Escape Mediocrity: "Social Media, Porn & Laziness Are Worse Than You Think!" | Robert Greene

If your goal is to climb the ladder of success, you have to avoid the common traps that devour most people. Laziness, drugs and alcohol, porn, nihilism, and things like doom scrolling take your time but give nothing in return. You're not going to stumble upon the path to success. You're going to have to hack your way through a jungle of potentially life-destroying behaviors that will grab at you on your way to developing discipline. To help in that fight, Robert Greene and I are going to discuss the best path through this minefield. A lot of people are feeling hopeless right now, and they are gravitating towards alcohol, porn, Netflix, etc. But nobody is coming to save them. If they want to get out of that hole, they're going to have to do it themselves. So, what is it that people can do, and quite honestly avoid doing, if they want to stop being aimless and make their dreams a reality? Well, um sometimes you have to get deep enough in that hole that you really, really want to get out. So, the key factor in life is motivation, is desire, is the energy that you bring to it. So, if you don't believe in yourself, if you only half-heartedly are reading my books or listening to Tom or listening to me, and you go, "Yeah, I kind of want to change." It won't matter. It won't change anything. You'll just go back to your old habits. Right? Because habits are very powerful. You're a product of the cultural moment. It's very hard to resist it. It's very hard to swim against the tide of the times that we live in. So, if you don't have the motivation, if you don't have the energy, if you don't have the idea that, "Damn it, I'm going down fast if I don't turn this around." I'm, you know, you're only alive once. It's, you know, YOLO. And um it goes past really fast. I can tell you that as now as I get older. Faster than you think. So, you've got to be desperate. You've got to tell yourself, "I've got to get out of this. I've got to change my life. I've got to swim against the tide of the times that I live in. I have to change my ways because if not, when I'm 32, when I'm 35, all of my hopes, all of my horizons will narrow so much that it it's going to look very, very bleak, right? So, the younger you are, the better, and you have to have that desire. You have to look yourself square in the eye, and the number one thing to think of is you have much less time than you imagine. Right? It goes past past really quickly. Your 20s will go past faster than you could imagine. Suddenly, you're 30, you go, "Whoa, what am I going to do?" Then you're 40, "Shit, it's too late." You know, okay, so just realize you don't have as much time as you think you have. Now, the other thing you have to realize is um what builds strength, what builds character, is resistance. Right? So, if you're trying to make your body physically stronger, you need resistance. You need weights because weights are are natural resistance. You need water is resistant. You need to run, you know, gravity is resistance, etc. That resistance builds muscle, builds strength, builds aerobic power, etc., etc. Life, mentally, it's the same thing. The times that you live in are providing incredible amounts of resistance towards success, towards power, towards a sense of fulfillment. They are flooding your face with all kinds of qualities that you have to resist. And to the degree that you're aware of these qualities, and to the degree that you resist them, you will build inner strength, you will build the kind of life skills that are necessary to survive and and thrive in a very, very tough world. So, one of these resistance factors is social media, is the level of distractions that we're all facing, right? It's never ever ever been so intense. And you have to realize you don't let everything into your body. You don't eat all this sugar, I hope at least. You don't eat all the pizza that you think is great for you. You understand that you have to limit your diet to be healthy, particularly as you get older, you have to limit your sugar intake among other things, etc. Okay? You have to limit the amount of stuff that's coming into your head. You have to put your head on a diet. You have to go, "I can't be distracted. I can't absorb all of this information." The human brain, we can only retain so much in our short-term memory, let alone our long-term memory. You're flooding it with too much, and what happens is you're losing the ability to focus on simple things, right? So, to be successful, you have to have primarily the quality to focus, to concentrate. And that begins on small banal tasks, like I mean, this is this is, you know, a simple example, but if you're playing the piano or you're want to be a chess master, you have to learn the basics. You have to learn the moves, the different games you can play. You have to learn how to do scales, etc. etc. You have to be very focused and attentive to it. So, if you're trying to learn scales and learn how to play the piano, and your mind is in 20 different places, you'll never master it. You have to develop the ability to concentrate, to focus, and the times that you are living in are making it increasingly so difficult for you that it's splintering your brain and your attention into a thousand different pieces to the point where you can't even focus on your body, on yourself, on who you are, on what makes you strong. So, you got to put your brain on a diet. And that means you got to limit how much social media you let into your life. You have to limit how many different sources you're listening to. You can't be listening to 100 different podcasts every week. Although you should be listening to Tom's podcast, right? So, put yourself on a diet and say, "What is it that matters? What is important?" And then that brings you to the second question, which is tied to the first one, which is by far the most important step in your life with all of these things coming at you that are creating resistance that are going to make it hard for you, which is who are you? What makes you unique? What makes What were you born to achieve in this world? You have to be aware of that. And to be aware of that, you have to be able to focus. You have to have introspect. Introspection is a is a skill. It's not given to you. The ability to tune out things and to look at yourself and go inward and go, "This is what matters to me. This is what I hate." I realized early on, I've said this before, I hate politicking. I hate office politics. I hate working for other people. They annoy me. I I feel like I can do a better job than they can. So, I hate that. Therefore, Robert, you need to be an entrepreneur. You're not meant in this life to be working for other people. So, you have to be attuned to yourself. You have to look in and go, "This is what I hate. This is what I love." And you have to be honest because you can fool yourself. You can think that you love rock music and that you're meant to be a rock star. But it's only that's because of the culture that you're living in, what your friends think is cool. That isn't necessarily who you are. You have to look at yourself. You have to focus deeply. You have to go through a process being honest and going, "What excites me? What do I feel like makes me unique? And what does the the power that you have in life is mining that uniqueness, mining that individual quality in whatever field you go into, even in business of being an entrepreneur. And so, you can't have that self-awareness if you can't focus. If you can't concentrate, if you can't be bored and take a notebook and start writing things out about your childhood, about who you are, about what you love and what you hate. If you can't do that, I'm sorry, but there's there's no hope for you. There's really no hope for you. So, you have to be able to put yourself on that information diet and go into that introspective process. That that's really heavy, and I think a lot of people are going to they're going to hear that there is no hope for them. That's going to feel right, and before you and I started rolling, you said um things really are bad for them. And if I grew up in their generation, I would probably be in the same boat. Why? Why is it bad right now? What what is it that's creating the sense of hopelessness? Well, we live in a very nihilistic culture. And I find it in our entertainment, you know? So, the idea of having a set of principles that guide you in life, man, it seems so old-fashioned, it seems so fussy. Well, so no, man, I'm just going to be who I am, you know? And and the the values that are implanted in in in entertainment are completely nihilistic. They give you no focus, they give you no direction, they don't tell you what actually matters in life, right? They give you all of these false these illusions about what life is about. And so, some of it stems from the kind of fractured society that we live in. So, Fractured in what way? Well, most cultures up until the 21st century had a kind of cohesiveness to it. There were certain myths that people ascribed to that that set the boundaries. This is what unites us all. These are the things that are good, these are the things that we hate. These are the values that are good. These are the values that are bad. Now, sometimes those cultures, those conventions, those myths were not good. But then you had something to rebel against. So, me as a product of the '60s and then in the '70s, when I came of age, you know, when I'm in in college, I didn't like the culture that was there, that kind of monolith, the myths and things. I wanted to rebel, but I had something to rebel against. What are you going to rebel against now? You don't even know what to rebel against now because there's nothing. It's just pure chaos. I can't point my finger finger to what are the guiding myths of our particular cultural moment. Maybe in a hundred years they'll be clear, but I think a lot of our myths come from technology. You know, so my study of history is every cultural moment has a kind of guiding metaphor for it. Something I'm writing about right now. And so like in the 18th century, the guiding metaphor was theater. Life is like theater. We're all actors. We're all playing roles. Early in the 20th century, it was the unconscious and Freud and discovering the unconscious and exploring that, which had a huge impact on culture. There were other myths, but I point to those. Today, it's technology. It's AI. It's It's all those other things, right? And so But that is like that kind of devalues the human element. So, I recently um gave a a couple of talks with a conversation with Ryan Holiday. And uh you can look at these on YouTube. It was like an hour and a half here in LA and then in Seattle. And Ryan asked me my thoughts about AI. And I went on a kind of a rant. I'm not a a I understand and I use technology, etc. But my point was instead of fetishizing AI and ChatGPT, which I admit I've seen it, it's powerful how it goes like that. Whoa, it's like magic. Fetishize the human brain. Fetishize human powers. Fetishize our sociabilities, our theory of mind. Theory of mind is what makes humans human. And what that means is we have the ability to put ourselves in the minds of other people, to imagine what they're thinking, what they're doing. That's what makes us a preeminent social animal, which is the source of our power. What is your power? Your power is your ability to be social. Is your ability to navigate difficult social environments. Your second power is your brain and all the incredible things it has. One of them is the ability to focus. One is the ability to