how can I bring a part of myself so honestly and so fully and so spontaneously so that I'm not operating out of my mind, but I'm operating my gut, from my core, whatever that is, so that it's spontaneous. If I can do that, I feel like it's a win. Yeah. I mean, To some level, it's like all I can do is be my best, but the notion of competing with another person is just an abstract notion in that sense, because I'm just trying to do my best, they're doing their best. And then the creators have a vision. And assuming I do my best, that person does their best. If one of us fits the vision, then they're going to get the job. No matter how brilliant I was, if this other person was also brilliant and fits some vision, they're going to get the role. Yeah.

I heard a funny story a couple of months ago just on how you can nail an audition, but then you're like three inches too tall or three inches too short when it comes to the overall casting. And I was like, What?

Yes. You have to be a little crazy to go into this. The thing with rejection is that when you get rejected, and this really applies to everyone, when there's a rejection that happens, you don't get something that you really wanted, it's really key to feel it like a bee sting Feel the hurt. If you have to curse, whatever, feel it, and then clear the slate and be open as you can for the next whatever it is that you're going to do. And I've seen so many people, incredibly talented people, have a series of rejections, and they start to armor up, and they start to go into situations, hiding protecting themselves, and not letting people see them because they... And so it's so key to feel...

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It's not going to be pleasant, and then it's done. And then you open your heart up again and experiment.

No, I love that. And that's to me, almost like the perfect segment way to committed impulse. It's what I follow you most now for. I've given your site, your material, to several of my colleagues, to my peers, to my family. Thank you. Because you talk about something that I think is not just relevant, but we need to talk about it. You talk a lot about fear and anxiety. And I think a lot of times for, and I'm just going to say it, us as men, we don't know we're allowed to have those emotions. And one of the things that I've learned from you is that our brain, the neuroscience of our brain, its first priority is to keep us safe. Our brain is built to keep us safe. And so these emotions that we have usually are there because the brain is saying, We're not safe, we're not safe, so let's get anxious, or we perceive things as anxiety.

Yeah, and contract and withdraw.

All right. Talk to us about, one, why it's important for us to start having these conversations. And this, I don't mean just as men. I just mean even as adults, that when we're having anxiety, It's okay to talk about it. But there's things we can do to correct it. When we have fear, it's natural. And then there's some things to do about it. So one, I want to applaud you for bringing that to the forefront today because it's needed. But two, I want to talk about why you decided it was an important for us to do so?

I went to acting school, thanks to my dad. And then I returned to New York, where I grew up, and I started auditioning. And I I had so much fear. I had so much nervousness. I had so much anxiety. I had so many thoughts in my head of like, I can't do this. I've made a mistake. What am I going to do? So much. And it was just disastrous auditions because I would just go in there and be... My whole system was jumbled. And if I can tell just a quick story about my dad, He was a theoretical businessman who worked with Einstein and Niels Bohr and Oppenheimer and all those guys. When I was a little kid, I asked him about what his job was. I was sitting next to a table. You may have heard this. I've told this many times, but I was sitting next to a table and I said, What is your job? And he said, You see that table? I said, Yes. Do you see your knee? Yes. He said, The smallest part of that table and the smallest part of your knee are the same things, atoms. And he said, That's what I explore, the building blocks of the universe.

So I reflected on that story, that incident that happened when I was six, when I was in this panic of, Can I even be an actor? And I started to think, Well, if my body is made out of atoms, then emotions must somehow be integrated with atoms because it's all happening in this structure. And so I started experimenting, feeling the actual sensation of anxiety, of fear, of nervousness. Say nervousness, it was often like a pulsation energy behind my rib cage, increased heart pounding. But when I just felt The actual sensation or anxiety, like a swirling energy in my body, a little bit out of control energy. But when I just felt it without the judgment and the stigma and what we We've all been so immersed in a myth, which is that this is a good thing to feel, and this is a bad thing to feel. And that's what we have to undo, because we are designed, it's in our DNA to feel all these different emotions. And so by just me feeling the frequency, the energetic pattern, I was still feeling it, but I was actually really feeling it as opposed to identifying it and then trying to suppress it.

