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Stop taking life so seriously. No one is getting out of this game alive. And in three generations, no one will even
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remember your name. And if that doesn't give you liberation to just drop your
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problems for a moment and find some joy, I don't know what will because there'll
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never be a time when there's no problems in life. And that's why this time in
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between Christmas and New Year is a really wonderful time to plan big dreams and goals for the year.
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>> So, let's talk about that. >> Chris Williamson is one of the world's
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leading podcast hosts and thinkers. And now he's back >> educating us on how to build discipline,
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turning goals into results, what's stopping us finding love, >> and what makes a good man in today's
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society? >> The single best question to work out what you should be doing next year, what
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would have to happen by the end of 2026. For me to look back and consider it a success and it usually comes down to
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only a few things. The first one is in order to pick something up, you have to put something down. So setting the bar
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unrealistically high does not increase your performance. Like you probably lose 20 lb and get a boyfriend. You can't do
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that and move cities and start a new business. So, make the assumption, I can do no more than I'm doing now. Second
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thing, if your life was a movie and the audience were watching, what would they be screaming at the screen telling you
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to do with your life? It is obvious. Leave the relationship. The job is not working for you. The killer's hiding in
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the cupboard. Because if you're not careful with how you design what it is that you chase after, you can spend your
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entire life realizing that you climbed a huge ladder that was leaning up against
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the wrong wall. >> And is there anything else? So there is a wonderful upside in trying to conquer
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and trying to achieve mastery, trying to really drive yourself to go and do stuff. But I'm not like your feelings,
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just hustle and grind until your eyes bleed either because one of the biggest lessons I've taken away from this year
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is suppression isn't the same thing as strength. And it's a good thing for guys
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who feel their emotions to show that they feel their emotions, right? Like I've been at some of my lowest points
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over the last 12 months. It felt like my better self was slipping through my fingers. I realized my emotions are
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legitimate and denying myself that is not helping anything at all. What happened?
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>> I see messages all the time in the comment section that some of you didn't
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realize you didn't subscribe. So, if you could do me a favor and double check if
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you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be tremendously appreciated.
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It's the simple, it's the free thing that anybody that watches this show
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frequently can do to help us here to keep everything going in this show in the trajectory it's on. So, please do
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double check if you've subscribed and uh thank you so much because in a strange
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way you are you're part of our history and you're on this journey with us and I
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appreciate you for that. So, yeah, thank you Chris. My audience care a lot about changing
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their life for the better. And I think at this time of year, change is front of mind for everybody. Everybody's thinking
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about New Year's resolutions, who I want to become in 2026. But when you look at
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the stats, 23% of people quit by the end of the first week of January, their New
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Year's resolution, the thing they aimed at. >> Roughly half of people will quit their
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New Year's resolution, the change they sought by the end of January. and only
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about 9% of people will keep their New Year's resolution for the full year. So
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I guess my opening question to you is does this time of year matter at all? Is it a useful productive time to be
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thinking about change in your point of view? I think the world is split into two camps. Uh one camp says there is no
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difference between January 1st and December 31st. Like why wait? It's December 10th, just do it now. and the
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other camp likes the idea of there being a culturally appropriate moment to stop
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doing something and start doing something else. Most people need to realize that they're already spending
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tons of time worrying about the future in the past. They're going back to this
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thing that they regret. I wish I'd done this differently. Oh, I I have uh uh
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rumination about something that occurred. I have a sense of uh wistfulness for something that I've
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maybe missed. I'm grief for something that I've lost. Then they're concerned
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about the future. They're thinking, "I'm uncertain about this thing that's going
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to happen. I could plan. I could try and come up with a solution for this." So,
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you're already worrying about the past. You're already doing reflection and
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planning just in a very unstructured way where you don't get to choose when it
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hits you in the face. This is a culturally appropriate moment, like a scheduling appropriate moment for
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you to just step in and think, okay, in between Christmas and New Year, people that work in retail, God bless you,
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people that got to go back to work and do that thing, but usually there's a bit
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of downtime. >> It's a little bit slower. It's Boxing Day, chilling out on the couch, and
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you're kind of thinking, "Wow, I was here again at mom and dad's house or
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with the in-laws or whatever. What was I doing last year? What was it like last year? You're already in a little bit of
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a reflective mode. There is no special magic super secret squirrel source in January 1st. But it is a good moment to
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check in because life tends to slow down a little bit. Work tends work uh time is
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a little bit more slow and you're already doing this. You're already thinking about the past and the future
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and this is just a good structured opportunity to check in and do it. I guess the the question that everybody
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should be asking themselves is what should I aim at? And and is there such a thing as aiming at too many things? What
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what what is a good goal for change? And when you think about all the people you've interviewed and the change you've
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seen in your own life, what what does a productive New Year's resolution or productive goal sound like? And how do I
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how do I get there? >> Yeah. It's very overwhelming. Uh if you realize, wow, I can do anything I want.
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I could look at my entire life. That's terrifying. That's absolutely terrifying.
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One thing I would say, this is your opportunity to change anything behaviorally. You can change anything
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you want. Not everything you want. Right? That's the problem. You can become anything you want behaviorally,
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but you can't be everything you want. So, you need to pick a small number. The
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single best question to work out what you should be doing next year. what would have to happen by the end of 2026
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for me to look back on 2026 and consider it a success. I think that really helps
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to just give you a bit more perspective and it usually comes down to only a few things. You don't usually have so much
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in your mind when you do that. Setting the bar unrealistically high does not increase your performance. Imagine this.
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Imagine that you went into a buffet and you made your plate as big as possible. He said, "I want all of these things.
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I'm going to put all of this stuff on my plate and my stomach is going to expand
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to be able to fit it." >> That's not the way that our stomachs work and that is not the way that our
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workloads work. So, first rule, in order to pick something up, you have to put something down.
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Don't assume that just because you've loaded more onto your workload plate,
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your work capacity will expand to be able to fit it into your stomach. That's
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not the way that it works. assume. Make the assumption I can do no more than I'm doing now. I can switch
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stuff, but I can't add more in. Maybe you can. Maybe you're going to be able
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to squeeze your phone time. Maybe you're going to be able to become more efficient, more productive, whatever.
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But it's safer to just assume this is the pie that I'm playing with. And in
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order to pick something up, I have to put something down. That's a really important thing because at the moment
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it's December 29th. I'm with I'm full of gusto and motivation and I can't wait.
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I'm going to crush it. And yeah, for the first week, maybe you've got that. But
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if you're using motivation and enthusiasm to work yourself through your goals, your goals are predicated largely
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on a fuel source that you don't have control over. Don't have a massive amount of control over your motivation
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over a long amount of time. Like it comes and then it goes. You want something that's a little bit more
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rigid. So in order to pick something up, you have to put something down. I think
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that's a really important point because when we think about the goals we'll
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start setting at this time of the year, all of them are asking for more time or more energy. Like pretty much all of
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them ask for I want to start running. I want to start going to the gym. Whereas,
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as you say, that means I'm going to have to take something off the plate. >> Yeah.
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>> And we don't think about subtraction at this time of the year. Typically, we
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don't think I'm going to spend less time with my friends. I'm going to cut out
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Netflix. We think of addition. Mhm. >> But logically there's still just just
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the 24 hours in a day and that the finite amount of body budget that we have in terms of energy. So are you
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saying that I have to create both an addition and subtraction list and make sure that they equal out they net out to
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zero? >> That would be optimal. I think one question that you really should be
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asking yourself. Let's go through a bunch of uncomfortable questions people can ask themselves. That could be cool.
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>> Okay. How would I spend my day if I wanted to make 85year-old me as miserable as
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possible? >> What is it that I did over the last year that made me right now
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feel it's this constriction. >> Okay. >> I I I don't like I don't like my
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relationship with my phone. I spend a lot of time on my phone. I don't like how uh my mornings aren't very
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productive. Uh I've noticed that when I'm with my friends, I'm not very
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present. I've noticed that I spend a lot of time on my own. I tend to isolate
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when things get difficult. I've noticed that I've got into the habit of not
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telling the truth when people ask me a question. I've noticed that I've got
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into the habit of not advocating for my needs when I should do. I don't hold my
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boundaries sufficiently well. Like, this is why the reflection part's really
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important. So, what would I do to make 85-year-old me as miserable as possible? How would I
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spend my day? And in what ways am I already doing that? Well, a lot of those are going to cross over.
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That ven diagram is not going to be as far apart as you might think it is. I've
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heard you ask the question before about if someone was watching this and it was a movie. What was that?
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>> Yes. I mean I mean it's the this question is so fantastic. If your life was a movie and the
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audience were watching up to this point, what would they be screaming at the screen telling you to do with your life?
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They would be it is obvious. Leave the relationship. The job is not working for you. The killer's hiding in the
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cupboard. What would the audience be screaming at the screen telling you to do with your
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life? >> So, you've asked three questions and I'm going to ask you those three questions.
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>> Okay. >> So, the first question you asked was about what would have to happen at the
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end of next year to look back and consider this year a success. So, for you personally, I want to spend more
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time thinking about ideas and less time caught up of doing admin. >> Uh admin is a drain on me. I don't enjoy
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I don't enjoy emails. I don't enjoy the operations of that sort of stuff.
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>> Spend time making or >> Yeah, I want to be in maker mode, not manager mode,
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>> would be a way to put it. Uh, I want to spend more time with my friends. I've
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been soloreneur grind set, you know, pick it up and lift it type thing a lot for the last forever. More time with my
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friends, more time connecting with people. So, that's two things. Like, if I can do
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that, spend more time with my friends and less time doing admin. Now, one of the problems that you have is and I want
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to lose 20 pounds and I want to get my bench press up to 200 kilos and I want to do this and it's like really like do
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you really really really want that? Because when I think about it, I have like much more gentle goals have much
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broader goals and that's the stuff that I think is important to me. >> And if we think about your subtraction
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framework, what what are you going to have to subtract? >> Well, what's interesting about those is
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that actually those aren't necessarily additions. The friends thing is an addition, but the executive functioning
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thing, the admin burden is not. So, actually, that's nice because I want to do less of that thing, which should
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hopefully open up a little bit of time. What would I need to get rid of? I'd
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realistically need to get rid of some time sat in front of my computer doing boring admin stuff. I'd probably need to
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spend less time scrolling on my phone, less time on social media. I would maybe need to make some sacrifices in training
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as well. If I'm going to go out with my friends a little bit more in an evening,
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I'm gonna have to get up a bit later. So, there's some of the trades that
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we're gonna have to make. >> The other question was around if this was a movie and the audience was
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screaming at you. >> Mhm. >> What would they be screaming? >> You're already doing enough.
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You're already doing enough. Stop whipping yourself into submission, thinking that your happiness sits on the
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other side of the next set of goals that you're going to achieve. You've already
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achieved goals that you said would make you happy. So if you haven't made it now, if this
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isn't when life is going to begin, then when when when are you going to start?
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There's this uh wonderful idea of the the deferred life hypothesis. Deferred
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life hypothesis is basically the sort of common belief that our life hasn't yet
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begun. That what's happening now is a sort of prelude. It's an intro to our
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life truly beginning. And upon reflection, what a lot of people realize is that this prelude that they run
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through was a mirage that sort of faded as they approached and they were actually just running toward the end of
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their life. Like they're permanently putting things off. I get it. People have got realistic structural monetary
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requirements. They've got to get up. They've got to go to work. They've got
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to [ __ ] change their nappy. They've got to walk their dog. They've got
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things that they need to do. That's not what I'm talking about. My point is
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everybody thinks a lot of people think in one form or another that my life will begin when they're holding their
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happiness hostage. They're in a holding pattern like a plane that can't land for
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some reason. It's like what if that what if that never changes? What if your
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problems in life are never ever going to go away? What if problems are always going to be there? What then? Oh wow.
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Well, I'm never going to arrive. That means I need to start living now. And I
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think for me there's definitely a lot of um I will get there when once the tasks
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of today are completed once the problems are gotten through. There'll never be a
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time when there's no problems in life. Problems are a feature, not a bug. >> I sometimes wonder if this is a trait of
00:14:01
just human evolution. Like it makes survival sense for it to be hardwired into my genetic code to strive to
00:14:09
basically continue to strive like to continue to conquer to continue to build. And in fact, maybe if my
00:14:13
ancestors didn't have that, we wouldn't be sat in a room now with all these
00:14:16
lights and fancy cameras and such because this is the consequence of a species that strive. And so I wonder if
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this is like the curse of being human, which is we just endlessly strive and then we die. And because we did our our
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offspring have a higher rate of survival. And like when I speak to people from, you know, like East Asian
00:14:33
traditions and stuff, they talk about being at peace and being at one and being satisfied and all these things,
00:14:38
but it seems so alien to me to be satisfied. >> I I I I think I live in a dichotomy
00:14:45
where I'm like well aware nothing will change my happiness and then at the same
00:14:48
time I'm completely striving as if it would. Of course, that's a human condition. We habituate in both
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directions. So if your ancestors had been satisfied when they got to a cave, when their family grew and they needed a
00:15:03
bigger cave, when you don't just go and find one bush, you find a ton of bushes
00:15:07
and then you expand and that gives you additional security. >> But unfortunately in the modern world,
00:15:13
that causes us with an infinite amount of things that we can do and can chase after. We sacrifice the important for
00:15:19
the urgent. The urgent's always in front of us. the email, the next meeting.
00:15:25
>> Yeah. >> And this is again, why should anybody care about doing an annual review?
00:15:31
Should anybody care about the new year? Well, you're busy living your life for
00:15:35
almost the entirety of the year. And this is one moment where the urgent can just take a tiny bit of a backseat and
00:15:42
the important can come through. Who have I been over the last year? What do I want from next year? Every single year
00:15:48
is a chapter of your life. for next year. It's chapter 38 for me. What do I want that chapter to be about?
00:15:56
>> Do you think there's a single a single change you could make to your life that
00:16:00
would yield the greatest return on happiness? Like if you could go into your own hardware
00:16:04
>> and rewrite the code a little bit. >> I think less striving would actually
00:16:08
make me happier. I think that a lot of striving and a desire for success comes from a sense of insufficiency. Like if
00:16:15
only the world recognized my brilliance, then I will be validated. And it takes a
00:16:21
long time to realize that you don't fix internal voids with external accolades.
00:16:25
The problem with that is it's an unteachable lesson. You try and tell people that money won't fix your
00:16:30
happiness problem or fame won't fix your self-worth problem. You should see your
00:16:34
parents more. Time in a hammock is never wasted. You don't love that pretty girl.
00:16:38
She's just hot and difficult to get. Like all of these things are only lessons that you can learn once you've
00:16:43
got there. And people who haven't yet gotten there think, "Well, that's easy
00:16:47
for you to say." And then when they arrive, for some reason they seem to evangelize the same insights like
00:16:54
somebody that's just gone through religious revelation. So either one of two things is true. People who achieve a
00:16:58
thing are lying about the fact that that thing didn't fix their problems, their
00:17:03
internal void with external accolades because of they're part of some cartel
00:17:08
that's trying to pull the ladder up after they've just gotten in. >> Or it's the truth, but it's it's an
00:17:16
unteachable lesson. You will not understand that that thing outside won't fix your internal void until you get
00:17:23
there. And I I actually think to Naval quote, it's far easy to achieve our material desires than to renounce them.
00:17:30
Like if you want a Ferrari, it's much easier to actually work real hard and try and like or get some nice car,
00:17:37
whatever it is, so that you learn that the car isn't the thing that you want
00:17:40
than it is to rid yourself of the desire for the car overall. And that's not to
00:17:44
say that getting a Ferrari is easy. is to say that getting rid of the desire is essentially impossible.
00:17:49
>> I think me and you are probably two guys that at some deep level had some kind of
00:17:53
internal void. Is that accurate statement? >> Of course. Are you speaking in the past
00:17:57
tense? >> Have. >> Have. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> You've now accomplished so much. You're
00:18:02
like one of the biggest podcasters on planet earth. You're you're famous.
00:18:05
People know who you are. >> Biggest in the world talking to second biggest in the world. Congratulations.
00:18:10
>> But people know who you are. You've got, you know, money. You've got freedom now.
00:18:14
You can go wherever you want. do whatever you want. People know who you are. You get restaurant t reservation
00:18:18
tables. >> You did it. >> Is it what you expected? And has has it actually changed that internal void?
00:18:27
>> The interesting thing is I never actually thought I was going to amount
00:18:30
to much. I was just I was just really interested in what was doing what what I was doing what was in front of me. I
00:18:38
didn't think this is going to lead to me being some achieving something or living in America
00:18:45
or whatever. Each different step got me there. But no, of course not. Of course.
00:18:50
The the the unteachable lesson has smashed me in the face, which is fame won't fix your self worth, money
00:18:57
won't make you happy, you should see your parents more, you can take a day off. Like all of these lessons, you have
00:19:03
to live them to learn them, unfortunately. And my last question on this is when I asked about the change to
00:19:08
your code that you'd make, you talked about fixing the striving. What's been
00:19:12
the downside of the striving? >> There's a a common sense of not enoughness like I will be enough when
00:19:19
right because you can either run away from something you want or run towards something uh run yeah run away from
00:19:23
something you fear or run towards something you want. >> And what's the consequence of that not
00:19:26
enoughness? >> It's a sense of lack. It's also a provisional life. It's putting life off.
00:19:32
I will be happy, satisfied, peaceful when >> And is that a thought you have?