learn. It's the plasticity of the brain. So the guiding metaphor, if it's all technology, it kind of makes us think that you know, with your smartphone, you have all of these powers and you can't believe it. It makes you so impatient. Everything should be like my phone. Everything should be instant. Everything should be at my fingertip. If my internet service goes down for a few hours, I get so cranky. Well, you're like a little baby whining and crying, right? No. What really should matter is not You don't have those powers. You can't press a button. Your brain isn't designed that way. It takes years to develop true skill, to be a master at something. You need to go back to these elemental primal human qualities. Our sociability, so get out of the virtual realm. Learn social skills, which is what my book The Laws of Human Nature will kind of help you and grind you ground you in as well as the 48 Laws of Power. And you need brain skills. You need to develop skills, actual skills that you can use in this world. Man, that's really interesting. So, the idea of the guiding myths um that's something that's sort of been in the back of my mind, but I hadn't pulled forward. So, thank you for that because now that you say that, I think one of the biggest issues that I see people struggling with, I would have used different words, but it's the same idea. Um people look at the world, they look at the here in the west, they look at the game that we're playing, they see capitalism, ew, this is gross, like it's predatory, whatever. And because they have such a negative view of the system, because the system right now isn't working for their generation, they just want to opt out, but it creates this incredibly cynical, incredibly aimless, incredibly hopeless vibe. And uh I think you and I agree that's dangerous. Now, I I I will say for my own sake, I think it's dangerous for them. I think the punchline of life is all about fulfillment. I think that's what people should be pursuing. I think fulfillment has an evolutionarily um imbued formula, and that recipe, maybe it's a better word, is you're going to have to work really hard to gain a set of skills that you care about for your own intrinsic reasons that allow you to serve yourself and others. If you do that, you're going to be fine. If you don't, you're going to have a profound sense of disease. Because people want to check out of the system, they are, to your point, ax they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So, they're trying to check out of a system, which by the way, I think is a phenomenal system, and I advise people not to check out of it. But anyway, even if you want to check out of that system, if you then just dive into uh a any setup that isolates you, you're going to be in for a bad time. Because we the brain works in a certain way, and so I've said many times on the show, on my tombstone, I want it to read, "You're having a biological experience." And the reason I want people to understand that is because your brain works a certain way, there are certain things that you can do that will align yourself to feeling good, feeling engaged, feeling fulfilled, loving communication, connection, meaning and purpose, all that. And there are things that you can do that will lead you exactly away from this. And so, uh rejecting the system, but without a cause, so rebel without a cause style, is not going to move you towards anything. That's a pure move away from play. And if you're just moving away from something, you're going to find yourself accelerating that sense of aimlessness. And so, I there's a a compounding variable here, which is people there's a rising sentiment, burn it all down, and then we'll build utopia, for lack of a better word, in its place. And that is people that don't understand the absolute hellfire of chaos that will reign if your meaning and purpose becomes destroying instead of building. Because if if they really do succeed in tearing down a system, uh you don't have scaffolding left to build upon, and that bad things happen in that vacuum. Well, first of all, also, it's not possible to tear things down because the world is larger than just individuals. It's larger than a movement. It's larger than your generation, I'm afraid to say. So, you don't even have the power to tear things down because the world will go into its own kind of system, its own the human unconscious has moved us throughout history, human nature has. It's going to continue. It's beyond it transcends you as an individual. So, you don't have as much power to burn things down as you imagine. So, just get over that that childish fantasy. But the second thing I would say is I began by saying what matters is your level of energy, your level of motivation in life, right? And when you're cynical, and when you're nihilistic, it just drains you of energy. Why do anything, man? It doesn't matter, you know? 10 years down the road with climate change, we're all going to be dying anyway. Who What matters, okay? But I'm writing a book right now on the sublime, which I'm trying to say the world that you live in is not ugly, it's not horrible, it's not destructive, it's insanely beautiful. The fact of being alive is one of the most weirdest things. I even have a chapter called Awaken to the Strangeness of Being Alive. It's chapter number two. And so, just the fact that you are alive now as a human being is an incredibly unlikely set of circumstances that occurred. So, the world that we live in is utterly sublime and utterly weird. And a lot of that interesting stuff comes from science. So, at the same time that technology is kind of making our brains into mush, scientists are uncovering things that just are so fantastic, they're extraordinary. What we're learning about the cosmos, what we're learning about the origins of life, what we're learning about evolution, what we're learning about the brain. I mean, if you just think about it, it's staggering. And so, being part of that wave of knowledge that's overwhelming us right now should be incredibly exciting. But if you have no excitement in life, if you think it's all just crap, and it's better just to not care, and you know what that comes from? It's a common adolescent pose, and I probably had it when I was 16 years old. Man, I don't care, you know, let's screw everything, you know? It comes from insecurity. It doesn't It's not strength. Being that kind of rebel without any reason for against nothing is actually a sign of incredible weakness. And you know where it comes from? Comes from the fear of failure. So, if I don't try to do anything, if I just say, "Oh, it's all going to hell. I'm just going to go in my van. I'm just going to tour around the United States. I'm just going to take videos and things. I You know, what the hell? Let Let You know, as as King Louis the XIV said, "Après moi le déluge." After me, the deluge. I don't care. If that's your attitude towards life, you know, then that's what That's what you're going to get. So, um you have So, it comes from a fear of failure. It doesn't come from strength because to try something to try to build a business, to try and write a book, to try and make a film, puts you You're putting yourself out on the line and you could fail. And with failure comes criticism. And with failure, you're exposing yourself. You're exposing your ambition. You're exposing that you weren't up to the task. Better to not even try and to just say, "Oh, I don't care." Because then you're not exposing yourself. So, that kind of pose is is actually a form of childish insecurity that you need to get over. But you need to have a sense of excitement. And if you don't, if you think everything is just gray and equal and bad and we're all heading to hell in a handbasket, then that's that's what you becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, I'm writing a book to just make you get that energy, that excitement again. And you know what? When you were a child, you had it. I don't care if you grew up in this culture now that is kind of I think deadening things. What Your child Children have this energy that nothing can can suppress. It if You actually live in a world of enchantment. Things are like amazing to you. You want to learn. You want to read books. You want to explore. You want to explore. You want to adventure. You had it when you were a child and you've lost it. You've lost it in adolescence. You lost it when you were 12. You lost it because the culture sucked it out of you. But it's there. It's still waiting to come back to you. But if you don't have that enchantment about life, if you don't see something really amazing about the one life that you have that can go back go by very quickly, then nothing will ever change. You'll you're just going to end up as as I said, it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. How often are you checking your credit score, afraid of identity theft or account breaches? We all use the internet every single day for important things like personal banking and remote work. So, why not protect yourself with our sponsor, Aura? Aura is an all-in-one cybersecurity service that keeps you safe online. Aura identifies data brokers exposing your info and submits opt-out requests on your behalf. Aura also monitors your credit, tracks your passwords for data breaches, and secures your online activity with VPN and anti-malware protection. You can try Aura for free for 2 weeks by clicking the link in the description or scanning the QR code. Okay, I agree with all that. It's easy though to step into their shoes and look back at you and say, "Hey, listen, old man who remembers the late '60s, uh that worked because of the time you were in and demographics are destiny and the time that I'm born, it's just an absolute [ __ ] show. Uh baby boomers are hoarding all of the wealth. They refuse to leave the workforce. I can't buy a property you and when you were first getting on the property ladder, it was like a $1.50 to buy a house in Beverly Hills. And so, yeah, it seems great for you. And OPS, uh I've taken on $180,000 in college debt. It's non-dischargeable even in bankruptcy. Uh so, you found a way to put me in indentured servitude and I can't expect my Oh, I'm not done. I can't expect my social security to be there when I get there because you [ __ ] won't die. Uh so, that's how they're going to look back at you. What do you say to somebody with that frame of reference? Well, you know, there's obviously some truth to that. And I said I understand why people are the way they are, you know? But not every time is this sort of golden period in history. You know, I lived through the 1980s, which I thought was a really, really ugly period in history. I found it very bleak and very horrifying. And I didn't have this kind of golden thing that you might imagine. I did not have success until I was 39 years old. I struggled. I I was more like how people are nowadays in in that I wandered from job to job. I had 60 different jobs. I never held a job for more than 11 months in my entire life. Success. Okay? So, I know and I got very depressed. I even had moments of being suicidal. I lived in a crappy one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica. I know Santa Monica is very nice, but back then it wasn't so nice. And so, I know what it means to struggle. I didn't have debt, but I didn't have any money. I was very poor living in many most of my life I was very poor. So, it's not as golden as you think for me individually, but I understand the baby boomer scenario and everything that you're facing. But so what? Stop whining. Stop whining about the circumstances. My parents grew up in the