15 Lessons From 2023 - Jordan Peterson, Alex Hormozi & Elon Musk

Hello everybody welcome back to the show it is an end of 2023 review it's the best lessons that I've learned over the last 12 months I did one of these a year ago and it went down really well and I really enjoyed the process so I figured I'd do it again if you want to do an end of review I have a free template which you can actually go and do right now you can download it and it'll help to structure your end of 2023 review and give you plans for 2024 you can go and get that at Chris willll x.com revie it's completely free you can just copy it and fill it in and use your notes app of choice Chris willll x.com review all right let's get into it first one is you should just be yourself not because it will make you more likable it won't but because it's only by being yourself that you'll find people who like you for who you really are rather than someone you're pretending to be that's from ginda Bogle and this was one of the biggest realizations of my 20s the the advantage of doing this thing where you sort of push off of who you really are is that no criticism will ever fully land because you're one degree removed from the person who's being criticized the disadvantage is that you're also removed from the person who's being complimented and if you're only playing a role you never fully feel connected to the successes that you have in your life any accolades or warmth that you receive won't resonate properly in your heart because it's not you who's receiving it it's the character that you're pretending to be Al Markus said the Persona is incapable of receiving love it can only receive praise and this is how you can feel alone in a crowd and Hollow in Victory if you haven't shown your true self to the people around you you are inevitably going to feel disconnected from them and the people who would have fallen in love with the true you will pass you by because that person is never presented the Persona subsumes the person this isn't the people around you's fault either like you need to take responsibility for this there are reasons to fear truly showing up but they pale in insignificance compared to the reasons to hide away like even if all that you want is Success your highest point of unique contribution involves you fully embracing you forget the actualizing yourself forward and offering the world something which no one else can nval ravikant says no one can beat you at being you the absolute best that you can hope for if you're playing a role is to be the second best in the world being someone else I did this research for a tedex talk that I did a couple of years ago around Salvador Daly so dar's parents gave birth to a child about 9 months before Dary was born who was also called Salvador and they were adamant that he was The Reincarnation of their Lost Child so like that was how he entered the world which might explain kind of why he was a bit crazy later on in life uh when he was a child he used to throw himself down down the stairs he was a masochist he used to enjoy throwing himself down the stairs he once gave a a speech a keynote speech at the University and he had to be wrenched out of a deep sea diving suit that he put himself into mid talk because he was suffocating uh the woman that he ended up marrying he married this lady who was got this lady away from her marriage he was in one so was she they both separated came together and he literally thought that she was his Muse that she was like divine he immediately bought her a castle and then sent her formal letters of request in order for him to be able to go and visit her in the castle that he bought her so just super eccentric guy but the point is that is part and parcel of Salvador DOI if he hadn't done all of those other things the world would have been fundamentally less because as brilliant as they were Michelangelo didn't do Dary and da Vinci didn't do Dary so had Salvador been anything short of his his absolute Unapologetic showing up self to the world the world would have been fundamentally less he would have been a pale imitation of something or someone else so yeah that Insight from Ginder around you should just be yourself not because it'll make you more likable but because you'll actually find people who like you for who you are rather than someone you're pretending to be there like 10 different reasons to do that but I also understand that it's scary and if you don't have confidence that who you are when fully expose yourself as someone that's likable it means that well you don't want to do it but again like having people fall in love with some fake version of you doesn't seem like it would be very fulfilling either next one it's one thing to get what you want but it's another thing to want what's worth getting that's from Shane parish and this is just like a really great Insight that the danger of not spending time working out what you want to want can cause you no matter how hard you work to move in the wrong direction your life as far as I can see it should be lived by Design not by default this guy Kyle Ean rer explains it so well he said uh blindly following your desires makes you a slave to your impulses a slave to the assumptions of those around you the advertisements you're exposed to and the confused chemical signals of your body if we don't pause and ask ourselves what we want to want we will spend our lives focused on unhealthy aims defined for us by others the worst parts of ourselves we will pass these bad assumptions about life onto our children and loved ones we will reinforce these boring desperate defaults in everything and everyone we encounter to achieve Freedom we must be able to think for ourselves if we don't cut to the core and program our wants then our best case scenario is to be a rich famous or successful slave if we never peer into our programming then we may end up being the cleverest rat in the room but that's hardly worth celebrating ating in short your default factory settings are [ __ ] don't follow them people who will never actually the people who do this are never going to fully actualize their potential either for happiness or for Success there's this quote from senica where he says they do not what they intended but what they happen to run across so you can imagine it's the difference between being a a cork bobbing around in the ocean which moves but it doesn't move under its own Steam or with its own desire and its own Direction and being a boat which actually forces itself through the environment toward a direction that it's chosen so if you think about it that your desires Define your own path of least resistance what you want is to be able to arrive at a place where the things that you want are the things that you want to want and that's why desires are important through deliberate training that at first feels tedious you can eventually arrive at that place where what you want is what you want to want and that's