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there are only three ways where stress will break you but the majority of how stress kills us is because of but this
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is completely within your control Mo go D is back and this time he's on a
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mission to help millions of people manage their stress no matter what their circumstances stress is very good for
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you until it kills you and what most people don't understand is that it's an addiction stress is a badge of honor now
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it means that I'm wanted I'm needed and the reality is that 80% of the stuff you do at work is just to prove your life
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but we tell ourselves we're too busy that's a lie but the truth is that we are getting to the point where this
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turning into burnout anxiety panic attacks we're all suffering now I think the most interesting part of stress is
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to understand that what breaks us is the long application of obsessions and
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nuisances nuisances are stressors that are triggered every day and there are so many of them the first 10 minutes of
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your day you get 10 15 stressors and then obsessions create a lot of stress as a result of the LI that you told
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yourself this is quite serious what do we do about it though so you get stressed in four modalities mentally
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emotionally physically or spiritually and each of those is a different language so your mental stress speaks to
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you in a language that is different than your emotional stress but if you learn that language then you can easily deal
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with that stress when it happens and it's simple techniques so we should cover as many of them as we can so first
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of all congratulations diio gang we've made some progress 63% of you that listen to
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this podcast regularly don't subscribe which is down from 69% our goal is 50% so if you've ever
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liked any of the videos we've posted if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the Subscribe button it helps this channel more than you know
00:01:51
and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this episode
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[Music] Mo how are you doing uh I'm here again love it uh it's
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always a pleasure to be with you Steve I am doing um I am somewhere between the best time
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of my life and uh and the most interestingly inviting
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for change time of my life what you mean I think the I think I'm I'm thanks
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to you of course by the way and and many others I've i' I think my message is getting to a lot of people I think
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that's uh really really really it feels such an honor to be actually making
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progress on my mission and what I stand for uh but I have to say I think the
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world is changing in so many ways that doing what we've always done
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may not deliver the same results so I feel that I have to revisit
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it very deeply uh how I can continue to help I
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how I can continue to explain what I think will be probably the most needed
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in the in the times to come but uh but also not um I think most people don't
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realize how different the world is going to be in the next 5 years are you talking about AI again May it's not just
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AI Steve we know that it's not just AI it's not just AI what is
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it I remember last time we met I we in closing I was telling you we hitting the
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perfect storm uh economics geopolitical uh climate
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AI uh synthetic biology um yeah and I think the the the the
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highlight of it is what I call the end of the truth if you think about what's about to happen in our
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world and uh yeah I I I will openly say this is going to be the most stressful
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time of any generation that we've ever met you and I uh it's it is so disruptive in so many
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ways it's so disruptive it doesn't have to be stressful it can be navigated so
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beautifully uh but it is going to be so unusual so unfamiliar for so many of us I think what's going to be the cause of
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the stress the biggest reason is is the pace
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and the unfamiliarity of the change it's not the the devastation of
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the impact if you think about it I as I said I think we can all sail through this I mean a big part of my focus this
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year is to is to help explain how how people can see all
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that's happening and really uh and really sail through it in a way that
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doesn't uh halt the progress if you want But but so much change in such a short
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amount of time I think the reality is that humans become very stressed when we
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have a lot of unfamiliar um you know change happening in front of us and I think this is where
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we stand today we stand in a world where I think I think it's led by economics the level of debt in in Western
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societies uh that cannot be fixed with the normal execution of fiscal policies
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that leads governments to to um dilute our economies in ways
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that are affecting that is you know basically everyone feels uh but I have to admit I think
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that you know the current economic and geopolitical view
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of the world is leading lots of governments in the world to
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um yeah to to create um to create conflicts that
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are uh that are going to expand beyond the current Horizon I I I don't know if
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this is how we want to start the conversation but I I believe you know you know how it is it's Wars are not the
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results of conflict conflict is the needed trigger to start a
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war uh or the illusion of a conflict is the needed trigger to start a war that
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helps fiscal policy and sets GE political stance on situations and I think our world is becoming quite
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interestingly a world where the truth is morphed in ways that uh you and I uh are
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unable to figure out so that we can uh so that we can agree to the leaders
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doing things that we shouldn't allow them to do and as a result of that we most of us are going to be in a dilemma
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economically politically sometimes safety wise and sometimes
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um purpose-- wise uh very uh very unusual times when you think about the
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times we're living in more broadly what is the most important sort of context in your in your mind for the
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viewer to understand if they're trying to understand how you're seeing the world right now because you've written a book now about the subject of stress and
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I know that you're someone who's got you know so many different books in your mind and in your soul that you're always
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working on sometimes for years and years sometimes those books never make it out so for you to commit your energy and
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time to writing a book about stress for me as someone that knows you well it is
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a clue of sorts to a perspective you have topic yeah on the nature of the world what is that n nature of the world
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what is the backdrop there that you're seeing it is the top Topic in my mind uh first of all I I wrote this because of
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my co-author Ellis Alis uh came to me at a point in time and she
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said you know you cannot continue to write about happiness and well-being without addressing stress right Alice
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herself had a very uh stressful you know uh stage of her life in her 20s and she
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learned through it that it's not the events of your life that stress you it's the way that you deal with them that
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does right and and so we started to work on this um around uh 2021
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uh but then we suddenly recognized that this probably is the topic of the time
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right so so unstress is a part of a big strategy to try and get a million people
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out of stress every year uh simply because uh I think the mounting stress
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in the world is one uh because of events outside most people's
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controls uh and two is because stress will cause more stress so so what is
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happening in our world today you you walk the streets and you feel it right you know you you can you can easily see
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that people are struggling economically for example and so they are um behaving
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in ways that are stressing others let's you know you know it's it's a bit less safe in the city of London it's a bit um
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you know more um challenging to make ends meet and so on and so forth right
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so the truth of the matter is that the events are leading those who are
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not uh capable of dealing with stress to a situation where where where they will
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be more stressed okay and and you ask me what is the state of the world I think the state of the world is that we let me
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try to explain this think of a think of hunters gatherers right uh when Hunters
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gatherers um when the best hunter in the tribe went out to hunt you could
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probably feed the tribe for a couple of days more right when the best farmer uh
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you know managed his or her Farm better you could probably feed the tribe for a
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month more right when the best manufacturer uh manufactured something
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you could probably feed or serve the world for a month more scale continues
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to grow right but at the same time the the gain of the best hunter was probably
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two more wives the gain of the best farmer was probably millions of dollars
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the gain of the best industrialist was probably billions of dollars the the the
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award the reward that you get as a result of automation so think of it as
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as the uh you know as the conduit that you put your efforts through to get something on the other side gets
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magnified a long time now with what is about to happen from an economic and technological point of view the gains
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are going to become massive right so one platform owner such as open AI for
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example will almost entirely own for a while until they are disrupted the
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commodity that we call intelligence right they they will almost have a plug in the wall where you know you plug in
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and you get 100 IQ more points more right the amount of power that this
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generates for the company for the country for the economy for the culture
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Becomes prohibitive of every other company and every other culture and so everyone's competing right uh most
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people don't talk about that because they're not aware of the scale of the conflict if you want so we are about to
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head into a world where Nations that are struggling economically have found an
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opportunity to get out of where they are uh at the expense of the rest of of
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society and that's going to cause a lot of stress it's going to cause stress in the replacement of jobs it's going to
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cause stress economically it's going to cause stress about the uncertainty of
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geopolitical uh landscape uh it's going to cause stress around you know I'm I'm
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even I am not able to keep up with the speed at which technology is changing right so that becomes all of that change
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all of that uncertainty I think is going to cause uh a situation where a lot of us dealing with things that might make
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us anxious I was looking at some of Ray Kell's work he's obviously one of the leading futurists in the world and there
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was a chat called um I think it was called Michael Simmons that studied his work and produced some predictions based
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on his predictions and he said that if you're 10 years old now by the age of 60 you'll experience a Year's change at
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today's rate in 10 days exact if you're 40 now you'll experience by the time you get to 60 you'll experience a Year's
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change in 3 months at today's rate and the 21st century will experience I think he said 10,000 years of change which is
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a thousand times more or whatever than the yeah than the previous um century
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and I remember thinking about how how one can navigate that without you know
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losing losing their mind to be honest if if the world is changing at such a speed and you feel dis you surely would feel
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disempowered to some degree yeah uh I mean one of the very first principles of unstress is the idea of limit it's the
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idea of being able to choose what to let in and what not to let in because there is that constant attempt to keep up with
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what's happening uh that uh goes beyond human ability and and in reality uh you
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know I I as I said I I can't even keep up with what's happening I I don't know if you've seen the latest editions of
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Chad jpt or Sora or whatever you can now have full conversations full
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conversations with an engine that appears very human that you know um changes its tonalities that um answers
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in a very clever way that is so political and so well presented you know
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when you ask the the difficult questions it will say things like oh no you know this is subject to human Ingenuity and
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when humans do this they seriously like a machine is so good at giving me the
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answer that politicians give me and and it's quite interesting when you really think that this is last time we spoke
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about uh you know AI was what a year ago yeah yeah there is a point in time where
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your well-being is not uh as a matter of fact all all the
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time your your well-being is not the result of the events happening in your life you know as I said the slogan of
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unstress is it's not the events of your life that stress you it's the way you deal with them that does right and there
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is a point we were chatting before we we started uh filming the you know you and
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I make choices you and I make choices that stress us right and and believe it
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or not we make those choices not because we're not intelligent enough to recognize the impact we make those
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choices because we are so caught up on in that cycle right and that cycle keeps
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speeding up and you get caught up in it and you and I are the kinds of people that you know think a little too much of
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ourselves like I can keep I can keep going I can keep faster I can go faster right I can take more H the truth is no
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I think that I think we're in entering a time of human evolution if you ask me
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where it's about time that you make your well-being your number one top priority
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your number one top priority because it it seems to me that we are all getting
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into forget all of the big picture stuff you know economic and geopolitical and so on but ask me how many of the people
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that you know H friends acquaintances co-workers whatever who are not
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stressed right there there are studies now that will tell you 70 to 80% of
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clinics visits of doctor visits are because of stress related illness right
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this is quite serious and and you know sometimes you look back at covid days
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and you say this is the biggest pandemic of our of our time it's not stress is the biggest pandemic of our time by a
