The Rich Roll Podcast

Episode: Rich On Rock Bottom, Resolutions & Reframing Family Dynamics
Host: Rich Roll
Guest: Adam Skolnick (co-host)
Date: December 4, 2025

Overview

In this wide-ranging solo/call-in style "Roll On" episode, Rich Roll and co-host Adam Skolnick dive deeply into three powerful topics particularly resonant during the holiday and New Year season: managing challenging family dynamics, the nature of "rock bottom" moments and personal transformation, and setting effective, values-aligned goals for the new year. They also celebrate Adam’s debut novel, American Tiger, exploring the creative journey and themes of parenthood, grief, and our relationship with nature.

Rich and Adam share candid personal experiences, practical strategies, and philosophical insights, emphasizing compassion, acceptance, and the importance of self-care. Listeners get a blend of concrete advice and big-picture reframing—delivered with warmth, humor, and vulnerability.

Table of Contents

1. Navigating Family Holiday Gatherings
2. Understanding and Utilizing Rock Bottom
3. Resolutions, Goals, and Direction for a New Year
4. Celebrating the Launch of American Tiger
5. Checklist for Direction and Change
6. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

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1. Navigating Family Holiday Gatherings

[03:07–18:42]

Key Points & Advice

• You can’t control others—just yourself.
  Rich emphasizes radical acceptance of personal powerlessness over family members' behavior, focusing instead on controlling your own reactions and self-care.

  • “You just cannot change or control other people's behavior. And you have to get to a place of acceptance around that and relinquish your attachment to people behaving differently than they always do and make peace with that.” – Rich Roll [05:05]

• Prepare and set boundaries.

  • Go in with a plan: Know your limits, arrange your own accommodations, allow for the “Irish exit” or breaks as needed.
    • “Maybe if you're used to going and staying in the same house as everybody else, get a hotel if you can, if you can afford that. Things like that, where you're creating some separation and some boundaries.” – Rich [06:50]
  • Stand firm despite potential pushback.
    • “Let people be mad or whatever. It's really about how you're comporting yourself.” – Rich [07:42]

• Neutrality and non-reactivity are your superpowers.

  • Use meditation, sleep, breathwork, and exercise to keep calm and consciously responsive, not reactive.
  • Avoid alcohol if it impairs your filter and increases reactivity.

• Practical technique:
  Imagine the whole experience as a TV show; you’re just watching characters in a drama. Don’t take their actions personally.

  • “Just pretend like everything that's happening is a TV show that you're watching… you have a choice, like I don’t need to react…” – Rich [08:26]

• Embrace compassion and seek to serve.

  • Recognize that everyone believes they’re “right” from their own perspective.
  • “Being non-reactive and just adopting this neutral stance, it's like being a lighthouse… stand in your strength and emit your beam and be completely detached from whether or not anybody responds to that beam...” – Rich [12:42]

For People-Pleasers:

• Understand that constant accommodation is a form of self-betrayal (and even a kind of narcissism, thinking you can control others’ happiness).
• Set small boundaries quietly, even if they break with tradition.
  • Example: Leave early, decline to stay overnight, and don’t feel obliged to explain at length.

Practical Service Strategy:

• “Clean up and get in the kitchen early”—help others to both serve and escape unwanted conversations [17:58].

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2. Understanding and Utilizing Rock Bottom

[23:08–41:53]

Key Insights

• Rock Bottom is Subjective, Not Objective

  • "Rock bottom is what you decide it to be." – Adam [23:08]
  • It’s a moment of willingness, not necessarily the lowest external circumstance.
    • “Rock bottom is a moment of taking responsibility. It's a decision, and it's a lever for transformation.” – Rich [25:18]
  • “At any moment, you can step off the elevator. You don't have to go all the way to the ground.” – Rich [25:18]

• It’s About Willingness

  • “Rock bottom is when the pain of your circumstances exceeds the fear of finally doing something different again.” – Rich [26:38]

• Shame vs. Willingness

  • Shame keeps us stuck; it thrives in isolation and secrecy, but “shame can't survive the light”—sharing with someone is crucial.
    • “There is a catharsis when you finally say out loud this thing that you're afraid to say to another person...” – Rich [35:20]
  • Take the “smallest thing” you can that moves you just a little in a better direction—tiny steps add up.

• Practical Stories & Examples

  • Rich’s own experiences: near-foreclosure, relapse after years of sobriety, and confronting shame by seeking connection and accountability.
  • “If you're gonna eat crow, eat it hot.” – AA saying shared by Rich [38:22]

• Reframing the Gift of Rock Bottom

  • “When I look back on [my rock bottoms], they're such gifts because they course corrected my life and set me on different trajectories...” – Rich [28:32]

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3. Resolutions, Goals, and Direction for a New Year

[42:00–63:25]

Core Philosophies & Tools

• Goals Are Good, But Direction is Better

  • Rich shares that with age, he’s learned to value the trajectory of life over hitting individual goals.
    • “I’m more focused on direction over goals... the more important piece... is whether or not you are on a trajectory or on a direction.” – Rich [43:30]

• Think Decades, Not Years

  • Most overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what is possible in ten.