where the life should be lived by Design not default things comes in because your default factory settings send you off into like such strange sub-optimized areas of life like whatever the current societal Norms are or the way that you've dealt with past trauma or what your parents made you think that you were supposed to like all of those things aren't things that you necessarily want to want they could be but you need to get a like stress test this and work out whether or not it is so yes your life should be lived by Design not default it's one thing to get what you want but it's another thing to want what's worth getting next one toxic compassion so this is one of my favorites by the way everyone gave me [ __ ] the last time that I was doing a solo episode because I was drinking just FYI I drink on the normal episodes as well I'm talking for an hour I need some sort of moisture and and hydration in my face difference is I can usually mute the mic and do it while the other person's talking when it's a two-way episode so forgive me that I need to be hydrated but someone accused me of not having any Dr it was it's obvious that there's nothing in the can it's like why would I be lifting this to my face if there wasn't anything in it anyway I will be drinking throughout solo episodes I apologize I'll try and drink quietly there we are toxic compassion toxic compassion is this really I love it I I it's one of the coolest ideas that I've come up with this year and I was looking for a name for this phenomenon that I'd seen for so long and I cycled through what was it like the shallow Pond of empathy uh uh [ __ ] like Satan like the inverse of Satan's love like all sorts of weird and wonderful other words and then toxic compassion just came to me and I thought that's that's it so toxic compassion is the prioritization of short-term emotional Comfort over everything else over truth reality actual long-term outcomes flourishing everything it optimizes for looking good rather than doing good and this is seen in much of popular culture as the desirable Fair empathetic thing to do and it's everywhere people would rather claim that body fat has no bearing on health and mortality outcomes to avoid making overweight people feel upset even if this causes them to literally die sooner or have a worse quality of life over the long run parents would rather allow children to play computer games or watch screens and access social media every night instead of dealing with the discomfort of taking it away from them even if it ruins their brain development social skills and self-esteem people would rather say that children growing up in single parent households suffer no worse outcomes than those from two parent homes even if this misleads parents children and teachers about why kids behave the way that they do campaigners would soon shout defund the police as a response to what they perceive as the unfair treatment of criminals even if this results in more crimes being committed against people from Minority backgrounds due to the abandonment of police officers from those very areas and Elon Musk recently responded to some criticism about his political alignment and contribution to climate change and skepticism of it I think and then he identified how big of a shift Tesla had caused in the electric vehicle market and the downstream impact of that on the environment he said he's done more for the climate than any other human in history and this quote from him is what I care about is the reality of goodness not the perception of it and what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil the important trade-off with all of those examples including Elon is between appearing good and actually doing good so telling people what they want to hear giving them immediate gratification and avoiding saying anything that could cause distress prioritizes the former of looking good over the latter of doing good and the net effect is usually wildly negative it's it's like a toddler who wants to eat ice cream every night sure that might be what they want in the moment but it's going to be wildly unhealthy over the long term and I asked Jordan Peterson about this on our last episode and he said that's exactly what the edle situation is it's the prioritization of short-term emotional Comfort over long-term thriving it's going to hurt now but the long-term consequences are positive if you give up your children to the world you will keep them and this Prospect of appearing bad while doing good is obviously not very enticing like you get all of the negatives up front of not appearing like somebody that cares and is empathetic even though yeah sure enough down the line people will benefit from it but you're going to be lambasted and criticized and and and seem like someone who doesn't care in the moment and the opposite of this is performative empathy saying whatever is required to look good even if you don't actually care and on the internet the gap between words and actions has never been bigger you can be the least virtuous the meanest most dishonest human on earth but if you say the right things if your thumbs literally hit the right buttons on a screen you look like a saint and no one ever stress tests the world words coming out of your mouths so it means that appearing good actually becomes more important than doing good so this the incentive of performative empathy kind of creates the basis for toxic compassion as as a trend you know posting about mistreated groups is more incentivized than actually helping mistreated groups it's all of the people who have put a flag in their bio but have never actually donated to a charity and this isn't me saying that you can't do good whilst also talking about it it's that many maybe even most of the people who prze about how virtuous and caring they are and about how it's everyone else who is evil and done caring and the enemy are allowing their morality to stand on the shoulders of limited scrutiny Peterson said it's like look how good I am well if the look at comes before the how good I am it really WS hav it with the claim I I think the the big lesson here is just beware the people who prioritize saying good things because they might not actually be doing good things this balance between what is it that you're saying how does it look and what are you doing what are the outcomes I see it everywhere and this idea of toxic compassion I think is it's useful it's a useful frame and I don't know everyone kind of has this in the back of their mind there's a degree of skepticism and scrutiny about anyone that says something good online but we all know that there are huge huge swats of people who are probably not that nice probably not that caring probably don't really give a [ __ ] about whatever the topic or movement is that they're getting behind or supposed to be a a front runner for lizo lizo supposed to be this Paragon of virtue and supporting these girls and giving them a platform