00:19:39
>> It's more like an embodied sense. Feel it. Yeah, I very much feel it. It's this
00:19:43
thriving. It's this pull. It's this sort of magnetism moving forward. >> But yeah, dude. Uh if your life was a
00:19:49
movie and the audience were watching up to this point, what would they be screaming at the screen telling you to
00:19:53
do? It's usually a very reliable indicator of where you should be putting your attention. So, as we think about
00:20:01
next year that the things one should aim at. >> Um, what I've heard you I think you said
00:20:06
on the high performance podcast, you said you're really obsessed with understanding what success actually is.
00:20:11
>> So, I I also just before we go into the more practical things, >> if someone sat at home and I know people
00:20:16
come up to you on your tours and ask you questions like this a lot, if they're
00:20:18
sat at home trying to figure out what success actually is for them, is there a framework or a principle or a method to
00:20:25
figure out what it might mean for them? I've heard you talk about two ideas which I love which is the region beta
00:20:30
paradox but also the parable of the Mexican fisherman which I think both stayed with me in a profound way. Yeah.
00:20:36
So three things success region beta uh Mexican fisherman what success looks like for any individual person is going
00:20:46
to be different for you knowing that you really want a family. There's people out
00:20:48
there that like I'm not that fussed. I don't think that that's on the cards for
00:20:52
me and that's fine. Other people might really really want to put the workload
00:20:57
down and step off and and go and do the dad or the mom thing. Unfortunately, you
00:21:02
can't take somebody else's purpose or success. Like that's that's you can't
00:21:06
wear it as a suit. It's a bad idea, right? Cuz it's going to not fit. And um
00:21:12
wonderful line, let go or be dragged. If something doesn't fit, eventually it's
00:21:17
going to hurt wearing it. And that means if you're not careful with how you design what it is that you chase after,
00:21:24
you can spend your entire life realizing that you climbed a huge [ __ ] ladder, a very, very long ladder that was
00:21:31
leaning up against the wrong wall. >> And uh you need to ensure that you don't
00:21:34
do that. And this is why we need to just sit with ourselves, sit with a little bit of reflection. And that's why this
00:21:38
time in between Christmas and New Year, I think, is a really wonderful time to do this. So, how do you work out what it
00:21:44
is that you want to do? the big picture goals are going to be hard for you to to
00:21:49
get to. But if you just think one year ahead, what do I want over the next 12 months? I think that usually helps you.
00:21:54
And maybe you want to be in a relationship. I want to be in a committed relationship with someone who
00:21:57
really loves me. Okay, now we can start to talk about a plan to do that. But you
00:22:03
need to have a little bit of silence. It's like a problem with permanently being busy stops you from being able to
00:22:09
listen to fleeting thoughts that are in the back of your mind. Mhm. >> And that quiet voice is usually the
00:22:14
really powerful one. But the there's a wonderful line, the answers you seek are in the silence
00:22:21
you're avoiding. The answers that you seek are in the silence you're avoiding.
00:22:26
>> Do you meditate? >> Of course you do. >> Yes. >> No. >> Yeah. Do you?
00:22:31
>> No. >> Do you wish you did? >> I think the the definition of meditation
00:22:36
is quite blurry because for me when I'm I I will have a shower for like 30 minutes and all I'm doing in there is
00:22:41
thinking. I'm not cleaning. Like I'm clean after five minutes. >> I was gonna say it suggests that you
00:22:47
come out of the shower not clean but with great ideas. >> Exactly. >> No, but I I I mean you get clean in like
00:22:52
5 minutes, but then I spend the other 25 minutes because there's something about
00:22:55
the waterfalling and the alone time that drops me into a a spiral of thinking which I think is my version of
00:23:01
meditation. Then treadmills and the stepper at the gym. >> Treadmills are great.
00:23:05
>> Yeah. >> My version of meditation. >> Shower thoughts are overrated. Toilet
00:23:08
thoughts are underrated. The other thing that I I love that you talk about is what it when we talk about metrics of
00:23:13
success, you talk about observable metrics and hidden metrics >> of success.
00:23:17
>> Yeah. So, a lot of the time we'll trade a hidden metric for an observable
00:23:22
metric. Something that's observable would be your job title, what your salary is per year, how many people know
00:23:27
you, your bank balance, the size of your house, the car that you drive, >> things people can see.
00:23:32
>> Yeah, of course. The only way that your success can be judged is outwardly. So
00:23:37
naturally we trade something which people can't see for something that they can see. For instance, lots of people
00:23:43
would trade a longer commute for a higher salary or um a better job title. One of the problems
00:23:52
that you encounter with that is that the length of your commute is one of the most correlated uh stats with your
00:23:58
happiness. Longer commutes reliably make people more miserable. And what's the
00:24:02
hidden metric that you've lost by doing that? Well, that's less time with your
00:24:08
family, with maybe your kids that are growing up, with your wife to connect, that's less time to pursue your own
00:24:13
passions, even if your job is your passion. So, what about uh a more stressful career? Going to move into a
00:24:20
different industry that's way more stressful, but it pays more observable metric. What's the hidden metric? What
00:24:25
about the peace of mind that you have as you go to sleep at night? What about what that does to your health and the
00:24:31
quality of your relationships and your ability to be present on a weekend? because you're not able to turn your
00:24:35
phone off because your last job was 9 to5, but this one is 247. Well, it's difficult to say because
00:24:42
you're like, people want and need real resources. I want to improve the quality
00:24:47
of my family. That's a noble thing to do. But after a while, you have to admit
00:24:52
if you already live a comfortable quality of life and you trade it, you you trade your happiness or your
00:24:59
your peace in order to get more, you're making a bad choice because you're going to sacrifice something that
00:25:06
you want, which is happiness, peace, connection for something that's supposed
00:25:09
to get the thing that you want, which is money, job title, bigger car, >> which I think links to the story of the
00:25:16
Mexican fisher. >> Yeah. Parable of the Mexican fisherman. Uh, an American businessman was away on a
00:25:23
holiday in Mexico and he got taken out by a fisherman and he asked the fisherman, "So, what do you do each
00:25:28
day?" The fisherman said, "I spend each morning out on the water. I fish a
00:25:33
little. I catch some food. I take it home and I sit in my house with my wife and my family and we eat what I've
00:25:39
caught for the day." The American says, "That's stupid. This a stupid idea. what
00:25:43
you should do is you should get a bigger boat and then you could catch more fish
00:25:46
and then you could go sell it at the market. The fisherman said, "Why would I
00:25:50
do that?" So, well, once you've sold it at the market, you could buy some more
00:25:53
boats and you could get your friends to come and work for you and then they could catch more fish and you could
00:25:57
start to sell it wholesale. Fisherman said, "Why would I do that?" So, well
00:26:01
then you could create a canning factory and you could export it back to the UK and you could have a huge business.
00:26:07
Fisherman said, "Why would I do that?" So well then you would be able to retire
00:26:12
and fish a little on a morning, catch some fish, and then spend the afternoon with your family.
00:26:17
And it's the same lesson as Paulo Qua's The Alchemist, which is this young boy
00:26:22
goes on a huge big journey and he finds out the thing that he was looking for was in the back garden all along. But
00:26:29
that's an unteachable lesson. And the big lesson behind The Alchemist is going on a massive journey to end up
00:26:36
back where you started is not the same as having never left. And this is what an unteachable lesson
00:26:42
is. You have to go to the top of the mountain to get up there and go, "Damn
00:26:46
it. Damn it." Like, I thought that was going to be the answer. But now that it's not,
00:26:51
I can rid myself of that. I've crossed it off. And it's so unpopular. It's so
00:26:55
unpopular to talk about this online because everybody that doesn't have a thing assumes that the thing will fix
00:27:00
their problems and that the people who have got there, achieved it, and say that it didn't are ungrateful.
00:27:06
like, "Oh my god, the thing that I want and they're just casting it away." Like,
00:27:10
how dare you? How dare you say that the thing that I know I want isn't the answer to my problems.
00:27:17
And yet, reliably, everybody that gets there says it's not the answer. It's very true. I was thinking back to
00:27:26
all the goals that I wrote in my diary at 18 years old, and then it's no surprise that that I have none of those
00:27:32
things now. They're all like material things and outcomes I was looking for.
00:27:35
Let me give you another one. A great question to reflect on. Knowing what I know now,
00:27:41
what advice would I give myself 12 months ago? Do you know what mine would be? Mine
00:27:46
would be around it would be about around prioritization. It would really be around the saying no.
00:27:52
Like we we don't really teach it goes back to what you're saying about adding
00:27:55
and subtracting, but my life would be much better if I was even 10% better at saying no to things.
00:28:02
>> Mhm. >> It would be so much better. I'd be so much more s upside isn't like 10%
00:28:06
upside. It's like 50 100% upside because the compounding force of focus. >> Okay. So that's what advice you would
00:28:13
have given yourself 12 months ago knowing what you know now. >> Yeah. >> Guess what?
00:28:16
>> Well, it's almost certainly what you need to hear right now. >> The big problems are the big problems.
00:28:22
In the same way that you've got the feat that you had a decade ago, the big drivers psychologically for you tend to
00:28:29
be the same throughout your life. Uh, I put other people's happiness ahead of
00:28:34
mine. Maybe that showed up when I was a child and I didn't speak up to mom when
00:28:37
I felt upset because I was worried that it would upset her. Maybe that happened when I got into my first job and I
00:28:42
didn't advocate for myself when my boss was treating me poorly. Maybe that happens when I get into a relationship
00:28:48
and I'm scared of making my needs known to my partner because I'm worried that
00:28:52
they're going to reject me or think lesser of me. When it comes to my child,
00:28:56
I'm terrified to discipline them because I need their love and I don't want them
00:28:59
to make them upset. This is a single trend that's occurring throughout your life and all of the time. One of the
00:29:05
most common questions that people ask is what would you tell yourself 10 years ago? Great question to ask. Not because
00:29:10
it's trit, but because it is almost always the very same thing that you need
00:29:14
to hear right now. >> What would you have said it 12 months ago? >> Stop working so hard.
00:29:24
>> Stop working. Take a day off. Take a day off. Take a day off per week. Put your
00:29:28
phone down. Put your phone down. go outside, touch some grass, and it's the same thing now. It's the exact same
00:29:34
thing now. >> Do you think you're going to accomplish it? >> I don't know. I don't know, man. I mean,
00:29:40
you know, I'm trying. I'm trying. But behavioral design, I I've got better.
00:29:45
The one thing that I can say and the beautiful thing about the end of your um review, there are some resolutions
00:29:54
which I decided on a decade ago that I still do now. And I think that's really
00:30:00
cool. So when I'm faced with the opportunity to plan because I gave myself a little bit of space, right? And
00:30:06
it never happened. Very few of the habits that randomly appeared in the middle of July are ones that I've stuck
00:30:12
with and I really care about. Bad ones maybe. I maybe accumulated bad habits in the middle of July, but most of the ones
00:30:17
that I really love that are very conscious that are aligned with where I want to go, they're ones that I
00:30:22
consciously designed, right? They're ones that were done purposefully and that's always been around a review
00:30:26
period. So, yeah, end of the year is not special. When else you going to do it, right? When else are you going to do it?
00:30:33
But yeah, 12 months ago and and 10 years ago, I was doing the same thing. Different industry, running nightclubs,
00:30:38
chill out, take a day off. So, what is this annual review template that I have in front of me?
00:30:45
>> At the end of each year, you need to have some sort of a format. Uh, if
00:30:48
anyone wants to go and download it, they can go to chriswilx.com/re. It's totally free. They can just copy
00:30:53
and paste it into their notes app of choice and then fill it in. I realized that this big question of it's the end
00:31:00
of the year and I need to look back on it. I want to uh reflect on what went well and badly and I want to plan my
00:31:05
goals. without a a structure, you're just like cast out a drift, freewheeling
00:31:12
everywhere, and you have no idea what to do. So, there's a bunch of questions.
00:31:16
Stuff like, "How has this year gone? What went well? What went badly? And why? What lessons did I learn? What
00:31:23
habit or system accounted for most of my success? What are the most valuable ways
00:31:27
that I spend my time? How can I find more time for this?" There's a section
00:31:31
for memories. What was the best surprise, best meal, coolest new experience, my favorite new city, my
00:31:36
favorite new friend? What was my favorite day or my most intense day? Was the best sex I had? What's my favorite
00:31:42
quote and song and artist? And then there's a plan. What would I do this year if I wanted to make 85-year-old me
00:31:48
miserable? What are the things I do to make my day go great? What do I think is productive that
00:31:55
isn't? What is productive that I don't realize? Those are two big ones. >> Mhm.
00:32:01
And then there's some final thoughts. What would have to have happened by the
00:32:04
end of next year to look back and consider it a success? Who do I need to become for the next chapter of my life
00:32:09
to go the way that I want? Knowing what I know now, what advice would I give myself 12 months ago? So for the people
00:32:13
that are frantically taking notes, they can just go to chriswallex.com/re. And this is this is available for free.
00:32:18
>> You mentioned there that goals you set 10 years ago are still some of your most
00:32:21
important today. >> Mhm. >> What are those goals that you cherish the most? Habits, goals that you cherish
00:32:27
the most that you you set out to accomplish 10 years ago. So, I reflected last year on the highest ROI resolutions
00:32:33
that I've ever done. And what I think would be cool would be if people put the
00:32:37
single best return on investment res re resolution that they've ever done in the
00:32:43
comments cuz that will create maybe the biggest repository of the highest value New Year's resolutions that anybody's
00:32:51
ever had and the best ones will get updated and the bad ones will be heavily criticized in the replies. So, that
00:32:55
could be kind of cool. Okay, so that was an instruction which means if you're
00:32:59
listening right now, leave a comment below with the resolution you set yourself at any point in the past that
00:33:04
returned the most for you in any in any area of your life. >> You love it the most.
00:33:08
>> And if you agree with someone's, please hit the like button on their comment,
00:33:12
too. And this should create, as Chris says, a repository of the most impactful, highest ROI resolutions.
00:33:18
>> I think that's cool, dude. I want to do it. I want to know what everyone else's
00:33:20
big resolutions are. So, I'll I'll give you mine. Okay. No phone in the bedroom
00:33:24
at night. charge it outside. >> Interesting. >> It's an instant 15% quality of life
00:33:31
increase. >> Why? >> Because when you start your day, if you use your phone as your alarm, you roll
00:33:36
over, you turn the alarm off, and immediately you're looking at your phone. You haven't got up, you haven't
00:33:42
got moving, you're not hydrated, you're not seeing sunlight in your eyes, you
00:33:45
are hit in the face by the world telling you what's happening as opposed to you
00:33:50
having a tiny little microcosm of peace, this little oasis for you. Now, I get it. People that have got young kids are
00:33:56
hit in the face by the children, not by the phone. But even if you do, adding the phone and the scroll and everything
00:34:02
else on top, that means you're not present with the kids. So, even if the kids are a problem, you don't need to
00:34:05
have the phone in there. You wake up, it means that you're always on the other
00:34:10
side. The world is happening to you. You're not happening to the world. When
00:34:14
you go to bed on a nighttime, you're going to be using your phone before you
00:34:17
go to sleep, which means that you're going to cut into your sleep time. you're going to be uh in an environment
00:34:24
digitally that's going to make yourself feel horrendous. It's not good. It's not
00:34:28
good for sleep. Whether it's the blue light, there's a little bit of research
00:34:31
that seems to say that it's not the blue light so much as it is the scroll sort
00:34:36
of dopamine trigger adrenal intermittent schedule reward thing that that's the
00:34:40
the main issue of what's going on. But it also means if you can't sleep, you
00:34:45
know, you can just roll over and pick your phone up and now you're two hours
00:34:47
into a YouTube scroll hole. That's who you truly are. By the way, people think
00:34:51
that who you are is, you know, your journal entries, your diary entries. No, no. Who you truly are are the videos
00:34:56
that you watch on YouTube between 10 p.m. and 12:00 p.m. at night when you can't sleep. That's who you really are.
00:35:01
So, getting your phone and putting it outside of the bedroom is no cost. There's no reason to not do it. The only
00:35:08
reason to not do it is somebody needs to ring you or something like that. I get it. Maybe you've got kids that are out
00:35:14
late and you need to make sure that they're okay in case some sort of catastrophe occurs. Really, there are
00:35:18
very few excuses to not have it outside. Radio alarm clocks have existed for forever. Buy a radio alarm clock. Take
00:35:24
your phone cable now and put it in the kitchen or put it in the living room or something or put it on the other side of
00:35:29
the room, right? Cuz you don't want to wake up and charge on your phone. The
00:35:33
it's the single biggest improves quality of sleep. It means that your mornings
00:35:37
are better. It means that your nights are better. It means you're less distracted. It means you spend less time
00:35:40
on your phone. you're forced to do something even tiny bit more productive like watch Netflix or read a book or
00:35:46
talk to your partner. It's interesting because I was thinking about this through a four quadrant graph
00:35:51
>> drawing a diagram >> where I'll throw it up on the screen please and make it look better editing
00:35:55
team because this nobody's going to be able this is not coherent but on one axis you've got things that are low
00:35:59
effort and on the other axis you've got things that are high return and this is
00:36:03
right up in the top right which is like very low effort high return habit yeah which is probably where one should aim
00:36:09
most but I imagine a lot of us are aiming at like high effort low return >> uh morning walk every day
00:36:14
>> okay morning walk slightly higher effort >> uh The research around this is is
00:36:18
fantastic. Humans obviously pushed this a lot. Morning sunlight in your eyes, even if you don't have the sun. Even if
00:36:23
you're somewhere dark and cold and wet, doesn't matter. Getting up and doing uh
00:36:27
ambulation, so walking through an environment while your eyes scan left and right seems to tune down your fear
00:36:33
response. It makes uh your amygdala just a little bit more calm. So regardless of
00:36:38
whether if there's sunlight, fantastic, that'll be even better. 5 minutes, 10
00:36:41
minutes. And I know people have got structural limitations. This is me assuming that you've got like 20 minutes
00:36:46
on a morning that you could slot this into. And if you're not waking up with
00:36:50
your phone in your hand, that probably is the 20 minutes, right? Little walk, bit of fresh air, just get up, put your
00:36:56
shoes on, get going, just get moving. You don't need to think. You don't need
00:36:58
to do anything at all. Don't need to brush your teeth. Get up and go. Probably need to get to the bathroom,
00:37:02
actually. Get up and go. Uh, no caffeine within 90 minutes of waking. Just push your caffeine a little bit later. It
00:37:09
seems like the adenosine system isn't dominant during the first 90 minutes of
00:37:14
the day. Your adrenal system is. >> So adenosine is the the receptors that
00:37:17
deal with caffeine and tightness. >> And tightness. Exactly. And caffeine binds to it and it stops you from
00:37:22
feeling tired. Salt act on your adrenal system. So if you use some sort of electrolyte drink first thing in the
00:37:27
morning, that will help to get that moving. But the main reason for this, regardless of the research, most people
00:37:32
have a 100 pm slump, feel a little bit tired. And I think if you just push that caffeine a little bit later, just see if
00:37:39
you can hold on. When you wake up, you should be okayish, just the natural cortisol, you've gone for a little walk,
00:37:45
you know, you're here we are, the day has begun. Do you really need a c a coffee within 20 minutes of waking?