And then that started to become creative fuel. So regardless of what I was feeling, I could create with it as opposed to push it away, hold it as bad, pretend it wasn't there, and then try to work while I'm trying to hide something. And that really opened up so much for me. And really, people started asking me to teach. Years ago, it wasn't my intent. But the more we have to welcome every sensation. None of it is bad. If we can get the... All it is is a frequency. It's just an energetic pattern. And it's not good and it's not bad when you really feel it. It might be intense, but you can withstand it. And if we feel what's there, it will shift to something else and something else and something else.

I love that. And speaking of filling it in that shift, What are some signs? What are some visible signs or some feeling signs, some physical signs that people ignore that they shouldn't ignore when we talk about fear and anxiety?

Well, If we're feeling... We've never culturally learned to increase our tolerance for living in a human body. And living in a human body is living in a system that's vibrating. We've come to call those vibrations this emotion or that emotion. And we have to know if we ignore it, we're not ignoring it. We're just suppressing it and pushing it into a part of our body. And over time, that part of our body is going to get tight, and then it's going to get painful, and then it's going to be like a knot. And it's all a motion. It's just been, I'm not feeling that because I've got to be whatever, a powerful man or a powerful woman. And I don't want to show weakness. But the other thing is that when anyone rides the sensations that are there, they are Almighty. Even nervousness, even fear. If you just feel that charge, all it is is a charge. It's It's so authentic, and it just looks like power because you're honoring your humanity in that moment.

You hit on it a little bit earlier, and one of the things that I really took a ton of notes on when following you is you talk about riding the wave. You challenge us to ride the wave. For people that are listening or watching, how do we ride the wave? The wave in the moment? I might be in a boardroom meeting if I'm a leader, or I might be doing a pitch if I'm an entrepreneur, or if I'm an actor or a comedian, I might be going on stage. And so that emotion, that vibration is going to be there. I love that vibration, by the way. How do I write it? And why is it important to write it?

Well, first, I just want to say that when anybody in any of those situations that you mentioned, I call it putting your ass on the line. You're standing up in a boardroom, you're giving a pitch, you're a lawyer doing a closing argument, whatever it is, you're going on a date, whatever it might be, any Any of those situations, it's natural that the body is going to increase in vibration. As we extend further out into the world, we're going to vibrate more. And that doesn't mean that you're not ready. A lot of people are like, Oh, I'm feeling this, so I'm not professional. No, this is what happens to the human system. As you extend out, vibration increases. And it's really a matter of practicing, not only in that high pressure situation, but practicing throughout the day of just feeling what's there and welcoming it. And then when it increases in in those high pressure situations, stay connected to your audience. See who's there as you're feeling this. Very often we start to feel it and then it's, oh, no, we suppress it. As soon as we suppress it, we go into our Our head, and our head tells us that we suck and it's not going well.

Or we feel the charge, but we stay with our audience, we breathe, and we use that as fuel to give our pitch. We use it as fuel tool to do our closing argument. And if we can look at it as our system is giving us energy for this task and that it's all good, that's my message. It's like what we feel, it's all good. I'm not talking about a harsh situation. I'm just talking about the range of things that our body generates. If we can hold it as all good, because a lot of times in my classes, I'll say, in 100 years from now, you're going to be floating around and you're going to be like, Oh, anxiety. I remember anxiety. Oh, that was so cool.

No, I love it, man, because through you, I also realize that our vibrations are telling us stories or giving us signals. We call it nervousness. If I'm going on stage to deliver a keynote, I want that nervousness or I don't feel right. It's almost unnatural for me because you're right, it's energy. It's positive. I need that, and I know I'm going to nail it. It's when I'm very calm that it's like, oh, crap, I have no idea what's going on, or it doesn't feel good.

Or- Let me ask you, how did you make that transition? Because I would imagine early on that nervousness might have been like, oh, no. But At some point, how did you welcome it and use it?

