For Those Who Don’t Have Life Figured Out Yet - Mark Manson

The most important skill in the 21st century is the ability to live happily with uncertainty. Yeah, I I I mean do you know what's going on? >> [laughter] >> Almost never. >> you you millions of people like tune in to listen to you to try to figure out what's going on and you still don't know what's going on. So it's if if you and I can't figure it out like I think we're all pretty Um it it is interesting that like as access to information scales the certainty in the confidence around that information like dissipates. I feel like everybody is feels less moored to reality than ever before despite the fact that we have access to everything 24/7 which is like a very weird paradox but I think it's it's there's a a deep human instinct to seek out certainty to find a certain set of beliefs and assumptions that you can kind of like hang your hat on and build your life around. And I think it's becoming harder than it's ever been before and I think as a result developing kind of the cognitive flexibility to live in ambiguity is probably more important than it's ever been. What happens if you can't deal with uncertainty? Then you will over index on one single belief, right? So you'll become radical about one idea. You'll you'll basically put all of your kind of emotional well-being into a single concept or a single world world view. And the danger of that is just that like any every world view is going to get blown up at a certain point. Like nothing survives contact with reality. Um so when you are forced you know, when when that world view gets contradicted you're either going to suffer immensely or you're going to have to double down the delusion to maintain the certainty. Anxiety is all about uncertainty. It's about trying to compress uncertainty down. Mhm. I don't know what's going to happen in future. If I can imagine all of the different ways that the future might unfold, especially the really bad ones, >> Mhm. I'll be able to plan and war game. And that means that when it happens, I'll be ready. Mhm. Yeah, there's a it's a really strange comment on how humans brains work that we would rather imagine a catastrophe than deal with uncertainty. Yes. Uh it you think about um you think about is thinking in superpositions, right? People would rather collapse the superposition down into something that maybe even breaks the laws of physics. Like your dead grandma comes back from the grave to tell you off for this thing that you do you do the entire supernatural shit's going on. Mhm. That's what you would rather have in your mind yeah than I don't know what's going to happen. Right. It's interesting too like what you described about anxiety that kind of that treadmill that you get on, right? Of like trying to predict future outcomes. In the process of trying to predict those outcomes, trying to be become certain about what's going to happen, uh you actually just inadvertently build more surface area for more uncertainty because every everything you try to project into the future, you just create more opportunities for that to be wrong. Yes. >> And yes. Um so it it's interesting cuz I think I think actually like the antidote to this is it's more of like an aperture issue, right? It's I think instead of trying to be certain about very specific small narrow things, it's better to try to zoom out till you find a place of confidence, right? So um like just take like AI for instance, right? Everybody's freaking out about it. Everybody's got you know, some people think the world's going to end. Some people think everybody's going to lose their jobs, some people think like China's going to take over everything. I have no idea if any of those things are true, but like if I zoom out broadly enough and you just look at every major technological revolution throughout human history, there is disruption, there is some displacement, but like society adapts and moves on. And so if I zoom out to that wide of an aperture, suddenly I feel some degree of certainty that we're going to be okay in the macro. But in the micro, right, of like are you and I going to have jobs in 2 years? Like I some less certainty about that. >> [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. It's uh it's a kind of fragility to need a lot of certainty because what you're saying is I can't deal with something that I can't anticipate. I don't have enough robustness in my system. If something happens that I haven't planned for, the only way that I can survive the future is if I've already prepared for it. Yeah. And that's the opposite of robustness or you know, the best anti-fragility. Look at COVID. Now, COVID everybody's lives during COVID basically forked into one of two directions. People either went way off the rails or people's lives got stupendously better. Right. Like that's it. It wasn't really anyone who was like, "Yeah, you know, COVID was okay." Yeah. It ticked over and stuff really didn't change. You know, my my trajectory stayed the same. That that was like a lifestyle Rorschach test that everybody took. Everybody looked at it and some people went in one direction and some people went in the other. And a lot of it is you just got dealt a [ __ ] shitty hand, dude. Yeah. You know? Like that that hospitality job that you were just about to take that was going to change your life. I'm really sorry that [ __ ] that blew. Or that SAS company that you were about to start. Like yeah, I mean you timed the [ __ ] out of the market. Well done for incorporating in 2019 and having everything ready to work from home remotely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting like So, what one of my fans recently asked me a question um about confidence and about like people who seem self-assured in kind of every situation. And it's interesting because I think, you know, when you hear a lot of confidence advice, you hear, you know, you need to fail at something a certain amount of times and you need to build evidence, right? That you're capable of handling setbacks and obstacles and all these things. And it's interesting cuz I think it kind of like confidence actually operates on two different dimensions. There's like state confidence and trait confidence, right? And so, you can put yourself in situations where you feel some degree of certainty. Like you you've done a thousand podcasts, right? So, it's like if a [ __ ] light blows up right here, like you're probably going to figure it out and be fine Yeah. And you're not going to worry about it. Um but there's there is an interesting aspect of like kind of a broader trait confidence of just living enough of your life in that uncertainty, being in enough situations where you felt out of control, but things turned out fine. Um that I I I don't think you can plan or predict for. It's like