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very very very large margin almost everyone you know is stressed in in in an interesting way
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right now stress in itself is not a bad thing you know if you have a presentation or a or a podcast with an
00:16:35
important person tomorrow and you're preparing for it stress is good for you right but the truth is that we are
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getting to the point where good is turning into burnout it's turning into anxiety it's turning into panic attacks
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it's turning into you know it it really is getting the tall on on you know we're we're all suffering so we have to change
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that we have to find a way where we can actually deal with our world as it is
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because we're not going to be able to change that world so that we're not as stressed by it as as the world is making
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it uh you know sort of dictating to us that we should be that
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stressed in the book you describe stress as the new Addiction mhm why why are we
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addicted to stress it's a status symbol it's a status symbol so there are
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two ways we uh invite stress proudly into our life one one way is I'm busy is
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is a badge of honor now right it's like I'm busy means I'm wanted I'm needed
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okay it means that look at me you know I I have enough to do right and some sadly
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if you're not in that space you start to tell yourself maybe I should be in that space the opposite of of of Sanity if
00:17:54
you ask me right other is because we're unable to sit with our
00:18:01
brains we're unable to Simply say look I'm just going to sit down and reflect
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on the week because if you you know if you start to sit with yourself demons pop up like oh you're not so you're
00:18:15
you're not good enough oh you know they they didn't like you when you said this or right all of the negative thoughts
00:18:20
pop up and interestingly that that psychological discomfort if you want one
00:18:26
of the easiest way Beyond social media one of the easiest ways to get rid of it is to keep your brain busy in something
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else so you keep adding stuff right and and in a very interesting way I think
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you and I both experienced that you make decisions you design your life and then
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the stress follows two and a half months later okay I know for a fact this is my
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fourth book right and even though Alice is really really really doing an amazing
00:18:56
amount of the work that's needed for the book I that burned out every book right
00:19:01
publishing a book is just a grueling job simply because people don't buy books
00:19:07
because of the content that's in them right they buy them because of the marketing that you do about them right
00:19:12
and it's you know it's my biggest job if I want to get a million people out of stress to Simply make them make people
00:19:19
pre-order the book because if they pre-order the book the book pops up on the bestseller list and then a million
00:19:25
people not a million but you know 100,000 people get to see it every day and think about stress right the the
00:19:31
challenge is you know it's going to happen and yet you had a couple of speaking engagements
00:19:37
and four podcast recordings and one trip to do this and right and then in the middle of all of this which actually was
00:19:43
my year this year and you know my mom fell and you know I lost my brother and my sister and you know it was a very
00:19:49
difficult year but I didn't know that this was going to be the case back in November when I was planning my February
00:19:55
and March right and so we're going through those cycles and then suddenly life pops up
00:20:02
and goes like all right let me show you what it is okay and yet you know on the
00:20:09
next book or on the next tour or on the next you know work appointment we just
00:20:15
overload ourselves to the point that is beyond human it's it is if you ask me it
00:20:21
has all of the symptoms of addiction okay it you know it is a a um you know a
00:20:27
a a substance almost that we're using because it justifies to us that
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you know this is the way we should live so what would my workaholic brain
00:20:40
say my workaholic brain would rebuttal youo and say well if I don't load my calendar and if I don't work 100 hour
00:20:47
weeks then I'm going to miss out on my own potential I'm not going to live the
00:20:54
life I could have lived I could I you know if I keep working like this I'm going to be able to get a big plane and
00:21:01
a mansion and a sports car and I'm going to be free and I'm going to have the best holidays and the best food so
00:21:07
that's why I'm doing absolutely not the truth you you know that for a fact that
00:21:13
the week you don't work is the week you are most productive you know that for a fact that
00:21:20
you know that I mean think about it huh I could load my calendar with a million
00:21:25
podcast interviews and that would never allow me the time to write a
00:21:31
book the the the reason why we we we you
00:21:37
you may have a diff you may make a difference to anything to your your your relationship with your loved ones to
00:21:42
your career to your uh you know uh uh a contribution to whatever is because you
00:21:49
allow yourself those spaces in which creativity happens in
00:21:54
which Ingenuity happens in which real connection happens in which you know and and you know that for a fact you know
00:22:01
for a fact that you're heading to Australia that you're going to produce
00:22:07
nothing in that trip other than consuming what you've produced before correct M yeah it's true yeah and
00:22:15
and so and so so the question is where is the balance is the balance is the
00:22:20
balance in me loading my calendar for my potential or is the balance in freeing my calendar for my potential so so this
00:22:28
year here for for example I have uh I struggled with with two things I mean my team is an incredible team who are very
00:22:35
motivated very very hardworking and each carries a separate responsibility right
00:22:41
so they they'd all P pull on my availability right to get things
00:22:47
achieved and so what do they do one will pop up and say I have this incredible guest you know this Steven Bartlet gu is
00:22:53
great guy you should have him on your podcast you're going to be in London that day why don't you invite him over
00:22:58
right and then another will say oh but hold on you know this newspaper wants to talk to you and then a third will say oh
00:23:04
but there is this customer that wants you to speak and and so on right and what ends up happening is that you and I
00:23:12
don't blame you and every one of us when presented with opportunities you go like come on man push yourself a little bit
00:23:19
right two things happen you push yourself to the point where you end up getting burned out okay by the way I say
00:23:25
that with love but especially when you get older like your body just can't take it
00:23:30
anymore right at the same time what ends up happening is that you're uh you're
00:23:36
depriving yourself of the true productivity the true productivity is that 1 hour in the morning where you're
00:23:43
not stressed where your calender is not loaded or you sit down and write the perfect email to someone that changes
00:23:49
something or make the perfect call to someone that does something for you or you write down a concept that fits in
00:23:54
your next book or and so on and so forth and that applies to everyone huh it it is that 1 hour in the morning where I
00:24:00
make my coffee and I sit with Hannah my wife and we connect so deeply right it's
00:24:05
that one hour and the question is how valuable is that how valuable is that hour as
00:24:13
compared to the consumption hours all of the hours where you're being used not to
00:24:19
not to realize your potential but to but to react to potential you've already
00:24:24
achieved and for all of work I mean I when I when I ran my business at Google
00:24:31
H I refused to be in meetings openly I was like why and by the way I encouraged
00:24:39
my people uh the idea of showing up in a meeting is just to say hey by the way
00:24:44
I'm here I clicked in in the morning uh stamped my my entry card or whatever I don't know what you call it in English
00:24:49
but I I attended and I'm alive look at me I'm sending an email just so that you know I exist right I think in my entire
00:24:57
career 12 years at Google I sent four emails I initiated four emails okay yes
00:25:04
I responded to to emails that basically said Mo what do you think of that if an email didn't say mo what did you think
00:25:10
of that I wouldn't respond why they're not asking for my opinion
00:25:15
why should I why why wen't you sending initiating more emails because you initiate one email and you get a
00:25:21
shitload of emails back right and and what's the point right why don't you
00:25:27
just simply tell tell yourself hey by the way I have no need to prove that I exist the proof that I exist is I
00:25:34
deliver my numbers right and so when I when I initiated an email people read it so how
00:25:40
did you get things done then called people phone calls or or walks or
00:25:46
conversations in the corridors or you know a a quick um like hey by the way
00:25:52
what's up with this and we had weekly reviews and we had you know lots of
00:25:57
connections human connections right by the way most of the time nothing
00:26:02
requires you to interrupt the flow most of the time to interrupt the flow of the weekend nothing cannot be discussed in
00:26:08
the weekly review on Monday right and and I think that the reality is that we're creating you we're
00:26:14
saying it's an addiction you're creating all of those circumstances to make it
00:26:20
look like everything is so you know like it's so crucial and
00:26:26
it's so urgent and it's so important because we can squeeze out that 5% more
00:26:32
efficiency yeah I I give up on the 5% more and 95% of the efficiency you can
00:26:39
achieve with 20% of the work I'm trying to figure out if there's you have to
00:26:45
concede that you will be less Innovative productive if
00:26:52
you wean yourself off your stress addiction because this is obviously the B Li I think I have with myself if I'm
00:26:57
honest I think I think I tell myself the story that you know working really really hard working all hours and really
00:27:02
throwing myself into it is because I'm going to get close to my potential and then someday I don't have to work as much my life will be free and these are
00:27:09
the kind of you know narratives I tell myself which as I say them I know I'm like that's embarrassing sorry I am so
00:27:14
sorry i l but but this is this is identical to the story of you know there is this very very interesting Fable of
00:27:20
the billionaire that goes to the to the beach somewhere and he finds a fisherman
00:27:25
and the fisherman goes fishing and he gets two fish you know sells one in the market and then feeds his family the
00:27:31
other one and so the billionaire goes like no no no no no you're you're wrong you're wrong you're you're doing this wrong you should uh you know go get four
00:27:39
fish or as many as you can huh and you know and and basically sell them in the market and he goes like why and he says
00:27:46
then you can buy a bigger boat and what do I do with a bigger boat you buy even more you get even more fish right and
00:27:52
you know what what do I do with that you sell all of it and you get a fleet and you know what do you do with the fleet
00:27:58
you get even more fish and he says why and he goes like then you can retire happily and sit on you know live in a
00:28:05
place near the ocean and go out in your boat every morning and the guy goes like but I'm going out in my boat every
00:28:11
morning already like why are you telling me this story they we've been given a
00:28:16
dream we've been given a dream okay and that dream is more is better faster is
00:28:24
better we've been given a dream that says I need to I need a billion dollars
00:28:29
to feel comfortable not really I mean you're not you're not a fancy guy don't drive up a Lamborghini right so so you
00:28:38
the truth is the truth is we really really really can have a much bigger
00:28:44
impact and impact on what by the way because if the impact is I'm going to
00:28:49
change the world is that a better and more important impact than I'm going to
00:28:55
hug my daughter because think about it huh relatively I'm going to spend time with
00:29:01
my girlfriend or my wife I'm going to you know relatively it's you succeed at what you
00:29:07
set your priority to and is there a balance somewhere is there a balance that says I'm going to limit my
00:29:15
life to achieve impact but the 95% right give up the 5% and save
00:29:23
yourself 80% of the effort Mo most people when when people go to to work I I'm going to say this is
00:29:30
going to upset a lot of people but 80% of the stuff you do at work is just to
00:29:35
prove your life okay 20% of what you do at work
00:29:41
actually achieves the numbers okay that's the truth of all work generated and and in your own day you
00:29:48
know can you actually do it with the objective of I'm going to achieve 100%
00:29:54
of my target 110% of my target but I'm going to do that with the minimum amount
00:30:00
of effort fairly to my employer I'm not cheating anyone I'm delivering is the is the problem that we don't have a Target
00:30:06
because I don't have a Target so for me it's um because I can I should I
00:30:12
maximize whatever I can do to Achieve Financial gains or uh you know followers
00:30:18
gains or numbers on the podcast and so on Amazing Just Add a Target H and say
00:30:25
and I maximize my well-being in the process suddenly the equation becomes incredibly
00:30:30
different it it enables you to do this longer it enables you to do it more
00:30:35
effectively one of the backbone models of unstress is something we call the
00:30:40
Three L's limit learn and lesson right and limit believe it or not is the
00:30:47
absolute core of a lot of what we call nuisances
00:30:52
so so let me try to explain this at a very top level the the the the sources of your of stress in your life uh we
00:31:00
call them a ton of stress t o NN right and you know trauma obsessions nuisances
00:31:06
and noise trauma happens from outside you it's a major change in your life and it hits you so hard and it breaks you
00:31:13
for a short time but believe it or not 91% of people will face at least one but
00:31:22
but often several PTSD inducing traumatic event in their life that's
00:31:28
like the L loss of a loved one or you know losing your job so unexpectedly to to to the point you have to suffer or
00:31:33
whatever okay being in a war zone and so on Believe It or Not 93% of them will
00:31:40
recover within 3 months trauma is not what breaks us right the the interesting
00:31:45
stuff that breaks us is the long application of obsessions nuisances and
00:31:51
Trauma and and and noise obsessions are macro issues that you tell yourself
00:31:58
don't exist in the real world at all okay like I have a belly a little belly so no one will ever love me you can you
00:32:04
can obsess about this for the rest of your life right and and make it your life story and basically create a lot of
00:32:12
stress as a result of that script that you told yourself okay uh you know nuisances are the little ones the little
00:32:19
forms of that you know things that are triggered every day by you passing in front of the of the mirror as you walk
00:32:26
out of the door and you go like um man you're still fat or whatever right believe it or not most of our stress
00:32:34
however comes because of what we call nuisances nuisances are are stressors that don't break you they're not trauma
00:32:41
okay but there are so many of them that you include in your life so many of them when Alice wrote uh uh you know the
00:32:47
limit bit of the of the chapter she she wrote a beautiful script about the first
00:32:53
5 minutes or 10 minutes of your day and she started to count the stressors that you trigger in in your life in those
00:32:58
minutes from the very loud alarm right to the to the you know opening your your
00:33:05
social media and seeing something upsetting or you know open opening WhatsApp and getting a message you don't
00:33:10
like and so on and so forth right and this is five minutes 10 minutes before you even had your coffee you get 10 15
00:33:16
stressors the trick is how beneficial for your life have those been and if
00:33:23
we're aware if we're able to look at those stressors and say hold on I'm going to take an inventory of all of the
00:33:29
things that stressed me last week okay a genuinely honest inventory and I'm going
00:33:34
to tell myself oh by the way I don't need this I don't need this I don't need this I don't need this right my commute
00:33:41
if I leave 10 minutes early would it be easier if I leave 10 minutes late would it be easier if I if I take music or the
00:33:48
diary of the CEO podcast with me would it become easier right and and if you actually attentively deliberately look
00:33:56
at all of the nuances in in your life H how many of them can you limit countless
00:34:03
I promise you you can limit countless nuisances you can remove that friend
00:34:08
that's annoying you okay by simply texting them and saying I don't want to be your friend anymore or or simply
00:34:14
winding down the conversations or when they tell send you something or talk to you about something you go like oh very
00:34:21
interesting right instead of engaging in those things can you can you limit the
00:34:26
you know the the the the amount of junk food you get you let into your life can you limit the amount of restrictions and
00:34:33
control that you apply to yourself in your life and millions of little things a lot of them feel like obligations do
00:34:39
they really yeah yeah do you want to live out of obligation do you know what I mean friendships feel like obligations
00:34:45
we've committed to do something go to an event take part in a charity whatever it is you know and they feel like
00:34:51
obligations now so we we feel like we have to see it through even if it's causing us stress or just Comfort she's
00:34:58
amazing coming from you because you're one of the most shrewd business people I know I'm not even talking about myself
00:35:04
although actually I am talking about myself because some of the things I was thinking about do feel like obligations and I do wish I could just and and and
00:35:11
how do you do that in business Steve I know you really well you'd say you you'd stay you'd say a straight no without
00:35:18
explanation you wouldn't even apologize it's the things that I've already managed to tie myself in because you
00:35:24
know old Steve overestimated future Steve's Capac St old Mo and and future old Steve
00:35:32
stitches up future Steve because you know old Steve is you know super ambitious and he doesn't understand
00:35:37
there's only 24 hours a day and you know look I mean I'm I'm not immune to this I it's actually my biggest issue my
00:35:43
biggest challenge is this beginning of this year I sat down and I realized I had 18 full-time
00:35:52
jobs sounds familiar yeah right and I cut them down to nine
00:35:58
right and I went to everyone I love and I celebrated and I said look I cut them down by 50% and they looked at me and
00:36:04
said they're still nine you must have had to upset some people I I simply said that's it we're
00:36:11
not doing this project you're going to hurt some people's feelings there the truth is by the way I think we're
00:36:17
talking at your your life and my life but this applies to everyone listening right you have this person that
00:36:24
constantly calls you and says hey let's go out for coffee and the coffee is annoying like hell right and you're like
00:36:30
yeah but I've known them for 20 years and they're really lovely I swear to you I had one of my really close wonderful
00:36:38
friends who was really really struggling with his ego so most of the
00:36:44
conversations would be around him trying to prove that he's good enough and I had a
00:36:50
lovely conversation with them I said at the end of one of those coffee meetings I said I think we shouldn't meet again
00:36:58
he said what do you mean you're traveling I said no no every time I sit next to you you make me miserable and he
00:37:03
said why and I said because you're constantly trying to do ab and C can you change that please right simple H if he
00:37:12
