The Journey Down the Mountain

Are you teaching people to be okay with being uncomfortable? Because you talk about it. That that pain is a teacher. I realized that I was thirty years old. I was trapped under the weight of my own success. I've got a few hits. Got a few million dollars . And I'm just sort of looking around, like , is this it ? Cause I got all the stuff I was supposed to. There was this asymmetry between like what I had to give to the world and what I had given to the world. And I said if I keep following that script , uh I know I'm never gonna close the gap. I have to admit something . I am not a millennial. I also don't listen to a lot of popular music. And so if I'm really honest, I didn't really know who Mike Posner was when we booked him on the podcast. Turns out he's a multi-platinum Grammy-nominated record ing artist and producer. But my team knew exactly who he was, because they're millennials. And for them, Mike's hits were more than just songs, they were anthems for their generation. Songs like Cooler Than Me and I Took a Pill in Ibiza became part of the Zeitgeist. But I'm really glad that Mike came on the podcast. Whether you know his songs or not, whether his songs captured your feelings or not, his message actually matters to all of us. By every external metric, Mike was hugely successful, but no one prepared him for life once the party ended. Mike spent the past decade trying to find himself again. He walked across America, he almost died of a snake bite, he climbed Mount Everest, and here's the thing: it worked. He learned something beautiful about himself: self-acceptance. Mike will freely admit he is now a different person from the guy who needed to chase external validation. And this new song I Went Back to Abiza tells his new story. It turns out, whether you have a Grammy nomination or not, whether you're famous or not, the lessons Mike learned apply to all of us because his journey is a very human journey. This is a bit of optimism . You know, it's funny they say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Yeah. And your career , your story, your presence, it seems to have shown up at the right time for the times we live in. The challenges that people are dealing with, the journeys that people are on , your story, your message, your inspiration would not have worked in the, you know, thir 20 years ago. So I don't know if you feel that I don't know. I haven't really contemplated it before. I I've toyed with this idea that God gives teachers pain and if you learn to overcome that pain you can teach others to do the same. And the teaching then is imbued with you know sort of like a gravitas that it wouldn't otherwise have to teach him from experience rather than a conceptual like reading of some book that you've never gone through. So I I guess thank you . I guess thank you . Um but you're right, you go through certain certain trials and tribulations and challenges, we could just call them that that maybe the ones that I've overcome or you know figured out some kind of rhyme or reason to how to get through 'em. Maybe they were like yeah, five, ten years before a lot of other people are undergoing the same ones. I'm not sure. I'm just trying to share and help people where I can . Did you want to be a musician or a teacher? Depends what what age mic we're we're asking. I think at sixteen I just wanted to be cool and and have some girls pay attention to me, you know, was probably as far as I had had planned out. Definitely definitely not a teacher. I guess it also speaks to the role of art , right? Which I'm fascinated by. As an art lover I spend you know Do you know how rich you sound when you say as an art lover ? Oh my really ? Oh yeah. Okay., Okay o nowkay, you're gonna get me okay. Now this beautiful invitation to have you on the podcast is now gonna change and I'm gonna pull up my soapbox and I'm gonna do all the talking now. Alright? That is such a trigger. I love art too, by the way, but when you say as an art lover, if you start a sentence like that, come on as your friend, I want you to know certain people are gonna Does it sound elite us to say as a music lover? No No. . Right? Does it sound elitist to say as a food lover? In the middle. In the middle. So I think I think we're speaking to one of the problems with with art, right? I understand why it doesn't sound elitist when you say it for music, is because music for fourteen ninety-five a month, you have unlimited access to all the music in the world, you know, so it's accessible, but this is the mistake about art, which is art is accessible too, it's the institutions that house the art or sell the art that are the elitist assholes that I hate. I love art and I hate the art world. Yeah. And there are incredibly talented young artists whose work is accessible. You can visit a museum, you can visit a gallery, many of those are free. You can also scroll through the internet and scroll through Instagram and, you can appreciate somebody's intensity and creativity all day . And so or you could watch a train go by. Or you can watch a train go by, and I think you're absolutely right. I have these moments, they're ultra, ultra present moments and they catch me by surprise. I don't do it on purpose. Where I'm fully consumed by the sights and sound of the thing I'm doing. So when I'm making coffee in the morning , and it doesn't happen all the time, but I'll