00:37:51
That's what most people's first thing is. Just see what happens. Test it. See
00:37:54
what happens if you push it back by 90 minutes and see how you feel. At least for me, I know that that works well.
00:37:59
No alcohol for 6 months. This is a big one. This is much more high effort for a lot of people, even people that don't
00:38:06
drink that much. Uh because a lot of the parties and things that you attend, are
00:38:12
not superbly fun. And some people use alcohol in order to make their family or the wedding or the birthday a little bit
00:38:23
more comfortable. >> A social lubricant. >> Correct. Yeah, of course. But if you
00:38:28
take alcohol out for about six months, what it forces you to do is think, do I really want to go to that party? I'm
00:38:35
actually having to anesthetize myself of the people that I'm around. Like, if you
00:38:41
can only bear to be around your friends when you're drinking, that's probably
00:38:44
not a good indication. And if your friends only want you to be around them when you're drinking, they're not
00:38:51
friends, they're drinking partners. So, I think alcohol is a a big qu I just
00:38:57
like it. It just makes me have more fun. All Hey, I get it. But I think if people
00:39:02
look at it closely, they realize that they're using alcohol as a bit of a crutch. They're using it to bolster
00:39:09
themselves in a way. What's interesting is it's one of those areas where you
00:39:14
don't understand the hidden cost until you really give it up for a while. And
00:39:19
and I think about my own relationship with drinking and I stopped drinking at 30 years old. I'm now 33. And I had just
00:39:26
drank because I just drank. I'd never ran the experiment of just giving it up
00:39:29
for a while. And I and then at like I don't know maybe I was at 31. I thought,
00:39:33
you know, I'll have a drink again >> because now I could really AB test it.
00:39:36
I'd had a year of not drinking. Decided to have a drink again. >> It ruined three days of my life. I had a
00:39:43
couple of glasses of wine, didn't get drunk. It ruined three days of my life
00:39:47
because of the the domino effect it caused. So it meant that I got worse sleep that night and then because I got
00:39:52
worse sleep that night. I ate more poorly the the next day because my my dopamine system or whatever the cortisol
00:39:57
system was all messed up >> and then I I podcasted worse. I didn't go to the gym the the day after that
00:40:03
that day or the day after because of that because I felt really bad. I then slept worse and I could track all of
00:40:08
this on my weight. Hashtag ad hashtagsponsor hashtag investor whatever. >> Bye.
00:40:11
>> Yeah. And I was like, "Oh my god, those three glasses of wine had this hidden
00:40:15
domino effect that I must have been living with for my whole life." >> Dude, so many people want to build
00:40:22
habits. They want to build meditation routine. They want to go to the gym more consistently. They want to improve their
00:40:27
eating habits. They don't realize that the thing that's stopping them from
00:40:31
doing that is sat at the bottom of the glass of wine that they have four nights a week. It's tough. Some people are able
00:40:37
to do it and they don't mind. The costbenefit ratio for some people is great. I'm just saying try just try try
00:40:45
six months. The reason that you need to put an end date on it is that you have it's like running a race where you know
00:40:50
that there's a finish line. If there's no finish line, it's really hard to run
00:40:53
the race. How are you motivating yourself to get there? I think that 90 days would be the absolute minimum. 30
00:40:58
days isn't long enough. You need longer, right? And especially given that the
00:41:01
hardest bit is the start, which means that you've paid all of the pain at the
00:41:05
very beginning to not actually get any of the benefits of this being my new habit.
00:41:09
>> Do it with an accountability buddy. Do it with your partner. Say, "Hey, I
00:41:13
listened to those two British idiots talk about how not drinking might be a good idea." Why don't we do that? Why
00:41:18
don't we try going sober until July? You haven't missed the summer, right? The
00:41:21
summer's just about to kick in. So, if you think, "Oh, I can't wait to get back
00:41:24
to drinking." You can have a a beer in a beer garden. a huge proportion of people will not
00:41:30
want to go back to drinking. They'll do it, take time off, get into it, and realize
00:41:36
I actually don't like this. I love the fact I got more reward from building good habits, from
00:41:45
now having a meditation practice, from now getting up on time, from being able to go to the gym more. I've become more
00:41:51
dependent on that than I ever was on the alcohol. This is an idea you when we talk about habits and when we read these
00:41:57
habit books, we we're often aiming at like the ninth domino in a set of dominoes.
00:42:02
>> And I was just thinking then like the conversation probably needs to start
00:42:06
with what are like the foundational things. What is the first domino? Because we know from science that what I
00:42:12
choose to eat is heavily impacted by my hormone balance today and my hormone balance is impacted by my sleep, my
00:42:17
emotional regulation, all these things. A lot of people aim at domino number nine and think, "Oh, we'll change that
00:42:22
one." Having no idea that actually this is downstream from a set of other foundational decisions. And you know,
00:42:29
even as someone that sits here with scientists and experts all the time, if my like core state isn't good,
00:42:37
the chance that I'm going to pick the right thing or go to the gym is extremely low. Being smart is basically
00:42:43
pointless unless you're at peace. Like any amount of intelligence can be overridden by ego or insecurity or
00:42:51
immorality or bad incentives or impatience or poor sleep. >> Yeah, sleep is, as far as I can see,
00:42:58
just it's the the pebble at the top of the avalanche. It's the gateway drug to
00:43:04
everything else being horrendous. Your caffeine use is impacting your sleep. Your phone use is impacting your sleep.
00:43:09
Your alcohol in an evening time is impacting your sleep. If you think that you drink in order to go to sleep,
00:43:13
you're not sleeping. You're sedating yourself. Okay. So, if we can sort the
00:43:18
sleep out, how many other things open up? But you don't sort the sleep out. You sort the caffeine intake out and you
00:43:23
sort the nighttime phone use out and you sort the drinking out and then oh my god, I've got all of this extra
00:43:29
willpower. The thing that I thought was the issue, which was I kind of always feel a bit tired and sluggish on the
00:43:34
morning or I always want to eat salty foods around midday or I always, you know, always just can't think too
00:43:40
straight for the first couple of hours. It's like the problem might be hiding at
00:43:44
the bottom of the glass. >> We think the cause is actually a symptom. I just noticed this because you
00:43:49
know when I I changed a couple of core foundational things like exercise and sleep, everything became everything was
00:43:55
lubricated. >> What's your highest ROI New Year's resolutions? >> Oh, my highest ROI New Year's resolution
00:44:03
was actually a change in a previous resolution. So my previous resolution in 2017 was I'm going to go to the gym
00:44:10
every day. Ended up being a terrible resolution, >> a horrendous resolution.
00:44:14
>> Yeah. So 2017 it was go to the gym every day and I got about four or five months
00:44:18
in, I missed a day, the resolution's done because it was a it was a completable resolution in an area of my
00:44:25
life where I didn't I need an incompletable resolution. So 2018, my resolution became consistency in the
00:44:31
gym. >> And this is when everything changed because consistency is a a goal I get a
00:44:37
shot at every day irrespective of what happened yesterday. >> And I've got the rule. I've got the
00:44:41
rule. Let me give you the rule. >> Okay. >> This is from all of the habit stuff.
00:44:45
James Cle has been on my show. I think he's been on your show too. >> Yeah, he has.
00:44:48
>> Yeah. Uh best habit book of all time, Atomic Habits. Of all of the things,
00:44:54
there's only two that have really, really, really stuck. This is the best rule when it comes to habits. Never miss
00:45:00
two days in a row. Like you are not going to be able to go to the gym every day. There will be one day when an
00:45:07
absolute catastrophe occurs. You ate some dodgy sushi last night. You can't go. But what you have is
00:45:15
one missed day is an error. Two missed days is the start of a new habit. And it alleviates this all or nothing
00:45:24
mentality that we all have. If you put a packet of biscuits in front of me and you, we say, "You can have none of them
00:45:30
or you can have all of them." Easy. Tell me to have two of them. [ __ ] you, dude.
00:45:35
I'm not going to have two. No one has two biscuits, right? You have all of the
00:45:38
biscuits or you have none of the biscuits. And that's kind of humans are absolutist creatures. Like think in
00:45:44
extremes. >> Yeah. Going to be super super dialed in on my diet and it's going to be great
00:45:48
and I'm going to get up and do my meditation and do the rest or I'm going
00:45:51
to go full DGEN mode and I'm partying and it's a beaather and so on and so
00:45:54
forth. Like there is no middle ground really with this and that means that small errors can snowball into complete
00:46:02
uh demolitions of the habit. But if you just think okay at some point this year I'm going to miss it. And the rule is if
00:46:11
I missed it yesterday I have to do it today. And that alleviates your issue which was I cranked it for the first
00:46:19
couple of months and then one day came in and I thought h and then the second day and then I thought well this is just
00:46:24
me now. >> The other trap that I've noticed in that is one of my friends had great success
00:46:30
with a new habit with going to the gym for like three or four months. He he messages us in the group chat. He says I
00:46:34
finally cracked it. I finally figured out how to do this. And I said to him at the time, I said, "Listen, mate. Like
00:46:39
the best the best thought I've ever had that's made my habits be consistent is
00:46:44
the realization that you never crack it." And actually thinking about the day
00:46:47
when I fall off the horse and what my strategy is for getting back on the horse. Like being really really
00:46:51
cognizant of the fact that at some point I'm going to eat the sushi and it's
00:46:55
going to [ __ ] up my belly or or I'm going to be on a flight from Australia
00:46:58
and I'm going to land and it's going to be midnight. And like having a strategy
00:47:02
to get back on the horse and this just deep belief that you never crack any habit
00:47:07
>> has been the single most important thing for me being consistent because when it
00:47:10
happens and I feel unmotivated and that guilt can creep in and say you [ __ ] it. I have a I was expecting this.
00:47:16
>> Yes. Of course it's not a a bug it's a feature. >> Yeah. >> This was the price of entry. It's the
00:47:21
cost of doing business of trying to do behavior change that it's not always going to work. Mhm.
00:47:26
>> Um, another one, another great uh resolution, 10-minute walk after every
00:47:31
meal. >> Interesting. >> Huge, huge ROI, dude. Crazy. So, it's called a postprandial walk. Um, and what
00:47:40
it does is it helps to regulate glucose. It gets your blood sugar moving. Your uh
00:47:45
stomach because of the contrlateral movement of how your arms and your legs work, the muscles actually cross across
00:47:50
your stomach, which helps you to digest food. You know, you have a huge big meal, you're having a great
00:47:54
conversation, and you sit there and you're like, "Uh, I mean, this conversation's so great, but I feel
00:47:59
awful. This this sucks." You just after you go out for dinner, uh, if you got a
00:48:05
lunch break from work, eat your food, 10-minute little walk. Again, I challenge people to do it and not say
00:48:12
that it makes them feel really good. You go for dinner, you're with a friend,
00:48:16
you're out with a partner, you're meeting somebody for the first time. Say, "Hey, do you want to why don't we
00:48:20
have a little stroll?" Sometimes it's gonna be freezing outside, whatever. You
00:48:23
know, do what you can. Let's go for a little stroll. Makes a huge difference.
00:48:27
Huge difference. >> What about matters of productivity? >> Do you think much about this? Because
00:48:32
again, this time of year, people are thinking about procrastination, productivity. They're trying to get more
00:48:36
done. They're trying not to doom scroll so much, be on Netflix, waste time. And
00:48:39
I think a lot of the guilt does come from feeling like we're unproductive. >> Absolutely. Yeah. There's a wonderful
00:48:45
idea called productivity dysmorphia. So, it's the inability to see your own success.
00:48:50
It's like uh to acknowledge the volume of your own output. So it sits at the
00:48:54
intersection of burnout, imposttor syndrome, and anxiety. It's you think of it like ambitions
00:49:03
alter ego. Basically like the pursuit of productivity spurs us to do more while robbing us of the ability to savor any
00:49:10
of the successes that we achieve along the way. So first off, people are not particularly good judges of how
00:49:15
productive they are. I think so many people are whipping themselves into submission saying you're not doing
00:49:20
enough because in the past that motivated them to do more. >> Yeah. And after a while you have to
00:49:26
accept I'm I'm doing quite a lot. And if you were an athlete on a sports team and
00:49:33
your coach only ever pointed at you when you made a bad play, you wouldn't feel
00:49:38
particularly motivated by that. But a lot of people have this sense of productivity debt. They wake up every
00:49:46
day feeling as if they're already behind. And only if they dominate their entire day perfectly can they drag
00:49:52
themselves back up to some minimum level of acceptable output. And only then can
00:49:57
they go to sleep that night without feeling like a loser. This means that you your set point is loss and the best
00:50:04
thing that you can do if you crush the day is get to a draw. You never win. And then there's this sort of weird drill
00:50:12
sergeant in the back of your mind that's saying, "All right, you can have a
00:50:16
little bit of a break now, but just so you know, soon as you wake up in the morning, it's all going to happen
00:50:21
again." And you know, I'm speaking to a very particular type of of mindset here
00:50:26
that there is a huge cohort of people on the internet who do need David Gogggins
00:50:30
screaming in their face, telling them to go harder and sort their life out. The sort of people that listen to your
00:50:35
show and listen to Modern Wisdom are probably not in that camp. >> Do you know what's surprising? I am in
00:50:43
that camp. I'm in the camp of productivity dysmorphia. >> Mhm. Of course you are. Why is that
00:50:47
surprising? Look at what you've built. How could you not do that with if you
00:50:51
were seeing how much you did? >> I can't really think of many days. And
00:50:55
just for context, when I wake up in the morning till, you know, 2 2 a.m. at night, I'm working. But I can't think of
00:51:01
many days or really none none come to mind where I've I've got in bed and
00:51:06
thought you were productive today. [ __ ] >> crushed it. >> You met the standard
00:51:09
>> productivity debt. >> Yeah. >> You woke up feeling like you're already
00:51:11
behind >> 100%. Because of yesterday and the week before and the month before and the
00:51:15
to-do list. >> You see you see your own shortfalls from a front row seat, right? And this is one
00:51:21
of the curses of people who have big dreams, goals for themselves. the the size of their goals is always greater
00:51:28
than their ability to deliver them. And we assume that by having very very very high standards for ourselves that that's
00:51:36
what what is it? Um shoot for the stars and even if you don't get it, you'll end
00:51:38
up on the moon. Something like that. >> Yeah. Whatever. Um that's great for a
00:51:43
while and it's very good at the beginning of your journey, >> but after a while I think you just need
00:51:48
to give yourself a [ __ ] break, dude. Like people are destroying themselves in this perpetual
00:51:54
sense of not enoughness. They're always chasing the next thing. So that's all of
00:51:59
that is for me to say that people uh want productivity, desire productivity. I'm just trying to say you're probably
00:52:06
working real hard as it is. That being said, how much do I think about productivity and how can we like twist
00:52:11
the the knife a little bit more to give people some some tools? Best question to ask yourself. Uh, if I
00:52:17
could only achieve one thing today, start of every day, if I could only achieve one thing today, what would that
00:52:23
be? You're only allowed to do one thing. And it's the big thing. It's usually the
00:52:27
scary thing. It's usually the thing that you probably don't want to do. How many
00:52:30
times does someone go and clean the cupboard in the kitchen that hasn't been
00:52:34
touched for 6 months? Rearrange. I'll rearrange all of the plates because they
00:52:38
don't want to have that conversation with their boss because they don't want
00:52:41
to face that particular piece of work which is like big and scary and I don't
00:52:44
really know how to tackle it, how to begin. you will do everything that doesn't need to be done in order to
00:52:50
avoid the one thing that does. It's because it's a big scary task that people will endure months, years,
00:52:56
decades of misery to avoid a couple of days of pain. And that makes sense. It's
00:53:02
a good trade in some ways, but over time you're going to accumulate an awful lot
00:53:06
of discomfort. >> Reminds me of what Nael said when I interviewed him about procrastination is
00:53:12
the avoidance of discomfort. Um, and he really said that most of human motivation is just the avoidance of
00:53:17
discomfort because I I tried to test his idea. I was like, "What about having
00:53:20
sex? That's surely the pursuit of pleasure." He was like, "No, you get
00:53:23
horny, which is a form of discomfort and in order to alleviate it, you go and have sex where you pursue." But he said,
00:53:28
"All all of our behavior is driven by discomfort." So, in your example of I've
00:53:31
got a big I've got to start the manuscript for my new book, but I end up cleaning the house. It's cuz
00:53:35
>> sounds like a personal example. >> No, but it is. It's like, you know, I
00:53:38
remember how long I procrastinated on starting my new book because it's like
00:53:40
being stood at the foot of Mount Everest starting a book. It's huge. >> When you think about procrastination,
00:53:46
which is part of pro becoming more productive, >> what what in your mind are the causes of
00:53:52
me me avoiding the thing that I should be doing? As far as I can see, there's
00:53:56
two main reasons for procrastination. The first one is you don't know what to
00:54:01
do. So, you have this big book in front of you, but nobody's ever written a book. they've written a sentence and
00:54:08
then that sentence has accumulated over time into pages and paragraphs and then a book appears or you've reviewed a
00:54:15
book, you've looked at the edit, you've made a decision about the color for the
00:54:18
front cover, but you do what's called a next action from uh getting things done,
00:54:24
David Allen's productivity strategy. People want a really really great productivity strategy. Getting things
00:54:28
done by David Allen is is about as good as you can get. You do a next action. So, I'm
00:54:34
procrastinating over a task. What is the next physical action that I can do that
00:54:40
pushes me toward that goal? I need to write an email. Well, you better go and open your email client. Right? If you
00:54:46
don't have your email client open, it is impossible for you to send the email.