behind the scenes she's body shaming her dancers she's forcing them to go on fasts when she isn't making them eat bananas out of the vaginas of Amsterdam strippers Ellen degenerous Jimmy Fallon you know allegedly allegedly all of these people that out front of these sort of cutesy nicy nicy people and behind the scenes the staff that have worked with them who know them best say that they're tyrants super mean so yeah I just think there's not really a way around this I'd be interested to try and think of a way around this because what you supposed to do it's easier to see someone's words than it is their deeds Deeds can be faked as well and there's always going to be an incentive for people to just say the right thing again say an increasingly complex or um convincing set of mouth face thumb noises so that you believe whatever it is but yeah I I thought toxic compassion one of the probably top five memes that's that's come out of this year all right next one this is Elon as well and this was on Lex's show such a good Insight you know you look at on as somebody who is um probably quite admired by lots of people on the internet wealth status influence all the rest of it and Lex asked how he was doing and sort of what it's like to be him and Elon replied my mind is a storm I don't think most people would want to be me they may think they would want to be me but they don't they don't know they don't understand and this is why jealousy is a stupid emotion in fact Envy is one of the it's the only one of the the seven deadly sins which doesn't actually feel good think about that so Naval says about jealousy I realized that all of these people I was jealous of I couldn't just cherry-pick and choose little aspects of their life I couldn't say I want his body I want her money I want his personality you have to be that person you actually want to be that person with all of their reactions their desires their family their happiness level their outlook on life their self-image if you're not willing to do a wholesale 24/7 100% swap with who who that person is then there is no point in being jealous it seems obvious but it's so counterintuitive to how we all relate to the people that we admire we look at humans that we are jealous of as ubiquitous successes this sort of brilliant collage worthy of lifewide admiration and envy and we presumed that we could add the elements of their life which we love like taking clothes off a rail but that's not how life works the outfit that you are imagining trying on is is head to toe not pick and shoes it's a onesie right not an alak cart wardrobe the price that you would need to pay to be the P the person or the people that you admire is often one that you wouldn't fot the bill for and this is what we're seeing with Elon as well that this dude who's you know created potentially one of the coolest most Innovative cars in history with the cybertruck that just got released a couple of weeks ago and he's on stage doing like weird robot dances in Japan sending Rockets to Mars you're trying to make Humanity a multiplanetary species like you look at him and you think well he must if he doesn't have it sorted if he's not the guy who is one of the wealthiest people on the planet bought Twitter just basically for fun well he's saying my mind is a storm people think they would want to be me but they don't they don't know they don't understand like that is the ground truth reality of his life and yeah I just think again for reminding us that people who outwardly have lots of things going for them inwardly can be suffering and have completely unadmirable uh undesirable internal States in fact perhaps the people who are most desirable externally May correlate with being the least desirable internally it gives us a couple of things first off it can give us a little bit of empathy that success outwardly doesn't fix all problems internally and it helps us to stop accusing things of being first world problems a lot and secondly it helps us realize that just because someone does have lots of things outwardly that we might desire that doesn't mean that we should actually be in any way envious of them or that they're a particularly good person doesn't mean that they're good just because they're successful speaking of that there was this I've quoted it a lot this year so sorry if you've heard this one before but the documentary following Lewis Capaldi around as he's going through this big change in scrutiny and status and fame does his first album which goes Super well and then he's got to make the second one and he develops a nervous tick I think it's Tourette's he sort of starts doing this a lot and it's not good you know I've seen videos of him in front of however many tens of thousands of people at glastenbury unable to sing because of our nervous is and I think this was only this summer so the documentary tries to finish on like a an uplifting Arc where he's like and I went and did some yoga and breath work and now my [ __ ] mental health is under control but it's not it's not under control this guy is still as one of the most successful breakout artists of The Last 5 Years this dude is still failing on the biggest stages that there are to fail on you know like glastenbury it doesn't get much big maybe it was like leads festival or reading or something instead but this guy is struggling really really struggling and he's got this line in the documentary where he turns to the camera and he says Fame doesn't change you it just changes everyone around you and again like I have Niche Fame I have Micro Micro influencer Niche Fame but there is something disconcerting and it's hard dude it's so hard to talk about this I spoke about this at one of the live q&as it's really difficult to talk about this on the internet without being accused of being full of yourself or or having a massive ego or thinking that you're more important than you are or complaining about first world problems don't you know about how hard people are the people have got it you just get to Dick about on a on a camera and a microphone and have all of this stuff I get it all of those things I get it but if you genuinely are interested in finding out what it feels like to go from completely as normal person as possible to still unbelievably normal person with micro influence and Niche Fame like I'm telling you that this is how it feels or at least this is how it feels to me which is it's disconcerting like it's it's very nice and it's flattering but imagine that you woke up tomorrow and everybody immediately started treating you differently and you didn't understand why because you see yourself as the same person and maybe even the things that you do are the same nothing's changed Lis Capaldi singing the same songs that he was singing when he was 17 18 years old in working men's pubs around Scotland those were the same songs that he then belted out across a global tour billions and billions of streams Fame doesn't change you it