depression. It's not It's nowhere near this entire They're nowhere near what they had to deal with. My grandparents really more, but even my parents to some extent. So, stop your goddamn whining. It was pretty awful back then. They had faced the stock market crash in 1929. They had to live through the depression of the 1930s. Then they had World War II. You think you have it bad? Try having to deal with the Nazis and the Japanese attacking you both at the same time. The 1960s, we had the Vietnam War. I was of the age where I had a draft number. My draft number was so low that I was certain to be drafted. But fortunately, the draft ended like 6 months before my age came of whatever. So, you know, you think it's the worst ever. It's not the worst ever. I can point to you a hundred other periods in history that were equally incredibly bleak. The generation that came out of World War I, do you know the massacre that young people faced in World War I? That's why we had the 1920s with the flappers because people didn't want They wanted to drink themselves into oblivion. Millions of young men died for a senseless stupid war. Okay? You have no historic sense. You have no sense of proportion. Just because you live in the 2020s, you think that this is the worst time. You don't read history. You don't understand it. It's not the worst ever. So, stop your whining. There are plenty of humans that have dealt with things far worse than you've ever dealt with. Our ancestors who were pioneers in the 19th century, they felt faced privations and poverty that you would have no conception over. You have it much better than a lot of other people in the past. So, stop your goddamn whining. People had it worse in the past a lot of times. You don't have it so bad. Okay? You have a lot of debt. All right, you have to make a plan. You have to be strategic. But if you give up, if you just say, "Oh, it's the baby boomers. Oh, I can't own a home." If that's your energy, then that's going to be the faith that you have. There are always circumstances that are going to be resistant to you. I understand the resistant factors now are very powerful. But are you going to meet them, or are you just going to give in and surrender? You can make that choice, and that's fine. If you want to live on a organic farm in Oregon, I have nothing against it, and I'm not making fun of it cuz that is a good life. That could be fine if that's your ambition. But maybe you can't make it that way because it's not that's not an easy life either, right? So, you have to make a choice. Do I want something else for myself? Or do I just want to wallow in self-pity and blame other people? And you can blame other people and there's a lot of things to blame. Just as when I was growing up, I had a lot of things I could blame. But you have to look at it differently and you have to say, "That kind of energy is self-destructive. How can I get out of that energy? I can only get out of I have to control what I can control. I have bad student debt. I have $100,000 in debt. All right, I got to make a plan for the next 5 years. First of all, you didn't have to get that $100,000 in debt. So, you take a little bit of responsibility for that, you know? I mean, I know they had little things that you signed that you you weren't aware of, but for a long time we've been aware of some of those predatory practices in lending. So, it's partially your responsibility a little there. But okay, you have your $100,000 in debt. You make a plan. I'm going to I'm going to have to work it off this way. I'm going to have to get a job that pays well, but at the same time, I'm going to be building other kind of life skills, etc. I'm going to get myself out of this hole. I'm going to have hope. I'm going to have energy. Fine. That's it that's the alternate path, but if you don't have that, if you don't think that it's possible, then there's nothing really that I can say. I could just waste a lot of words that won't mean anything. But don't think that you have it worse than other people because you have no sense of history. You're living in this bubble, this illusion of the present. You don't know what people like were living in the Middle Ages, in the 18th century in America, in the 19th century, World War I, the Depression, the Vietnam War, the Watergate era, the the recession we had then. Stop it. You don't understand. You're not reading history. And I I agree with that very much. The way that I think about it because one uh I have a feeling that even with the like intense energy, you say that from a place of you want to see them do well. Uh you don't want to see them be stuck. And that's certainly where when I get riled up on this topic, it's from that perspective. And what I used to ask people that would you know come to me and say, "Look, I've got it really hard for whatever reason." And I've worked in the inner city, so I've seen poverty just absolutely demolish people. It It's really brutal to see up close. And the only question that I can think of is, "Okay, you've got $180,000 in student debt. Uh boomers are sucking up all the oxygen in the room. Whatever whatever. All the bad things. Terrible economy. Nobody can get on the property market." All that. Climate change. The The question that remains is, "And now what?" And if your answer to "And now what?" is, "I give up." I will say that that is not a life frame of reference that I'll I'll refer to it as that that is going to lead you anywhere neurochemically advantageous. Now, okay, going back to you're having a biological experience. So, when I say a neurochemically advantageous uh experience, what I mean is you're not going to feel good. It's just going to feel terrible. And so, it's an incredibly self-destructive frame of reference to adopt. Now, we all see the world through a distorted lens. That's what I mean when I say frame of reference. So, your frame of reference is a pair of glasses that you wear. And these glasses are distorted, and they do not show you reality. They show you a distortion of reality. The great news is uh even though it doesn't seem like it, you get to shape those lenses. And the thing that worries me is that people have shaped the lens to show them a world that is uh against them. It is a hostile universe. Well, and let's say that these all these things are real like about the with they're very real. I don't deny them and I don't deny the reality of people living in inner cities and I have a huge readership among people from inner cities who've used my books and have helped them a lot. And I did a book with 50 Cent who's I agree I understand is an exception, but he came from the worst part of America and he managed to pull himself up in an incredible story. So, I I understand that, but let's say that these are the circumstances that you have and you're young and when you're young you're idealistic which is part of cynicism is just the flip side of idealism. So, your idealism you can't really hold on to so it just flips into cynicism, but the two are very much related. And so, if you believe that these things that there are so unjust in this world, then there's your energy. There's where you put yourself. There's your cause. Your cause isn't to to destroy, it's to say, "Wow, there's a lot of injustice in this world. There's a lot of poor people that are suffering because there's no opportunities out there. Boomers have created this awful world. All right, how do I construct a better world? How can I create a movement? How can I how can I create um more opportunity for other people? How can I start a business that will employ thousands of people instead of just wasting away and not and not contributing at all. How can I contribute to helping climate change? You know, it kind of ticks me off that there's so much technology in Silicon Valley that goes to entertaining us, to masturbating our minds so to speak with all kinds of trivial [ __ ] things that don't matter in life. Take all of that brilliant energy and do it to solving some real problems that we're facing. Problems that we've just outlined here about the lack of opportunities, about home ownership, about climate change. But pour your energy into something productive if you feel that way, and then contribute a sense of contribution. You know, it will fulfill you in a way as a social animal, the sense of I just didn't whine and give up. I actually did something to help change this world. And if you think that's impossible, if it's just like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, then fine, then that's that's what end up happening. But even Don Quixote had this illusion that he was actually going to change it. So you need to have those illusions, even if it's not true that you could change this world, you at least need to believe that you can kill those windmills with your sword. You need to at least believe in the illusion, and then then your energy will change. So, if there's so much against you, there's so much injustice in the world, there's your cause, there's your energy, there's your hope. So if it really is an illusion, uh why would they be better off believing in an illusion than trying to contact ground truth, figure out what is real, and how to operate moving forward so that they can make whatever change it is that they want to change? Well, I'm not sure quite understand. I mean, what I meant by illusion is maybe you as an individual can't really stop climate change, obviously you can't. And it's a bigger problem that you than than than what any of us can really tackle. But believing that you can make a difference will give you the energy to create something, to do something. As I said in Human Nature, change your attitude to change your circumstances. So if you believe in it, then you will you will do something towards that, and maybe it won't be enough. But if enough people believe that in then it will be enough, you know? But what was the second part of your question? That was it. I wanted to know so my thing is it's what I call the only belief that matters. So the only belief that matters is that if you put time and energy into getting better at something, you'll actually get better at it. Yeah. So if like my advice would be very different if I actually thought there was nothing they could do. The reason that my advice is to ask and now what and to come up with a positive vision for their future is that they really can make a change. I mean there's just the litany I mean you've already gone through the litany of of people that have had it way worse and they've still managed to do something productive with their time. Anybody that doesn't know Winston Churchill's story, it is truly incredible. This is a guy that was watching his city be bombed nightly. He was constantly in danger. He was on the front lines of World War I being shot at. Like this was not somebody who was tucked away had severe bouts of depression. Indeed. And he was he just always said, you know, one I'm grateful that I live at such a pivotal moment in history so that we can do something about this. So to your point, it's like if you really see a lot of things you want to make change on, then it's like okay, what do I need to do in order to make that change? So going back to frame of reference, if your frame of reference is cynical and there's nothing I can do, it it becomes that self-fulfilling prophecy because only behaviors matter, but your behaviors are downstream of your beliefs. So if you don't get your beliefs right that hey, if I engage in this, if I go do something, if I want to pay off my student loans, there is a path to getting this done. And that doesn't mean that the deck isn't stacked