managed to change it I would have stayed he didn't manage to change it we met again and I said look I love you very
00:37:19
much and I think we should be friends but not to the point where we meet every Sunday doesn't make any sense for me to
00:37:26
volunteer part of my son Sunday to suffer right and and it is actually
00:37:31
quite possible to do that lovingly by saying look I realize that you are in this stage it's not my responsibility to
00:37:39
take you out of it by the way that's not what friends are for my responsibility as a friend is to be there when you ask
00:37:45
me a specific thing that relates to what you're going through that I'm capable of
00:37:51
providing but just sitting there for 4 hours to listen to something that I'm not able to change doesn't doesn't make
00:37:57
any sense right and some of of our listeners will be stuck in that relationship right
00:38:04
that is really abusive or really not you know effective or and and what are they doing it's an obligation you know we've
00:38:10
been together for years it's you know it's it's he's he or she is not that bad and is that the truth H is you know can
00:38:18
you can you make choices that simply say I will put my well-being my mental
00:38:25
well-being first what is the short-term cost of putting ourselves first because
00:38:31
that's often the thing that prevents us doing it is there is a clear short-term cost I understand the long-term gain
00:38:37
potentially but the shortterm thing is the thing that keeps us in prison so Hannah my my wonderful wife is a
00:38:43
therapist so therapy is not a topic you know psychology is not a topic I I researched heavily uh so she's teaching
00:38:49
me quite a bit and and one of the biggest eye openers for me is that she said we love consistency we hate change
00:38:57
even if change is good for us okay so if we if we uh you know follow a script
00:39:03
that says I am ugly or I am not good enough or whatever changing that script
00:39:11
that script is painful but changing that script is more painful because your your
00:39:17
survival mechanism says I'm familiar with this pain I know how to deal with this pain I don't want the uncertainty
00:39:24
right so so you know the the way we started this this podcast and you asked me what what is the most stressful thing
00:39:30
about the modern world is that unfamiliarity of the future where were unable to to know what it looks like and
00:39:36
so we resist we resist the change we say look I am in this place I know how to do it very well it's hurting my back it's
00:39:42
keeping me on Long flights it's doing this it's doing that but I'm really very familiar with it okay I always make a a
00:39:50
big joke about this when I was leaving Google X so I uh I was um you know obviously
00:39:58
soul for happy was booming one you know my my 1 billion happy mission was 10 million happy when we started the first
00:40:04
print of the book and and 10 million took eight weeks like you have to tell
00:40:10
yourself sorry for my English Google like you know I I have to I have to focus on this right but when I was
00:40:16
leaving Google and Google was so kind to me and I was very fortunate and I made a reasonable amount of money don't have
00:40:23
most of it now anymore but at the time I started to tell myself but what about the future of I am my daughter okay but
00:40:30
what about my ex and her her needs what about this what about that do I have the financial resources to do this typical
00:40:37
engineer I started that spreadsheet okay put every possible expense put every possible uh you know uh um source of
00:40:44
Revenue and so on and it appeared to be okay right and so my brain volunteers to
00:40:49
tell me oh but hold on Mo what if there is a nuclear war because the you know
00:40:56
the IR Iranians don't agree with the Americans and that the nuclear dust comes to Dubai so your real estate
00:41:02
portfolio in Dubai gets wiped out and what will happen then and yeah if you
00:41:07
want to continue to to hold on to your you know safety mechanisms you're going
00:41:14
to end up in a place where there is always something that that could go wrong and the answer was if that happens
00:41:20
I think I'll be a lot a lot more concerned about other things than how much revenue I'm making at the time
00:41:26
right and the truth is for every single one of us we we we are afraid of the
00:41:33
change so we stick to the familiar okay and the familiar could be killing
00:41:39
us and it's quite interesting that we know it could be killing us whatever
00:41:44
scale you are in in the world right you you know you're you're studying something you not you're not enjoying
00:41:49
but it's familiar I went on that path it's been 3 years already right and I'm not saying jump
00:41:55
and say that's it and start over that consistency matters but tell yourself I
00:42:01
have one more year to finish I'll finish this year with with the minimum effort to achieve the result and I'll start to
00:42:07
look at other parts of my Life by reinvesting my hours right I you know you're stuck in that relationship but
00:42:13
dating is horrible I don't want to leave that person around yeah but you know if
00:42:18
it's not working that sooner or later you're going to leave the person right and I think my story and your stories
00:42:24
are great examples of what happens when you leave that person I mean not yours but M mine like when
00:42:29
when you're available so that when the right person shows up you're there if
00:42:35
you're you know your true obligation to yourself is to put yourself in those situations of
00:42:40
uncertainty that you chose calculated risks rather than let the world push you
00:42:46
you know like Alice constantly speaks about the world will always push you to either heal or change direction okay
00:42:53
quite interestingly the the way we write both of us is very very interesting because Alice is you know so soft and
00:42:59
feminine and spiritual in her writing I'm a freaking engineer like everything to me is an equation and a bullet point
00:43:04
and so on so I always say the world will push you to change direction or to learn Brainiac she she says the the
00:43:12
world will push you to change direction or to heal H they're more or less the same but learning is like sort of The
00:43:18
Brainiac process of it and and healing is the so so why not why not get
00:43:24
yourself in the place where the world wants you to be so that you he or change direction why not make that decision
00:43:30
yourself so many of us contend with loss verion don't we and this is I was you
00:43:35
know Daniel kman he passed away I think three or four days ago and he's did he yeah he's a
00:43:40
real amazing writer an amazing thinker he was incredible really really incredible individual that's inspired so
00:43:46
many people including myself in so many ways um but I I remember that paper he produced I think in the 1980s about loss
00:43:52
AV verion I know the the the paintings yeah yeah yeah remember that yeah and in
00:43:57
that in in that work where he discovers this term loss of version he talks about how um humans need the gain to be two to
00:44:05
three times bigger than the thing they lose the possible loss yeah yeah so the pain we experience from losing 10 pounds
00:44:12
on the floor or1 on the floor isn't equal to the pleasure we experien from finding 10 we'd have to find 20 or 30 to
00:44:19
equal the pain of losing 10 and that speaks I think in some part why people stay in the situation they're in because
00:44:25
for me to go after a better relationship it better appear to be two to three times better than the one I'm going to lose or the job it you know has to
00:44:32
appear to be two to three times better than the one I'm sacrificing and that almost Keeps Us pinned down I actually did a bit of research a couple of years
00:44:38
ago as to why we have loss AV verion like what's the evolutionary basis and the best answer I could find was that we
00:44:44
come from a a background of trading with like other rapes and stuff and there was there's often a risk that the person
00:44:50
might not trade back or the you know so we factor that into the trade yeah we factor in the the probability that we
00:44:56
won't it won't be be an equal trade life's not an equal trade we pursue things and we don't get them and I think
00:45:02
that's part of what's holding us in situations aren't serving us and in the stress you describe it's uh it's uh it's surprising
00:45:10
though if you look back at your life and you really take a factual view
00:45:16
of the of the history of your life most of the time when you lost something you opened up a space that allowed something
00:45:21
else to walk in right this is the truth of life right if if you you know if you
00:45:26
lose a job that's the only time where you're allowed to actually find another job it's a shame hindsight doesn't have
00:45:35
the wisdom of foresight because your brain is a survival mechanism your brain
00:45:40
is constantly ignoring all of that all that you've learned and saying there could be a nuclear war right and and
00:45:47
it's quite interesting when you really think about it because I always say if your worst fear have ever fears have
00:45:53
ever happened you wouldn't be here right now okay and by the way if some of them happened surprisingly you're still here
00:46:01
isn't that interesting huh so yes your worst fear happened and you made it
00:46:06
because you never factor in the reality of how resilient you actually are and and I think that the the the trick
00:46:13
really is not is also not not the the fact that we should be a little conservative and cons you know concerned
00:46:20
about certain things but how much of our life should we be concerned about like if you if you really rank the the things
00:46:27
that are important in your life how many of them actually matter enough so that
00:46:32
you don't make the change four five right that but there but we hold on to
00:46:38
200,000 other things below the four or five 200 let's say
00:46:44
2,000 realistically for each and every one of us that you know my Hannah when
00:46:49
Hannah came to my home the first time uh she uh looked at my home and she said oh
00:46:55
Hannah Hannah is my wife yeah uh I fell in love badly badly and and you know and
00:47:02
again because I had space in my life just remember that we're going to talk about that later are we really are we
00:47:08
going to go talk about unstressful at all the the the the when she came to my home the first time she said oh because
00:47:15
she follows my podcast and she knows my works and and so on she said oh you're not a minimalist you're a minimalist
00:47:20
want to be and and I said what do you mean because I am reasonably minimalist right but but she has that uh you know
00:47:29
attitude to things where she says it's only going to come into my life if I truly love it truly love it like you
00:47:36
know I I have 16 types of tea in my uh in my cupboard some of them have never
00:47:43
tasted right she has two but she really loves them right and and I think that's
00:47:49
the trick the trick is when you rank life H you you hold on to that you know
00:47:55
box of Earl gry that you you bought a year ago and you know you're like yeah I'll drink it one day will you really
00:48:02
right you hold on to that friend that you met when you were four and you know yeah this changed you changed right but
00:48:09
we hold on to those things and the trick is can we actually let go of those things can we leave the space for other
00:48:17
things to come in or for us to chill and find expansion in our life right so so I
00:48:23
you know I I I used to have that attitude of trying everything Saturday to to throw 10 things away from my home
00:48:30
okay Believe It or Not endlessly endlessly you can throw 10 10 things or give give away 10 give away 10
00:48:37
things uh from your home you know last Saturday I had this beautiful um uh
00:48:43
humidifier you know just to make the the room a little more uh humid okay and I
00:48:48
was like should I keep it should I throw it away should I keep it should I throw it away and then I plugged it in and it
00:48:53
didn't work I haven't used it for like a year and half and you have to imagine
00:48:58
that so many of those things are there they're bugging you down they're stressing your life so if they're not used they're stressing you and and you
00:49:06
can choose to leave them just leave them behind do you believe that do you believe that if you're not using it even
00:49:11
if it's just sat there that it's stressing you out 100% and it's actually and and you're depriving it of the
00:49:17
opportunity to live so so think about I know this is philosophical but a humidifier is
00:49:24
supposed to humidify right it's it's not supposed to sit there and look pretty if you're not
00:49:30
using it someone else will use it right and believe it or not the simple impact
00:49:35
of when they're using it you save them the the need to actually buy another one
00:49:42
right and in in doing that you might have contributed a tiny bit to our planet and and you know the the hoarding
00:49:49
that we have in our lives the number of things that we keep I you know I I love
00:49:54
Arabic incense h and like everything and you see sometimes silly things like you
00:50:00
know it's so what each of those is like $10 I had like 14 different uh scents
00:50:07
right and then I realized you know what anytime I light an incent I light one okay and when I need to to order another
00:50:15
one I'll get it within one day so when this one is about to finish and I've
00:50:20
really enjoyed it really loved it I'll order another one limit you're you're supposed to constantly limit the number
00:50:27
of things in your life by the way you know you you may think it's not taking away from your life but it's taking
00:50:33
space it's taking attention it's taking the space of something else it's you know requiring you to deal with it clean
00:50:39
it dust it it's just why is this what you refer to in that stress quadrant
00:50:46
from unstress as noise noise no noise is what happens from within your head okay so it's
00:50:53
little stressors H that you don't uh that that don't happen in the real
00:50:58
world okay it's little stressors that you know when I'm when I'm uh uh looking
00:51:06
at myself in the mirror or when I'm driving and thinking about oh you messed up on that thing right it's it's
00:51:12
generated so the the ton of stress is very straightforward it is uh external and internal macro and micro so if you
00:51:19
look at stress coming from within you or from outside you right internal and external and if you look at it coming
00:51:26
from a small reason of stress or a big reason of stress the the great example
00:51:31
is trauma is macro external macro meaning it's a very very high stressful
00:51:38
impact uh you know very significant comes from outside you we don't cause ourselves trauma something else causes
00:51:44
us trauma right that trauma capital T here huh and and and yeah so it's noise
00:51:50
is micro it's like that constant nagging in your head like you know you you need
00:51:56
to uh your hair is starting to show white like so constant nagging it's like you're getting old okay it's it's small
00:52:04
it doesn't kill you but if you say it every day starts to become uh quite
00:52:10
significant which actually is really I think the most interesting part of of stress is to understand that stress is
00:52:17
very good for you right until it kills you and I think what most people don't
00:52:22
understand is that there are only three ways where stress will break you one is trauma outside you but we said you'll
00:52:28
recover very quickly the other is burnout and the third is anticipation of stress okay and these two are completely
00:52:35
within your control so trauma is outside your control but 93% will recover in 3
00:52:41
months 96% will recover in 6 months and most of us will actually get post-traumatic growth so postt trauma
00:52:48
you'll be fine okay the majority of how stress kills us is burnout which is a
00:52:55
large very large number of small stressors so the burnout equation as I wrote it in the book is the number of
00:53:02
stressors multiplied by the intensity of each multiplied by the time of application of each multiplied by the
00:53:07
frequency of application so take a commute for example if if you commute is
00:53:13
one stressor multiplied by if it's a two hours commute and it's very annoying and
00:53:19
you're surrounded by people it's very intense okay and if you have to do it twice a day it's very different than if
00:53:24
you do it four times a day okay and if you have to do it every day it's very different than if you have to do it once
00:53:30
a week so you add all of those up the sigma of all of those when that reaches
00:53:35
the breaking point of what you can carry as a human you'll break right and and and normally you'll break because of a
00:53:42
tiny thing like your best friend goes like hey chubby and you go like what I
00:53:48
can't take this anymore and you can cannot take out go go out of of bed anymore you know previously you would go
00:53:53
like yeah skinny whatever you you would just laugh about about it and and I think the trick
00:53:59
is is to to say save yourself from burnout it's not that what one L
00:54:05
stressor right it's it is all of the other 400 stressors that piled up so
00:54:12
that when that last one is applied you break right and and it's it is quite interesting because we know we normally
00:54:19
never break because of stress it's not the event that breaks us okay so so one
00:54:26
of of the interesting topics and unstress is is of course Alice in her very spiritual soft you know um um um
00:54:34
practice approach you know wrote her her parts of the book and I was like Alice I I just still don't get it and and she
00:54:41
she said what don't you get and and in my Approach I said in physics right
00:54:46
stress is very defined stress is very clear in physics right your an object is
00:54:51
stressed when you uh uh when you stress an object you apply a force to a square area to the cross-section of the object
00:54:59
right the object the stress is not just the the result of the force it's not the
00:55:05
external stressor the external challenge or threat that we face that stresses us
00:55:10
it's your square area that also plays in that equation so basically our stress as
00:55:17
humans if you apply the same concept of physics is the intensity of the challenges that you face divided by the
00:55:25
skills and resources es and the abilities that you have to deal with that stress right so the stress equation
00:55:32
is your you know the challenge divided by the resources okay and that's why
00:55:38
someone you know like you may be able to carry things that would make someone
00:55:43
freak out it's it's the reason why someone like me would you know laugh
00:55:49
about things that made me freak out in my 20s right because you not because the event is different it's because you
00:55:55
increased your resource so how does someone increase their resources because I think everybody
00:56:00
listening to this now either they're that person or they know someone who um flaps yeah when things get a little bit
00:56:08
tricky they flap yeah so and when I'm saying flap if you don't know what I'm saying I mean like they Panic or they
00:56:15
they worry or they have like a bit of a panic and worry is a different topic we should absolutely cover that right so so
00:56:20
panic and worry is is breaking down under the anticipation of threats yeah okay but but but it when it comes to
00:56:28
dealing with stress right you know I don't know how to say it but someone in
00:56:34
at at work when I used to be in the corporate world would walk in and say oh the CEO has changed you know we've been
00:56:40
working on this deal for the last N9 month and the CEO has changed everything has collapsed and I'm like no it hasn't
00:56:47
no I've done 200 deals in my life where the CEO has changed and you have to rebuild your network and you have to do
00:56:52
this and that and so on I mean I think the most valuable example I remember in my life is to the 2008 crisis so when I
00:56:59
joined Google uh my boss which I really adore at the time he was so direct and
00:57:05
very shrewd and so the introduction when I joined the management meeting the first day is he says hey everyone this
00:57:11
is Mo he's bringing the average age of the company up and I was like one more sentence please like please say
00:57:17
something else he didn't that was it the introduction is he's bringing the average age of the company up but when
00:57:22
the economic crisis of 2008 happened Google completely panics and the older
00:57:28
group goes like it's not the first time we've seen economic crisis before it's cyclical this is what happens maybe we
00:57:34
should behave this way right it's the same event but you have more resources because you've seen it over and over
00:57:40
right so it's your accountability as a person to tell yourself that I need to learn the
00:57:47
techniques okay that I need to understand to be able to manage stress
00:57:52
and and the way we we wrote them in and unstress is we said you get stressed in four modalities you get stressed
00:57:58
mentally get stressed emotionally physically or spiritually okay and each
00:58:04
of those is a different I don't know how to say a different language course so
00:58:09