just changes everyone around you you haven't even changed the thing that you're doing and everybody else refers to you and responds to you and reacts to you in a different way that is the reality at least from where I am at the moment that's like part of the reality of changing state in some regards that like it's beautiful and flattering but like disconcerting as well everyone is you just see yourself as a same person and maybe people maybe it's just that you've become more confident maybe it's got nothing to do with the position that you're in now but yeah that's like that's something that I'm kind of battling with at the moment trying to work out what it means and how to deal with it and stuff so yeah anyway enough online solo therapy between me and the camera next one Jimmy car so uh Jimmy and me become friends this year and he just has this really wonderful idea about the difference between trajectory and position and how important trajectory is how much more important it is than your position so if you are number two in the world but last year you were number one that is way worse than sitting at number 150 but being on this huge upward slope from being number 32 months ago so number one to number two number uh 150 from number 300 and there's a few reasons for this I think so uh recency bias if your value is increasing right now then it means that you have to be popular at the moment and by looking at recent trajectory you are selecting for only the people who are trendy right now which a lot of the time is all that we can remember we can also romanticize where someone will be in future if they're currently hot stuff you think about how high this person might climb maybe maybe they'll get to the top maybe they'll go beyond the top humans struggle to realize that everything is temporary including growth and decline instead it's easier to label people as Heroes and losers based on what we know of them right now so that we don't have to predict a messy future I was talking to this uh to Ryan long about this he's a massive fan of Jimmy and Ryan said there's an old saying that there's three types of people on a ladder one at the bottom one at the middle and one at the top which one is the best to be the one that's still climbing interesting right this I don't think it works just for status but it works for possessions and achievements and wealth and sex and everything else and it's not just how we see other people it's also how we see ourselves we know when we're moving up or down when life is getting better or getting worse we have this internal like altimeter is that what it is an altitude meter we have one of those we know where we were before in all of these different domains status money possessions achievements education competence confidence and we know we we can predict whether things are going up or down what was that Will Smith in his biography uh gaining status is amazing being becoming famous is amazing being famous is a mixed bag and losing Fame is horrible like there's just this sort of hodg podge of lots of different things Andrew Tate you know one of my favorite insights that I think I've learned over the last couple of years having things isn't fun getting things is fun there's something I feel like it's a Kendrick Lamar line as well that people don't love you when you've got something they love you when you're on the way to go to to getting something another way to look at it is any accomplishment is just a new higher bar for you to get over in future future so let's say in our own work that we do an episode that hits a million plays in the first day amazing that's a very exciting new record that we can feel proud of almost immediately wow that also means that every video in future is now going to feel unimpressive until we hit 1.1 million or more and in this way rapid increases in status are more a curse than a blessing and this Theory got co-signed by Dan B Arion so you know it's legit even though we might want our goals and accomplishments to arrive immediately maybe a smarter strategy is to actually stretch out the achievement of our dreams we shouldn't wish for overnight success because we would then need to be able to beat it pretty soon or else we're going to feel like we're declining instead slow consistent progress is a much more reliable way to maintain satisfaction so I came up with this idea of slow success strategy as a way of making sure that you're going in the right direction of of of of elongating out that Journey a little bit more so let's say that um you got a pay rise and you were able to afford your dream car or one of your dream cars but you're jumping from you maybe haven't updated your car in a very long time you have the opportunity instead of going from total [ __ ] box to the ultimate car that you've ever wanted you have the opportunity to chunk that up maybe you could go halfway and take a bunch of satisfaction from that because once you've got the dream car what is there after that you once you've got the dream house once you've been on the holiday that you've always wanted to go on if you have the opportunity of maybe making a couple of small jumps in between that aren't the massive leap to the very top I think that you can stretch out that sense of progression and you know it's one of the reasons why you literally should pray to never win the lottery in some regards it would be the most amazing and most Terri terrible day of your life because how are you going to have a better day than that given the fact that trajectory is more important than position I I absolutely think that this is true trajectory is more important than position and given that what you want is to always continue you want to just have this very nice sort of slow steady ramp up and then you can just flatten out toward the end of your life what you don't want is to have this huge Spike up and then be like all right where do I go I'm just floating in the stratosphere where do I go from here and this relates to another lesson that I learned from Adam mastriani where he explains what happens when people sacrifice their happiness and their passions in order to achieve success this such a cool uh analogy he uses here he says this is an extra special type of tragedy a tragedy that unfolds while everyone cheers strangling your passions in exchange for an elite to life is like being on the Titanic after the iceberg water up to your chin with everybody telling you that you're so lucky to be on the greatest steam ship of all time and the Titanic is indeed so huge and wonderful that you can't help but agree but you're also feeling a bit cold and wet at the moment and you're not sure why strangling your passions in exchange for an elite life I Lov that Insight like what's the point in success if the road to get there is paved with nails and you don't care about the place that you arrive at in the end don't forget having things isn't fun getting things is fun but once you have them it's