Sacrificing Mediocrity for Extraordinary Results

Welcome back, man another speed rununning podcasting boot call. hope Do more hard things every day is a great mantra But it should be less about ice baths and more about making that decision you've been putting off for three months Yeah Um I think that than a Big misconception around hard stuff, which is just that Um running a marathon necessarily means you can have a conversation with your wife. U by saying, like I do hard things Um but those hard things don't necessarily generalize And so I think domain specificity is much more narrow unless you decide to generalize to an identity label of like, I am the type of person who can do hard things because I run this marathon or because I do these ice pads. And then as a result, I can then generalize that label to other behaviors. But if you can make that label and identify with it, then you don't need to run the marathon in order to do the hard thing. You just need the label What are the hard things that people should be focusing on more? What are the step change function, hard thing capacity skills that people should focus on more I think it's being cognizant of What? other What outside forces are influencing your behavior in a way that is aversive or against your goals And so if you're like, I want to start a business, but I am afraid of what other people will say, then it means that we are allowing those other people to control your behavior I think when you say it really plain terms like, they're like, wow, I didn't I was ging them that much power for my life. It's like, I'm not doing this because of them, which means they control me And to me, like the hard thing is in some ways just not allowing that control to persist or keep going It is interesting how many people can do hard things physically but can't do hard things decisively? I have So I have you, our security team and whatnot and this is a discussion that I've had with probably each of them at different times because they've seen combat and death and all that kind of stuff. And what's funny is that like, the amount of risk that they are willing to put their physical bodies in, like literally their lives at stake, but then how that doesn't necessarily translate to being able to have a like call it vulnerable conversation with a wife, spouse, lover, etca U it's just interesting. And this is again back to like These things don't generalize, they look good, but they do not mean the same thing weird that we publicly admire the obvious hard thing even if that isn't the one that actually makes the biggest difference to people's life direction. It's not predictive of being a good friend not predictive of being the best partner. It's not predictive of being a successful business owner C it more Obvious because it's more publicly laudable you can flex it online and you can tell people I ran a marathon as opposed to When my partner asked me a difficult question, I didn't shy away from it. I told them the truth T to be clear, I think that those things are laudable in and of themselves. like you go fight a war, you go like you go run a marathon, and I think all of those things are praiseworthy. It's just the generalizable component of that hard being, oh, I can do all hard things is really the misconception. But I do think that if for whatever reason you tell yourself a narrative that because you did this hard thing, you can do all hard things, then that's amazing. byy all means if someone's like, I started doing Ju Jutsu and completely changed my life. It's like, that's awesome. But it probably isn't because you learn how to do guard better. It's probably because like Gard what learning to D do Guard meant for you changed these other series ofhaviors down the line How correlative do you think it is people that do hard things physically versus people who develop the capacity to do hard things that matter Can you re say that again? Let's say that doing hard things electively versus doing hard things decisively. The big difference between the two to me seems to be decisions that require emotion and decisions that require effort That seems to be one of the big delineations here So it's like the called hard conversation versus hard physical tasks. Yeah. And how many people who develop the skill to do hard physical tasks as a transformation? How many of those do you think carry over into being able to do the hard thing emotionally probably the same in the opposite direction The guys who are like can have quote hard conversations, the attorney who can get through all these complex ideas and have whatever then sucks on Ji Jitsu or sucks that in the weight room or doesn't try hard. I think I just think that skills are more specific unless you generalize them How do you generalize I think it it's creating labels and identity with personality. And so we if we if we ident if we define personality by the aggregate of how you behave in all conditions Right? So All these conditions, how you act is your personality The label we ascribe to that personality would then be the identity And so if we decide to change that label, then that label, this is getting a little technical, but basically becomes a global reinforcer for your behavior. Like I am this I am honest And so we make this label and then honest has a lot of subbehaviors underneath of it that we then act because we believe that honest is good And so we want to act in accordance with this global raid forcer for ourselves. And so when we enter a new situation, we think, okay What is in alignment? what behavior is most aligned with this label? And then we do that. And then when we don't do, when we don't act that way then we feel guilty because we broke our own rules of behavior. So the big lesson here is just because you're doing hard things in one domain does not mean that it crosses over into all domains unless you purposefully try to make your identity wrapped up around it a thousand percent. I when I um remember when I went to college, my u I wanted to pledge a fraternity And it was in the SEC and they're known for hazing and whatnot. And so call my dad and I was like, hey, this might be like bad I might have to go through some stuff that's hard, I don't know And you know, my dad's given me a lot of lasting gifts, but one of them he said, think about every hard thing that you've gone through. up until this point. He's like, there is nothing that they can do to you that is worse than that And that actually was incredibly empowering. And I remember when there were more hardships that were going on, I just immediately went to the worst things that I had gone through. and I was like, oh my God, this is nothing. So I was able to go through this relatively hard thing where there were people who were like cracking and crying and all this stuff. like I don'tna say grown men, but I wouldd say adult boys next to me And I was able to stay at tall because it was just like there's nothing that these other twenty one year old guys can do to me that I have not suffered through. That's a good justification for doing hard things that Rogan's got this line, The worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. Yeah And if the worst thing that's ever happened to you is somebody misspelling your name on a Starbucks cup That's a big deal. Yeah. But if the worst thing that's ever happened to you is a thousand times worse than that I think One problem we have is recency bias that if you haven't been through a tough time right now your memory of being able to deal with hard things. You kind of get Velvet Pison syndrome. and Sometimes you can forget like I guess Chicks would say like I'm still that bitch or I'm, you know, I've still got that capacity Uh sometimes we forget Yeah, I think one of the strongest frames has got me through those harder times is that this is the story I will one day tell And so it just like almost the more bad things that happen, it's like the more epic the story becomes. And so I mean, in the main beneficiary of the stories that we tell is ourselves because we're we're the giver and the receiver of both of the stories. byy percentage of stories told, we we are the biggest receiver of the stories. And so I think that's that's actually been I think just such a powerful frame for like Of course this this terrible thing will happen and like, doesn't that make the story so much better? Yeah What's cool is? I think when you say we're talking in narrative, story personification, arc, hero's journey, it also sounds kind of wishful in a way, mythological, irrational U symbolic That's the way that humans' brains were We work in story And even if it's Not the way that the neuroscience behind how the medial prefrontal lateral cortex works in order to make a tougher person. If you are the kind of person that tells yourself the story that you're the kind of person that can get through this is functionally exactly what you're chasing what you're after is The story and by putting that on the front end and going, okay, I'm just going to keep on building stories that I'm going to refer back to in future. I think you're actually being more direct than if you were trying to take a more rational view of exactly how behavior is put together. Like the story is the rational view of how your behavior and your identity are put together There's a lot there. I think like with the neuroscience and the brain labeling and all that stuff, I have no idea. So that's above my pay grade. But yeah, I just think about all of our behavior is just in aggregate. We do what we've been rewarded for doing And it doesn't mean we get a cookie. It can also mean a bad thing goes away. there's a lot of different types of reward Um And so if we remember a story Um So like let's say you have that story of You went through this hard thing and then you survived And then it basically serves as a reminder of the reinforcer of the behaviors you did to get through it And so it's almost like, um, with a kid who's smaller. if you're like, Hey, remember last time you did this, you got ice cream if you remind them of that reward, then they're more likely to repeat the behavior. And so I think we basically use that narrative as a reminder to in the short term increase the relative value of a reinforcer. And so if we think about what is motivation in general 's functionally what you're doing if you motivate someone. Like if you sell someone something, for the short term, you increase the relative value of a specific reinforcer. You didn't wake up wanting to buy Cologne, but you see an ad and for the short period of time that the ad goes on, it increases the relative value of smelling good And so as a result, it changes your behavior and then you buy. And so I think stories function in that same way where we use them to motivate ourselves in the short term to do the desired behavior that might be less comfortable in the short term, but we're reminded about the larger reinforcing event that we had in the past How many people do you think are doing hard things publicly in order to not need to face the lack of capacity they have to do hard things privately I don't know them, so I don't know T to be honest with you That's my honest answer. I don't know. I think some people really do hard things and that's what they capture online is a fraction of what they really do. And I think there are people who one one hundred percent of the hard things they do are online and they're not even hard on them they do. And they're not even that hard because they've got a squad of people behind them. Like I think there wass a meme around this for a moment was like But you had a camera there. It's like girl collapses because of crazy news or something like that. It's like, but you had a camera there. And so so there's just this this, you know, this element of, you know, mistrust, performative nature. Yeah. Yeah The three step process of how to win Number one, realize no one is coming to save you. Number two take responsibility for your current position Number three be willing to sacrifice who you are for who you want to be I think that those three is really all about power Um in the realization, so the Probably in sequence probably the first one should come first, which is you own everything It's like, okay, if I own everything. then you could still hope that someone saves you, but it still relies on someone else to change your condition And so it's like, okay, I own all these outcomes I'm not going to rely on someone else to change my condition. that you're still there whichich means you have to take the third step, which is that I have to sacrifice, I have to give up um something in order get something else. and I think I think where people actually sayay stuck the longest in their careers from an entrepreneurialhip perspective or just from a personal development perspective is, um, the trades that we are unwilling to make is basically the desire to have everything at the same time and The easiest analogy I have is like, It is totally reasonable to want to have a mountain view be on the beach and be walking distance from a Whole Foods Um but you probably will not find a place that has all three of those because they are all at apparent contradictions or you know, apparent odds. And so there So what happens is we just stay in this sp paralysis of indecision because we feel like all paths are settling. And I think there's this movement or narrative around like never settle and things like that. But people mistake never settle for never make trades. And so we have this obsession with optionality or optionality maxing. Options are only valuable when taken. And so when we never take the option which means we don't cash in the option that we have available Like some options need to be taken and when they are taken, other options disappear. becausecause just having maximum potential does not mean maximum reality Because you need to commit. you have to commit, which is the elimination of alternatives. And so like there, I mean, show me anything that was worth doing that did not require commitment, which is an elimination of alternives a trade offff Um, and so In the beginning of our lives, when we're younger, we are praised for maximizing our potential, right? How can we have as many colleges accept us? How can we have All the best grades. How can we help all the paths in front of us But I think many people know, people who are really successful early on on by for maximizing potential, but not realizing potential. And I think the gap between the maximization of potential and the realization of potential is the commitments that we're willing to make, which is the trades, the elimination of the alternatives when we have to start cashing those options in and realizing that some of them are never going to come from fruition, because we can only have one life and some of those trades are permanent You can only not have a kid until you have a kid. And then at that point, you have a kid. R There's no going back, right? You know, some decisions in life don't have refunds Um and I think I think that is what I would say maybe in the earlier part of my career, especially single guys because I think a lot of that's like really prevalent in social media right now Um is just options maxing Um, But we just even in the attempt to options max you still close off other options, which is that like you will not have benefits of, let's say, a committed marriage early on. Be you've kept your options up. Right. And like you will not have the benefits of like a very large business if you try to pursue five, or don't pursue any because you want to not make commitments And so I think that commitment is actually a really strong signal for maturation in growing up lotots of mistakes were made by standing still. Like people think that inaction isn't a decision, but it is Totally. I mean, your conditions change through an action still doors close, there are moments where you have opportunities where you have to act or they will go away Yeah. And so I think it's like being able to seize those opportunities and that means that you have to ively say no to something that you might want or might want a lot And I think those are the tradits that we. I think I think being willing to make those trade offs clearly and trade them for the things that you want more Um is how people can progress their life and get more of what they want. The pain of having to accept trade offffs holds a lot of people back. one hundred percent, and then they end up getting nothing And I I honestly think that is like at the crux of why so many people are not realizing any potential at all is because they are unwilling to make any trade and then make the biggest trade of all How do you think about overcoming that decision paralysis, lots of good options in front of you ve spent a lot of time trying to maximize surface area of available options and It's insane to say, but it's functionally true for humans, that more options make you more miserable, not happier super true. And also we probably know someone, I mean, I can think of people off the top of my head that didn't have many options, but the option that they had was very clear Like this guy is a super nerd and just loves coding and it was very clear straight on. And so there was a lot of things that weren't available to him physically, probablyro wasn't going to be the sports star, maybe even in super great shape. But like it was almost like that path was predetermined. But then when you fast forward, it's not like they're less successful It's that because they just already knew what they were going to do, they got to start pulling the future forward down the one path and start walking. And so there's again, this this likeet fetishization of having options and seeing that as a proxy for status when the reality is that they're all blank checks. You haven't cashed any of them in. And so I think the original question ladders to like People get stuck because they don't know what they want. And I define what you want by what you're willing to sacrifice to get something Take responsibility for your current position. What's that mean U It's identifying yourself a source And to be clear, it doesn't mean that like your position in reality is one hundred percent because of you So this is a validity this is a invalid but useful more useful way of going through life, which is that it absolutely might not be your fault, but it is still your problem. Since you are the only one who you can influence directly, then you are the one who is source And because like you could still be correct in saying that like because I insert grievance, insert, you know, trauma, insert genetic predisposition, and insert zip code I was born in U or language or poverty level or whatever it is. All of those things could be true and yet you still have to take action as the only source that can change it No one's coming to save you. Yeah, which goes back to the first one The interesting thing about no one is coming to save you also means no one is coming to stop you H I think some people might I think actually as ood as you start, I think the lobster or crab analogy in the bck is so true. I actually think that the the hardest, I mean, I think, I mean, for me again, like the hardest part of entrepreneurship was the first set of friends that you have to relinquish Because once you do it the first time you realize that you will still survive, you'll still make it through. you'll find new friends. But like in the first time it's sacrificing everything you've known and loved for something that you've never experienced and hope will happen and have no idea if it actually will. So the cost is known, the payoff isn't And that is why I think it is the riskiest and why so many people struggle to make the job. Yeah Did you know your gut controls your energy, your recovery, how well you absorb everything that you eat, and the one nutrient that keeps it all running properly is fiber? Well, it turns out that ninety five percent of Americans don't get enough of it, which is why I'm such a huge fan of Ment is fibber plus. Most fiber supplements are a one trick pony, one type of fiber solving One part of the problem. FiberPlus is a three in one formula built to tackle digestion, gut barrier strength, and blood sugar stability at once. I use this every single day. It is kind of hard to get in a fiber just through food alone. and best of all, Mentus offers a thirty day money back guarantee. So you can buy it, try it every single day for twenty nine days. and if you don't love it, they will just give you your money back. pllus they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to thirty five percent off your first subscription and that thirty day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livementus dot com d Slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom Check out The world will reward you in proportion to your courage, not your intellect. The most dangerous person in the world is the one who continues to show up every day, even when the rewards are not guaranteed Your potential is determined by the amount of uncertainty you're able to tolerate and how long you can tolerate it for beat ninety nine percent of people if you can master the shame of rejection Barden of repetition payain a feedback I was asked if you could transfer only one trade to your son What would it be? Um And Ive really thought a lot about it and I was like, all the trades, what I would transfer And I think it's courage Because if you don't have courage, Nothing else matters Like you can't take the you can't take any action, you can't do anything worth doing. You can't stand for anything. because you have no courage Um And so I think That's why It's so much more preferable to be a failure than a coward And I think that I would hope that I could transfer just that lesson and try and reinforce as many times as I can and his upbringing that like, You to you have to take jumps and you have to lose and you have to be willing to lose. and then realize that losing doesn't actually make you a loser because losing is the is the is the first signal on the path to winning but like not playing is the actual signal for a forever loss. What is courage to you ion I needed to find it better. being willing to action where there's a large tone past with an uncertain delayed benefit So if you want to start a business And you think that you're going to get made fun of or Side remarks or like, oh, yeah, you're doing your podcast thing again. Oh, yeah,'t don't m out, right you know, donon't miss Friday, it's a big podcast Um, you know you're going to suffer that. term, that's a known cost And then the payoff is delayed and uncertain Like not only will it come later, if they were guaranteed, if you knew you were going to make a million dollars doing a podcast, then you'd be like, whatever fuck it. Like it takes significantly less courage. But I think it's the fact that it is unknown and delayed. So you basically have to be willing to get kicked in the nuts multiple times and sometimes for extended durations before the hope that you will get something I think the only way to get through that kind of kicked in the nuts period for however long it's going to be Um is realizing that You have two paths, onene that is guaranteed. which is that p you're currently on will not get you where you want to go and the other pass It is not guaranteed to get you where we want to go But it's the only one where you have a shot where you do And that's where your potential is determined by the amount of uncertainty you're able tolerate and long you can tolerate it for. And I think that also goes to the bigger the games we play like The longer the game you play, the bigger the game you play. And so if you want to create rockets that go to the moon, you have to be able to deal with uncertainty for just an absolutely absurd amount of time. compared to most humans on any endeavor. There's a line at the end, pain of feedback. I'm interested in that Um I mean, rejection hurts, failing hurts And I think Give it your all and then The market, society of the universe, whatever determines that you are still not enough That is very painful. I think that in time you learn that feedback is fuel rather than failure And once that new association gets paired I mean, you've had plenty of incredibly successful people in this podcast and I would say many of them have the same kind of, I would call it lesson is like it's not It's not failure, it's feedback or it's not failure But it just means that like fundamentally, they have a different pairing for losing And so everyone has to go through this because like Losing, losing is good And feeling bad about losing is good because it forces you to change. and that change means that over time, as long as you're changing in the correct direction, you get better O else you would continue to do the strategy that caused you to lose last time and you would just run it back again. And this is why I have this like I thought on the way over here, I was thinking about this and I think one of the big losses or failures of society right now is that we are trying to castrate the teeth from the pain of loss We're trying to not allow kids people feeling to feel bad It's like we haveve disetermined that feeling bad is bad But feeling bad is not bad feeling bad is a signal so that we need to change. Because if no one feels bad ever, then it means that everyone is doing what they want to do all the time. and that is not how functioning society works. Sometimes people do stupid shit. and need to know and feel bad for it. Eventually reality is going to come into contact with your decisions. Yes. And the more that that's put off, the less likely you are to come up with a way to avoid that reality coming into reality. So the way that, you know, right now, what's going and this is probably the more frighting part about like some of the media that's out there is like tryrying to just redefine reality and create a fantasy where you losing and you feeling bad isn't true, but it doesn't change reality. It just changes someone's perception of it for the short term and then they have to pay reality back with interest and time. And like the check always comes due. It's just like the interest is much bigger And so in light of, you know my son, my child that I have in the future, like I want him to experience the pain of loss so that he can learn like, how can you learn You have to. othertherwise it's just it's everything's quote, you know, going by feelld. and then also somehow thinking that Feeling bad is bad And also that feeling good is good And there's tons of things you can probably do that feel good that are not good. And there's tons of things you can do that feel bad that are not bad. Well what a gift to give somebody to say you can feel bad and not feel bad about it. Yeah It's in like, and that's okay You lost What will we learn What we do next time again that feels like resilience. Yeah, as opposed to Anytime that you feel this emotion which is negative, that is worthy of rushing in and panic and control and distance That's almost like a formula for fragility So laddered onto this. I know we haven't talked about all. so this is fun. is the idea that we need like that because you becausecause you feel bad, it means that the path that you're on, like you need to change something. And so it's equal opposite, which is like Okay, if we know that we're on the path of getting kicked in the nuts right now, and I know I'm on my seventeenth or hundredth podcast and I'm still not like a millionaire yet I I have not achieved what I want yet. It does not mean that I have to change course But earlier on, he said that bad feelings, feeling bad are important to update the way that you're approaching this situation. So how do you distinguish between the two? No and that's and I wouldd say what you hit on is the crux of it, which is judgment is like, and this is one of the hardest ones is like, how do you help someone recognize patterns of when you need to basically it's the internal question of when do push and when do pivot What do I push through the hardship versus when do I adjust? Am I giving up on this set in the gym because I'm being pussy or A am I giving up because I'm about to injure myself? Yeah And so put up pivot I like that. Yeah. and I've worked with this a lot because it's a pretty classic entrepreneurhip issue of like, do I product market fit or like do I need to keep pushing? you like, you know, where am I just trying to push up a hill is that If one of the fundamental assumptions that you began your quest with has been proven untrue. basased on the feedback. then that is where pivoting makes sense So if you said, like, I think that I'm going to create doggy skatebard because I think that a lot of dog owners will want to buy skateboards for their dog Um be like, and I believe that the percentage like and I would to make a, you know, a billion dollars doing this. That would mean that there's the size of the market. this percentage needs to be the take in order for me to get that that market share. It's like, okay I talk to a hundred dog owners and none of them want to buy my doggie skateboard. I would not say that is a push situation. I would say that is a pivot situation. because our fundamental assumption we started this quest with is false. And so we need to take that feedback and then pivot. if as we're going through, they're saying maybe, but like I don't know what you have in your hands. what the hell is that? So it's like the assumption is not proven, but it's more of an execution issue. And so it's like, okay, I just need to get better I need to push throughow. but I'm like, it is definite one of the harder Um lines to know, like when should I push when should I pivot? What lesson do I learn from losing? M Because losing losing teaches you shit And we just need to make sure that we learn the right thing teaching will oc Yes. whether you take it away or not is up to you. It it's the I hired my first employee and he was a fuck ass. therefore all employees suck. Right. So like losing will teach you something. It's just want to make sure that we learn the right lesson I feel like this is a justification for making early decisions as right as possible. one hundred percent to try and avoid that PTSD of Far easier to learn something than it is to unlearn something, probably a hundred times