your mental stress speaks to you and responds to you in a language that is different than your emotional stress
00:58:16
it's different than your physical stress that's different than your spiritual stress okay but if you learn that
00:58:22
language H then you can easily deal with that stress when it happens
00:58:29
okay and it's simple techniques like you know we probably should cover as many of them as we can but take the simplest
00:58:35
thing mental stress is the kind of stress that wakes you up at 4:00 a.m. at night because a thought is running through your head you can't stop it
00:58:42
right simple techniques are write the thought down okay promise yourself that
00:58:47
you're going to think about it in the morning before you go to bed and most of the time if you
00:58:52
simply let the thought reside on paper it won't res in your head okay and keep
00:58:58
the promise so when you wake up the next morning actually think about that thought that you that you made the
00:59:03
promise to your brain that you will simple technique and there are hundreds of those like you know we have in in the
00:59:10
mental stress space for example we have something we call the gy g y m m m m mm so eight eight different practices right
00:59:17
and and and the trick here is learn that technique apply that
00:59:23
technique and you will be able to deal with stress a little bit better okay and
00:59:29
you know creating a support network your ability to uh question your thoughts you
00:59:35
know I have a technique that we I call meat Becky the idea that you allow your brain to express things and share them
00:59:41
rather than block them and so on and so forth right and and and that skill in mental stress is very very different
00:59:48
than emotional stress okay because your brain speaks to you all the time it rarely ever if if if at all ever tells
00:59:55
you the truth that's the language that your brain speaks it only tells you what it thinks is the truth okay your
01:00:00
emotions speak to you all the time and it's always the truth right if if you're
01:00:06
afraid you're afraid there's no there's no lying about that okay but the problem
01:00:11
is that emotions are so subtle they're so Blended they're brush Strokes of multiple emotions overlaid on each other
01:00:18
and we're told not to acknowledge them at all so we don't even respond to the language right your body speaks in in in
01:00:26
in aches and and pains okay what why that smile before you go to Australia
01:00:33
right but but but yeah but we ignore it completely we go like this is normal this is it's normal to have aches and
01:00:38
pains you know I'm traveling for 16 hours must have aches and pains right no
01:00:44
you you must not you you you you have aches and pains because you're stressing your body okay but if your body is your
01:00:50
priority you're not going to have the aches and pains right your spirit would cry through intuition I mean Spirit here
01:00:57
is not a religious thing right but your non-physical part call it your Consciousness the part that doesn't
01:01:04
relate to your physical form okay it sends you signals all the time related to your purpose and what you're supposed
01:01:10
to be doing through your intuition how many of us listen to our intuition when we're running through life and and so
01:01:17
when these are skills this is the entire body of the book the skills of how do you build your your
01:01:24
resources in terms of spotting by listening to the language that the modality speaks to you spotting that
01:01:31
you're being stressed and then how do you actually speak back to it and deal with it with the resources that you need
01:01:37
so that you you're not that stressed anymore how do we how do we know how do we spot our own stress because it's it's
01:01:44
hard isn't it when we've told ourselves a different story about the feeling or
01:01:49
that sensation we tell ourselves different stories about it we say you know this this is this AAL pain is good
01:01:55
because it means growth or this burnout or this anxiety is good because it means you know productivity but how do we
01:02:02
truly know that we are we've pushed ourselves too far and I think the the easiest one to
01:02:09
recognize believe it or not is physical stress right physical stress is undeniable it is when you when you when
01:02:17
you when you have a th a sore throat you know something's wrong yeah and you tell
01:02:22
yourself something's wrong okay when you have back pain you know something's
01:02:27
wrong yeah but you don't tell yourself something's wrong okay and the SYM the the the the symptoms of physical stress
01:02:34
are very straightforward you know digestive issues headaches uh you're unable to sleep very well you're unable
01:02:40
to rest when you sleep and so on and so it's very simple your body theoretically is a machine that should work
01:02:48
seamlessly okay unless there is a a disease or an illness or whatever it should work seamlessly should simply be
01:02:55
like a a luxury car you run it and it runs right if it starts to shake and you know and it it's not performing well you
01:03:02
have to stop and say what is going on and every every stress will give you a a
01:03:08
slightly different physical signature right anxiety is felt in your stomach
01:03:14
right you know uh uh fear is all over your body you just want to run you feel
01:03:19
that like you can feel it the trick is how do you get embodied how do you allow yourself H to sit with
01:03:27
your body and say so you know Alice writes about a very normal practice is a body scan and so few of us do it you you
01:03:35
know on a long flight you should sit with your body and go like okay close your eyes you know take a deep breath
01:03:42
and scan your body from your top of your head all the way to your toes and see
01:03:48
where it hurts right and and ask yourself how much more effective in your mission
01:03:54
would you be if it doesn't hurt I think this is the the part that a lot of
01:04:00
Workaholics you know you described it as an addiction earlier now if you sat down with someone who had another form of
01:04:05
addiction and told them this like logically they'd refuse it yeah they'd say yeah I know this injecting this
01:04:12
thing in me is bad but addictions are complicated emotional states aren't they they're like deep
01:04:19
psychological emotional states and obviously there's a chemical element to it but but often we find um that that
01:04:25
there's a trauma or there's an underlying issue with self-esteem or whatever it might be that's causing it
01:04:32
so although there's many people listening to this now including myself that go okay I know what you're saying is true but I part of me thinks I'm a
01:04:41
little bit dragged and not very driven so I never had much control
01:04:48
you but but that's kind of what I imagine a lot of people's like rebuttal is to that is like yeah I know this like
01:04:53
someone said to me before that you know you know I'm embodying the listener now people have told me that I need to stop
01:04:59
and I'm thinking of some of my best friends some of my best friends are literally like they're killing themselves because of their work and
01:05:05
like objectively if you ask them they'd say I'm killing myself because of this work what's your favorite
01:05:11
band I think is Kanye and I have to separate the art from the individual for
01:05:17
reasons but it's the it's the art it's the pushing boundaries making things that are unapologetically unique you
01:05:24
know this already makes this episode quite a very useful one uh but uh but uh
01:05:31
theoretically if Kanye is performing in London tonight yeah would you go yes
01:05:36
yeah you'd find the time yeah yeah it's a lie we tell ourselves we're too busy
01:05:43
it's a lie we're not okay anyone who's too busy has not watched Game of Thrones
01:05:52
because if you allowed yourself to watch Game of Thrones that's like 600 hours of of your life okay you're not too busy
01:05:59
right anyone who's too busy this is the interesting bit the interesting bit is if you are too busy okay when you get
01:06:07
home you're unable to do anything right and you waste 3 hours binge watching something or completely
01:06:14
brain dead right the truth is that those three hours are wasted three hours you
01:06:20
could actually waste them through during the day they're wasted anyway and use them differently when you get home
01:06:26
the the truth is not we're not too busy and the problem is this and I I I rarely
01:06:31
ever use threats as a motivation but the problem is you're going to put in the
01:06:37
time you're going to put in the time by working on your stress beforehand or
01:06:43
lying in bed when you're burnt out that's the truth the truth is your you know the body keeps the score you know
01:06:49
the book right eventually your body is going to go can't do this anymore right
01:06:55
your mind is going to say I just I I just can't deal with this and even I'm
01:07:01
I'm you know I'm theoretically trained in this my whole life I've managed very
01:07:08
very complex very stressful jobs I I run so many things at the same time and I
01:07:14
will tell you openly I burn out at the end of every book launch I'm hoping this
01:07:20
year I'm not okay but but that's the truth the truth is I will eventually
01:07:26
after running really hard for 3 weeks I will eventually spend a week and a half unable to do anything on average that
01:07:33
means I worked a week and a half so why did you keep doing it to yourself I I because of what you're because of what
01:07:38
you and I struggle with we assigned to ourselves things beforehand right this year I'm saying I
01:07:46
may not get there why because when I'm publishing uh so we're we're filming
01:07:51
this long before unstressful right and at the same time when the publication
01:07:57
date happens I'm doing nothing during those two weeks or two and a half weeks
01:08:02
nothing but unstress very unlike the typical me right the typical me thinks
01:08:08
of himself as Superman I'm super old man now right and it's quite interesting
01:08:14
because at at the end of the day if I can if I plug so many things in my life
01:08:20
eventually eventually believe it or not you balance it out what about the people
01:08:27
who really don't have a choice is there anybody that doesn't have a choice you know I'm thinking about the people that work on the factory line and they're
01:08:35
providing they're working two jobs providing for a family that are you know struggling what about those people first
01:08:40
of all I think these are the most honorable commended people that we can ever talk about but I will before I talk
01:08:47
about them I'll ask you to think about how blessed you are okay and everyone who's not in that
01:08:53
position uh anyone who's not not in a war zone anyone who was not uh born to a
01:09:00
very very difficult circumstances right if you're not one of those then ask
01:09:05
yourself why are you pushing yourself so hard right now if you're one of those
01:09:12
people remember it's limit learn and listen okay if your external
01:09:18
circumstances don't you're not able to change them you can ex you can you can change your ability to deal with
01:09:25
distress no I have to ask you a question you know me you you've come to know me
01:09:30
we've known each other for years now you know you've observed my life you kind of understand all the pieces in my life you
01:09:35
understand what I do here you've also seen behind the scenes you know how obsessive I am about the things that I'm involved in um what is the that
01:09:42
I'm telling myself of all the people that could like do you know you know you know what I'm saying like i' I've actually pondered this for some time
01:09:48
because I do have moments where I go Steve you don't have to work anymore you don't have to you're not going to like
01:09:54
nothing I'm going to accomplish my life is going to make me any more anything really to myself it's not going to it's
01:10:00
not going to make me happier that's for sure it's not going to mean that I can live better in anyway so why am I like
01:10:05
why am I doing this what is the I'm telling myself you don't have a
01:10:12
ceiling your structure doesn't have a seiling so I told you before we before
01:10:18
we uh we started uh this conversation so you and I uh make a reasonable amount of
01:10:24
revenue from speaking engagements for example so my my policy was very straightforward when I started uh my
01:10:30
mission 1 billion happy I openly said I'm going to go to any place that has more than 50 people and I'm going to
01:10:36
speak for free right and then I met my wonderful business manager Monir and mon said that's not right I said what do you
01:10:43
mean and he said if it's a profit making organization okay uh that's going to
01:10:49
hire you or if it's a paying event so they're going to use you and then sell
01:10:54
tickets you should charge them okay that's the cycle the complete cycle of Life otherwise go and speak for free
01:11:01
right and that tiny change created Revenue right the question is how much
01:11:07
revenue is enough because I was willing to do it for free remember that so in my
01:11:14
conversation with mon very very professional also a brother to me said
01:11:19
M he said this is the target for this year I said if I give you the Restriction of 20 travel days for the
01:11:26
year or 20 trips basically would you be able to make that Target he said well in
01:11:32
that case we're going to have to change the Dynamics and we're going to have to maybe can can we make them 25 no I said
01:11:38
20 trips a year okay everything else I can do online everything else I can do
01:11:43
right the question is where's the ceiling the boundary where's the boundary right and
01:11:49
boundaries are not set by the world for you the world will keep pushing you
01:11:55
right you you and I talk about our lives which are not typical lives but where's
01:12:00
the boundary if or any of our listeners where's your boundary with your friends okay where's your boundary with
01:12:07
the arguments with your partner where's your boundary with you know the the the
01:12:13
challenges that you um are willing to accept uh at work right where's your
01:12:19
poundies let me play Devil's Advocate then so you made a limit you know you said I'll do what's it 20 yeah 20 20
01:12:26
trips a year you'll do 20 trips a year okay so Devil's Advocate would be well
01:12:33
Mo if you did 40 or if you did 30 you'd make x amount
01:12:40
more money and that money can be put towards your mission of making a million
01:12:45
people unstressful if you just did a little bit more you'd be closer to achieving your mission the truth is H if
01:12:53
I made only 20 and I created a program online I'd create more revenue of from
01:12:58
that and I can put that uh uh you know Revenue to unstress but it would reach more people at the same time do you
01:13:05
think part of this I was just thinking as you SE interrupt but I was thinking I think part of it with me is I'm really
01:13:10
good at measuring it's really easy if we use the case of speaking appointments it's really easy to measure the gain and
01:13:16
it's very difficult to measure the loss or the cost yeah you're you're constantly driven by opportunity cost
01:13:22
yeah if if you sell your health and well-being for Revenue it's always
01:13:29
opportunity cost it's always opportunity cost it's always but they're paying me X
01:13:34
how can I leave that on the table okay you leave that on the table because you don't need
01:13:40
X right and two because X the true cost of X is not 3
01:13:46
hours or an hour that you speak the true cost of X is your well-being your health
01:13:54
what you're selling H is your time is your joy is your health that's what
01:14:01
you're selling you're not selling your intellectual property and your relationships and your relationships
01:14:07
okay I I I told you I fell in love and suddenly everything became very different because in all honesty H yeah
01:14:16
I'd lose a speaking engagement to spend an an extra day with my wife we have the
01:14:21
most incredible conversations right she enlight me on so many different ways and
01:14:27
I can promise you you know Finders Keepers my my book about love when I sit with
01:14:33
Hannah and she and she teaches me about
01:14:39
psychology and the impact of psychology on dating that wasn't part of my my my
01:14:45
Approach at all okay so believe it or not that day is eventually going to create a book or or a training or
01:14:52
whatever that's going to change more people's life H than anything I could do with money Remember by the way the other
01:14:59
side of this is that our biggest resource you know when when when we were at Google I had this conversation at a
01:15:07
point in time with people and I said why does google.org contribute money why
01:15:12
don't we contribute code we're so much better at producing code uh than any other organization that
01:15:20
can contribute money can can we write Disaster Recovery uh uh uh software can we write this can we can we quote that
01:15:27
that be becomes our contribution right what is your
01:15:33
contribution I would say I I love you you're you're so dear to me I I'd say you're not observing the
01:15:40
season your first contribution in your 20s was you with your energy with your
01:15:48
drive I mean look at your books more and more and more maturity
01:15:53
more and more deliverables very C L thought through look at what you do here
01:15:58
if you don't mind me saying Steve this is your biggest contribution right this could happen in
01:16:08
a week a quarter now you you do two a week yeah yeah mad absolutely
01:16:15
mad absolutely mad I'm I love you but to a week you're stressing yourself and
01:16:20
you're stressing the listeners only reason why you you do two a week is
01:16:27
because it gives you more views where's the rush and it's your life that's being traded for
01:16:35
listeners so you're saying I'm I'm so I'm I I know you really well you know how you love your
01:16:41
girlfriend how much time did you spend with her in the last quarter not enough
01:16:47
and and and how much of it was completely attentively restful oh my God
01:16:52
H even less yeah I I I flew over here with my daughter so my daughter was in
01:16:58
Dubai she she came to London with me best 9 hours
01:17:04
ever ever okay what would I have been doing with that time on the flight writing thinking responding to emails
01:17:11
what a waste of life what a waste of
01:17:17
life you see the trick is H we said that the stress equation is the external
01:17:23
challenges divided by the resources you have to deal with them how many of the external challenges do we
01:17:32
create how how many of those do we invite in our life how many of those are the result of us not setting
01:17:41
boundaries and the question is is to to achieve
01:17:47
what to achieve what right I I had a very dear friend of
01:17:53
mine that uh uh was in a relationship that was horrible okay and I said why
01:17:59
are you there and she said well we share the same apartment can't leave him because you know I can't afford rent on
01:18:06
my own I said roommate like where is how is that
01:18:12
challenging okay how is that challenging why would you allow yourself to go through this when there are
01:18:20
alternatives I was I was wondering if people's childhood plays a big role in
01:18:26
their bias towards you know this work holism this sort of self-inflicted um stress
01:18:34
disease that many of us put ourselves through because you know like first and second generation immigrants who where
01:18:40
their mother or their father was fighting for survival they almost like inherit that belief that life and work
01:18:47
is about survival um even though it's not objectively true anymore it's not objectively true for me but I still feel
01:18:53
like I've got my mother's survival thing in me and coupled with that I've got a lot of like shame from
01:19:00
being different when I was younger and trying to fit in and being the only black kid and chemically relaxing my
01:19:05
hair and listening to the cooks and the Arctic Monkeys to pretend I was a white you know rich person those the only two
01:19:11
bands I know because those are the on those are the ones I used to pretend to listen to and I just wonder for those
01:19:17
people it feels like you know when I said how am I bullshitting myself earlier to you I was expecting you to
01:19:23
say something about you you think I you would say to me I think
01:19:30
that I've con I've connected my work to my self-esteem or my self-worth in some
01:19:36
deep way and I'm still trying to fight for my like sense of self-worth I'm still trying to convince myself that I'm
01:19:41
enough with my work and people you know this is what this is in some respects
01:19:47
why we all just like take the promotion we take the opportunity I think about this who's like how many people decline
01:19:53
a promotion because they consider the implications of what they'll have on their family or their you know one of my
01:19:59
favorite chapters in happy sexy millionaire was how you quit your CEO
01:20:05
job yeah and and you when you really look at that you basically were saying
01:20:12
it's killing me there was no joy in it anymore yeah and it's quite interesting
01:20:17
the the CH the challenge for most of us humans is that we're very capable on