not that fun the journey is the destination and if you strangle your passions in in return for an elite life remembering that when you get to the very top not only have you got nowhere to go from there or as you start to get to the top the bar of increasing your trajectory becomes harder and harder if you are miserable you're sacrificing the thing that you want which is happiness for the thing which is supposed to get it which is success and that is the bar stool being turned upside down it's very dangerous then I've been been on tour with James which has been good I've had so much fun and I've learned an awful lot I'm trying to not hop on about it because I know it must be boring like I sometimes don't like it about someone goes on some formative experience and all that they talk about for the next year is this like one trip to [ __ ] Peru so I'm trying not to be like the tour guy but it has been very formative it's been very strange to watch you know like a few thousand people over the space of a couple of weeks come out and see you live but while I was watching James one of my favorite lessons that I took from him is this idea about imagine how good you'd be at something you loved if you're winning at something that you hate so committing to decisions that you feel drawn toward making often makes you feel nervous it's an existential pull toward a new dire a life Direction changing a job or leaving a relationship or moving to a new city it's hard it's often hard to let go of the fear around what this new situation might might have in store but his justification is that you absolutely can because if you're not happy right now you're not risking anything in any case what's the worst that could happen you leave a job that you hate to take a chance on one that you love fail and still have the one that you hate there to go back to that's still a success in fact it's more than a success because you've closed the loop that you had in your mind that was ramping up anxiety cost for ages and ages in the back of your mind and you don't need to worry about it anymore and this is the difference in life between playing to win and playing to not lose a more difficult decision is if your life is okay but not perfect and this is the region beta problem right you don't hate your job or your relationship or your city but they're not fulfilling you as you thought you would how do you know when to give up the good for the great how do you even know what good and great are how do you know when you're deceiving yourself into thinking that the grass is greener and in fact the problem is your perspective on the situation not the situation itself that is messy but if you've got something where Johnny from Johnny and USF propan Fitness used to sing to himself on his way to his old accounting job singing I don't want to go to work I don't want to go to work I don't want to go to work just over and over again and his Ms one day turned to him and was like I'm not sure I'm not sure that you're fully fulfilled it's oh you think like he created an entire song about not a good song but he created a song and he was singing a song to himself about not wanting to go to work if that's you what are you giving up and if you're being successful if you're being effective at something that you do not enjoy how great could you be if you were fired up and you couldn't wait to hit the the alarm on a morning so that you could get out and go and do it so yeah if you're succeeding at something that you hate imagine how amazing you'd be at something that you loved and then Philip Lin had this idea this is from Douglas Murray who told me about it he said uh I felt like I'd been shun Ed to the side of my own life often times there's a thing we must do something we're called or compelled to do and yet we can ignore this sense and proceed in a different direction not take the risk not try the thing or make the change this is how we shunt ourselves to the side of our own lives by ignoring the things we feel called to do in place of things our fears rationalize that we should do instead we can protect ourselves from failing publicly by ensuring that we fail privately even though it doesn't seem it in the face of a big scary decision the pain of regret hurts much worse than the pain of failure so you need to get out of your own way as best you can here and that idea of being shunted to the side of your own life like you should have you were meant to live a different life you weren't there I can't remember who it was I think it was maybe George Mack who was telling me about how imagine that you met God at the Pearly Gates and he said you you did all right you did you did okay what why did you just come with me and I can show you what you were supposed to do this is the life that you were supposed to live and it was you taking the chances it was you having the conviction to follow your your courage and to go after the things that you truly wanted it was you playing to win not playing to to not lose and that would be pain and that's the same you know the true hell is when the person you are meets the person you could have been like perhaps that would be true hell uh but yeah this this Robert sapolsky thing as well which kind of relates to that um Journey destination idea but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it hubman posted a screenshot of it on his Instagram a couple of weeks ago and I I just can't stop thinking about it dopamine is not about the pursuit of happiness it is about the happiness of pursuit so much of life and enjoyment is about the anticipation of things coming in fact the anticipation is often actually more enjoyable than the experience Tim Ferris used to book these vacations years in advance so that he would stretch out that anticipation for so long it's basically like free holiday before your holiday as he was excited and thinking about it it puts a new perspective on it's not the journey it's the destination because there actually is no destination each arrival at a destination simply marks the beginning of another journey toward the next destination Morgan housel told me that when he went on holiday after months of planning you know he's got all of these kids and organiz and he writes for collaborative fund and he's got a fund and he's like this big guy and his author and he's got all of this [ __ ] that he needs to sort and he finally arrives and he steps out onto the balcony and he's there on the first night and he looks out in the sun setting or whatever and his first thought was wow we should totally come back here next year it would be great if we came back here next year so literally during the supposed enjoyment of the destination Morgan was captured by the Allure of the next journey and it's hilarious but tragic like the dangerous thing about anticipation is it can cause us to look over the shoulder of the present moment to always see what's coming next so that we never actually experience what's