00:54:50
Well, actually, before that, I need to sit down at my desk. Actually, before that, I might need to put my pants on.
00:54:55
Okay, pants are on. Hooray. I'm moving. I'm down at the desk. All right, there
00:54:59
we go. I opened Instagram. [ __ ] Okay, close Instagram. Email client. That's
00:55:04
the next action. So any bit, what is it like? Uh completing a marathon is just a
00:55:09
ton of steps one in front of the other. Like it's just one foot in front of the
00:55:12
other. Do this really really big thing by breaking it down into small chunks. That's the first reason in my opinion
00:55:16
for procrastination. >> Before we move on to the second thing, it reminds me of something Jordan
00:55:19
Peterson said to me about um why people don't change their life. He said people
00:55:23
don't change their life because the first steps to doing so are so embar so small that it's like embarrassing.
00:55:28
Correct. And he told me the story of a guy who he was trying to get to change his life. This person wouldn't leave
00:55:33
their bedroom. Plates stacked to the ceiling, messy bedroom. And on day one, he walks in, they put a vacuum cleaner
00:55:38
in there, they do nothing else. Day two, they come back, they plug it in, nothing
00:55:41
else. Day three, they come back, they turn it on, nothing else. And by the end of the 30 days, this guy is out of his
00:55:46
bedroom, his room is clean, and he's out in out in the world, which he was scared
00:55:49
of. And it always made me think like the the first step to real change isn't some
00:55:53
great leap which is going to cause huge cognitive dissonance and discomfort. It is often so embarrassingly small that we
00:55:58
don't think it's consequential. >> Yeah. >> And I think about that with my life all
00:56:01
the time. I'm like actually maybe the first step here is just like buying buying a notepad,
00:56:08
>> you know, to start writing my book. There is definitely a sense that focusing our attention on a small step
00:56:17
kind of reveals the smallalness of our lives that like, oh my god, I said that I I sat down at my desk. like how
00:56:25
pitiful is this really how small I've become. I should have this big cathedral
00:56:29
of achievements and monumental stuff. You go, well, yeah, but how do you get there? We got to lay the first break.
00:56:36
Um, so humility, being humble and uh compassionate to yourself. Okay, I I I did a thing today. I went for a walk,
00:56:45
felt like crap. I ate this bad sushi last night and I, you know, I did one thing did one thing, one small thing
00:56:51
that moved me toward my goal. So anyway, >> maybe that's because we never get to see
00:56:55
that first small step. We get to see the outcome. So if I'm thinking about becoming a podcaster and following in
00:56:59
your footsteps, >> I see you've got this [ __ ] digital screen with where you've got Matthew
00:57:03
McConnA sat in the set of >> I do >> his movie and I'm thinking, "Fuck, God,
00:57:08
that's a long way to go." >> Well, the beautiful thing about a lot of
00:57:11
stuff on the internet is that uh it is archived for the rest of time. So you can go back and watch my first ever
00:57:17
episode, which is me in my old office for the nightclub stuff that I did. And my business partner yelled at me
00:57:22
afterward because I kicked everybody out so that I could record. And he's like,
00:57:24
"You can't keep doing this. It's not your studio. It's our office." And it's
00:57:27
a single iPhone and a Blue Yeti USB mic that looks like a big white dildo. And it's up and over the top of the desk.
00:57:35
And it's me and a friend from the gym talking about how we might row the Atlantic one day.
00:57:39
>> Embarrassing to start there for someone that's watching you do Matthew McConnA
00:57:42
in a digital screen. It's embarrassing, >> but also not because that was the first
00:57:46
step. But that wasn't the first step. The first step was deciding what name it
00:57:49
was going to be and then driving to Gates Head to buy the Yeti secondhand from some dude on eBay and that Yeti
00:57:59
went on to do 500 episodes of my podcast and then we changed to nicer microphones
00:58:04
or something. So everybody's journey begins embarrassingly small. And I think
00:58:09
just having a little bit of compassion for yourself, having the humility to go the first step that I do is going to be
00:58:17
so small that it it almost wouldn't register on the ledger of accomplishments. It would be minute
00:58:23
going, okay, that's still a win. First thing, you don't know what to do. Second
00:58:29
thing, you know what to do, but you don't know how to do it. So you can sit down in front of the spreadsheet and you
00:58:36
know that you've got to do a VLOOKUP on this spreadsheet. We have no idea how to
00:58:39
do a VLOOKUP. What's VLOOKUP? It's some like some Excel thing that Excel nerds
00:58:44
will know. Um Chat GPT, Google, ring a boss, ring a friend that is an expert in Excel. So for me, when I look at my
00:58:54
procrastination, it occurs due to usually one of two things. Poorly defined next physical action. I don't
00:59:00
know exactly what the next smallest step is that moves me toward my goal. I do know that and I sit down. I don't know
00:59:05
how to do it. Like how do I like if you don't know how to open a file, you don't
00:59:09
know how to unzip a file. Doesn't matter how many files you've got in front of
00:59:13
you. If you can't unzip them, you can't see them. So, okay, I need to learn. Hey
00:59:16
dude, I got this zip file. Where do I go to get it? Oh. Oh, okay. Thank you. And
00:59:20
then we've got moving. So, it's either a uh action issue or a skill issue. And
00:59:26
both of those are usually pretty simply fixed. I was reading your newsletter, you talk about how some people
00:59:31
procrastinate because they're scared of what they'll find out about themselves.
00:59:34
>> Mhm. >> If they try the thing, and I thought that's so true. >> Yeah. I mean, if you The upside of never
00:59:41
trying is never having to feel the pain of failure, >> right? If you never face that
00:59:48
discomfort, like if I tell myself that all women are terrible, then I'm excused
00:59:53
of ever having to talk to a woman and as a result I never have to feel the pain of rejection. If I tell myself that
00:59:59
everything is [ __ ] or that things will never get better, I'm excused of ever
01:00:03
having to try anything. It's more comfortable to get fatalistic and call it pragmatism. like the cope is framing
01:00:10
hope as pathetic and embarrassing and optimism as delusion. This is cynicism, right? Cynicism. And uh the opposite of
01:00:20
that is enthusiasm. Since moving to America, I've been surrounded by very enthusiastic people. Americans kind of
01:00:25
have permanent firstline cocaine energy. And uh I like enthusiasm. I wish I could, you know, export some of it back
01:00:34
to the UK. You know what I was really disappointed by? I mean, you featured in an article recently in a very well-known
01:00:40
British paper. Maybe this came across your desk or maybe not. >> No, I have no idea.
01:00:45
>> Okay. So, it was uh it was the same week that the Spotify rap came out. Yeah.
01:00:49
>> And in the top 10 in the world, there's me, you and J Shetty. There's three
01:00:52
Brits. I think we're punching above our weight. >> Yeah. % >> with regards to this lady who wrote this
01:00:58
article basically said it was a rejection of our patriotic inheritance that we were trying to do
01:01:07
self-improvement at scale like whatever happened to the British stiff upper lipness where we sort of feel stoically
01:01:14
satisfied in our own loneliness and misery that's like an almost an exact quote
01:01:19
>> really >> yeah it was really it really made me sad and it made me sad for a few reasons
01:01:23
first stuff. The UK is not exactly showering itself in glory at the moment. There is an entire content bucket of
01:01:31
American streamers reacting to news from the UK and going, "Oh, the downfall of
01:01:36
the UK with the whatever." Whether that's true or not, the optics aren't
01:01:39
great coming out of the UK at the moment. And you've got three people who have done it. I don't know whether Jay
01:01:46
is from workingass, but I'm from as workingass as workingass can be. I know that you're like even lower than me
01:01:51
somehow. Congratulations. and wherever Jay's from, and you've managed to get
01:01:56
these three guys who are genuinely trying to make the world a better place, really working hard at it, and your main
01:02:03
takeaway was not during a time where the UK is kind of eating [ __ ] on the global
01:02:07
stage. Congratulations to three people who can show young entrepreneurs, people that want to do personal development,
01:02:14
improve their own lives, that maybe you can do it, too. And maybe we all got lucky. I don't know. But it made me real
01:02:20
sad to read that. And this isn't just that. I was like, it would have been nice if the the UK like UK press had
01:02:25
backed us and said, "Good on you guys." But on top of that, it just reminded me
01:02:28
of a a mindset in the UK that kind of has like Stockholm syndrome for their own sad moments, for their own
01:02:39
like zero sum like tall poppy thing. And I really don't like the tall poppy syndrome in the UK. And uh it made me
01:02:46
sad to to to read that. If I had one wish for people in the UK and if you're
01:02:51
listening now there's a high possibility you're in the UK is lift people up and be positive like clap
01:02:59
for strangers. If someone does something if someone falls flat on their face in the pursuit of a big goal clap for them.
01:03:04
Go that was amazing. At least you tried because their success paves the way for us all to fail and fall flat on our
01:03:10
face. But right now there's a bit of an inversion of that. I was in San Francisco last week and I swear to you
01:03:16
one woman came up to me. She told me three times she had failed at her startup. She's now back living with her
01:03:20
mom. And she wore it like a credential in a badge of honor because in that room it is.
01:03:24
>> But back home that's a hit piece. That's a hit. >> Look at this stupid delusional woman who
01:03:29
tried to do this thing. It's evidently not going to work. How embarrassing. >> Oh yeah. She she's her employees have
01:03:35
been let go. She owes this money. All these things. It would be framed as a negative. And actually when I read the
01:03:41
thing the the Spotify top 10 thing. Yes, we're all doing self-improvement stuff.
01:03:45
But for me, that's kind of beside the point. We we built media businesses and
01:03:49
there's not a lot of in terms of competing with America and competing with the rest of the world. It's crazy
01:03:54
that three British entrepreneurs managed to contend with the United States, the home of media, more capital, more brand
01:04:04
partners, more access to talent, everything is here it seems. And for for three Brits to do that, I was so proud.
01:04:11
I I actually don't need anyone to tell me like to be like I was so proud of you. I was so proud of Jay because that
01:04:16
is um it's a real underdog thing and many of us started a lot later than the
01:04:22
people that >> you know the Indiana Jones movie where he's like running and the big door is
01:04:28
coming down the big stone door and it's coming down real slow and he's running
01:04:31
running running. He slides underneath and he grabs his hat as he comes in. I kind of feel like that was us in the
01:04:35
podcasting WORLD. WE JUST SNUCK IN before the sort of explosion and and you know we rode uh rode the the the
01:04:42
increase in platform size. But yeah, look dude, having people around you that genuinely
01:04:48
are prepared to watch you take big swings is something I wish I could gift to the UK. Like the way that I would put
01:04:53
it is Americans want you to succeed in case you take them with you on the journey.
01:05:01
Mhm. >> And the worst parts of British culture don't want you to succeed in case you
01:05:07
leave them behind. >> And I I know that there are so many people that this is just a mimemetic
01:05:16
issue that if you had one key mover within a group that that would start to spread and spread and spread. But to the
01:05:25
people in the UK that are doers and are builders and are actually making stuff happen, like you have one of the hardest
01:05:31
jobs in the world, cuz not only have you got to get over the lonely chapter, the
01:05:34
challenge, the difficulty, the procrastination, the getting up early, I've got to stop drinking, caffeine 90
01:05:37
minutes after waking, holy [ __ ] there's so much on my plate, you have this
01:05:41
additional gravity of a culture that doesn't tend to celebrate success and risk-taking in quite the same way. So,
01:05:48
if that's you, I think like power to you. I I really do. and there is a community of people out there even if it
01:05:56
feels lonely. Now, >> what do you think of the UK versus US conversations generally? Do you think
01:06:01
it's really as bad as you hear on X or on social media? Do you think the UK is
01:06:06
really as doomed? >> I don't know, man. I mean, I hesitate. I don't like to throw a ton of shade at
01:06:13
the country that I left three, four years ago now. Uh because it does feel a bit like pulling the ladder up after I
01:06:18
got you the last lifeboat off the Titanic and me going like sorry I had my problems while I was there. I had I had
01:06:24
my my criticisms of the UK while I was still in the UK. I wish that people were more positive some. I wish that there
01:06:30
was less tall poppy syndrome. I wish that risk was um more celebrated. You know, we have the same number of
01:06:42
universities in the top 10 in the world as America, >> but we produce 80% fewer entrepreneurs.
01:06:48
>> And what is entrepreneurialism? It's like vision. It's risk-taking. It's
01:06:52
being prepared to do something that hasn't been done before. and uh that maybe there's some something else I'm
01:07:00
not seeing that's a part of the maybe it's the weather you know maybe it's the
01:07:03
fact that we're a waterlocked island or that the population density is 10 times
01:07:07
that of the US but there's something I feel like bottom up that's putting a bit
01:07:11
of a restriction on people and and and yeah it was a shame it was a shame to see that the UK press was
01:07:19
just living out the exact cultural script that I assumed that they would Um, shame. Shame.
01:07:27
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customizable. We've been able to tailor it for different teams depending on how
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or payment required, just using my link below. Or you can go to piperive.com/ceo
01:08:24
to get started. That's pipederive.comceo. Productivity. Have we closed off the
01:08:31
book of uh things that really one of the things I've read in your newsletter as
01:08:34
well as relates to productivity is just this idea that a lack of confidence kills more dreams than a lack of skill.
01:08:39
>> Mhm. >> And confidence I think is maybe one of those big foundational things that sits
01:08:44
at the very top of the stack of dominoes to be able to do anything which is like
01:08:49
do I actually believe I'll be able to? Mhm. Well, let me give you this. Uh, I think a lot of people assume that
01:08:56
self-belief is kind of the answer to what it is that they're looking to do. You can just do things.
01:09:06
You can just do it anyway. You can do it tired. You can do it with no self-belief.
01:09:13
You can do it when you don't want to. You can do it when you think it's not
01:09:17
going to work. You can just do things. And I've learned that you can have no
01:09:24
self-esteem and show up anyway. You can have no self-belief and things still go well. Ryan Holidayiday says,
01:09:32
"Self-belief is overrated. Generate evidence." [ __ ] yeah. I want evidence.
01:09:41
Want an undeniable stack of proof that I am who I say I am. And I I am I am the poster boy for imposter syndrome, dude.
01:09:47
Like I I never assumed that I would amount to really anything, but I'm pretty stubborn. And being
01:09:55
stubborn has meant that I've just kept showing up. And uh that stubbornness feels even more in reach than
01:10:01
consistency. Consistency is pretty in reach, right? Don't miss two days in a
01:10:04
row. All right. Well, [ __ ] write write 500 words a week. Start a Substack and write 500 words a week. You can
01:10:11
probably do that. You can probably find 500 words a week. It'll take you half an
01:10:13
hour. Write 500 words a week. After a year, you're a writer. Congratulations.
01:10:16
You're a writer. You have the license to be able to call yourself a writer. How
01:10:19
fantastic. And then who knows in four years time you've got Penguin came knocking. Maybe there's a book deal for
01:10:26
you. How fantastic with that? I'm a published author with Penguin. How fantastic is that?
01:10:32
But it starts by just going I'm going to see what happens if I do this little thing.
01:10:37
>> So interesting as you said that I thought you know what when I started I
01:10:41
had no evidence. Definitely didn't have belief that I could do what I've done
01:10:44
over the last sort of 1015 years of my life. But I also had no choice because of that internal void. So
01:10:50
>> yeah, >> I had no evidence but no choice. >> That's the that's the region beta thing
01:10:53
that you mentioned earlier on. So um the region beta paradox. Imagine that if you
01:10:59
were going to travel less than a mile, you'd walk it. If you're going to travel
01:11:04
a mile or more, you would drive it. Paradoxically, you would travel 2 miles quicker than you would travel one mile.