almost by definition, uh you have to live through things not going as planned to build that like deeper level trait level confidence. >> Yeah, that's the dark night of the soul thing. The worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. It's like um difficulty exposure therapy. Oh, I've been here before and I didn't die. That means I can probably be there again, things will go okay. But if you haven't been there before and it happens, if a pandemic comes along again, everybody apart from 5-year-olds are prepared. Yeah. Way more Okay, I understand what's going to happen here. Like I I lock myself in the house, I'll probably invest in some companies that have decent, you know, like distributed I zoom stock. Yeah, exactly. [laughter] Buy zoom stock, yeah. You know that when when COVID happened, there was another company called Zoom whose ticker is very close to the proper one, and that share price went up by like 400%. It's some Chinese company that just by fortune of being called the same thing. All right, next one. Yeah. Do hard [ __ ] Not because it's fun, but because the win actually means something. You bled for it. You broke for it. You earned it. Easy wins are forgettable. Hard ones change you. That's the point. I I've been thinking a lot about this concept recently of like how there's an inverse relationship between convenience and significance. Like I think we tend to only appreciate things that require some degree of friction or sacrifice. And I mean, look, there's there's the classic reason to do hard things, which is kind of what we just, you know, it's like you build resilience and you, you know, you build up your endurance and self-belief and confidence and all these things, but I'm I've been thinking a a lot about this more from like kind of a existential meaning lens of that when things are just handed to you, you take them for granted. It's human nature. And so if there are a lot of results in your life, if we if if we are all kind of accumulating more and more results and outputs in our life that are kind of just handed to us by technology, uh-huh, you know, [ __ ] burrito taxis coming anytime we want. Like it it's it's in in one way it's kind of robbing us for opportunities of significance. And I'm I'm maybe it's because I'm 40 now, but I'm like >> [laughter] >> I'm like starting I'm starting to develop uh this like interest in in intentionally introducing friction back into my life in certain ways. I actually had a conversation with my wife last night where like she was telling me she said that one of her her childhood friends sent her some voice notes and it's like she was going through all this [ __ ] like her kid was having problems uh her business partner was like you know, just completely checked out. Um huge fight with like her ex-husband all this stuff and my wife was like do you want to talk? And her friend was like I never even considered like I didn't want to bother you or you know, you're busy or whatever. And then of course they got on the phone they talked for like an hour and a half and it was like this great kind of reconnection in this moment. But my wife and I were talking last night about like how just that reluctance to even like actually call somebody without permission without like establishing okay, I sent a text and then I asked if I can call. Um it's we're we're also like hung up on it's an the phone is annoying. It's annoying like when the phone rings. It's annoying to like have to deal with calls. Um that we've like robbed ourselves of the friction that actually builds like the uh the connective tissue of our relationships, right? Cuz you can't reproduce that intimacy through like voice notes or text messages or anything. So like that's a very superficial example, but like we're surrounded by those superficial examples 24/7. Is this making any sense? >> Absolutely. What's the I didn't know where you were going at the start but you really brought it back into the land there. Um the uh the inconvenience of a friendship is exactly where it grows from. Yeah, it's the definition of safety the best definition of safety that's been formally given to me is we can go through something hard and come out the other side okay. Mhm. The best definition of personal safety and sovereignty is I'm okay no matter what happens. Right. She's >> similar to a relationship with yourself, a relationship with somebody else. >> Yeah. But you have to How do you know that you're safe if you haven't gone through something difficult with somebody? Mhm. It's the same thing as Jordan Peterson's idea about you're not being noble if you're unable to be harmful. You're just being harmless. Right. >> A rabbit doesn't choose Actually, rabbits can be bastards, but a rabbit doesn't choose to be harmless. It just doesn't have very many weapons. Sure. Um but I the that line between significance and convenience, I think is so [ __ ] right. And I've been thinking about this a lot. I'm sure that you you write a lot of things, you need to produce stuff. Everybody in one way or another is probably using AI to assist them with their workflow and what I've noticed is that there's certain things that it's robbed me of the enjoyment of in completion, even as it's made completing it easier and maybe better. Right. And then you start to ask yourself a deep question, which is what am I doing it for? Right. >> Am I doing it for the outcome? Because I can speed run the outcome. Right. Well, kind of, but also kind of not. What I'm doing is I'm doing this thing for the way that I feel when I have finished it. Mhm. That's really what I'm doing it for. Cuz let's say that um you could create some prompt in ChatGPT. Thank you to our partner ChatGPT. Uh and that would create videos on your channel. Let's say they're even derivative of your work. They're not using anybody else's work. But it was able to get a new channel of yours to a million subscribers in four weeks. Yeah. And you just put it in and you're like, "Oh, amazing. It's my work." Right? So it's still you. But the process of getting there wasn't that challenging. Right. I don't think I don't think that you would feel that satisfied. Think about how satisfied you were when your book actually gets completed by you by hand in the before times. >> Yeah, and it's like I struggle with this too because I'm generally like a very technology pro-technology person. >> Who owns an AI company? >> Yeah, so it's but I I think of it like when you were talking the the thing that came to mind is it's kind of like playing a video game with cheat codes. Right? It's fun for a minute. You're like, oh, I'm like crushing everything. This is awesome. But then when you beat it, it's not satisfying. And it's almost like most of the technological innovation of say the last 20 years has just been adding little cheat codes to all these