happening right now and this has been one of the most common questions that we've had at the Q&A you know I I don't want to leave growth and and achievements and experiences and life on the table I want to feel like I left it all on the field of play and I maximized my time and all the rest of it but I want my mind and my sort of spirit to be where my feet are I want to be able to take pride and pleasure and gratitude and happiness and peace in the things that I'm doing whilst continuing to try and Achieve like how do I how do I find this balance and it's been it's been really tough I I this is something that I struggle with as well looking over the shoulder of the present moment to see what's coming next always peers in my mind when something great Great's happening and I'm always thinking about already thinking about whatever's going to happen next one of the solutions I think that you can do is to celebrate micro winds as much as possible lots of little way markers As you move along you know lots of tiny little destinations put along the journey any excuse I think to celebrate a victory celebrate a win celebrate some new record or or or just a degree of satisfaction it doesn't need to be a big celebration but I really think that that one good way of chunking up long destinations into shorter Journeys um James Smith was talking about how his clients a lot of the time will say I want to lose 10 kilos he goes well hang on why don't we lose one kilo and then lose another kilo and then lose another kilo that seems like a way that you could celebrate the win presuming you don't celebrate it with a massive like 3,500 calorie cake that seems like a much more enjoyable way to go about this but yeah I think so much of so much of what I've been thinking about this year and and what it seems like from the live shows and the questions and the q&as that you guys have too is this balance between becoming and being between growth and presence between wanting to achieve as much as possible and wanting to be grateful for the things that we've already accomplished like this balances is a a tough one and if anyone's got the cheat code please send it in next one selfworth and why it's so tricky to get right is again another challenge because you're built to care about the opinions of the people that are around you and fully dispensing with this impulse is a super difficult task but turning down the volume is not only achievable but I think also crucial Outsourcing your sense of self-worth to the crowd is unbelievably dangerous not only will you begin to change how you act to fit in with the expect expectations of everyone else that they have of you you sometimes lose who you really are in the process and again this is kind of like that first one that if you're only playing a role you're going to basically be marionetta by your interpretation of what the people around you want to see that's super dangerous Ginder bogle's got this beautiful idea where he says they exaggerate the more idiosyncratic facets of their personalities becoming crude caricatures of themselves this caricature quickly becomes the influencer's distinct brand and all subsequent attempts by the influencer to remain on brand and fulfill audience expectations require them to act like the caricature as the caricature becomes more familiar than the person both to the audience and to the influencer it comes to be regarded by both as the only honest expression of the influencer so that any deviation from it soon looks and feels inauthentic at that point the Persona has eclipsed the person and the audience has captured the influencer this is the ultimate trapo in the Hall of Fame to become a prisoner of One's Own Persona the desire for recognition in an increasingly atomized World L us to be who strangers wish us to be and with personal development so uous and lonely there is ease and comfort in crowdsourcing your identity but amid such Temptations it's worth remembering that when you become who your audience expects at the expense of who you are the affection you receive is not intended for you but for the character you're playing a character you'll eventually Tire of and so be warned being someone often means being fake and if you chase the approval of others you may in the end lose the approval of yourself schopenhauer said other places heads are a wretched place to be the home of a man's true happiness and this Outsourcing of self-worth to the crowd this manipulation of who you are honestly of showing up in a way that's performative so that other people will like you or you think that they will means that the best you can hope for is for people to fall in love with a projection and ultimately what may end up happening is that you now need to play up to a role which you do not you do not resonate with which it is not you and if you start to deviate from that even if you're not a content creator that deviation is going to feel disingenuous even though it is you moving toward a more genuine version of you so it's like audience capture is just so evidently verse and easy to slip into for exactly those reasons next one I came up with some I thought it was a cool idea uh the four levels of f saying [ __ ] you so people talk about uh [ __ ] you money and that was kind of the first level it's a meme but it's also a truth there's an amount of wealth that you can achieve when typical restrictions and conventions don't really apply to you anymore you don't need to suck up to The Gatekeepers you don't need to do things that you don't want to do and in extreme situations you kind of don't even need to follow the law because you can pay people off or buy expensive solicitors and lawyers and stuff and then [ __ ] freedom is kind of Downstream from [ __ ] your money but can also be created aside from it by cultivating a lack of resilience on other groups there are no restrictions on where you can travel to and when and for how long you don't need to show up to work on time or work at all if you're sufficiently well structured you don't really even need to care about the state of the economy or the power grid or The Wider world or whatever um this is your classic Austin guy that buys a ranch somewhere in bassdrop or bave or whatever uh and they now live outside of town and they don't really even need to worry about anything they the the a siloed little Nation out in the middle of nowhere and then another level that I think you can get to again all of these kind of exist independently it's not like they're stacked on top of each other uh which is significantly cheaper and more accessible and more common and maybe even more powerful which was the [ __ ] you family so a lot of fathers that I've spoken to have told me about how their priorities were completely changed upon starting a family and all of the previous status games that they used to play seem quite Petty because the admiration and the gamesmanship that they used to play in order to impress people in power