01:20:22
achieving what we set our mind to the question is always what do we set our mind
01:20:28
to okay if if you ask me you're in a in a treadmill yeah you're like you know
01:20:35
that hamster wheel yeah okay and there is no ceiling so the hamster wheel is
01:20:41
basically saying I'm here I'm going to R run like mad I'm really I'm a very good
01:20:46
hamster okay and and as long as you're in in that wheel you're going to run run like M and you're very capable you keep
01:20:52
running to achieve what what that's the whole question when do we put our
01:20:59
well-being in the equation
01:21:04
later yeah so I I'll tell you very openly one of the most interesting thoughts I have in my life uh who did I
01:21:12
interview recently I don't remember but remember when we spoke about heartbeats yeah okay
01:21:19
uh um heartbeats are your only resource H
01:21:24
you're this is the only asset you come to the world with right and you may think you know you're healthy you're um
01:21:33
you know athletic that you have let's say 40 more years of full energy truth
01:21:40
that's true but how many more years do you have in your 20s none gone right and the question is
01:21:49
how many more years will you have in your 30s because this is this season of life
01:21:56
is very different okay I hope I'll be able to continue to contribute for maybe
01:22:03
10 15 more years right how many will I be able to contribute with the same
01:22:09
sharpness of mind and the same ability to beat the
01:22:16
machines right three that that's when it starts to
01:22:22
become quite interesting I I told you this story before when when when my son Ali died sat next to me my
01:22:30
ex-wife she was flipping through a um photo album she said uh oh my God he was such
01:22:38
a beautiful infant and then he died I was like what is she talking about like he died when
01:22:45
he was 21 and she said and then he became this beautiful child as she's flipping through the album and then he
01:22:52
died and then this young man showed up the teenager and then the teenager died right and and and
01:23:00
and I just couldn't get what she's saying until eventually she said and then there was this handsome tall
01:23:07
wonderful man and that actually really died okay and the truth is my son as an
01:23:14
infant was there for 2 years you pass those two years you never get them again never get them again
01:23:22
right then you know he starts to mess his words and is so funny and so loving and so you know cuddly but he does that
01:23:30
for two years and then they're gone and you never get them again and and you you you know you get
01:23:37
the child but then the child becomes the teenager and you never get any of them again and yet we tell ourselves
01:23:44
yeah fine fine fine when I'm done building whatever it is that I set
01:23:50
myself as an objective objective to to build I'll hug them
01:23:55
oh my God I promise you I was sitting I hope a doesn't listen to this was sitting next to a in the on the
01:24:02
flight asking myself why the F did I not take her on every
01:24:07
flight your daughter yeah why did I not take her on every flight like what more
01:24:14
joy could I get in life and and and the reasons why are because of illusions
01:24:21
that we tell ourselves oh no no know I'm busy oh no this this it's expensive oh
01:24:27
no you know she needs to focus on this oh seriously and by the way I'm not being
01:24:33
the the the stupid romantic that's it's like oh it's all about connection it's not but it need you need a certain
01:24:39
balance of connection I I I I looked at a and I said you know we've been working with a
01:24:45
recently on her financial uh um you know capabilities and how to manage money and
01:24:51
how to invest and right that why should that prevent me from
01:24:57
taking her shopping one of the biggest Joys I always had when she was in Canada and I used to go visit her was we would
01:25:04
go out shopping and she'd buy those that beautiful pair of jeans or whatever those shoes or whatever you know Adidas
01:25:10
made this new thing it's going to make a buy it baby right and I was capable of
01:25:15
of doing that and and the trick was H why did I stop because I changed my
01:25:22
objective so why do you do what you do Stephen is
01:25:28
because your objective is set to maximize without a
01:25:33
ceiling okay your objective is driven by your young
01:25:38
years I say that with a ton of respect that said there is a possibility that
01:25:44
there is nothing at all so I might as well have as much as I can
01:25:50
okay it doesn't matter you know I I I always said that about Ali yeah I used to I used to save for Ali invest for Ali
01:25:59
issue insurance policies for Ali and start businesses in the majors that he
01:26:05
used to go through in University right so Ali changed Majors three times every time he he he he
01:26:11
changed Majors I would start a business in that major so that when he graduates he runs it okay and then Ali dies how
01:26:19
many assurances how many of those assurances worked for Ali okay how many of those assurances allowed me to spend
01:26:26
the time with Ali do you realize that do you realize that while life is supposed to be lived
01:26:34
we spend most of it planning to live
01:26:41
it okay and once again I I I hope that this is doesn't alienate people because
01:26:47
that applies at every single level it applies at the level of that fisherman that goes out to buy to get
01:26:53
two fish one for his family and one for his business and two is enough the fear of
01:27:01
I'm not going to get fish tomorrow is what would drive him to get three okay but by the way if you get three you
01:27:07
might get you might not get fish tomorrow and after tomorrow so now you need four but what if you don't fish for
01:27:14
a week where is the ceiling are you saying as well then in order to create that ceiling or boundary we all need to
01:27:21
know our we need to know our ceiling but you also need to know our minimum you need to know what you need
01:27:28
yeah what you need what do I need you black T-shirt what do you need H gosh
01:27:36
well it it somewhat depends because when you've you're running a bunch of
01:27:42
different businesses and stuff like that do you need to run a bunch of business and different businesses good no I don't
01:27:47
need to but when you are you you you kind of you raise what you need right because you then need you need to make
01:27:52
sure you make you bringing in certain amounts of capital and you can pay everybody and but I don't need to start the businesses in the first place so if
01:27:58
I just did this podcast and I stripped it all back I wouldn't I wouldn't need much I'd have so much free time it's
01:28:05
unbelievable if I just did this podcast oh my God so have like well of the seven
01:28:11
days a week I'd have about five spare correct you you'd basically film for two
01:28:17
weeks a quarter yeah two two podcasts or three podcasts a day and that's it then what
01:28:24
but the problem is with that free time I just fill it that's the other one I just start writing books and I just make you know find the question is that the real
01:28:32
problem is we're not able to sit with our brains yeah so we keep ourselves
01:28:39
busy yeah yeah but but there's studies that show this you remember that famous
01:28:44
study where they ask people if you'd rather sit and wait for 15 minutes or give yourself an electric shock mhm and
01:28:50
a staggering amount of people gave themselves the electric shock because they rather some stimulation than did I
01:28:56
ever tell you the story about my entry into la oh oh my God Jack the passport
01:29:01
there oh well I went through that a week ago did you they put me in Immigration for five five six hours I lost my
01:29:08
passport but I've been in there twice now and you can't touch your phone you can't touch your phone you can't they
01:29:14
they so so they sat me down for N9 hours to find the reason why they shouldn't
01:29:19
let me in and then they put me in detention for 30 37
01:29:25
hours best 37 hours of my life because I walked in and I
01:29:30
immediately said silent Retreat I'm just going to meditate and sleep and relax and rest okay and I
01:29:37
would do eight hours of silence and then get up and joke with the with we were wonderful security people okay by the
01:29:44
way it's you know the system that put me there it's not the people and I would get up and joke with them and then sit for eight hours of Silence right
01:29:51
practically though H how does someone who's listening to this now that has built that life you know where they're
01:29:58
in the corporate world and they're the managing director of this fund or whatever they are they're listening to
01:30:03
this now they're on their way to work on the tube or the plane or the train or whatever and they've built up all of these like commitments so they getting
01:30:10
the whatsapps they're getting the emails they're getting the Pates instructor checking you they've built that
01:30:16
noise into their life how do they set about unpacking it without like destroying their life you can do it
01:30:22
granular or you can do it at micro levels so limit remember limit learn and listen limit the first module the first
01:30:30
ability is what can I limit 80% of that person's life is not
01:30:36
needed okay 80% of the money unless you give your money to charity is a waste of
01:30:42
resources because you cannot buy you cannot enjoy two cars at the same time you cannot enjoy two beds at the same
01:30:47
time you cannot simple really huh and and the the the trick is this you can
01:30:53
add the micro level H tell yourself I I met uh when I was in my chief business
01:30:58
Officer of Google X I met uh this wonderful uh CEO who uh you know
01:31:04
basically I appeared so chill and I asked him and I said how are you so chill and he said I do only four
01:31:11
meetings a day at most each is an hour okay nothing less nothing more he said
01:31:18
and I said how and he said I'm a CEO if I do meetings that are shorter than an
01:31:24
hour they're too operational okay if I do meetings that are longer than an hour they haven't figured it out yet okay I'm
01:31:31
I'm so sorry Steve but how much of your business can be run by Oliver okay uh
01:31:37
you know your CEOs should run that business but but but again I don't want
01:31:42
to limit this to the top business people of the world how much of your
01:31:48
life as a Salesman so so my sales team would work would walk in to my uh my
01:31:54
review meetings and they would present 12 opportunities every week and I would
01:32:00
go like okay I'm going to focus on number one and number four don't talk to me about the other 10 they go like why
01:32:06
why this is like a billion dollars of business and I'm like yeah but this is enough those are more difficult those
01:32:13
customers are interested we can serve them better if you serve them better you're going to close the deal right go
01:32:19
do two and by the way if there are 12 we should hire more sales people but if you focus on two you'll do 110%
01:32:27
of your target what's better than that and normally what ends up happening is they focus they continue to focus on all
01:32:34
12 and you know what happens that portfolio approach reality hits you're
01:32:40
running a portfolio so that 10 of them will fail and two will run will happen you lose the 10 that's the reality right
01:32:47
you're spreading yourself so thin that that that 10 of them are not getting your attention anyway they're just
01:32:53
bothering you in the back of your mind and you lose the 10 so instead of to run three 50% buffer okay Devil's Advocate
01:33:01
again here I'm thinking about the listener who every entrepreneur that they admire every person they admire
01:33:09
lies it's lies and you're contributing to it my friend no but I'm trying to I'm really trying to how many of those
01:33:15
people we know all of them how many of them are happy oh my God that's a different question I mean how many of
01:33:21
them are well so here's what I was going to say is
01:33:26
when you hear about the people you admire and that first year or two in starting the thing that they went on to
01:33:33
do that maybe even gives them fulfillment now you know all of those people will say there was no work life
01:33:39
balance at the start we had to work really hard um and that's just the way it is I was working in a call center I
01:33:45
was building my business on the side I had to work until midnight or else I would I respect that I couldn't have left the call center I respect that
01:33:51
that's me that's what I tell people I gave not working in the call center anymore I'm not no but for for that
01:33:57
first year or two if you want to do year or two fine okay okay fine but the LIE
01:34:03
is it's never ending I I I I told you openly for every one of us not just you there's no ceiling there's no
01:34:12
preview there's no pre-plan of when I reach this it's enough 20 trips is
01:34:17
enough yeah okay you know what happens when you when you limit yourself to 20 trips your Val becomes higher yeah you
01:34:26
make the same amount of Revenue okay you you know what happens when you limit yourself to two deals you
01:34:32
serve the customer better you know what happens when you limit yourself to five friends they become real friends you go
01:34:39
out and meet them instead of text them so you're saying cancel the third podcast a week who you're going to launch are you going to do a third
01:34:46
podcast a week I I struggled with that too because I've been trying to build an Arabic
01:34:52
podcast for a while yeah which I have to say is needed in the region yeah okay really needed the region of 350 million
01:34:59
people and and in reality I'm one of the few that can run an Arabic podcast that's as as successful as slow-mo right
01:35:06
but the cost of that podcast is my health so there will be a moment in my life where one of my projects will be
01:35:13
handed over and the Arabic podcast will show up but I sat with the person that were I was working on this with and I
01:35:19
said look just it's it's not going to be right if I do it now 52 more episodes a
01:35:27
year beyond my capabilities think about
01:35:33
one kickass diary of the CEO a week does that slash Your sponsorship
01:35:39
Revenue by half I wouldn't even know um
01:35:44
I wouldn't even know this this is this is the truth people might not believe it's the truth but um the sponsorship
01:35:51
revenue is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things I think when we started for the first three years we said I said to the team and the team know this
01:35:56
because they all get to see the bank accounts and stuff I said to them if we make any money from this we put it back into the show now we've obviously we
01:36:03
make more money than we can put into the show so it's like I see the message in our slack channel that we've made this much money from the podcast or whatever
01:36:09
else but obviously the impact of that
01:36:15
is I mean what does it mean we can hire more people we can have a studio in LA and in
01:36:20
America at the same time we can yeah buy a big boat or buy a fleet I'm never going to buy a boat because I'm so busy
01:36:25
I'm talking about I'm talking about the fisherman oh right yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah okay no so so so the the the
01:36:31
the real the real question is if you if you allowed yourself to measure a different objective not the number of
01:36:39
listeners but the impact on every listener okay not nor not the number of
01:36:47
guests H but the quality of guests right not the number of topics
01:36:54
but the topics that you believe in and how does that look over the long term so you're saying you'd get to the same
01:36:59
place over the long term you you you'll not become Steve Jobs when I say get to the same place my
01:37:06
my rebuttal in my brain was like because we built a platform people like you when
01:37:12
you've got something good good to talk about like your books you came and we had that incredible conversation episode
01:37:18
101 my favorite conversation of all time that was a byproduct of us fighting hard
01:37:24
to build a platform where you felt or whoever's decision it was I'm so so you're you're saying that because you're
01:37:31
doing two two episodes a week by the way when I did one 101 it was one episode a week but uh but but because you're doing
01:37:39
two episodes a week you're enabling more people to have a channel to speak right
01:37:44
there are 62,000 books written last year you need to step up your game if you
01:37:50
want to serve all books no I don't want to serve all books I just want to best ones so so the the qu the question
01:37:57
really is again what's the ceiling how many good books can you spread a year right I mean when you when you look
01:38:04
at slow-mo I do the opposite of what you do so a very interesting part of what I do is slowo is I rarely ever get a
01:38:12
celebrity okay it's a podcast by the people for the people if you want sort of like I a lot of people will listen
01:38:18
and say I can relate to this this is part of my story and the game here is
01:38:23
that's 7.8 million possible guests billion sorry right it's impossible
01:38:30
impossible okay the the the question truly is what do I want to stand
01:38:38
for I mean the the there are so many ways I can grow slow-mo H is that what I
01:38:46
stand for why do I want to grow it I mean look at my my Instagram and your Instagram this is a very interesting
01:38:53
conversation my Instagram I think is 150,000 people or something yours is what 15 million
01:39:01
gazillion gazillion something like that no I don't know but it's a very large number
01:39:08
right what difference does it make well you you said to me you said you want to make a million people unstressed yeah a
01:39:14
billion people happy or whatever it was it's my it's my ambition but do I have to do that or do people listening to
01:39:22
this M are people listening to this going to tell other people about this so
01:39:28
that they come and listen to this right but you know if this podcast had six
01:39:33
listeners you probably would have chose it for your book tour I would have chosen a thousand of them have no time
01:39:40
but but but no but the the the question really is very straightforward the question is you're there
01:39:47
already yeah I understand that this is why I ask like what's the I'm telling myself CU I I do realize that
01:39:52
there's some kind of I'm telling myself at a deep level about um why I need to work hard like and it it's
01:40:00
clearer to me now more than ever that the cost is significant and the reward is
01:40:08
not clear it's diminishing yeah like well I don't even know what the reward is the most rewarding thing I do you've identified is this yeah it's the most
01:40:14
impactful thing I do it's the thing people appreciate the most opens so many Minds It's a Wonderful part of people's
01:40:20
life it is this so I asked myself why don't I just do this because there
01:40:26
are 40 other companies that I'm involved in as an investor or you know six or seven that I founded and you know before
01:40:34
you were sat there today there was a Founder an hour before you arrived of another business that I'm involved in and I co I'm a co-founder of and we were
01:40:41
talking about funding and this plan and this plan and this plan and I do go like what what insanity is this and I know
01:40:47
it's not just me like it's it's a lot of people out there that have engaged in this like voluntary Insanity of
01:40:54
overstressing their lives the the addiction of stress as you describe it in the book and a lot of us we as I said
01:41:00
earlier like we know it's Insanity when we zoom out and think about it on a pce of paper but there's something so
01:41:07
tempting about the addiction it's the only script that you know yeah so I I I
01:41:13
keep telling myself when I there was a time if you really dig deep back in probably 2009 I did a public talk
01:41:21
somewhere and it was filmed H and they asked me what is your life's purpose and
01:41:28
I said my life's purpose is to help startups build technology that is as
01:41:34
complex as Google outside the Western World so specific you very very
01:41:41
interesting thinker truth is I am not that person right why did you say that
01:41:48
because at the time I was in a system where I was very good at helping start
01:41:53
ups but it wasn't my life's purpose okay and as a result I coached 50 startups a
01:41:59
week when I used to go to California I used to say to to tell from the number of startups that needed my time I used
01:42:05
to say I'm going to be in blue bottle Cafe on University Avenue between 11: and 6:00 p.m. or 5:00 p.m. on Sundays
01:42:13
come over catch me and I'll try to help you and I would meet 15 20 of them H
01:42:19
every single week right why it's not my life's purpose at all I I focus my life
01:42:26
now on things that are very different happiness well-being you know and and it
01:42:32
wasn't me that chose this path by the way huh that purpose was chose me by by
01:42:39
Ali leaving the world and at the at a moment where I was where I was ready
01:42:45
okay that's what that's and and what what does that mean it means that I had to leave Google X I had to leave a
01:42:52
career around being an angel investor and being this and being that and you know now people text me and say mo I
