What “The Morning Show” Teaches Us About Redemption

“Is there room for redemption? Is there room for self-reflection and forgiveness?” That’s Jennifer Aniston on the?central question ?being explored in the last few episodes of “The Morning Show,” the Apple TV+ drama that recently?ended its second season. Spoiler alert — if you haven’t yet watched it, I encourage you to do so before reading what follows. And I definitely urge you to watch it. I loved it and I’m already dealing with withdrawal symptoms while waiting for Season 3.?

The question of whether there is room for forgiveness, redemption and growth is central to our culture right now. “The Morning Show’s” second season ends just as the pandemic is beginning. And as it did for many of us, the pandemic and the existential threat it represents causes the main characters to re-evaluate their lives and ask themselves big questions about who they want to be and what they really value. And part of that means taking responsibility for our mistakes so we can grow, evolve and redeem ourselves.

As Joan Didion put it, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And in all good stories, as in the stories of our lives, growth and transformation are central. That’s the whole point of life, but right now our culture has conflated redemption and forgiveness with exoneration. But if we can’t learn from our past, we can’t build a better future — either individually or collectively. These are the questions being faced by Mitch Kessler (played by Steve Carell). After being exposed as a sexual predator in Season 1, he’s back in Season 2, a pariah living in Italy trying to come to grips with what he’s done.

His former co-host and close friend, Alex Levy (played by Jennifer Aniston), is afraid of being canceled by association. They meet in Italy at very different stages of their journeys: Alex, desperate to protect her public persona, by which she defines herself; Mitch, having moved from denial to acknowledgment of the wrongs he perpetrated, now struggling to grow beyond who he was and what he did.

The good thing about being canceled, Mitch says, is that you find out “who believes that you have the capacity as a human being to change.” He practically begs Alex: “I don't have the tools to understand… Could you teach me? I want to be a better person… I want to be a good person.” But Alex can’t help — she’s still too wedded to what the public thinks of her.?

For Mitch, the process of going from denial to a recognition of what he’s done is torture — that’s why recognizing and taking responsibility for our actions is so hard. In fact, that’s what hell really is. Dante’s?Inferno?is not a place but a state of mind. And as the show makes clear, there’s no shortcut — without accepting full responsibility, with?all the torture that entails, there can be no redemption.

For Carl Jung, this meant coming to terms with what he called “the Shadow,” which he described as “that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality.” The more we repress and deny it, the more power it has over us, and the more we project it onto others.

It’s in the middle of this journey that Alex has reconnected with Mitch. He tries to see the possibility of his redemption through her eyes,?but she’s too caught up in herself and her own fears.?After Alex leaves, driving late at night, Mitch is?tormented by the latest accusations against him swirling in his head. After swerving to avoid an oncoming car, he?lets his own?car careen over the cliff.

What’s so powerful about the series is how it humanizes Mitch without exonerating him. As Kerry Ehrin, the show’s brilliant showrunner,?puts it , “The way Steve played it is that he wanted to be able to redeem himself inside of himself, and he would not allow it. He couldn’t go there, because he was really acknowledging what he’d done. And so, it was a kind of prison.”

In her eulogy at Mitch’s memorial, Alex speaks about their last moments together: “Mitch made unforgivable choices. And I wanted you to know that he was really starting to understand the effects of his actions. He was remorseful. He wanted to do better. He wanted to be better. And I know that's not enough.?And it will never, ever be enough.”?But why should it never, ever be enough? Why shouldn’t we be allowed to do the hard, painful work until it is enough? Until we can earn redemption?

In the last episode, Alex gets COVID and hosts a livestream from her apartment as her temperature continues to go up: “I think we can all agree that the world seems to be at a turning point, and life right now is presenting me with some adversity,” she says. “I’m looking inward and asking myself who is it that I actually want to be? And then I'm looking in the mirror, and I’m asking if that's actually who I am. I think a lot of people are going to be doing that.”

With death — both Mitch’s death and the specter of large numbers dying of COVID — becoming the fitting counterpoint to the idea of redemption, questions about how we live our lives, how we grow beyond our worst moments, how, as another character puts it, we get our “soul straight” and how we achieve justice tempered by mercy become more urgent than ever.

That’s the point of Portia’s speech by that much older showrunner, William Shakespeare.?Mercy, Portia says in?The Merchant of Venice, is “an attribute to God himself... It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” And as Portia warns, seeking justice alone without mercy won’t work out well for any of us in the end.

Baylor University ethics professor Matthew Lee Anderson?sums it up ?perfectly: “If mercy does not season justice, our culture’s pursuit of retribution could be our undoing... we must find ways to temper our pursuits of justice with mercy. But that means we should engage with a person in a broader context than 140 characters.”

We’re at a moment when we’re going through a long-overdue reckoning with injustices of many kinds. But allowing for forgiveness, redemption and growth isn’t antithetical to that process. In fact, it’s a core part of it.

“One of the things I love so much about the show is how it will never just be black and white,” Aniston says. “It will always peep behind the curtain of the real conversations that are going on behind closed doors that are never dared to be uttered out loud and in public.” I can’t wait for Season 3 to continue peeping behind the curtain both of real conversations and of what it means to be human.

Thrive Turns Five With A 5×5 Product Suite?

