From Proxy: Mic Chooses the Wrong Life
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It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Hey, everybody. As many of you know, I've been deeply interested in recent years by the practice of self-compassion, which sounds a little treacly, but actually, in my experience, is life-changing. There's a ton of scientific research to back this up. And one of the principal practices of self-compassion developed by the great Kristen Neff, the researcher who pioneered the concept of self-compassion and then led much of the research into it, one of the primary practices is called the Mindful Self-Compassion Break.

And the first step is to just wake up to the fact that you're suffering in some way or kicking your own ass. So the first step is mindfulness.

The second step I'm going to hold for a second because it relates to everything else I'm going to say. The third step is to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend, which is incredibly impactful. But back to the second step. The second step is something called common humanity. Just bringing to mind that whatever you're dealing with right now, no matter how bespoke or odd or idiosyncratic your issue is right now, there are millions of other people around

odds are, who are dealing with the same thing at this very moment. So it's that second piece of the mindful self-compassion break, this thing that Kristen Neff calls common humanity, that is at the heart of a new podcast that I want to introduce you to today. Here's the concept. If you've ever been in a situation where you have a problem,

And you have this feeling that you're alone in the problem that nobody else can relate and that you wish you could talk to one person who really, really understands it from the inside. So what if in that situation you had your own personal investigative journalist who would scour the world for the perfect stranger with just the right experience for you to talk to? I would have loved it back in 2004 if there was somebody else who could have talked to me about what it was like to have a Coke-fueled panic attack on national television. But anyway...

Back to this podcast I want to introduce you to. It's called Proxy, and it provides exactly the service I was just describing. It's hosted by Yo-Wei Shaw, who you may remember as one of the hosts of the NPR podcast Invisibilia, which was super, super popular but sadly went away. Yo-Wei

And on this new show, Proxy, Yo-A investigates your niche emotional conundrums and puts you into conversation with a proxy, a stranger who's been in nearly the exact same situation or has some expertise and can hopefully help you get unstuck. Yo-A calls it emotional investigative journalism, a term I've never heard before, but I really like it.

So that's what we're going to do for you today. We're going to bring you an episode of said emotional investigative journalism from proxy before we play you the episode of proxy. I do want to tell you about something I'm doing over on danharris.com all week at 4 p.m. Eastern. I'm going to be doing live guided meditations where I focus on specific forms of meditation that were designed by the Buddha as an antidote to anxiety.

as you may know there are four related meditation practices that are collectively known as the brahma viharas or divine abodes not my preferred branding but really i found these styles of practice to be immensely helpful in my own life and you can think of these four interrelated flavors of meditation as a way to take it easier on yourself and more skillfully navigate the world these

These styles of meditation have stood the test of time, having been practiced for 2600 years and are increasingly being validated by modern science, which suggests these practices can have psychological, physiological and even behavioral benefits.

So again, I'll be doing live guided meditations all week over at danharris.com. Like any good drug dealer, I give you the first dose for free, meaning Monday's session is open to everybody. And then the rest of the week is really just for paid subscribers. So you know what to do. Again, head on over to Dan Harris and get all the details. All right, enough out of me. Let's check out a new episode of this new show from Yo-Wei Shaw. It's called Proxy. Check it out.

One of the best purchases I've ever made is the Land Rover Defender. My family has owned Defenders for going on five years now. It's actually the car my wife drives. We have the black Defender. It's a very sleek vehicle. But to me, what's more important than the aesthetics is the safety. I just feel really good knowing that my wife and son are tooling around in such a sturdy, safe vehicle.

As the Defender folks say, it's a vehicle that looks tough because it is tough. And the inside is really comfortable and stylish. The new Defender 110 has five seats with the option of seven. And there are luxury choices you can make in terms of the seats.

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There are driver aid technologies which make driving and parking simpler. Next generation PIVI Pro infotainment system helps you make more of your world. Intuitive driver displays are customizable to your journey. There's a lot going on. A lot to recommend, Defender. Like I said, one of the best purchases my family and I have ever made. We really love this vehicle and I was very excited when they wanted to advertise on this show.

Design your Defender 110 at LandRoverUSA.com. You can visit LandRoverUSA.com to learn more about the Defender 110. Around my house these days, we're starting to think very seriously about our summer travel plans.

