“Everything Goes My Way”: Bill Lawrence Explains How His Real-Life Mantra Made It Into ‘Shrinking’

While watching Episode 2 of Shrinking — Apple TV+’s new grief-com from creators Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein, and Jason Segel — I yelped a little too loud when Michael Urie’s character Brian delivered the lines, “Everything goes my way! It’s kind of my mantra.”

You may assume I did so because that mantra is low-key insufferable, or because Urie portrays the upbeat optimist so perfectly you just want to squeal — both of which are true. But I yelped because as a faithful listener of Goldstein’s podcast, Films To Be Buried With, I know that “Everything goes my way” is Lawrence’s real-life mantra, which he came up with at 18 because he needed a profound philosophy to include in his high school yearbook. (Yes, really.)

In Shrinking, Urie’s Brian is the longtime best friend of Jimmy (Segel), a grieving therapist who’s struggling to pick himself up again after loss. When Jimmy’s wife died, he inexplicably distanced himself from Brian. But when the two reunite nearly a year later, Brian finally learns why. “You ghosted me for a year. I want to know why. You were drowning, I was there trying to pull you out!” Brian said. “You wouldn’t let me be fucking miserable, Brian. I needed to hit rock bottom and you wouldn’t let me. It’s not fun to be around somebody who says, ‘Everything goes my way!’ when their wife is dying,” Jimmy responded. After Brian apologized and cracked an iconic “I never said everything goes your way” joke, the two picked up right where they left off. But in case you’re wondering, Lawrence’s friends hate the infamous mantra just as much as Jimmy does.

“Being a young guy who was trying to be a comedian and comedy writer in Hollywood, you constantly get fired from every job and can’t get a gig and it gets very depressing. So when I was young I used to torture my friends by saying ‘Everything goes my way’ all the time,” Lawrence told Decider at The Paley Center’s red carpet premiere for Shrinking. “It was almost like that Oprah, The Secret type thing of just put it out there and manifest it. Because it was an absolute lie. Most days in my twenties I was lucky to get out of my boxers, because I had no job other than painting houses. But then it got to be a thing. So now if I get fired I say, ‘It’s alright. Something better will come along. Everything goes my way!’ And I mostly say it to annoy the people I care about in my life. It drives them insane. And I decided to make it some other character’s mantra finally, and it’s so much funnier out of Michael Urie’s mouth than it ever was out of mine.”

Urie is well aware that his character’s mantra belongs to Lawrence, and he loves it. “I think it means that in a few years I’ll have about half a dozen hit shows under my belt and all his money,” Urie told Decider with a giggle at the Shrinking premiere. “[Bill] told me a really great story. He was in a car with his friend, they had just played tennis, and he was like, ‘Oh, shoot. I lost my wedding ring. Ugh. Well, I’m sure I’ll find it. Everything goes my way!’ And his friend was like, ‘That is so annoying. Why do you always do that? I hate when you say, ‘Everything goes my way.’ That’s the most annoying thing you do.’ And Bill was like, ‘Yeah, man. You’re right. Oh, here’s my wedding ring!'”

But the stories don’t stop there… When Lawrence was a guest on Goldstein’s podcast in March 2019, he shared the first time the mantra was truly tested. “I got hired to write on Friends the very first year. I did very well on that show. I did not get along with one of the showrunners, and I was fired right when the show was number one,” Lawerence told Goldstein. “I was fetal for a couple days, you know, because the show was huge. But I did my ‘Everything goes my way’ thing. I said to my friends, ‘This shit’s happening for a reason. Everything goes my way.’ And one of the showrunners, a guy named David Crane — who I did have a good relationship with — called up Gary Goldberg and said, ‘We didn’t mesh with Bill Lawrence, but I think you’ll really like him.’ And Gary, who I’d never met, immediately invited me over to play basketball…and within three weeks I was I was a staff writer on the first DreamWorks sitcom. It was Gary’s show called Champs. And six months after that we created Spin City together.”

“You got fired from Friends so you could create Spin City?” Goldstein asked. “Everything goes your way!”

“Look it’s not a true prophecy, but the amount of stories that have been enhanced by the fact that I’ll say that out loud, and I’ll do something…like, I left my wallet on the roof of my car when I was 25 with a buddy. And we drove away, and it was on the freeway somewhere. He’s like, ‘Fuck, you’re gonna have to cancel all your credit cards.’ I’m like, ‘No. Everything goes my way, man.’ And literally there was a weird card in there to a person I had worked with that was the only phone number they could find. They called. I got home that night and the guy was like, ‘Hey, we haven’t talked in a year but someone found your wallet on the freeway.’ I’m like, ‘Cool. I’m gonna go over there with this friend who’s really annoyed and get it.'” Lawrence laughed.

When Goldstein asked where Lawrence’s philosophy came from, the Scrubs creator credited his father. “My dad used to spit out these platitudes that I really embraced, and one of them that I still remember was, ‘Don’t worry about the weather.’ I used to stand outside when I had a baseball game in the afternoon and it was supposed to rain. I’d be so upset, and I’d be staring at the sky. And he’d say, ‘Don’t worry about the weather…it’s a bigger thing than that. I mean, don’t worry about things you can’t control,'” Lawrence recalled. “He instilled this stuff in me. Everything goes my way; I don’t really mean it. I don’t mean I’m the luckiest guy on the planet. What he’s really saying is you can turn a negative into a positive. How many times do we get dumped and crushed by somebody or does a relationship fall apart or a job go away? It takes you a while, but then you go ‘OH. This is an opportunity. I can do this thing that I’ve always wanted to.’ And so I don’t mean it. The reason I’ve made it sound so arrogant and cocky is that it bugs my friends.”

Goldstein — who, like me, was raised with a mantra closer to “just be careful!” — simply said, “I’m gonna change my life philosophy to, ‘Everything goes Bill Lawrence’s way,'” as should we all.

The first two episodes of Shrinking are currently available to stream on Apple TV+. New episodes premiere weekly on Fridays.