easier to learn something than it is to unlearn something. If you've drilled a particular habit, a particular bad habit, if you have come up with a mode of interacting with your employees or the world because all of your employees the first three employees, you get all of them fuck you over and then finally you get to the fourth. You have to unlearn all of the compensatory mechanisms that you built on the first three Now that you've got someone who's worthy of that and you're restricting their progress, you're slowing everything down, you're being hypervigilant. It doesn't feel like a good place to work Try to make your early decisions, right Yeah, changing a behavior with a long history of reinforcement is harder than changing one with no history of such a hard c behaviorist Yeah. I mean, it's the only thing that' made sense to me in the world Like I mean, it's the skin uphealed. I mean, it's just I don't even It's just My reality So I'll say it differently like Many people do not they want They look up at their lives and they're like, this is not what I want. And so if you don't have what you want, it means that the model that you view the world through is incorrect, or you have the correct model and the incorrect variables are insufficient variables. That's basically all it is. And so for me, the more I have looked purely at inputs and outputs the more I've gotten my predictions correct. And so I have been super reinforced for using this style of thinking. And so I do it more. And so it's just and like I read some of my old stuff and I'm like, oh man, like I could have said this in half as much words if I' now because it's understanding why Like at the most basic level It's just understanding why. Um I'll give an example. I think this is why the vast majority of the world like wasalks around confused, which is I don't have what I want That didn't go the way I expected. She took that worse than I thought. you're constantly surprised by reality And so in a simple sentence like Johnny stole because he's dishonest most people nodd their heads like, Johnysold, because iss disishonest But we say what does dishonest mean? Dishonest means it's a label, right that we ascribe to somebody who does a series of different behaviors One of which is stealing And so if we were to restate that sentence with the broken down definition, it would then Johnny Stole because he's the type of person who steals which is circular and makes no sense. Becauseuse the real reason that Johnny Stole is because he's been reinforced for stealing in the past or he saw someone who got reinforced for stealing, and then modeled their behavior. That is why Johnny Stole. And so because of that basic misunderstanding, most people have these words that they use to explain the reality that they don't actually understand. And as a result, reality fools them more often than it should. He was rewarded for it. or he was punished for doing the opposite of Exactly And so u basasic that like and That What I just explained is the difference between description and explanation which is relatively heady and I think difficult sometimes to grasp but is at the most basic level, like My worldview. This is what happened. This is why it happened. Why? Yeah And so from that one kind of basic understanding, everything else can kind of pretty much get latered up And so u said differently If I wanted to tell a child good at basketball Um I would Tell him G better basketball because A five year old would be like, I don't know how to do this What does that mean? So to be like okay, well, let's break it down. We've got dribling passing, shooting. okay do that a little bit closer but they still probably don't know how to. If I say, go get better at dribling passassing and shooting. St still can't do anything with that until eventually you'd like o Okaykay, passing. So I want you to take a step with your left foot towards the person. and I want you to extend your elbows and finish with your thumbs down. And if the ball goes towards them in the direction that they're running and they catch it, you've passed successfully. And then I would repeat that chain of events until eventually they would understand that chain of behaviors equals passing. And if they do it a lot and they hit the target many times, they would be good at passing. We'd repeat that all the down until they're good at passing, dribling, shooting, etcera. And then eventually we would describe them as a good basketball player But that basic unbundling and rebundling of terms is why I think the vast majority of people are wildly Um confonfused. by what's going on around them. Is that someone says, why don't you love me And he's like, what are you he talking about? He's like, I pay the bills, I take out the trash. L You know, like, what you want for me? and she says Uh, like, you don't tell me, I'm pretty, you don't hug me. Uh Like, you don't listen to me when I when I you don't never ask me how my day's going And it's because for her She defines love in these behaviors and he defines love in these behaviors and so then they fight forever rather than just saying like, what does that mean? What does that mean Um We had we had two employees They' arguing about something at acquisition. and one was like, hey, can you I would be fine if you were just like kind and polite to me And, um I was like, okay What does that mean and Uh There there was obviously a moment of like hesitation there because it's like, okay, so you want the other person to guess What you think in your mind means good behavior, but you've never articulated it. and so you want them to guess and somehow get it right And so finally, it just was like, can you ask more questions rather making more statements? And they was was like, yeah, sure. It's like basic thing. now and They're fine now and everything's great. And so but like this is why I view the world in behavior because I have wanted things But I didn't know how to get them which is happens in reality And so as long as I live in reality I prefer to define things through reality, and then reality tends to behave far more as I predicted it would Before we continue, most people in their thirties are still training hard. Their protein is dialed in. They sleep better than they did in their twenties discipline is not the issue, but recovery feels somewhat different. Strength gains take a little longer. The margin for error starts to shrink. And that is why I'm such a huge fan of timeline. You see Mitochondria are the energy producers inside of your muscle cells. As they weaken with age, your ability to generate power and recover effectively changes, even if your habits stay strong. Mitoure from Teline contains the only clinically validated form of uryylinA used in human trials. It promotes mitophagy, which is your body's natural process for clearing out damaged mitochondria and renewing healthy ones in studies This It supported mitochondrial function and muscle strength in older adults. It's not about pushing harder, it's about actually supporting the cellular machinery underneath your training. If you care about staying strong into your thirties, forties, and fifties and beyond, this is foundational. Best of all, there is a thirty day money back guarantee plus free shipping in the US and they ship internationally. And right now you can get up to twenty percent off by going to the link in the description below or heading to timeline dot com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom A check out that's timeline. com slash modern Wisdom and modern wisdom, a checkout on the I want you to do this, but I didn't tell you. it's that Neil Strauss line, Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentment. Why Why nott you do this thing that I didn't tell you to do not deliberately because I think a lot of people do it not on purpose. Of course. But it's unconscious, premeditated resentment. the investment that you are making will be a resentment in future that you aren't aware is about to come about. Yeah. Another thing on the People's map of reality is inaccurate. I think one of the most obvious realizations that you can have when you hear somebody who complains a lot is that they're framework of reality is incorrect. Oh by mile. A complaint is you saying why is reality not delivering that to me which I anticipated? And reality doesn't care. Reality is just going to continue to deliver to you that which it is giving Why is there all of this traffic on the way to away? There shouldn't be all of this traffic. I didn't anticipate all of this traffic I assumed there wouldn't be traffic. reality disagreed with me Reality is not wrong. It's undefeated Reality is undefeated, ye. It's a million and O. A million TKO's So this is really, I mean I can talk about this as long as you want. You know this. So what this becomes really interesting is how often this misconception of reality causes people to get fooled. and keep the wrong people in their lives and keep sometimes the right people out of their lives. And so, um, I call this a malicious benefit or u well intentioned harm And so On one hand if there are a number of people who make Let's say negative videos about you They intend to harm you But when you look at your Media in the way that you are compensated through the impressions that you earn and the amount of relevance that you have You make more money And so though they intended to hurt you They have taken their time and effort which you normally have to pay people for And then for free promote you What a gift It just means that they are incompetent at doing harm which is wonderful. You want all your enemies to be incompetent in their harm doing On the other hand, You have somebody who loves, I'll use this in quotes, right, loves you means you well also incompetent And as a result, whenever they enter your life, your life gets worse They cause negative consequences to occur And so a lot of people care a huge amount about intention. And this was one of the larger shifts that I think happened in my al call career, but just my life Um was completely stripping of their intentions and only looking at their outputs And that made navigating relationships significantly easier for me because it allowed me to Remove the noise from the signal of the person. And so There are some people like I mean, honestly the reason that One of the this is like probably the very beginning of this kind of thought change was with Layla. Like I had an advisor, if you want to call that at the time. And I was like, I'm not sure if I want to marry this girl. I don't, you know help me, you know, make this decision. And he said, Well, just look at your stats He's like, are you better shape? And I was like, Well, yeah you know, she'salthy, she goes to gym, you know, I go with her and he's, okay So you're exercising more, you're eating better. Okay? Are you drinking as much? He's like, No, she really doesn't drink. I like drinking. I'm probably a bad influence of her. He's like, okay, so she decreases this kind of negative thing, Okaykay, got it. And he's like, what about business wes? I wass, I'm making more than ever made And she's helping me do that. And he wass like, Okay And so he just went down the list of all these different kind of components in my life that I could measure, and he's like, it seems like your life is significantly better with this person than it. U And when I contrast that to some of the called relationships I had in the past, It was almost the opposite. like I would get in the relationship and all a suden, like In't out as much, and I wouldn't eat as healthy and I would go out more and my business would suffer U And so like all the things that I cared about would go down And so even though I don't think that person had any malicious intent, I think they had good intent. But they had well intent to harm. And so that lens has helped me make so many decisions in a way that removes a lot of the emotional weight behind them, which is like, oh I absolutely believe that you are a Walted person. It's like I just think you're very incompetent at at doing good for me. Like you do not have the skill to help me. I'm not prepared to be the collateral damage of your good intentioned errors. Yes as you spin around trying to give me a hug, but by accident punch me in the face. Y. it' you're driving down the street and because you didn't mean to, but weren't paying attention, you ran somebody over functionally the difference between that person being dead because you didn't mean to because you were texting on your phone or because you're a bad driver and you swerving off the street to hit them The outcome is the same And this is something that our society actively disagrees with Because if we look at how our laws are written, we try to tease out intention and we change punishment and consequences based on intention ' not importantp to a degree It can be, but I'm just more saying I'm not saying should or shouldn't, but I'm saying in terms of how you navigate getting what you want out of life If you were the one who got hit, you're dead either way And so when any any equals one I would look at the signal, what happens rather than the intention a hundred times out of a hundred Is there any space It sounds like a for as long as this person in my life benefits me. It's good to keep them in the moment that they stop benefiting me then I get rid of them to some people that would come across a very transactional view of relationships. I think it assumes a binary of benefit and not benefit and Most people have many things that they do. L let's say somebody let's say you're like, I'm married somebody. What happens when that person stops serving me? It's very unlikely that tomorrow someone stops goes from I help you in these hundred ways, Do I either hurt you or help you in zero It's more common or more likely that you had one hundred ways and now ten years later they help you seventy ways and maybe ten years later they help you forty ways, but if you're at least cognizant of the hundred ways that that person helps you, then it allows you to articulate, Hey, when you do these things, it helps me a lot. It would really mean a lot to me Oh re enforcement again. Yeah I mean, and and And I appreciate yes. But like in different terms, I was going I was going to put my my Chris hat on it. It's just good communication ight? Like how do I know what you want until you tell me And I think that people say what you just said, which is, u people would see this as transactional. And then I would say and Yes, and Why is this wrong Why have you decided that having an exchange is incorrect? It's how society works, all of capitalism, which is the best societies have been built on exchange, voluntary exchange. I think some people would feel icky about applying that exchange capitalism dynamic inside of friendships and intimate relationships. I think that exchange happens either way. they just don't want tona say it. If you have a friend, and you or like, oh we're ride or die. It means you have a long history reinforce, which means you have a long extinension curve. It just means that you've been reinforced many times for this friendship, which means that you're willing to deal with blips But the amount of blips that you're willing to do with is proportional to the history of reinforcement. If someone new comes into your life and has almost done nothing good and then does a blip, you don't have as much ballast in the s. Exactly, have no reason to So the hope basically extinction curve is functionally just how long you're willing to hope that the good thing comes back You probably should have a degree of recency bias though Yeah because if the person's behavior is changed, yeah, for sure.. It's going it's always discounted. Someone that was fifty percent a good guy and fifty percent an asshole. the fifty percent that is closest to you is more salient than the fifty percent that started ten years ago. Oh, yeah, if it was front half, back half, one hundred percent. And that's and honestly, and this is like, I think this is super relevant for a lot of people. like, People do change And that's okay, and you can be friends with the person they once were and no longer friends with the person they are And that's okay Mark Manson dropped this unreal line that reminded me of you. Okay do hard shit notot because it's fun But because the win actually means something He bled for it, you broke for it anded it Easy wins are forgettable H ones change you pointint Let's go line Everything is hard and no one cares U I'm sorry accomplishing your dreams wasn't fast, easy and risk free Thike They wouldn't be dreams if they were And you wouldn't call them wins if they were easy because they would just be you tying your shoes. And what it was once a win when you were five is no longer a win when you're competent. And with increased competence comes increased stakes You have to be willing to bet more, put more on the line to win bigger Which means like if you're a billionaire playing ten dollarars hands of poker is a complete waste of time. Gabe from I Pvail, He's the drammer from I Prevail You will always think you suck. That's okay It's okay to suck compared to your standards, as you grow, so will your standards. That doesn't mean you actually suck think could just be the actuality of sucking versus the perception of sucking, right? It's as you increase in capacity, you increase in standards and given that your standards will always outstrip your capacity, there will always be this felt sense lack between where I am and where I want to be Yeah, that Mark Manson line, I think is really important in sort of an era of AI because you can spepeedrun or shortcut ting the outcome without putting in the requisite inputs. Now, because everybody's obsessed with leverage and trying to get as many outputs from as few inputs as possible, that does make sense. But when you begin to fully detach it from it and you don't focus on the journey that got you there in the same way, and you're not scrutinizing the outputs with the same level of initude and resolution was lower cost. Yes It's not just the outputs that matter It's not just the outut. And this is where the sort of leverage crowd doesn't fully come into reality It doesn't come into contact with the way that humans are. telling themselves the story of their life or if you could come up with some sort of super quick code that would write, hundred million dollar leadids for you entire project would feel different, your process of getting that it could be word for word, the exact same. takeake every word that I've written and create this book based on this brief. h I would prove that AI knew a lot about leads, but not me And I think I mean U I think this this this sits at the discrepancy between saying the output of your life is who you become and the aggregate set of behavior that you've learned over your life or if the output of your life is the stuff that you that exists as a result of you being here Um And that is more of a philosophical question than I think it is a like right or wrong. I think you can make arguments for either side of like the purpose of your life is what changed as a result of you being here, what you did or who you became. Yeah U or the purpose of your life is all of the outside only existed to change the inside. And I think there there's arguments for both. I have I would say I have strong affinity towards both defin definitions because, u, I wouldd say that when I go through harder times I lean more towards like, this is happening for me And when I'm going through easier times, it's like, I am happening to it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm happening to reality. But the binary of that. seeing there's only one or the other will create a kind of fragility. If all that you're focused on is outcomes, then you're never going to think about becoming the person who can generate those outcomes because you're going to find shortcuts that don't necessarily work And if you're only ever focused on inputs, you're never going to actually work out if all of this suffering amounted to anything. Sh me some George in the house last night was reading one of these books and he wasn't happy with the way that the author had put together the sentence. and he says, Show me something I can drop on my foot That was his line. like I can't drop anything on my fucking foot with this Show me something I can drop on my foot. It wishy washy, vague language Do you remember the park bench scene in Goodwill hunting? No. I't get you long enough ago. Yeah S sat a park bench Robin Willams talking to Mt Damon about love And he has this line. He says, loveove is an active commitment, Will It's a choice to value someone else's well being as much as your own If you watch the film. You'll know that he doesn't say that. He says this instead You wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months. because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term visiting hs Do not apply to you It's the same thing sameame idea ideea, picture words, and that is the order notot idea words, pictures show me something I can drop on my fucking foot that I can drop on my foot clear language Both of them, both of the examples I think it's interesting because with the drop on your foot, it's like I think the The picture is obviously like more motive and becausecause of that can be more motivating, more persuasive, etcetera. whereere I think the drop on drop on my foot part, where I like where where I have struggled as a human being. is taking that idea and saying, I want to do that. I want that type of love. and then saying No The person I love is not in the hospital And I don't have the opportunity right now to sleep standing up and have a doctor know that visiting hours don't apply to me What do I do And so then it does go back to Um what I'm willing to give up in order to maintain something. But It's interesting when there isn't that level of pressure when you brush up against the grain of life, when you're swimming into the stream V veryy easy to see effort because the whole world is bearing down and you said there's an enemy to go up against I think when things are easy Okay, well What does love look like when things are easy? U We talk in relation to love Yeah I think it's really Well, I'll just say more how I measure it Um, But I think it's just what you're willing to give up in order to maintain something. And so if I have a relationship and I have somebody that I love a lot, then I'm willing to give up everything, including my life, in order to maintain that relationship And so or for that person or for that idea for freedom for the country If you love something a lot, you're really it up everything for it. U And so when that person asks you to do something or doesn't ask you to do something and you think that they would still Like it then you are willing to inconvenience yourself to a large degree in order to do that Um And I think that like The reason this stuff is so valuable for me is that like It allows me to both give the things that I think the other person wants or that they've told me they want, but also how to differentiate who is using words in order to try and manipulate me When someone like, dude, dude you know I love you You know Um if it was bromance, obviously. But then you could say, what have you given up? in order to maintain this. in what way have you inconvenienced yourself in order to maintain this relationship because All of the actions you've taken you've taken out of convenience and this relationship has been only beneficial for you which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that. there will come a time where Our needs are at odds. And in that situation I would like to know how reinforcing was all the other stuff so that it is worth Basically it's saying like, how much good was the good for you? so that you're willing to deal with some bad Can that lead to a situation where You almost purposefully try to seek out difficulty in an attempt to stress test relationships because Not all relationships should have the glorious friendship would be seamless between you and another guy. And there's never anything you have to navigate and it's all just beneficial and positive in both directions. I have a friend like that. I've been friends since sixth grade and I don't think we've ever had conflict. which is great and rare, and that's why we are so friends. But no, I think that it's okay for conflict to occur. It's okay for seasons of friendship to end Um but you can measure how how good a friends you are by how. And I don't know how much inconvenience you might be willing to deal with with me, but we just it just so happens. that we really haven't had any need for conflict or competition. He's an FBI agent. And so his measures was ex likeike he has zero. there's no jealousy, there's no envy, there's no anything. It's just like How many bad guys you catch today? He's like, Bro, you got to hear this one. And so we can just and he's like, you know then he'll just ask ridiculous questions about money stuff because he thinks this's funny So and that has worked out well, but Most people have no idea where their testosterone levels sit. But what if I told you there was a solution? somethinghing that identifies low tea faster than a high school bully? and it won't cost you all your lunch money. That's where fununction comes in. gives you access to over one hundred sixty lab tests, including a deep dive into your full hormone paddle. Every result is reviewed by clinicians, anything out of range flagged and you get clear explanations with a personalised protocol with actionable next steps So if something's off, you know exactly what to do about it. Whether you just need to go to the gym more or playay Creed louder in your car. Function will tell you exactly where your test are run, and everything else stands. Normally this level of testing would usually cost thousands, but with function, it's three hundred sixty five dollars a year. That's one dollar a day to stop guessing with your health and start knowing. And right now you can get twenty five dollars off, bringing it down to three hundred and forty bucks. So get the exact same blood panels that I do and save twenty five dollars by going to the link in the description below or heading to function health. com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom A check out. You're behind because you're in a rush and you're in a rush because you fail behind And you feel behind because you're in a different season than the people you're comparing yourself to You're not behind You're just sly Yeah, it's measuring the output difference with without comparing the input difference I think it's basically a It's like why isn't my podcast like Rogan'? It's like, okay, well He's got ten more year you would know the answer to that, right? T more years and however many more podcasts Um more And so it's, okay, well, if I were to match that, and have done it back in time Would I have the same? wouldould I be bigger same scale. Yeah, same all of that. And so it's comparing outputs without comparing inputs. And I really just think it comes down to that at the most basic level. Now most of the time, Um, you were early because most people who make that I would call it error in judgment are earlier in their careers I also don't think there's anything necessarily wrong L A lot of people were like comparisons is theief ofoy U I don't agree with that. I think comparison is how you measure things. Like this this, this is the discrepancy. Labeling the discrepancy as bad as the thief of joy.. Comparison in general is how you can know what the discrepancy looks like between what you want and what you have so that you can fix it So we should compare absolutely. You should compare yourself to Rogan. Im's using it, but like, you know, I should compare myself to Elon worse I should U, so I could look at massive disrepancy between between me and Elon. Um, and that just gives me clarity on what things I need to do to try and Decrease that How do you think about getting rid of the label of bad I think that first the first action you take when you have not been reinforced for an action you do through modeling So and this is why we do these types of podcasts, I assume. I mean is that If you haven't done the hard thing or the hard thing that you want to do or taking the bet or taking the risk We look for other people who have been the penguins who jumped off the edge first and Was there an alligator? well no alligators for penguins, but polar bear at the bottom to eat them Or did they swim and get to the next iceberg and then they found whatever so we look at other people and so Modeling is a very real way, It's how you learn everything when you're a child, is you look at what other people do good things happen to them, okay, I'm going do And so In the short term, we model the long term play is that once you take that first step, ideally, you don't get eaten by a polar bear. and instead you also get a fish and then you go up and then you get reinforced for that. And then basically every moment after that is your own experience becomes the loop. But the first jump comes from looking at whatever everyone else does and then takes the jump. Now where that's so difficult to do is that you're looking what everyone else is doing or at least the people that you want to emulate, which is, you know, really important L like don't listen to the people closest to you, listen to the people closest to your goals. which is not necessarily say people often not. I want to listen to them. to I want to model their behavior But then also still ignoring all of other people So it's like, I'm listing to these people I'm ignoring these people, but behavior is tough because you're still valuing other people a lot. And so I think this is why so many, I would say again, I come from the entrepreneur side but like Successful entrepreneurs have a very first principles approach of thinking because at some point No one has gone to the moon. And you just have to say like, does physics prevent me from doing this And then when you reason everything from the ground up U You're able to find discrepancies between what people believe and what's true And that's obviously where opportunity exists. You David Deutsche pilled with that does physics prevent me from being able to achieve this, if not, then I just