We may be a little bit behind the eight ball on this, but every summer we go out to the beach. We particularly love Montauk on the eastern tip of Long Island. I have nothing against hotels. There are some beautiful hotels out there that we've stayed at and really enjoyed. But for me, especially on a beach vacation, it's always great to get an Airbnb. A couple reasons for this, in my opinion. One, it's nice to be able to cook for yourself. Two, it's

It's nice to be able to get a place with other families. One of my favorite parts of life is being at the beach or really being anywhere with the people I love. It's so much more intimate and personal. When you're sharing a house with someone, you're really getting to spend time with them. And I find this irreplaceable, frankly.

It's great for the kids. Kids really get to, you know, entertain each other. And then the parents really get to talk in depth and do stuff together. You can put your home on Airbnb and make some extra cash when you're out vacationing. You get paid to vacation. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Hello.

Hey, Bedraggle Podcast spouse. What was your favorite thing about mixing this week's episode? Oh, my favorite part was that your your peep pops are way more under control. I guess I finally learned as an audio professional to not talk directly into the microphone. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Did you learn anything that you're going to put into practice? I don't know that I necessarily learned something that I could sum up in a single sentence, but

It definitely... We're trying to sell the show here, Kyle. Oh, you didn't let me finish. Yeah, I said nothing I could sum up in one sentence because I'm tired because I was up till midnight mixing this fucking thing. This is Proxy, and I'm Yo-Ai Shaw, your emotional investigative journalist. Today, the case of the man filled with regret for the life that got away. That's after the break. ♪

So there's this stereotype about Asians. The stereotype goes, Asian immigrant parent wants kid to be doctor or lawyer, while kid wants to do something that won't make money and won't bring honor to the family.

Something shameful. Like podcasting. My parents immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan in the 70s. And I assure you, they are complex, multidimensional people. My mom loves to wear crop tops. My dad loves to talk about how hot my mom is. But this is one stereotype they did conform to.

Unfortunately, I was terrible at math and was still calling my dad to do my homework by the time I got to college. I also have a terrible memory and would never have passed the bar exam. No, I decided to follow my heart and pursue my passion of long-form audio journalism, only to now read articles every week titled, "Has the Podcast Bubble Finally Burst?" But still, no regrets. I never ever think about being a lawyer or doctor.

The regret that I mostly hear around this is from people like my dad, who was a doctor but really wanted to be an artist.

Which is why I was really surprised to hear from an Asian with a version of the story I'd never heard before. Are you going to use video? Because if you do, I'm going to clean up a little bit more. Oh, I'm sorry. I should have told you. This is Mike Nguyen. He works in advertising. And he's also a comedian who's known on the internet for roasting himself for being a menswear dork. He calls his style American Prosperity Corps. How Americans dressed back when the middle class was prosperous.

So lots of blazers with hand-sewn buttonholes and Alden Cordovan horse leather loafers. I don't know what that means, but apparently it signals, hello, I take menswear very seriously. I do a fashion. Whenever people find out it's a fashion, they always make fun of me. My comics make fun of me. My friends make fun of me. I always want to tell these people, hey, I don't dress for you guys. I dress for Black teenagers, okay? But here's the thing about Mike. Even though he followed his heart to pursue a creative passion,

He's haunted by the life he didn't choose. So I feel in my life, I was destined to fulfill the family fate of like becoming a doctor. And for various reasons, I ended up not becoming a doctor. And ever since then, I've just been adrift.

You know, sometimes people say, oh, you're chasing your dream. No, my dream is to be a doctor. That's the dream. The comedian thing, everything else is second to that. Mike is the son of Vietnamese refugees. And growing up, he says it was just understood he was going to be a doctor. Okay, this is the thing that's going to make me happy and make my family happy and make my mom happy and like make the stars align.

Mike says in Vietnamese culture, there are only a couple jobs that bring prestige to the family. And for Mike, it felt good to be on this path. Like he had a higher calling. Plus, he was good at school. He liked science. He cared about people. Everything made sense. He still remembers the day it all went south. He was a junior at Berkeley, and he was struggling to keep up with his pre-med classes. I remember I had to take physics.

And I was sitting outside the physics building and it was the last day before you could drop a class. It was like, you know, the second week of school. And I took out like a quarter and I said, if this is heads, I'm going to take physics. If this is tails, I'm not going to take physics. And it came up heads, which means I'm supposed to take physics. And I said, nope, not going to do it. And I just walked right down to the administration office and

And I dropped the physics course. It's like your body was telling you no. I think so. The idea of putting myself through that was just like, it made me feel sick. So I didn't want to do it anymore. Mike switched majors to sociology. He graduated college. He got a job at a test prep company. He moved to New York and got a job in advertising and eventually started doing comedy to give him an edge over the other copywriters and liked it.