areas of our lives. And >> [clears throat] >> it has made everything more seamless, frictionless, convenient, faster, more efficient, but it's like robbing the satisfaction of like Which is the reason that you do it. You do it for the emotional state of having done it. Now, hopefully having done it well, hopefully having done it in a way that makes other people's lives better and is popular, maybe gets you some money, too. But all of those things only matter in as much as you can link your effort to that outcome. Yes. And I think part of it too is is that it's it's causing us to mistake the convenience and efficiency for what why we're doing it, right? I like I think for example, like I think this dating is probably the most egregious example of this, right? If you if you look at the just the state of the dating apps, they're completely optimized for convenience of introduction. And on the surface, if you're a single person, like that sounds like a great deal, but in the in the process of like mass matching people out of convenience, you are losing that friction and that and that the struggle, which is essentially the filtration system for who's actually going to be a good partner for you. Which also creates the significance in the connection, too. And that that's that bottom line. Easy wins are forgettable. Yes. And that's the thing. You look back on your life and you say, "Wow, I I don't actually know how I got here." I mean, it's great, and I look at all of the things I have. Isn't that wonderful? I I think about this people that got became millionaires, deca centimillionaires through crypto. Mhm. Yeah, how deranging must that be? Mhm. Completely deranging. The same way as somebody who's poor winning the lottery, in many ways that could be one of the worst days of their life. >> Yes. When they look back, they go, "Wow, that was completely unmoored, untethered to my existing perspective of reality. I'm never going to have a day that's that good again." Right? It's like It's like having never done cocaine and then deciding one day to complete like a Charlie Sheen-size dose of it. And you go, "Well, I'm not conditioned I wasn't I didn't build up my tolerance for this. And I don't have the story and the narrative." And that's what we live in. Humans live in these narratives. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's There's also like there's a skill aspect of this, too, right? Like especially with around money and relationships. Like I think part of the issue with kind of the the app-driven dating culture is that there's a lot of just simple, basic dating skills that you build and optimize through like actually speaking face-to-face with lots and lots of people, especially people who are not very interested in you. Mhm. And uh >> you have a lot of experience with that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um the And the interesting thing, you know, there's this stat around lottery winners, where like the majority of them end up broke, lots of them end up depressed, lot number of them commit suicide. And I think a lot of it, too, is is that there's this this there's a skill set around money, right? Which is like, okay, you have a lot of money, there's a lot of bad ways to manage that money, there are a lot of bad decisions, there's a lot of bad habits around money that you've like never developed cuz you never climbed the mountain steadily over a long period of time. You were just like air-dropped to the peak. And so, clearly you just fall off. >> But the stupid thing is, we don't know what technology we have now that had it have not been there, we would have preferred our lives in the past. There was a I think the typewriter came in partway through Nietzsche's life. Mhm. And his writing changed Interesting. >> when he the typewriter came along. He was previously writing by hand. >> Yeah. And then after that, his sentences got shorter, his writing style changed. And I wonder how many people when the typewriter came along said, well, without the quill, it's going to change all of these things. Now, that's not to say that some technologies can't unlock creativity and unlock your access to difficulty. There's like there's unnecessary challenge, but it certainly feels to me like if there's a bell curve of where the optimal point is, or the area under the curve, we are way overshooting it now that a single prompt can basically spit out a passable piece of work. All that being said, Mhm. I do think that the advent of AI opens up for everybody. AI basically regresses you back to the mean. Yeah. >> it is. It's optimizing for the mean. Yeah. So, if you're worse than if you're in the bottom 50% of anything, It's a great deal. >> AI will make you better. >> It's a great deal. If you're in the top 50% of anything, AI makes you worse. And if you're trying to do anything, you shouldn't be doing it if you're in the bottom 50%. So, presumably, it's actually dragging you back. Yeah. Yeah. I think the tricky thing with all all of this whole concept, all these technologies, is what happens is that it becomes incumbent upon us individually to go find the new difficulty, right? Which is hard. E- Exactly, right? So, it's like using AI, but also pushing yourself to still do something original or unique or have original ideas. Uh and it's And the problem is it's just like it's it's really against our you know, our nature is to always choose the last the path of least resistance and um so, it's like very hard to develop that muscle and I think a lot of people just don't have that muscle. Choose hard, dude. All right, next one. Yep. A quick aside, there is a stat that genuinely surprised me when I first heard it. 95% of people don't get enough fiber. Not because they're being careless, but because hitting your daily fiber target through food alone is actually quite hard. But, that's why Momentous built Fiber Plus. See, fiber isn't just a digestion thing. 