possible. Yeah, it is possible. Yeah, I think One of the reasons that these episodes presresonate is that A lot of people who want to do things aren't around people who know how to do them. And the harder the thing is that you're trying to achieve The rarer it is to find people who are able to support you in the doing of it, and not even just support you give you legitimate advice about how to get that I a hundred percent agree and this is something that I've struggled a lot with because gives you the credibility to gain media and attention as being exceptional in some domain most of the time And being exceptional in a domain makes you unrelatable And so it's kind of this very difficult catch twenty two where credibility and relatability are inverse. Right. But like to your point, poor people are surrounded by other poor people and then assume that that is everyone. Be it's everyone they know, not everyone that exists, but it's their everyone, as far as they're concerned. And I think that's what makes it so difficult in the beginning to get out of that first bubble is because you have to look outside and look at some people who might even appear unrelatable and try and grasp at the straws of their character, their origin story, where again, people could hear me say that I slept on the floor that I didn't enough money, whatever But like, they only see me not then. No one's interviewing the gym owner who's sleeping on the floor Wh's going to someday become something because they don't know yet. That's your one regre onene of the regrets that I have that's the same as yours which is I didn't track the early journey enough Anyone is listening to this. I'm not a big advocate of regrets in general, but like a behavior that I would have changed that I don't think would have changed the outcome is document and you don't have to share you don't have to share it publicly. just pictures, take voice notes, email yourself, whatever, whatever catalogue you want. I remember one of the most important personal moments that I had was when I lost everything for the first time I screenshed out my bank account. so I went from having, you know, six successful gyms to losing all of it and having a thousand dollars to my name, And I remember looking at my bank account. I was like Wow, that's what the bottom of the barrel looks like. That is and I had't, know, Ive seen number that low in a very, very, very long in high school I had more than that, just because I had jobs on a net expenses. And so Um I screenshotted it, and it was this very cathartic moment for me because I was like, never again I will not let this happen. and I will have this be part of the story I tell. And I still have that screenshot. I've seen and I show it becausecause like, so basically you want to document it because you believe that you will be the hero that will overcome. And I think that you can if you can really just grasp it, like just beginning the documentation story, like even the fact that Kanye had some of those early videos. It's like he believed that he would make it and he believed he would use it. And so I think one of one of the greatest things you can do is and it was like it was almost like at that point like I believed when I took that screenshot that I was going to win and I did believe I was going to get it back Um And so the earlier you can have that realization that like I have to document this monster. othertherwise I won't be able to tell the story. And the story, the receiver of that story The biggest beneficiary of that story is you I wish I had done the same I wish that I had done the same all the way back in my previous life, there was a period in plplacement yarn, I would have been twenty. I was living in Scotland and one of the problems that you have with running businesses in events, especially long single comeome events is that it's all costs until you finally get to cash in the revenue And there was a dwindling pot of money that we had because we were putting all of this time in and driving from Edinburgh to Glasgow to Stterling to Dundee to come back to hand out flyers, to manage the guest listters, to restock the bars with the t shirts to sell the thing. The the event wasn't gonna happen for another month That just meant it was all. I needed to pay for my gym membership and I needed to eat food and I needed to drive to these different places dwindled, dindled, dwindled, dwind and we're not going to get to withdraw this money until it happens And I had a friend who came to help me hand out flyers because my business partner needed to look after Fresh's Wek in Newcastle. I was going to look after Fresh' Week across all of Scotland. I my friend who came up bit of a rough dude, but nice guy. And he'd grown up in serious poverty in the northeast of the UK. And this was the first time that I was out of money zero, zero money. And I could have wrg my parents and I'm sure that they would have sent me some cash, but I had too much pride, and I felt too ashamed to do it And there was this moment where we were in this flat and U Socky Hall Street in Edinburgh on the far side of Edinburgh, sorry Danark Rad, Dean Park Rad on the other side Edinbur And I was saying him, man'm like we're out of food in the house and I don't know we're going to get it from. You said, don't worry, man I was going steal. his background H background from his upbringing was that When you run out of money, you go and steal food I remember thinking gotot myself to the point in life where Stealing food is a realistic decision And that do I want to video My friend Dean stealing sandwiches from the Tesco around the corner. probablyrobably not. The fact that that story only exists for me in my mind, and then the only way that I can communicate the lessons that I took from it and the way that it made me feel is by having to go through this retelling. Uh, yeah capapture shit, especially in the beginning The worstase scenario is you delete it. Like I'm just saying for like, what's the downside of doing it? The downside of doing it is that you quote don't use it and that you delete it. But like the upside of having it as an artifact of Kind of the stepping stones of who you wanted to become, I think is invaluable Everything looks like luck to the unskilled Iignnore them Oh You have to have skill in order to perceive and recognize skill, you have to have a base level of skill. Now you don't have to have the same level of skill as somebody else, but the greater skill you have in any domain, the more you appreciate the skill of somebody who's exceptional So for example, if you don't understand the rules of basketball It's just guys passing a ball around and you don't know who scores or how it works or why they're wearing different shirts. L you have no understanding what's going on. Brazilian jiujitsu was a great example of this No idea. is that good Is is the guy? Is he winning? Yeah Yeah Who's wning Yeah, Who's winning Right. And then and then the greater your skill, the greater your appreciation for Good someone who said that thing like resolution, more dexterity. one hundred percent. And so like for that reason if people who around you as you begin to walk, up the ascension of beginning to get successful. You have your first signs of life like, oh my God, this might actually start working And you get angry, only speaking from experience here, when people attribute the success to luck rather than effort The reality is one there was probably some luck two Um They don't have the skill to recognize your skill. It's a question of competence not. malicious intent. And I think just just defining it that way has made it significantly or made it significantly easier for me to realize it was like, oh They don't have the ability to recognize what I didn't because if they did have the ability to fully comprehend the skill that it took, they would be able to do it too. Mark Mans and James Clear,'ve got an idea that's simil to that You only envy the lives of people whose sacrifices you cannot see It doesn't make sense to continue wanting something if you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. If you don't want to live the lifestyle, then release yourself from the desire to crave the results, but not the process is to guarantee disappointment You only envy the lives of people whose sacrifices you cannot see Yeah, I love Jimmy Cars. peopleople want what you have, but not what you did to get it It's just so good, you know. I think the first time I heard that I was like, fuck I wish I'd written was on this pod. Yeah. So good. I wish I' hadd written it Um and I think I think part of it is just like, It goes back to what we started with around trades. is like Price tags and you can totally say that something costs too much. Like that is good s like those shoes are nice, they're not worth a billion dollars or whatever that relity ye, to me And so I think that being able to say like, I think it is okay to say somethingomething is both good and not worth it And people have a hard time with that. So they say, it must be bad because I'm not willing to pay the price for it They might be great shoes. They might not be worth it for you, but they're still good shoes. I think what particularly hurts is when you as a person who's put a lot of effort in see the price that you paid to acquire a skill and it appears to be dismissed by somebody that doesn't understand it. Or when you buy the shoes and then someone says, I can't believe you bought those shoes, there's no way I would ever do that and you're like, I know you would never do that That's why you don't have them And it's okay that you don't have them either. I'm not saying that is a judgment on you. It's like you don't have the shoes I do I thought they were worth it You didn't And guess what? we both are different people who live different lives. And so we have stated the obvious In other news, Shopify powers ten percent of all e commerce companies in the US. They are the driving force behind GymsShark and Sims and Aloe and Ntonic which is why I partnered with them because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers, they are best in class. Their checkout is thirty six percent better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms. and with shop pay, you can boost conversions up to fifty percent. Basically, you didn't get into business to learn how to code or build a website or deal with the inventory on the bac endnd, you just want to get down to creating and promoting an awesome product and Shopify takes all of the mess off your hands and allows you to focus on the job you actually came here to do designing and selling the thing that you love. So upgrade your business and get the same checkout that we use with Newtonic We Shopify. Right now, you can sign up for a one dollar per month trial period by going to the link in the description below or heading to shhopify. com slash modern wisdom, all lowercase. That's shopify d. comot Sash water wis Avoiding people who make it harder for you to achieve your goals is the highest form of self care. The fastest way to change your life is to get around people whose minimum standards are your life goals Ls I violently agree with both of these statements then I wrote. I agree with me. Oh, it'd be great if you didn't agree with you. Whoever wrote that is a fucking idiot. This is at the heart of the and I was I wrote that Um, right in the sake of my thinking around malicious goodwill. our milit sorry, I'm Malicious benefit and well intentioned harm was just, um I think I had some people around me at that time that had done me harm and had said, but I didn't mean to you know, I had good intentions And If you were telling that person who was texting and driving to the wife of the person whose husband you killed. Um don't think I think they are justified in not carrying. And I think that if that person who continues to drive while texting afterwards because they lack the skill to not drive without texting and continues to run over your spouse or whatever Um you are justified in removing them from your life despite their good intention. And I just think intention is desired result ' just like if my intention was this, this is what I wanted to have happen. And it's literally just a lack of confidence andometences inccredibly rare So it makes sense to remove many people who are not competent at helping you. either mentioned but incompetent. Yeah. And so I think that's why being really clear about like, hey, if you do this, this would help me this decreases my risk of failure, that would be helpful for me. Um makes serving and I say that like serving you as a friend or as a spouse or as a whatever U You give people the tools to help you And I think that you should totally do that If some if you give some of the tools, and then they choose not to help you then I think you were also justified or it would be It would be rational for you. If you value your goals more than you value the relationship to sacrifice their relationship for the goal. And again We would say which one you love more by the one that you're willing to give up? The harshest truth every young man must eventually learn is that everyone was always rooting for you Your parents want you to be a great son. Your wife wants you to be a great husband. Y boss wants you to be a slam dunk hire. Every first date you've ever been on They've been rooting for you to get laid Every time you started to tell a joke, people hoped it would have a hilarious punchline Your proximity to anyone is a reflection of themselves, meaning the deck is never stacked against you and your failures are completely your own Sense I'll Rust. I was suppos I like, who wrote that one? U It's all your fault No one's coming to save you sacrifice who you are people aren't against you, especially the people that arere in proximity to you People's proximity to you is a reflection of themselves. We hang around with people who we want to be like and who We want to win so that we can be in the collective glory of it So this is where the worldview, I think is super important for me, at least, which is like we hang around people who've rewarded us for being around them So either they've removed stuff that we hate or they U, give us stuff that we like. And I think where it becomes difficult is where you have competing priorities, where you have multiple things that you like and you want to shift. It's where you begin to change. Basically, your motivating factors start to change, but your environment hasn't. And so what was once reinforcing for you or was once rewarding no longer is as much. And so this is where people feel this tension between desire of like, this is the life I want to live versus the life that I have. Trade offffs. Yeah. I mean, I could I've given a tremendous amount of thought to trade offs, and I really think it comes down to that is that people are just unwilling to make trades virientially why because we want Everything And when we get everything we wanted. We no longer want it because we have it And I think there's this amazing comedian. I think his name's Kanon. I'm going to mess it up, but he says Awesome bit on this. It's like more philosophy than comedy And he says, all the joyys in the getting. He's like, but once you get it, you just have it He's like And getting so much better than having. Having is like, but the only thing worse than having is losing And then you lose it all you want is to have it again Um, It's like a two minute bit and And he's like, you know, you don't, you don't get kids, you have kids And he's like or have And that is why you will never be satisfied. But yeah, you only either live in the desire or in the have and the have is unsatisfactory and the desire is always compelling and out of reach. Lla 've been talking to me about this more recently where she's like, you know, the things that makeake you us, et cetera good at business is always seeing where things could be better, where things could be improved And it's this incredibly You said earlier, these habits that have been reinforced, these grooves of behavior that lots of water has run through, right Um and being able to live life with two modes, I find incredibly difficult, which is like All I am in one part of my life is dissatisfied and seeing the imperfections in what we do and then The key to satisfaction of life is saying everything is great or rather I accept everything as it is and I do not wish to change it U and I think that conflict is I would just say just one that I conquered just from one that I outlin for a problem to be managed, not a paradox to be solved. Yeah. they're caught it Yeah, exactly. It's a problem to be managed not a dcotomy to be sol don' I think many of these things like there is no oh, number forty two, that's the answer. Like that is the answer to this. I think they we just we do the best we can. And I think again, to the question the started, which is why do people have such a hard time with trade offffs Um which is that The trades We don't want to make the trade We want to be able to date everyone and have the benefits of a committed relationship. And when you begin to walk down one of those paths and see the other one start fading in the distance, people have an emotional reaction and then they change course and then they flip flop back and forth between do these two things, but then they never actually get to realize any of them. becausecause loss is more painful than gain You lose five pounds, it is more painful than finding five pounds. And that means that you're always going to try and avoid loss oppose to expedite gain even if you would be happier by doing that because the pain of the loss is always going to be felt more in probably short term long term. Yeah as well. Yeah. Bill Perkins has got this line. He says, peopleeople will endure years of misery to avoid a couple of minutes of pain Oh my Godd. Yes Incredibly true And again, when we think about motivation, it's just that that short term pain is always immediate And so it always motivates you not to do it You you have many motivating operations that are working on us in any given moment And so even though something is short term, like even it's funny because like M people Obviously there's some people who just love going to the gym There are significantly more people who don't love going to the gym the moment they get to the gym thanen you warm up, then all of sudden you feel good again. But there's this period where you're like, I don't necessarily want to go right now And so you have a motivating operation at all times that is working against your best wishes or you know, your best desires and Our goal of motivating ourself is to tell ourselves those stories so that in the short term we can overcome these short term discomfort so that can get the long term benefit that we ultimately want that we know we want, but we're reminded. And the first time you work out only looks like pain And then we model, we look at somebody else who's already done it for a long time and say, well, I want that. And so we model that and we borrow that credibility, that outcome of the penguin that jumps off the cliff. like, I want the fish. So I guess I'll try and do that And then after that the loop takes over It's like hyperbolic accounting rather than hyperbolic discounting. And It happens both ways So like for example I'm if I want to set an alarm, right? If I set an alarm at five o'clock the night before four o'cock in theorning I'm going to wake up super early and I'm going do this shit, We get the benefit of the idea of our productivity when we set the alarm The cost is discounted because it's in the future But when we have to pay the cost, it's immediate And so the benefit of hitting the snooze button is immediate and the cost of getting up is also immediate. And so we hit the snz button And so it's like I feel like that is the microcosm of humanity ofting setting an alarm twelve hours before or eight hours before you're supposed to wake up and being like super jacked about it because you only get the benefit and there's no price attached to it. But then in the moment that you have to make the trade, all of a sudden, your priorities change because the motiv of the operations have changed And the long term benefit of what will happen to your life if you become the sort of person who gets up early is also in future And if you do it a few times a row, then you tell yourself, I' that the type of person does this. And then that becomes a second operation which can help you overcome the short term. Like I'm a big believer in in I am statements as motivating operations, meaning like, I am this type of person. Um I tend to be really hesitant to say I am statements because I believe they're very powerful in terms of changing behavior But it's also something that I feel like I listen to a lot when I'm talking to other people. like I mean, this happens a lot, especially in dating think about first dates, second dates, people were like, well, I'm like in the first meeting, they'll give you like twenty IMs. like I I'm an e freak, I'mike they just give you o Okay, here's latest work of my beliefs about myself Um When in reality, all of these things are just shorthand for a number of behaviors underneath they're saying I'm a great at basketball. I' also great at swimming and're like, there's so much here But where it gets difficult is when you need to stop dribling and start passing but you said I'm b at basketball but I'm supposed to do both, but I actually need to change only one of them. And that's where people get into these really hard times, which is why I think defining everything of the granular and moving it back up, but being able to go clouds to dirt on these definitions of behavior allow you to change who you are much more fluidly because You w you understand that the label is actually just that. It's just shorthand. It's not reality. It's just a bucket to make communication easier. If I homby balled to describe all of the things that this particular term me. It would be unreasonable if I to say he's a good basketball player but instad of saying,' like, Oh my God,'s really good at taking his right foot and putting in front like it would be ridiculous. But you have to understand at that level in order to communicate really clearly, in my opinion This tension between excellence and satisfaction is an interesting one this line this year, which was what you are praised for in public, you will pay for in private. A lot of the time, the things that make you fantastic operator when it comes to business and your career often can be Totally unadaptive mal adaptive when it comes to the kitchen table competing priorities. And I like this is This is such a this is one that I think I think a lot about this. U because there is a priority. There is one that you want more And I think people have a lot of trouble with that. This is why people who are monomonal can get so much further than people that don't, because even just the thinking cost of managing, navigating the trade ups. That's why someone asked me Basically how monom maniacically should I go after my career? And I said well, it depends on what Faz' in. Uh, but I think it is almost impossible to make a big swwing. big progress in your life without going complete sicko mode for an extended period of time. Yeah It's about ten years. I mean, I've just I think it's it's like about ten years. I've just gone I'm not going to compromise Yeah It's no compromises It's no. There's this um episode in Breaking Bad and the title was, I think, no half meeasures and I think it was about whether you punish someone or kill them, but that was I remember watching that episode and The line stuck with me a lot, like no half measures, either do or don't and I think that half measures yield No outcomes Yeah, it's not that you get half results. Yeah And so what many people are plagued by is they are doing half measures in four domains. and have yielded none and they feel like they are trying all the time. they're working every hour that they're awake to pursue or serve four different masters. and It's the realization that romise on one means getting neither And I think that people have a hard time with that because they're unwilling to say, I I want one thing more than another And I think you just have to be able to say like, I'm willing to sacrifice this thing Not forever, but for now. obligation because of anchering bias, because of the momentum of where you are now, because of the fear of regretting it This is where This is where the inaction thing comes back in People think that inaction has no cost, but it does have a cost Usually it's higher. Like, um, Money love speed Wealth loves time poverty lives indecision And if you think about in action As an action, we are Al doing something, even if you were watching television, you were taking an action It's just not making it's not making any progress. Well, maybe you're making progress in a show Maybe you're making progress in your relaxation, mayaybe your're resting heart rate drops. L like things are always occurring And I think it's just whether We are Voting our behavior about the outcome that we truly want And most of the outcomes that we truly want happen at a delay, which is what makes them worth wanting. also makes them equally hard to get Don't listen to other people's opinions. friendly reminder that most people are fat, poor pansies and don't listen to them when they try to deter you from whatever it takes to succeed The average person will always try to keep you average. It makes sense that if you want to be extraordinary, you will do things that an ordinary person would see as extra This is the really hard part that I had to come to terms with A lot of people want to see fail because it justifies the risks that they chose not to take Al have to think about listening to the people who are closest to our goals not closest to us We yearn for the approval of many people don't have lives that we want And so if they have a specific life then it means that that is what they think is valuable And if we don't want what they have Why would we value their weight on our decisions And so it's like you have this, they're like, we have this mold that is my life. Your life no longer fits my mold. And you're like, right, I don't like the pot that that mold makes And so somehow when people state the obvious, which is that you are living your life against my preferences We somehow feel like that needs to change because when we're younger and growing up We can' leave. Yeah, you can't leave, and you do need to live your life according to your parents' preferences, your teacher' preferences, your classmates' prefnces your princip's preferen Um But when you get older, you do have to break some mold. and decide what mold you want And in so doing you will be against their preferences and if the vast majority of people have a life that you don't want then you're going to do things that the vast majority of people don't agree with I think the average American adult is obese, likely to be divorced and has less than one K in the bank Do what everybody else does sounds like. A great idea, but it's actually a reliable route to a life that you're probably not looking for This is I feel very passionately about this particular topic because means that path to exceptionalism is lonely. And loneliness is something that We ry as a society that there's something wrong with it, there's something bad, there's something wrong with you if Many people disagree with you. but success and pursuit of large endeavors is one of those few domains where everyveryone disagreeing with you is a signal that you are actually doing something different Sometimes you doing something different is the wrong move I think, um Larry Ellison said this, he said, u if everyone thinks your idea is stupid either They're right. or you're right. And if you're right then you're likely to make a lot of money. I'm loosely paraphrasing, but basically it's like we have to be willing to do exceptional things in isolation and deal with the pain of rejection And some of rejection isn't people saying no, I don't want to buy from you. Some of rejection is people just rejecting your behavior, rejecting who you're becoming, rejecting the choices that you're making. And I think that rejection oftentimes is harder because it often surfaces as snide remarks, jokes that are demeaning, that have a little bit too much edge to them like a little bit too much truth or even just being excluded a more silent version of that, notot omission, but omission. We won't invite them out Yeah. you turned up to squash prractice. I didn't know it was on. I just thought that I don't know, do you guys not tell me? Oh yeah, well, all right, come on Join Th those moments And I think those moments are very painful Um, But you trade those moments for The many moments when you're at home alone looking at your life around you and saying this is not what I want. I don't want to be here Right I don't want to be here. I don't want to be who I am And I don't want tona be there with them either. Right. And so it's no man's land Um, and I think that that is like beginning of the metamorphosis, the beginning of the transformations. The single most powerful idea that many and you have come up with, the Lly chapter by far, by far. And I think the reason that it speaks to people is that The amount of doubt that you have to endure When doing this for the first time, when nobody around you understands what you're trying to do, when you're actively being discouraged from making changes and you have no promise of glory or success on the other side of it is One of the most perfect cocktails of pain and discomfort that you can go through And this happens on every mountain. So it happens on your first mountain and it happens on your second mountain. Like if you are, you've achieved some level of success that everyone around you deems is successful enough by their standards, not yours When you pursue the next summit They then All of it begins again. The machine begins again. I actually think that for a lot of people The first big lonely chapter that they will feel will be after their first success because for a lot of people the first success is done within the frame that they're already inside of, they get to the top of it and realize it wasn't what they wanted. and then some people decide to go back down