randomly, it's like a switch goes, and I'm all of a sudden hyper-attuned to the cl ank of the coffee pot and the swish of the spoon in the coffee and the sprinkle of the coffee into the cup, you know, and all those sounds become my morning music and everything else is completely tuned out. To your point, we are surrounded by beautiful, beautiful things. That wasn't my point. I was just trying to tease you a little bit. I know. Do you have to have courage to put so much of yourself and your vulnerability in your work for display. Like why not just sing about love and happiness and joy? Why sing about loss and pain and hurt? Because most most art or most music , it's superficial, let's be honest. The lyricists and the lyrics that are written it's forced rhymes and silly stories and made up ide as. What is it about your work? Is it courage? Is it naivete that you are so raw ? Well, first of all, thank you for for recognizing that. As you asked the question, I had this this riff that our friend in Q sometimes goes on. I know he's been a guest on your Yeah. He's his I loved his episode. He has this great riff that he'll sometimes do on stage and he says art is alchemy. Yeah. Okay, so you're taking pain that you undergo in life, and pain is a part of life. We all go through pain. Every single person at some point will undergo extreme stress . Not like, oh, I stubbed my toe, like man, this person died. Like every single human being gets the privilege of experiencing extreme pain at some point . Artists have this gift. We get to make if we do our job well something beautiful out of that pain so our friend adam and q he calls that alchemy he says you are alchemizing pain into beauty . Now, if someone else like you , as an art lover, can go either listen to the song or hear the poem or see the painting . And that imbues you with a sense of fellowship. Okay ? Going, wow, I too have felt that sort of pain, but it was hard for me to describe. It was hard for me to put my finger on. Maybe because it's hard to even describe in words to begin with. But if you get to play with music or you get to play with color, then suddenly you can put your finger on this thing that was otherwise ineff able . And then you, Simon, as our placeholder, as an art lover, can say , Wow, I'm not the only one . So art is an artist with a capital A and I agree with you, you know, a lot of the art. And it's not with with judgment, because I've done it too, right? Most of the art or the music, most of the music rather that we have, it is not art, it's a commodity. Most of the artists become brand ambassadors for a picture of themselves that they used to be. Or it's simply a commercial enterprise and it's a product and they choose the product that sells well. Great. Great, and and nothing wrong with it. Yep. But art, as you asked, with a capital A, it often involves I haven't thought about it enough to say it always involves, but it often involves this sort of alchemy and it's somebody saying the artist saying hey this is what it's like for me to be human yeah this is the stuff I don't tell other people or I I don't even know how to I don't I don't even know how to start telling, but when I sit down at this keyboard, I put it pick up this guitar. This is what it's like for me to be me . Anybody else ? Does anyone else feel this way ? And if we do a good job, someone hears it, looks, sees it, and they might not even be born yet. That's the crazy thing. And they go, thank you . Me too . Okay, I have so many thoughts bubbling. I have talked about this publicly, that we have misinterpreted vulnerability and broadcast that going into a room by yourself with your phone, turning on the camera, and crying and talking about how your loss is not really vulnerability, but it is broadc ast, and it's actually more difficult to say those exact same words to a friend in person in private than it is by yourself in your room with your phone, right ? Right. But this is where I need your help. What's the difference between the broadcast of my feelings by myself in my room with my camera and you sitting by yourself writing down your lyrics , strumming your guitar, recording the album and putting it out there. Why is one art and designed to be a mirror to make others feel not alone in that pain and the other seems to kind of like I know it feels different, but it feels to miss the mark. Like, because they're similar. What makes them different? Well, it comes down to intention . Because you're right, you know, going alone in the guitar. Look, I got my microphone right here. You know, I could be alone in this room is where I do my music, by the way. If I just sit here and I write a song from that exact viewpoint, which is not to create a human connection and fellowship, but is actually to get attention . And in Q Riffs on this, he said that's not alchemy. That's turning pain to pa in. The equation would be then if you're broadcasting and the likes and the follows are the thing that alleviate the pain, you miss the point. Because the album sales and the downloads of your song are not the thing that relieve the pain, but the album sales and the downloads are a recognition that others may either appreciate the music superficially or feel not alone when they share your pain. Perhaps perhaps. You know, they could be. No, I'm always surprised by those. Right. That I don't perform. Right. But people ask me this question