01:42:58
have this new startup and I really need you to invest and I say I don't invest
01:43:03
period why because investment is not giving someone some money investment is a call every four hours hey we have this
01:43:10
opportunity we who wants that okay and and the real question is
01:43:15
and I I say it with with worry that a lot of people might have already
01:43:21
switched off the podcast by now okay it's a big lie the
01:43:27
whole endless cycle of growth and progress is a big lie it's the reason
01:43:32
why we're allowing AI into our life without thinking of the dangers of
01:43:38
AI because it's a big line more is better faster is better more progress is better is
01:43:45
it is it is
01:43:51
it there there is a point until which we've done really well we've increased
01:43:56
life expectancy because of Technology from I think it was 37 10 and some years
01:44:02
ago to now uh 70 some H or 80 some I
01:44:08
don't know right we've increased human life expectancy but when my wonderful friend Peter uh dandz wants to increase
01:44:15
life infinitely or Ray corwell says you know that the technology can make us live live
01:44:21
forever really do I want to live forever right why do I want to live
01:44:27
forever is there a is there a a fear of death that I'm I need to deal with is there a a a childhood story that I need
01:44:34
to look into okay and and the real question is everything is positive until you have
01:44:40
too much of it stress itself is positive unless you let it linger forever
01:44:53
AI really is going to change the world and it's interesting how this kind of coalesces with the subject of stress um
01:45:00
I saw what the founder of Cl said recently about his company he said that
01:45:05
AI is now doing the equivalent of 800 customer service jobs at cler and there was a report that came out in the UK
01:45:11
saying that about 8 million UK jobs were vulnerable to AI um and it's now we're now moving into
01:45:18
an era where things are going to be apparently a lot easier and ease has always been the Temptation that LS us
01:45:25
into easier for who for the ones that are hiring the AI
01:45:31
or the ones that lost their jobs well I was thinking about the we
01:45:37
talk about productivity when we're saying easier we say oh you know companies are going to be more productive people are going to be more
01:45:43
productive what does productive mean more more create more for
01:45:48
Less so that the so that the consumer gets it cheap or that the founder makes
01:45:54
more money I guess the promise as I hear it is both we be able to bring down the
01:46:00
cost of things you know so that I mean I I I love how the simple
01:46:10
lie of the true value of money is ignored in all of this you you you see the whole the whole
01:46:17
idea of less or more I mean how how much is a is a
01:46:24
British pound is it you know one and a bit uh uh dollars or is it for free when
01:46:31
your bank prints it on their machines uh through fractional Reserve to give it to
01:46:37
someone so that this someone pays it back with interest what is money right
01:46:43
and the and the real question is could our economies when you really strip our economies from
01:46:48
money could our economies behave operate on the fact that we mine something turn
01:46:55
it into something give it to someone and the entire if if we changed
01:47:01
all of the of the economic chain of the currency that's going through from dollars to uh something else would that
01:47:08
make any difference at all the the the reality of the matter is that if you if you created a company
01:47:17
that built products sold them at the end of the year paid all of the salaries of
01:47:22
the employees and gave you a reasonable profit why does it have to grow 2% every year or 5% or
01:47:31
20% yeah it has to grow because the Economy based on
01:47:37
debt requires that we create more GDP next year than last year so that we pay the debt if you add it all up if you're
01:47:45
borrowing a th000 and he's borrowing a th000 and the economy this year uh needs to pay 1,200 next year the GDP next year
01:47:53
need needs to become 1,200 instead of the th000 right so we're all following a cycle and we're in that big lie that
01:48:00
says we need more productivity we need more productivity no we don't okay before those cycles of money
01:48:07
if we really are talking about changing the world before those cycles of money gripped us H all you needed to do as a
01:48:14
shoe maker is to make two shoes so that you can trade them for 14 eggs and the guy that you know had the hands needed
01:48:21
to create 28 eggs so that he can get one shoe and a couple of vegetables right
01:48:27
and that was it there was no inflation there was no you see the whole trick is that we get engaged in the details and
01:48:35
and I I don't undermine technology in any way it's changed our life it's the reason you and I are able to talk to
01:48:41
people now until a certain point of growth and progress it's useful beyond that certain
01:48:48
point of growth and pro and progress it works against you too much of anything is bad if you could press a button now
01:48:54
and stop AI I would 100% do it really
01:49:01
100% we talked about this last time but obviously A lot's happened since we last spoke in the last nine months I mean there become a real AI race globally
01:49:07
Microsoft Facebook have you used chat GPT recently yeah have you used the audio one the voice engine one they
01:49:14
released yesterday well I've used it through a software called 11 Labs I actually invested in a company called Wonder laabs um wondercraft sorry
01:49:21
wondercraft AI that um do voice synthesizing Etc but did you
01:49:27
see yesterday open AI released their voice engine yeah which did you uh ask
01:49:34
me a question about AI ask you a question about AI yeah Will
01:49:41
AI end up replacing podcasters great
01:49:47
question well it's hard to say for sure but AI is getting pretty advanced while
01:49:53
it's possible that AI could handle some aspects of podcasting like generating content or even hosting shows it's
01:50:00
unlikely to fully replace human podcasters people enjoy the personal touch and unique perspectives that
01:50:05
humans bring to the table but you sound very human to me I mean I wouldn't be able to tell if you
01:50:12
were not a human uh if someone didn't tell me that you're an AI I mean is
01:50:18
there a way where we can actually ensure that AI is presented as a machine instead of being presented as so human
01:50:25
like you are I appreciate the compliment creating AI voices that sound
01:50:33
less humanlike is definitely possible developers can adjust parameters like tone Cadence and intonation to make AI
01:50:40
sound more machine-like if that's the goal it's all about finding the right balance between Clarity and naturalness
01:50:47
let me ask you a question if AI continues at the current
01:50:52
rate of improvement is it true that at some point in the future it will be
01:50:58
indistinguishable from a human it's a possibility but it's also a
01:51:04
topic of debate among experts while AI has made significant strides in mimicking humanlike Behavior achieving
01:51:12
complete indistinguishability from humans would require solving complex challenges related to emotions
01:51:17
creativity and Consciousness which are still areas of active research and debate
01:51:23
I feel like it's lying to me correct because mathematically if someone if
01:51:28
something if you assume just any Improvement of a technology eventually it continues right it continues right I
01:51:35
understand your point predicting the future of AI involves a lot of uncertainties and
01:51:41
variables so it's essential to approach it with a critical mindset while
01:51:46
mathematical models can help us understand Trends and possibilities they can't account for all the fact factors
01:51:53
that influence technological progress and human
01:51:58
behavior it's so interesting that they've been programmed to be so diplomatic and it's it's creepy
01:52:05
diplomatic yeah like a politician but but the question really is have you seen the movie her no yeah so B basically if
01:52:13
I didn't tell you that this was a human if I told you this was a call center agent yeah would you be able to tell the
01:52:20
difference the the other problem that most people don't realize is if I told
01:52:25
you that chat GPT was text based just 6 to 9 months ago and now
01:52:33
it's able to do language processing without a mistake she understands I'm saying she the machine understands every
01:52:40
part of the words that I say okay I can switch between languages so sometimes I speak half Arabic half English Okay in
01:52:47
in Arabic I tell her uh don't speak to me in in high Arabic speak to me in Egyptian and she literally speaks like
01:52:54
an 18-year-old did you see what happened did you see two days ago they released the voice engine yeah and and and now it
01:53:00
sounds exactly like you I have an avatar I speaking at abundance 360 they had an avatar of me that looked like me and
01:53:07
sounded like me 100% it actually made sense so the voice engine for anyone that doesn't know is open AI released
01:53:13
three or four days ago they said they released a new piece of technology that can take 15 seconds of your voice and
01:53:20
basically perfectly clone it so that you can say anything with just 15 seconds as a reference and and it's so interesting
01:53:28
I've read the full article and in the article they they say listen we've got this technology now but we're not sure
01:53:33
whether we're going to release it we're basically giving you a warning there they have four bullet points warnings in
01:53:38
in this article they say we've released this press release so
01:53:44
that your bank has time to change their security um system so that voice is no
01:53:51
longer away some can get in your bank account they literally say like we're warning you this is coming and at the
01:53:56
end of the article it says we may or may not release this but this is essentially a warning yeah for the World to Change
01:54:02
where's the ceiling when do we take a stand and say we actually don't need
01:54:07
that we won't we won't and you know we won't yeah so this is why the world is
01:54:13
going to become more and more stressful and and my promise at least my
01:54:18
hope is to is to tell the world that you can become
01:54:24
unstressful okay I I can't tell you that the world is going to be easier I really cannot but I really think that for every
01:54:32
single one of us the biggest task in the next two years is to find a way for you to handle all of those
01:54:39
events with calm and ease and peace as best as you can because it really is for
01:54:45
me Steve I lived through this this is these are this is my typical life that
01:54:51
space of technology is my typical life for 25 years right no it the world is
01:54:58
changing the world is changing economically the world is changing relationship wise I mean if you don't
01:55:04
mind me think about dating okay how think about
01:55:11
friendships would you know we moved from having to knock on my friends door when
01:55:16
I was young to go and play to being able to call them on the phone to being being
01:55:22
able to to text them to being able to text you know connect with them on social media to now so to to the
01:55:28
epidemic of loneliness that we have in the world today imagine how many of the next
01:55:34
generation will have one of those as their friend and you can talk about anything I was chatting with this machine in you
01:55:41
know yesterday morning about the difference between theory of relativity and strength theory in in definitions of
01:55:48
gravity right or you know it is it and and the was compelling there was a
01:55:54
product on product H which is a tech website for anybody that doesn't know where it takes your history of your ex-
01:56:02
partner your ex-girlfriend your ex-boyfriend it takes all of that processes all of it and it allows you to
01:56:07
continue the relationship after they dumped you I speak to and there was a lot of conversation online whether this
01:56:13
is ethical or not because these young people these young girls and boys are downloading the entire chat history they
01:56:18
had with their exboyfriend or girlfriend and they're continuing the Rel relationship with AI so AI is talking
01:56:24
like that person did it is do we need this or is or is the answer to stop
01:56:32
everyone with a brain would answer you we don't need it but I think everyone with with a brain would also probably
01:56:39
say human incentives prove that we won't stop the reason for all the challenges H
01:56:46
is not to serve us this CH those challenges that we're facing are When someone tells you I'm Building
01:56:52
Technology to make human life better no they're making technology to make more money okay and do they need this more
01:57:01
money they don't is one of the illusions that they kind of think they're going to live forever or something they think their
01:57:07
legacy is going to live forever because you know they work so hard in this lifetime that they can never spend it anyway I I I I think I think money is
01:57:15
you know that that constant need for money is either insecurity or ego
01:57:20
yeah right and we as a society are struggling the insecurity and ego of
01:57:26
money you know America at large wants to be the most powerful nation in the
01:57:31
world that's ego okay that's power that's insecurity that if I'm not the
01:57:36
most powerful powerful nation in the world they attack me but is it not human as well because I've sat here with experts on the subject of status one of
01:57:44
my guests wrote a book on the subject of status um will store and he he basically
01:57:51
makes the case that all status seeking humans you and me and that's hard wide because we didn't want to be kicked out
01:57:56
of the tribe so we you know even if I'm not wearing Louis Vuitton anymore I'm still playing a status game in some area
01:58:01
of my life I'm trying to have the best cameras of course you know but so so the question is
01:58:07
what position do you want in the tribe do you want to be the richest boy in the tribe do you want to be the kindest boy
01:58:13
in the tribe do you want to be the most compassionate do you want to be the wisest okay I I told you before I want
01:58:18
to die a billionaire one billion happy is a capitalist movement the only
01:58:24
currency the only difference is the currency is not dollars a billionaire a billion Happy People okay now you you
01:58:31
spoke about how technology might drop the cost of everything to zero literally to zero right because if we figure out a
01:58:39
technology using you know additional intelligence as I as I describe it huh artificial intelligence commoditized
01:58:45
intelligence so you get a plug in the wall you plug into it you get 400 IQ points more right if we use that to
01:58:52
figure out energy right and we simply generate energy for free because energy
01:58:59
is abundant in the universe right what does that mean does it mean that we can
01:59:04
give that to the whole world so products become mostly for free okay or do we
01:59:11
give it to the to the to the person that built it so that they become gazillionaires while everyone else
01:59:18
struggles and and the main mindset difference is that question and I I say that with respect it's a question of a
01:59:25
world of abundance versus a world of scarcity we competed most of us in our
01:59:31
past in a world of scarcity where for Microsoft to win Lotus 123 had to shut
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down right that's no longer needed you you know there is enough for everyone we
01:59:42
can all win but that shift from scarcity to abundance is a is a is a shift that
01:59:48
you're struggling with okay it's a shift of a question of what do we actually
01:59:55
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change people's lives and for many of you I think it could change yours do you think it's possible to
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build a billion- Dollar business I'm thinking about some of my friends now while
02:02:13
also living in the balanced way that you describe no so I've got a lot of friends
02:02:19
that are billionaires or building billion dollar companies do you think it's possible for any of them to be
02:02:24
balanced in the way that is healthy while doing that I think it's the wrong target to start okay what if they didn't
02:02:31
start with that Target and it happened because they were good at like I don't know sewing something and then loads of people started buying that thing they
02:02:37
sewed yeah yeah it's still the wrong target to start so so building a billion doll
02:02:47
business is impossible for you to spend the target of you you saying I want to
02:02:53
build a business that is a billion dollars within it uh you know if you take the the very
02:02:59
core of morality it basically means I'm going to use resources and people to create wealth for
02:03:08
myself in a very interesting way that's not a very moral thing right if the if the if the
02:03:15
objective is I'm going to build a billion users business a billion
02:03:21
happy people initiative okay and in the process I'm going to invite others to
02:03:26
come within that conversation and as I invite them to come in the objective is
02:03:31
to make a billion people happier or the objective is to make you know a billion people get food in Africa or whatever
02:03:37
that is and in the process I will be rich and wealthy it's very different okay so it's about what you're aiming at
02:03:43
yeah it's it's where you're headed and because when we head somewhere regardless of your Steven Bartlet or if
02:03:49
you're an accountant you know working on tax accounting okay if if your mind says
02:03:56
I'm going to maximize every minute of my day by doing more accounting files uh more tax you know reports and
02:04:04
so on your life might never end you might get into that hamster wheel and
02:04:09
yeah you're going to Triple your Revenue at the end of the year for what end and for Humanity at large the
02:04:17
capitalist system assumed a world of scarcity
02:04:22
where I am increasing my wealth either for in for for insecurity because I'm
02:04:28
afraid I might lose it or I'm increasing it for my ego so that I buy a better yacht or better car than than my other
02:04:35
Rich friend okay forgetting that it is no longer the truth the truth is with
02:04:43
more intelligence we can Harvest uh uh the fruits of building
02:04:49
things almost for free but we won't break the capitalist system okay as a result of that you
02:04:57
could literally solve hunger you could literally end cancer you could literally
02:05:02
do anything you want reverse climate change if you made that the objective
02:05:07
but the capitalist system will tell you no the objective is to give to give to create to make Elon musk's $200 billion
02:05:15
wealth trivial compared to the next trillionaire wrong objective
02:05:23
it's the wrong objective what what are we paying for it okay as individuals
02:05:28
we're paying our well-being as you know as Rich
02:05:33
billionaires all of them are miserable they they you know they make a lot of money they I mean all is a very
02:05:40
difficult word to say but many of them the many that I know are miserable okay most of them are very stressed they
02:05:45
don't know how to stop right and for the planet for the planet we're consuming it
02:05:52
they don't know how to stop is exactly the way I describe it I remember meeting a particular billionaire in the north of
02:05:57
England and sitting in his office and the first time I met a billionaire and I asked him like I spoke to his family
02:06:04
first his family were like dad's not happy dad's really unhappy and then I met him and I I just stared at him and I
02:06:10
was like this is a human being who has lost control of like he knows he's not
02:06:16
happy but he can't get off the Monopoly table yeah he can't
02:06:22
and there's so many people listening to this now you know I did a post the other day on my Instagram um about my own
02:06:27
predicament and it was the most messages I've ever had and the most people that reached out to me either saying they
02:06:33
related or in some degree concerned and I was just expressing that I'd like basically burnt the candle at both ends
02:06:39
in my life I'd taken on too much I'd worked myself into the ground and ended up staying up for two days in a row to write this thing to deliver the speech
02:06:46
etc etc etc and there was a photo of me with like my head in my hands and um I posted it because I just taken off on
02:06:52
this plane and I saw the photo I thought such a great photo that Will's taken I'll explain the story of the photo and my DMs were inundated with people going
02:07:00
that is me I've taken on too much in my life I've built up too too many obligations and responsibilities I've
02:07:05
taken this promotion I have these team members now and like there's something inside of me that's going this is just
02:07:11
too much and I and because of the external narrative the external
02:07:16
expectation I'm held in place I can't get off this thing that I've this merry
02:07:22
go around that's absolutely the wrong use of language you can get off it if
02:07:28