Maybe some people don't need to go up the first mountain to realize they're somewhere they don't want to be. But for a lot of people, especially people that are driven and pushed toward excellence, think they actually have to get there within this was my story getting One of the biggest defense companies in the UK running an organization that is cool and fun and I got to define and I was the boss and everybody knew me and there's some wealth and some status and some freedom and there's girls Everybody's telling me that this is something that I should be happy about and satisfied with. And for some reason it didn't feel right And the only way to try and find something new is to let go of something that everybody else is telling you is something that you should want. loocal maximums And it's like the further up they can see up the mountain. And then when you get to that N local maximum, you have a different perception than they do and you can see the next peak and they can't And some people don't need to go up the peak, but I think a lot of people do. Yeah I u I wonder if those are different types of longongy chapter or if there's a different type of alonely chapter of of letting go. I kind of been hold that thought. just I really wanted to talk to you about the difference between having fallen off and having never made it Oh And having fallen off a lot of the time is somebody going from one local maxima to another local maxima thats higher or to a global maxima Sure, some fall offffccur not tr choice, but that evolution might be somebody going My priorities have changed, and you are judging me on the scorecard of the game that I used to play. I'm not bothered about that anymore Oh that guy fell off And I have two completely different thoughts about this one is short and then I'll make the longer one. I realized when I I was writing something a while ago When you haven't when you have no evidence or no proof that you're going to be successful, everyone will ask why you're working so hard And then once you win, everyone asks why you're working so hard. You know, that was the Mark Manson one that he said will tell you how lucky you are. Oh you like the idea of No, they just ask you again why you're working so hard. Yeah. Yeah, ye yeah yeah. And it's a funny remix. Yeah And um, And it was just a realization that people were literally always going to ask me why I was working so hard or why you were working so hard and why are you're pursuing your goals? becausecause they're saying that your goals are not the goals that I would pursue and to which you would respond, yes The second thing was, u I was I was talking to an entrepreneur successful and they were saying, hey, I really want I want to dominate my market. I want to y everyone else out of business, blah blah and I as somebody who has put people out of business Um I will say that It come with parades and it doesn't come with balloons and it's not Goliath versus Goliath because by the time you actually beat them into true submission, it's really like a giant beating a child because It's almost never a true fair fight There are no rules and there is no referee and no one determines you the winner And so what ends up happening is you get bigger and bigger and bigger and then they shrink into irrelevance and then you see a Facebook post that says that they've changed their goals and that they actually determine that this isn't as important to them as it once was. And I think that One that's okay Um, To, it's not satisfying at all three when you see the jobs and the employees that actually worked at the company that We're just, you know li in their lives and have kids and all of a sudden like this idea of this conquest that you're going to beat someone feel significantly less rewarding U That's glorious. one hundred percent and I used I used to joke that when losers lose They change their goals rather than say they lost. And I think it's more that they might have at some point while they began to lose Maybe it's the first quarter or the second quarter of the game, they're down by a few points they might have some awareness of what it would take in order to win determined at that point that the trade was no longer worth it. And I think that that's okay. And I would say that that has That is a shift that I've had personally is that if someone no longer determines that the price is worth it That's been amazing They've made a they've made a conscious decision. what I what I would say I advocate against is having that decision made for you. because you weren't conscious of the decision being made to begin with and then just basically accepting it Can vengeance be deranging in that way then Obsidian, C vengeance be deranging For whom, the desire to get one over on this person compels you to act in a way, which is being puppeted them in a very odd way. they control you. Yeah. the person that you're trying to beat has cajoled you and tempted you into doing something that isn't necessarily in your interests. And then when you do reach the finish line They're never gonna to say Well played, man Fair f. Yeah, exactly. No one else knows. it's largely just this silent war between you and your projection of them and And to be clear, like I think that vengeance and revenge can be incredibly motivating and If if the only fuel that you have is that to get what you want. then use what you have I think that the come of it Beating a specific person is not nearly as fulfilling as you think it will be If along the way, you can create good from it then I think that there's some reconciliation of pros and cons that happens of like good stuff happened, bad stuff happened, and is there more good than bad Um that we sum up at the end of our lives. but I find it interesting when I think about When I look at like the oldest you know, the old wise men that I pay attention to or that I read their dead books or if they're dead, the books are alive Um It is interesting how much they talk about like the folly of youth and how much we value things that never really mattered to begin with And how and I try to think like, what is that guy going to say about what I'm currently doing? and will he approve of it Um, And dont I mean, to be clear, I don't like I always have the answer I think it It takes the edge off both sides U on the downside if you do, you know, have your losses, it's like, well, this this is okay And on the upside when you do have your wins, you're like I'm not that important A lot of this feels to be about the expansion of time Being able to see things on a broader time horizon. Is that fair Time in space I think there's the two things that can shrink or expand anything Right. So like if you zoom into the atoms of this table versus zooming all the way out to the cosmos, all of a sudden, you know whether two monkeys are having a podcast that they're recording matters significantly less. And also when we think about the billions of podcasts that get recorded over the next, however many years, it shrinks it. But in this exact moment, this becomes the most important thing that I'm focused on right now. U I think playing with time and space as ways to cope with hardship is one of the most viable tools that you can have in terms of getting through Zoom into enjoyment, zoom out of difficulty pain Yeah You can get competent at nearly anything in twenty hours The problem is most people spend a decade delaying the first twenty hours More potential is wasted through inaction than incompetence Ted Tal years ago where a guy how you learned how to play the guitar in twenty hours And that Ted talk changed my life not because I learned to play the guitar, but all of a sudden complex tasks or seemingly complex tasks felt incre much much more attainable where I was like, oK, I might not be the best website developer in the world, but in twenty hours I can have a website And that twenty hour mantra for me has just been like two days Two full days, twowo ten hour days, fully focused You can pretty much go from zero to not hero, but zero to competent. Um And when you string, hundredundreds of those twenty hour days together, I think you become incredibly dangerous. We were talking earlier about Range, the book. I think being cross departmental, being Cross what's the multidisciplinary. Thank you, disisciplinary. Multidisciplinary is is It's hard to calculate how valuable it is because of the because the first twenty hours of almost every discipline is probably the biggest most meaningful concepts from that discipline Not being able to ride a bike to being able to ride Being able to not read to read Um even if you can't read Shakespeare, but you can read all of a sudden like eighty percent The world of Shakespeare is now opened up to you. It's just a matter of time before you get that. Yeah And even if you could never read Shakespeare, the eighty percent of the books that you can read as a result of a sixth grade reading level is basically more books than you have time to read and you will get the largest returns from those first twenty hours. And so there's a very strong argument for trying to collapse the time between wanting something and beginning those first twenty hours. and because the eighty twenty of your of the skills you gain that are that have utility, like that your usefulness across a huge amount of domains is multiplicative, not additive. So I've said this example before, but like JayZ in the very beginning, it's like he might have had some rhythm or something. And then all of a sudden he, you know learned how to rap And then he learned how to sell. Now, some people say maybe was sold earlier than that, but I'll just leave it there. He learned how to sell. and then all of a sudden he learned how to market. And with each of these additional skills, his income didn't go up by like, o, one plus one equals two. It went, you know one one's a bad number. So two to the tenth power all of a sudden becomes significantly greater. than what you can do. And so when When unsure about what step like when you're not sure what to do potential when opportunity does come, you want to be ready And so it does make sense in the beginning of your career to maximize optionality. It's just that you have to be willing to trade it in. And so when you're not sure what to do, the logical thing to do is, I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow, but I'm gonna to get a good night' sleep I don't know what I'm going tomun toate but I'm going start getting in shape now. I don't know what I'm going to sell, but I'm going to start building an audience, making content. There's always an argument for like if you don't know what to do, there's still plenty of things to do And but the goal is not necessarily to do those things forever. It's to do those things to then use them as the launchpad to get the thing you really want. The trap is opening up so much optionality without the Ccordant dececisiveness. that you end up being trapped. Yeah You end up being stuck because you think I've got all of these directions that I could go in. I've spent all of this time building up . Caniply of roote that I could take my life down And I do not have any ability to decide on which of those to take Yeah Myriad corornuccopia, a plethora. Yeah O two people that are obsessed with language, have a war with each other. But one is British so he wins You only need to get rich ones So you might as well work as hard as you can to get it done as fast as you can The fastest way to attract what you want in life is to deserve it by doing so much work it becomes unreasonable not to achieve it Do so much work, it would be unreasonable that you fail The seat at the table is yours if you want it do the hard work Build the skills, no one can ignore addjust your mindset to match where you want to go. Th then pull up a chair and sit down You want to work with such relentless obsession that when people see you, they're grateful, they don't have to compete against you The fastest shortcut is to stop looking for shortcuts the work Are there online Oh one Violence is the answ There's two there's two quotes on the on the in the first few pages of our sales handbook internalid acquisition. com. One is volume togates luck and violence is the answer And I would say that those are like credos that the team lives by And I think vent team. M. they are um, and violently successful. Um I think I think there's a lot of power in in knowing that you're doing every single thing you possibly can't to win Because if you are if you can look at yourself in the mirror and say I have controlled the controllable I think there's something highly entirely. The controllable, not the uncontrollable. Those things can happen. I could do my book launch and there can be a lightened strike and there could be no power in Vegas. That can happen in the event that that happens. If you if you leave it all in the field, If you have nothing left in the tank I don't think there's a feeling that's more satisfying as a man the knowing that you've given everything that you had to give to an endeavor that you deemed meaningful. And so Leil and I have this thing that we say a lot, but A man must have a quest And I just really, really like that You need to do something. you need to go towards something and your quest could be the best being the best father. It could be, it could be being the best musician or the best podcaster or the best businessman or the best tire replacer, the best sweeeper. whatever it is, but like I think I think being questless. Aimless and never being able to use the violence that you are capable of in the pursuit of endeavor that you find meaningful is where people find themselves lost and without hope because Hopelessness comes from a perceived lack of options. We don't know what to do Anxiety comes from many options, but no priorities And so there's many things to do, but we don't sure which one And so a quest remedies both of those because you have one path that you're clear on and You know the only thing that you have left to do is destroy everything in your path to getting to where you want to go. And I'm using strong language on purpose rather than saying that you literally need to destroy everyone, but more so the ideas, the thoughts, the doubts perceived risks that aren't even really risks Um, Those are the things that we have to march tri toally towards. and I think u having someone in your corner believes in that better version of you is one of the the rarest gifts that you can have in life and There's a line from three hundred that I love. The quQeen says to Leonidas She s she says, um come back with your shielder on it. And I think that we all want a spouse or a partner who can who can reward us four goodood fight because Queen is saying in that moment is not like I want you to win She's like, I want you to die trying. So and I think that that's that's like all we, I mean, to be fair, that's literally all we will do is di tryoning All of us will die trying. And I think U we rather all of us will die Some of us will die trying. And I think that's that's about as good of a life as I think anyone can really ask for it. One of my least favorite groups of people are those without a quest mocking those who have one wastes of space It causes doubt. this is another reason why the Lonely Chapter thing resonates so much that People who are in it haveave their certainty about wanting to get out of it diminished. by people who can't see the fact that they're in it. And you go, fuck, all my friends are saying Well why are you staying? becausecause you want to go to the gym in the morning? What does it matter if you miss Would it matter if you miss your workout Do't matter if you it doesn't matter if you miss your work outout tomorrow dud no, I really, really want this thing and My wanting of this hard thing and the efforts and sacrifices and trade offs I'm having to make in order to get there The doubt that already exists inside of me is being multiplied by people who are outside of it and If I could give everybody a gift, it would be the ability to turn down the volume on people who don't understand the goals that you're trying to achieve It shouldn't be your job to explain yourself to people who don't understand what you're trying to do and the confusion of this person gets it and understands it. And this person doesn't You shouldn't be listening to the equal measure I have a lot of live translation that I think, I've wired into being able to handle some things that were difficult, which is like I pretty much translate all hate into you live your life against my preferences And so whenever they're saying all of these things of like, no, you don't have to go to the gym. We' doing this other thing. it's just saying, you're living your life in a way that's against my preferences. You're valuing things that don'talue. And you're like, you're right And so it doesn't mean like we don't need to have the same values att least in the shorterm Um And I think just accepting that that is okay and that you can still be friends at least in the short term is fine and What they're really trying to do is get you to comply their way of living. becausecause maybe, not always, when you live in accordance with your new values and new preferences It brings into sharp contrast how they are not living in accordance to theirs This is tenany years ago. when As C club promoter I decided that I was going to take six months off from drinking, which now sounds like commonplace. Now is almost a caricature of something lame that people do too much. and drinking has come back around. But ten years ago I was on the fucking frontier. And I remember when I stopped drinking so many of the people that I would hang out with went from being prized to ribbing mockery to almost offended and I think a lot of that was people realizing, oh shit The fact that Chris has stopped drinking throws the fact that I need to drink in order to feel social into harsh contrast My bad habits are being highlighted by the fact that someone near me has broken them. What's really interesting about that is that you made money from other people drinking. And so clearly had no problem with anyone drinking. You just chose not to drink for you so that you could grow the business, get more in shape. makes it feel even more elective, which makes it feel like even more of an insult. Right, which is which makes it Also more more ridiculous how violent they were about opposing this choice because you were like, I'm not projecting anything on you. I would prefer it if you drink. Please please spend as much money as you can at the club.. Yeah, yeah Um, but even that like it's a perfect example because There's there wasn't a shade of judgment behind it because you are incentivized to have them I was opening the doors my. and cracking the bot. Yeah ye. prettyty much. And so like I actually think it is the perfect example because it shows that Like there is it is not about you That is the point becausecause there was no judgment. You were literally incentivized them for them to continue that behavior and yet they still bad and angry that you were doing not doing something they were doing which then made them feel that they felt like they shouldn't be doing it either. and then they just projected it on to you. And it's like when you have this violent opposition, One of the things that I've actually been more recently thinking about is like No one hates you They hate the projection that they have of you. That's ninety nine percent made up becausecause no one can know one hundred percent of you. Like the only person whose hate you should really pay attention to is your own. because there's no other person on earth who has full context to who you are. And so person that someone's making fun of or they hate or that they're disagreeing with is the person and within the context of here, obviously that's consumed. Six thirty second clips of you over the thirty seven years you've been alive and has filled in the blanks every other minute of your existence with the exception of those three minutes that they have consumed, correct And so how much weight? I should probably proportionally weight the opinions of people based on the shared experience that they have of my life with me. And so if someone has spent one day with me out of the thirty seven years that I've been alive, I have thirty seven times three hundred and sixty five more context on the individual than they do. And so I should probably weight it appropriately to that. There's an idea from Gwinda Bogl, which is about this. It's called Tilting at Windmills. An online stranger doesn't know you. All they have are a few vague impressions of you, too meager to form anything but a phantasm So when they attack you They're really just attacking their own imagination And there is no need to take it personally, which is related to this principle of humanity Every single person is exactly what you would be if you would them. This includes your political opponents, so instead of dismissing them as evil or stupid maybe seek to understand the circumstances that led them to their conclusions You know I love Um lo it also teases out something that I might have to put my put myat on for it.. No switch it out which is that if everyone, if you were going to be the same. If you were the exact same person is They are if you were them that never remves the concept of free will Mhm. Mhm Ey Tour Try the buy nothing challenge. The buy nothing challenge For thirty days, by nothing except food, rent, gas and insurance. Don't bring your wallet with you when you leave home, pack lunch See how much you save Repeat until you have as much as you want. brackets pas well with working twelve hours a day being good with money literally just means spend less than you make put the extra in things that go up not down Financial education in into Teets Um The hardest part about most things isn't knowing what to do It's doing it. And The hard part about doing it is that you're often more rewarded for every action except for the one that you need to take And so there's a hundred things you can spend money on There's only one nothing And so E it's so exhausting to not spend money when you don't have any because Every single thing that you want or many things that you want have price tags associated with them and you have to All moments in the day say no a hundred times in order to quote, spend nothing And so It's this muscle that we have to build But I I strongly encourage the buy Nhing challenge because One, you realize how little you can really live on And when you realize how little you can really live on, You realize how much more risk you can actually take Because the apparent downside of what if I lost everything becomes incredibly tangible, which is like, while I lived on two hundred dollars, five hundred dollars Not even that bad. Yeah, it's actually when you realize that and this is, I think, Morgan Strusel, when I to say his name right When we look back in time at some of our happiest moments we think we were happy when we were poor Um But I'll just say on anecotal le Um Al got one of my own words. We often say that we'll be happy. like we already have the things that we said we want that would make us happy And yet here we are. Yeah, there's a nostalgia discount for sure Nobody ever a believes that we're living through a golden era Goldenir is only ever occur in history Good old days. Yeah, it's always the good old days I asked a question actually recently, which was there's certain periods that people look back on nationally as times that were particularly Wonderful. I did ask the question, do you think anyone will look back at twenty twenty six and think that it was the good old days at some point Hh. every generation believes that they're living through a moment which is markedly different than the generations before. This one does feel particularly Unremarkable in that to a degree yeah, I think when I I'm trying to project forward stuff that currently we think about with loving nostalgia from the past And I'm not sure, but then probably during the nineties, right, did people think that WWF and F sixteen fighter rocket of fighter jets and limp biscuit were going to be what people in three decades time would look back on with looving tenderness So I'm going to say two things that I think are So one The behaviors can explain the nostalgia paradox which is that cross species neegative consequences fade fading affect bias. ye and the positive doesn't. And so that's why you have your ex that you always want to back to ' because you forget out how crazy he is and then you see her and then you're like, my God, I forgot how crazy And why you drink in the next morning, you say I'm never going to drink again and then seven days later you're drinking again, back of my life. R. And so but like even being cognizant of the fact that punishment fades and reward sticks is help for making decisions in the future Size thing one The second is that Like when I really think about At least the areeras of my life, so I'll just talk personally when I think about when I was, you know, sleeping on the gym floor Um In a lot of ways, that was like the good old days. I was fighting really hard for something I really cared about and then You know, there was a moment where it started to work and I started, you know, launching gym to gym to gym with Layla, which was like wasn't necessarily the good old days, but like it was she and I and we were figuring it out. And I think I have a lot of respect and admiration for kid who was just working his ass off, even though I didn't know I was doing, I just tried. I tried Um And then obviously when things started working with Jimm Launch and it was really scaling, it's like, I remember that period and like I think can you can ascribe a good old days, especially on a personal level to like almost every season of life when you look in retrospect be just because the The negative has faded of course Um And so It's one of these things that's like It's like a great way to feel bad about how you feel today because you know you should feel better because you know you will feel better about today in the future because the future will have today without the negative consequences and the stressors of today that in the future seem irrelevant U And so it's like whenever you think about this stuff, like what is my my operation for gratitude is imagine something good Imagine losing it and then realize that you haven't lost it That is how you feel gratitude. 's basic level And so whenever you repeat that operation, either in your mind or in reality like you feel gratitude. And so I think nostalgia is a flavor of that as we go back in time Um, now we We can't get it back. But I guess we can see it through a new lens That's the memory dividend thing from Bill Perkins Phenomenal book, everyveryone D zero G by Die zero Re, really good book. Really, great. Three hours to read. fantastic Um Yeah, I think Some of the areas that people rely on with more nostalgia from a personal standpoint, Times with more simplicity and fewer trade offs, I think tend to be looked back on with H I was really singularly focused in that way. Life was simpler then. Correct. And there is an accumulation of complexity So I wonder if Simplification would be a way to remove some of the restrictions between Now and front running some of that gratitude for now in the moment I think this's really interesting because I think that the complexity of our lives in the moment that we were living them was just as maxed outed as it is now because we're human, not because life was more complex, but because we always find the maximum amount of problems that our brains can perceive And so at any given moment, whether you're, you know or forty, you might have absolutely more problems when you're forty, but you also have higher ability to deal with those problems and the problems that you perceiveed when you were twenty. The worst thing things's ever happened to you is the worst thing that've ever happened to you. You will still have the same number of problems. And so the idea of simplifying our lives is really just an attempt to mirror only the incomplete memory that we have of that moment. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. I'm going to try and get rid of the trade offs that I did have to do in the past in the moment to make the moment more like the past.. Yeah. There's a Adam Lane Smith taught me this a couple of years ago. I think it's really, really true Your life does not need to be easier, it needs to be simpler Your system is designed to handle stress and challenge, but not complication You probably handle hard things pretty well but feel overwhelmed when they become messy Do not attribute to difficulty that which can be explained by complexity. Rle raicical And I think that's where a lot of stress is felt. And this is the line from what I' fucking four episodes ago where there's no such thing as being overworked, only underrested that overworked is the Asterisk overworked. That's a small bucket of things But there is such a thing as being Bread too thin and overwork across a larger bucket of things. If all that you have to do for the next six months or two years is write a book It's going to be stressful, but it's going to be enjoyable If you have to write a book and raise a kid and manage finances and go to work and try and get in shape and get connected with your partner and your mum's ill It doesn't only takes two or three of those and people fall apart. system is designed to handle intensity but not complexity I think I think most people would be astonished at how much they can accomplish if they remove things Because I don't think focus is also not additive but multiplicative. in that The best things that I've ever made, books, things like that, the best works that I've created, have been things that had M coats of paint And so I can look at the same project Over a long period of time when I'm on good days, on bad days, it rains. it's sunhine, Layla and I are good. Lila and I are bad through all these different seasons. and so I look at the work through as many lenses as I can and then it It creates the texture to the work that gives it that depth And I like the manyi coats of paint because like you have to let it dry like it's very rare that something on the first shot is very good It just takes a lot of attempts, but you can't get that surface area of thinking if you can only think about it a handful of times And so there's only so much thinking time that you have, which means that if you give it to F projects rather than one gettingting one inch deep on five projects is rarely a novel concept Like you rarely will come up with something that is inherently unique because many people can give one inch deep thought towards any idea. Well alsoso somebody who is one fifth as good as you at doing that thing are giving a hundred percent of themselves. So you're basically Ctailing your capacity spreading it across multiple things And again, I relate things back to business, but Um, In some ways, you believing that you can pursue multiple masters is actually arrogant because it assumes that the people that you compete against beat you when they're fully focused on one thing and that you can somehow compete with three or four or five people at the same time and still win And maybe you can, but I think the vast majority of people just lose Stop whining every position has an advantage Younger means cutting edge. older means more experience. Smaller company means more personalized, bigger company means longer track record Rich means resources to use broke means nothing to lose You aren't limited by your resources Oh go resourcefulness. There's always a way to win not always They enough desire to win The position of simplicity as well, I think So much of today is about trade offs, is cool lookingoo across all of these Can't see. any of them that would be improved by compleplexity Young old small, big rich broke It's universal rule that cuts through all of them, which I think is really interesting. But yeah, Everybody is able to find a reason why the situation that they're in is either but more typically because findinding all of the ways that the thing that you have or don't have either limits you or restricts you in a way that it wouldn't if you were somebody else or in a different situation allows you to front run why you might fail in future This is the reason why inversion is one of the most powerful ways to get what you want. We are hardwired to survive. and part of survival is threat identification. What are all the problems that exist around me in my environment, in my life threaten me And so when you try to think about what's good with your life, you have to sit there and be like, okay, I have to do my five minute journal in the morning and think what three you're like sitting there you're like, okay, what three things am I grateful for, right? And you have to try to do that, especially if you do different things every day, right But what's interesting and this is why I think Munger was was so brilliant with this is If you frame what are all the threats that I have to accomplishing what I want. What are all the things they're going to get in my way If I had to guarantee failure, what would I do It's much easier to come up with the list of all the things that will guarantee failure because we're programmed to find those threats All you have to do is just flip it as soon as you've figured out that monster list of the things that guarantee your failure And then you just do that. You know, it's a cool version of this. If you were to design a day or a lifestyle for your worst enemy who's trying to beat you What would it be? And the inversion of the inversion is Imagine that you were going up against you but with a mustache It's you versus a muststache and this version of you is doing everything that they can to beat you. They know all of your failures, they know all of your shortcomings and your fears. What would that person do Just do that. Do what that person would do that would be you, Do what you with a moustache would do to be you And that's one of George's ideas. And I think it's really cool. It's the same as basically, what would you do if you had ten times the agency Because presumably that person would have way more agency. They wouldn't doubt themselves as much. They'd be more decisive they would reduce complexity, they would be less distracted. So there's a frame in the investing world, which is if someone else were to come and buy one hundred percent of your company today, what would they immediately do in the first, thirty days? Holy shit, I can't believe that they're spending this much money on catering I can't believe they still have that guy who was good two years ago and just shows up Pork now Um And I think it's because what that frame provides you is an emotionless view of your current situation. You are best the person that you would your worst enemy would have no emotion withow Yeah with a mustache would have no emotion around making the hard call because he's not you He's someone else. Yes. And the person he's firing is not your best friend Todd It's just this inadequate person who's no longer upskilled And so when we make these when we talk through, you know, we have these podcasts around feelings and emotions and whatnot, like There is the There's the feelings that we there's the experience of life of the things that we feel while we go through it And then there's the the decisions that must occur in reality And trying to serve both masters is where people get I don't want to say in trouble, but at least they understand that they're making a trade. I keep td on because I feel guilty Okay, we at least understand that Todd is hurting your business and you would rather hurt the business then have the conversation with Todd. Sh me your priorities. Yeah. and we know the priorities It's just are the parties, the parties you what are you willing to sacrifice? Well, you either care more about Td or more about not feeling guilty than you do about your business. Yeah. Sing our priorities. And And we know them, we know the priorities And so, u behaviorist what hum in? Yeah. And I think that like your life is a consequence of your priorities. and the question is just whether or not like, Many people want to want, they don't actually want They want to be willing to give up things in order to get stuff they don't actually give up things in order to get stuff. Above your intelligence, above your work ethic, you will be compensated in proportion to your risk Pro tip If you're afraid to take the risk Write down in excruciating detail what you're actually afraid of happening. step by step What happens next when you fail You'll often find It's not so bad when you spell it out feear exists in the vague Not the specific There's a risk comes in a handful of flavors One is what we know we will give up We hope we will get something back from that's bigger There's also the We want something bigger, but we will pay a cost. So different ways of saying the same thing. L it's going to be Lose something good, get something bad. are the things that risk presents for us different view and risk that I've been thinking a lot about is proportionality of risk and t the most basic level, this is a lot of what you know, investing really is, which is there is always risk but is the risk priced appropriately? and Peter Thial had this commentary around Elon where if he had just had one If his three companies succeed, it would have already been a crazy win someomehow he got all three of them to become, I guess now, you know, multiibillion trillion dollar plus companies. And he said, he must know something about risk that all of us don't understand And I think there's something incredibly powerful about studying the person who's accumulated the most wealth in history or at least in present day U and that man's understanding of risk is different and it's probably a more accurate view of true risk rather than perceived risk He often talks about like, well, the downside of trying as hard as you can is Basically nothing you if you're in the developed world, the likeliood that you starve to death is almost nothing. and there there is free shelter if literally no one in your social construct would allow you to crash on a couch And that assumes that during the day, you are incapable of working in any way that generates money, which There are many ways to generate money that do not require tremendous skill at least today And so The downside is nothing And so that is why the risk of going after whatever it is that you want is mispriced by the vast majority of people because they have this fear of the big thing that's good that's going to go away or a big bad thing that's going to come as a result, But the big bad thing is nothing The big thing that's good that they miss out on is everything And so the Risk is almost always misprised because our brains are wired to misprice it because if you mess up once, you don't pass on your jeans and you die It is in no way wired to maximize your potential and what you're capable of This mismatch between ancient programming and the modern world is kind of hilarious. We got a nervous system that was built to fight bears and now it's worried by group tanks. U It' true It's true. and u How do you think about let me add one more piece on that risk piece? Um I was talking to an entrepreneur a week or two ago and she had grown her great grandmother's business from four million do to forty four million in three years. It was like awesome, suuper cool story. And it became obvious to her that herer brand and needing to create more content was kind of the constraint of her going from called it forty five million do to you know two hundred million beyond And she said, Okaykay, so do you think I should like hire an editor And was interesting. She's like, well, how much is that going to cost? And so the business is doing a million month of profit Now And What's interesting to me is that oftentimes we don't also recalibrate our appetite for risk as our exposure to opportunity expands.. And so as you right now are still operating from the four million dollar business owner risk angle where you were making a million dollars a year and one or two editors was tencent or twenty percent of your net income when you're making twelve million dollars in profit We should be thinking about how do we make a two, three, four million dollar bet that we think is going to result in an extra two hundred million or one hundred million on top of that, which is a phenomenal return And so I mean, I open up the offers book with One of my top two quotes from Jeff Beasos he talks about how If you have a ten percent chance hundred of one hundred X payoff, you should take that bet every time, knowing that you will be wrong nine times out of ten. The difficulty with that example. contrasted with reality is that if you were at a casino and you had a ten percent chance of one hundred X payoff. f course you should take that bet. but then just assume that the minimum bet is ten years and you only have three hands to play Yeah And that's the reality of life. That said, when we look at what that loss of that ten percent when that ten percent when the ninety percent of the time that it fails isn't actually a loss though You've accumulated a lot along the way. Yeah And' gained experence, you've gained lessons,'veainedills,'ve gained network, youveain relationships perspective And so only move forward by taking these shots on goal And I think that if every risk was only seen as zero downside, only upside, and either I win or I learn, which We are not the first people to say that. Whatever version of that narrative you need in order to realize that life is giving you an endless amount of scratch off tickets and you just have to cash them in I think that more people would take bets and more people would win It's way better to be high conviction and wrong than low conviction and wrong. You know Mike, I'm just going to go for it because at least if you're high conviction and wrong, you move sufficiently quickly to be able to update your system based on the results that you've got So why indecisiveness again in that inaction thing, inaction has a cost do not make the assumption that inaction has no price It does have a price. Yeah. and it's a this is one of those labels that we're saying at the very beginning about shorthand. It's like, in action isn't even in action. We are always taking action. Aion against your priorities versus action towards your priorities, which of them will help you accomplish what you want. And when you think that presumably nobody wants to be less decisive. There's very few. I mean there's being rash, which I don't think is the same as being decisive when I've met the threshold that is satisfactory or should be satisfactory in order for me to make this decision, I make it is not the same as I make a decision before I have sufficient information in order to be able to make it. It's an information question, not a time question. Yeah Uh, but when you think Don't practice what you don't want to become if you are practicing being indecisive pouched in the rarapper of keeping optionality open You're just practicing being indecisive. overver and over again If you think of your indecision as an investment in your future decisions, I making them harder, that actually makes indecision a really a really, really horrible pitfall to go down I remember one of the things that allowed me to take the bet to quit my job was and I people see me now be like I'm still very risk averse believe it or not And so Remember I was a, you know, finish I didn't have the like school failed me What do I do? I had the obstac cursive options I had done really well. all that kind of stuff and The thing that got me was If not now, then when? because I figured a future version of me that I was delaying this decision for would either have a wife to support or wife in kids to get Right? And I was like, so if it's this hard for me now, How How can I make the assumption that it's going to somehow be easier at some point in the future? And if I really say that I want this thing thenen how can I not do it now when the chips are most stacked in my favor and You said one other thing earlier that I, um U we have a desire for perfect information in order to make a perfect decision from a world that will give us neither And so We have to be willing So like what separates a rash decision from a well informed decision Well, taking it to the natural extreme a perfectly informed decision The decision has often been made for you because the outcomes have already occurred, which means that if you have perfect information, the opportunity has already gone away And so we have to be willing to make some assumptions. We have to make some bets, which is why having a worldview or a good model of prediction. makes you better at getting what you want because you can say, listen I know this. I believe this based on my pattern of how I think the world works. And because of this fill, I think this is a good or decent bet A lot of that calculus is the what's my upside? what's my downside if I'm wrong? And if we know that the downside of being wrong is zero, Then go for it. What's that? All loss is just psychological until death. Do this Jaco Of course, I saw that and I was like Fuck. Jocko shout out. I love that quote. Yeah. It angers me how good it is. So good I was thinking about It's been almost exactly a year since me and you sat down and a lot of the This is seventh time you've been on maybe something like Is really? Maybe Sth or seventh plus we did the one with me M and Layla. And I think There's always an interesting progression. So one of the things that I've noticed looking at the time capsule of the last year of your writing and what I've been thinking about too is risk, uncertainty and decisiveness seem to be themes that are in there a lot And I came across this Nebile Koreashi quote. is maybe a little self serving, but I think it's really true about why drilling twentyw, thirty hours, forty hours, however long mean you have spoken. Why it's Wh I think it's important and why I don't get bored of it He says, Aursed fact of the world is that the most important life lessons you learn are the hardest to communicate to others becausecause they always sound like cliches And there's a bit of me in the back of my mind that he is It's not that deep, bro. you're over compomplicating it. You don't need to look at life with this level of resolution. This seems to be unnecessarily dissecting. This is majoring in the minors. This is taking too seriously things which don't matter in that sort of a way, paying too much attention, it's a kind of fragility of optimization etcera, etc The fact that Lots of things that are important sound like stuff that you've heard before Do doesnn't discount the fact that you need to hear it Because if you know it that well Why the fuck you still in the same place? If you're bored of hearing about how important cold Dark quQiet is in order to prepare your bedroom for sleep Why do you sleep still suck Why did your sleep still soak If you're bored of hearing how It's important to integrate emotions But there are times when you need to put them to one side that their information not a master Why is it you still don't have a good relationship with your emotions? If you know this stuff, if it's so obvious, if this is the sort of thing that you should have been taught by your father, or you should have learned in school, or you shouldn't have had to wait until you're in your forties to understand, Why is it you haven't mastered and The most important life lessons that you learn are the hardest to communicate to others because they always sound like cliches We need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. And so that means that the gap between what we have and what we want is typically not a lack of information, but a lack of execution And so if it's a lack of execution, then it ladders up to, what are the motivating operations that are either preventing me from doing it or that are insufficient to compel me And so This is why I think Chris and I go into this very, very minute detail about Okay, you would just sleep on your friend's couch and how bad is that? and trying to actually spell out that the downs like how do you put the picture like we were saying earlier with the waiting room or the hospital bed It's It's trying to take three steps forward into the reality of what living through your downside would look like so that you can realize that the downside is ten times worse in your mind than it is in reality. And if it's ten times worse in your mind than it is in reality, then it means that you can take actions in reality because The downser doesn't really exist. And the excruciating detail is needed in order to be able to bring this imagination into reality Oh I can feel that. I imagine what it would be like to be in my friend's couch. I know it would be brown. it would be on the left hand side of the room. I would have a little thing on the floor. That would be a mobile desk that I might work at And sometimes it takes actually reaching out to a friend before you take a big jump and say, hey All this, I'm about to do something wild. If this went to shit, would I be able to crash at your place for like an extended period? I would be willing to do X, Y, Z. I don't think it's going to happen, but would you be willing to do it? Because you saying that you're willing to take me in is going to allow me to do that I would say that if you actually have real friends, Ten out of ten of them would be like, yeah, dude go for it. Like I got you and I think having like I had there was a handful of people that I probably called every single night during the six months leading into me quitting my job where I basically rehashed the exact same decision a hundred times with them and rederived it. I think people would be surprised to hear that I think people would be surprised to hear that Mr. Decisive seemingly would need to have that conversation. I also think it's cool to hear that story because It legitimates somebody's bravery in the face of uncertainty and repetition I think a lot of the time we feel like we're a burden to our friends for asking them for advice about the same problem that we've come to with before. I've done it with you. And like, hey man, I yeah, no, no, it's not new. Yeah, No, it's the yeah,'s it's it's the same thing again. I'm sorry. Yeah, I need to say No, no new perspective. No, I need to say the I need yeah, it's going to be it's the conversation from last week But but Now again, is that Cool. So the license Giving people the license to be Boring in their learning and in their need for support. people's like, I'm sick of moping about this situation I' I have a friend that's prepared to sit in it with me That feels really good to give more color to that period because One the things that Laylo and I were talking about was But she has a desire to make successful people more relatable so that people who don't have successful people around them can feel like it is attainable Um, So I'm going to add a handful of colors to that little chapter and hopefully people will be okay with it Um So in that, in that time period Um many people know this, but I got fired And so like, who would fire H Moseie, the hard wororking maniac? Well, I just wasn't that good of an employee. Um, And so I basically just read books all day instead of working And I read most of the self h books that you've heard of. one hundred million dollar offers, one hundred million dollarsar leads. those are books. I'm kiding I wast reading this No, but I was reading, you know, and to be fair, I don't think any one of them I say like I can I can say A handful of them phrases in entire books stuck with me U One phrase I heard in about can't remember which one it was entrepreneur and The phrase disgusted me so much because it was like, oh yeah, all those people who just want to be entrepreneurs. And it just said it flippantly, wasn't even decrying the term. It just said like, Ohh yeah, this is how we define these people who are like not there, but like business interested And the nonchalance is even more insult. Exactly. And that's why I was like, I'm that I am this disgusting thing. I don't want to be this But that still wasn't enough to motivate. It was a negative operating, you know, it was negative, but it still wasn't enough Um I listen to Arnold's Ladder of success speech that he gave. this is obviously fifteen, sixteen years ago. Um It was this speech, I found it on YouTube and I listened to it like every morning before I go to work Um cannot climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets, you know and I listen to that every morning. I Um I read Relentless by Tim Grover and it was basically the first book that I think gave me permission to use called The Darkide to get things done. And I'd be like, I would say now I don't necessarily operate one hundred percent from the same perspective, but It was what I needed at the time. And I called a friend of mine, his name was Victor. He was considering quitting his job too. And so every night we basically just like planned and schemed of how we're going to our exit plan of how we were going to we just mentally masturbated the idea of like what freedom would be like if we actually left And I would have this I, you know, I had to have an early Bluetooth thing, which is a piece of ship now. And I remember I had this cow hide carpet in my apartment that I got from IKEA, that the path that I would walk on while he and I would talk started getting treadded. So there's this l in the middle of I' done that in my house whereere I would pace And and the And so the things that that and I would have the lunch with my dad, the like, hey,m gonna I'm going to quit my job and do my own thing I didn't have that lunch one time. I had that lunch many times And each time he would reasonably talk me off the cliff and say, listen This is the boring chapter. You're just going to do your few years and then you're going to go to business school and like, this is the plan Um And so it was very clear that I was following a path that was troud upon. And to be fair, my dad absolutely did what he believed was best and I think his intentions are perfect Um, And so All of these things were happening with me for me during that period of time. And I just remember having read as many sel up books as I could, you know, get my hands on and then I looked around my room in an apartment and realiz that my life hadn't changed at all And That was when I Googled online and decided I was going start a business. I narrowed it down to three. and then one guy got back to me who had a gym And even then when I had my first conversation with him I was like, I really want to start aym. He's like, so you don't have a gym. I was like, no. He he's like, okay, well basically, u You're going need to like do something before I can help you And it says you need to make a serious commitment, makeake a decision So I thought about this for a while and then U A few weeks later, I texted him and I said, like, I'm ready. And So so I called him back up again and he's like, well Okay, great. So you have a lease.'s the you know, what's the you know it's just like Oh, oh, no, no, no, I don't have that. And he was and he was disgusted and he was like, lose my number dud. He was disgusted by how little I had done in that meantime All of these things happened. It wasn't one of them. And so as much as I could say, like, I just read this one book in my life changed Sometimes you have to hear it a hundred times before It either sinks in or there's enough negative or enough positive or both that it gets you over whatever perceived threshold of action that you have And so it was only when all of those things happened And I came to the realization And I also applied to business school because I was like, what do I do in the meantime? So was doing four hours of GMAT problems every day because I was still violent then, so that I could ace the GMAT. And then I got above Harvard's mid score and then I I was doing all the applications because it's something else that you can do that you can procrastinate with. And so I did all the applications into business school. and one of the questions that came up was How will a Harvard NBA or B booth NBA Camerinburgh help your short and long term goals And Ibers belaboring over this this question for three days and I answered all the other questions, and I was singing about it and I was like I don't think it is going to help my long term goals becausecause I looked at the math of like, okay, this can cost me one hundred twenty thousand dollars. This is at the time U And I won't be able to make money for two years. So I'm going to stop making money. and it's going to cost me one hundred twenty, and then the starting salary was one hundred twenty average starting salary post business school. So I thought to myself could I take two years one hundred twenty thousand dollars and within that period of time believed that I could get to the point where I could make ten thousand dollars a month, but I would own a business rather than having a job to then maybe someday own a business And I believe that that bet felt reasonable And so even then you're like, okay, so that's when he quitt' dead. No. And it was all of those things. And then finally the realization that I it was never going to get easier. And so then the fear that I was never going to start the business that I said I wanted to someday start The fact that I actually had an exploding offer from life which is that it was only going to get harder. I realized how hard it had been for me at that point to still not have made a decision. And it was the fear that I was never going to make, that which compelled me to make it And that's what got me to call my shit, drive my car halfway across the country and then then and only then C call everyone and tell them the diet left so couldn't talk me out it And so If anyone is like Man, the so decisive Hermosi or whatever, like It took A Herculean effort and to suspend a shitload of doubt and risk aversion And also in terms of when I talk about the stuff with caring about what other people thought. I cared so much about other people thought that I knew that I cared so much about what other people thought that I wasn't even willing to hear them because I knew if I did hear them, they would talk me out of it That's how fragile your conviction was. Yes, that one sentence from the wrong person. moving you back in that past direction would have pulled you. I needed to physically create so much space that even if they had talked me out of it, it would still take me a day and a half to drive back And so the reason I think you read one of the quotes earlier, like if you want to change your life, change your environment is so powerful is that Your environment as it currently stands right now, the combination of where you live, where your friends are, the routines that you have, the places you go have created loops of behavior for you. And so the best way to change what you're doing is change the entire environment. Like there's the Vietnam warar vets, they did this research study, you probably heard of it, but all these guys did heroin when they were in Vietnam. It was like twenty five percent. It was a gigantic percentage And then weirdly when they came, I think Car talks about this in his book. when they came back, only ten percent of the heroin users relapsed into heroin only. I mean, but still it's small compared to Tero and that yes, the success rate of or the failure rate of rehab institutions is like seventy eight percent So it had a eight X, you know, a difference in in in relapse rate But there wasn't even rehab that happened. The only thing that happened was that every single environmental queue was changed. And so if you are having trouble getting out of your current condition, then get out of your current condition Move Go to a different city. Even if you can't move to a different city, move across town, move thirty minutes away train a different gym, go a different coffee shop to work. Yeah, make different friends for the short period. and realistically, you probably won't make different friends but just stop hanging out with the friends you got for a period. And if you decide that once you've gone through that session, that series, that chapter, you still want to be friends. If they are really your friends, they will welcome me back with open arms. If they only were friends with that version of you, then that's not the version of you that you want to be And that's not what you want