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That's l i v e m o m e n t o u s.com/modernwisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. When you select a partner, whether you realize it or not, you're choosing a whole lifestyle and not just the person. You're choosing their sleep schedule, you're choosing their money habits, you're choosing their stress levels, their family drama, their levels of cleanliness, their work ethic, their coping mechanisms, all of these things will be a baseline of your daily life. If their normal is doom scrolling till 2:00 a.m., avoiding all conflict, impulse spending, and never exercising, guess what? You're signing up to live in that ecosystem. Love does not cancel out people's flaws. In fact, love just makes you tolerate them for longer. Most people obsess over do we have romantic chemistry? And they completely skip can I live with this person's version of a Tuesday for the next 10 years? >> [laughter] >> The hard truth is you don't fix somebody's lifestyle from the inside. You either accept the package as they are, or you walk. Mhm. I've been having I've been having this conversation with a lot of single friends recently of what I'm what I am noticing is that people tend seem to have kind of this laundry list of requirements. And as soon as they and there's this also this false perception of infinite options. And so as soon as the person that they're seeing or that they're on a date with like fails one of the qualifications, they're like, "Oh, next. I'm going to move on." And then of course they're you know, 45 and still single and wondering why they never found anybody. And have you ever heard that story that I think it I think it it was Warren Buffett where he said that he was like, you know, you you write out a list of 20 things that you want in your life. Put them in order from the thing that's most important to least important, and then cross out everything but the top three. It I I'm I've essentially started giving that exercise to my single friends. Cuz I I'm like, "You're not going to find all of these. And and and it's you've been brainwashed. You have this like false perception that there's a lot of these people out there that that tick every single box. And there's not. And you're probably even if there is, you're probably not going to meet them. And and if you do meet them, they're going to have so many options that it's going to be like very unlikely that you end up with them. So, it's find your three non-negotiables and then negotiate on the rest. And that's like [ __ ] sacrilege these days to tell people cuz they're like, "I don't want to settle." Yeah, I don't want to settle. It's like Dude, everybody settles on something. >> I mean, you're settling in that you can't fly at the moment. Yeah. >> [laughter] >> You know, you're settling in that you need to go to bed every night. >> Yeah. I mean, dude, there's things I've been with my wife for 14 years. There's things about her that still drive me [ __ ] crazy. And But I But she's like Latina, right? Well, yeah. Yeah, so that kind of comes That's part of the course. It's yes, it's part for every course, but it's the Latina The Latina versions are just much more dramatic. >> [laughter] >> Very loud with lots of tears involved. Spicy. >> [laughter] >> The spicy version. It's the fuego version. It's fuego dating. Exactly. Um but there's things about me that like she can't stand. But it's like you just accept it at a certain point. You're like, okay, the good vastly outweighs the bad and and you go with it. And um and I think I think the reason that post did so well is you know, when you are meeting people, when you are dating people, there's there's this whole kind of like iceberg under the water of traits and characteristics and personality and connections and relationships that you're you're not really aware of that they're there. Um but that's actually going to be the majority of the relationship. And really most people are kind of just going on vibes, you know, when they're when they're dating somebody. Um And so I I just think it's helpful to be like explicitly conscious about it and understand like, okay, if if her mother's crazy, like and you want to marry her, like you're going to have a crazy mother-in-law for 40 years. >> Buckle in for some crazy. Exactly. Like it it's just put it on the plate cuz it's part of the course. You can't You can't only It's not a buffet. You don't just take the items you want. You got to take It's the whole pre-fix menu. You know what the original name for this podcast was going to be? What's that? Crushing a Tuesday. The reason for that glad that I didn't do it. Uh another one was mind and matter and another one was brain and brawn and it was they were horrible. Modern Wisdom was divine inspiration. It came to me at 3:00 in the morning. Yeah. >> Much better. And thank you. Uh Crushing Tuesday's not bad. >> Crushing a Tuesday was taken from a Tim Ferriss podcast. >> Okay. >> And what he said was most people try to optimize their lives around peak experiences. >> Mhm. But your life is made up of average Tuesdays. Yeah. And your goal should be to make your average Tuesday as enjoyable as possible. Yeah. And that's what you're talking about here. That what people look at is the amazing sex or the fascinating conversation. They don't realize what is this person like normally? What is the middle of their bell curve of just how they operate? Mhm. What do they do with with the most frequent interaction between them and reality? What do they do with their diet? That's pretty important. What do they do with their sleep pattern? That's pretty important. These are structural things. How do they deal with discomfort? How do they deal with things when they're hot? How do they deal when they're dysregulated? What's their family like? Yeah. What are their timelines like? You know, your timeline's in the same moving in the same direction. And that is What what's the relationship with money like? That is what you are signing up for. Right. And that line, love does not cancel out people's flaws. In fact, it just makes you tolerate it for longer. Mhm. Um which is what's deranging to a lot of people that they get into a relationship with somebody who isn't right for them or isn't good for them. And the capacity of that love, the intensity of their love, just allows them to stay in something which isn't right for even longer. Yeah. And I think that people often feel guilty about having optimized for romantic chemistry when what they should have been optimizing for is is Tuesday evening with this person enjoyable. Right. And it's it's easy to optimize for that romantic chemistry cuz that's what you're flooded with when you meet somebody you really like. Um so that's what you're going to be biased towards. And I should I should add so it's funny cuz I think I've posted a couple variations of this post over the years and um every every time there's always like a couple angry people in the comments who are like you this is unrealistic. You shouldn't expect somebody to satisfy all of these things for you. And the point of this isn't that you have to go find somebody who has a mother that you like and who's like good with money. >> of that. Yeah, no, it's like it's you have to find somebody that you're willing to tolerate all of the all of those things, right? So it's it's not um they're not trying to hit a a ceiling like you're just trying to make find somebody who like nothing falls below your floor. Mhm. And it's also I think a lot of it there are a couple other facets of this. I think one is understanding that what you what what are you particularly well equipped to handle? So for example, my wife's Brazilian. She has a lot