01:11:10
You jump in the car. And what this suggests is that if we only act when things cross a certain threshold of
01:11:16
badness, worse things can be better than better things. So for instance, the person who
01:11:23
lives in an apartment and it's in a kind of a sketchy area of town and there's a
01:11:27
little bit of mold on the ceiling and the housemates's kind of a bit weird, but it's really cheap and they quite
01:11:33
like the bed and it's not too far from their work. Uh, someone's in a relationship and their partner's not
01:11:38
abusive or mean to them, but they're not really that fired up and don't really
01:11:42
see that much of a future with them. Or the person who's got a job and their
01:11:45
boss is a bit of a dick and it doesn't pay that well, but it's really cushy and
01:11:49
they don't actually have to work that hard. All of these people would be better off if their situations were
01:11:54
worse because it would galvanize them to go and do something. And this zone of comfortable complacency that people get
01:12:02
into is where they can sit for a very long time. And this is a really dangerous one. Things aren't bad enough
01:12:07
to be bad, but they're nowhere near good enough to be good. And this sort of gray zone, this liinal space,
01:12:15
this sort of like productivity purgatory that you sit in just sort of allows you
01:12:21
to keep moving forward. You're not moving toward what you want, but there's
01:12:24
not enough discomfort to get you to do it. One of the most uh spicy questions that's been asked at one of my live
01:12:29
talks about this was um should I purposefully make my life worse so that it kicks me out the bottom of region
01:12:35
beta? I'm like it's a high-risisk strategy. I wouldn't I wouldn't
01:12:39
recommend it but it is a difficulty. >> As you were saying that I was thinking
01:12:42
about how our relationship with that uncertainty is going to define our lives and that a lot of people are choosing
01:12:47
certain misery over the uncertainty that you'll encounter as you go and search
01:12:50
for more. And I always almost almost imagine it as being stood on the edge of a cliff and the part of the cliff I'm on
01:12:56
is illuminated. I know it. It's not great, but I know it. >> And then I look off into the the abyss
01:13:01
and I've got to jump into this uncertainty. I don't know if there's land there. I don't know what what's in
01:13:06
there. And I think people's relationship with with uncertainty defines their
01:13:10
entire life. Like can you quit when it's meh? And I look back on my life and go, if
01:13:16
there is one defining skill, maybe because of of this sort of internal void, it's been not overstaying my
01:13:22
welcome by many days in a situation >> that pushes back against your I say yes
01:13:27
too much. It seems like you do have the capacity to be able to quit when >> Oh, yeah. But it's it's I mean, so these
01:13:34
are like big life decisions. And what I'm talking about when I say I don't say
01:13:37
no enough is like gradual clutter. Right. >> Gradual clutter being uh you start
01:13:46
starting a newsletter when I have no time to write. Whereas when I'm thinking
01:13:49
about this uncertainty, it's like went to university, lasted a day, never went
01:13:54
back. >> Walked in, thought this is like school where where I failed, never went back.
01:13:59
Built a company, was going well, raising investment, very successful, quit out of
01:14:03
the blue, started this other company called Social Chain. Did that up until the age of 27. 10 days before we're
01:14:09
about to go on this IPO road show for the company to up this to a new stock market reached this point where I'm like
01:14:15
even though my entire identity is this social chain guy and even though we're
01:14:18
about to raise this money and the company would eventually rally up to what being worth 4 500 million on the
01:14:23
Frankfurt stock exchange I'm going to jump off into nothingness I'm going to leave it all with no plan B
01:14:30
and that's when I reflect on my life and go oh like in the big moments I've not
01:14:34
required I've not needed certainty what I've needed is uh realization that this
01:14:39
certain misery is not what I want. >> That's brave. Do you know what I'm
01:14:42
saying? Like I I look at people's decisioning and their life story through this lens, which is like how much
01:14:47
conviction do you need that you're in the wrong place? Obama said on stage when I spoke at this event um that he
01:14:53
spoke at many years ago that on his big decisions in life, he gets to 51% certainty and then makes the decision
01:14:58
with the peace of mind that he made the decision with the best available evidence. He talked about getting Osama
01:15:02
bin Laden in that compound in Pakistan. He had never seen that he was there, but
01:15:06
he he risked two Apache helicopters of lives and >> like what percentage of certainty do you
01:15:13
need to make a big decision I think is a determinant for the long-term success you'll have in your life. Some people
01:15:19
need to get to like 95%. And you never get there in most things. >> Yeah. It's the difference in uh
01:15:25
behavioral economics between maximizing and satisficing. It's like the two the
01:15:30
two terms like basically what's your threshold for conviction? Yeah. >> You know the paradox of choice by Barry
01:15:36
Schwarz. Do you know this? Okay. So Barry Schwarz uses this wonderful example of people buying jeans 50 years
01:15:42
ago going into the jeans store. You go in and there is one type of jeans. There's maybe different sizes maybe. And
01:15:50
you go in, you buy the pair of jeans, you leave. Maybe they're not the perfect
01:15:53
jeans that you wanted, but you had no other choice, right? So you got them. So you're okay with your decision. Would
01:15:59
have been happier if there was others, but there wasn't. So, your decision regret is basically zero. Roll the clock
01:16:05
forward. It's 2025. You go into the jeans store. Do you want skinny or stretch? Do you want boot cut? Do you
01:16:10
want ripped? Do you want bleach? Do you want gray, blue, black? If you walk out of the jean store with a suboptimal pair
01:16:18
of jeans. This is no longer because of restriction from the environment. This is because of your inability to make the
01:16:23
right choice. >> And this causes people to fear making choices. They project the potential
01:16:29
regret they're fearful of in the future down into the present and it causes decision paralysis. So they don't do
01:16:34
anything. They think there's so many different options here. And this is one
01:16:37
of the paradoxes where you think, well, lots of choice allows you to maximize what you want. You get the perfect pair
01:16:42
of jeans. So why is it that firstly people tend to be less satisfied with their decisions when they're given more
01:16:49
options and secondly why so many people struggle to make decisions in the first place? all because they're paralyzed by
01:16:55
the overanalysis they have of all of the different optionality that's in front of
01:16:58
them. >> Overanalysis paralysis. Jeff Bezos's Amazon thing about type one, type two doors is really useful
01:17:07
here because when kids come up to me at the tours and stuff that I've done, >> most of the time the question they're
01:17:12
asking me can be answered with with a rebuttal, which is, "If you're wrong,
01:17:15
could you go back?" >> Like, "If you're wrong about quitting
01:17:18
that job at City Bank, would City Bank have you back?" or Santandere, >> whoever, but you've been there for three
01:17:24
or four years. You're like a high performer. You're killing it. You could
01:17:26
do it with your eyes closed. Of course, they're going to have you back. In fact,
01:17:28
you probably get a pay rise if you go to their competitor. So, in such a scenario, go be the violinist in Peru
01:17:33
and do the cupcake thing. >> Like the start the cupcake store because if you're wrong,
01:17:37
>> you can always go back. And that honestly, when I say that to kids, it's
01:17:41
almost like the most common rebuttal I give them, which is like, if you're wrong about this dream you have, would
01:17:45
you be welcomed back to your current life? >> Well, think about this. If you're
01:17:48
succeeding at a job that you hate, imagine how great you'd be at one that you loved.
01:17:52
>> If you're not fired up about the thing that you're doing today and you're still
01:17:57
winning, what could happen if you actually enjoyed you were fired up when you woke
01:18:03
up in the morning? Imagine that. >> Some people have never experienced to know that it's possible.
01:18:08
>> It's tough, man. And lots of people have got real world restrictions, which
01:18:11
[ __ ] blows. But there's always something that you can do that's little.
01:18:15
Another question people can ask themselves when reflecting on last year. What are some of the thoughts that you
01:18:21
repeated too many times this year? What are the things that came up over and over? That little voice in the back of
01:18:26
your head, that conversation that you need to have? >> What are the thoughts you repeated too
01:18:33
many times this year to the point that it caused harm or distraction? It it plagued you. There's this thing that's
01:18:40
there. [ __ ] Like that thing that my partner said to me 18 months ago over dinner is still in the back of my mind
01:18:48
and I'm I'm ashamed of bringing it up to them. I'm even more ashamed to bring it
01:18:51
up to them now because they're probably not even going to remember it. But they
01:18:53
said they said this thing or they looked at the waiter that way or or my boss mentioned something in an email that
01:19:02
made me feel like they they really don't value me and I really and it's just over
01:19:05
and over or [ __ ] I need to I need to sort my diet out. I need to sort my diet out. I should sort my diet. I can't sort
01:19:11
my diet out. I'm going to sort my diet out. I should sort I can't over and over
01:19:14
and over again. What are the thoughts that plagued you this year? What are the ones that kept on happening over and
01:19:20
over and over and over again? And typically from that there is a conversation that you need to have
01:19:27
or there is an emotion that you're unprepared to feel. So another great question, what are the emotions that
01:19:32
you're unprepared to feel? If fear comes up, do you run away from it? You distract yourself away from it. You
01:19:37
drink yourself away from it. You lift yourself away from it. What are the emotions you're unprepared to feel?
01:19:41
>> And you're safe to feel these emotions. You can just sit there. It >> It's interesting because as you said
01:19:46
that, I thought about how the framing of 85-year-old me was actually such a wonderful way to understand this because
01:19:53
I know the question we asked earlier was what would 85-year-old you like really be annoyed that you did today. But the
01:19:58
inverse of that is like 85year-old Steven is just going to wish I took care of my body more.
01:20:04
>> It's like just it's not going to care about the money. It's going to go, "You
01:20:07
can't walk up a [ __ ] hill, my guy. your you your glutes have blown out and
01:20:10
you don't have flexibility and you're hunched over and you you lose uh respiratory
01:20:16
um you can't walk upstairs without being out of breath. >> Mhm. >> And it's so interesting that if like
01:20:21
85year-old me is going to be so pissed off that I didn't take care of my body
01:20:26
more. >> It's even as someone that seems to take care of their body quite a bit.
01:20:32
>> But still, yeah, you're making trades. I I'd love, you know, what would I do to
01:20:36
make 85-year-old me miserable and what would 85-year-old me want me to do more of?
01:20:40
>> They're great great frames. Let me give you a couple on uh problems and stress.
01:20:44
So, one of the issues that people come up against is you've got the start of
01:20:50
the year, this wideeyed blue sky vision for what's going to happen. And even
01:20:57
though you know that stuff's going to come and sort of get in the way, it always feels unfair when it does.
01:21:03
shouldn't be this way. We sort of rail against the the road bumps that we have
01:21:08
along the way. So, uh, six lessons about problems and stress. Number one, problems are a feature of life, not a
01:21:16
bug. There will never come a time when you have no problems. What did you you think you were going to wake up one day
01:21:24
and there be no more problems? Like completing a video game level and going to a map where there's nothing there,
01:21:30
right? things are always going to incur problems. Your problems will change, but having
01:21:37
problems is going nowhere. Uh number two, whatever negativity is consuming your thoughts probably won't matter in 3
01:21:45
months time. Like in 3 months, you won't remember the corrosive texture of your
01:21:50
own mind or the boring repetitive things that you thought or or maybe even what you worried about. I think what were you
01:21:57
worrying about 3 months ago right now? Probably can't remember. don't remember,
01:22:01
>> but all of the time that you spent worrying will have passed. So, you're
01:22:06
sacrificing your joy and your presence in the moment for a problem that you won't even be able to recall in the
01:22:12
future. So, immortality would kind of be the only life where so much flippency with the the time that we have would be
01:22:20
acceptable. Learning comes from the edges. Number three, change is uncomfortable and it rarely occurs
01:22:27
without a lot of stress. Learning comes from the edges. >> From the edges.
01:22:31
>> Pro approximate zone of development. >> What does that mean? >> You pushing yourself just beyond what
01:22:36
you're comfortable with. And sometimes this can be emotional pain too. Leaving
01:22:40
the job happens when you get pushed out of region beta on the bottom end or growth happens when you overextend
01:22:46
yourself the right amount. Not so much that you get injured, but so much that you're challenged. That this is a new
01:22:51
zone for you to get into. I'm clawing up. Wow. And it expands your potential,
01:22:55
your idea of what you're able to do. And it's like it pushes you so that your
01:23:01
system becomes more resilient on the other side. Many of the periods of radical important
01:23:06
change that you have had in your life have only occurred because of severe challenges you faced. Like look back
01:23:14
almost all of the big periods of growth in your life have germinated from your lowest points.
01:23:21
In retrospect would you have avoided them if you could? Probably not. So yeah, this challenge is a gift. You
01:23:31
can uh lean into discomfort as if you invited it through the door. It's like,
01:23:36
oh, there we are. Hello. It's good to see you. >> What thoughts did you repeat too many
01:23:42
times this year? >> You're working too much. >> Okay, so this is a recurring theme here.
01:23:46
>> Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Again, the big questions, the big problems are the big
01:23:50
problems. >> And you want to orientate your life towards just having bigger gaps of
01:23:54
emptiness. Uh, but probably filling it with other stuff. Family, same as you. I can't wait to be a dad or dog. I should
01:24:01
have a dog. I should have a dog. How many times have I thought the thought I should have a dog? Get a golden
01:24:04
retriever. >> I saw a tweet which has kind of haunted me for 12 months. The tweet said, "Why
01:24:10
do all the big male podcasters not have kids?" >> All the big male podcasters not have
01:24:15
kids. They all talk about the population crisis and this that and the other. And
01:24:19
then it was like Chris Williamson, Huberman, Lex, Steven. None of them. >> Jay got kids.
01:24:26
>> Jay Shetty. >> Yeah. No. Okay. Yeah. But then also Tucker Carlson's breeding a lot. Uh he's
01:24:32
he was number 10. Rogan's got like three daughters, I think. Three or four daughters. So
01:24:37
>> Rogan's the only one that But think about it as well. There's a generational
01:24:41
difference here. Like Tucker and Rogan are of the same generation. And this younger generation of like
01:24:46
>> It's very flattering for Andrew Huberman in his 50s, but >> Oh, yeah. [ __ ] Yeah. But why why is
01:24:51
that? Why don't we have kids? I I mean it's a it's a great question.
01:24:56
Um for me, I spent a lot of time in my 20ies really trying to work out who I was. I had my head up my own ass. Like
01:25:03
I'm happy to say that I had a uh slow development psychologically in terms of
01:25:09
becoming the person I wanted to in terms of realizing how important different things were to me. Like how long have
01:25:15
you known felt it I should have kids? I've always wanted kids, but I've not
01:25:22
put steps in place to make that happen. Um, up until the last two years. And you
01:25:29
know what's crazy? I'm completely unprepared. I am my life as it is now is
01:25:34
not ready for kids. >> I fly too much. I'm too busy. I have too many prior other priorities
01:25:39
>> in order to pick something up. >> Yeah. But something down. >> But I have this sort of meta view which
01:25:43
is the big step up in meaning in my life will probably come from that. So even though there's no emotion in my body
01:25:48
that's telling me that this is a good idea, >> close my eyes and do it and I will
01:25:54
adjust. >> I will adjust to the responsibility as I always have. There was no room in my
01:25:57
life for a podcast when I started this podcast, >> right? >> But I adjusted. And so it goes against
01:26:03
every inclination that I have to have children right now as a as a as a man that has freedom, who is 33 years old,
01:26:11
who can go wherever he wants, whenever he wants, and doesn't really have to answer to any major responsibilities
01:26:15
outside of my >> Do you like that? Do you like the fact that you don't have dependence in that
01:26:21
way? >> If you ask this brain, >> yes, I like freedom. I like the fact
01:26:27
that I after this conversation I can work on my business, go to the gym, go wherever I want, fly somewhere, go to
01:26:33
Hawaii. I like the freedom. However, there's this like meta brain >> that is my regret brain and it lives 50
01:26:42
years from now and it's been inspired by all the conversations I've had on the
01:26:46
podcast and it says to me that actually the most meaningful thing you can do is increase the amount of dependence and
01:26:51
responsibility that you have. >> This is an unteachable lesson, dude. that uh you should probably have kids
01:26:58
now, right? That could be a could be a lesson perhaps. >> Yeah. >> That you will never feel ready. That
01:27:03
could be an unteable lesson. >> We have this population decline situation going on.
01:27:07
>> Mhm. >> And is it it's is it not a function of or a consequence of the fact that we have
01:27:16
more freedom, more control, we're like more nihilistic. We we >> it's more like me me. M
01:27:22
>> now there's like a subtle narcissism which is bred in society and look I I
01:27:26
ain't got kids but just so you know lads that are watching I'm doing everything
01:27:31
in my power some things that I can't actually tell you about but I'm doing
01:27:34
everything in my power to to have kids as soon as possible. >> Okay. >> So I I imagine that I'll be a father
01:27:39
>> that just sounds like shagging all the time. >> Well, yeah. >> Okay.
01:27:43
>> But I think I'll be a dad within the next 12 months. >> Amazing.
01:27:46
>> And I I and I I have to say this again because it's so important. Like there's
01:27:51
no part of me in this moment of time that's like, "Oh, I really really want
01:27:54
to be a dad." I can see the cost, but the benefit is unknown. I have to take
01:27:59
other people's words for it. >> It's crazy, dude. It's it's a a painful
01:28:03
realization. And um I've had some of the best demographers in the world on uh
01:28:08
Lyman Stone uh from the Institute for Family Studies, Steven J. Shaw who did the birth gap documentary. Uh these
01:28:14
people know what's going on and it's a it's a function of a lot of things. It's
01:28:19
a a function of people having other stuff to do. There are so many other things to do than have kids. Uh reliable
01:28:26
contraception. That means that you can choose to put it off. You can continue to push it off for as long as you want.