Five years ago this week, we launched Thrive Global with the mission to end the global epidemic of stress and burnout. When the pandemic hit, the themes at the heart of our mission suddenly became among the most urgent issues of our time. Companies now realize that well-being?isn’t a perk, but an essential strategy for success that must be embedded into the workflow itself. That’s why I’m excited to announce Thrive Global’s new 5×5 product suite. It’s a comprehensive set of five distinctive products — Thrive Today, Thrive Learn, Thrive Reset, Thrive Challenges and Thrive Pulse — available across five platforms: web, mobile, chat, conference and call centers. Thrive is meeting the moment by meeting employees where they are and providing solutions in real time when they need them most.

We’ve spent?five years?cracking the code on habit formation and behavior change, delivering our solutions to customers on a best-in-class platform made up of science-backed Microsteps, real-time stress interventions, storytelling and community.?We’ve deployed this continuous, real-time behavior change?experience across our customer base, helping employees at over 125?organizations in more than 140 countries improve well-being, mental resilience and productivity.?

It’s an exciting time at Thrive Global. Our goal from day one has been to reshape the employee experience. And now we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to accelerate our mission and redefine the future of work. Our 5×5 product suite will be the foundation of that effort, and I’m excited about the impact it can have on the lives of millions of employees around the world. You can read more about 5×5, including details about each product,?here .?I'm so grateful to everyone on the Thrive team and to our visionary Chief Product Officer, Christopher O'Donnell, who joined us after spending over 10 years at HubSpot, most recently as Chief Product Officer, and is leading the buildout of our 5×5 product suite. As we say at Thrive, onward, upward and inward!

Book of the Month?

With Indra Nooyi at dinner on Friday celebrating her new book

My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future?by Indra Nooyi. This memoir by the trailblazing former Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo is endlessly riveting. It?includes stories of how she?managed to succeed, again and again, as one of the few female business leaders in the country. But what really comes through for me is how deeply committed her experience?has made her to our need to fundamentally change our business culture. “Our failure to address work and family pressures in the senior reaches of global decision-making restrains hundreds of millions of women every day, not only from rising and leading, but from blending a satisfying career with a healthy partnership and motherhood,” she writes. The consequences of this “disconnect,” as she calls it, are profound, not just for women, but for men, for families and for the planet. The effort to change that, to solve the “work and family conundrum” and build an economy centered around care is what Nooyi calls our “moonshot.” She is right that the transformation won’t be easy. “But I have learned that with courage and persistence — and the inevitable give-and-take — it can happen,” she writes. And she has given us a roadmap, both in her own remarkable life and now in this book.?So if you’re looking to be inspired and motivated, or someone on your holiday gift list is, you can order a copy?here .

Read More on Thrive:?Lessons on Life, Work, Family and Business From Indra Nooyi

Are You Suffering From "Pandemic Brain"?

So much of the conversation?about our?new hybrid world is about where we’ll work, but just as important is how much of ourselves we?are?bringing to our work. Are we?truly present and able to tap into our best, most human qualities, like compassion, empathy, resilience and creativity? Or are we?stressed, distracted and unable to focus? If that sounds?familiar, you might be suffering from what’s being called “pandemic brain.”

The proliferation of incredible technologies that make it possible for us to stay connected are, paradoxically, overwhelming us with stress and making us less productive. As Kelli María Korducki reports in?The Guardian, not only is “pandemic brain” widespread, the cognitive effects of stress don’t magically disappear as soon as the stressor does. So along with the Great Resignation,?we need a Great Re-evaluation to rethink how to use technology and how to structure the workplace in ways that?create pathways of connection to our inner resources, those treasures inside us that enable us to handle whatever the external world throws our way.

Read More on Thrive:?Noises Off: Finding Focus in a World of Pandemic Brain and Techno-overload

Before You Go

__________________________________________________________________________

Help Us #RedefineGifting?

Last year, Thrive Global and I partnered with investor and philanthropist Ray Dalio in his #RedefineGifting campaign to give away 20,000 $50 charity gift cards to donate to people’s favorite charities?— and I’m excited to say we’re doing the same thing this year. Once again, there are no strings attached. The only thing we hope for is that those who receive free cards will spread the word about their experience, and then consider this type of gift for their own families, friends, clients and employees this holiday season.

And as part of the Thrive community, I’m thrilled to invite you to be a part of this #RedefineGifting campaign.?The first round?of charity?gift cards for the 2021 giveaway were claimed in just?a matter of hours — but stay tuned because?there’s going to be a second round this month. We’ve also made this our holiday gift to all team members at Thrive this year. Giving is one of our most powerful well-being tools, transforming?the giver as much as the recipient. Ray notes that?each holiday season over $16 billion is spent on unwanted gifts. “Imagine what a huge impact we can have by convincing more people to give to charity instead of buying more unwanted stuff!” he writes.?I hope you’ll spread the word and help us #RedefineGifting. Sign up at?Tisbest.org/RedefineGifting ?to be notified of the next giveaway round.

Read More on Thrive:?Our Gift to You: The Chance to #RedefineGifting

Nature Moment of the Month?

Nature can be beautiful, moving and awe-inspiring. It can also be... really funny. Exhibit A: the?winners ?of the?Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. Yes, we’ve all had days like this:

Photo: John Speirs / Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards 2021

Best,