Charlie was going to die. And he kind of deserved it.
“I could feel the alarm bells going off in my body. My vision… and my hearing felt weird. Sounds came in slowly, in waves… I felt like my body was falling apart.”
“We all experience anxiety on some level,” Charlie Hoehn told me on my podcast. “But not like this. This was different. This was debilitating. I found myself isolated. I didn’t want anybody I interacted with to catch this weird energy that I had. It felt like I was contagious. It felt like I was losing my mind. It felt like I was dying.”
He explained. And I started getting excited. Because he was describing me. I’ve not only been addicted to anxiety in my life, I’ve been addicted to anxiety prescriptions.
When I tried to get off my prescriptions, I would have panic attacks and seizures. They don’t tell you that when you first get anxious. “They” want you in the system, tracking the pills you take, the emotions you feel, the stress that their pills are trying to hold together or else you fall apart.
I knew what Charlie was going through. I felt like I had deserved to die also.
Everyone’s emotional state is unique to them. There are so many factors to consider:
Physical: We all absorb a different combinations or nutrients, sugars, fats, pesticides, antibiotics, probiotics, etc. Our bodies are different. My gut is different from your gut. We don’t process information equally.
And the environment doesn’t help. Heck, they found anti-depressants in NY tap water last year. Chemicals are everywhere.
Emotional: We all have a different levels of support. And a different group of people we surround ourselves with… or a different level of isolation. We experience different stress. And the number of times I laugh in a day is different from you, too.
And then there’s history. What conditions have you been exposed to? What conditions have your family been exposed to? What did you see at age two that you have no memory of now?
What about spirituality or creativity or thought-process. Some people are agreeable, optimistic, hopeful and then have flashes of self-doubt, loss, anger, and so on. Others feel doomed or scared or cynical with traces of sarcasm and an ability to be so honest it translates as humor.
A woman bumped into me a day ago. And she said, “I’m sorry. I seem to be saying sorry to everyone these days.” I smiled and said, “You’re fine.”
“No I’m not,” she said with some underlying sense of joy. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. She smiled. She seemed buoyant like she was somehow floating above the water in the midst of moving her two eldering parents to a new home right after one suffered a stroke. “Is there someone I can go to just lay down and cry,” she said.
The person at cash register overhead. “Yes,” she said.
So when I hear someone’s survival story — how they got out of “debilitating anxiety,” which is what Charlie called it, I get hopeful.
He told me how he climbed out of it. And I’ll tell you what he told me. But first I want to share with you how anxiety came in and highjacked his body to begin with.
“All in the same week, a close friend attempted suicide and a family member died so I took a week off,” he said.
He was working with Tim Ferriss. They just launched an event and Charlie was ON for months leading up to it.
“I said to Tim, ‘I’m a mess right now. I think I’ve really go to take some time off…’”
“I was shaking going into that meeting,” he said. “I was terrified I was burning a bridge that I worked so hard to build. I was at the point where I just had to take care of myself.”
Tim was supportive.
He took time off. A week turned into a year.
He tried everything. He saw a doctor who prescribed medicine. He read the side effects: insomnia, psychosis, anxiety… all the problems he was trying to fix.
He read forums and saw other people said the medicine was addictive. And didn’t always help. So he skipped it. “I realized whatever situation I was in, I knew I got myself into it and I could probably get myself out.”
I wish I had skipped it. But still…anxiety often feels worse than the cure.
He tried deep breathing exercises, therapy, journaling, all different supplements, exercise, psychedelic drugs, volunteering, prayer. He even took a course on “How to Overcome Anxiety.”
But none of it stuck… “I was constantly in fight or flight. I felt like my survival was constantly on the line,” he said.
It was as if he hit an internal tripwire. No one knew he was going through this. But he wrote about it in his book, “Play it Away.”
His friends read it and started apologizing. They had no idea he was going through constant dread.
Then he finally hit another internal trip write. And started coming back to life. “It was the ah-ha that lead to recovering in a couple of weeks.”
He was reading a book about play by Stuart Brown where he writes, “The opposite of play isn’t work, it’s depression.”
There’s a strong evolutionary component to play.
Our bodies were built to hunt and gather and move. Humans aren’t meant to stay still.
“The research is pretty clear,” Charlie said. “They have done experiments. They’ve deprived animals of play—they give them love, nurturing, food, shelter, all the things they need to survive— but when they deprive them of play, the animal inevitably grows up to be socially and emotionally crippled.”
Charlie calls it “chronic-play deprivation.” And I think many people suffer from that.