of feelings. Uh and I'm just like very even-keeled pretty much all the time. It it really takes a lot for me to get worked up about anything. Like I'm I'm the guy who doesn't give a [ __ ] So it actually works extremely well. Like I can handle a lot of emotions. It doesn't really freak me out. I don't like get sucked in the drama easily. So there's like a certain amount of self-knowledge of understanding this is the type of partner that I'm probably well suited for because my strength kind of resonates well with their weakness or vice versa. Whereas like my you know, I I've a very very like strong need for intellectual stimulation. I get bored extremely easily. And back when I was single like I I dated a lot of really cool girls, but who just like weren't super smart or curious and I I was bored within minutes. And some of them were smoking hot, some of them were awesome in bed. And I I I remember sitting there being like I can't believe I'm going to break up with this girl. Like she's what am I doing? But I was bored. I got nothing to talk to you about. >> Yeah, I was bored out of my mind. And your first date with your now wife was you met in a nightclub and within 30 minutes we're talking about Russian literature? Uh Russian grammar. Russian grammar. That's it. [laughter] You know. Yes. I told you about this last time that uh my best piece of advice for sort of the intellectual bros or the intellectually inclined bros when they're single is to speed run sending weird psychology articles to the girls that you're talking to and to just see who comes back. It's like an intellectual [ __ ] test. And you're not looking for the smart ones, you're looking for the ones that engage. Oh, that's cool. Never never heard of that before. Like let's talk about that the next time we get on the phone or next time we go for dinner. Even if they don't know anything about it. Like that's not what it's about. Okay, can I is this person interested? Are they going to engage with me? So yeah, I think uh It's funny. Rory Sutherland's got this idea. He says you should have an air fryer girlfriend not a Fiat 500 girlfriend. And what he means by that is you want to find somebody who only you can see the value in in a way that other people can't and who have disadvantages that only you can tolerate in a way that other people can't. So if you have an air fryer for instance it's going to stank up the kitchen. If you're sensitive to smells, it's going to be a bad thing to have in your house, or else you're going to have to put it out on the balcony or in the garage or something like that, and that's a bit of a nightmare to use. If you're not that bothered about smells, you can have your entire life's calories go through one machine. Uh he uses the example that um he doesn't mind noise when he goes to sleep. Mhm. He's a fan of trains, and he likes beer. So, he lived in a house that was next to a pub with a garden that backs onto a railway line. Because he quite likes the trains. They're actually actively sort of enjoyable for him to see going by. He doesn't mind that much about the noise from them or from the beer garden, and he's made good friends with the landlord of the pub, and it means that he can order a beer by leaning over his fence and asking for it. And he can sort of enjoy the atmosphere of the pub from the comfort of his own home. Uh what he's done is he's been able to get a house, I think it's his cottage that's somewhere in the British countryside. He's been able to get that at a price that most other people would still think was too much despite the fact that it's discounted >> [clears throat] >> because there are certain inconveniences and challenges that he is particularly well equipped to put up with that other people would struggle with. Yeah. And the same thing is true when it comes to choosing a partner. Can we dig into this a little bit because I feel like >> Well, I'll let you know how that goes over with my wife. I'm going to I'm going to go home after this. >> Darling, darling, I I want >> air fryer. You're my life. >> fryer, am I? You're my air fryer. I can cook everything in you. >> [laughter] >> Well, yeah, that's I mean, she is Brazilian, so they're highly fertile. Yes. Uh but it's and especially like you you come more from this optimization world than I do. Um but the person like the personalization of optimization, like this is the thing that always bugged me about a lot of the optimization content out there because it's everybody's so different in terms of what they want and who they are and like what they're predisposed to. And I think the same way like some people are more predisposed to certain athletic activities or certain physical activities than others, we're all predisposed to like certain psychological environments and certain types of relationships than other people. And and and I just it drives me crazy that there's like no accounting for that often. Like there's no discussion of how it's yeah, living next to a train track where you can order a beer over a fence is like that might actually be optimal for one person's life. Whereas you would never see that like broadcast on, you know, health and fitness industry. >> optimal way that you should get your house. Look at all of the advantages. Well, we know that those advantages are so niche that it only addresses a very small cohort of people. Right. But the assumption here is all optimization advice is optimizing for the general >> Exactly. You know that study about they tried to engineer fighter pilot seats inside of US fighter jets and new US fighter jet. They took all of the fighter pilots and averaged their body dimensions so that they could design the seat that was the average of them all. It fitted zero pilots. >> [laughter] >> There's no such thing as average. Right. There is no such thing >> The average person literally doesn't exist. They're an aggregate of everything. But I mean, let's say for instance that you had a distribution of people on a graph that looked like a pair of boobs. Okay. Right. So you have sort of two there. Yeah. Where's the average? It's actually at a point where maybe nobody is. >> You know? This is the problem with doing it. And I understand that sweeping generalizations about advice is something that I've always steered away from when I can. Yeah. And it's been massively to the detriment of my credibility. >> [laughter] >> I'm I'm doing other things that are massively to the detriment of my credibility as well. But, um one of the reasons is people love certainty. They love absolutes, they love certainty, and this goes back to the fact that uncertainty is very difficult to deal with. If I listen to someone who says, "Well, we know we know that this is the case. We know what Israel is doing. We know how much protein you should have per day. We know what the best