against people. It doesn't mean that there are aren't worse times in human history, but at the same time, if you the only way to make a bad time worse is to have a negative attitude about it. And I mean look, there's two books written about Auschwitz where that's the punchline. Man's Search for Meaning and then um it the book is called The Choice. I forget the woman's name. Uh she's still alive as far as I know. She She doing podcasts very recently and her whole family is killed in the Holocaust. She was in the Holocaust, um, and she was a dancer, and the Nazis used to make her dance while they were like selecting people to be killed. It was crazy, just like unimaginable amounts of psychological torture, and she realized, I have a choice to make now that I've survived. Is that going to be my life? Or am I going to find a way to find meaning and purpose and and go after something? Yeah. And so, it's I I don't want to adjudicate whether worst time, not worst time. I just want to say, such is the human condition Yeah. that everyone is going to encounter difficult things. Your frame of reference is going to control what you do, and what you do will control the quality of your life. I mean, Auschwitz, I mean, who had it worse than that? Can you imagine? And I've read many, many accounts of it as somebody who lost a lot of my ancestry in in the Holocaust. Um, and I I highly I can't recommend enough reading Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl. It's an amazing book that accounts what he lived through, but also a philosophy of life that will serve you very well in exactly the struggles that we're talking about. So, yeah. Talk to me about envy. Life is driven in large part by envy. How much of that do you think's at play here with social media exacerbating all the comparisons and Yeah, well, um, you know, it's been a subject that has interested me for a long time cuz I think it is a huge motivating factor that people don't talk about. I had a chapter in The 48 Laws of Power called Never Appear Too Perfect and the dangers of being seeming perfect and great is you're going to attract envy. And then, in Human Nature, I had a whole chapter on envy and kind of where it comes from and and how you yourself are prone to feeling envy. And so, the first thing you have to realize is these negative qualities that are embedded in human nature and I I think we can all agree that they're seemingly negative like envy, like overt aggression or passive aggression, or grandiosity, or being irrational, or being only able to think in terms of short-term, etc. All of these qualities, envy being a very, very potent one of them. The main thing is to not externalize it and to say, "Oh, people on social media have envy. Oh, it's this person It's my friend." You have it. I have it. I feel envy all the time. I know it. I sense it in myself. And it's because the human brain is a comparing machine. The our brains function by taking in information and comparing it to things that have happened previously. So, we can say, "This is familiar. This is unfamiliar. If it's familiar, I can deal with it. If it's unfamiliar, I have to be creative. I have to think in the moment." Our brains compare. That part of our brain is now operating in the social realm because we're social animals. We're continually comparing ourselves to other people, what they have, what we don't have, their the great vacations they're taking, the incredible girlfriend or wife that they have that's much better than mine, the much the greater income that they're making, they're younger. You know, I've talked in previous podcasts about the envy that I have for Ryan Holiday. And it's very real, and I'm not joking. And I deal with it and and and I turn it into something positive because I I I love Ryan. I admire him. But, damn it, he's younger than me. He's had 20 best-selling books before I even wrote a single book. He's got all this incredible energy and all this He's got a family. Yeah, I can feel envy towards it. I'm honest. I understand that I feel it. So, that's the first thing to under to have to come to grips with. You have envy. Okay? You think that we are so sophisticated, we live in this modern 21st century world that we've that we're so superior to anybody in the past, but when it comes to envy, we are the most primitive animal on the planet because of our technology. Right? So, having Instagram that shows you pictures of everybody's vacation, everybody's fun that they're having in life. And man, I look at it, too, right now, you know? I'll go, "Damn it. My friend's in Istanbul. It looks fantastic. Why couldn't I Why can't I be like that?" They're climbing this mountain. I had a stroke. I can't climb the mountain. Damn it. Why do I have to see this? It's in your face. It's making you feel envy all the time. It's making you compare yourself to other people. And it's feeding that cynicism and nihilism that we're talking about, you know? So, if you're looking and you're seeing that boomers are living in these great houses, that they own all the companies, that they own Amazon, although he's not a boomer. You know, they own all the wealth in this country, etc., etc. Then why bother, man? Why even try, you know? You know, and and anyway, I hate millionaires. They're They're ugly people. They suck, you know, kind of thing. That's your thinking, you know? So, all that envy is going to feed into this kind of negative thing where it's hopeless. I can't even do anything. It's also going to make you passive-aggressive. It's going to make you leave [ __ ] comments on YouTube, which believe me, I see all the time, or or wherever you you you go on social media. It's infecting you in subtle ways. It's draining you of positive energy. And you have to come to terms with the fact that you feel envy, and you have to turn it into something productive. You have to channel, like we were talking earlier about channeling your aggressiveness, you have to channel it into something productive, which is instead of trashing people who are better than have more than you, I'm going to emulate them. I'm going to use them as a role model. He's got much more money. All right, I'm going to I'm going to make some money. I'm going to do so as well. He's a better athlete in this particular sport. All right, I'm going to raise my game, you know? I'm going to become a better seducer. I'm going to become better at this, that, or the other instead of feeling envy. The other thing you can do is you can tell yourself the people you envy don't really have it any better than you do. I talked about how in um in Laws of Human Nature, in the '60s, what many people will remember this, but there was a man named Aristotle Onassis, who was married to Jacqueline Kennedy, the widow of John Kennedy. He was the wealthiest man at the time, one of the wealthiest man at the time. He was a Greek shipping magnate. He had yachts galore. He had every life everything you could dream about, and he had Jacqueline Kennedy, you know, the most desirable, beautiful woman in the world. He was the most miserable, depressed son of a [ __ ] that you know, on the planet at the time. He was incredibly unhappy. So, these people that you think are so wonderful, you're seeing all these images, you're only seeing the good side, but they're probably just as miserable as you are inside because they don't have any inner qualities. They don't They're just They're just out there trying to show you the best stuff, but they're actually very insecure. So, these people aren't as great as you think they are. And the other thing is to practice the opposite of envy. And And this is a hard thing to do, but it's a very positive trait. So, when people have good things, your friend So, let's say envy is very common among friends for reasons that I explained in the book. I'm not going to tell you about now, but it's very common among friends. So, your friend got a better job than you. Damn it. Oh, God, I'm really I'm going to smile and say, "Yeah, that's great." But deep down, oh, [ __ ] What a jerk. He probably didn't really deserve it. He probably got there by some nefarious means, etc. Instead of going through that envy process, in which you don't admit that it's envy, you think that it's just because he's a bad person, go through the opposite and go train yourself to go to be happy for other people's success. You won't believe what a great relief it is and how how it'll help you benefit you therapeutically in your mind in general to be happy, to celebrate other people's success. It's a very wonderful, great human quality that you have to develop because it doesn't come naturally to us. So, um just be aware that it's something that lives inside of you and uh the worst thing are people who feel envy but aren't aware of it. Yeah, the inability to control one's mind. I'll narrow it down to emotions. I think one of the things that gets people into so much trouble is they do not have control over their emotional mind. Part of that is just lack of self-awareness. They they've never even taken the time to say, "What is this thing that I feel?" And then and this is another thing that I'm ranting and raving about. So, if my tombstone is going to say, "You're having a biological experience" with like a little subhead under that that says, "Oh, and by the way, don't trust your emotions." Uh people think if they feel it, then they should act on it and it must be true. And when I have a strong emotion, I get so skeptical of myself. And I have just learned, man, there were times where I feel so certain that I have so much righteous indignation only to then be like, "Oh, yeah, that actually was stupid." Uh and I think people would save themselves a lot of pain and suffering if they went, "Hmm, that's weird. I feel depressed or I feel nihilistic or this all feels like [ __ ] Hold on. I'm going to check that or I'm mad at that person. They upset me or I'm envious. They must not deserve this." Like all of that. If you check yourself and get goal-directed. So, okay, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to accomplish? What's the emotional state that you want to exist in? Um I think a lot of people don't even have the North Star in their life. So, for me, the North Star of not just my life, but any life to me, seems like it should be to reduce as much human suffering as possible and to promote as much human flourishing. Okay, cool. Well, then are the things you're doing, believing, saying, are they in line with that? Like is it uh reducing human suffering to lean into envy? And I think if people had that North Star, then they could get into just the uh a question of what's effective. And when I do this, I get this result, and that isn't the result that I want. Or when I do this, I get that result, and that is the result that I want. Cool. If you're getting the result that you want, you're doing the right thing by definition. If you don't get the result that you want, you're doing the wrong thing by definition. So, if you don't feel the way that you want, you're doing something wrong. If you're not getting the result that you want, you're doing something wrong. Again, that doesn't mean the deck isn't stacked against you. It just means that given the hand you've been dealt, you're not playing the cards right in a way that's giving you the outcome that you're looking for. Now, I want to get back to this idea of consumption versus creation. So, Netflix has become shorthand for uh you know, just sort of a meme life of a guy sitting in a dark room smoking weed, red eyes, not going to bed, almost sort of staying up out of spite to like you know, [ __ ] you to my boss who I guess controls