It’s the transition from childhood to adulthood. Statistically, children laugh an average of 300 times a day. But adults laugh an average of 3-5 times a day.
Charlie said he was approaching life “so seriously… so joylessly. And very much in terms of ‘what’s the output’, ‘what’s the income’, ‘what’s the money pay-off.’”
So I asked, “How did you learn to play again?”
Step 1: Do the play history exercise:
You can do this right now. List all the activities you would voluntarily turn to when you were child. These are things that no adult was making you do. There was no judgement or grade.
Charlie says, “It’s what you were just doing for the internal joy.”
For me it was playing chess, riding my bike, and I loved games—video and board games. For Charlie it was playing catch in his backyard. So he started integrating this in his work life (that’s the next step)
Step 2: Integrate play into your daily life:
I took Charlie’s book to heart.
I started doing 100% of my meetings over ping-pong, backgammon or chess.
I don’t let a SINGLE DAY go by without an hour or two of play. Even if I have no time. Even if the stress is too great. Even if I have too many responsibilities. I make the time to play. It’s that important.
A couple weeks ago I had a meeting over backgammon and in between games, I learned my backgammon partner’s company was going to get acquired. I never would have learned this in an “official” business meeting. We talked about our personal lives too.
I always leave these meetings with a sense of friendship. I get to see different sides to someone. In business, there’s one angle: money. But in play there’s a joy of being alive and that is what feeds the purpose of making a deal in the first place.
Step 3: Once a day
Charlie plays daily.
“Did you have to force it?” I asked.
“No, it transitioned nicely,” he said. Charlie replaced “let’s grab coffee” with hikes and catch meetings in the park.
Some parts of life are still. And that’s good. Being still has it’s own sense of aliveness. But sometimes, we’re still when we want to be moving. Pick one thing in your day. One monotonous part. And try replacing it with play.
Even if it’s just a 10-minute trade out. There’s always time.
As I write this, I’m getting ready for my “play” of the day. I’m going to go to StandupNy in the city and do 15 minutes of standup comedy. I love making people laugh. It feeds my soul.
Charlie said playing every day immediately had an effect. “Not just on how I felt but in how people responded to me.”
“I ultimately, made this book for myself… as a reminder,” Charlie said. “Or at least, that’s where it began.”
This was my favorite:
Links and Resources:
- Read “Play it Away” by Charlie Hoehn
- Charlie’s next book is “Play for A Living.” He launched it on Kickstarter. Join the waiting list here
- Listen to his podcast “Author Hour with Charlie Hoehn”
- Follow Charlie on
- And check out his website (he has a free guide “Top 10 Tips to Conquer Anxiety in 30 Days”
Also mentioned:
- “Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul” by Stuart Brown (this is the book that rescued Charlie from his “debilitating anxiety”)
- In the show, Charlie mentions a student of his, Darvinder, who came up with “Google Hobbies” – read his blog post on it here.
- Charlie also wrote about Darvinder’s idea here.
- “The Four Hour Chef” by Tim Ferriss
- “Opening the Kimono” (the event Charlie helped Tim Ferriss plan and market)
- Ramit Sethi’s New York Times bestseller, “I Will Teach You to Be Rich,” which Charlie ALSO helped market
- Our good friend Kamal Ravikant’s book, “Love Yourself,” which he self-published
- “Jesus’ Son” by Dennis Johnson (my favorite book. I’ve read it 200 times)
- Mary Karr (a great writer who’s also been on my podcast – Ep. 144 “How to Start Anything”
- Book in a Box (which my friend Tucker Max founded and it’s where Charlie currently acts as the Head of Marketing)
- Steve Scott who’s written and self-published tons of books (he’s also been on my podcast and talked about how he STILL gets $40K-$50K a month from his book sales – Ep. 23 – “How To Go From $0-$40,000 a Month Writing From Home“
- Documentary: “Comedian” (we talked about this because Charlie also experimented in stand-up!)
- “Strategic Play: The Creative Facilitator’s Guide” by Jacqueline Lloyd Smith and Denise Meyerson (this is another book Charlie mentioned about play)
- Charlie mentioned he tried Modafinil right before he hit the anxiety tripwire… he used this for additional energy (but it also added to his exhaustion). I know other people who use it. But Charlie said, “I don’t recommend it or endorse it.” If you want to learn more, you can read about it from Dave Asprey, here.
- Erin Tyler Design (Erin helped me design my latest book “ReInvent Yourself” and she designed Charlie’s book too.)
The post Ep. 234: Charlie Hoehn – Getting Past Anxiety and Learning How to Play Again appeared first on Altucher Confidential.
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