sometimes, they'll be like, you know, because I've made albums my entire adult life. I think I have twelve now. So almost one a year for like the last 15 years. I just thought you were a guy who wrote a song. Right. So people ask this question, they say, but listen, the context in which I live now is like my last hit song was I I don't know, like nine or ten years ago, like really popular songs. So people will say to me like when are you gonna write another song? Like I've written hundreds of songs since All in the context of for whatever reason, am always shocked by which of my songs have become popular. Yeah. I f I feel like I meet and work with and know other recording artists who can sort of like sit down and go, Hey, we're gonna make a big one and then they do and then they say this is the big one and then you promote it and then it it's the big one. And look, I always put these on like man surely this one's gonna be this one's gonna be very popular. That never works out. And then I'll write something like my most popular song so far is called I Took a Pill and Ibiza, right? And this song is like I finished it and I loved it . It felt true to me. It felt like territory I hadn't already trodden as a writer , but I also thought surely this will never become popular because it's got a drug reference in the title. It's like this will never be on the radio and lo and behold, it became quite popular. So I never know. I want to go back to something that we said before. I said there were lots of thoughts, and there's another one that I had, which is you had the courage, and I call it courage, to put your feelings, your hardships in a song for all to hear. But do we live in a world right now where people and I'll skew young er, you know, the younger people, well maybe old people, not to be ageist, are afraid of discomfort. And the reason I say younger people is because I think, you know, they didn't live through the war, they didn't live through civil rights, you know. Arguably, there's a lot of discomfort these days, there's seems to be a lot of upheaval and discomfort these days for all kinds of reasons. Are you teaching people to be okay with being uncomfortable? Because you talk about it, that that pain is a teacher. But are are we learning the lessons? Are we learning the lessons of pain now or are we just avoidant and putting up barriers and walls and you know, creating boundaries, I put it in air quotes, because the pain is just too much. Scott Galloway talks about this. Like go screw something up. Go fail. Go humiliate yourself. It'll be more valuable to your life than none of those difficult, hard, and uncomfortable feelings. You know, I got a degree from Duke University in sociology , but I haven't really kept up with that in the last twenty years, Simon. I'm vaguely familiar with the archetypal stereotypes of Gen Z and Millennial, all this stuff, but I wouldn't so be so bold as to say whole generations this way or that way. I could say in my own life many of the things that you just referenced are true. Yeah. That things went relatively well. I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. There was no capital T trauma in my childhood. I got really good grades. I went to Duke University all the while sort of developing this skill as a musician. Before I graduated from Duke University, I won myself a record deal. My career had started to take off. I was becoming famous . Flash cut forward now I'm 30 years old and I've got a few hits, got a few million dollars in the bank account, and I'm just sort of looking around like is this it ? Cause I got all the stuff I was supposed to. When it comes to like the American society or like at what's the pinnacle it's like president, rock star, you know it,'s like which one would you rather be? At least for our general. I think now it's like in Instagram influencer is up there for kids, but for people my age is like I I was a pop star, man. You can't go that much higher than that. It's true. I think Pop Star is even higher than movie star . Maybe. Perhaps. I think then there's levels to each. I realized I was 30 years old. I was trapped under the weight of my own success. I was living in West Hollywood and I I I just thought, you know, this can't be it. This can't this can't be it. And there was this feeling, Simon , that maybe you'll resonate with and I'm willing to bet s n more than one person will resonate with listening. There was this feeling like there was more inside me than I was expressing like I I had more to give inside my soul than my actual life reflected. There was this asymmetry between like what I had to give to the world and what I had given to the world. And I couldn't figure out how to close that gap. And people would say to me at the time, but you've done so much. You're the guy that same cooler than me. You did I took a pill and a visa. Like you got nominated for a Grammy. What like what do you mean? You've given so much to the world. But it wasn't about the external . It was this just internal knowing like something is off. And I remember like for years I felt like, man, I was just like one supplement away or like one new biohacking trick away or one change in my diet away from feeling peace from feeling like my life was the way it was supposed to be and And at age 30, I said, I don't know how I'm gonna close this peace gap, but I know if I just keep doing what I'm doing, like 