Yeah, because I realized that it was one, telling me to take a deep breath and just pause in the moment. And then two, that energy was more just excitability. It wasn't what I considered nerves. It was anticipation. It was the energy that I needed to make sure I was focused on the moments. And so you helped me understand that, that, hey, write it because it's probably good. And like I told you, I got to a point now where I need it. I need that feeling where I don't feel right. And same thing with the relationships, right? It's like, when you get butterflies around that person, that special person. That's supposed to be there.

That's that thing.

It's helped me understand a lot. I owe you, bro.

Oh, man. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes, sir.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So you've been gracious with your time, but what else do you have going on? One, I'm going to send everyone to Committed Impulse. We're going to make sure we send people there because there's much, much, much more that you offer and that you have there from a coaching perspective.

I just happen to have this here, which is my book, which came out recently. It's called Lose your mind, the Path to Creative Invinciability. The Path to creative invincible. And that's the past year and a half has really been my focus, is really putting everything that we're talking about and a lot more into the book so that it's not just ideas, but there's exercises, there's different kinds of meditations that you can get, even with the hardcover book, with the QR code, it's also an audible. And I feel like this is my life's work, like what you asked about my because, it's all in this book.

And so that was going to be my final segue, going from the website to the book, because you do give It's almost like a manual, a workbook of tips, of strategies in Lose Your Mind. Talk to us, highlight one or two that you think are critically important that the book really goes into, because I want everybody that's listening, that's watching, to go get a copy of the book, and I'm going to have something cool for you in a moment, too. But what are a couple of things that are in this book that everybody needs to know?

One thing is there are four access points to presence, and the key one, I can go over all four, but maybe I'll just, for time, just touch on one of the key ones, which is there's a period When your mind take... And all the book is how to get out of so you're not listening to this nonsense all the time. And you may be in a situation and all of a sudden your mind has caught you and you're in some a mental drama, or you're thinking about later, or you think about what happened before, and you completely left what's in front of you. As soon as that happens, well, first of all, there's a period of time that you don't know you've left. You're just like, I don't know. Then as soon as you realize that your mind just grabbed you, in my classes, I have people say, I'm back. That is just training yourself to return to what is real, because this is the same crap day in, day out. As soon as it starts, I'm back, connect with what's in front of you, increase your breathing, connect to your body. And then as soon as your mind gets you again, I'm back.

And the more that you practice that, in the beginning, it might be shocking. You'll be, I'm back, I'm back, I'm back. But by simply practicing this, and there's exercises, like you said, all throughout the book, the window of not being caught up in your mind is starts to expand, and the light becomes an adventure. You have access to your creativity. You have access to whatever it is you want to do in the world, as opposed to listening to how you can't. And how you can't is not accurate, but that's one of the things that our mind will always drop down.

I'm writing that down.

Yeah, I'm back. It's like, back. I'm back. Yeah.

So here's what I want to do, Josh, because I know this book is impacting lives right now, and I do this for books that I love. So the first 20 people that message me, whether it's social media or if you have my email or if you have my number, first 20 people that message me, I'm back because I want to make sure that they were paying attention. I'm going to purchase a copy of the book for them.

Oh, man.

You're amazing. So 20 copies I'm purchasing for my listeners. I'm going to purchase 10 for myself because I have some family members that I think- Thank you. This book is going to be dynamic for. So 30 copies in total, I want to make sure I purchase those. But I'm back. I'm back. Message me, 20 people, I've got you.

Oh, man, that's beautiful. Thank you so much. That means the world to me, really.

You got it. Well, Josh, again, I know how busy you are, man. I'm honored to spend some time with you. Likewise. I love to have you back on so we can deeper into this. Yeah, let's do it. Because I'm totally dialed in on you, bro. Totally dialed in.

Let me know. You got it. I'm game. We can go into any area and Yeah, for sure.

Let's do it. Well, Josh, I appreciate you, brother. More than you know, thank you for taking the time to spend with us. Thank you. You got it. And to all the viewers and listeners, remember, your because is your superpower. For power. I'm Lisa.

That's another powerful conversation on Mic Unplug. If this episode moved you, and I'm sure it did, follow the show wherever you listen. Share it with someone who needs that spark, and leave a review so more people can find their because. I'm Rudy Rush, and until next time, stay driven, stay focused, and stay Unplugged.