01:28:32
Specifically, uh women's socioeconomic emancipation into the workforce and in
01:28:38
higher education. That means that at 18, the first thing you do isn't get married. Oh, I'm going to go to
01:28:45
university. Well, I've just put three or four years into university. I'm going to
01:28:48
now go and get a job and now I've committed to the job. I'm going to maybe
01:28:50
climb the corporate ladder. That's pushed the vitality curve back. It's made it later rather than being earlier.
01:28:56
And another problem is because there is such a multiplicity of different life directions that people can go down. The
01:29:01
likelihood of you being ready at 22 and you meeting someone else who's also ready at 22 is actually quite low. So if
01:29:08
you think that you could have a graph like this uh vitality curve it's called
01:29:11
by Steven Shaw and previously it would have been very short and and sharp and spiky and that would be like when people
01:29:17
want to have kids it's like you know from 18 to 24 let's say if you meet
01:29:22
anybody within that age range it's likely that they're at the same life situation as you as you flatten that
01:29:27
curve make it longer and you also push it a little bit later you're now 35 to
01:29:34
meet somebody that's also 35 and ready to have kids but you meet some that not
01:29:37
because there's too much area under the curve that's flat as opposed to everybody kind of dancing to the same
01:29:43
tune. They're all dancing to different tunes. >> Uh so that contributes to it. I
01:29:48
certainly think that there is a anti-f family message that comes about that there's a girl with the list on Tik Tok
01:29:56
which I think is this girl who wrote 350 reasons to not have kids. It's like
01:30:01
eight pages, nine pages long and it went super viral and it's everything from
01:30:06
literally a parasite growing inside of your body to can't wear cute heels with
01:30:11
the girls, will have to miss brunch, all of the different issues that can occur during childirth and then I think there
01:30:16
was a a list of things for kids and it was like maybe a page a half a page long that she'd written and um we she is open
01:30:25
to seeing the world as she wishes. I think by the sounds of things, it is a really good idea that she's not a
01:30:30
mother. And I'm glad that she's choosing to not have kids. But that tone, that
01:30:37
sentiment is like prevalent because people see this is what I have to sacrifice now.
01:30:44
Pain, discomfort, lack of freedom for something that I have no idea about whether or not it's going to make me
01:30:52
satisfied in future. And yeah, maybe people say it's the most important thing
01:30:58
or whatever, but it's easy to excuse away when there are so many other things
01:31:01
I can do with my life. I can travel around Bali and I can watch Netflix and I could build a business and I could
01:31:05
start a substack or I could build a YouTube channel and do a podcast. All of these things you could do. Pushing off,
01:31:11
pushing off, pushing off. It's no surprise. And the final point is I think um having kids is mimemetic. So
01:31:17
>> what does that mean? >> Uh you model the behavior of the people that are around you and the people that
01:31:21
you see. So good example of this Uh, South Korea's got one of the worst birth
01:31:26
rates in the world. It's uh for every hundred South Koreans, there will be four great grandchildren. A 96%
01:31:34
reduction over the next century. It's insane. There are entire classrooms, whole schools in South Korea that are
01:31:39
unoccupied now. And um there are many many reasons. the 4Bs movement, uh the the um increasing of women's acceptance
01:31:48
into education, and then when they got into the workforce, they were still being prejudiced against, which meant
01:31:54
that they swore off a lot of the things that they were promised. Like lots and lots and lots of different reasons, but
01:31:59
one of the big ones culturally, which is really fascinating, is K-pop. K-pop was
01:32:04
this export that Korea was going to put to the world. We have this ability to construct like the perfect boy band or
01:32:11
girl band. we're going to export it to the world and this is going to be a representation for us. One of the things
01:32:15
that K-pop stars have to say is that they will be celibate while they're in the band. So, not only does this mean
01:32:20
that they can't be in a relationship, so the most popular cultural influences in
01:32:25
South Korea aren't showing a pro- relationship narrative. >> They also obviously can't be mothers or
01:32:33
fathers because they can't be in a relationship. the converse of this cultural intervention in the country of
01:32:38
Georgia, very religious and there's this superstar pastor guy, very religious
01:32:44
country, this this this pastor that's kind of like a really rock star sort of
01:32:49
dude. He said, "I will personally baptize the third child of any family in the
01:32:57
country." So now these parents are speedrunning having kids so that their child can be baptized by the equivalent
01:33:03
like you know the goat. He's like the the the the like [ __ ] Avichi of uh of
01:33:08
of of pastas. K-pop did the exact opposite. They had a cultural intervention which showed a
01:33:18
nonp pro- family influence whereas Georgia had this one that was a pro- family influence. So, a cultural
01:33:25
intervention that South Korea could easily implement would be to say the only way that you can become a K-pop
01:33:31
star is to already have had a kid. Like, we're only going to create boy bands and
01:33:37
girl bands out of people who have already had families. >> This kind of brings the conversation to
01:33:42
me and you because there's a lot of men that listen to your show. There's a lot
01:33:45
of men that listen to my show. And I do think in many respects we're modeling to
01:33:49
some respects to some people what it is to be a good man. by what we choose to do. You know, you
01:33:55
have a lot of influence. I've watched the videos of people coming to you after
01:33:57
after your tours and they say to you that you're their friend. They're like
01:34:00
they thank you for the fact that you have been their their big brother or their friend to look up to. And so I I
01:34:04
think about this a lot which is like what am I modeling >> as a as a podcaster? We're both in the
01:34:09
top 10 list of the global podcasts uh according to Spotify. So do you think about what you you model and do you
01:34:16
think about what a good man is? Do you think about what you want your audience to think of a man's responsibility is?
01:34:22
>> Yeah, very much so. That being said, I've never claimed to be some shining
01:34:26
example of what people should do. >> Uh I certainly know that I try my best
01:34:33
to be the sort of guy that I would want to be friends with. I I quite like me. I
01:34:42
quite like me. And I've worked really hard. I didn't like me. And I worked
01:34:46
really, really hard to form myself into a shape, a construction. I feel big emotions, for instance. And
01:34:53
for a long time I was very ashamed of them and I wouldn't get below the neck
01:34:55
and I would use intellect to like protect myself from feeling my feelings. And on stage anybody that's come to see
01:35:02
my live show I get tearary every night. I get tearary telling the same story. Okay. Well, I think that's like a a good
01:35:11
thing. I think it's a good thing for guys who feel their emotions to show that they feel their emotions. Right.
01:35:17
Suppression isn't the same thing as strength. and I've stopped suppressing. Wonderful.
01:35:24
I think that there is uh wonderful upside in trying to conquer and trying to achieve mastery, trying to really
01:35:32
drive yourself to go and do stuff. But I'm not like [ __ ] your feelings, just
01:35:36
hustle and grind until your eyes bleed either. So, I'm trying to show balance.
01:35:40
I think mindfulness is really important. I think that a physical practice is really important. All of this stuff kind
01:35:44
of appears in the exterior. Remember what I said before? What's the conversation we're prepared to have?
01:35:49
What's the one thing that you should be doing? It's usually the big thing. The
01:35:52
big thing is probably going to be something to do with have a [ __ ] family, dude. Like, it's time for you to
01:35:57
have a family, but it's a uh >> Is that scary for you? Be honest. >> To have a family? No.
01:36:04
>> But the the sacrifice and commitment >> It used to be. >> It used to be.
01:36:08
>> Used to be. Yeah. Of course. >> When did that change? >> Two years ago.
01:36:12
>> Really? >> Two or three years ago? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, we are products of our
01:36:16
environment. like all of the the cornucopia of different things that we can do. Look at this paniply of options
01:36:24
that I could spend my life doing. And you sort of get shiny object syndrome and you chase after things and isn't it
01:36:30
going to be exciting and then you get to where you thought you wanted to be and you go
01:36:38
that might not be the answer. That's why having a bit of time to reflect, having
01:36:44
a little bit of time for quiet, fleeting thoughts to come up. Like a busy calendar is a hedge against existential
01:36:51
loneliness. Right? If you are always needed by somebody, you don't have to sit with your quiet thoughts. You don't
01:36:57
have to think, "Oh, [ __ ] that deep question that's been in the back of my
01:37:02
mind. I'm it's easy to push off if people want me or I move from caffeinefueled meeting to evening
01:37:07
dinner. I actually have to listen to that." But if you sit with your thoughts
01:37:11
for a little bit, and this is why a lot of people don't like sitting with their
01:37:13
thoughts, this stuff comes up. And that's why the question, "What emotions
01:37:17
are you unprepared to feel?" is so good. >> What changed two years ago that made you
01:37:21
change your perspective? >> I don't know. I grew up. I just I guess that's what growing up is called. Like
01:37:27
it wasn't some moment where the skies opened and and things changed. I noticed
01:37:32
I used to think I used to think that kids were super annoying. My business partner uh had his first son when he was
01:37:39
25. So I would have been 252, 25, 26 maybe. And I remember thinking, [ __ ] like he just can't come out with me
01:37:45
anymore. Like he's busy. He's got all this stuff to do. And then each kid that
01:37:50
he had, it was about two years apart, each one. I noticed my relationship to the child was different. I was like,
01:37:57
"Oh, okay. Well, you know, they're kind of kind of cute or whatever." And then
01:38:01
another one came along and I'm like, "Okay, like that's really." So, I saw
01:38:04
this sort of um sedimentary rock, this like archaeological dig of myself change, and now I'm godfather to uh my
01:38:12
best friend's daughter, beautiful daughter who's like four months old, 5
01:38:15
months old. And I love going around and seeing her. And yeah, I I don't know.
01:38:18
It's just growing up, dude. Growing up's weird because something changes and you
01:38:23
kind of didn't choose it. Do you know what I mean? Like, did you choose? >> No. [ __ ] me. No, it's weird, man. It's
01:38:29
weird. >> This belief climbs inside of you and sort of wears you a little bit.
01:38:33
>> Yeah. And a lot of the time we're scared of that and I understand why. But like
01:38:37
resisting the fact that that's there like I don't know it's kind of a denial of
01:38:43
this beautiful thing that's just been given to you. There you go. There's like
01:38:46
something new and exciting that you can move into. And I think a lot of friction
01:38:51
is in the resistance, right? Suffering is in the resistance of the thing. >> I've just finished writing my third
01:38:57
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01:39:08
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01:40:01
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01:40:57
You mentioned a word earlier on. You talked about the lonely chapter. >> Uhhuh.
01:41:02
>> You you said the word briefly. I guess this lonely chapter idea is a consequence of what will happen when you
01:41:08
go in pursuit of a big goal. You want to start the business. You want to quit the
01:41:11
job. Whatever. Explain to me what the lonely chapter is. The lonely chapter describes a time in your life where
01:41:17
you're so developed that you can't really resonate with your old set of friends, but you're not yet sufficiently
01:41:23
developed that you've built a new set of friends. >> Give me an example.
01:41:26
>> You have decided to stop drinking. Your New Year's resolution is 6 months. I'm
01:41:30
going to stop drinking. You can go out with your friends that want to go to the pub on an evening time, but you feel a
01:41:37
little bit ostracized. They're having digs at you and jibes at you. Oh, come
01:41:40
on, mate. Only one beer. Who do you think you are? Um, so your change is creating some
01:41:47
friction between you and them. Your friends like to play Xbox on an evening time and that's how they hang out, but
01:41:54
you want to start going to the gym, but your friends don't go to the gym and
01:41:58
then when you do hang out with them, you're talking about the gym because that's your new thing and they're still
01:42:02
talking about Xbox. So there is a a friction that happens as you try to grow because if your friends don't grow at
01:42:10
the same pace as you, you don't speak the same language. A friend referred to
01:42:14
it as changing your dialect so much so that over time you and your friends don't even speak the same language
01:42:19
anymore. >> And it's very uncomfortable because it's tempting to go back to the old life that
01:42:24
you're used to. The old patterns, the old routines, the old friend groups, the
01:42:29
old everything. And you have to stop doing the things that you know bring you validation in the moment to start doing
01:42:36
the things that you have no idea about whether it'll actually work. Like you're
01:42:41
going to tell me that I'm not going to go out with my friends this weekend cuz
01:42:45
I'm going to keep my meditation streak going. Who even knows if meditation works, right? It's so much easier to
01:42:50
just stay in the routine that you were previously doing the same sort of things. for you to pull away from that,
01:42:55
you're going to have to do stuff usually that makes you more different, more easy
01:42:59
to be mocked, and more alone. And the initial sad reality is that on your journey of personal growth, at some
01:43:09
point you may need to leave a group of friends behind who aren't growing at the
01:43:13
same pace as you. But the really sad reality is that if you do it a lot, you may have to do this
01:43:20
multiple times throughout your life. And it's not a value judgment about who's
01:43:24
better or who's worse. It's just a stark reality of what happens when you start
01:43:28
to make changes in your life. And I for instance, I met a million people on the front door of nightclubs. Million people
01:43:34
in person had a handful of friends. I worked with half of them. Million people, handful of friends in internet
01:43:40
marketing speak. My friendship conversion funnel ratio was not very good. Million people, handful of
01:43:44
friends. And the only way that I could work out who I was was to kind of follow my own instincts and do some of the
01:43:51
personal development stuff. Like a thousand days sober, 500 days without caffeine, which is [ __ ] miserable.
01:43:57
Nine gratitude meditation journals with no idea if any of it was going to work. And this is the really important thing,
01:44:04
and it's a bit that all origin stories miss. And I I wish that they paid more
01:44:10
attention to it. Seems to me that on every hero's journey, as soon as they make the
01:44:17
commitment to go from where they are to where they want to be, their self-belief
01:44:21
never waver. Like, sure, there's ups and downs in the journey and the progress,
01:44:27
but their conviction doesn't slip. It's like at that moment, the clouds parted
01:44:32
and I was sure I was going to become a UFC fighter. I was going to become a businessman. I was going to get off
01:44:35
drugs, change my mindset, whatever. In my experience, that's not the way it is
01:44:42
at all. Like your entire journey of personal growth is just steeped in doubt and self-pity and uncertainty and it
01:44:52
tarnishes the whole experience. It's not sexy. It's not cool. You're like, "This
01:44:57
is supposed to be my rocky cut scene. It's three and a half minutes in the movies, but it's been four years for me.
01:45:02
What's going on?" There's not even the promise that there's any glory on the
01:45:06
other side of it. And this is exactly why it's so much easier to just go back to your old patterns. Why
01:45:14
it's easier to just go back to doing the old things that you used to do. People
01:45:17
make small changes. They do little things. Lose 5 pounds or they change companies. But how many people do you
01:45:23
know that have really changed their mindset? Lost 50 or 100 pounds or change careers or moved from the city that they
01:45:29
grew up in? It's rarer. And I think the reason that I love this lonely chapter
01:45:35
idea is that it it names something that a lot of people feel is a bug, not a feature of personal growth, which is
01:45:45
this discordance with their old patterns and their old friend groups and the fact
01:45:48
that they don't know whether the uncomfortability is supposed to be there. Is this discomfort right? Is my
01:45:54
self-doubt? Surely I should just believe and see it, believe it, achieve it. Am I
01:45:57
not supposed to just be, you know, single-mindedly going toward my goal? This doubt is supposed to be there. I I
01:46:05
can promise you that every single person who has gone from a place where they didn't want to be to one where they did
01:46:12
has had to go through this lonely chapter and deal with all of this. And uh I think it resonates with people
01:46:21
because the sort of people who listen to Modern Wisdom and your show are the sort
01:46:26
of people that this is about. It's the kind of people who live in the UK and
01:46:31
want to do something themselves who want to build a business, do something that there isn't a
01:46:37
particularly good role model for. That's presumably because they want to do something. They want to become better.
01:46:42
They feel like they're built for more. Uh, and this is what I meant when I said
01:46:46
before that you can just do things. Just do it anyway. Do it tired, do it sad, do it lonely, do it without a
01:46:54
role model because if you're waiting for somebody to come along and give you that
01:46:58
helping hand, sometimes you're going to be waiting too long. >> It reminds me so much of um Jeff Bezos's
01:47:06
shareholder letter where he talks about resisting the equilibrium. in his final 2020 sharehold shareholder letter said,
01:47:13
"Differentiation is survival and the universe wants you to be typical." And
01:47:17
the way that this dubtails into what you've said is your environment is very
01:47:20
very much holding you in place. And actually in every facet of life, every organism is currently expending a huge
01:47:29
amount of energy just to resist the pull to be typical >> regression to the mean.
01:47:33
>> Exactly. So if you were to like leave your friendship group now, the the
01:47:37
amount of energy it's going to take to stay untypical is tremendous. And he says, "This is my last annual
01:47:42
shareholder letter as the CEO of Amazon, >> and I have one last thing of utmost
01:47:47
importance I feel compelled to teach. I hope all Amazonians take it to heart. Here is a passage from Richard Dawkins
01:47:54
book, The Blind Watchmaker. It's about a basic fact of biology. Saving off death
01:47:59
is a thing that you have to work at. Left to itself and that is what it is when it dies. The body tends to revert
01:48:06
to a state of equilibrium with its environment. If you measure some quantity such as the temperature, the
01:48:11
acidity, the water content or the electrical potential of a living body, you will typically find that it is
01:48:16
markedly different from the corresponding measure in its surroundings. Our bodies, for instance,
01:48:22
are usually hotter than our surroundings. And in cold climates, they have to work hard to maintain that
01:48:27
differential. When we die, the work stops. The temp temperature differential starts to disappear and we end up the
01:48:33
same temperature as our surroundings. Not all animals have to work so hard to avoid coming into equilibrium with their
01:48:40
surrounding temperature. But all animals do some comparable work. For instance, in a dry country, animals and plants
01:48:46
work to maintain the fluid content in their cells. They work against a natural tendency for water to flow from them
01:48:52
into the dry outside world. If they fail, they die. More generally, if living things didn't work actively to
01:48:58
prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings and cease to exist as autonomous beings. This is what
01:49:04
happens when they die. And what he's talking about here is that to be different in any context or environment,
01:49:10
work is being done. Like to stay atypical, and I think about this as we come into the new year, which is if
01:49:15
you're planning to be different, quit the job, go and be the violinist in Peru, start the cupcake business. It's
01:49:21
going to cost you so much energy to resist the equilibrium that you better going back to what you said about
01:49:27
subtracting things. You better save energy somewhere else >> because you know I had a neuroscientist on the
01:49:33
podcast that was the neuroscientist that discovered we have a biological budget of energy and literally like a bank
01:49:39
account. And what tends to happen, I think, and why the the New Year stats are so horrific in terms of the amount
01:49:44
of people that stick to their goals is we go in search of a new state, a new life that's going to
01:49:51
cost us even more energy to resist the our current environment without budgeting for it by saving elsewhere.