'cause I was on a trajectory. I was supposed to make albums, then go on tour, then make another album, then go on tour, man make another album, then go on tour. I was supposed to basically do that until I died or became so irrelevant that it was no longer a business that that that a multinational corporation could count on. So I I said if I keep following that script , uh I know I'm never going to close the gap. That's a recipe to not close the gap. So to Scott Galloway's point, like I have to try something else. So that's when I chose to do this crazy idea , which was to walk across the the United States. I wanted to start walking on the east coast, the Atlantic Ocean, New Jersey, and walk all the way to the West Co ast. It is some strange effort. I was trying to lose myself and find myself at the same time. And I only tell this whole wild story because at age 30, I made the decision to go and then I actually started when I was thirty one . It's a funny change of numbers because I grew up Jewish and Judaism you're supposed to have a bar mitzvah when you're thirteen and that's when you're supposed to become a man. But now I wasn't thirteen, I was thirty-one and I realized hey, you know, I'm not a man. Why am I not a man? Because I haven't gone through hard stuff. Life's just kind of worked. And there's been hardship internally, but you know what? Instead of trying to make myself more famous, more money, so I can get more stuff and make my little box inside LA more comfortable, I'm gonna make it as uncomfortable as possible. I'm gonna do something I don't know if I can do. And it's gonna be physically hard. It's actually gonna be dangerous. And it's gonna be so divorced from what I'm supposed to do that it might actually risk the work that I put in the last 10 years of my life to become a pop star. And that's what my agents and managers told me. They said, You're gonna ruin your whole career by doing this. Okay, let's go . And for me, that was my real bar mitzvah. That was my real starting to become an adult. I think there's a lot more to that. So I agree with you. You know, uh a lot of what mental health is supposed to be is actually mental weakness. And it's like, I'm gonna take time off, I'm gonna make boundaries, I'm gonna shield myself from stuff that's challenging or difficult. That's not mental health, that's weakness. That's you can't deal with things that are challenging. No, you actually want to become inoculated, choose hardship. And I realize like maybe some people listening to this are thinking, oh, this is absurd. You know, Mike Posner, you're like a healthy young white guy who's has a lot of money saying choose hardship. And I'm saying, yes, you're right. I had a life that didn't have so much hardship. In fact, it was so devoid of hardship that it was empty. We need hardship. We pretend that we don't want any challenges in our life. In actuality, we crave them. We crave challenges . Because even though our intellectual minds tell us, hey, let's make life as comfortable as possible , the only way to grow, the real way to grow, is through challenges. Challenges come and we ask, what are we supposed to learn from this? Who were you when you set off in New Jersey and who were you when you arrived in California? Well, I can remember when I arrived in California, I looked at my friend and I said , man , before I started this, I was such a bitch . I just , you know, you learn. There's a through line of me and all of us I think never changes , but there's a lot that we can change more than we give ourselves credit for. We got to be real careful when we start saying, I'm this kind of person, I'm an introvert, I'm an avoidant type of person, I'm an anxious type of person. No, you're not. You have avoidant tendency. You have avoidant habits, patterns. You have anxious habits, patterns. A lot of stuff we can change we don't give ourselves credit for. So to your question, what changed I didn't learn to become a better person in relationships. I didn't become somebody that somebody else would want to marry. I didn't find joy and fulfillment . But what did change, I found a freaking tougher part of myself, man, that was never gonna come out in West Hollywood. Because I almost died on the journey. I got bit by a poisonous rattlesnake and spent I think it was three nights in the ICU , and my legs swelled to the size of an elephant trunk and and when that happened I got really famous. I got a lot of attention. Got picked up by mainstream media and TMZ and my Instagram followers went up. So I was getting all this attention after I got hurt . And it was a crossroads moment because I was either gonna go back to living my life based on how much attention I could get from other people. Just goes back to the beginning of our conversation . Or I was gonna finish this thing . Because the more I more I was hurt, that's the more attention I got. And when I was walking I didn't get that much attentive, you know. So there's an irony in it, isn't there? It's ridiculous. There's an irony, which is if you had just walked across the country and not get bitten by a snake . You would have learned your lessons, you would have had your hardship, you would have come out and said, I was this, I'm now this and you know, different because you got bitten by a snake, but you know, you would have had your lessons of humility and all of the rest of it, right? But walking