He got married. He had a kid. Today, Mike is 45. And you know that meme about how often men think about the Roman Empire? That's what it's like for Mike, but with a career that got away. Even though he enjoys working in advertising, even though he loves doing comedy, he can't stop thinking back to that coin toss. What if he'd stayed in physics? What if he just gritted his teeth and gone to med school as planned?

I was watching content on Instagram and I found this one guy and he's like a dad fitness influencer type. And I found out later on that he's also an MD. He's like, I'm a doctor and I'm a dad and I work out a lot. And I was reading this and I was like, hey, you know, he's a content creator and a doctor. Maybe I should give it another go. And I legit looked up a couple of things.

And I at least give myself enough credit in that I am wise enough to know that I would quickly come to the reality that, holy shit, this would be absolutely crazy. And I probably wouldn't enjoy it. When did this happen? That was like last week. Oh my God. Yeah, no, it's really always rattling in my mind all the time, constantly. Mike knows he doesn't want to go to med school.

But he keeps looking into going to med school because he's stuck in a loop. He regrets not becoming a doctor. And yet, he doesn't actually want to be a doctor. I don't know if you've ever done this, but you're playing an online video game and you sort of mess up your one chance to get the big score or kill the boss. And you just have to wait around until the game starts over again. It feels like that. It feels like, oh, I missed my chance. Well...

Guess I'll just float around and stuff until I get to go again or I die. One of the two, you know, like it's that feeling. And that's why Mike came to us. To find him a proxy to talk to. A stranger with just the right experience with his conundrum and can hopefully help him get less stuck. Mike wants to know if there's anything he can do to silence the rattling of this regret.

Or at least, anything he can do to make this earworm less annoying. Is there a way to turn this into something healthy? Because I do feel like it's going to be something I have to live with. So I'm going to have to just come to terms with it. Okay, Mike, thank you for bringing me this case. I will try my best to find you a proxy. I do have one last question, though. If you had to vocalize the sound of this emotional conundrum, what would it be? Vocalize the sound?

Yeah. Gosh, it's probably, let me think here. Okay, what is the sound to this feeling? The first thing that comes to mind, I don't know if this is totally right. You know, the elevator music waiting sound, waiting room music is what I would describe it as. Right. So you know,

It's not entirely unpleasant, but it's a little like boring and a little bit tedious. After the break, Mike has a proxy conversation and we attempt to break Mike out of the emotional waiting room he's stuck in. Please hold and proxy will be right back. Six months go by after that first call with Mike. Six months of tedious hold music.

And then finally, it's the day of the Praxi conversation. I log into the video call with Mike. You're wearing a robe right now? I am wearing this awesome wrap knit cardigan. A lot has happened in the six months since we spoke.

Some good things? My daughter was born in August. I can't remember if we talked since then. And some not so good things. Yes, I lost my job. Oh, I'm so sorry, Mike. It's okay. It's okay. Yeah. That afternoon was definitely scary. It was like a gut punch. You know, I did the whole thing. The Asian thing was like, did I do something wrong? Should I have worked harder?

Oh, yes, Mike. I know all about it. I made a three-part series about getting laid off. Listen to the Layoff Trilogy wherever you get your podcasts. Anyway, Mike says after losing his job, he found himself scrolling through Reddit one day. I don't know how they know. Maybe they listen in on our conversations. But Reddit serves me up an ad for St. George University. Do you know this school? It is a Caribbean medical school.

And it said, are you ready to make the leap to medicine? And I was like, I just got laid off. I need to provide for my family. Reddit is serving up this ad for Caribbean medical schools. And I was like, is this it? Am I doing this?

Did you look up what it would take to go to medical school again? Yeah, I mean, actually. You did? Not at the school. I just like talked to my friend and just the idea of having to like take biology 1A again made my stomach sick. I do think this is a little bit of the grass is always going to be greener. And I know, you know, doctors have very tough lives, but it's like I do want someone to kind of just give me a sense check. Even if it is like, hey, it's awesome, dude. You fucked up. At least somebody told me.

Hold that thought, because the proxy's here. Yes. Are you ready for me to let them in? I'm nervous. So, the proxy. Now, on the show, our job is to help Mike investigate his feelings. We do that by finding him a proxy to talk to. That could be a stranger with shared life experience. It could be a researcher who's studied the issue at hand. In Mike's case, I thought about looking for another Asian who struggled with this same kind of regret.