to go back to anyways. And so That was one of the trades that you made to become who you wanted to be It's crazy that we think we can change our thinking environment whilst keeping our external environment the exact same and we're going to just continue to use I don't know what. type of effort we think it is that we're applying to our own brain whilst experiencing the same cues and stimulus but hoping that our thinking is going to adapt You have to change to change And it sounds so like that sound like a tritourism or whatever? Like cliche, Yeah If nothing has changed, nothing will change And so you have to be like something has to be the catalyst. And you were the only like either you get in a car accident, your girlfriend breaks up with you, you can use the negative at least like if you were not happy with your life And then something bad happens to you Be grateful for it in the moment because it means that a change, a chaos variable has entered the building And that means that you have the ability for a short period of time before equilibrium gets re established that you can change shit without the same consequences because all of your loops got muddled. And so like those are the periods of time where you can go through tremendous change because you're like, well, fuck it. Everything that I thought to be true is't So what else? that I think was false but isn't And then you can start moving towards that. came across this line from Beauty of SS, It is an unwritten rule of life that after every prolonged period of hardship and uncertainty, there is going to be a period where you achieve quantum leaps across multiple areas of your life The only requirement is that you do not give up on yourself Failure and success are on the same road. It's just that failure is an earlier exit What's that one about whatever you do, don't be the guy who gives up at the exact moment when you should be fighting with everything you have You'll make it through either way. But there's only one way you'll look back and be proud of yourself This is the metap frrame of the story that we wanted to tell We tell stories of what type of person we are all day long when we're confronted with different decisions. What type of person am I and I would like to be known to myself as a fighter is that I'm willing to fight for what I want and for what I believe in And I think that That is why I think I would want to have courage to be the one thing that is transferred And I think it's because I'm going to go back that season, I think it's for all of it Like I I was a really good student at Vanderbilt I was vice president of the powerlifting team. I was president of the fraternity that I was in. I had a three eight, I think, GPA and I graduated in three years But I was so afraid of not getting a job that I took the first job that I was offered. from the first person, which was an introduction my dad had from a patient of his belare to we were like, oh, it was it was an epotism. It wasn't a great job But I was so afraid that I would be jobless that I just took that job And I only say this to say that like Like you can change your stars Like I was not the type of person does the types of things that I do now and I retell those stories I don't talk about talk about them as much because U Honestly, I blocked most of them out because I was in so much pain during that period of my life and The reason I'm willing to keep making content and write books and all that stuff is because I know that there is another person who's going through a similar chapter and worried if they are sane or if it is only them and it is not And so Like You can't compare yourself to people who are different chapters You just have to believe that you can change incrementally one behavior at a time over an extended period of time and that those changes will aggregate. that they will stack up Um Because like we don't know what the last chapter is going to look like. We only know what the next page does and we get to write that today And I was I was so driven by fear I was so I was sofraid of everything Um during that chapter. And so he was like Other people's opinions. what if I fail? What if this doesn't work out? What if people make fun of me? Like I had all this the fear around it and like the emotionality that I have now towards it is because of the and uh a mix of pity and pride. that I have for that young man, the young Alex that was going through that because I'm proud that I made made it through that I also pity the amount of pain that I was going through Um to make that jump And so I don't know who's lening but like can be useful If you know that you were driven by fear to some deree and in some ways it's almost shame to say it because it was the reason that The word that I never want to have used described for me is cowardly is because I behavave like a coward I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of failing. I was afraid of My dad's judgment I was afraid of every s and I flip that made it for me was just using that fear against something bigger was that I was more afraid of not of looking back on my life and never having tried And I knew that that would be so empty And I would be so filled with regret and that I knew that I would beat myself up over it every single day as I got older that existence was was more terrifying to me than the practical consequences. of me taking a step where I would fail. And it sounds it's very easy for me to say now to you or anyone who's listening, like Of course the downside is not big, you'll sleep on a friend's couch, whatever A at the time for me It was everything. And it was all of the status that I had spent all of my time trying to accumulate. I was president of this, Pident of that, I'd done all the good grades. I had a good job on paper. Um And so Whatever fuel you have, whether it's anger, whether it's shame, whether it's fear, even if you have all of them If you know you have them Try and to get you to run away from it. If it's right now it's in front of you and it's preventing you from taking the next step. And so it's like if you can just put it behind you so that you're running away from this future,'s like run harder away from the future current path is taking you towards that you're afraid of then the short term path that running away from it is going to run you into. It's like you either have to be, you know it's like in I'm taking some liberty to share Um, It's like you can eith fear the whip of the person behind you or the enemy in front of you and The direction you face is the one that you fear the least And so If you know that there's an enemy in front of you and a whip behind you, it's like you just need to in the short term, increase pain of the one that you want Have you seen succession Od. the first season. Okay. so I don't watch it because it's too real for me So it keeps me up. And I get too like amped when I watch it because I like it, but I'm like, I can't do this before bed. So I need like vampires and like in the final season, Tom is having a conversation with his wife. And he says I wonder if the pain that I would feel without you be less than the pain that I feel by being with you seems to be what you're talking about here. It's one hundred percent that And When you talk in retrospect about that period about what that guy went through. Do doesnesn't sound like pity to me. It sounds like grief. sounds much close to Graf. Like somebody nearly died or did die or suffered a lot and didn't deserve it. Oh, I think that person totally died like the I don't want to say the man I was the boy that I was totally died. And I think I mean, the hardest, the hardest loss that I had to take was the boy that I was in my father's eyes that was living up to his expectations, which is all that I wanted And so sacrificing that And it took years and my dad and I are cool. We're great, but like for for a season That's what I had to sacrifice that person And it was all I had wanted was to make him happy. And so And again No fault was out. That is all I want. And so it's like I had a tree I had achieved the dreams that I had as a younger man, and in so doing it had become my nightmare and That's why the third point that you read about known as coming to save you Everything is your fault And you have to sacrifice who you are for who you want to become Um I think it's so real for me is that you do And like like someone's dreams will die It is yours or theirs So you just want to make sure that the person who is dreaming for you has bigger dreams for a life than you do. and sometimes well intentioned people because they want to be practical and they want to be realistic, have smaller dreams for you than you do And if they have smaller dreams Th then you should listen to you and not them Obviously your dad buil it. a story about what success looks like. Yeah and you rejected it slowly but loudly now that you're about to have a child What story are you going to tell that kid of that period or no, this story about what success looks like. How how certain are you that the story that you tell your son isn't just a new version of the same cage that you had to break out of. It's something that I think a lot about Um How do I you know, the the child is going to be born into By the time he has memory, he will be the son of a billionire That's That's a lot Um, And in some ways, I like don't wish that on anyone, but and yet I'm bringing someone into that Um has its own thought circles I will get into. Um but I am going to focus him to the degree that I can influenceces behavior Um on on being courageous on leaving nothing on the field I will care endlessly about his effort and very little the outcomes. Asuming He controlled the controllables and I will hold an incredibly high standard and it is because I respect and believe in him and that he has the potential to achieve it and What's been very difficult for me because I haven't haven't fully defined this and maybe I will by the time he's born or by the time he's a little older is I've had trouble trying to define what a successful parent looks like and what does a successful child look like becausecause if we decide if we define a successful parent by the output of the child There's a whole hell of lot of people that have had pretty tough parents that have turned out really good But then does that mean that the parents were good or b I don't know Um And the successful child is the successful child that he is happy I tend to reject that that definition overall Is it that he has purpose? I'd probably prefer that Um, because I think Happiness can be fleeting, purpose tends to stick a little longer. Um But at the very end of the day, I think character, which I still just f us just huge sets of behaviors Um, I want him to be brave. and I want him to try his ass off. And if he does that No matter what, he will be good enough for me. but Yeah. I will just more so make the commitment that given all the resources that I have both mental and and financial Um I will do the best I can with what I have to give him the maximum possibility of achieving what he wants Have you've been thinking about life differently for yourself prospect of a kid on the way. Not really That might surprise some people, but like first off, I'm not pregnant. And so I don't believe in the we are pregnant. I do not have a baby inside of my stomach. And so no I haven't my behavior hasn't really changed because my condition has't really changed Um I suspect that when, you know, the job comes, I will I will change accordingly. And I think that it's This is one of those, I would say like internet strawms of like We'll just wait wait tntil the kid comes, I'll be like, yeah, and then I'll change. Like there'll be a new condition. so I'll change to that. It's like, well what if you change your mind thenen I'll change what I'm doing. You know, It's just like this has worked for me so far. and I'll probably take the things that continue to work, and I'll probably adjust others. I don't think that having children in any way is going to get in the way of the goals that I have. And my proof points are that the wealthiest, most successful business people in the world all have children. and so like, see that as pretty strong proof that it's not something that that prevents you from achieving, know business success. And to be clear, business success for me is more something like I want to leave everything I have on the field. and if that results in growth, then great. If I have many seasons of hardship ahead of me, which I'm sure I do, and moments of plateaus, and stagnation and things like that until I figure out whatever the next thing have to do is or the next person I need to become, or you know, sets of behavior that I have to do then that's the game.'s That's what I sign up for that. I chose this U but I also know exactly what I chose this, what I traded this for the young boy uh, in that life And I would happily make that trade a hundred times over. And so I in no way say that my life is perfect or anything far from it. It is the life I chose And I amm okay with that You talked about changing your environment, often changing your desired outcomes going to be about as big of an environment change as you've had in a decade. Yeah, more I'm sure it will change me and I what would be the most surprising outcome I think the most surprising outcome is that I don't change at all A actually think the second most surprising outcome. Um I'll say the outcome that might surprise other people the most is that I think there's a very real chance of a reality where like I work significantly less than I do now Um, because I prefer hanging out with the kid than I do working. And if I do, then that's what I will do. Is that pathway of satisfaction that hasn't necessarily been front and center of your life for quite a while Basically being willing to enjoy a moment for the sake of the moment and nothing else. It's a less instrumental view. Yeah. a lot of your life and mine as well is very instrumental. Yeah. I will do it because I will do it because not I will do it. Yeah Also because I enjoy it.. But there's only one more stuff. Yeah Um Yes, and I think it's just because it's in accordance with values that I have. like I want to be a good father. And so I deem that a label that I would like to live up to. And so I'm willing to make some trades. And I think that's I will be making trades in the future And I'll try to make the trace the best I can. interestnting that after decade and a a couple of decades of contorting yourself into this very specific type of engine. or it's a sort a sort of monster that sucks in challenges and spits out completed tasks to most people Holidays sound like leisure, but to a certain category of people, holidays feel like work because they need to let go of the routine and pathway that they've sort of constructed themselves into Uh, there might be a lot of work required in order to be able to co sleep with your kid at three in the afternoon with it laying on your chest. reading fiction or not you just lying staring at the ceiling, thinking this is cool Hh that should be naturally biologically, hormonally energy expenditure relatively seamless to do and yet there's potentially going to be ton of areas for growth in you I'm sure I'm sure that it will be a new challenge and I will dedicate my effort to succeeding at it. the same way I do other challenges Um And I'm sure I will be uncomfortable as I have been with other challenges and I will try and meet that discomfort with action and let myself get used to a new reality And I will do my best to enjoy it every second of it because I mean, I do look a lot at older guys who have kids. and one of the really fun ones to look at is people who have second families. So they kind of like do, first run, first wife, kids, whatever, and then take did the first business? How does he run the second one? Yeah, kind of. And so what's interesting is I've tried to observe what those guys do differently and almost to a man They'll say I should have spent more time with the kid and like and it's it's one thing to say that you You should have somethingomething very different to see them do it the second time around Now there's the obvious of like, well, easy for them to say because they built the emmpire the first time. And so like they get a do over. That was collateral damage and getting to the point where they're sufficiently satisfied. I Thankfully Kockkingwood, whatever want to do. built what I needed to build to feel like I had a sufficient platform to provide for a child in all manners, both like my time, flexibility. I work because I choose to, but like I have the flexibility and we canot work, whatever and the kid can have whatever. The side effect of you working whether you chose to or not is a degree of material comfort and ticking off of the accomplishments that closes the loops around them I think that, um if I can live this season trying to steal as many chapters from people's second G I'll see that as a good idea and basasically use that off of modeling. like I'm just looking at what good things seems to happen for them. I'm going to try that and I'll adjust as we go. But I'll probably use that as my base case baseline and then Andll I'll figure it we'll figure it out together. You know but I have a little have a little a, something. I was impending loading loading competence. Yeah It's very important that the baby's got good much. So it's all about the mergion. Yeah. That's right this this spot on him is we have a retail price for the ad space. so I'll let you know in the Okay, that's cool. I imagine I assumed it would just be acquisition. com but front end of the funnel ont side of the baby Yeah, He' be like a NSCAR driver with all the spots E everyw ye. If you're going to chase a dream, Go all in If you're going to love, love fiercely. If you're going to walk away, never look back So many people never even give themselves a fighting chance because they never fully commit If you're going to go go all the way No half measures I was about to say no half measures. I was like, no who wrote that? You think so many solutions are aren't fully committed. and as a result, they don't actually work. and then we think, oh, this path was wrong. This business was a bad idea. I shouldn't have started making content Um when they never had a fighting chance because we didn't even do close to the amount of volume that would be sufficient to work and not for nearly the duration would be required And so it's like people to do enough for long enough to get anything to work And I think the biggest issue there is because we expect our dreams to be accomplished faster and easier risk free when it will be hard take a long time, and we will sacrifice more things than we expected And I think one of the hardest parts about U acccomplishing big things is that the cost is unknown So even though it is more than you You know you're giving up some stuff, but you don't even know everything that you're going to give up is like running a race and not knowing how long it is a hundred. You don't know where the finish line is. Yeah And's what's fascinating about that is that like If you know where the finish line is, you can usually handle just about anything It's Google works. Yeah. That's the main reason Yeahah you can order a cab from anywhere and you don't need to work out the local taxi number and stuff. The main reason why it works is you know how far away the car is I know how long this wait is. Remember in the before times? justust ring a cab? It would just arrive Yeah at some point. Yeah I think Rory Sutheran had the thing about the, I think the channel uh this is your people's thing, but You could see that people complain about how long it took They could either build another channel which would cost billions of dollars or they could what they did, which was just tell you how long you had to wait and it like solved all the concerns. It was Keathrow airport., Terminal five, if anyone's ever taken a connecting flight inside of Terminal five It's mad how many times I've done that and it's always the same fucking escalator. I don't know whether it's because I' fly the same route or if that's just the one funnel to go up through internal security for the second time to briefly enter England before you then fly back out without actually being able to leave And people were complaining about the fact that it was taking too long to get through security and classic engineer problem. they decided we're going to get new detectors, and we're going to speed up the conveyor belll, and we're going to have an S shaped queing system which will spread people out into more fingers so that the security checking people can get them through and moreitious, just millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in reopperating costs And Rory and his team are like, let's there might be there might be a cheaper solution. and they fixed it by just putting time posters fifteen minutes from here, twenty minutes from here, twenty five minutes from here. And the wait time was always five minutes longer than the amount of time it took to f for his movie. Yeah, dude they said it was going to be twenty five. We got in seventeen. Yeah. we got a bit of a bonus. Get some good time. Yeah. Dude. That's why his book's called Alchemy, right? Behavioral science applied well is kind of like magic But yeah, if it did the no half measures thing, dude that So much of the pain people feel when it comes to decisions in the indecision, even in making the decision. It's the uncertainty when they do it And this is what common optionality focused advice is If the decision' reversible, then it doesn't really matter so much. You should treat reversible decisions still as if they're irreversible This is Brian David Epstein's new work. which is People are much happier irreversible decisions than with reversible ones. For instance, if every jean store that you went into did not allow returns or exchanges You would be happier with your jans, even if you wanted to exchange them return Yous like at the kid store cant return the kid Most people are very happy with their kids This is just like you can't Yeah, I mean, you can't you can't really go back. And so it makes it's way less cognitive effort to justify and rationalize that it was a good idea. So Um an investor and a huge advocate of embryo selection through IVF and Herasite, which is the company in the world that's best for this have just an endless list of philosophical justifications, medical justifications, biological justifications, humanitary, humanitarian justifications. And I think that if you agree that trying to avoid disease is good, it scales all the way up to trying to increase robustness, which is pretty much any trait that you care to care about The thing I'm still yet to hear a compelling case in argument against byy's remorse Because if you have chosen particular embryo out of a list of ten because this one had the particular diagnostic criteria and dashboard that you like to look up. The thing that's weird is This is already happening by doctors because they look through the scope of the microscope and they go, That one looks healthy round. Yeah. That one it's A BC, right? You don't want the Cs Bs probably not. You've got three A's, two As in there. Let's try and implant this, one doesn't take one, whatever So this was already being done and eyeballed by the doctor, but even that wasn't your decision. So you could maybe be angry at the doctor, but it's like, Hey, look, we just took the advice of a professional here. we decided to do the thing. That is the one element that I wonder whether when this becomes more widespread, whether we're going to see just a a little tweak. I don't think so. Okay Just because I don't think the the like is I think it would be more akin to , you go to the jean store and they show you uh maybe like a thread on a thing and maybe a die and then But the jans that you got you still can't return And so it's so far from the final product. If they had if you had six kids and you could only pick one and they were fully you and you could talk to them And then you're like, but you can't go back. I think people might have rei because you would have seen what the other Yeah with the full with the full yeah. Don't stop trying because it didn't work never works the first time It takes everyone a different amount of time to realize everyone is just thinking about themselves. No one's watching And you should have just done whatever the fuck you wanted to all along Yeah, look at old people Old people haven't figured out I mean, My I did so my my debt my my my father's father died before I was you know able to function. But my dad has called a father figure who functioned as a grandfather on that side and One of the things that I always admired about him was that he literally didn't have time for this He's like, I've got like ten years. I literally don't have time for this. And so his give a fuck level was so low U that he just he walked through life Unscathed Bye the worries that weigh down most people. Like, o, I wonder if I said that too rudely to that person was just he was already mom ono the next thing. He's like, I literally don't have time. That's the youth is wasted on the young thing. Yeah But it it's one of those like I stiny brought that up. I don't know if youth is wasted on the young. I think You just have call it peak cognition and health state and you don't know anything besides like nothing hurts and everything works. And then you just have a a slow degradation of everything works and nothing hurts until and then at the very end, you just nothing works and everything ye and everything hurts Yeah, and I think that's just it There's definitely a a unique value in The future is long and broad. has a quality all of its own that is only available to people that are young Right? That is not nothing. and it does not just exist inside of your head You were able to make a materially different type of plan When there is a long amount of time in front of you than when there is a short amount of time in front of you. As assuming you don'tie or something else happ. Of course O the probability distribution of you being able to fulfill these plans is different this is Bill Perkins thing about It's not memory dividend, but you can only do certain things at certain reads of life. A really great concept. Yeah, that going downhill Semame eighty is unlikely with your knees. I think he Tld me fifties and he said, um offered the opportunity to go wake boarding Wake surfs a lot We got the opportunity to go wakeboarding U Ye ago, a couple of years ago and he didn't want to go. he was tired or something. And then he realized This is probably one of the last times that I'm ever gonna be able to go Whikeboarding. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to do this again And um That very well might be it There are certain things that you can only do at certain times. and I think what trying to do and it's interesting about that cliche. line Unteachable lessons. I think we We choose to learn the hard lessons the hard way. And what we're all trying to do is as many cliches into our experience in order to be able to skip over the most well known pitfalls of the ages ourselves. L we're try We know that it's coming, we know it's going to happen. For some reason we refuse to learn by the doing of others, we have to choose we decide to do ourselves. We're trying to pick up We're trying to imbibe the most commommonly held wisdom that is least absorbed everybody. Money won't make you happy, Fay won't fix your sel worth. You don't love that hot girl. she's just pretty and difficult to get You should see your parents more. Nothing is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it. All your worries were a waste of time, We're just trying to mountain of evidence and exposure is greatest and our ability to it's like a It's a some sort of macronutrient which is unbelievably pervasive and unbelievably hard to absorb You caningest tons and tons of it, but for some reason, and what we're trying to do is find the enzyme or the particular way to cook this thing so that we are able to finally absorb it takes everyone a different amount of time to realize everyone is just thinking about themselves, no one was watching and you should have just done whatever the fuck you wanted to all along That is every old person ever telling you that. And it's just a case of, okay How quickly can I believe that the people, all of the old people All right? because it's one of two things, that'sue Either All old people have arrived at a similar sort of insight, which is that one M They've all been inducted into some sort of psyop. to lie to younger people the same coordinated False flag in order to get them to do something I think So each of the isms that you just said to me is clear behavior loop where there is a super strong short term reinforcer and a very long Long term one. And so almost all of those are things that you would opt for in the short term And so until you have a strong thing that tells you that that is wrong The other magnet is just too strong to resist for the vast majority of people. And I would also imagine that the older folks have a much closer proximity to death which I mean, when you see one or two people die, it can affect you When you see like a lot of people die And the good ones and the bad ones in the in betweens, all of a sudden you're like, wa because I think like when you go through death or someone close to you dying I think one of the most jarring pieces of death is how quickly everyone else moves on and how everyone just keeps operating as though that person never existed And of course, there's the like, I always remember, you know, XYZ person. and of course, that's fine But like The world moves on And I think when you see that happen of times, unless you are completely delusional, you assume that they will that it will move on from you. And then I think what it does is it creates this huge this gigantic pill of humility. That I think older people have not all older people. Of course, there's there's oddballs, but like, I think by and large O people are significantly less competitive. There's less ego, I would say, as a class They're more like That's a young man'same Like I don't I don't want to basically they just choose not to play at a lot of the status games and things like that because they've just seen people with the best status and the worst status, they all die the same and everyone moves on just the same. And so I think they shift more to more being present because also They could die soon too I think that's one of the reasons why seeing somebody who is old playing a game that they should have transcended gives us a sort of a sense of like we wce a bit's like cringe almost. The businessman who is in his sixties still attending every high powered conference who already has done the exit as many times as is needed trying to win the validation of the same group of people who have cycled through a bunch. never he never is like being stuck on the level of a video game whose boss you defeated and just going back and running it back again because maybe this time it would be different. Yeah I think Arther Brooks talksed about this with like uh like from strength to strength in that book or like the second like Everyone has to make this leap from first level of fluid intelligence, high energy high work ethic to at some point you make the second jump and some people don't and then it just becomes this Cudgons, these very miserable older people. and it's like, you have to make this leap where you switch the way you work. But you're not an old person is not going to beat a young person at being young. Right. And that's and that's where people and that's where I think some of that cringeness and it happens on both sexes men, you know, men and women you know, the six year old woman is trying to pretend like she's twenty. It's like it's ye. Yeahah, there's something in there too If you're nervous more It's hard to be nervous when you practice the same thing Thousand times in a row one in dout stack ropes. Anything you start you will suck at You will be embarrassing, but you will survive. Then you will realize that looking like a fool lasts a moment being one that never started lasts a lifetime. I think people wildly erestimate the value of accumulating significant enough volume that it's no longer something that you have a reaction to. So you desensitize yourself to it And so like, for example, expos your therapy. And so if you give a speech and you're nervous about the speech, if you do it enough times that you are bored of doing it that you are sick of the presentation. You're probably ready And so I how many times did you do the Bck launch over a hundred easily. easily over one hundred Um, was a lot By the time that it happened, I was like, I know what the next slide. I had words on the slides, but I knew what the slide was going to say because my words started started them before the words appeared on the slide Um And that is that has just become my limus test because I Like I said earlier, like I deffinitely cared a lot about what people thought And so you can do the very hard work of not caring what people think or you can do so much work that there's nothing left to control. Like if you've controlled the controllables, then I think at least for me personally, my My anxiety levels around performance and things like that go down to essentially zero because it's like, I have done this before. And before I did both launchess because I've had them I've done two big ones now The first one that I did I did at a venue and the woman who kind of ran the whole thing, she's like she had people going on stages all the time And she said something right before I got on stage. She said, you were the most calm out of any person that I have seen. And I just remember looking at her in the moment and I was like, I have done this before And I said it a little bit violently, but I was just like, this is not my first time doing this. I will do exactly what I did the last twenty fucking times I did this. and That is all I will come, I will do my job and I just That's why I'm a big fan of the patriots under Belchck like like do your job You cannot control everything Do the things you can control it takes so much of the anxiety and the second loops of thinking and third order consequences that you're worried about out of your mind because That is it. And so if you If there's a lot of sticks so much volume that it would be unreasonable that you fail And then at that point, if you do fail, you will not blame yourself because you're like, I did my part And that's okay And next time I'll try to control the things that are outside And the judgment of other people becomes less scary because your likelihood of failure becomes lower overall and less culpable to you Yeah in uh People think after they fail, they think to themselves like, I should have done this differently. I should have done that differently. It's like, well, think about what you're going to say when you fail. And then do that before you fail, and you probably won't fail That's why I think people feel so aggrieved when something happens that was out of their control. when they've done everything because it's is going to suck If there is a lightning strike in Vegas, you go for fuck' sake, dude. I worked so hard. I worked so hard, everything was done. Yes, it's not your fault, but there's a It's not that frustration won't come and that you won't be agitated at it. It's a different flavor and it's certainly better than blaming yourself It's L I think about pediatric surgery, something like that, you know, you got the kid that had been in the traffic accident to the hospital on time, but that surgeon that particular day just wasn't paying the right amount of attention or whatever happened. and then there's you know there's some b outcome We did everything We did everything. and we did everything is reassuring There is a type of lack of control comes along with that that must be also very difficult to deal with the same for businessiness launches and everything else So two fun things there. So one People don't know this, but the day before the launch, the last one Um I had someone filed a TRO, which is a temporary restraining order try and prevent from watching the book Let's just say an adversary and the hearing for the whether I could do the book launch was at four o'clock on Friday. for a launch that I'd sp speent ten million dollars on. and Almost years of my life plus the other books leading up to this, right And so At four o'clock there was going to be a decision, obviously, it was dismissed. But like There was a world where I was not going to be able parallel universe where I wasn't going to be able to launch the time did launch the buook nine AM Saturday Did you have to attend the hearing? No, my counsel do it But what was interesting is that when like when they told me that we that it was dismissed and that we had one or whatever, I My honest reaction was like, Darn, it would have been a sicker story. Like I swear to God because I already was like, this book is so good, people want to make it illegal Like it would have been like the market would have writtden itself Um Anyways, I say that say like one is like, I'm a big believer from a marketer's perspective, you should never waste a crisis. And that means there's always a story to tell and you're the best person to tell it too. The second one is that U, especially with a kid coming H I call them like getting kicked in the nuts type problems which is if if tooddler wakes up and then decides to You know, if let's say I had something that was super valuable and very fragile. findinds it and then destroys it and it's, you know, year and a half you know, a year and a half old or two years old in that moment. There is nothing that I can can't there's no screaming, there's no punishing. It doesn't comprehend what's going on. All I would do is condition it to hate me if I were to punish it in that moment. And so I just have to suffer. Like there's nothing to do there. You just suffer. And and you can try and avoid it and put it elevated cir, off course, control the control, but let's assume that you did that and it still happened Um and But I think there's a certain amount of peace knowing that like You did what you could. And Sit happens. Like there's just nothing you can do There' is just nothing you can do And I think in some ways that's veryfraing. Like shit happens to everyw It's interesting how I think about this when I watch people perform Eespecially people that become very familiar with their craft So peopleople Leak out who they are in the breaths in between the things that they're doing. Somebody's character is not revealed with how they pick you up on the first date, but it's how they treat the waiter. whether or not they hold the door open for somebody else who goes in. And I think about this when I see performers on stage, watching a band this young and seeing the drummer who is playing and his stick breaks while he's playing the particular beat, he just seamlessly switches, this hand, reaches behind him, picks up another one twels it twice and then gets back to it. And I was like that is something that you have done tenen thousand, twenty thousand, thirty thousand times It's got nothing to do with the actual role of playing the drums, not the skill or the talent of playing the drums, but it's the breath in between what he does and I think about the same here with It's easy for anybody to look composed when things are going well or even when things are going neutral. It's very exposing when things go poorly about their character. It's the breath in between the big things. It's you going, well, what I'm here to do is give the presentation for the book Okay, well, how do you deal with a TRO the night before That's the Reach behind, can I keep going I see it as u I actually so to and this is not to pop the bubble of romanticism around because I do think that's really elegant. It's just how they behave on different conditions And so if we see personalities, how you behave in the aggregative conditions, it means that you can behave under perfect conditions and you can't behave under im perperfect conditions, which means that you need to practice behaving in imperfect conditions so that you can behave the same way And so again, part of the reason I think of having so much practice being basically being a proxy for the preparation is that you will have been exposed to so many different conditions That none of them what happens when the clicker stops working. Exactly. And I had that happen during one of them One of my proactions I two times I the clicker stopped working, I was like, I gonna do that Like It didn't happen? We were live.. One of the issues did it have happened. you've already run that. Right. we figured that out. I had another run where I had the case of the book stuff, and then it all fell over U I had I had one where like I put it they were backwards, they were like upside down or whatever. So like on the't tell me about that So there's there's there's all these different permutations that like It's like you can can you could decrease likely of failure if you try and get all the failures out before you actually before it counts And I think that's like at least for me how I approach performance is how do I get all the failures out of the way so that I have the highest like of succeeding Uh when when the time that matters counts I wonder if Elon intended to do that with the cybertruck. How many times have you tried to throw that steel ball at the window of a cyber trruck, presumably not non. Yeah. Presumably it's happened before. you just get a little bit ovexcited with too much adrenaline launch it with too heavy of an arm You'd be surprised how far you can get by only knowing what you want and not accepting anything else until you get it So we've talked about commitment and decisions a lot U I find it interesting like decisions, the root of that from Latin is decicadere, which is to cut off and commitment is the elimination of alternatives so theyre almost like you know cousin cousin words in terms of their meaning Um By definition, If you are the most focused person in the world, then you would have nothing but the one thing that you focus on for the most focused reader in the world, you would only read, you would not drink, you would not sleep, you would not eat. You you'd be the most focused reader in the world. Anything that is not reading is making you less focused And so if you know what you want, which I think is for many people more difficult because it's not knowing what they want. It's deciding all the things they're willing to give up in order to get what they want. because what you want is what you're willing to sacrifice for, right? And so if we want multiple things, which one of the things that we still want are we willing to sacrifice for the one that we want more And I think if you get clear on the thing that you're willing to sacrifice other things for, that you're willing to put all those things on the altar sacrifice for the one thing Life gets to our point earlier about simplicity, much easier because you have a singular lens to make all decisions through Kobe was notorious for like, does this make me a better baskball player That was it It just every decision was filtered through that lens And so it makes decision making incredibly easy. And so the amount of mental bandwidth that you get back is all of it U But the hard part for most people is making the decision that this is what they want Um not once you made the decision Stick following through It's the elimination of alternatives, not the continued commitment to the thing which is none of the alternatives. We talk like there's tons of stuff on productivity for like switching costs being, you know, horrendous. But I think that what is not talked about enough is Basically the cost of switching desires Like you're you're switching wants. and And the amount of time and effort that gets wasted in the loops of making the decision and then yearning for the costs of that decision that you already said was worth it. So one of the things that's been really helpful for me for big life decisions when I have, I would say conflicting priorities like multiple things that I want is When I make the call, I'll usually write out a document that explains all of the reasoning in in it its totality so that I don't So one if I have this moment of doubt again, I revisit it and then I read it again, and then it basically closes the loop almost instantly. And so rather than have these endless thought loops, I'll have one or two, I'll reread it and then it kind of goes away. And this is especially on the relational side, if you, let's say you had a breakup or something like that and you're like, or maybe you were the one who did the breakup and youew could get them back. but don't know if it was the right decision, blah. writing out every reason that you did it because you forget And this is the whole point about punishment fades and reward sticks is that in the moment of pain, after she comes back and she's crazy You have to remind yourself of all the shit of all the things that you know you will forget. So it's almost like youre writing warning letter to your future self of like Don't forget about this. rememember the time she keyed your car, she did it again, right? Like you have to put all those things down so that when you're in that moment of nostalgia looking back, you know what, Th those were the good old ties. You know she wasn't so bad. Maybe I was being a little bit unreasonable. You can read again. You're like, oh my Godd, I can't believe. Thank God, I made that call. But that way you don't actually have to then waste the next six months re leararning the same mistake again because you already documented in an artifact That's called borrowed authority exercises borrowed authority, but instead of borrowing from someone else, you're borrowing from a past version of you. Yeah, I like that. Yeah ye. the fading affect bias thing is pretty fascinating. Adam Mastriiani says that Tragedy plus timeime equals comedy is the closest thing that exists as a formula in human psychology. Tragedy plus time equals comedy some stuff that was kind of horrendous in the past. Over a long enough time, horizon becomes a neeutral or hilarious and some substicks about it as bad, but even the bad isn't as bad Yeah, it's Tragedy plus timeime equals comedy is Kind of true. And I think that's one of the reasons why gallows humor that soldiers use when they're away. I was talking to this British SAS guy He got one of his teammates got friendly fired in the ass bu a misfiire from someone's handgun. And they're in the middle of a firefight. surrounded by enemy combatants. they're now going to have to get this guy out of there. That guy's not going to be able to fight anymore They're going to have to su someone for the team. Maybe this means everybody but But everyone just started laughing . Fuck sake. Everyone laughed. Yeah like I do get the sense that trying to bring forward humor as a tool. How do you think about that? Serious guy, take up a suit with a existential level of drive. How do you think about the role of humor So it's funny that you even said serious guy becausecause like I would say I'm serious this pod becausecause we talk about serious things, but like U If you were to talk to my team, like The recording studio is not PG zone. It is not like everyone knows there's two places HR is not allowed. One is where I record and the second is the gym And like there's just no HR allowed. Youve got to deal with whatever happen. But if you were to look at my news feeed right now, it is entirely standup comedy And so I'm probably a closeted or not not like I'm a huge standup fan. It's almost all that I consume. And it's because I think that comedians are modern day philosophers. Um They point out these arent truths that we don't want to look at and some comedians. some. And but what's interesting about comedy specifically is that Most of the time, They say statements that they would be punished for saying in any other condition than on stage. And so comedy gives this veil of protection, which I think we need to protect Um for them to say things that like if you think about comedy the most basic level for like a human Kids can laugh when they see someone do something they should get punished for but not get punished. So you see Road Runner get smashed with a hammer or whatever. and then they laugh, right? O you see, you know, three stooges, like you know, whatever. And so it's slapstick because that's the level of humor that a child can understand. But it's basically punishment avoided. And so we laugh And so when somebody goes up there and says something they should get punished for, they should get bunked on the head, but they don't We laugh And so I find that like endlessly I mean, I laugh a lot. So I don't remember the question was but yeah I'm a fan of comedy. Yeah It was what's the role of comedy in manipulating But using using using humor as a tool, I guess, in that way The ability to dispel this thing feeling serious Yeah by laughing at it is kindind of magical. It's like the Bogurt and Harry Potter. Like how many of my big fears can I just laugh about how funny this will be soon? And if I can pull if I think it's going to be funny eventually, I might as well think it's gonna to be funny today That's a fucking great archive poll to think about the bogart in Harry Potter, which is how you do it. It's to make it look silly. This is the thing that you are most scared of. and the way that you get it to fuck off is to turn it into something hilarious. I still remember the first time I learned about this. I was probably eleven. my friend Um We were on this road trip. And he at eleven Well I was there were parents who were driving. Yeah, but there's there's him and his brother, right? Yeah we were just just crushing Cushing life And and right before the road trip, he they had just picked u Like those those yellow cherries, whatever those are, you know, the little they're like cherries, but they're yellow and red, like golden cherry. They look like golden apples, but they're whatever They're cheres Some sort of cherry and they just picked them from like the tree that had just gone ripe or whatever, and there was a whole bowl of them and he had all of them H And then we went in the car to go on the road trip And about an hour into the trip He's like, I need to go to the bathroom. And they were like, well, we're not there yet. like, know, we'll stop in the next bathroom. He was like, no, like I really need to go to the bathroom And so they had to pull over to this like small town that had nothing And they literally knocked on doors to see if someone would let an eleven year old kid And so there's an old lady who said, yes, through a window. I couldn't even make this up. And we had to go through this spiral staircase up to her flat or whatever, her apartment. And I was behind him because they were like, well, all of your kids are going to go use the bathroom if we're going to stop, And so it's his dad, it's the it's the old lady, his dad. him, me and then his younger brother and then the mom, actuallyctually the mom went in the car, but any it was that, that was the lineu. I'm looking up And as we're walking up I just remember this horrendous smell. And then I was like Oh my God, he's ripping ass and then I see just A fucking deluge of shit and drip down his leg and it's on the steps and he's walking through and we're all trying. And it was horrendous. And he's eleven And anyways, he goes, he has to wear his dad's boxers because he shits his pants, right? So his dad doesn't have boxers, he has his dad's boxers on. And He was so humiliated. and he was like, donon't fuck joke about it, blah, blah,. And obviously, we're eleven, right And so and so his mother when she saw it crracks up this happening, even though he's like super serious about it. And she says You are going to laugh about this in a few years. L this will be a very funny story And I just remember that she was already there She like she was already there. She was already at this is hilarious. And she was like, it might take you sometime, but this is very funny. And I that was like that was the time where I learned that was Your tragedy plus time is comedy can if it becomes that eventually thenen you might as well have it now. Of course we have a TRO Haha. Like how ridiculous is this What a better story it'll be because like I don't remember anything about that trip besides the fact that he sh his pants That'll definitely breach the threshold for emotional activation. Yeah Novelty and intensity are the two things that create emotion. That would create memories. That's definitely one of them. Talking of the young people thing Young people don't want to work hard anymore Young people don't want to work hard anymore for you You have to create a company worth working hard for Yeah, I mean, I just fundamentally reject that humans have somehow changed. I do think that There are going to be preferences that change between classes, u generations. Thank you generations Um But they just work differently. But there I mean, I see some fifteen year old, twenty year olds that are just as motivated as fifteen and twenty year olds, and I see some lazy fifteen and twenty year olds that were just as lazy as fifteen and twenty year olds that I know. I think it's just convenient more than anything. and typically it's easier for older people to say that we had it harder and you did. So what And also, Most generations say I want to make it better for the next generation. and then when it is better for the next generation, we resent them for it being better and easier, but wasn't that the point And so it's really just like resenting them for receiving the gift that we gave them What does Creating a company worth working hard for me I think it's a combination of the micro environment within the company and then the global reinforcer that the company stands for. And so I see when when Elon says we're going to, you know, Mars or more realistically, we're saving humanity, which is I think what most of people were Bought in on his vision C. He's created the most noble cause of all kind that you should a goal big enough that it's worth suffering for And so people are willing to suffer as long as the price is worth it, we're willing to go through just about anything. And so making the company worth suffering for or worth working hard for is about number one, making sure that where we're going is a place that people feel inspired to work towards, right? I think this is worth doing On the micro, it's okay, how can I make the work environment something that people want to come back to And that a lot has to do with just training leaders and managers in order to make environments that ward off people who suck encourage people who don't suck. Yeah, if you have a company that continues to get great talent, that you should. You can hire people who just weren't right or we're not going to work hard or weren't going to be brought in But after a while, especially if you've got enough staff that work for you, if they continue to be demotivated and to not want to work hard What's your problem? What's more likely that all of your ex's are assholes who are argumentative or that you're the argumentative asshole? Be you are the common denominator between all of these different exs. We're them, me and them, there's two. them is the other, right? Y Yeses. No, but so no to your point in seriousness. if we see that as culture, right, which is this big amorphous term, but obviously it's the business world I define it, which is the rules that govern reinforcement in organization, right? So what are the if then statements that when someone does this, this happens? And so the culture of any group, not necessarily in a company, but of any team, any group of people is going to be what are all the things that are rewarded What are all the things that are punished? And then kind of third categories, What are the things that are themselves reinforcing that we permit, but we shouldn't. right? And so being really clear and this is why I'm big on defining things in observational terms. is so instead of saying, hey Suzie was lazy, we're to say like Suuszie doesn't respond to slat quickly and she showed up late to two meetings Okay, so that's what she did. Is she lazy? That's a label that doesn't really help anybody. But if I can tell Suzy, hey People are beginning to describe you as lazy and it's because of these things. I'm assuming you don't want to be described as lazy, right? Okaykay? If you just do this instead next time And it just it just, it cuts out so much of the noise of like this generate. It's like many of the times, they don't even know. That's what good looked like No one ever defined success. no one ever defined what the standard was. And so I see probablybably the most important job of the leaders is to hold the standard is to define what good looks like in observable term so that everyone knows this is success. Therefore, failure is also obvious. Right. And then obviously all the downstream implications of that, of how do you model behavior so that other people do et ccera It's very hard to have a vision when you have bills to pay. I saw this old white guy giving financial advice on TikTok getting roasted in the comments, booomer, fake guru, etcera The guy was Ray Dahio That's when I realized there was no amount of success that can legitimize you to the ignorant If you actually met everyone, you'd realize some people aren't worth being loved by It's a good thing to be hated by a bad person Violent agreement But that moment with Ray Dally was like It was actually like there are these moments that you have. change the way you behave And that was one for me that I don't want to say it was the last nail in the coffin because I don't think anyone is impervious from outside influences, but it was a significant nail in the coffin of the public opinion for me in terms of content Um because when I like To some degree, let me go to speak for myself There's always a chase for more legitimacy. Am I legit yet They might like Do I need to be billionaire? Yeah? Do I need to a billionaire to be legit? I don't need to be a deck a billionaire to begit Like, when am I legit, right Um which really means When will everyone love me and no one hate me When and when I was writing that, I was thinking to myself, like, Oh Everyone loves me Well, I've met a lot of people that I think that if they loved me, I don't think I would like me. I wouldn't see that as a compliment. Yeah And so then it was like, oh, well, this is just This is a fixed cost I just would prefer to be liked by the correct people And I should prefer to be disliked by the incorrect people in which case, Some people didn't like me. That makes sense. I'm not for everyone. Adam Mastiani's got the two laws that govern the internet The In internet is a very big place and people have differing opinions When you combine those two things together, it means that some huge portion of people are going to hate you as you get exposed to more, given that the internet is a very big place. Heard Joe Santagado on the show One of the biggest podcasts in the world, recently sold out MSG, fucking huge. sat there and the first thing that I said to him was like, Dude they do the same plays as we do on Spotify the same play. they got their award, their button award. that's literally the same announcement. I got mine Non zero and number of fucking plays, right? Work very hard in it Joe, what do you think is the podcast just saw the MSG, I do Tols too, podcast how Ven diagramy, how much he's like I think it's like the headlights of a fucking Jeep two big circles. He's eighty percent women at his live events. It's ninety per, ninety five percent women for him and his co host. Hilarious comedian. I've never heard of it, so yeah been on YouTube, the basement yard, Joe like fucking awesome talent. generational at what he does all of the comments, all of the comments I like this guy. whoo the fuck is he The internet is a really big place. It's a really, really, really big place. and Sometimes you can have that, which is wow, two Ven diagrams come together and they actually mix quite nicely. Other times it's like oil and water. And given the fact that the internet's a big place and lots of people have different tastes, the problem, I think is taking feeedback peopleople who you think are your people but aren't becausecause the difference between this person is unencumbered and has