across the country's for the rest of us is boring . You know what I mean? Like hearing about a guy walking is boring. Not for the person doing it. I understand. And so there's an irony that the very thing you're trying to escape is the thing that doubled because of the event of the drama . The near death, because it's newsworthy. Right? And this is where I find this whole conversation , quite frankly, difficult . Because it's all true . Hardship builds character. Hardship m teaches you things about yourself you would never learn. We don't learn anything when things go well, we learn things when things go badly. All the lessons are in in in the difficult. Everything you're saying is true. Challenging ourselves, getting out of our comfort zones, all of this is good advice and makes great posters with you know dangling kittens. All easier said than done in practice. You know, somebody says I'm gonna walk across the country, and then you hear about you getting bitten by a snake, you're like, ah , you know, it sort of only adds the risk. The reason I struggle with the conversation, I'm even struggling being articulate about why I'm struggling with the conversation. There's two kinds of hardship, right ? There's an event. I got bitten by a snake. That's an event. That's a one kind of hardship. You know, I lost somebody I love. That's a hardship. My relationship collapsed. That's a hardship. Right. And there's a different kind of hardship, which is sort of like I'm trying to change my lot in life. I started my own business. I've decided I'm gonna live a life without a corporate job and that hardship is more ongoing and m more extended. Where I'm trying to get to is like are we talking about either one? Are we talking about both? Because some hardship we can create for ourselves, you know, it's called risk. Another ship just happens to us whether we like it or not. Yes. Yes. Take a breakup for example, right? Someone's not in a relationship and they're so afraid of being hurt that they keep their walls up so high and are so incapable of vulnerability that they'll never actually get the relationship and they spend their life angry that they can't be in a relationship not recognizing that they're the ones that have built this wall around them out of fear of losing. Or you can actually be in the relationship. Wait, wait, wait. Have you read my journals from ages uh twenty to thirty-four? What's going on? Or you can be in the relationship and so afraid of losing it that you become a pleaser to the other person, manipulating your own self into points of quite extreme discomfort just to ensure the other person's happ y for fear of losing the relationship, which by the way, will probably shorten the life of the relationship because you're not being yourself. Yeah . And this is what vulnerability is, right? Vulnerability is the risk to lose the thing you hope you don't lose . Vulnerability is stepping into the thing that absolutely could fail. And we're not talking about being blind. There's a difference between jumping out of a plane and jumping out of a plane with a parachute . Yeah, they both have the same thrill, but one has certainty and one does not of of failure. And when I make the blanket broad s uh comment about you know afraid of being uncomfortable, we see it exhibited, which is I'm so afraid of breaking up with you even though we've dated for six months, you know what I'll do? I'll just ghost you. It's easier for me. Nothing personal. I know it's a traumatic for you, but it's just easier for me because I don't want to have an uncomfortable conversation break up with you. Or I'm just gonna quit my job., you know It's not going great, but instead of talking to my boss, I think I'll just quit because you know it's easier for me, you know ? And that's what I'm talking about , which is it is the discomfort , even when it blows up in our face , that the lessons will happen . Because you and I have both walked into things sometimes blindly and sometimes consciously , that did not go well . I would argue went extremely badly. And I can be blamey, be like they did this, they did that. And some of that might be true, but it also gives me the opportunity to be like, how did I show up? What did I do to pour gas on that fire? Whether I started or not is irrelevant . And I can't learn that without screwing it up. And so if we avoid making mistakes, if we avoid feeling humiliated, if we avoid discomfort, pain, just cause it's easier for me right now, you know ? Then to your point, that hollowness perpetuates . And now we're living lives of running away, avoidance and fear It's getting very philosophical, Mike . And so I think the problem I have with these kinds of conversations is the discussion is so academic , and the discussion usually happens ith people who did it and are now going around everybody else, you really gotta do it . And you have the credibility because you did it and people found inspiration in your story and continue to find inspiration in your story. I guess tell me a story not about you. Tell me a story about somebody who did something because of your art or because of your walk across the country? That's a good question. I'll preface it by saying one other thing about me or the old me, which is all the stuff that you're describing of avoiding, ghosting , making decisions based on what's psychologically most comfortable for oneself. I've done all