my day and so by me staying up late, I'm I'm controlling my time. But, I have a feeling that what's going on is people aren't in control of their emotions, so they're not framing this hard time that they are legitimately going through. They're not framing it in an in a way that will allow them to act productively. So, they then feel a way they don't want to feel. They don't see see outlet through behavior to fix it. So, they start consuming, consuming, consuming alcohol, weed, porn, Netflix, whatever, which all of those things can be fun in the right amounts at the right time. Um does that seem true to you that this is ultimately them trying to numb out effectively? Well, um it's very difficult to be a human being. Let's Let's start at at a very basic level. Going back to our earliest ancestry. So, unlike animals, we are not programmed. Now, animals aren't completely programmed, that's a myth, but they're much more programmed than we are by their instincts. So, a leopard doesn't wake up in the morning and go, "What am I going to do today? Am I going to hunt this animal or that? I don't know. I think it's kind of cloudy." Just No, they don't. They don't have that choice. We do. And that's what makes us aimless. That's what makes us wake up in the morning go, "Man, what am I going to do?" So, what that means what that translates into is the human being has emptiness, has a hole inside of ourselves. A hole that we need to fill in some way because we have incredibly active minds. The The brain, if you break it down, as I said earlier, we should be fetishizing it. If you study the brain in in a larger sense, it's absolutely astounding. The powers that it has, the amount of neural pathways that connect, the complexity of it, and the activeness of it. I meditate every morning, and as I try and still my mind, woah, thoughts are coming like this. You can't believe how active your mind is. You're just not aware of it. And but we have this emptiness. We don't know what to fill it with. This mind is active. We're not programmed. We don't know what to do. And because of that emptiness, we have to fill it with something. We're restless. And if we don't know what to fill it with, we're just going to consume, consume, consume, consume, consume as a way to kind of deal with that empty feeling, as you say, to numb ourselves. We're going to eat, eat, eat. We're going to watch movies. We're going to binge watch. We're going to get addicted to porn cuz it's filling that emptiness. It's taking that active mind and it's it's numbing it. And it's like, you know, it seems satisfying because we don't have to deal with these other things. So, you have to be aware that you have this emptiness inside of you. Everybody does. I have it. Everyone does. But, my life, the way I go, and I don't mean to be put the focus continually on me, is I wake every up every morning now cuz I reached this position, and I want you to have this this privilege that I have. I'm not saying that I feel so great. I want you to have it. I have this feeling I wake up in the morning. I know what I have to accomplish. I know what my goals are. I know what I have to do that particular day. I know what I have to do that particular week. These are the things that I can do to fill that emptiness, to program to give me self purpose, to have that North Star that you're talking about. And yes, within those parameters, I can waste some time reading about the Lakers on on Lakers ground.net, you know, it's website that I that I lurk in. Or I can read articles that have nothing to do with my life, you know, I can go on and on. I can waste time, but I have a general parameter. I don't have that gnawing emptiness that has to be continually filled by consuming, consuming, consuming. So, be aware that your mind is so active that you have to have something to fill it. But, it's your choice whether you're just going to consume mindless stuff or you're going to actually use that restless, active brain of yours and put it to some incredible function. How How figure out what incredible function to put it to? Well, that's the million-dollar question and that's why I wrote my my fifth book Mastery. Um So, I have a chapter one in Mastery called um Discover Your Life's Task. And it's not easy and I don't have like a formula for it. But I I kind of lay out the process that could lead you to it. So, if you're 22 or or younger, then it's it's pretty clear what you have to do and it's not so difficult. If you're 29, 30, it gets more complicated. If you're 40, it's very difficult. If you're 50, it's almost impossible. So, the younger you go through this process, the better. And what it entails is figuring out what makes you unique in life. And I don't mean like total weirdness unique. I don't mean that you have to be like some flamboyant rock star, etc., etc. It can be what makes you unique as an entrepreneur, as a business person. What makes you unique as a social individual, as somebody who likes to interact with people. What makes you unique in any endeavor, right? Going into looking at your childhood and being honest with yourself and saying, "I'm inter- I'm interested in this thing now that I'm 22, but it's not really me. It's what my parents want me to be interested in. It's not really me because it's what other peers think is cool right now. It's not really me because of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What is really me? Okay? So, you got to peel away these layers and you got to come at So, when you were born, I liken it to where a seed is planted. That seed is your uniqueness because A, your DNA has never existed in the history of the universe and never will exist again. Okay, it's impossible. It's so unique. B, your parents are not like any other parents and they're going to raise you in a way that's different from any other parenting couple in the in the history. C, you're going to have early experiences that are not like anybody else. That is unique. That is you. That is what separates you from the 100 billion I I I I narrowed it down how many humans have lived lived in the cuz I had in one of my chapters. I think it's 100 billion somewhere around that 110 billion. Oh. Ever. This is what separates me from Homo sapiens. Let's draw that line. Who have ever lived before, okay? And it's real. It exists. And it's not like a single thing. It's not like, "Oh, I was meant to be a fireman. Oh, I was meant to be a politician." It's vaguer than that. It has to do with things that attract you. Whether it's sports and and your body, whether it's mathematics or music, or whether it's words and literature, or whether it's social things, or whether it's building building a house, carpentry, or building a business, etc. What is it that excites me? What is it that I'm drawn towards what I call your primal inclinations? Going through that process and figuring out digging up that seed and figuring out what it is is the most should be the most exciting process in your life because if you do it, all the stuff that we're talking about, all the bad circumstances of the world, everything you're facing, you will reverse that power. You will discover your superpower. You will be motivated. You will find the energy, right? You will know what to ignore. It's not worth my time to be watching this podcast or reading this book. It's not worth my time to be wasting my energy doing this, that, or the other. I know what I want, okay? When you're 21 or 22, man, you can go if you figure that out, it doesn't have to be so specific, it just has to be this is the general direction I want in my life. These are the people that I want to end up being like even though I'm going to be myself in that within those parameters. Then the world will open up for you and you'll have a little bit of that radar that will guide you through life. Okay? If you're 30 years old, it's different. In the 30 years old you go through the thing of where did I go wrong? Cuz you wouldn't be going through this process unless you went wrong. If you were going right, then you don't need you can ignore everything. Most likely you Where did I go wrong? Why am I in this [ __ ] job? Why am I unhappy? Why am I drinking? Why am I addicted to this that and the other thing? My frustration, my unhappiness is speaking to me. It's telling me something. It's telling me that I took a wrong turn. All right, now go back and figure out where you took the wrong turn. And what it was where you how you can perhaps correct your path. How do you solve for that? How do you go back and figure out where the wrong turn was? Well, you're um so often times uh you choose a wrong path for reasons that have to do with money, with what you think is status, what other people think is cool. So, um look at your first choices, like you're 23 years old and you decided to go work for like a big corporation and now it's sucking your soul out and you feel empty and frustrated. Okay, I'm frustrated, I'm unhappy. Well, I chose to work in this kind of soulless environment and I quit when I was 27 and then I started working as a barista. Okay? Okay, I went wrong there. All right, so that's not where I was meant to go. All right, what was it out of college that I really wanted to do? What was it that excited me? What is the path I would have taken perhaps if I hadn't listened to my parents, if I hadn't followed this I this dumb idea. What is it that I could have done? And at that point, if you can be have just a tincture, a little flash of enlightenment about that, then you can start building on it and you start going, all right, I took this wrong path. All right, now I have to head in a different direction. I'm not going to give up. I'm not going to stay being a barista because that's not going to lead anywhere. I have to figure out a career for myself that I can't give up the 8 years I spent out of college because that's that's useless. That's not going to go anywhere. You're not 22 anymore. All right, I have to adapt what I learned in that time and I have to apply it in a different direction. So, you're going this way, your decision now isn't to go this way, it's to go this way or this way, a subtle little deviation closer towards what you were meant to to what excites you. And I have people who've written to me about the course corrections they've taken. They went from being a lawyer to being a writer about legal issues. They went from A lot of podcasters, believe it or not, have a very similar story. They went into the wrong profession and then they discovered that what they really liked was podcasting. And they applied So, I just had an interview recently with Andrew Huberman, you know, one of the most successful podcasters of our era, brilliant man, a neuroscientist. He was a neuroscientist working for a a university, etc. He was really, really unhappy about all the politicking. And he told me that he read Mastery and Mastery had a very huge impact on him. And I I don't want to credit but it kind of to him it saved his life. Wow. He decided he had to get into podcasting. That he loved interviewing people, that he loved the interaction with other people. Instead of having to do all the research, he wanted to be able to take that research and apply it to his interviews and interview fascinating people. Okay, it's a very common scenario among people in the podcasting business. But there are other scenarios that people have written to me about who have made that course correction in their late 20s. I talk about in Master I talk about Paul Graham who was a master in artificial intelligence in the 70s when it was just a little baby about to be born. It was just in the first instances. And he was a computer