sleep formula is." You go, "Well, [ __ ] hell, like I don't need to worry anymore. All the chaos of the world, all of the different directions that things could have gone in." I don't need to I don't need to wrangle with that. Yeah. And it's way less sexy to say, "Well, it's directionally correct that it seems to be the case that in most circumstances I would estimate that it is good to It's way less sexy, but it's much more accurate for people. If you're the sort of person, and this is why for the whole podcast, and I see this all the time, when people get pissy about some piece of advice that's been put forward, especially when it's been caveated. Well, the outlier actually I think you'll find It's like, "Hey dude, if this is not for you, that's fine, but your ability to discern doesn't mean What you should say is, "That's not for me. Huh, I wonder if it is for anybody else." Mhm. Can you imagine if that piece of advice is for somebody else? And if so, then like shut the [ __ ] up. All right. Yeah. This piece of content that isn't for you found you, or this piece of advice that isn't for you found you. Your first port of call should be, "Wow, I wonder if that actually exists for anybody. [ __ ] I actually can imagine somebody that it would be good for that's in my life or Huh, how varied are we as humans that that's the case? Isn't that interesting?" The The flip side of that there's a flip side version of that that I see a lot that I that actually concerns me even more, which is that people will hear a piece of general piece of advice. Um they will try it on themselves, It won't work. And instead of coming to the conclusion of like, "Oh, there's just something different about me and I need to adjust accordingly." They assume that there's something wrong with the advice. No, with them. Oh, okay. They're like the advice is the gold standard, right? Cuz it came it came from, you know, Mr. Guru or Mr. Super PhD. And but it it's not working for them. So, therefore they must be doing something wrong. They must be something's wrong with them. And so they need to like go find an even more detailed protocol and implement it even more strictly. And you see them kind of get into this like OCD spiral. >> Over-optimization spiral. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The >> [snorts] >> the pain of trying to be perfect will kill you more quickly than your imperfections will. >> Yeah. The one thing that I remind my listeners on my show of all the time is that like the best, most credible piece of advice in psychology, like if you look at all the literature in terms of every intervention imaginable every [clears throat] intervention imaginable and like what its hit rate is, it's like maybe 50%. You know, like the very best forms of therapy with a really good therapist, it's like maybe cracks over 50%. So, it's none of this stuff is going to work for everybody all the time. And in fact, you should expect that roughly half of it is not going to work for you. At best. At best. And so it is it is your responsibility to try everything, track what what's working, what's not, be honest with yourself about what's working, what's not. And then like move forward accordingly. Before we continue, most people in their 30s are still training hard. Their protein is dialed in. They sleep better than they did in their 20s. Discipline is not the issue, but recovery feels somewhat different. Strength gains take a little longer. The margin for error starts to shrink. And that is why I'm such a huge fan of Timeline. You see, mitochondria are the energy producers inside of your muscle cells. As they weaken with age, your ability to generate power and recover effectively changes, even if your habits stay strong. Mitopure from Timeline contains the only clinically validated form of Urolithin A used in human trials. It promotes mitophagy, which is your body's natural process for clearing out damaged mitochondria and renewing healthy ones. 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That is definitely a uh that was definitely posted in 2025 or 2026 cuz it that would that would that's the sort of thing that you could not post between like 2016 and 2022. Mhm. Uh it would've gotten me canceled. Um all sorts of proclamations about white male privilege or whatnot. Um I mean, it's it's it's difficult because there are genuine victims in the world and there are people who have genuinely suffered lots of [ __ ] that is not fair and not their fault. And those people deserve sympathy. But they don't deserve they don't necessarily deserve anything more than that. And I think we're kind of coming out of this period, but we went through a very intense period where there was a lot of entitlement associated with Like I I think in one of my books I called it the victimhood Olympics. Mhm. Right? It's like And And you see this now with like a lot of like super lefty groups, you know, it's it's like well, I am a abused indigenous person of color who grew up with three legs and and then it's like the next person is like, well, as a person who grew up with one leg and is a abused transsexual indigenous person, like my voice actually carries more weight than yours. And And I've got gluten intolerance. Yeah. Yeah. >> [laughter] >> It's It's like at a certain point it's like who [ __ ] care? Like what are you going to do? Correct. Right? Like what You can't You can't like just sit around measuring your pain every day as if it's like you know, it it it earns you merit badges. Mhm. I've had to pull this up. This is one of the best takes on Alex Hormozi getting in trouble for saying this the same thing that nobody owes you patience just cuz you've had a rough day or a hard upbringing. Yeah. And he wrote a response. This is [ __ ] money by him. >> [clears throat] >> If you had disadvantages, I agree with you. You are right. It's harder to be successful if X happened to you. Replace X with gender, race, birth deformity, different language, different country, abuse, etc. The main point of the longer conversation is that despite the disadvantage, you only have one choice. What are you going to do about it? Number one, take action anyway and become proof to other people like you, your people, also born into this abused tragedy, that you, too, can overcome it, and they can as well. Number two, blame and complain. And to be clear, do whatever you want. I support your choice, but only one of those decisions will make you better, and I wish I could say this without getting attacked, but you know who wins by you not being successful? Whoever and whatever you blame. Mhm, [ __ ] that and [ __ ] them. You can lead a rebellion of one, and blame the one thing you can control, which is you. In your mind, redefine the word blame as give power to. Mhm. And when you do that, there's only one person you're going