But then I thought, maybe it'd be helpful to talk to someone who's studied regret. Someone who could help Mike understand what he was feeling and maybe even reframe his relationship with regret. And then I came across a regret researcher who was nice enough to agree to this proxy conversation experiment. Hey! Hey, nice to meet you! Meet Amy Somerville.

principal research scientist at Kairos Research and a social cognitive psychologist who used to run a whole research lab on regret at Miami University in Ohio. So I'm Dr. Amy Somerville. I have a PhD in social psychology. I've published one of the most cited papers on regret with my graduate advisor called What We Regret Most and Why and have done research on regret for, I guess,

over 20 years at this point. No, I'm already getting very triggered by the fact that she introduced herself as doctor. So I was like, "Yeah!" I was like, "Sheesh!" I asked Mike to explain his case to Amy, and he tells her how he felt destined to become a doctor.

how he couldn't keep up with his pre-med classes, and about that coin toss outside his physics class. And I flipped a coin, and I said, if it's heads, I will take the class. If it's tails, I will not. And it turned out heads, and I said, no, I'm still not taking it. And I walked down to the registrar, and I dropped the class, and it felt awesome. It felt amazing. And that was pretty much it. I never even looked back after that. Except Mike did look back. He can't stop looking back.

That's literally the point of this whole episode. And I always think, like, what if I had just done that? There's always that part of me that is like, should I just apply to medical school now? I'm curious, any initial reactions?

Yeah, gosh, a lot. So I guess maybe a place to start is let me define how I think about regret because I think people come to it with a lot of different ideas of like what regret means and like hashtag no regrets and all of that. So in my work, I use a definition from Tom Gilovich and Victoria Medvec that I think is awesome. And it says regret has three pieces. The first is that it feels bad.

The second is that it's because you have a thought about how things could have been different. And the third is that it's because of something that you think you could have done differently.

And so I think it sounds like we're check, check, check. Oh, yeah. And sort of the technical term for this, like, thought about how things could have been different is a counterfactual. So, right, like, literally contrary to the facts. So it's this imagined possible world of how things could have been different. Yeah. Yeah.

Regrets in particular seem to be kind of this combination of I had a chance to do something different that maybe is now kind of a lost opportunity. I can't just like instantly fix it. But also it still feels like really relevant to my goals and who I am.

This sense of like, who am I as a person and what is my identity and role in the world? Like, I mean, that's like the big question for everyone. So like, of course, that's a thing we all keep wrestling with throughout our lives. So it makes sense that things that really touch on that are going to be places we come back to. Yes. You're looking into my soul, doctor. This is not that kind of doctor, just to be clear. Not that kind of doctor, but still. Amy is a psychologist. She doesn't treat people.

But once upon a time, Amy actually also wanted to be a doctor like Mike. She was in a pre-med program. And just like Mike, Amy wasn't sure if it was right for her.

So during a summer program where she was shadowing doctors, she asked them all a question. If somebody was on the fence about whether they should go to med school or do something different, what would you tell them? And every single one of them told me they should do something different. If you can imagine a life for yourself doing anything other than this, you should go do that. Yeah. Huh. Because it's too hard for too long.

But this seems almost like a trick, you know? Well, only the real ones. You, you're a bit of a softie, so you should get out of here. So, you know, it's kind of like also goes up against the way I saw myself. I always was the smart kid in class. And it like took out one of the legs of my identity. Well, not only do I, am I not smart, I clearly don't even have the wherewithal or the gumption to do this other thing. So now...

What the hell? You know, I'm just, uh, I'm just some guy with great style. Like what, like what else can I do?

Well, Mike, if it's OK, I want to go back to that moment with the coin toss. Yes. It seems like you were very certain of how you felt about that decision in the moment. Like it just felt bad to like listen to the coin and stay in physics. Yes. And that's why you dropped out. Yep. And then you said it felt awesome. It felt awesome.

And so I'm just curious, why do you think you trusted your gut so much back then? And why aren't you trusting it now? I think a lot of it has to do with like, you're in college, you're like kind of a hedonist, you know, you're doing a lot of things because it feels good. You know, it felt good at the time. And I think sometimes I frame it as that's a

kind of an immature response that as a rational person, you should do the thing that may not feel good, but it is the good thing, the thing that's right for whatever your family or yourself or what have you. And so I discount some of that action because

Hey, we also grew up Catholic. You can layer that on top as well. So things which feel good are probably bad for you. Things that feel bad are probably good for you, you know? So there is sort of that element as well.