hacker and he didn't enjoy it and he hated working for companies. So he went off and became an artist. He just studied painting in Italy. He came back to New York. He was kind of living in a loft in in New York, very poor. But he was kind of enjoying it. And then he heard an ad on on the radio for this new online This is 1994 mind you. This new online world of advertising and marketing and selling products that was about to happen. And he got very excited and he goes well, I'm poor. I don't mind being poor but maybe I could make some money and and still have my life. And so he decides he's going to take all his computer skills and he's going to combine them with all that he learned in art and he's going to design a very aesthetic, a very pleasing, a very user-friendly site for selling products on the internet. It ended up turning to something that Yahoo bought for $5 back then. Not bad. And then he became a billionaire. On and on and on. He made a course correction kind of thing. So it's possible it's very common scenario when when 29, 30 years old. It's not so common when you're 40, but I have heard some stories. It's pretty much I've never really heard it when you're in your 50s. So, tell me about that. So, uh what is it that makes it impossible? Is it just that people can't muster the will because they don't think they have enough working years left? Is it is impossible, so I overstated the case, but it's unlikely. First of all, you're setting unlikely due to a character flaw or Well, as you get older, you get rigid. You think you know all the answers. You used to you have habits. You have My life isn't at all what I thought it would be. I'm 50 years old, but I know all the answers. Yeah. That's terrifying. Yeah, uh um I I have habits. It's you're not aware of it, but you're not so fluid, you're not so flexible. You think you know what you know what what the the right path is. You're not willing to admit your mistakes because then that throws open When you're 30, you go, "Okay, I made 8 years of mistakes." When you're 50, "I made 28 years of mistakes." Man, that's a painful realization. And we don't like to have painful realizations. advice though to somebody like that? Because let me tell you, if you and I are friends, I'm dangerously close to 50 as it is. But if I get to 50 and I'm like, "Hey, uh made a lot of mistakes, picked the wrong path. I I want you to kick me in the ass, make sure that I don't just resign." What would you say to somebody in that position? Well, it's it's actually not so difficult because you have accumulated, hopefully, a set of skills. Maybe one skill, maybe two skills, maybe three skills. If it were in the case of you, it was creating a product, marketing it, then being a podcaster, then creating this this animated world, then this educational stuff. You've got four, five sets of real skills there. But you're not satisfied. How can I take these skills and a package them and move in a different direction that is a new frontier for me that excites me that builds on what I have. So, it's actually an advantage in a weird way, but the disadvantage is you're rigid, you're set in your hat in your ways, you think you know the answers, you're not so fluid anymore. You're not willing to make a change in your thinking, to going It's 2028, whenever you turn 50, I'm just speculating. And the world is really different now. It's not the way it was in 2012 when I was building my empire, etc., etc. Am I willing to now face 2028 and the altered landscape, which means altering how I think and how I adapt and not not being so set in the ways like Robert Greene is about AI? Maybe AI is a fantastic tool. You know, I realize my limitations. I know I'm an old man. I know I'm a dinosaur. I'm aware of that. But am I willing to shake myself up and go and it's 2028, the world is different, people are young, they don't think the way I think anymore, it's a whole new generation. I have to I have to be sharp, I have to alter my game. I take those skills that I have, I adapt to this new world, to this new AI frontier. I I hate to say it kind of makes me nauseated, but okay. I have to adapt myself to this new frontier. Can I do it cuz when you get older, it's hard to do that. It's hard to say I'm dealing with a new generation, I'm dealing with a new landscape, I'm dealing with my own obstacles in my set ways of doing things. Can I overcome them, you know, kind of thing. You can reboot your life, your health, even your career, anything you want. All you need is discipline. I can teach you the tactics that I learned while growing a billion-dollar business that will allow you to see your goals through. If you want better health, stronger relationships, a more successful career, any of that is possible with the mindset and business programs in Impact Theory University. Join the thousands of students who have already accomplished amazing things. Tap now for a free trial and get started today. Okay, so if I did all that calculus and I was like, "Yeah, no, I'm I'm done. I don't I don't have any to keep going." Um what would you say? Well, um you have to find energy and love in life. And so maybe um there's something that you're doing that maybe isn't going to be so thrilling like this new career path that I'm saying, but it will be more energizing. You have to challenge yourself. So a lot of um feeling stale and lifeless is you've run out of challenges. You've conquered, you've done with certain things. But now it's it doesn't it's not you don't need to rise to the occasion anymore. You've kind of reached this plateau. You need to create a challenge for yourself. So within the business that you have, that you've been doing, whether you're working at a in an office for someone else or you've started your own business I'm going to do something a little bit bold. I'm going to start a new venture that's just like my old venture based on all the same skills but it's a bit of a risk. To take a risk, to shake yourself up a little bit, you know? It's not a similar thing, but with me and my books I never try and do the same book over. Right? Because I know if I did, I'd be bored as hell. I need challenges. My mind is so active, I can't even describe. It's terrifying sometimes. And if I am bored, I don't have the energy and I get frustrated. I get depressed. So, each book has to be different. It has to challenge me. It has to go, "You've never done this before. You might fail. You might not make it what you thought you did. You better You better be up to the challenge." It excites me. So, if you're stale, you need challenges. It doesn't mean you have to make a career change, but you have to take some kind of risk. If you come to me after this next book, which I'm sure will be amazing, and you even half reach towards the I'm tapping out bell, uh if you're just done and retired and you're super passionate to go travel or something like that, cool. I'm going to clap and I'll help you ring the bell. But if you're doing it because some part of your spirit has been broken, I'm going to be, "Hey, listen. This is an identity problem. Right now, you are allowing yourself to be uh cowed by a terrible set of [ __ ] values. And you need to right now decide what ought someone do with their life? Like, what should you be doing with your life? And this is where everybody [ __ ] hates moralizing, but I think people need to moralize in their own life. People need to have a sense of like, what should life be? Like, when we look at the landscape of a life well lived, what what ought it be? For me, you should be trying to wring every bit of potential out of your life. So, cool. Maybe your last book bored the [ __ ] out of you. Fine. Do something totally new. I'm here for it, but find something that's going to make you feel alive. I have done jobs that made me feel the exact opposite, and I would give up creature comforts, I would give up money, I would give up just about anything to feel alive. And so, when I watch people live lives of quiet desperation most men live lives of quiet desperation with Thoreau whoever said that. So it's like hey no way like that is crazy. People need bright lines in their life. I I will never get addicted to drugs because I just would tell myself there's a bright line you can't do whatever substance more than twice a week three times a week whatever. The second I'm doing it more than that I know that I have a violation and I'm going to immediately address it. It's like if I'm feeling I'm not going to allow myself see how many people I can piss off with this. I'm not going to allow myself to sit in depression. I may not be able to stop myself from getting depressed but I'm not just going to allow myself to sit and wallow in it. This goes back to I'm not going to trust my emotions. I'm going to ask myself what my value system is. Is my value system that hey if you're suffering you just sit in it? No. So it's like people need to address this stuff. So having a biological experience there's something going on in in my brain in that case or gut and I need to address it. And so figuring out what exactly that is and then making sure that I'm making changes based on value system frame of reference beliefs to ensure that I'm moving towards my North Star and I can only imagine if somebody doesn't know me and they're hearing this for the first time this is going to sound so polyana. Everything in my life is because that's how I respond to everything. Every time I've had just a grotesque challenge uh Jesus Christ the number of things that I've been through in 20 plus years of business uh is crazy and inevitably you hit hard times brutal times soul sucking times whatever whatever and I have realized that all of my success is predicated on one simple thing. I never quit and I don't quit because I'm able to recharge myself by going through the process that I just walked through should you come to me and say that yeah, I'm some part of my spirit has been broken. Well, I don't think that'll happen. You know, I talk about me personally. No, I'm just saying like this is obviously at the end I'm talking to myself in all of this is a reminder to how I'd want to react, but I really do try to frame episodes around okay, there is a person watching the show. They are in this case uh they're feeling hopeless. They are being consumed by this moment in time and the realities of their life cuz I the most horrible thing about excuses is that they're valid. And so people have valid reasons to feel hopeless. But and now what? Like what are you going to do? And so if people just allow themselves to sit in that that that is a value system problem. You have to build a frame of reference that moves you towards your North Star and unless hopelessness is your North Star, there's clearly a problem. Yeah. Yeah, so um to me that North Star is a sense of purpose which makes everything else kind of fold into what you're talking about and fit. So you don't need anything else. So when you have a sense of purpose, when you know what makes you unique, when you know what your calling is in life, then if you hit a moment where you want to quit, you know, all right, I'm not going to quit. I just need to go with a slightly different direction here because I know that that this is what I was meant to do. These are my strengths. These are my good qualities, etc. And you know, I I'm I don't like talking about myself so much, but here I here I go talking about myself again. Um when I was in my mid-20s, I was you know, in my journalism career, I was very unhappy. It wasn't working for me. I was depressed. So I go and I leave and I go to Europe and I travel Europe and I had a a heck of fun. I