to want to give more power to, and that's you. For everyone who had shitty circumstances, I'm on your side, your long-term side, the side that wants you to win. So, do it anyway, with all the disadvantages, and still tell them to shove it, and win. I want to be clear, again, if you had tough [ __ ] happen to you, it sucks, and that's not your fault. But now what? Where do we go? Isn't it crazy how many caveats and like, you know, >> throat-clearing, land acknowledgements? >> Yeah, yeah. >> [laughter] >> Yes, yes. >> Dude, I got in I I I continue I continue to [ __ ] get in trouble by saying things that to some people doesn't land right, and to other people becomes a mantra that they live by. >> Mhm. And yeah, the the I understand, because creating any goal to aim for, and degree of obligation, can make people who feel like that's out of reach for a reason that isn't their fault, feel [snorts] like they are being made to pay twice for something that hurt them. Mhm. And that [ __ ] blows. But it also makes communication really clunky, and I hate it. >> Yeah. >> It's so Oh. Yeah. >> over and over, and it it's such a a shallow form of empathy as well. Yeah. >> To to assume that the only way that you can be caring is if you think about the middle 90% minus the two fives on the end that are obviously unrealistic for you to have thought about. That you have to include all of these people as opposed to hey, I'm speaking to a very specific cohort of people now. Yeah. It it I would argue the empathy is actually completely disingenuous because it's Right? Like if I'm empathizing with somebody strictly because of their the color of their skin and their gender and their sexual orientation. Like that's exactly what they don't want to be empathized for. Correct. So, it's it's it's backfiring. Like the whole strategy is backfiring in the first place. We were talking before I did my show in Australia and to the people who came to the Sydney show, you will remember that um James came out swinging when he did his warm-up before me and he made a comment partway through which was uh I hate to say it, but I'm racist. And I'm racist against a very unique group of people and it's Italians. He says, I know that I'm racist against Italians because I love the food, but I still don't like the people. And there was a a lady >> [laughter] >> a lady partway through the show who piped up and said I was made to basically do the apology for James. She piped up and said, I really think that you need to be more careful about you know, some of the sort of judgments that are being made in the show. I'd I'd I'd make a joke and James had made a joke and she's like, you know, this is sort of making make people uncomfortable and it's exclusionary and all the rest of it. It was one of those moments where I'm like, [ __ ] there's like 2,499 other people in here looking at me to see if I can handle this situation. And uh I I realized that true equality is when you have to put up with the same level of [ __ ] that everybody else does. Mhm. If you want to be properly properly included, the most inclusive society, it's to not be treated with kid gloves. Yeah. If you told me that somebody was treating me differently because they thought that I couldn't handle it or something, that is a kind of bigotry and patronizing cotton wool gentleness that would make me feel so [ __ ] icky. Be like, "Oh my god, you are not my friend. You are not my friend." Yeah, does that mean that you push the person who's only just started training at the same level that you push the person that's professional athlete? Obviously not. But when it comes to including people in discourse, I think that yeah, true equality is when you put up with the same level of [ __ ] that everybody else does. Mhm. That's funny in Australia, man. I I'm just remembering I did a show a couple years ago in Brisbane. And I had I had this bit in the show. I was talking about Freud. You know, do did do they do this in your shows out there? So Australia has this thing where they have like the sign language person on stage signing for everything? >> Did they have one for you? Yeah. >> Okay. Like all all of my >> Do you do you have many deaf fans in Australia? Brisbane? I don't know. I never HEAR FROM THEM. >> [laughter] >> [ __ ] ME. YOU WALKED RIGHT INTO THAT. >> [laughter] >> YEAH, SO every show, yeah. I had a There was a guy on stage on the corner of the stage like doing all the signs or everything. Cool. So I I implemented a segment of the show when I I had a whole section about Freud and some of Freud's like whackier theories. And I had I had a segment where I talked about how Freud had an obsession with dicks, moms, moms with dicks, [ __ ] moms with dicks. And I just like went on and on and then like I would like make the person sign everything. >> Unbelievable. What does [laughter] What does Freud's obsession with [ __ ] moms with dicks in sign language look like? I don't know, but >> [laughter and gasps] >> it was it was just so funny to like watch the signer just get so uncomfortable and then yeah, it was a great crowd moment, but there was one there was one time in Brisbane where in the Q&A afterward a woman got up and uh basically started chastising me for transphobia and um lecturing me about how I had like a moral responsibility and as a the moms with dicks thing? >> Yeah. Okay, right. And because I have a platform and all this stuff and uh Yep. Um and it was it was interesting cuz the crowd just instantly started booing her and um but it was funny cuz like I I I tried to use it as kind of a teaching moment and I said something very similar to you, which is like, "Look, if you you're it's not a quality if we can't laugh about it." Right? Like if if as long as something is so like can't even be spoken of because it is needs to be it's so fragile and it needs to be protected to like such an extreme extent. Um like that's that's not a quality that's actually kind of the opposite of a quality um in in a lot of ways. I don't know if if I convinced anybody of anything, but uh it was it was a fun moment. >> Well, suddenly the deaf people got convinced. Yeah. Jim [laughter] Jimmy Carr's got a line where he says telling me that there is a problem too serious to joke about is like saying there's a disease too bad to create medicine for. Yeah. You go like, "Th- This is the salve that helps people to see this problem with less seriousness. It's not being callous. It's not being flippant with it, but it's helping them If anybody has ever had a problem that's felt really important to them, have they wanted to take it more seriously or would they like to be able to find a way to actually inject some Yeah, [snorts] like that is [clears throat] isn't that like isn't that funny? Humor it's therapeutic. It's funny actually that that the Jimmy Carr quote it reminds