So there's work by a researcher called Tori Higgins who basically says we carry with us like two self guides of what we should be aspiring to. And one of them is he calls the ideal self. So like what is like the aspirational version of yourself that you like most want to be?

And then what's your ought self? So like, what are the like obligations and duties and the things you feel like you should be? The idea is that sort of like in general, like our oughts are kind of easier to repair. Like if there's a thing you should do,

You can just go do it. I got up last night at 1130 to be like, oh God, did I close my garage door? It's that kind of like, oh, did you do the thing? Okay, now I can forget it. And there's some work in the regret science that actually for most people, the things that we regret most over time are related to our ideal self. And it's sort of interesting to me that it sounds like it's kind of like your parents' ideal moment.

more than your ideal, but also, you know, it kind of became ingrained in you both as an obligation and because of your vision of who you are in the family, that kind of like meeting their ideal became your ideal. Oh, a hundred percent. I have a bunch of questions for you. I hope that's okay to pass. Yeah.

One is, you know, I was wondering if it's like a cultural thing. Because the way the language I would describe is, it's not just my family. I'm talking about like 1,000 generations of my family, you know, are pretty bummed out. It's a very Mulan situation. The ancestors are like, whoa, we sent this guy to America. And now this guy decided to go on this podcast. What's the deal with that?

I don't know if there's anything where I don't want to say like my regret is more enhanced than other people. I'm sure other people have a tremendous amount of regret, but it's like, I feel sometimes that there's a cultural thing as well.

Yeah, I mean, so I've actually done some work on cross-cultural stuff and not specifically with Vietnamese culture. So I want to be clear, like, I don't have, like, specific expertise there. Yeah, yeah. So I have a paper looking at Arab students compared to white Midwestern students. And they're, right, like, totally different understanding of fate. It's really this idea of, like, your fate is written, right?

So they actually basically don't report some of the patterns of counterfactuals that I was talking about earlier. Yeah. So if you ask, hey, there's this car accident. How much is he thinking? Oh, I should have taken another route.

And people say, well, no, because if God wrote for him to have this accident, it doesn't matter what road he was on. Like the accident was written. That was his fate. Right. If it's his fate, you can't escape that. Yes. He probably feels bad that this accident happened, but that doesn't actually mean that he could have done anything different. So it's really interesting to me that for you, it's sort of this like I defied my fate.

That's really sort of the thing is that I always joke around again with my wife because, you know, me and my wife, we live in Brooklyn. We have these kind of artistic jobs. And I always joke with her that I'm supposed to be

Living in San Jose, driving a Tesla, married to a Vietnamese woman. We eat pho every single day. Maybe if I'm not a doctor, maybe I sell medical equipment. And I see this life over and over again. I'm not in it, but my cousins are in it. And every time I check in with them, I can't help but compare my life to their life. You know, it's like, who has a better life? And it gets complicated, but it is there, right? And I'm confronted with the other one.

the other me, right? And I often say, I'm not supposed to be here. How many Vietnamese comedians can you even name? You know, like there's only like three of us. And so I'm constantly grappling with this fact that I chose something different. My life turned out radically different. Yeah. So that there's definitely like pieces of the regret literature that speak to that. I was like writing down all sorts of things as you were talking. It's a little embarrassing for me to say. No, not at all.

So there's sort of two pieces of a counterfactual, right? There's the like, if I had done this, then this other thing would have been different. And so you can imagine all sorts of counterfactuals that you can have where, I don't know, like if aliens had invaded today, then my son could have ice cream for dinner. And it's like, well, okay, the first is so improbable.

That doesn't even make sense as a thing. But you have this really clear, like, if I had made another decision, right? Like, it's really easy to imagine walking into the physics class instead of the registrar's office. Right. Like, Frost writes this whole poem about the road I didn't travel, and I kind of don't know what was down there. But, like, your cousins are walking that road. Yes. You can really clearly see, like, here's what would have been different if...

If you too had stayed on that path. But counterfactuals aren't the only comparisons out there. Social comparison also is a thing and has its own set of emotions that go with it. Like envy and pride are kind of the like cousins of regret and relief. And it's interesting to me that

It feels like regret to you and not like, oh, I feel envious of this person who's living the life that I was supposed to have. It is about your decision and not about like, oh, I want their life. Yes. That's a question. Do you want their life?