• SMART Goals Still Matter

  • If setting a goal, use: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound.
  • Reflect deeply before setting goals—align them with values, not just external influences.

• Intrinsic Motivation > Extrinsic Motivation

  • “The best goals are ones that are intrinsically motivated, obviously.” – Rich [45:35]

• Presence and Avoidance

  • The most growth often lies in moving toward the things you're most avoiding.
    • “All the growth in my life that is waiting for me out there is a function of moving towards the things that I'm most avoiding.” – Rich [51:51]

• Hold Goals Loosely

  • Be open to pivoting if new opportunities or realizations present themselves.
    • “The best things in life are byproducts of being service minded and pursuing life with curiosity.” – Rich [58:03]

• Nature and Ritual

  • Adam’s story: his simple “be in the ocean every day” reset his relationship with nature and led to lifelong passions, not through a grand goal but small, repeated action [56:02].

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4. Celebrating the Launch of American Tiger

[73:46–87:48]

About the Book

• Adam's novel, American Tiger, is based on a real tiger sighting in suburban LA in 2005, exploring themes of identity, grief, childhood, and nature.
• The story centers on a nine-year-old girl and her game-warden father, using their journey as a way to interrogate “our place in the natural world,” the search for personal identity, and the nature of father-daughter bonds.
  • “The search for identity doesn't stop at the human level. The search for identity goes to the nature level... so much unity in that.” – Adam [77:16]
• Inspiration came “through” Adam, and he shares mystical experiences—like repeated sightings of a one-legged crow—as “green lights” from the universe to persist with the creative journey despite “red lights” (doubt, rejection).

Creative Resilience

• Learn to distinguish between real “red lights” and self-sabotaging internal resistance.

  • “It was easier to run those red lights because I knew they weren't really red lights. It was just myself trying to stop this...” – Adam [75:57]

• The “job of the day” mindset for creators: just do today’s work, regardless of doubt.

• Importance of shipping your work (“The job of the creator isn’t just to create, it’s to create and then ship.” – Seth Godin, cited by Rich [81:14])

The Book’s Broader Message

• We are not separate from nature; “Mother Nature is always underneath, coming up through the cracks in the concrete and all around us.” – Adam [82:02]
• Rich and Adam reflect on the father-daughter dynamic, the bittersweetness and complexity of parental bonds, and the similarities between the book’s characters and Rich’s own experience as a father [84:25].

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5. Checklist for Gaining Direction and Making Change

[71:19–73:46]

Rich distills advice into actionable points for those seeking clarity on goals or their life’s direction:

• Self-care is foundational

  • Move your body (exercise)
  • Sleep well (aim for 8 hours)
  • Eat nourishing food
  • Spend time in nature
  • Build and nurture real-life community for accountability

• Morning Pages Practice

  • Write 3 pages longhand every morning without judgment (per Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way) to surface patterns, avoidances, and true desires

• Invest in curiosity and allow for imperfection

• Release rigid timelines

• Take decisive action

  • Don’t overthink or ruminate; “develop a reflex to action” (per Dr. Ellen Langer)

• Put your phone away—reduce digital distraction

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6. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On managing family triggers:
  “Neutrality, like extreme equanimity… That is the goal, that is the superpower. No matter what is happening around you, can you remain calm, neutral and equanimous and non-reactive?” – Rich [08:12]

• On rock bottom:
  “Rock bottom is a decision, not a disaster.” – Rich [24:16]

• On direction vs. goals:
  “I’m more focused on direction over goals... The more important piece... is whether or not you are on a trajectory or on a direction.” – Rich [43:30]

• On self-forgiveness and action:
  “Shame can't survive the light.” – Rich [34:52]
  “If you're gonna eat crow, eat it hot.” [38:22]

• On hustle culture:
  “When you open up your phone, there's no shortage of like hustle porn videos… most people have that experience of feeling bad about themselves because they can't possibly live up to the insane hustle porn culture that they're constantly being inundated with. And so that's the flip side of this. I think that that is doing damage to people…” – Rich [63:25]

• On finding your passion:
  “The only way to find [your passion] is by engaging with your curiosity.” – Rich [67:54]

• On the creative process and resilience:
  “The job of the day is either putting words on the page or to try to get this character going over the pages… Part of the job is to zero in. And that just comes with experience and the habits...” – Adam [80:07]

• On the parent/child bond:
  “There's nothing like the bond that a dad has with the young daughter at that age… There's something really special about that.” – Rich [84:42]

Important Timestamps

• Dealing with family at holidays: [03:07–18:42]
• What “rock bottom” really means: [23:08–41:53]
• Resolutions, goals, direction: [42:00–63:25]
• Sustaining change & creative habits: [68:01–73:46]
• Adam’s novel, American Tiger: [73:46–87:48]
• The power of community and closure: [87:48–90:46]

Tone:
Candid, compassionate, philosophical, occasionally playful; rich with personal anecdotes and encouragement for authentic growth.

Summary Takeaway

This episode arms listeners with practical wisdom for navigating challenging family interactions, reframing moments of crisis as windows for transformation, and building a more values-driven approach to goal setting and change. Rich and Adam's vulnerable stories and creative journeys offer inspiration and companionship for anyone seeking to live more skillfully and authentically in the holidays and beyond.