a type of unbiased perspective of me that is novel and useful to take as opposed to people who have seen a lot of me and conf frame Maybe I was a bit mean They know I've got enough ballast in the system that they give me a pass. Suppose to this person that saw me for the first time was like, I think you're a bit rude to that person. You fuck, A actually do you know what maybe I was The other side being this person just isn't my people determining those two from the internet with the disembodied egg profile thing or Ebody everybody now, especially with how the platforms work, everybody can go viral because it's no longer about followers, which I feel unbelievably annoyed by that I was small when followers mattered and now I'm big when just content matters. Like I invested into the market when it was really, really difficult. and now that I'm at the top of the market, it means that it's easy for everybody at the start Whatever The same thing How do you really feel? Yeah It's true. is it is. The followers seemed to matter an awful lot and meant that you'd just piss out huge plays because of your subscriber base. and now body the fact that anybody can go viral, how fantastic. It's egalitarian. and it means that new creators can come through and I've seen lots of them and I coach lots of them and help them to try and get up But at the same time, that means that people who aren't creators can go viral Someone can just gap because they wanted to. I was on this American Airlines flight and I can't believe that this happened,,,,, but you wake the next day and you're a headline I don't know if all of these people who don't know who I am are my people or not, and the feedback is very difficult to discern. Or if they see the fifteen seconds, I think there was that lady who had that she went off the airline pilot I don't know anything about it. I literally only know that. I thought you were gonna to say the one about that this is like ten years old now, the chick that said I'm heading to Africa. I hope I don't get AIDs lll just joking I'm white U and she got she tweeted it before she got on the plane, got off the plane and her whole life was in flames The familyamily guy did a bit about this, Brian did it before he got on a plane. So good And they saw and the world saw However many less than you know, two hundred eight, whatever the characters is and took that and then just said this I know everything about who you are. This is everything that you are And I think that in a nutshell is like why we can't take too much weight for Okay, that they have consumed s two hundred and eighty characters of every character that you've ever said or thought in the history of you One thing that u, think brought to argue the complete opposite side of this U I think there's a very powerful question, which is what if they're right And And so what So for example, I get a ton of like Jew said, gear, steroids, whatever. I I said Jew said I don't get that one. but But I get a lot of like steroid related stuff, especially if I don't have, you know my flan on And I used to be like really offended by it. and then Uh Lila was like, you've taken steroids and I was like That is a fair point What if that r? And it's just like, and And I was like, oh, This makes sense And then like Layla people, you know, get after her her voice big low. And it's like She's like, I took steroids. So yeah, that's how that happens Anyways, moving on. Yeah. L Do you know Joe Hudson have you comeing across him yet? No, It's been on my pod. He's Sam Altan's coach, Head of Human culture, performance something at Op AI. like one of only maybe two or three people that deserve the title of Master Coach, doct. K being one of them. probablyrobably Tony, I guess, too I know His handle on Twitter is FU Joe Hudson. And I was like, Where's the FU from? It's like because people say fuck you Joe Hudson, because one of my friends A long time ago said, You know Je, you're an assso and I thought about it for a while and then I realized I am an awo So sometimes the things that people say to you just are true They're just right. And in the fighting against it is where all of the pain is. That's all the pain. Exactly. And then as soon as that like That happened. I either that comment stopped tapping as much or I stopped seeing it I don't know which one actually happened, but Either way, it stopped affecting me. And so like I mean, I guess it is simply a frame of acceptance of like What if they're right Maybe they are right. And so what What does that mean But the answer what works, whether they're right or wrong whichich is why, I mean, that's one of your old ones, right I'm thinking about One of my favoritees lines of yours that I keep coming back to this year The stress of being perfect will kill you more quickly than your imperfections. stress of trying to be perfect will kill him more quickly than your imperfections I think there's a Burbling but pretty rapidly growing anti optimization Cult at the moment, and I think that people are feeling overwhelmed with advice, I think they're uncertain about the future There's loads of chaos going on. Is AI going to take my job? Is the Iran war going to bleed over here? What's going to happen? Is Trump going to run for a thirderm? Is there going to be a civil war? too much there's too much information I'm overwhelmed with screens I haven't got good sleep I'm taking too supplement. And they just want someone to simplify life. You can simplify life by trying to wrangle it down into an aggressive routine, but what that looks like from the outside a lot of the time is sort of fragility And this is your America was built on the backs of men who ate bacon for breakfast and smoked cigarettes. If you miss your morning routine today, you'll be fine Um, the line between This is important for me to improve my mental health in order to create the structure that I need to make progress And this is a glorified rain dance that I'm doing because I'm superstitious about how things work I even saw this with Jocko, the first ever episode I did with Jocko He was in a bit of a Curse Mood. As a TS man, that was like Turse squad and, um And someone brought up to him. afterfterward a couple of months later on Twitter, and he said,n't hadn't trained that morning. was in a bit of a grum He hadn't been to the gym. and I reflected about that a lot. I brought it up to him, I'd spent a few days with them over Christmas And I was like, remember when that Yeahah. Interesting because Training is obviously the structure that you have built a lot of things on and it makes you feel good and it facilitates your performance if the removal of the training doesn't allow you to do the thing. There is a kind of fragility that's baked into the system there you want to be able to perform regardless of whether you've got to train or not and the training builds on top. that m make sense. one thousand percent if the If the routine that you do is additive Great. then you have baseline performance without it if the routine fates dependence to do baseline performance thenen it becomes a crutch And then you become fragile And so yeah, I'm I would say the on the spectrum of routine versus retard maxing I'm on the retard maxing side of like just work Um grab, you know, grab your grab your st grab your stimmies. Yeah and uh and get to it And I think it's because my I think one of my big fears, in life was is becoming soft is allowing It's like nothing feels like success is letting the laurels Soften me to the game which is like the reason that I still do like Q and A's with you know, smaller business owners that are, you know doing, you know, few mion dollars or whate is that's going to come off weird. but is I have to stay connected to the Eth. I have to stay like grounded here, otherwise I will lose the edge that is where all the details are one. And so Um I'm a I'm a as a flag for self If you cannot function without your routine, your routine owns you, you do not own it Full stop If it's just additive, great, and that means that if you don't have it, you should still be able to win. because one of my big beliefs is Whenever someone has an excuse for losing, that's like, well, it wasn't a perfect day for me. It's like There's this scene in I think it's in Victus. It's Matt Damon movie. He's like aub rugby player or whatever with Morgan Frameman.ou South Africa. Yeah And there's this scene where Morgan Freeman is Nelsa Mendela and he's talking to Matt Damon and I think Matt Damon says something to the degree of' you know,, we're we're not playing it one hundred percent And I think Morgan Freedman says No one ever is And it's it was like, I don't even think it's a quoted part of the movie but I remember seeing that and being like No one's ever at one hundred percent. It's like saying, I can I can win the I can win with if I have perfect weather, perfect conditions, perfect whatever. And so I think that's why having trying to get all the failures out so you can try to create or recreate the randomness that imperfect conditions can and still win And I think that's why I'm such an advocate of of a just win ike Like it doesn't like it just does because the thing is after the game is played No one remembers whether the ref gave you a bad call or the weather was bad, or whether your starting lineup had two entries on it No one remembers. And so if they're not to remember in twenty years, then it shouldn't be a reason we're going to lose today There's a Floyd May Weeather quote, where he says You felt like you were on your A game today and he says, I ain't got to use my A game, my B game, my C game. I can use my Z game. I don't even have to hit him hard. The result's going to be the same The prospect of being able to beat somebody with your C game is really fucking cool. I love it viol Most people think the hard part is getting started The hard part is continuing to do the work when the excitement wears off. and the grind feels hopeless The visual that I always think about this is the marathons, marathon runners People get excited at the very beginning of the marathon where there's all these balloons and their friends and they're like training them on and there's mus and then att the end of the marathon is where everyone cheers you want to end But the marathon is one in the twenty six point one miles between those two tenth of a mile And it is the boring unending relentless, mundane middle. And I think the game is mastering the middle It's just the it's just unending, unyielding and Everyone can get motivated for a moment It's just like people feel motivated. but like motivation is incredibly ephemeral, right? It vanishes. And that's why Having creating the conditions that make failure less likely is so important Because if we can make suuccessful actions, the most likely actions, success becomes the most likely outcome And I think that is like that is the piece that people miss because they actually stack their deck against themselves by never arranging the conditions to make successful actions the most likely action It's like I have to have Like I have to use perfect willpower to go out with my friends and not drink. I have to and because of that, I'm going to stay late, but I can I'm going I'm going to get home and immediately fall asleep And and if I fall asleep perfectly, I'll get up by the time that I have this interview or by the time I need to give this presentation. And they need everything to go perfect in order to have one win when it is M more, let's use anti fragile set up the conditions so that everything can go wrong and you can still win So when we did the launch for the Money M models launch, One of the frames that we had is we wanted it to be inevitable And so in order for it to be inevitable, we wanted to have three or four different ways that we could break the record Mm. wasas it like If we only do this, we break the record. If we only do this, we break the record. If only this happens, we break the record. If only do this break we break the record. And we figured that if each of these had eighty percent or ninety percent likelihood of happening that the likelily that we'd break the record would be very high And at the end of the day, we still didn't know. But I think stacking probabilities And And thinking about, I'm going to I'm abridge this for a second, but I think the number of ways that people attack the problems in front of them is not nearly enough in terms of volume and not with nearly enough the intensity. Like they' not going at it with full measure. Like if you knew that your family was going to die or the thing that you care about most was going to disappear How differently would you attack this problem And how many different ways would you tack the problem? If you said, A, man, I don't a job right now. It's o, okay, what have you actually done R And it's like, why apply to three places? It's like, okay, cool. Well, how long did that take you? It took me forty five minutes. Okay, how many hours are there in a week? How many hours are there in a month? What are you doing that's not that? That is increasingly likely that you get it. Basically nothing And so there's nothing that stops you from applying to one hundred or one thousand jobs in a month. And the likelihood of you appied to one thousand jobs and you have the requisite requirements that you don't get one is very low And so it's just like, why are you not doing that And I don't know the answer to that because I've just been a relatively violent person by nature Once you have a very clear path to getting what you want Okay, how do I remove everything that prevents me from getting it N not in a self aggrandizing way. I amlawed too, but I'm just saying It's It is true that more dreams are destroyed by distraction and incompetence. That's in the micro, but in the macicro as well billion percent If you had so if you had a a white room that you were locked into and There was nothing in the white room except for one black dot What is the most interesting thing in that robe the one black dot. And so people struggle to get motivated to do the work because There are other more interesting things to do than the work And so you're not going to willpower your way through making work more interesting, but you can absolutely Put yourself in a situation where work becomes the most interesting thing And that is how you do a shitload of work We talked a lot about risk, I said there, you know, over the last sort of twelve months lookingooking at what you've talked about, uncertainty Managing risk respect is something else you've been thinking about a good bit. What have you another R word, the other R word What have you been thinking about to do with respect I'm so excited you I'm so excited you asked. U So I've been trying to think about the operation of respect because I thought, okay, what is something that I've wanted My whole life, right? I think many men want respect. Some people say status, but I'll define respect Um is this So respect is letting someone else's word change what you do even when they cannot make you So if I respect someone, What they say changes what I do even though they cannot force me to do it And so There's two sides to respect. There's the earning of respect, and there's the giving of respect And so I was trying to encapsulate this into An acronm that I could remember because I know I'm going to talk about this a lot, especi with our leaders, the company, because Leaders wanton't respect. That makes sense But how do you how how how do you gain respect and then also not pass the line of being a tyrant? And so the outcome that I have his powers which is The behaviors that earn respect is number one is that you pay the cost which is that you sacrifice for the group where they can see it. I remember the first time u So when I was a pledge back in my fraternity days, it's a group where everyone's even, right? no one's special And There was a particular senior who was known for being a bad hazer and he called the goats. and so the goats had to go to the house, and you had to go in pairs Right? And so he called one guy and the guy was like, it's goats. It's just a derogative term, derogatory term for a pledge. Okay Yeah. Yeah, wormss, goats, whatever U, with go because they're goers and negot shhip for you Anyways, they u And so he just looked at the group of know, eighteen other guys and it's like Wh wants to come with me We knew he was going to get hazed. So somebody just has to basically sacrifice themselves. And so I remember was like, I'll go with you dude And it's a tiny act where that sacrifice gains respect from the whole group because that micro benefits everybody else for not having to go through it And so when you are in a new organization, this is the operation for respect. You sacrifice yourself in a way that benefits the whole Um, in a way that is vible. You don't have to do it visibly because then it looks cringe, but like They will see it eventually. Ting up Ellie Number two is outcomes, which is that things get better when you are involved for everyone. And so functionally it's competence, which I would define as outcomes improve with your involvement that are traceable to you repeatedly So it's the opposite of locker free riding Three is your word, right? The W which is what you say will happen happens and what you say you'll do, you do E is in force, and this is the sticky one I'll get to more in a second, but it's you don't let people cross you consistently R is restraint which is that you hold back when you could punish more and you give more credit than you need to S is steady is that you function in high stake situations the same as normal situations And so What ends up happening is that enforcement is basically your compliance floor which is that if I enforce rules of like, this is how I want to be treated then M will at baseline, just do that. but that is where you have a tyrant on it on their own because you need the other ones to have respect. You have to be competent. L if you have just U ennforcement of rules, but you have no competence things is not better for anyone. You've never beared any cost Everyone fucking hates that guy. And the moment their ability to make that person's life worse goes away So does the behavior And so the key that separates basically fear driven or compliance versus respect is that they have to be able to do it even when you have no ability to make them Now on the flip side, if you have all of the competence things, but you have no enforcement, then you're the admired doormat. You do things for everyone, but like no one respects you So then the next thing that comes up is like, okay, so enforcement and this is probably the hairiest of the ones that is still required And so there's three things that have to happen in order for you to obligated to enforce a standard which is that number one someone has to know the standards you have. We're like Please do not talk to me that way. Please not address me that manner. whatever whatever whatever do not do not turn in the dinner That's cold, whatever. They have to have a known standard two is that they have to have the ability to adhere to that standard. And then three, choose not to Now, a lot of times people can feel disrespected But if you've never articulated that this is a preference of yours, that you do things a certain way And then you basically punish someone for treating you in a specific way without ever having told them And that is when you'll be seen as tyyrical. Unspoken standards are premeditated disrespects. Yeah. And so So imagine the situation where you have a chef who's He takes a shitole, turns it around is, you know, best in class chehef. and he's got and he's known for both being incredibly hard Everyone who works for him loves him So it's like how do we manage these this apparent contradiction So New newew Soushef comes in messes something up plate comes back in And then the head chehef takes it, dumps it and looks at the kid He says, you just cost us that table. We're going to comp the bill Don'try You're still with us Jump again at six A tomorrow and do better So you have the moment, we have to enforce it, but it's about the behavior, not the person. And' the that's the big unlock what we're doing it about the person So it's basically You lazy piece of shit. It's basically labeling them rather than the behavior and criticizing who they areather than what they did And so the three things is number one, it has to be a known Rule. numberumber two They have to have the ability to follow it. and number three choose not to. That is when a transgression occurs thenen it comes into, okay, what are the consequences that happen? Does that mean that you just let people transgress if you say, hey, don't do that, and then hey, don't worry I still love you Well, the consequence for crossing you needs to be consistent, which means that every time someone crosses you, there needs to be a consequence. If there isn't, then you teach people to gamble with you because it's a variable reinforcer. You need to have consistent reinorcers, which extinguishes the behavior. And so it has to be consistent, it has to be immediate And it has to be escalating Which means if the first time I tell you, I say, donon't worry, you're with us, be here tomorrow, do better If you do it again Th then it's like You're off for the night If you do it again, you don't come back And so there has to be an escalating consequenence because what happens is at some moment it stops being about punishing the behavior and it should about punishing the pattern of behavior, whichich then means it is the person, which might be at that point. I don't to I don't train this person anymore. And so at that point, you have to respect the standard for everyone and out of owing it to everyone, we have to let this person go even if they're a perceived high performer. And so The flip side of it, so that's how you earn respect is you do powers. You sacrifice for the group, you have outcomes that you demonstrate competence for. Your word is your bond. you do what you say you're going to do. you enforce the standards publicly. swiftly, consistently, and escalatingly. You show restraint Could yo? likeike go fucking nuts on this kid for fucking something up. You choose not to even though you could And then S is that you're steady, even when the biggest missionist are judes there, you still act the exact same way as though they were just a normal dinner table On the flip side, it's like, okay, how do I Give respect because this is equal opposite if you're like, well, this person needs to show me respect. And I think this's important because if you're like, I felt disrespected Well one did we say what our preference was? And this has been super useful for me because I sometimes will feel disrespected by somebody who doesn't know. And so it helped me just to say, hey You might ent this. Don't do this again We're still cool You didn't know If you do it again, now we have a problem So just came ac hearted, which is all I could make from my memory. But basically honor, which is that you respect their preferences, you respect their lines, and you don't test the limits is esteem, so you praise them when they are not present. attend, which is that you listen to them without cutting in or interrupting you are reliable in that your word is as good to them as theres as theirs is to you. If you say, I've got the soup You'll get the soup. You show them respect by saying what you said you were going to do to honor them The next is truth, and this is where gets a little bit more interesting. You tell them straight, including what they will not like And so that means that if you really respect someone, you don't coddle them just like a parent would respect to childa. I'm not going to dumb this down for you And then E, this is another hard one, is expectations is that you hold them to the same standard. And so you don't lower the bar for someone because otherwise that's just watering it down and diluting it. don't talk down to D't stand it down to the level of cont. Exactly And so it's equal opposite. And then finally, D is defer is that in their area of expertise, you defer to their decisions And so this has been really helpful for me to define this because respect is one word, but has many behaviors underneath of it And so by defining it that way It's been incredibly helpful because when king to leaders is like, you need to earn respect and you earn respect in this way. And that way I could say you have not visibly sacrificed anything for this group. or the outcomes that you've generated in no way have demonstrated competence. O you said you would do this thing and then you haven't done it. or you are allowing people to treat you in a way That is not the way that t a leader would allow someone to treat them. and you have not enforced anything U I would say that that happens on the e happens on both sides. I would say that I have some leaders in the company, for example, who are overly enforcing and people absolutely comply with what they tell them to do, but it's because it's all out of fear of just don't cross them, right? But you don't know what theyre what it is, which just means that they look like a loose canon On the other side, you've got the people who really competent, but they're just like,, you know, it'skay. you know, Jolly you know, Paby go lucky but like they don't get the respect because they never enforce anything. I can think of two different leaders in my company right now that are on both sides of this. bothoth competent but one that probably over enforces and another that basically under enforces. But until I had the words and these behaviors I can't give them good feedback whichich is why I'm so adamant about defining these terms in terms of behavior, because then I can actually help someone gain respect And so if you were like, man, fucking no one respects me. It's like, well There's the list What things did you miss or what things have you not done And that's just like This is something that it's obviously a huge passion of mine because defining the vague or defining the amorphous in terms that people can be like Wow, I did that operation and I now have gotten respect That's very cool for me. I read a really great essay about How status has accumulated and there's broadly two ways, especially ancestrally Dominance and prestige And the interesting thing is that in times of war, Tribes tend to prefer dominant leaders The problem being that a time of war, hopefully, if you don't lose with less aybe it'll end And then you stuck with this tyrannical dominant guy who' surrounded himself with sycophantans And that's when you want someone who's prestigious. And to find someone who's prestigious, the issue being that sometimes they're not as decisive or as cutthroat as you need in a time of crisis and um This issue with Churchill, right? I mean, Churchill was like an amazing wartime leader and then didnt didn't do as well. a bit of a tyrant. Yeah. I mean he wasn't built as a peacetime leader. Yeah. just that wasn't what he needed. UK history. Yeah of course. Dude. here's one about Churchill. I'm reading The Slendid and the Vial, which is the best book about Churchill.n only go at the whole book, I think it's five hundred pages eighteen months is what it covers and it's all of the journals and diary entries from all of the different people The best thing that I learned about Churchill so far is that he really hated whistling like allergic to whistling. and there was one day there was a boy that was walking down the street whistling and he ended up in this huge back and forth with this eleven year old kid. You know, some street urchin. And Churchill one of the biggest wars before his like campaign began was between him and this eleven year old child, brilliant bsolly brilli U fininishing this off, just talking about like probably the word of the day, risk You can't get rich if you never risk losing money You can't get loved if you never risk getting rejected You can't get strong if you never risk getting injured. You have to risk looking broke to get rich, you have to risk looking weak to get strong. You have to risk looking desperate to get loved. Egos hold back more dreams than failure and rejection ever will like risk not have not that you have to put something on the altar At the most basic level, it's like the first step is what you're willing to lose and it's It is trade of a known and inferior saying for a unknown and superior thing And it justs the fact that it's unknown that is the thing that bugs everyone And I think most of gains most of the gains in life the lack of gains come from Unwilling. to sacrifice mediocrity interesting to think about sacrificing mediocrity. Right. But that is I think that is the that is the appropriate term People fear being less than extraordinary In so doing sacrifice being extraordinary It's like you sacrifice one either way And so either you sacrifice being extraordinary to be ordinary or you sacrifice ordinary for the chance at being extraordinary or less than ordinary? But if you really think about it, many people who are ordinary have failed. And so your really is just still ordinary And so why would you not sacrifice ordinary for extraordinary Damon. I appreciate you Al always get to s down with you P pleasure is mine as always ee next time everyone. Dude Yes Yeah, to Sound good. Mbe sweet We speak fuck There we go, if Ian, you can present you where Two versions I have a very famous photo that's going to behind you for most of the episodes A Rembrand? Yeah. An original. Yeah, this is an original. I'm not sure if you've knowic this. I'd like to thank my friends and family. Your hair is also really short hereir too, so you look like And this one you look like a child with the I do. I look like some sort of freak child with bicep veins. I think it's like ancient Chippndales Yes, it is But for some reason, for some reason you're in Hawaiian shorts I't notice that. And then the one behind it is the this is the original O class. It's just, ye, old class, no breaks Ive how they've kept me in a necklace, but this one's become Like so baroque. a tasteful group. I think we're looking at truth That's true. That's correct. That's correct. Disregard risk, look the truth. Yeah ye, fuckking You it I get asked all the time for book suggestions. People want to get into reading fiction or nonfiction or real life stories.