No. That was an immediate answer, Mike. Yeah, I mean, there are some things I would enjoy. For sure, I think I would like stability for my family, for my kids. But I don't want to drive a Tesla. I would love to eat pho every single week. That would be great. But as far as like actually being implanted into their life,

It doesn't sound appealing either. You know what I'm saying? That's really interesting. I never thought about it like envy versus regret. Huh. After the break, we get to the root of Mike's regret and how regret can be a hopeful, even useful emotion. Welcome back to Praxy. So picking up where we left off,

Amy now wants to go back to the coin toss, the fateful day when Mike flipped the coin and dropped the class, even though the coin told him to stay in pre-med. I wrote down that when you talked about like, it felt amazing, it felt awesome, and I never looked back. And it was like, but, but, but you are. Yeah, yeah, no, that's a really good point. Yeah, you got me there, guys.

Haha, problem solved. No, but you are onto something because there was a period of time where I didn't feel bad about it.

I was still in college. I knew people who were going to med school. And actually, the woman who is now my wife, she was also in the track. She went really far. She took the MCAT, but she didn't go to medical school. And I remember when she was studying, "I got to take the MCAT tomorrow." And I was like, "That sounds terrible. I don't know how to do it." So for a little while, it didn't bother me that much.

But it wasn't very long lasting. I remember after I graduated, I moved back to Orange County in California where my parents lived. And I was living with them and I had a very hard time finding a job. I couldn't even really articulate what kind of job I was looking for. My parents were throwing all sorts of hilarious job titles at me. Become a human resources guy. They were literally just naming jobs that they had seen on TV. Yeah.

They all sounded terrible to me. I was like, these jobs sound so boring. And so I was unemployed. I was in my 20s. I felt like a big loser. And I remember that's when I was like, oh, maybe I could go back to med school. And that's really where I was like, now I'm like kind of in this loop. Interesting. Yeah. And so it sounds like it was only when there was other stuff in your life that was kind of dissatisfying that then it was like,

maybe the thing that would have made all this better is if I'd gone to med school. Yes. I think sometimes we have regrets where it sort of comes from the negative emotion first. Like something feels bad.

And then we just sort of want to look around and be like, well, what is it that could have changed this? When I talk to people about regret, it's like, oh, you're a regret researcher. Like, do you have regrets? I'm like, I don't have like a ton and I don't have a ton that I really want to talk about. But like...

I will sort of broadly say I've had a traumatic loss. And if you know people who have gone through that, whether it's losing someone to suicide or violence or addiction or whatever, that oftentimes, and in the data, right, you see people saying,

Like, oh, if I had just done something different. Yes. If I'd had a better intervention, then my friend wouldn't have OD'd. Right. Or if I had agreed to go to the party, then I could have been the DD and they wouldn't have driven drunk and been in the accident. Certainly in your case, right? Like there really was this path and there really was this decision. But it's also the case that like,

one of the great secrets of adulthood is it actually like being right out of college kind of sucks like you have this like like idyllic experience of like all of your needs were catered to as if you were a child all your friends yeah

All your friends were right there. And yet also, like, you had all this independence of adulthood. It's, like, really kind of the sweet spot, at least at Amherst. Like, someone else cooked for me, like, every day of my college career. And then suddenly you get out and it's like, oh, God, I have to go to the grocery store? I have, like, more than, like, three hours of obligation a day? This is crazy. How does anyone live like this? And so I do wonder a little bit about how much of it is...

Being 23 sucks. Yes. And latching on to here's the thing that I know could have been different and it would have put me in this totally different place.

And like, if you didn't have that, is there some other counterfactual you would have generated in that moment? But for you, there was just this clear like, oh, yeah, maybe it was med school. Like some people have the romantic one that got away from college and you have like the career that got away. The career that got away.

It is interesting because it almost feels almost sometimes like a default excuse. I don't know, like I was very interested in, you know, econ. Maybe I could have become a finance guy, but I never think I'm like, oh, I should have become a finance guy because I'm like, that seems so odd. I guess I could have become an NFL football player. There's all sorts of weird things you could say, but it defaults always to this one thing.

Well, Mike, when the regret pops up, does it happen around times when like stuff is hard and bad or is it just all the time kind of like randomly?

I mean, I would definitely say I think it is definitely triggered by things where I need something. Like, gosh, my wife and I are always like, we're going to buy a house. And it's impossible to because I'm not a billionaire. So it would be nice if I had a little bit more money, you know, or during this layoff that just happened. Yeah. And this is another thing I was going to ask you about is like this.

career that I have, whether it's in advertising or even worse in comedy, it is only setbacks. Comedy is almost entirely setback after setback until you were either famous or you were dead. And that is it. And so you're constantly confronted with, did you make the right decision? Why did you spend so much time doing this thing? I've been doing comedy for maybe a

Gosh, I don't know, like 10 or 11 years at this point. And I've sunk an immense amount of time into it, going to open mics or writing, which generate absolutely zero income. Just doing this thing because I feel sometimes I have no other choice to do it because I feel I am a creative person and I have to do it and I'm an idiot. But every single time I'm there, I'm like, I could be somewhere else.