01:49:59
And I think about this through the lens of as a business owner because as a company the dire of a co will become
01:50:05
like the mean the minute we stop the fight. >> The minute we stop experimenting the
01:50:09
minute we stop pushing the boundaries. The minute you stop doing the big digital screens the minute you give up
01:50:13
the fight you will become every other show. That's what I meant when I said problems are a feature of life not a
01:50:19
bug. Like there will be no day when you don't have any problems. And uh railing
01:50:26
against it. Why is the flight delayed? Because flights get delayed. Because flights get delayed. That's why. And did
01:50:32
you think that there was going to be a day when no flights were delayed? That you're going to reach some escape
01:50:37
velocity where this was no longer an issue? I love this analogy using escape velocity. Imagine that we've got a uh
01:50:43
rocket ship here. So when this is taking off on the launch pad is when it needs the most energy. The inertia is the
01:50:50
highest, the resistance is the most. So that's when you need to use whatever
01:50:53
fuel you've got. Use the chip on your shoulder from the kids that bullied you
01:50:56
in school. Use your desperate desire to be seen by that girl out there. Use your
01:51:02
need for validation from your parents, whatever it is. And then what happens is the old school style rockets, not the
01:51:07
new Falcon 9 ones. What happens when this takes off? This fuel source switches off and then
01:51:13
the booster rockets come on. That's as you get to a different level of altitude
01:51:17
and now you're using a different sort of fuel source and then this falls away,
01:51:21
the bottom falls off and it keeps on going and then it gets into escape velocity. Use what you have at the
01:51:27
start. And at the start, most people have way more discontent than they do love.
01:51:30
>> There's a I mean, even this ties right back to New Year's resolutions because
01:51:34
if I am going to make a change and reach escape velocity, then I'm going to need
01:51:38
to focus all my energy and therefore save leakage, like save wasted energy in this moment of time. And I've heard you
01:51:44
talk about this when you do your annual review that again it goes back to what we're saying like you do need to cut
01:51:50
some [ __ ] and you can't have it all at the same time if you are going to change
01:51:54
your life. This is one of the problems of overcooking your goals for the next 12
01:51:59
months. I think you can probably do two big things in 2026. Two big things. You can probably lose 20 pounds and get a
01:52:10
boyfriend that you really, really love. You can't do that and move cities and
01:52:16
start a new business and and learn to play the piano. No. And that again is why don't go into a buffet and assume
01:52:24
that however much food you put on the plate, your stomach will just expand to fit it in. Because what you're going to
01:52:30
guarantee is that you fail next year. You can almost guarantee that you fail at doing this thing. Is it great to set
01:52:36
your sights high? Yeah, that's real cool. And maybe you've got lots of things that you want to do, but just
01:52:40
what would have to happen by the end of next year for you to look back on it and
01:52:43
consider it a success. And what if you created a rankordered list and okay, I need to kill one of these and you left
01:52:49
yourself with one or two. What's left? You could only do one thing next year.
01:52:53
Cross that off. Cross that off. Cross that. What am I left with? I really want to lose the weight. There
01:52:59
we go. Now we can break that down into individual steps. I need to get a gym membership. I need to get some cool gym
01:53:03
wear that makes me feel good as I go to the gym. I've heard you talk, you know, you
01:53:07
mentioned that get getting a boyfriend next year. One of the resolutions a lot of people will have, even if it's not
01:53:12
directly, is to find a partner. >> And I I heard you referencing psychological stability as the thing we
01:53:20
should be looking for in a partner. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> What do you mean by psychological
01:53:25
stability? >> After some sort of emotional perturbment, after something happens,
01:53:30
how long does it take for them to get back to baseline? >> Oh, okay. So, I'm looking for someone
01:53:34
who is just what? emotionally stable or they they returned >> the return to their emotional
01:53:39
equilibrium. Right? So, let's say that we're going on holiday and uh the flight
01:53:45
is cancelled and it's a big deal because their family is going out there. Is that
01:53:50
the sort of thing that happens and then there is a reversion to baseline within a few hours or is that the sort of thing
01:53:57
that blows up the entire trip of the holiday with their family? M >> something occurs that causes emotions to
01:54:04
be uh impacted. How long does it take to get back to baseline? That's emotional
01:54:09
stability and it's very predictive of relationship outcomes. Some other stuff
01:54:14
um conscientiousness. Person's thoughtful. They think a lot about you specifically and they care.
01:54:23
Agreeableness. Someone who's moderately agreeable. You want somebody who when
01:54:27
you propose plans is a a yes and person like huh yeah and finally you want someone who's
01:54:36
moderately open in openness personality trait. So there's three conscientiousness agreeableness openness
01:54:44
to experience. You want someone who's moderately open so that they're prepared
01:54:48
to go and do new things. As soon as you get into high openness that's when wandering eyes come in. This isn't to
01:54:53
say that personality traits are destiny, rah, but based on titro's work, this is
01:55:01
pretty reliable. I also like the psychological stability thing. I think that's really, really lovely. You want
01:55:06
somebody who feels like home. You want a relationship that feels like a safe harbor that you can wall yourself off
01:55:12
against all of the ills of the world. Your business can fall apart. Your health can decay. Your friends can
01:55:18
abandon you. But you know that at home there's someone who loves you for who you are,
01:55:24
not for what you do, and they've always got your back. And I think aiming for a relationship that feels
01:55:31
like a safe harbor is a really good idea. >> It's rough at the moment, isn't it? For
01:55:36
I just I just I'm so glad that I'm not single because when I look out at the
01:55:40
dating landscape of like dating apps and all this stuff, I'm so glad that I I'm
01:55:45
not out there in in that war zone. Mhm. >> And when you, you know, there's a lot of
01:55:50
single people that follow you, men and women. When you think about if you were 30-year-old Chris, and you're a single
01:55:58
guy, you're not doing the podcast, people don't know who you are. >> If you were trying to solve the love
01:56:02
problem in your life, where would you aim at first? >> Like the love problem, that's cool. Um,
01:56:07
the first thing you need to do is say, am I the sort of person who the sort of person I want to date wants to date?
01:56:15
>> Yeah. If not, it's obvious where you need to work. Work on yourself.
01:56:19
>> That's such an important question that requires such honesty. >> Yeah. And this again is why some time
01:56:24
away from the urgent in the importance, some time to reflect, some time to listen to your fleeting thoughts. You
01:56:29
know, you know that your wardrobe sucks. You know that your wardrobe sucks and you hate fashion and you've excused it.
01:56:35
It's like, I don't need to do that or I'm not interested or whatever.
01:56:39
Hey, dude. I'm sorry. Chicks care about how you look. Shock horror. They care about what you wear.
01:56:45
probably need to go and update the wardrobe. You got a female friend. You watch a few YouTube videos online. Maybe
01:56:50
that's where you need to start. I'm a bit overweight. I'm a bit skinny fat.
01:56:55
The gym is one of the most reliable ways to increase your attractiveness. One of
01:56:58
the most reliable ways as a man to increase your attractiveness. You need to be a real super Chad to not need to
01:57:04
have any physical practice at all and still be able to get the sort of woman that you want. So, okay, maybe you're
01:57:10
going to start to go to the gym, but let's assume that you have reached the level that you need to be at in order to
01:57:18
be attractive to the sort of person that you are. So, that's the first one, right? Because if you're not, you're
01:57:21
permanently uh condemning yourself to always pine after partners that aren't
01:57:26
going to want you back. Next step, where do partners like the sort of person that
01:57:32
you want to date hang out? Where do they go? Like if you love dance music, it's
01:57:39
probably a bad idea to go to a breath work class. Like why not just go to parties that have got dance DJs on? Or
01:57:44
if you're really into lectures and philosophy, go to an Alex Okconor live event or something and hang around
01:57:50
outside or like talk to the girl that's next to you. If you really love sport,
01:57:54
like obviously go to the gym, pick up pickle ball, like start doing that. Where are the sorts of places inhabited
01:58:00
by the sort of person that you want to be like? There's bonus points if you can
01:58:05
go and do a thing that you have a little bit of a competitive advantage at, especially as a guy. If you used to play
01:58:11
tennis in high school and you've got a bit of hand eye coordination, you can
01:58:15
probably be one of the best pickle ball players at a recreational court pretty quickly and you're going to be that new
01:58:20
guy who's like a like you seem like I want to play with him like he always wins or whatever it might be. Like not
01:58:24
being manipulative, you're just playing to your strengths. >> What decision did you make in your life
01:58:28
that made you more attractive than any other decision? going to the gym. Going to the gym. Uh I started training when I
01:58:36
was 18 at the Center for Sporting Excellence at Newcastle University. I had no idea what I was doing and was
01:58:41
taking blueberry extract and unflavored hydraized whey in a desperate attempt to
01:58:46
see if I could gain some size and I just didn't stop. And um I like it. It makes me healthier. It
01:58:53
makes me feel powerful. It it it added to my frame. I had real hard gain. It took [ __ ] ages to put weight. I
01:59:00
remember when I was 20 and I broke 70 kilos for the first time and I was like, I'm [ __ ] huge. Um, and I just didn't
01:59:08
stop. And I think not only is it something that's great for me, it's something that really very reliably
01:59:15
makes you more attractive to women. >> What about for women? >> What do you think in your POV would
01:59:20
make? >> Look, I would be tempted to go for the gym thing too. And the reason that I
01:59:25
like it is that it is it's uh you benefit on multiple levels. Like even what you don't want to do is do
01:59:33
something that makes your life feel like a performance for your future partner. >> You want something that even if that
01:59:38
doesn't come along, you're still glad you did it. And how many people say, "I
01:59:42
went to the gym in an attempt to get better legs because the guy that I want to attract is kind of like into girls
01:59:46
that have got good legs and I want to wear like nice dresses and look cute in them and all the rest of it." But I
01:59:51
really hated the way that I my boyfriend didn't come along and what I was I broke
01:59:56
myself trying to do I lost myself trying to do that. No, you made yourself. You won independently of whether or not that
02:00:04
person came along. And how wonderful is that for you? So I I I mean this is just
02:00:08
me shamelessly shilling for everybody to go to the gym and get jagged. Uh but I think that would be good. One other
02:00:13
thing I think that is maybe a slightly unusual strategy that women can cultivate is receptiveness.
02:00:23
So I think especially in a postmeto world, a lot of guys are very scared of approaching. Guys have always been
02:00:29
scared of approaching women. But in a postmeto world, they've been taught that
02:00:34
anything short of a hell yeah is a no get away from me so that you don't make
02:00:39
the girl feel uncomfortable. guys already were quite nervous going up and talking to you. So, you have to
02:00:46
treat a man and his interest kind of like slightly inexperienced golden retriever. It needs to be very loud,
02:00:55
very obvious signals of interest from you. So, in the middle ages or aristocratic middle ages, ladies would
02:01:01
drop a handkerchief in front of a gentleman. Oh, mom. Mom. Oh. In 2025 in New York, there are women uh stealing
02:01:10
finance bros salads, finding their names from the salad on Instagram, and then messaging them and saying, "Sorry, I
02:01:15
accidentally took your salad." Like, that's the 2025 equivalent of dropping
02:01:18
the handkerchief. But receptiveness, I think, is important. Like, hey ladies, if you like that guy and he's not
02:01:24
approaching you, maybe assume that he doesn't know that you like him and apply
02:01:31
a little bit more receptiveness. And another the other side of this is if a guy does come up to you and you're not
02:01:38
into him, don't mock him or make it like uncomfortable to his face because you
02:01:44
are ruining the next girl's chances who really does want him by making him feel
02:01:50
not enough for doing it. It's taken a superhuman amount of strength to come up and say, "Hello, I just wanted to say
02:01:58
I thought you look really lovely today. What's your name?" That was the most
02:02:04
terrifying thing that that guy has done that day. And if you don't, if you're
02:02:08
not receptive, even if you don't want it, it kind of creates this culture of
02:02:12
men feeling broken and and like they shouldn't do that more. >> So, >> yeah, there's some
02:02:17
>> What is um what is the most important things we haven't talked about that we
02:02:20
should have talked about, Chris, as it relates to this time of year? >> The strivvers who want to make make
02:02:24
change, become someone else. >> Stop taking life so seriously. Like no one is getting out of this game
02:02:32
alive. Literally in three generations, no one will even remember your name. And if that doesn't give you liberation
02:02:43
to just drop your [ __ ] problems for a moment and find some joy, I don't know
02:02:50
what will. Like life is inherently ridiculous and guaranteed to end sooner or later.
02:02:59
So, you might as well enjoy the ride. >> Do you know your great granddad's name?
02:03:02
>> Nope. Do >> you? >> No. >> People don't like that idea. And I I I
02:03:07
get it. Maybe you will be remembered for generations to come. But just assume that you don't. This is
02:03:13
this deferred happiness syndrome thing, dude. Like, don't wait. Life really is
02:03:19
happening right now. There there is this belief that once life's duties are out of the way, then
02:03:27
you can finally start doing the thing you want to and fully living your life. It's uh called the provisional life.
02:03:34
This sort of strange feeling that you're not yet in your real life. For now,
02:03:38
you're doing this thing or that, but there's always the fantasy that at some
02:03:41
point in future the real thing will come about. There is a kind of urgency that I think
02:03:51
we could all do with and uh that's not to put pressure on people so that they
02:03:56
feel um like a failure if they fall short. It's not to deny the fact that people
02:04:03
have got real legitimate resource and time constraints that mean that they can't do a thing.
02:04:10
But don't wait. This life really is happening right now. And I can't think of many times when you're
02:04:18
going to regret trying to make something happen. Now, I guess one other thing, the sort of people that
02:04:29
have made it this deep into the episode are the ones that this is about. I think type A people have a type B
02:04:36
problem. So, insecure overachievers. Is that type A? >> Yep. Need to learn how to chill out and
02:04:42
relax. And lazy people need to learn how to be motivated and work harder. But given that someone is two hours into a
02:04:48
podcast between me and you, I'm going to guess that they're probably type A. Some
02:04:53
version of a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity, as Andrew Wilkinson says. And here's the thing
02:04:59
that you may have already realized, which is type A people with type B problems often get very little sympathy
02:05:07
because a miserable but outwardly successful person always appears to be in a much more preferential position
02:05:14
than a content being lazy but on the verge of bankruptcy. One like one feels like uh a a limitation and the other
02:05:25
feels like a choice. One is a systemic imposition and the other is like a bourgeoa luxury, right? I need someone
02:05:33
to teach me how to work harder and be disciplined feels upward aiming, noble, charitable. I need someone to teach me
02:05:38
how to switch off and relax feels dopamineergic, transactional, like opulent. Every underdog movie ever has a scene of
02:05:49
some person down on their luck learning how to work harder and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
02:05:55
None include a scene of a guy learning how to log out of Slack at 6 PM or finally enjoy a beach holiday.
02:06:02
>> And like I said before, maybe more people do need David Gogggin screaming
02:06:05
in their face to go harder than need Echart Tole whispering in their ear that they're enough already.
02:06:11
But for a perhaps minority of people, they actually need to hear the opposite message. We need a a parasympathetic
02:06:20
Gogggins who's going to carry the TV remote and the Cheetos. # rest harder than me. We need to teach people to give
02:06:30
themselves a [ __ ] break. And this is a an odd thing to hold in both our hands at the same time. You do not want to
02:06:39
have a victim mindset. You want to have agency on the world. You want to enact stuff that's going on. You want to make
02:06:43
it and you're going to have to try really hard. And also, you need to give yourself a break. You
02:06:51
have to know that if you nailed your day, you don't just make it back to zero. You got to plus 10.
02:06:59
There's no arbitrary minimum level of productivity you have to achieve every
02:07:02
day in order to be worthwhile. Are you religious? And I asked this because you talked about the idea of
02:07:10
death and pursuit and you don't know how long you've got left. M >> and I think it probably has to be framed
02:07:14
in the context of what you think happens thereafter. >> Uh no, I wouldn't call myself religious.
02:07:21
Are you? >> The way that I look at it is if you look at our evolutionary history, we we're
02:07:26
meant to be part of something. But if you look at the narrative of the last 20 years, that's given rise because of
02:07:31
social media. It's all about be your own boss, remote work. I mean, we talked
02:07:36
about the whole kids thing, people having less kids. So we're actually swinging away from dependency to
02:07:41
independence and freedom. And it appears to me that freedom and total independence
02:07:47
>> will make you sick. >> So naturally our masov needs going this doesn't feel right. I need to I need
02:07:53
some I need to belong somewhere. >> Think about this Maslo's hierarchy of
02:07:56
needs uh an existential crisis. You asking yourself the question or anybody that goes through this review process
02:08:02
chriswex.com/review. Anyone that goes through that and thinks, "I don't know what to do with my
02:08:07
life." Think about how few people throughout human history have ever had to ask themselves that question.