those things. We all have. No, no, I'm saying every single worse worse than that. I mean, who I used to be was not a good guy. Yeah. So I don't think anyone should listen to me because I'm so wise or I'm s I've done these cool things or you know, I think they're cool. Walking across the US a lot of people think they're very stupid. I don't think anyone should should take any credence to to my messages be or I think they should listen because of where I was, how miserable I was, how many times I thought about killing myself. Not because I hadn't achieved something externally. I I had achieved a lot externally, but because I was doing the exact th ings you're talking about, that I realized somewhere deep down I was not happy . And the point of my whole life until I got into my Early 30s was convincing the world I was. My life was a fraud and my reason for existence was convincing people that I was not a fraud. And I was good at it. People even found me inspiring back then. And on some level I was . But I didn't have what I have now. I didn't have just a peace in being. I didn't have the ability to hold a vision of the future that I'm excited about, but also being content with, hey man, if this all ends right now, I'm grateful I got to even have a go-round. So I'm not avoiding your question. The first guy that that pops into my head, there was a guy named Adam when I was walking across Kansas . This I'll call him a kid. He wasn't a kid, but he was younger than me. You know, I was 31 and he was maybe 25 or something. He just kept showing up. And at that point, I walked 24 miles a day, and he would walk with me 24 miles a day. And I think he walked like a couple hundred miles with me in Kansas. He was a really quiet guy . And I got a message a few years later and it was from him and he said I decided I was gonna walk across America also . And I would like you to walk the last day with me . So I went to Santa Monica and I met up with this guy and I walked with him and he and he had this big backpack on and he was like real thin and like you could tell he he been through been through some life. And I watched him dive in the Pacific Ocean and I wouldn't be so egotistical to say it's that's because I did it. You know, I think probably had some some non-trivial part in like seeding the idea in his head, but ultimately was his decision to go do that. And I'm proud of him . You know, I the other day I was walking on stage and I used to run these community calls every week last year. I don't do it anymore. And I was walking on stage in this nightclub in Austin and someone held up a phone because so loud in there and they had written on the phone and it just said, Your calls help me get clean from drugs and alcohol. Thank you . I get lost stuff like that. But it's not me . It's them . You know, he he he got himself cleaned drugs and alcohol. Wasn't my call or my song or some magic word I said on a Zoom call, right ? Like one of my favorite teachers, Ramdas, he said, we're all just walking each other home . And I can't tell you how many times Simon, like a piece of art, like to go back to our the beginning of our conversation or another human being live or never on Instagram but sometimes even a YouTube video has helped me so much, man. Helped me through like real periods of dark ness . And if one of my songs or something I say or some distinction that I picked up from some other teacher or some book I read and I share it regurgitate it back and probably, you know, mess it up a little bit, but hopefully don't ruin all the truth of it can help someone on their journey towards what ? Towards themselves , towards, I believe in God, with a connection to something bigger than them, towards the life that I think we all deserve, which is a life imbued with meaning, some fun , some joy, some enthusiasm, maybe some laughter and definitely some love mixed in. If anything I do can bring people closer to that, like that's awesome. It comes from telling the truth first. And then sometimes, sometimes, these are beautiful byproducts can happen. They're moments of grace. I love the way you speak about peace and grace and moments . You know ? And I I think you're right. I think if if you're living a life well lived , if you're leaning into the discomfort in the way that you're describing it, the result is calm. Right? Because the opposite of calm is the anxiety of how many followers, how much money, how much fame. Right? That is not calm . That's anxious . Me proving myself to myself, trying to convince myself that I have value relative to someone else. And I think this to me is the ultimate message that I find in your work , which is it's not about the pursuit of discomfort, it's not about the pursuit of difficult, it's not about the pursuit of any of those things. It's the pursuit of calm, peace, a restful mind . And you have learned that these challenges that you put for yourself and these acceptances and the difficulties, what you have found is that has been the best route to find that peace , which is counterintuitive . That peace came from stress , not from pretending you're a baller. And it is a deeply personal journey because only we know the stress and the discomfort and the unease that we feel, because we can project anything we want. And there's a deep, deep honest y that has to go with am I calm? Am I at peace? And I think that's perhaps one of the reasons that you