I'm wondering, is this regret around becoming a doctor, is it about success and how you're feeling about yourself rather than like this particular regret around becoming a doctor? I think it is definitely like, am I living up to my full potential, for lack of a better word? Am I doing, you know, the most I can do? And I was just saying, like, I have to be a creative person.

And it's led me to this point. And sometimes I feel guilty about that. You know, I have a lot of anxiety around like, well, I've chosen this life and I hope my children don't have to pay for it later on because like they didn't get into a great school or something like that. Well, that gets into a whole other thing. But I'm like tearing up a little bit. Sorry. So like it's just it's a it's a lot. It's like weird. Yeah. I'm just kind of getting emotional, I guess. It's just like.

For me and my wife, we're like creative people. And like, if I pay the price for it, it's my life. But I don't want anyone else to pay for my own weakness or hedonism or whatever you want to call it. You know what I'm saying? Like my children didn't ask for that. That's a whole other thing. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm a parent too. And so I totally get like, I feel like so much of like parenthood is about you brought this person into the world, you have this obligation to them. Am I meeting that kind of like role that I'm supposed to be fulfilling? But yeah.

I think it's easy to think about, here's the things that would be better if I was a doctor. Yeah. Like I might have more career stability, more financial stability, but also there's stuff you'd be giving up. Right. You'd be regretting that like, oh, like my kid is sick and I had to have the nanny pick them up. I'm in clinic right now and I can't just drop it and go home and like take care of my kid. And like, oh, I can't go to that game. Yeah. Oh, now I'm letting my kid down in all these other ways. That's absolutely right.

I feel like maybe one of the things that I do want to say is that in general, I come from like an academic tradition of thinking of regret as like a really useful emotion to us. Oh. Like regret is telling us about how we should do things differently. Mike, why did your mouth open when Amy said regret is a useful emotion? Yeah, I mean, I've always thought of this as just like something I'm just going to have to deal with for the rest of my life.

For me, I think it can be really helpful to kind of think about, is this regret helping me? Is there something here that I could learn? Is there something I could do differently? And if not, is it really a regret or do I just sort of feel sad? Again, with sort of examples of things like traumatic loss, I don't really think that

oh, like, here's the one action I could have taken and everything would have been okay. I'm just sad. I'm sad this thing happened. And I wish there was something that could have made it different. Wow. Yeah, like, it really sucks to live in a high-cost-of-living area where you can't buy a house. Yeah. It really sucks to live under capitalism with economic instability. But even if you had gone to med school...

What are the things that would be different? Maybe it's stable, but there are these other costs that come with it. I don't know, maybe this is because I'm just a straight man with toxic masculinity, but the idea that I'm just sad is so profound. Oh, I'm just sad. You know, next time I feel this coming on, maybe I'm just bummed out. And there is a lot of stuff to be bummed out about globally and in a micro sense.

It sounds really silly, but I've never thought of it like just being sad. Wow. I mean, I've done therapy before where you take an emotion and you kind of look at it and say, well, this anxiety is because maybe it's I need to pay attention to something in my life. But there is also emotions, I think, where there is nothing to do. This is just how it is to kind of understand that there is no action involved.

It's very freeing because you can just be sad. But I'm bummed out. I'm going to have a candy bar now and just deal with it. Yeah. Well, so Amy, you said that regret can be a useful emotion. Regret can tell us what is important to us. And what I'm hearing from this conversation again and again, Mike, is like family, right?

is really important to you. Right. Yes. Family, your relationship with your parents, your relationship with your community, your kids. Yeah. Like family, family, family. And if you were going to think about this regret you have, take away all the bad parts, all the anxieties, all the bad feelings. What do you think it's pointing at?

Yeah, I mean, gosh, you think about the inverse of regret, which is like all the things which are awesome, you know, and I have a lot of awesome things. My amazing knitwear, for example. You have to give that up and live in scrubs? Can you imagine? I hate scrubs so much. It's the worst thing in the world. Anyways, I feel the most fulfilled...