or those with status seemed Juvenile and shallow in retrospect and much of their anxiety about whether different people liked them or thought they were cool or whatever evaporate the only person that they really needed to care about impressing was the one 5T asleep above them in their house and maybe the person that was next to them in the bed to their kids they were the coolest richest strongest most heroic person on the planet and this gives dads it seems a very powerful kind of Liberation and it seems to me that much of what young men get up to our surrogate activities until they finally become a father and this isn't to say that all fathers have become like Placid soy boy hippies or that having kids new is your ambition but it definitely seems to open up a new realm where dads care far less about the flum and Jetsam that used to occupy their lives but then I heard a story this weekend about a fourth type of saying [ __ ] you which is [ __ ] you Fame and this is I guess whereas the the family and the freedom and to some degree the money pulls you outside of the existing uh hierarchy and the existing game this is winning the existing game so well that you are no longer at the mercy of it and that is the example that was used was uh Rachel mccadams doesn't have social media so you're so ubiquitous you're so welln that your Fame carries itself and you don't need to any longer Play The Fame game and Rachel mccadams not having social media embarrassingly apparently Rachel mccadams doesn't have social media because of how well known she was and I had to question who's Rachel McAdams and then realized that someone had done a song about her I think it was Dave on that or whatever it's called Uh little Bobby I've ruined that whatever the whatever that [ __ ] uh sitcom is that's been going around that's got Andrew Santino in it that's pretty funny that they did a song about Rachel mccadams in there I think but other than that I didn't know who she was famous actress doesn't have social media she's played The Fame game to a degree where she is so high she's now outside of it and she doesn't need to which perhaps is why I didn't know who she was I wanted for a little while to find a justification for a hosy quote that I loved which was we're not afraid of failing we're afraid of what other people will say about us if we fail and that it seems to make sense it seems honest and truthful to me and it seems accurate failing when you're on your own doesn't matter no one really cares if you trip over when you're in the house apart from Pain there isn't any embarrassing M but if you tripped over while you were on stage in front of 500 people there would be okay so failure is inherently to do with other people's judgments of us not intrinsically what that thing is itself like if you were playing a game of keepy uppies against the wall you might be frustrated if you drop the ball or whatever but it's not the same it's nowh near the same as if other people are watching you or scrutinizing you or you know trying to criticize you or whatever and then Rob Henderson brought this idea up which is why do you feel shame when others falsely accuse you of misconduct your heart rate elevates your cheeks flush your body temperature feels like it's rising even though you didn't do anything wrong the reason is that social devaluation by others is sufficient to elicit the emotion of Shame even when there is no wrongdoing the true trigger of Shame is negative perceptions by others not by the self and that actually has source for it so I really love that idea the fact that being accused of something that you didn't do apart from the indignation right and the unfairness of it the fact that think no I didn't I didn't this is this is this isn't true this isn't honest on top of that why do you have the response if it was about the thing that you did and not the judgments of other people around you this shouldn't matter and yet it obviously does we're not afraid of failing we're afraid of what other people will say about us if we fail now next one neediness the definition of neediness this is Mark Manson who again I keep forgetting about like he's so obvious as a person in self-development that a lot of the time I like overlooked for a good chunk of a good while like overlooked a lot of the insights that he had because he's like oh yeah yeah Mark Manson or whatever you're trying to look for whoever the new diamond in the rough is but Mark's just got so many amazing insights and this one about the definition of neediness actually comes from his first book models it's like from 2014 I think it a pickup artist book kind of like ethical pickup Artistry neediness occurs when you place a higher priority on what others think of you than what you think of yourself anytime you alter your words or behavior to fit someone else's needs rather than your own that is needy anytime you lie about your interests Hobbies or background that is needy anytime you pursue a goal to impress others rather than fulfill yourself that is needy whereas most people focus on what behavior is attractive or unattractive what determines neediness and therefore attractiveness is the why behind your behavior you can say the coolest thing or do what everyone else does but if you do it for the wrong reason it will come off as needy and desperate and turn people off turning people off is definitely not optimal but there's an even bigger price to be paid here which is your own self-worth like imagine a world in which you're unanimously adored by millions but you hate yourself are you happy is it worth it probably not now imagine a world in which you're disliked by everybody but you love yourself not optimal but I would propose that self-love you would ultimately be happier because in some tost roundabout way the reason we want validation from others is to give us a good enough reason to validate ourselves and if you compromise yourself in order to gain favor with other people you'll know even if you think you're not keeping score your subconscious is and this sacrifice of the thing that we want for the thing which is supposed to get it sacrifice the thing we want self-worth for the thing which is supposed to get it validation means that we need to prioritize ourselves and Mark's contention in models basically the entirety of models as a piece of advice for male dating is neediness is the attraction killer therefore you cannot prioritize other people's opinions of yourself ahead of your own anytime you alter your words or your behavior to fit someone else's needs rather than your own that's needy so I think there's a lot in that and neediness is not really spoken about much it's interesting cuz it's like it was a formative powerful book and it's sold pretty well and there's lots in it but the modern world of dating doesn't really talk about neediness they talk it's been transmuted into uh attachment Theory right oh that person's got avoidant attachment or that person's