you make it your target so if I if I told you Steve I love you so much you're really like my my brother right if I
02:07:35
told you I love you so much you're my brother your objective for next year is to be unstressed by the end of December
02:07:44
this year or next year this year you think you're going to achieve that could I achieve it 100% 100% 100%
02:07:52
100% listen learn and and and and and limit you you're simply You're simply going to say okay limit I'll just write
02:08:00
down a million things that I'm doing every day I'm going to delegate half a million of them I'm going to cancel
02:08:06
200,000 of them and I will eventually phase the the remaining ones to 2,000 a
02:08:12
week easy it's interesting because when you say so I'm thinking now about everyone listening to this I'm I'm
02:08:17
thinking throw that question to them if you told them to put themselves in a
02:08:23
position by the end of the year where they weren't stressed there is a significant amount of them not all of
02:08:28
them but there is a significant amount of them that think you know what I I think I could actually do that 100% that
02:08:33
was my objetive and the ones that will not think that way that will be because they believe that the their their life
02:08:40
circumstances the events are making them stressed which is true but it's not only
02:08:46
the events of your life that stress you it's the way you deal with them that that does the equation is the event the
02:08:51
challenge divided by your resources your abilities your uh your square area like
02:08:58
like physics give give give more square area to carry the load and and you'll be able to do it so if you it's not the
02:09:05
events if you invest in your abilities you will be less stressed there will never be a time in your life when you'll
02:09:11
not be stressed at all but you can definitely reduce it significantly is there a third group that are telling the
02:09:17
truth and because of their circumstances you know they actually couldn't become unstressed by the end of the year
02:09:22
they're working in a factory three jobs they couldn't change the harshness of the events of their life but they could
02:09:30
change the way they deal with it and how would they go about doing that take a simple example a simple
02:09:37
example is if you're stuck in a factory job your life is Harsh today if you add to it an obsession that my life will
02:09:44
always be harsh you're more stressed because of the obsession not because of the of the harshness of life okay if if
02:09:51
you if you tell yourself I'm working day and night to feed my
02:09:56
kids okay but then add to yourself and say the world is going to become much
02:10:02
more difficult and my kids were starve you created that stress okay we
02:10:07
we didn't talk about one of my favorite parts of the book is what I call anticipation of stress okay so we said
02:10:13
we said you break down under trauma you break down under burnout and you break down under anticipation of threats and
02:10:20
challenges that the the worry and anxiety and panic exactly it's fear and all of its derivatives right and it's so
02:10:25
interesting when you really think about it fear is a moment in the future is less safe right than right now okay by
02:10:32
the way you can do nothing about that moment in the future you can plan for it you can get ready for it but until you
02:10:38
reach it you cannot react to it okay when you're afraid you try to limit
02:10:45
the challenge or limit the threat you you you think in your head about okay you know if there is something that is
02:10:52
going to be difficult I'm I'm going to lose my job in a year's time you're going to try to save now interesting
02:10:58
okay these are fear is not the tricky one the tricky ones are the derivatives worry anxiety and Fe and panic okay
02:11:06
worry is I don't know if I'm going to lose my job in a year I don't it's not
02:11:11
like I got a letter that says I'm going to lose my job in a year and so you keep spending your
02:11:16
Cycles trying to save as if you're going to lose it but that's not the the right reaction the right reaction is to verify
02:11:23
if there is a reason to be afraid or not right so if if you're worried your reaction shouldn't be the reaction of a
02:11:30
you know a person who's afraid your reaction should be I either need to decide should I be afraid or should I
02:11:36
drop this what if I don't know then you spend your Cycles trying to know and what if I can
02:11:43
never know because I'm thinking about some of my things that make me anxious and worry anxious is different okay
02:11:49
anxiety is very different anxiety is actually your inability to deal with
02:11:55
the threat so you you basically tell yourself I have to report to my manager
02:12:01
on Thursday about this deal okay and I don't have any ability to actually uh uh
02:12:08
um you know prepare the report I'm not skilled enough right and again if you
02:12:14
deal with it as fear I'm afraid to meet my manager you're going to try to not meet your manager if you deal with that
02:12:21
reality of anxiety is it's my ability that is the issue you're going to try to increase your ability you're going to
02:12:26
try to get someone to help you maybe that has the skill if you're struggling with a bit of the finance in the middle
02:12:31
you're going to talk to your friend or you know at work who's who who's capable of helping you with the spreadsheet whatever right so you handle your
02:12:38
abilities Panic is different Panic is a question of time so fear is a question of a
02:12:44
challenge worry is a question of uncertainty anxiety is a question of
02:12:49
your ability and panic is a question of do I have enough time where does this
02:12:54
fit then sometimes I have worries because I'll get some news or I'll get
02:13:00
like an inclination that something bad is going to happen I don't know necessarily when the date of the thing
02:13:06
bad that might happen but I get a tip off that something bad's going to happen I don't know if it's definitely going to happen or when but then I live in that
02:13:12
sort of cycle of obsession that oh my God it could happen today did it happen I look at my phone I go has it happened
02:13:18
yet you know let me give you a good examp example then of of something that someone might worry about but not know
02:13:24
the date but kind of not and not be not sure if it's going to happen they've got an an ill relative this isn't just to be
02:13:30
full transpar I normally say assume they're going to die and go live your life loving
02:13:37
them give them all the love that you can if you have someone that you're worried
02:13:43
is going to leave my mom fell right and and she um yeah she's
02:13:50
now better H but it took such a long time I could have spent that time in my
02:13:57
head saying but I'm going to lose her or I could fly to Cairo sit next to her and
02:14:02
say I love you very much turn the worry into into certainty
02:14:07
whether that's the best certainty or the worst C certainty okay but then react to the certainty and she's recovering and I
02:14:14
hope she will be running marathons I hope right but for that moment in time
02:14:19
instead of worrying about the certainty putting my brain Cycles into worry okay
02:14:24
I just assumed what would happen if I don't see her again fly go see her stop
02:14:29
your meetings stop your this go pour love on her the only certainty you have
02:14:36
around someone who is ill is that they're still here today you know the only certainty you
02:14:43
have about your your daughter getting into uh uh you know
02:14:49
trouble when she's a teenageer H is that your daughter is not in trouble
02:14:55
now spend the time with her now this is this is what life is all about we spend
02:15:00
those Cycles being stressed and this is why I tell you look it it is it is so uh
02:15:05
entitled to sit here and talk about the problems of billionaires and the problem of problems of technology and all of the
02:15:12
progress and so on when we forget that many of us are working two jobs and struggling with a relationship and you
02:15:18
know un stuck in long commutes and so on okay and I wish that life is easier for
02:15:25
for them I really in my heart do but if it isn't because the external harshness of life is not within our control the
02:15:32
way we deal with it is within our control okay the way we deal with it is you know even if it's the tiniest things
02:15:39
like I'm working in the factory and it's such a horrible job can I spend my break at the factory with my best friend okay
02:15:46
can I can I you know try to ease the the challenge of the commute a little bit
02:15:53
okay can I find a gratitude practice that says at least my kids are still
02:15:59
going to school because by the way if you if you do those things it's not
02:16:04
going to take away the harshness of life but it's going to ease it okay and as you ease it you're not going to be
02:16:11
unstressed you're going to be less stressed less stressed is better than more stress one of the things that helps
02:16:16
to ease it is what you've described which is love oh 100% and it's interesting because the first time we
02:16:22
spoke you were single and I was pretty sure you were like this digital Nomad that was going to be single forever I
02:16:28
was too and then little did I know you would meet someone and you would get
02:16:34
married in 4 days eight days yeah from the day you met them to the day you
02:16:42
married them was 48 days now if I said to you if you'd waited 49 days or maybe
02:16:47
6 months I proposed on day three
02:16:53
the engineering you not the soft feminine side right the
02:16:58
feminine energy that wasn't the feminine side at all but the logical engineering you and I'm playing devil's advocate
02:17:04
here because you know I I have I have to present the argument but and I'm very happy for you you know that I couldn't
02:17:09
be I could be more happy for you but I'm just saying when I saw that I thought to myself my rebuttal would be if you had
02:17:15
waited 49 days would that not have been better if you had waited 6 months a year 2 years absolutely
02:17:21
as a matter of fact one of the biggest things I struggle with in relationships is that uh is that the Western approach
02:17:28
to relationships uh assumes that the longer you wait the more you will
02:17:35
know and that basically assumes that
02:17:40
uh it's the responsibility of the other person for you to be happy in your
02:17:47
relationship you understand that so so if I need need to make sure that they're amazing so that this relationship works
02:17:55
that's entitled okay and by the way there is a massive difference between
02:18:01
heading into a relationship and saying I'm going to make this work right then
02:18:06
heading into a relationship and saying I'm going to see if that works now Hannah I I call her the jackpot right
02:18:14
she might not be everyone's jackpot but for me because I've done so much work on
02:18:21
myself and because she's done so much work on herself I hosted on her I hosted her on my podcast we were we were doing
02:18:28
a mini series about love and romance I mean come on like you're we you know we bump into each other in the
02:18:34
streets and literally around the corner in marleor somewhere right and and I and
02:18:40
and she looks at me and she goes like I know you you're Mo and I'm like I do I I don't know are we like how do I know you
02:18:47
and she said no you don't know me follow your work I'm a friend of your friends Cari and you know we spoke about you and
02:18:52
anyway I love your work I was like courteous I said so what what do you do Hannah and she said I'm a therapist I'm
02:18:59
working on you know this and that and so on and I said oh so so I was doing that many series most of it was about you
02:19:06
know the Fe feminine female side if you want a woman falling in love so most of
02:19:12
my guests were talking about the women in relationships there wasn't a miniseries was
02:19:17
there anyway so you came up with a miniseries on yeah she she she talks about uh men in
02:19:24
relationships so anyway I'm sitting there for an hour and a half in front of that woman and everything she says is
02:19:29
like oh my God that's exactly everything I have noticed Within Me notice the
02:19:35
first thing she says is she says we uh date our
02:19:40
potential we date them thinking they can make us better okay they can't the only
02:19:47
way you can become better is for you to work on who you are and if if you're ready H then love will be very easy
02:19:55
right so I basically find someone the jackpot for me who who after all of the
02:20:01
work I've done in my life knowing exactly what I want and what I don't want I meet someone that actually fits
02:20:09
but 3 days in she could have just been masquerading yes and if that's the case
02:20:14
then the marriage wouldn't wouldn't last too long right and 48 days is more than enough to know someone
02:20:21
but you were trying to marry her in three yeah yeah I know it sounds crazy right
02:20:26
but because we decided to do that you by at the time by the way I had been so
02:20:32
through so many such challenging relationships because they didn't fit me
02:20:38
that I decided I will never again touch a woman unless I am absolutely certain I
02:20:43
wouldn't leave in the first 6 months not a big Target when you really think about it okay but my thinking process was if I
02:20:50
if I'm not certain that it will last 6 months I'm not going to start right but if it lasts 6 months it
02:20:58
should last a lot longer I feel like it's important to say here you're not suggesting other people do this I'm
02:21:03
suggesting that people flip their mindset from I'm going to see if this
02:21:09
works okay uh to I'm going to only
02:21:14
engage in a relationship if I know for a fact that there is a high probability it will work
02:21:21
okay and I'm saying this believe it or not to men as much as women because
02:21:27
we uh men sadly there's no reason to generalize
02:21:33
but in general we're motivated by things that are sometimes less than
02:21:39
love okay superficial yeah so so in reality uh there is a lot of junk food
02:21:46
that comes in relationships junk relationships okay yeah they seem to have intimacy and sexuality and so on
02:21:54
but they tax you more than they feed you right and the reality is that for most men we don't recognize that because the
02:22:02
cost of switching seems to be yeah if you're successful and you're desired you
02:22:07
can have another woman in 3 weeks time right if if you're in that mindset and
02:22:12
that's a horrible mindset for one side of it is that you end up you yourself
02:22:19
are really it's junk okay it's not healthy for you and and from a morality
02:22:25
point of view you're using a person for your confusion okay that the what I'm
02:22:32
suggesting for people to do is to actually refuse to enter a relationship
02:22:39
until you actually know for a for a with a reasonable level of conviction that
02:22:46
this person is not junk for you because by the way this person could be junk for you but not junk for others but this
02:22:52
person is not junk for you requires you to know you and I I am I'm telling you openly I
02:23:00
knew for I know you're going to you're going to you're going to think I'm mad but I'm a mathematician so when I knew
02:23:08
what I wanted in a woman the the possibility of finding that woman was one in 8 million
02:23:16
737,000 women mathematically you can easily calculate that if you if you want
02:23:21
something in in someone that is one available in one in 10 and something else that's available in one in five
02:23:27
you're now looking at 1 in 50 right if another thing that's available in one in 20 you're looking in one in a th right
02:23:35
and the mathematics are very straightforward you find someone that actually is 1 in 8,
02:23:42
737,000 you go like okay I'm buying that stock and I have been the happiest
02:23:48
person truly and honestly I she she listens to my podcast so she probably will listen to this one she's made me
02:23:54
the happiest person she's made me a better person okay and she truly and
02:24:00
honestly made me focus on life differently serve life differently right and that's the value
02:24:07
of having someone who's not junk in your life by the way I I don't mean that that
02:24:12
uh that's the woman I had in my life by the way all were junk I had amazing women that blessed me but I had a lot of
02:24:18
junk too right so that no one who's blessed me before gets upset I had
02:24:24
amazing women that blessed me we were just not perfect matches right when you
02:24:29
know what you want when you've done the work on yourself it's actually much easier to
02:24:34
find love than it is when you're just you know randomly with a machine gun
02:24:40
trying to shoot and hit someone that's such a big when though
02:24:45
because so many people you know what I mean I was thinking of so many people that that I know currently um struggling
02:24:52
to find the person and much of it and even in my case I probably speak about myself first is
02:24:58
um the person that I eventually found who is 100% my future wife and I um feel
02:25:04
this same way when you talk about Hannah as I do with my partner that happened when I changed
02:25:12
exactly and then I had so much McDonald's on the way there you would believe it exactly I so much junk food
02:25:18
on the way there like dating is an internal job you work on yourself you work on yourself if if you
02:25:26
get to the point where when where you would date you you'll find this the
02:25:32
person that you're looking for it's an internal
02:25:38
job and it's it's really interesting when you think about it that you know again men
02:25:46
H it's not a secret that in in many other relationships in my past I would
02:25:52
question and say do I really want to be with one woman for the rest of my life yeah same yeah but it's so
02:26:00
interesting when you say when you when you suddenly say oh my God this is so healthy and
02:26:05
delicious I really don't like the junk and I don't like the risk of more
02:26:11
junk I don't like the risk of trying and then ending up in a relationship right
02:26:17
but so there is a cost I always reflect on my friends I've got a couple of friends male and female that are serial
02:26:24
daters they're doing 100 dates a year they're doing through a week and I know from like a probabilistic standpoint I'm
02:26:29
like you must have met a perfectly good one along the way somewhere but there's something going on in the in the
02:26:35
psychology that's that's making you miss the person over and over and over again and then I've got you know they might
02:26:40
say I'm just really picky or all these guys are you know no no no no no so so I
02:26:47
I I think the again you know so one one of the things that Hanah teaches me from therapy is that we run on
02:26:55
scripts okay so you come to the to this world with a perfectly balanced
02:27:00
machine and then you get conditioned into scripts those scripts become your
02:27:06
narrative your lens through which you see the word right and you know if you
02:27:11
if you come from a family that is avoidant you know attachment avoidant you'll you'll you'll think that this is
02:27:18
the way relationships are if you if you uh if you as a child was not given
02:27:24
attention for example you think that life love doesn't exist or that love is conditional or you you know and you take
02:27:29
those scripts and you believe them fully you believe them fully you you look through
02:27:35
the lens of the world and believe them fully until someone shows up and tells you no that's actually not
02:27:44
true at all right your choice then is to tell yourself I'm wrong and go into the
02:27:49
unknown we said we like familiarity even if it's painful okay your your choice is
02:27:55
to take that and go into the unknown and say maybe my script was wrong okay and
02:28:00
then you will change only then it's an internal job right so my my challenge
02:28:05
was and I I say that with a lot of respect not every woman is like that but the women that showed up in my
02:28:12
life didn't take accountability in my very highly
02:28:17
engineered approach okay to life in general to to logic in general I I don't
02:28:22
mind if someone does something that hurts me I just want them to wake up in the next morning and say you didn't
02:28:28
deserve that right and I created a script in my brain
02:28:36
that said all women are like that it's the wrong script for a fact for a fact
02:28:41
it's a wrong script but I convinced myself of it okay and then Hannah pops up and says hey by the way what I did
02:28:48
yesterday I I think that was really not your fault right you said
02:28:54
this and it triggered me but it triggered me she's a therapist right it triggered me because my original
02:28:59
programming means that when you say this it means that hey by the way you know it
02:29:05
was nice of you to to to hug me and and not get upset about it oh my God I'll
02:29:10
keep you forever right that's the the point is she had to challenge my script
02:29:16
and when those people are constantly moving from one to the next h the script is could be you know I uh relationships
02:29:24
don't last okay uh I need constant reassurance that I'm desired uh you know
02:29:29
to to be to be valued mine was um relationships of prison specifically 100% you know are they well i' I'd