The specific moment is when I am in the kitchen and my wife is feeding both my kids or one of my kids and I'm like running food to them. I'm like cooking food. You know, my wife is like, OK, we need boiled eggs because that's the only thing he's going to eat. I'm like on it. Boiled eggs stack. You know, the front of house wants eggs. I got to make eggs. I'm kind of like a mind cook.

But I feel awesome because I feel like I am, you know, providing for my family, literally. You know, I'm the perfect, like, thing in the machine that is making this happen. It's very actionable and doable. But, you know, with my children, I'm trying to think about values I want to give them. And I think that it is worthwhile to try hard. It's not a good thing, I think, to just do the minimum. And so I think I do regret maybe not giving my all.

Maybe I didn't want to be a doctor, but I do think there was probably a little bit of me I left on the table as far as like I didn't work as hard as I could have. I think I corrected that later on in life, but I want to be able to say that I gave it my all.

Okay, we are near the end. Thank you both so much. This was such a roller coaster. Okay, final question. Mike, I asked you to vocalize the sound of your niche emotional conundrum way back when. Oh, yeah. Many, many months ago. And you told me it was elevator music, like waiting music. Ah, yes, I did. Yes. I'm curious, what is the sound of the niche emotional conundrum now? Has it changed at all?

No, this is different because now I forgot that I had said Muzak and I totally remember why I said Muzak because it was sort of like, I feel like my life is like on hold or waiting. I'm waiting for something. Now it just feels like, oh, now I got to do work on myself. Oh, that's so much, that's so much harder. I think med school is probably easier than working on myself. I don't want to do that. So it's a groan. Oh, yes.

Thank you, Dr. Amy. This is awesome. It's been so great getting to meet you and getting to talk to you. Thank you to Mike Nguyen for being our special guest today. You can listen to Mike every week on his podcast, Asian Not Asian, and you can check out his American Prosperity Corps outfits on Instagram at NicePantsBro.

And thank you to Amy Somerville for being our proxy today. As Amy pointed out to me, much of the social science research that informs today's episode is now the target of massive funding cuts across several government agencies. But she said there is something you can do about it. You can let your elected officials know about the impact this research has had on you. You can find out more by going to the website for the Consortium of Social Science Associations, cossa.org.

That's the show we have for you this week. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday, May 20th. New episodes every other Tuesday for the rest of the year, which Chrissy, a listener from Philadelphia, is thrilled about because she loves gossiping about proxy episodes with friends. Hi. Hey, Chrissy. What do you have over there? This is an apple. My friend Andrew got it for me.

At the Wegmans. So you like eating apples, huh? Yeah, I love apples. And what about proxy? You like proxy? I love proxy. I love feelings and talking about them. Okay, so if you had to do some proxy math, how many Golden Delicious apples is a proxy episode worth to you? Nine. Nine Golden Delicious apples?

If we're talking organic, that's like $13.50 she's willing to pay per episode. But because she's a Patreon member, for just $5 a month, Chrissy's getting a steal.

Proxy is an independent podcast and we rely on listener support. We need to get to at least 3,000 subscribers this year to keep making the show. And we are at about 300 right now. Thank you to everyone who's already signed up. For just $5 a month, you'll get ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus interviews. So be thrifty like Chrissy.

Sign up at patreon.com slash proxy podcast. That's patreon.com slash proxy podcast. As always, you can follow us on Instagram at proxy podcast. And I'm at Yo-E Shaw. We also have a free newsletter. Sign up to get dispatches from the emotions beat, behind the scenes content, and the latest proxy gossip. We'll have those links in the show notes. This episode was edited by John Delore and Tim Howard, produced by me and mixed by Kyle Pooley.

Proxy is also produced by Kim Naderbane-Petersa, with help from Anakaran Santana and Nick LeBlanc. Our newsletter editor is Juliana Feliciano-Reyes. Music in this episode by Tim Howard, and theme music by Breakmaster Cylinder. Special thanks to Audrey Martavich, Yori Lozordo, Laura Starczewski, and Mathilde Urfelino. Proxy is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent radio stations.

independent, creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at Radiotopia.fm. And if you have a niche emotional conundrum you'd like investigated by proxy, get in touch at proxythepod at gmail.com. We're taking cases. Kyle, how often do you regret marrying a podcast host? Uh, I think it's a good counterbalance to someone marrying a music producer, so...

Anytime I have complaints, I realize there's things that ex-girlfriends would complain about me. Oh, like all your complaints about me? That's what your exes would say about you? Yeah. So it's karma in a way. It's poetic justice. Yeah, except I didn't make them mix my podcast.

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