was seducing. I was seeing incredible things. I was learning languages. I was trying to write novels. But, I was poor. And I was starting to get older and I was going, "God, this isn't working." And I got very depressed. Then, I came back to Los Angeles and I go, "I know, I'm going to become a screenwriter. It's Hollywood. Hooray! I'm going to make money, but I'm going to write. It's going to be fine. I like theater. It's going to be exciting." I start going and I hate Hollywood. It's soulless. I'm not very good at it. I start getting very depressed. Probably the most depressed I've ever been in my life at that point in my one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica. As I said, I probably had moments where I was slightly suicidal. I know I did. I'm not wasn't slightly. I was. I was depressed. And I was like, "God damn it, what am I meant to do in life?" And then, I had a fortuitous encounter with a man who produces books. He asked me for an idea for a book and I kind of improvised The 48 Laws of Power and it all fell into place. But, my lesson is my long my long-winded story is I got depressed. I got down on myself, but I never gave up. I kept saying, "I'm meant to write. I'm a good writer. I have a way with words. I'm undisciplined. I have flaws. I'm not good at anything else, but I can write. I have a message. I have something to say." And it kept me going. It kept me going after all of these circumstances in which I think a lot of people would have given up at that point. And I didn't give up because I had that inner voice saying, "You're meant to write. You're You're good at it. You've developed skill. Don't give up. Keep trying. Keep trying. Keep trying." It picked me up every single time. And so, when I look at people and I go, they don't have that. And I understand that. It's very sad because if they face situation like that, they do they give up. And then they they go funnel down a dark tunnel, a dark path in life. And so that's why I wrote mastery. I don't want you to get into that that downward syndrome. I want you to see the fact that you have an overall frame and overall purpose that gives you that radar. So when things are bad, you don't give up. You just say I need to make a slight course correction to where I'm going in life. Yeah, it's interesting. I think people have a really hard time building out the road map. I think that to be nearly 40 for things to not have worked out I think as you well know that's a very hard place for people to be in. I think the scarier thing is to want to be a writer, but you're not a good writer. And I can imagine there's a lot of people that finally figure out, okay, this is what I was quote unquote meant to do but they actually suck at it. It's very true and people have presented that to me as if it's like maybe a kind of a flaw in my theory and I and I and I knock my head against it. And the only thing I can say is if you were young, if you were three or four years old or five and you decided that you wanted to write then you would have built the right skill. You would have known that because you had a flare, you had a love of language. And you realized it because you were reading books and you just were attracted to words. And you would have built those skills. You would have developed them. But the reason you're a bad writer is you chose writing when you were 10, 12, 15 years old because you thought it was cool, because you read a book you thought, "Hmm, this would be something." You thought it was easy. You thought, "I I write. Everybody writes. I can become a writer." I think chose a false path. Now, maybe I'm justifying that to myself, but I think if you had a true love of words, you would have found yourself a niche to where you would have mastered, you would have spent lifetime developing those skills. Like I spent 18 years more developing writing skills. I was terrible. I failed again and again, but I was developing skills. You weren't developing those skills because you were kind of half-assed about it. And that's why you failed. It wasn't what you were meant to do. And, you know, somebody once said, "Robert, you talked about 10,000 hours, which is some people dispute is actually valid theory, blah blah blah, which I think is bullshit." But I've been painting since I was 18 years old. I'm now in my 50s. I've put in my 10,000 hours, and I'm not Leonardo da Vinci. What are you talking about? Well, I go, "You put your 10,000 hours in over 33 years. If you had put those 10,000 hours from the age of 18 to 24 and starved because you couldn't make a living instead of becoming insurance brokers, which is what you are, you would have developed those skills in that year. You would have put the 10,000 hours in a condensed period of time. But you didn't because you really heart wasn't into it. Your heart was into making money and being comfortable. Because to be an artist, you have to be willing to starve. To be a writer, you have to be willing to be a failure, and you have to be willing to be alone. Do you know how lonely it is to be a writer? You're not out there having drinks with friends, going to parties. You're in your goddamn office alone without any distractions. You have to have a stomach for a loneliness, for facing a blank piece of paper. It's not easy. And if you're not truly into it, you won't make the effort get over that mountain and develop the real skills. So, that's why I think people generally become like a mediocre writer 40 and they go, "Shit, man. Robert Greene is wrong. I I I I don't This isn't meant for me. Blah, blah, blah." It's interesting. I think all of that is true. The only thing I disagree with is I don't think anybody's meant for anything. I think there are definitely things you're going to get a disproportionate return on, but I'll give you an example of a uh no longer super young man that I know uh who went to film school, graduated, thought he would get the three-picture deal. He didn't. He went into business as a way to get rich so that he can get build his own studio. Uh thought it would take 18 months. It took 15 years. And in the end he realized, "Oh my god, I spent 20 years plus now at this point." Uh this he is me. Um It's you. Oh, yeah. I always knew I wanted to be a storyteller, but I got to my mid-40s before I actually was able to put time and energy into doing it. And so, for you could certainly say that I made a whole series of bad choices. It's hard to cry about it recording this in my fancy house. Uh but the reality is if I had to do it over again, I would certainly do it differently. And but the way that I approach it is that now I just need to get good at the thing. So, what I worry about is that what people are really doing is measuring themselves against the financial yardstick or they're measuring themselves against Oh, that person has a best-selling book and I don't. And my thing is, "Okay, you're asking yourself the wrong question." The question people think they're supposed to ask themselves is what would I do uh if I knew I couldn't fail. Terrible [ __ ] question. What you should be asking yourself is, "What would I do and love every day even if I were failing?" Because, hey, the odds of you failing are very high. But if you're pursuing something that you actually love and care about, then it's like cool, pour yourself into getting good at it, value yourself for the sincere pursuit. Maybe you never get there, but man, if you actually value yourself for the sincere pursuit and you're pursuing something that you actually enjoy the doing of, which is the only part of it I can guarantee cuz no one can guarantee success, then cool, you I won't say you can't lose, but I will say that man, that do you take the sting out of that loss by being like, I've really enjoyed this. So, for instance, when I first founded Impact Theory, the number of people that offered me ownership in a company, come run this new uh food company or whatever cuz I had so much credibility in that space. And I turned them all down. And they were, "Why?" And I'm starting a media company. I'm going to beat Disney. And everybody was like, "Well, that's dumb because you don't have any experience in that area. You just had a historic exit from a food company. You should be doing food." And that would have made me more money, but that would have also made me miserable. And so, I had to figure out what do I value myself for? Because if I build my self-esteem around money, success, accolades, whatever, I'm going to be miserable. But, if I build my self-esteem around the sincere pursuit of something that makes me feel alive, cool. Now, now we're in. But, you have to be very thoughtful about what you value yourself for. Okay, a couple of things. Um So, it's very hard to keep at something if you get no validation for it. So, if you want to write, and I know this from personal experience, and you never get anything published, and or you get it and only a few people read it and you get bad reviews, it's very hard to keep going. Mhm. It's very difficult to keep pushing and pushing and pushing, right? And so, if you I actually believe that if you spend the time that apprenticeship phase and you are earnest about it and you're self-aware and you're looking not just at yourself and what you love, but you're aware of what the world is and what the market is for books, that you will find an audience, that you will find a niche. But you somewhere went wrong and where you went wrong was you didn't pay deep attention. You didn't pay deep attention to your to where your business was going, to the times, to your audience, and you failed in that way. So it's not just a matter of the 10,000 hours. It's also being aware of the cultural moment that you're living through and being just aware in general of how things are changing and what your audience is and what will feed the public right now as it is. And so you failed at that. And And if you hadn't, guarantee that you'd be a successful author. Now as far as your story is concerned, I have a much different take on it, but I'm not you, which is nothing you did was wrong. Everything you did was right and it it it was a link in a chain that led you to your mid-40s where you're about to have fantastic success. So if you were 30 and you went through a different process and you go, "I'm just going to go right ahead into animation. I'm not going to do this other stuff that's that distracted me." I don't know I don't know if I'm going correctly into your story, but something else would have happened. Something else would have turned wrong. But everything fits into place. Amor fati. Everything has a purpose. You were meant to have go off into these side roads and discover yourself and you're tougher for it and you're stronger and you've learned incredible lessons that are now going into what will be a mega successful business. I have that attitude because I think it's the best attitude to have. No regrets. Everything what I learned from. So even my bad jobs that I've had, do you know how many bad jobs I've had? I've worked in in construction and grease, a miserable job. I worked in a hotel. I worked in a detective agency, which might sounds like fun, but it was very depressing. I was a waiter. I had a whole string of crap jobs. I know what that's like, you know? But, I learned from every single one of them. I learned about human nature. I learned about how horrible can people can be, which went into the 48 Laws of Power. I learned how manipulative people can be, which went into the 48 Laws of Power. I learned how to observe people. I learned what I didn't love. Everything My motto in life, on my tombstone, is everything is material. Everything