02:29:36
learned that from watching my mom and my dad so I thought my dad was in prison basically correct you know so I he
02:29:42
probably was from reading your first book yeah he probably was so I had this avoidant Behavior because our
02:29:47
relationships PR I thought he had lost his freedom so I avoided every relationship until someone got over the
02:29:54
wall yeah and made your made her relationship with you your freedom yeah she was exactly what you said she
02:30:01
rewrote the script so she got over the wall which I put up very big wall she got over the wall and from inside she
02:30:07
managed to teach me a lesson I probably didn't want to learn I was reluctant to learn which is that relationships aren't prison in fact they're very much the
02:30:13
opposite if it's a good one exactly this the actual I get Tri now we we're in coup's therapy because sometimes I'll
02:30:19
get I'll get triggered when I say triggered I mean
02:30:25
like she might do something through love or because in one
02:30:32
of her needs are being unmet and I might interpret it as an impingement on my freedom and so I kind of shut down a
02:30:38
little bit and I try and like get my freedom back yeah like so Hannah and I are working on Finders Keepers finally I
02:30:43
think that's the version that will come out the love and romance book and uh we'll probably release it as a training
02:30:50
first before a book but anyway uh the the the the thing that she talks about is she uh you know she basically tells
02:30:57
you if there is a repetitive behavior in your relationships with different people okay that basically means the only
02:31:03
constant is you the trigger of that behavior is you right and so it's so
02:31:09
useful for for us to look back at relationships and and go like what is my
02:31:15
my my regular behavior my psycle yeah and if and if you know notice that you need to start to tell yourself
02:31:22
interestingly then this is my issue the the most interesting part of triggered
02:31:27
the word triggered is that if an event happens and you get triggered you're not
02:31:33
triggered by the event you're triggered by the event magnified by the lens of your trauma right so so you look at the event
02:31:41
he said or she said and you look at it through your lens of trauma and translate it into his
02:31:48
cheating I I I wrote actually an unstressful I wrote about a a relationship with wonderful woman that I
02:31:54
had in my life who was quite calm and very very you know composed and
02:31:59
contented and and uh you know we were having friends over including two of our
02:32:04
best friends a couple he was one of my best friends she was one you know he was one of her best friends and his
02:32:11
girlfriend was really in our life all the time they came late uh you know it
02:32:17
was several people she asked me and said Mo can I ask you something please and then we sat in a different room open
02:32:24
room and uh and she started to say you know we had this argument before we came and I need to understand what he meant
02:32:31
by that and so on and so forth and she was crying okay and then she put my head her head on my shoulder as she was
02:32:37
crying my my ex my girlfriend at the time walks in and literally that
02:32:44
calm wonderful like a very calm woman goes like take your hands off my man you
02:32:50
b b word right and everyone is like what
02:32:56
we've never seen her onc right and you know we sat down and we she was a mature
02:33:04
wise woman okay mature in terms of her you know abilities to understand she said I wasn't triggered just by you I
02:33:10
was triggered because my ex-boyfriend cheated on me with a friend right and so
02:33:16
what what what what that position H what that situ ation triggered was her past
02:33:22
not me and that person a wound from the past yeah and and we do that all the time we are the only constant and this
02:33:31
is why I mean when when I was hosting Hannah on my podcast uh when she said
02:33:37
that I found myself I swear I'm not making this up I found this very clear
02:33:42
voice in my head saying God please make her mine and for some reason I had that
02:33:47
very strong conviction that I need to shape up I need to step up okay she does
02:33:53
too by the way and and everyone always will we we're on that constant journey of
02:33:59
improvement but the the the interesting turning point is when you
02:34:04
take that accountability and you say no it's just it's not just because of them that I'm failing by the way them I'm
02:34:12
attracting because of who I am if I work on who I am H and suddenly someone will
02:34:19
show show up that matches the new me and I guess one of the ways we can
02:34:24
work on who we are is by becoming unstress yes I love how we come to speak
02:34:31
about a certain book and then we talk about everything else what did we talk about today we talk about Ai Ai and
02:34:38
wealth and and yeah we did speak about stress a little bit it's all interconnected though it is all
02:34:43
interconnected to chat with you that's how it is and I I did read um a study which is also featured in your book A
02:34:50
couple of years ago that showed I think I've got it written down here somewhere yeah I read a study that showed um it
02:34:56
was a study of 850 people from Detroit and found that those who experienced major stressful events increased their risk of death by 30% however the risk
02:35:05
was negated for individuals who reported High rates of helping others even under
02:35:11
stress because their support networks um are stronger con connection truly and
02:35:17
honestly when we talk about spiritually stressed in the in the very end of the book which is a very difficult chapter to explain to people because not
02:35:23
everyone is spiritual right uh spirituality in our description here is you know your connection to your
02:35:28
non-physical form right and and it's uh it is uh you know it's quite interesting
02:35:35
because your nonphysical form is not an individual right and so accordingly your
02:35:41
connection to the rest of being is so fundamental to feeling safe as a tribe
02:35:49
prev it or not Humanity did not succeed because we were the most intelligent
02:35:55
being on the planet we succeeded because we could work together right the only the only true survival Instinct in
02:36:02
humanity is can I fit within the tribe you understand and so that human connection is the the ultimate Way of
02:36:10
triggering your parasympathetic nervous system to tell you things are okay and that's when stress goes
02:36:15
down welcome to the machine trigger unhappy carrying the T NN which is the
02:36:21
framework we talked about it's in your head feel to heal your hips don't lie and S Renity and then in part three we
02:36:27
have the unstress it is a wonderful book it is a timely book is it is a book written by
02:36:33
two exceptional individuals yourself and Alice law who is a Stress Management coach International speaker podcaster
02:36:38
and co-author of the law of brand attraction Alex Alice Works privately with clients internationally as well as
02:36:45
with large corporations and Brands such as RBS and the Ned um I met her briefly
02:36:50
beforehand both of you are exceptional and as you say it's a ying and yang approach to AR it really is I think that's my favorite part of the book it's
02:36:56
we're so different to our approach with the same Mission so it's really really beautiful but I think that's the only
02:37:02
way that this book could have been written because I think people typically sit on one side of of that in terms of
02:37:08
how their brain thinks I'm a bit of a engineer a bit of a mathematician logical and and even my partner she's
02:37:14
the opposite she's got a feminine ener spiritual she's softer she's empathetic and it's the the nuance and the coming
02:37:20
together which creates the truth I think I I I love the way we read we wrote it together as well so we would we would
02:37:25
get together at the beginning of every chapter regardless of who's writing it and agree sort of the structure MH and
02:37:31
then you know we would edit each other's chapters afterwards and my chapters are really concise and brief bullet points
02:37:37
equations some logic that's it and when I read Alice's work I go like where is
02:37:42
she going with this right it's a very different writing style but you know from our early readers the the feminine
02:37:49
those who read it just completely registered with it and and the and the thing is even I as I read through like
02:37:56
70% of the page and I I feel something in my heart not in my head very very
02:38:01
interesting actually so it's been a a very joyful partnership I think for me and I think con complemented the part of
02:38:08
me that wouldn't have been written in the book If I wrote it alone a practical guide To stressfree
02:38:15
Living and you can order it right now because it's out very very soon and just a couple of days so I'll put the link to
02:38:21
the the book below unstress and I highly recommend everybody goes and checks it out because it is a fantastic book and
02:38:26
it's a timely book so if you are someone that is interested in stressfree living which is something that's front of mine for me after this conversation um please
02:38:33
do get this book because there won't be a better book written on this subject matter you're so kind thank you is there
02:38:38
anything as it relates to stress that you think was really important that we didn't
02:38:44
cover the concept of unstress I think it's is so important to understand that
02:38:50
this is not about de-stressing right a lot of the approach to to stress is either through Western
02:38:58
Medicine by saying okay uh you know uh your stress Let's help you distress a
02:39:04
little bit right uh if you know or through even practice like uh you know
02:39:10
uh try to meditate so that you calm down or try to relax and walk in nature
02:39:15
that's not the objective the the objective is how can you configure yourself so that stress doesn't reoccur
02:39:23
it's a long a slightly longer path so there is nowhere in unstress where we tell you well if you're feeling stressed
02:39:30
because of a b and c at work go eat a vegetable and do this and that and you'll feel less stressed we're we're
02:39:36
constantly telling you if you do this and that when work stresses you it's not
02:39:41
going to stress you anymore when you know if you think in the same in this way or go to the Mind gym as we call it
02:39:47
right when thoughts attack you not going to be stressed the same way right and I think that's the shift that I I I keep
02:39:54
saying in this conversation is that we're trying to say time you know the times we're living are going to become
02:40:00
more and more stressful we might as well prepare so this is not about you uh um
02:40:06
uh you know resting it's about you going to the gym right it's about you actually getting
02:40:12
fit uh so that that you're capable of carrying the load mentioned your mom and
02:40:17
your brother yeah happened at a very uh my brother and my sister actually uh so
02:40:23
so my sister-in-law my my brother's wife but 42 years together I love her like a
02:40:30
sister truly I didn't never had a sister and I was it we were not together when
02:40:36
so my brother got diagnosed with cancer um yeah back in summer and uh and
02:40:44
actually one of the biggest shifts in my life believe it or not because I was
02:40:49
recording the BBC Maestro uh training at the time very intensive you know a big
02:40:54
crew uh we booked four days to to do it or five I don't remember but
02:41:00
basically you know it's important and I'm committed and then day one I get uh
02:41:07
the news that am is uh is diagnosed with cancer that it's actually serious they're going to have a a surgery 2 days
02:41:13
later and uh yeah I had to stop and fly uh to meet him because I actually didn't
02:41:19
know if I was going to meet him again and he surgery went well uh we
02:41:26
started to do uh immunotherapy because he had multiple cancers that were not
02:41:33
easy to treat anyway uh he recovered very positively and then
02:41:40
uh and then beginning of the year he had some kind of a digestive issue he had a
02:41:46
tumor in his um some where in his digestive system uh that was actually
02:41:52
totally benign had nothing to do with the cancers right but then the stress his lovely wife my sister just
02:42:01
collapsed under the stress and basically had that heart attack in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital and we lost
02:42:09
the sweetest human being on the planet like I think that was the biggest shock
02:42:14
Steve I'll tell you openly I mean a couple of or 3 weeks later my brother left too which you know so interesting
02:42:22
because you can imagine that somehow they didn't want to live without each others right but but the the thing is
02:42:28
that Sahar my sister-in-law and she left I I honestly and truly have never been
02:42:33
shocked back to reality as much as this when I was talking about ali dying and
02:42:39
several times Sahar dying so suddenly H like what are we doing with our lives
02:42:47
honestly what are we doing with our lives what you know should I have gone to Egypt to to see
02:42:54
them five times more every year rather than do five more talks
02:43:01
100% 100% it is so clear when you look in
02:43:07
high Insight that what we dedicate our life to is not the right objective right this that mean I want to
02:43:13
stop 1 billion happy and spend time with my family no I can be so much more effective with 1 bil
02:43:19
happy right I can have this conversation with you and it reaches millions of
02:43:25
people right it's a it's a it's a way of deciding that something else matters
02:43:31
than maximizing your impact without a ceiling maximizing your gain without a
02:43:37
cealing I think the truth is sadly like like Alice writes you know life gives
02:43:43
you that harshness to to teach you to change direction or heal and and I always say that if you
02:43:52
pre pre- respond to life life wouldn't need to be harsh if you change direction
02:43:59
or heal and learn before the you know life finds a reason to force you to
02:44:05
nudge you right there wouldn't be there wouldn't be
02:44:11
harshness sorry for your loss they were wonderful truly and honestly the kindest
02:44:19
most beautiful pure people you would ever meet I mean we're we're all going someday but
02:44:26
when those people leave your life you suddenly realize in a way that you haven't
02:44:39
lived
02:44:46
priorities well you've given me an awful lot to think about a little bit too much to think about I feel
02:44:54
stressed um we have a closing tradition as you know question that's been left for you from our previous guest without
02:45:00
knowing who you were is think of the first person you were ever in love with
02:45:06
when did you last see them and what would you say to them if you saw them
02:45:12
now I mean I I'm I'm the the worst to answer that question
02:45:19
because my first love was my very long you know term marriage who a wonderful
02:45:24
person Nel in every possible way and who even after we separated we uh we stayed
02:45:31
very close incredibly wise woman incredibly wonderful woman so we're very
02:45:36
close we're in touch uh all the time we're there would rarely be a week that
02:45:42
we don't speak is there something you haven't said to her which you probably should if she was listening to this now is there something if you found out
02:45:49
to tomorrow that she was no longer here is there words you you're going to wish
02:45:55
that you'd said I I think she knows that I mean I will I will always say I am who I am
02:46:03
because of nibel I mean you know it's it's it's hard to
02:46:11
think most people don't understand that not being able to continue in a romantic
02:46:18
relationship ship is actually not an indication of the purity of the connection that you
02:46:24
had so so a romantic relationship as I as I as I write in in Finders Keepers is
02:46:31
made up of a lot more than love right so there are you know I call it the perfect PP r f CS so you look for partnership
02:46:41
passion romance friendship companionship tenderness or you know uh touch and
02:46:48
support right uh and and and all of those things are prerequisites to continue a romantic
02:46:55
relationship if one of them or two of them don't work the the Romantic intimate side of the relationship
02:47:02
doesn't work but that doesn't mean that all of the others the partnership right the support the tenderness the kindness
02:47:09
the right it doesn't mean that all of the others have to end and I think what most people Miss is if I can't kiss her
02:47:17
anymore for what ever reason then everything I've ever done with her is wrong 27 years spent 27 years together
02:47:26
right and and she shaped my life with her advice with her wisdom and with her
02:47:34
mistakes understand that huh even the bits that we don't like about our partner are the parts that shape us onto
02:47:42
the person that we are right and it's almost Criminal
02:47:49
I I say that openly it's almost criminal that we LED our egos and our
02:47:56
anger and that I have I have a couple of friends who are so wonderful I I loveed
02:48:02
them so much Colombian when I when when I went to Colombia the first time they invited me they were helping me spread
02:48:10
um s for happy at the time and they're wonderful in every way and they
02:48:16
separated and I keep telling them H with two kids between you and all of that
02:48:21
love what really matters is how are you going to move forward from here can you actually talk every week can you parent
02:48:28
together can you right and I think this is what what most people forget when the anger takes them over when the ego takes
02:48:34
them over Nebel shaped my life she I I always tell her I am the person that I
02:48:39
am because of how we started our life together in the years we spent together okay and if I'm ungrateful for that then
02:48:47
I truly am the wrong person I am a bad person and I ask everyone to to think
02:48:52
about that I ask everyone who somehow even even if it was a painful breakup or
02:48:59
a painful ending I asked them to try and say hey by the way I'm grateful for the
02:49:04
time that I had you in my life you've got one last 30- second phone call with her why would you say that such a tough
02:49:13
question after I losing so many people this year um
02:49:20
I think what I would probably say is
02:49:27
uh I wish life
02:49:32
didn't give us that test so losing Ali I
02:49:39
think was bigger than both both of us
02:49:45
uh this is difficult when you when
02:49:51
you I think we neither of us despite how well we did terms of being calm and
02:49:57
grateful and peaceful it's it was just it still is
02:50:03
the most difficult thing ever and Niel is such a beautiful fragile um I don't know if fragile is
02:50:10
the right word delicate maybe delicate is the right word uh beautiful
02:50:15
soul I think that Gap was so harsh and
02:50:20
it's not our it's not our choice how life treats us I would have wished that
02:50:26
this had never happened I would have wished that she had never been subjected to that
02:50:32
pay and I as I said I would I would do what Ali did to us before he left I
02:50:38
would simply say all of the things that she taught me I would simply say how grateful I am to have her in my life
02:50:45
still and uh yeah I hope I never have that
02:50:51
call I hope I never have that call I don't know how many more I can
02:50:56
take to be honest oh thank you thank you for everything every time
02:51:03
we speak I um I push you on these questions and I
02:51:10
think it's important for me to say because you have a remarkable level of wisdom which helps
02:51:17
me to confront things that I think sometimes I'm avoiding it's funny that where I I had
02:51:23
been thinking about what we spoke about actually uh for a while I wanted to tell
02:51:29
you that somehow you brought it up today in front of I don't know how many million people I I really really think
02:51:37
of your Brilliance out of
02:51:43
season I think there is a different season for you now
02:51:51
we don't know what it is but I think your Brilliance in your 20s was applied
02:51:56
in a season different than your current brins what do you think it
02:52:04
is I really think that your ability to reach people can be converted
02:52:11
into a much more rewarding
02:52:19
result then just success and what do you think that looks
02:52:25
like you think it looks like this it does that's you don't have to change a thing you have to change the intention
02:52:32
of what you're why you're doing those things and what will happen if I do I
02:52:39
think you'll probably one of be one of the most heard people on the planet I think you'll bring a lot of
02:52:46
wisdom to a lot of people not always yours by the way yeah rarely
02:52:53
mine yeah and I and I think you're going to be rewarded very handsomely for that
02:52:58
by life okay you've given me a lot to think about before I descend further into my existential crisis I'm going to
02:53:05
let you go um but again everybody please buy the book love you
02:53:11
man thank you so much St honestly I I really enjoyed this one probably my favorite conversation between us it's
02:53:19
yeah it's always wonderful thank you so much for having me
02:53:24
[Music]