got anxious attachment and that person's got secure attachment so I don't know sometimes I remember I went back home and I was talking about like trying to reverse engineer some evolutionary psychology insight and you know about uh the ability for men to detach their emotions from uh having sex and women struggling with it and all the rest of it and I you know come up with this big long like high futing idea about it and then my M went yeah yeah yeah like you know Birds catch feels I was like birds catch feels yeah like that that's what it was so the same thing with the neediness I wonder how much has been layered on top of a fundamental uh law which is neediness is unattractive especially for men but also from women that if you see someone who is overly pliable and overly responsive and doesn't seem like they've got much else going on it seems like it's an an immediate indicator of low value and that's not something that you want to have to deal with so yeah I wonder uh how many ideas are us just repurposing [ __ ] that uh we all already knew and maybe there's like a colloquial term that probably actually even makes more sense all right one more Alex hosi um when we did our episode at the start of this year the first one we did he we used a clip from it at the very start and it got him a bit of bother because we put it we put it on Instagram and taken out of context people were quite unhappy and he posted basically kind of a a press release a rebuttal against it and I really like this so this is what it is in full if you had disadvantages I agree with you you are right it's harder to be successful if x happened to you replace x with gender race birth deformity different language different country abuse Etc the main point the longer conversation is that despite the advantage you only have one choice are you going to do about it number one take action anyway and become proof to other people like you your people also born into or abused into this tragedy that you were that they too can overcome it number two blame and complain and to be clear do whatever you want I support your choice but only one of those decisions will make you better and I wish I could say this without getting attacked but you know who wins by you not being successful whoever or what whatever you blame and [ __ ] them or [ __ ] that you can lead a rebellion of one and blame one thing that you can control which is you in your mind redefine the word blame as give power to and when you do that there's only one person you're going to want to give more power to and that's you for everyone who's had shitty circumstances I'm on your side your long-term side the side that wants you to win so do it anyways with all the disadvantages and still tell them to shove it and win I want to be clear again if you had tough [ __ ] happened to you it sucks and it's not your fault but now what where do we go my two cents win anyways and prove that you can win even when the chips are stacked against you and you're dealt a lousy hand because we can't get dealt a new hand we got to play the cards we got rather than hoping the dealer rules in our favor so again what do you do with your shitty hand the only thing possible you play it the best you can and this is a nice reframe it's a lovely reframe against the cynicism sort of black pill external validation or extrinsic locus of control external locus of control thing that's been going on which I don't like I don't like it it's I understand that there are lots of immutable truths about the world and that there is a whole distribution of people who have advantages and disadvantages all the way along it but ultimately despondency kind of just puts you at the mercy of whatever is happening to you and that doesn't seem particularly heroic and I don't think that you're going to look back on it and consider that it was a life well lived again like Alex says like you're free to do what you want you're free to make whatever decision or choice or approach to completing life that it is that you want to go through but I think you're going to look back with a lot more satisfaction and pride and you'll overcome the bitterness and the envy that you have of whatever the thing or the people or the situation or the movement or the incident was that caused you to feel negative in the first place because you're going to know that despite the shitty hand that you were dealt you continue to overcome it and I know that that seems like a more heroic way to to look at it trying to think about kind of what the what The Meta theme of this year has been uh at least based on the lessons that we've gone through today and seems like there's some stuff around performing not performing uh trying to just be yourself um finding a place that you have something that's reliable and honest and and and and truthful for you to go to in hard times right that you want people to accept you for who you are that you want to show up in a way that people genuinely feel like they have a connection with you and so that you're not just doing this like performance so that you're not just this dancing monkey I guess the performative empathy toxic compassion thing a lot of what that's talking about is kind of the uh outward equivalent of the same as opposed to you wanting validation it's you just wanting to appear good when it comes to the social group overall um but yeah I look guys I this year has been crazy like I can't believe the changes and the growth and all the rest of the stuff that's happened this year and I'm trying to like not lose my head along the way which is some days it's easier than others uh and I'm trying to be open and honest about what I'm going through if it was me and I was a fan of this show and someone was going through a kind of formative learning experience about changes in life I would want to know so I'm trying to avoid accusations of being of myself or considering myself more important than I am or getting in the way of these interesting guests that come on but I'm also trying to open up about what the experience is like of going from very unassured person very unconfident person to person who does a bit of self-work and builds a little bit of confidence but still has you know good chunks of Need for validation and and and fear and people pleasing tendencies All the Way along and then that just gets projected and magnified out across you know a few million people like 40 million people 50 million people a month it's an interesting challenge but I appreciate you all for being here I appreciate every single person that's tuned in forever but especially the ones that have joined this year there was this Spotify stat that said 84% of the modern wisdom audience joined us in 2023 so uh for the 16% of you or 177% of you or whatever that joined before that thank you for sticking about and for the ones that have joined this year thank you as well I hope you have a good Christmas I hope you have a good New Year I'll see you soon