know, as I get older , I I'm I'm becoming that person that drove me nuts when I was younger . Like we do. It's really, it's really annoying. You know , where when I was younger, I thought I knew everything, and now I realize how little I know, and I actually find it more comforting knowing that I know less. Where I thought I had to have comfort by knowing more and proving I could do more, and now just I'm total a total peace going, I know so little, and I'm I'm cool with that. If life goes normally, stuff goes bad . And so you know the benefit of age is not is not that you get It's just that the likelihood that you've had to struggle a little bit is higher. Some people find those lessons at a very young age, you know, an 18-year-old who's had a bad run can have the same wisdom as a 70-year-old, you know ? But the point is they lived a little. And what you're talking about is injecting life experience into the system . Injecting the hardship, injecting it. And you can sit around and wait for it. It'll happen at some point. Yes, it will. But you have agency. We can inject it. And nobody's saying walk across the country, you know, but the there are little things that we can do, little risks that we can take in our careers, in our relationships. Somebody recently said to me , I don't tell you enough how much I love you. And I took that exactly how it was intended . And I felt more loved in that moment from the risk of telling me that I I don't tell you enough not because I don't feel it. It's just I don't know how you're gonna receive it and I don't know if you feel the same way . But I realize I don't tell you how much I love you. And it was better that one sentence made me feel more loved than the daily act of kindness. My point is that was an injection. That was a conscious decision to inject stress and fear into the system . It happened to have gone well. It doesn't always. And that's part of it, which is sometimes we don't get the response we're hoping for. And that's why we avoid doing it again . And that's where I'm struck by your message. I think it's about peace and calm, not about stress or discomfort I agree. I I'm look I'm glad that person told you how much they they love you, Sim on. A lot of people love you a lot. And I think you're quite lovable man . I do . Thanks, Mike. I do. Too bad we're doing this virtually we could hug now. Oh big hug, man. I would give you a big bear hug . You're right. Thank you for distilling you know our conversation further. It's not about doing some crazy thing. In fact, some of the crazy things I've done, I feel like I had to do just to realize I didn't have to do them . There you go. And that's the problem. That's the problem because we see somebody on Instagram who does this and now we think it's a cycle. We think that that if we do this every day and we over stress the body and over stress the mind constantly, that's what's making us stronger. But it's only adding more stress . And the pursuit isn't strength, the pursuit isn't grit, the pursuit is peace . A calm mind. You embody everything you talk about, and you and I both know that that is rare. Thank you. And it's a joy to to be in it with you, you know? I appreciate that. You know, I'm I'm very much still building the ship as I sail. I sometimes leave the toilet seat up and I'm known for getting my wallet in airports three to four times per year. But all that being said. And it's not to promote an album. Hey, you can find my wallet at LAX . Use my credit card for whatever you want. That's right. You can even use credit credit. Buy my album with my credit card. Buy one for your friends. That would be a very clever promotion. To find your credit card. Listen. Thank you for distilling it down . Because on some level I thought you know it isn't my message to tell people oh you gotta go do crazy stuff. This is all nuanced, you know. But the we live in a world of sound bites where there's plenty of people online telling us to go do the crazy things. I once watched a podcast with two guys who you would know, I'm not gonna say him because I'm gonna say some mean afterwards, but two brilliant men, influencers, and they sat across a table from one another with their big brains and they like sparred with these witty aphorisms that they had like loaded up like machine gun bullets. What was an example of one? Like I have my own of them. Like I was gonna say one earlier, like, you know, we train for the pain that we don't choose by the pain that we do choose, right? Right, right. And they they just had like scores of them and they're like wham and the other guy's like he they that's all that the only way they could even speak like there was no he's like well I think this bam and the other guy's like that's interesting bam and it's like it was like a conversation of love, just like it's like two it's like chat GBT talking to Claude. Yeah, but they were clever, yeah, yeah, yes . But like they weren't actually relating to each other, just kind of like slapping their intellectual balls on the table. And I was like, this is unlistenable. You know, like I can't wait, brain's gonna explode. The point is that you know, as as as clever as any of those aphorisms or quips are, and as as far as like they can get any sort of like guys like us on the internet, there's always nuance. Yeah. Like hardship does create challenges, which is like the thing that you were struggling