is wood for the fire, as to quote Marcus Aurelius. It's all going into that fire, and it's all for a reason and a purpose. And maybe it's not true, but it's the most beautiful philosophy you can adopt in life. It's interesting. Um we have we are achieving the same outcome, but viewing it incredibly differently. So, for me, I I don't mind being wrong. I don't mind having mistakes. And so, I don't mind, and this may have just be how we think about the word regret, I don't mind having regrets. I don't I don't mind that I would do it differently if I had to do it over. Um I can't do it over, and I love the way my life turned out, and I don't have a beef with it. It's just I don't want to lie to myself and say uh oh, no, no, no, I did it perfectly. Everything happens for a reason. I don't think things happen for a reason, other than that, you know, when it when it goes awry, it is because I'm dumb and did the wrong things. Uh that that is a reason. Um but yeah, I don't know, that doesn't bother me. In fact, I find it more empowering to say, oh, yeah, I [ __ ] that up, but I learned from it, and so, it was useful in the end, anyway. That's the same thing that I'm saying. That's what I mean. We've We've come to like the same conclusion, but through a different means. Okay. Um because very much I I don't know why I rebel against the idea of fate. I suppose I can quote the Matrix and say I just hate the idea that my life is not in my control. So it's far more interesting to me to say oh no, things don't happen for a reason. There is no net under this tightrope I'm walking on. If I fall, I may truly fall to my death. Things don't happen for a reason. There is no grand plan here. No one's coming to save me. I have to do this myself. And I won't do it perfectly. I will make mistakes. And so I'm not going to value myself for doing things perfectly. That's a suicide mission. But I never said it's perfect. All the twists and turns of my life weren't perfect. They were terrible. They led to depression. But they happened for a reason. They made me stronger. I learned from them. So you can have a bad experience and you can get throw your hands up in the air and go damn it, why'd that happen? I should have done something differently. Or you can go and this is what amor fati means. I can learn from it. It happened for a reason. It taught me something. It taught me that this was the wrong thing I should do. It taught me that I am intended to do something differently. Everything in life is a lesson it's teaching me. And I do believe in fate and I do believe in in there's a your whole life is on rails though? No, this this that's that's mechanistic thinking. for me. Well, there's a great book written by Robert Hillman that I recommend for everybody called The Soul's Code. And he explains in modern terms that's not so woo-woo about what that fate can mean. Can you channel it? I'm getting tired and it's hard, but I'll try. Um So you have your genetics. Okay? You don't control your genetic makeup. Right? It's sending you on a path. You think that it's all luck and chance, but no. You have genetics, you have DNA that is controlling some of your behavior. And it's setting you into patterns of behavior. Okay? Some of those patterns can be very positive, and some of them can be negative. But what you were what happens in life is kind of actually under your control and the fate is saying that because it's something that is sort of inscribed in your genetic code. It was meant for you to to happen that way, and you see it and you actualize it and you make it a positive thing. You discover what that seed is, what you were meant to accomplish in life. You realize your fate. So, there's a quote that I use in Mastery by Pindar. I hope I can remember. Um See who you are by becoming who you are. So, you see what your fate is and you become that fate and you realize it by your self-awareness. So, a lot of people don't realize what they were meant to accomplish in life, and then they they're just failures, and that's what their fate is. Right? But, I realized what my fate was. It guided me. It didn't mean I was destined to work at Esquire magazine when I was 23 years old and and hated. Didn't mean that I was destined to work for this director in Hollywood and have a terrible experience. It just meant that I was fated to have paths in life that didn't lead to what I wanted and that I would realize and go, "I need to keep doing this." It meant I was meant to be a writer and I hung on to it. I'm not giving Robert Hillman justice. As I said, I'm kind of tired, but that's that's how I look at it. It's not this woo-woo thing that everything in life is determined. Do you understand the difference? I do. I feel like um for me it's almost certainly just semantics. There might be some uh real thing that I just don't like cuz it clearly, Robert, your life's amazing. So, if that's the way that you have dealt with everything uh then that's phenomenal and it works for you and the last thing I'd want to I'm not trying to convince you my way is right. I'm just um laying out the way that resonates with me is that I like to remind myself that sometimes things go wrong because I was stupid and I didn't think about it properly. Um I'm not it wasn't fated for me. I don't need to love what happened. I can just say, "Cool, learn from this." And so, there is a a self I'm poking myself in the ribs to remind myself, "Hey, if you go on autopilot again, odds are you're going to make that same mistake. So, you need to be more careful." arguing over semantics cuz we're saying the same thing in the end. Okay? Maybe. I think we are. We'll see. There could be second and third order consequences I'm not anticipating. But yeah, look, no, I think that we ultimately get keep getting to the same place through a slightly different means. Yeah, cuz I'm not saying that my mistakes were perfect. I'm just saying that they It's the same thing. We're just arguing We should We should move on here because I believe we're saying the same thing. It's just that I am stupid. I have flaws. I make mistakes. But I learn from them. I realize that they happen for a reason and they're teaching me something about myself. So, we're saying the same thing. I believe. Yeah, it's interesting. I want to let it go, but you use the words it's teaching me and I think it's important for people to understand it's not going to teach you [ __ ] You're going to have to learn. Like you have to be the active participant in this. It won't happen by accident. Anyway, we'll stop there. Yeah, but if if if you're aware of what you were meant to accomplish in life, you will learn. Yeah, I don't agree with that. All right. All right. So interesting. Okay, so what's that? Adelante. What does that mean? That means just forward in Spanish. Okay, perfect. Forward we go. Let's let's build people back up. We've talked a lot about the problem. We've talked about how you can find yourself in some pretty dire straits. So for me it would be all right, you have to figure out where you want to go. You have to know that with with a clarity that's terrifying. Yeah. You have to have a set of values and beliefs that are going to essentially force you to act in the ways you would need to act in order to accomplish that. What's your setup for people if they want to really do something? problem with with how you laid it out is it sounds kind of dire. It sounds kind of dreary. Man, I have to go through all of that? Yes. That's like man, I I don't it's not even worth it. I'm just going to give up. I'm just going to keep smoking pot. It's a lot more fun. If that were true, I'd leave people alone. I think what I try to appeal to people is it's fun. When you figure it out, life becomes thrilling. It becomes an adventure. You know that okay, I'm in my 20s. I I can go out and have fun. I can waste some time. I can have this adventure, but I'm learning from it and it's helping me grow and I know that I have a sense of direction. So you know, if you want to be be a great basketball player or a chess master, in the beginning, it's tedious. It's boring. It's hell. You're frustrated. Five years down the line, it's kind of getting easier and better. 10 years down the line, you're able to shoot 60% on three-point shots. You become a a grandmaster or whatever the step below that is. You're having fun. It's exciting. So following this path is actually the most thrilling thing you can be on because you're not going to do it if you think it's all drudgery and pain and I've got to spend so many years self-sacrificing, not being able to No, man. You're going to have fun overcoming challenges, getting good at something is the greatest high you can have. If you want to be an entrepreneur and you're 23 years old and you go, "Nah, I'm not really ready for it. I need to go back to business school." Okay, no. You start your business now and it fails and it's painful and you go, "Shit, I don't know." But then you go, "I'm going to do it again cuz I learned some terrible lessons." You do it again and it succeeds and this is like 7 years later. Man, what a feeling. You've overcome yourself. You've mastered your own weaknesses. You're having fun. People are admiring you. You have the attention that you want. Women are flocking to you, whatever you want to however you want to say it. It's a high. It's great. So, mastering something, becoming great, figuring out what you want to do is not painful. It's the most fulfilling decision you can ever make and it involves some tedium. It involves a couple some years of frustration. But if you can if you can delay immediate gratification, if you can say it'll come to something in 3 or 4 years, if I'm focused, if I'm energized then you're going to reap the rewards. I guarantee you cuz that's how the human brain is structured. So, I like to flip the script and make it seem like something that's incredibly fun and that's why I wrote mastery where the last two chapters are about being creative and about the feeling of being a master at something where you have an intuitive feel. It's like a superpower at that point and it's an incredibly intoxicating sensation. And I set it up that way because I wanted you to realize that this is a goal that you can have and it's incredibly it'll give you life a sense of direction. So um I just want you to feel that there's another path even in these miserable times even with all the problems there is a path that will lead to something so different and it'll turn your life around and I I mean I don't know it's hard to convince people with words and that's why I wrote that book but I honestly believe that. What a beautiful description of the very difficult but so worth it adventure of doing something great. Where can people follow you Robert Greene? Well um they can follow me on my ancient ancient website called power seduction and war the and is spelled out powerseductionandwar.com. It literally dates from the mid-2000s. Um but on that ancient dinosaur website I have links to all of my seven books um to my YouTube channel to Instagram to Twitter to uh Tik Tok to Facebook to everything where everything you need and all of links to all of my books on Amazon. So that's the best site to begin at. I like it. All right everybody if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary. Take care. Peace. Check out my intense conversation with Patrick Bet-David about masculinity. To truly be free you have to be strong enough to control your own life and many men today simply do not qualify. Many of you have been told the pursuit of power is disgusting you shouldn't do it. Many of you don't even have a clear definition of what it means