02:08:13
>> Dayto-day, desperately just trying to cling on to existence, unsure whether or
02:08:17
not the cold snap tomorrow is going to come into the cave and kill them all. An existential crisis is a luxurious
02:08:26
position to be in. And it feels horrendous. How do you hold those two things in your mind at one time? Yeah.
02:08:31
>> Like you're telling me I'm blessed because I'm asking myself questions that
02:08:34
make me doubt the meaning of my life. >> Yeah. And uh maybe that's where religion
02:08:40
is is stepping in now to try and give people some guidance on that sort of stuff. I saw a tweet that said um my
02:08:46
parents had the problem of survival and I have the problem of self-actualization.
02:08:50
And I think um sometimes sometimes some I got to be careful what I say here, but I'm say you know they are both
02:09:00
they both come with their own challenges I should say. >> Absolutely. I mean and there's this idea
02:09:06
I had the other day of the the shame of small fears which is what this is about.
02:09:10
So imagine explaining small fears to a caveman. say, "Uh, Grook, I worry about
02:09:19
sending this message." And Grrook would respond, "Will the enemy try and see the
02:09:25
message?" "No." "Will a saber-tooth tiger smell the message?" "No." "Will it
02:09:30
be etched on the wall for the rest of time?" "No, it's a little small
02:09:34
rectangle." "Why are you worried?" uh in case somebody doesn't like me or
02:09:40
like what I say or I hurt their feelings, he just laughs in your face. And we have to accept the fact that the sort
02:09:48
of fears we have in the modern world are both uh smaller and more complex at the
02:09:55
same time. Yes, they're not about life and death, but our nervous system has
02:09:59
been repurposed from bears to boundaries and it does not know the difference. It
02:10:06
feels like you saying your truth, saying, "I don't think that this job's
02:10:10
working for me," or you said something that doesn't land with me, and you you
02:10:13
crossed a line. That feels like you're about to be rejected from the tribe, even if the tribe is now just a WhatsApp
02:10:19
chat. >> And this repurposing of our nervous system gives us the additional complexity of
02:10:28
the shame because now we feel shame. Who am I to have this problem? Do I not know that across the grand expanse of
02:10:36
history, this is nothing? My ancestors would have dreamed to have had the opportunity to have dealt with this
02:10:41
problem instead of the one that they do. And yet, you can't deny the way that you
02:10:46
feel. It's like one of the biggest lessons I've taken away from this year
02:10:48
is my emotions are legitimate. Like the way that I feel is the way that I feel. And denying myself that is not helping
02:10:59
anything at all. It's like you feel scared before you go out on stage to go and give this talk in front of a few
02:11:05
thousand people. You shouldn't be scared. No one's going to come and kill
02:11:08
you. And you start shaming yourself for your fear. And then you become anxious about your shame about your fear and
02:11:14
then bitter about your anxiousness about your shame about your fear. You've got
02:11:16
this infinite regress of mean emotions. Like, huh? The first one wasn't me. The first one
02:11:25
was the situation. The second one was me. the third one, the fourth one, and now I'm complicit in
02:11:31
my own suffering. I've made myself I've made myself suffer unnecessarily. So,
02:11:36
and this is why the spit and sawdust and caffeine and big dreams really really important, but it has to
02:11:45
be married with some self- loveve. And um maybe not in the beginning. Maybe if you're trying to get the rocket ship off
02:11:50
the launch pad, use what you have, including your self-hatred and your need for validation
02:11:58
from people and that chip on your shoulder from the kids in school. But after a while, you need to accept that
02:12:03
that is a toxic fuel if you use it for too long. But when inertia is at its greatest, I think you have to use what
02:12:08
you have. >> I'm going to I'm going to ask you a question, and this is a I just want to
02:12:12
try an experiment here. Can you think out loud when you hear this question? Okay.
02:12:18
So, I'm going to ask you immediately. Think out loud. Okay. Are you happy? It's
02:12:24
>> complex question. I have to work hard to be in a good mood sometimes. And I don't like the fact
02:12:31
that I have to work hard to be in a good mood. Uh it feels to me like I need to stack the deck in my favor in order to
02:12:38
be able to do that. And I wish that I didn't. And yet I'm really proud of all
02:12:44
of the things that I've done in order to be able to make my my happiness increase. I have a I have a set point. I
02:12:51
I had depression in my 20ies. I've had a lot of anxiety as well and I'm really
02:12:55
proud of what I've done to overcome that. >> You have to work hard to be in a good
02:13:00
mood. >> Yes. >> Can you talk me through that? I've never had this before from you.
02:13:03
>> Okay. Well, this year has been a particularly difficult one for me because I got kicked in the nuts by
02:13:08
health. America's a wonderful country, but everything's trying to kill you. The
02:13:11
food system, the municipal water, the building materials, the air quality, and uh I lived in a house that had toxic
02:13:18
mold. I got mold poisoning, which a lot of people in America have, and it's so
02:13:22
brutal. A ton of other stuff. And I spent a long time, the best part of two years, with two jobs. One was the show,
02:13:29
the other was trying to fix my health. So after all of this, all this big Modern Wisdom review thing, all I did,
02:13:36
my only two goals for this year at the start of this year were don't let the
02:13:39
show drop and fix my health. That was it. That was all I wanted. Nothing else. Don't let the show drop and fix my
02:13:44
health. So I really was humbled, like kicked in the nuts so many times that they were two-dimensional. They turn
02:13:50
they disappeared if you looked at them from the side. It felt like a cosmic joke. It felt so
02:13:56
unfair. like working so hard to just operate, going to bed at 7 o'clock at night for six months, unable to sleep
02:14:04
because I was wired but tired because my cortisol was inverted. Cortisol was higher at night than it was in the
02:14:08
morning. So no matter how long I slept, I was never able to feel rested in the morning. and then dealing with it alone,
02:14:15
dealing with it on my own and trying to go through complex environmental illness
02:14:20
doctors and treatments and all of this stuff that really made me face a lot of the fears of insufficiency
02:14:29
that I've had. I think every man knows reflection when he's at his lowest and
02:14:33
I've been at some of my lowest points over the last 12 months. So for me, the
02:14:38
happiness thing has been like I just need to get through today. I just want to perform well on the show. I can't
02:14:44
really think about the mood that I'm in when I do it because the mood that I'm
02:14:47
in is just swimming in melancholy. I don't feel very good. It felt like it felt like my better self was slipping
02:14:55
through my fingers like it was being ripped away from me due to some thing that I hadn't done. It felt
02:15:05
so unfair, so comically unfair, like a literally like a personal curse that had been hit at me. And it was specifically
02:15:12
on the thing that I care about the most. So mold does typically lots of things, but three things. Uh energy, mood, and
02:15:19
cognition. So it makes you tired all the time. It makes you low mood. And it makes you forgetful. Like there was a
02:15:26
day when I looked down and I forgot how to tie my shoes. Couldn't remember how
02:15:30
to put my shoelaces together in order to tie my shoes. I was forgetting words. forgetting the names of people that I'd
02:15:35
known, forgetting the names of like friends, dogs and stuff that I'd spent time with.
02:15:40
And um yeah, this year has not been a year where I've been trying to maximize
02:15:43
my happiness. It's one where I've been trying to sort of survive. And I did it
02:15:48
pretty much silently. I did a video about it in maybe October time, something like that. But again, my I
02:15:54
want to keep my private life private thing was important to me because I didn't want to
02:16:01
have other people Being ill. Anybody that is dealing with a an illness will know this.
02:16:11
Talking about your illness is kind of like having a birthday that what you get is inundated with lots of messages from
02:16:17
people who are all really well-wishing, but what it results in is just a ton of admin and a load of guilt if you don't
02:16:23
reply. So, I didn't I knew that if I started talking about all of the stuff that I was going through, it would be
02:16:28
great because it would make other people that were dealing with it feel less alone. But it would also be an
02:16:31
additional burden on me while I'm trying to fix myself of trying to sift through
02:16:36
all of my friend knows how to do a parasite cleanse using goat milk and you can, you know, pray to the full moon.
02:16:42
Like, dude, I really appreciate you caring about me so much that you've tried to link me in with this person.
02:16:46
And sure enough, this documentary that I put on the channel that people can go and watch came out and that happened. It
02:16:53
mercifully I was a little bit further through the journey. But yeah, man. Like, how do I optimize my happiness is
02:17:00
a luxury that a lot of people aren't in a position to do. And and that that was
02:17:03
me this year. I didn't have the spare capacity to optimize my happiness. >> And you still try hard to be you still
02:17:09
have to put significant effort in to be content, happy. >> Um yeah, at the moment, yeah. Uh I've
02:17:17
been working hard on it. You know, happiness really only exists when uncertainty
02:17:24
isn't there. It's very difficult to be uncertain and happy at the same time.
02:17:28
You'd even make the argument that humans never chase happiness directly. They
02:17:33
always chase certainty first because if you don't know how the future is going
02:17:37
to pan out, how are you able to be h especially if it's like chronic uncertainty like you know severe
02:17:42
uncertainty, not just I don't know who's going to win the sports game tomorrow.
02:17:46
And for me, I didn't know if I was going to get escape velocity to get out of
02:17:52
this health stuff. And if that's the case, where am I deriving my happiness from? All I see is this endless stretch
02:18:00
of work and discomfort and fatigue and tiredness and solitude. And I I I feel bad for the guy that had to go through
02:18:09
that this year. Like I feel for him cuz it wasn't it wasn't easy and it was
02:18:13
lonely. And I'm really proud. I'm really really proud that I kept showing up. I didn't give up on
02:18:22
myself. I hit dead ends with regards to treatment, with regards to testing. It was like months where
02:18:31
I was going to bed at 7:00 p.m., waking up at 8:00 a.m., still tired, sleeping straight through.
02:18:39
>> There's something interesting here because the three areas that you said
02:18:42
mold impacts are also the three areas that everybody kind of knows you for, right?
02:18:47
>> And that's kind of >> why I said personal curse. It felt like
02:18:50
it felt like somebody had designed a pathology just for me and it would hit at all of the places that I took my self
02:18:58
worth from. >> Does it leave a question then which is if you take everything I value now that
02:19:03
gives me selfworth, what remains? >> Well, that was a question I had to ask
02:19:08
myself this year >> and what did remain? >> Somebody who's kind, somebody who's
02:19:14
genuinely kind and uh sensitive. And I always thought that sensitivity was a weakness, but it's
02:19:22
not. At least not for me. Somebody who is resilient in a very normal way. So boring
02:19:29
victories is something that I've had to learn to take pleasure from this year. You know,
02:19:35
is today the grandest accomplishment of your entire life? No. but you went for a walk or you were
02:19:46
kind to that person at the supermarket or you were gentle with yourself when you became frustrated.
02:19:51
And I had to get over the shame of small pleasures that somehow me feeling proud
02:19:58
about the way that I showed up in a tiny minute way that nobody else saw was sort
02:20:03
of a comment of the smallness of my life. Oh, you must not have a lot going on. Like how feeble, how weak, how
02:20:10
minuscule must your life be? that that seeing that golden retriever was the best part of your morning.
02:20:18
And yet I realized that that was worth being happy about and that denying myself the opportunity to be happy about
02:20:27
something small is basically me holding my happiness hostage. Like until the bank deposit is sufficiently large, the
02:20:34
ledger doesn't kick in. Like I can't pick up pennies. I can only pick up $100
02:20:38
bills. And um it really [ __ ] humbled me, dude. Especially if you're flying
02:20:43
high, you know, two years ago, the show is just vertical. And it, you know, numerically it still is now, but it
02:20:51
really really felt like something had just come in to bring my feet back down to earth. And I feel different to the
02:20:59
person I was last year, but I'm much more connected, I think, to a sort of truth. Alander Boton says, "The best men
02:21:06
are those who have been broken." And this year has definitely broken me. >> Are you doing better now?
02:21:11
>> I am. Yeah, I am. Um, it's if I was at a three 12 months ago, I'm probably at a
02:21:17
seven to an eight now. So, don't let the show drop and fix my health. Like, I got
02:21:22
close to doing both of those. We've got to wrap up now, but I wanted to give you
02:21:26
the chance to end this with any closing thoughts that you might have for the listener that's gotten this far in this
02:21:31
conversation >> and who is really at, you know, the foothills of potentially a new version
02:21:35
of themselves. Is there anything else, >> Chris, that you wanted to say? >> Well, first off, congratulations for
02:21:42
making it through all of this. There's a lot of uncomfortable things to face with
02:21:46
conversations like this. It really forces you to reckon with parts of your direction. You're like, [ __ ] Like, I I
02:21:54
really don't want to have to have that conversation. I really don't want to
02:21:57
face that thing. There's a great quote from John Paul Sartra. He said, I've led
02:22:02
a toothless life. I have never bitten into anything. I was waiting. I was reserving myself
02:22:08
for later on. And I've just noticed that my teeth have gone. This idea of being shunted to the side
02:22:17
of your own life, of being a an NPC, a non-playable character when you should have been the main character.
02:22:27
uh you can be in service of other people, but you can still have some sort of action that you take into the world.
02:22:33
This deferred life thing, waiting for life to begin. It's a great time of year to question
02:22:41
that assumption. What would have to happen by the end of next year for you to look back on it and consider it a
02:22:45
success? What would I do to make 85-year-old me miserable? What would I what would 85-year-old me wish that I
02:22:50
did more of? What are the emotions I'm unprepared to feel? What are the thoughts that I thought too many times
02:22:56
last year? If this was a movie and the audience was watching, what would they be screaming at the screen telling me to
02:23:03
do with my life? They're cool questions and uh they certainly helped me. They helped me find
02:23:10
direction. So, I hope they've helped everyone else as well. We have a closing tradition where the
02:23:15
last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it
02:23:17
for. And the question left for you is quite relevant. What is the most important component of human joy and
02:23:24
endeavor that you believe must be preserved in priority? Oh, wonderful. I think agency
02:23:38
I think the belief that you have the ability to impact your surroundings. Uh because the opposite of agency is you
02:23:47
basically holding your hands up and saying, "I'm at the mercy of the world.
02:23:51
You happen to life. Life doesn't happen to you." Chris, thank you. You are going on tour
02:23:58
and uh you're going on tour next year in March, I believe. And you're going in on
02:24:02
tour in an area where I know we have lots of listeners, >> Australia, New Zealand, Bali.
02:24:05
>> So, I'm going to link below a link to anyone that wants to come see you on
02:24:08
tour, >> but also highly recommend people go download the the modern wisdom annual
02:24:13
review template. So, I'm going to link that below as well. Look in the description. It's all there.
02:24:17
>> Is there anything else that if people, you know, your channel, people should go
02:24:20
subscribe to your channel if they've liked what they've heard today. Is there
02:24:22
anything else? >> I had a conversation with Naval Ravocant. >> Oh my god, I love that.
02:24:27
>> It's the people always ask like, "What's the best conversation you've ever had?"
02:24:30
And I say, "It's like trying to choose between a thousand children." Um, that
02:24:34
was really special. And for people who know him, you should watch it again. >> For people who don't know him, you
02:24:40
should go and check it out. So, we can link that below. I highly recommend that. Yeah. Honestly, the modern wisdom
02:24:45
manual review template, it's free. Copy it, use it, and um that'll put you on my
02:24:50
mailing list for a once a week newsletter, which is a lot of the thoughts, a lot of the ideas that we've
02:24:54
gone through today. I wanted to uh say something to you before we finished up as well.
02:24:59
>> Um, no, it's a it's a thank you. So, uh I think people often wonder about what's
02:25:04
going on behind the scenes or what somebody's like behind the scenes. And, uh I had a I needed some advice from
02:25:12
you. So, I messaged you on a Saturday afternoon on WhatsApp and within 30 seconds, you rang me and then put me in
02:25:20
a group with like the guy that was able to help with this thing and then basically sort of carried us through
02:25:28
this process for the next couple of weeks and kept checking in with me. That was that was very very meaningful
02:25:34
and you didn't need to do it. And uh I very much appreciate having you. I mean
02:25:37
you you in my phone book is like a [ __ ] hidden weapon. you're kind of like the jocker willing to be able to
02:25:42
get, you know, stuff sorted. But uh I just wanted to say thank you for that cuz it was it was really really kind and
02:25:47
um yeah, it's it's awesome to feel like people have got your back and that made
02:25:52
me feel like that. >> I appreciate that. Um yeah, you've earned that because you you've done so
02:25:57
much for so many other people and you've been so selfless in a way that I aspire
02:26:00
to be. Like I'm not very good at like staying in touch and connecting and replying and stuff like that, but in
02:26:06
those particular moments, you know, I think we are a team. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
02:26:13
>> So, uh, so I appreciate that. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, mate.
02:26:21
>> This is something that I've made for you. I realized that the direio audience
02:26:25
are striv goals that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I've learned is that
02:26:32
when you aim at the big big big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like
02:26:39
being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking
02:26:44
them down into tiny small steps. And we call this in our team the 1%. And actually this philosophy is highly
02:26:51
responsible for much of our success here. So what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that
02:26:57
you have is we've made these 1% diaries and we released these last year and they
02:27:02
all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back but also to introduce some new colors
02:27:07
and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So now we have a better range for you. So, if you have a big goal in mind
02:27:15
and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries
02:27:21
before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours now at the diary.com where you can get 20% off our Black
02:27:28
Friday bundle. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below.