with earlier, but like you push it too far and it becomes totally selfish in this like rabbit hole that leads to nowhere. And I lived that because after I walked across America, I climbed Everest. And when I was on Everest I was like this is a really dumb way to die if I die here and thankfully praise God I didn't die there. Because people forget that getting to the top is only halfway. Exactly. Well played. Um so and so the the point is that I risked my life for self-improvement. Literally. I almost died twice exploring myself , which is selfish . Okay, there's lot of worthy reasons to die. All of them involve other human beings. Yeah. None of them involve exploring yourself. Yeah. So any of these things, like when pushed the extreme, they kind of fall apart . And what's left is like this moment in our lives contributing to others, a feeling of love or transcendence if we can transmit that to another person like your friend did to you in that moment. Yeah . Like what's left? After all this intellectual snobbery and like personal growth of you know, it's like we're here walking each other home. We're all gonna die. Yeah. And and can we make each other's walk a little more con can we hold someone else's hand? I'm realizing we just came up with an accidental aphorism, which you know . Yeah, I know. Uh Woo! Sound the alarms. By the way, before because I ha get the feeling maybe we're wrapping up. I want you to know that I wore my grown-up shirt today. Why? Because I just felt like this is a serious podcast, man. Oh my god. You wanna be serious? If you think this is a serious podcast, I have failed . Seriously, I have failed. Um This is serious business. I've get told this a lot. People like they're afraid to come on because I'm serious. I I mean that really upsets me. No, I didn't say you were serious. I said this is a serious podcast. Well it's called a bit of optimism. Which is not the most serious subject in the world. Here's the accidental aphorism that I've now decided I really like as a metaphor. And I'm not gonna try and unwrap it, but I will lay it out and then we'll leave it for you and for everybody else to just go ruminate. When I said when you get to the top of Everest, you're only halfway , I think that's good life advice. That when you get to the top of whatever mountain you're climbing, career , whatever, relationship, lock that marriage down, you know, whatever the goal is. When you get to the top, you're only halfway, and the only place to go once you're at the top is down . And And if you thought the goal was to get to the top, you've missed the point . The goal is to have peace on the journey up, and to have peace on the journey down . That the joy of coming down is as exciting and the views are as beautiful as going up. And all the aphorisms are all about the journey up . And they never tell us that when you get there, you're only halfway . And no one gives us any advice on the journey down the other side of the mountain. Like, all right, I got the relationship. Now what? Oh, now the hard work . Now the hard work. Mm-hmm . And I just think there's there's more to unwrap there. That the joy of life is the whole journey. The joy of climbing Everest is not the peak, it's the whole journey. It's the ability to come down the mountain and say, I went up and I came down . Cause you can as easily die on the way down as you can on the way up . In fact, you're more likely to die on the way down because you're exhausted. Way more likely. You're way more likely to die on the way down because you're exhausted and you don't think clearly and you make mistakes and if you spend too much time on the top, you know all this. You run out of time, you run out of oxygen, you run out of all kinds of things. And I like that too. I like that metaphor . That on Everest, you can spend too much time there. And the longer you spend up in that air, you will increase the likelihood of death because you spent too long at the top, which is another perfect metaphor, which is if you're climbing up, make sure to keep the humility that maybe you don't need to stay there your whole li fe . Yes. Yes. I love that . What a joy. Well, I'm not gonna say any more words. That big brain of yours just came out with that great multi tiered metaphor come on let's end no okay we'll end right there Mike Posner thank you for climbing Everest thank you for walking across America. Thank you for being bit by a snake. Thank you for taking pills in a biza . What a joy. And thank you for writing hundreds of songs for the joy of writing the songs, even though they're not necessarily as famous. I just love the fact you've written twelve albums . A lot of them, man. I know. It's the work, but it's the work. This is the work of the artist. You do it not for others, you do it for yourself. And if if they're hits, great. And if they're not hits, you're still making music because you love making music. Oh, it's it's the best. As always, thank you for watching. If you liked this episode, please subscribe to a bit of optimism for more interesting guests and even more interesting conversations. New episodes drop every Tuesday. You can also watch a bit of optimism on Spotify, and remember Spo,tify premium users can enjoy the show ad-free. Until next time, take care of yourself. Take care of each other. A bit of optimism is a production of the Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team