me so my my grandmother she died of a brain tumor when I was probably 14 15 and it was it was one of these like awful cancers like she died very slowly >> Rapid onset? No, slow. Slow yeah, over the course of like you know, probably eight or 12 months and we just watched her deteriorate like week after week week and it was awful like we we would spend every weekend with her and we'd go see her and my grandmother had a great sense of humor and so she started cracking jokes about she like named her tumor and she was like cracking jokes about her tumor all the time and when it got really bad like it it started to get awkward you know, so she's like she can't walk anymore. She's like her she's having memory problems but she's still cracking jokes about the [ __ ] tumor. >> [laughter] >> And at at a certain point like my aunt got really upset and she was like you know, she was like Maureen like you can't joke about this like this is this is really up like it's upsetting and I remember [snorts] my grandmother said she was like there's nothing too serious in this life that you can't laugh about it and um and she was like it's my tumor I'm going to I'm going to >> I'm going to laugh at it if I want. She was like I'm going to make any joke I want about it but that always stuck with me and it's something that like I I believe very deeply as well. Yeah, it's a strange one but there there's a recent bit of research in the New Statesman that just came out about the attitudes of young women specifically in Britain. Mhm and um white women are significantly more likely than women of color to say that the country's racist. So what does that do to us? Like how how? Because [laughter] because there is this >> know how but it's just like how did we get here? I know >> [laughter] >> It goes back to it goes back to the desire to be seen as empathetic. >> Yes. >> Right? If you can show yourself as some kind of savior, some sort of white knight that's going to steam in. But again, in that is so much It's such a patronizing perspective to say, "Oh, you poor you poor people of color. You You poor deaf people. You're not able to You're so unresilient that you can't deal with this yourself. Allow me Allow me to come in and tell these people exactly what you want." You go, "I Hang on a second. Notice that the person that piped up about the joke James made about Italians wasn't Italian." Of course. Of course she wasn't. >> [clears throat] >> I mean, I don't know, Chris. I think you're kind of minimizing the epidemic of transphobic deaf people in Australia. It is It is It is a real problem, and you're not taking it seriously. >> I'm not I'm not help I'm not helping >> Check your privilege. That is true. That is true. I am >> [laughter] >> I am British, which I do think means that I've kind of got How do you say? I've got ancestral empire privilege, but modern-day embarrassment disadvantage. Uh You know, I I'm just If you would invested in the UK If the UK was a stock, it was like [ __ ] Herbalife or something. This thing has just absolutely nose-dived. >> you had to have seen that recent survey where they surveyed British people of uh economically what if the UK was a state in the US, where they would be. And the the Brits said they'd be like number six or number seven, and it's like, "Actually, it's 51st." Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Although, we're like fifth in America in number one in America in uh heart health, number one in America in obesity, number one in America in all of the health stats. >> That's a low bar. That's true. [laughter] Across all of America? There's not even There's not even one state. You know? There's like those >> When it comes to health, like, yeah, we're we're completely [ __ ] over here. All right, next one. A quick aside, most people think that they're dehydrated because they don't drink enough water. It turns out water alone isn't just the problem. It's also what's missing from it, which is why for the last 5 years I've started every single morning with a cold glass of element in water. Element is an electrolyte drink with a science-backed ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium. No sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients, just the stuff that your body actually needs to function. This plays a critical role in reducing your muscle cramps and your fatigue. It optimizes your brain health, it regulates your appetite, and it helps curb cravings. I keep talking about it because I genuinely feel a difference when I use it versus when I don't. And best of all, there's a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. So, if you're on the fence, you can buy it and try it for as long as you like. And if you don't like it for any reason, they'll just give you your money back. You don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. And they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/ modernwisdom. If you have to explain to somebody why you deserve respect, then you're already in the wrong relationship, full stop. Mhm. People don't realize that you shouldn't have to ask someone to prioritize you. You shouldn't have to beg them to be proud of you. If their efforts have to be requested, then it's not really effort. It's like compliance, and compliance fades the second you stop asking. So, really, it's just a performance. They're just doing it to placate you and keep you satisfied and stop you from complaining. The right person will treat you well because that's who they are. They just fundamentally care about you regardless of how other things are going. Not because you gave them a checklist or a deadline, but because you are just somebody that they value. So, if you feel like you have to train someone to just be a decent partner for you, they've already kind of told you everything you need to know. You probably just don't want to hear it. I'm I'm going to amend that. Cuz that that works great. You know, that's I think that's probably one of my reels on Instagram or something. Um but I'm going to amend that. I'm going to say that that is true in the macro, not necessarily true in the micro. Like Let me Let me explain this. So, if somebody is egregiously disrespectful, consistently like you are constantly fighting for them to even acknowledge you, pay attention to you, care about you, like do anything. Um that in and of itself is is unfixable to a certain degree because like if there are certain just base layer requirements for a healthy relationship. Um that the fact you have to request them means that it's it they are non-transactional by nature. So, as soon as you request them, it becomes a transaction. And so, you are you kind of invalidate whatever is given. Mhm. So, if it is if if it is on a severity of scale that like there's just nothing present at all, the amendment that the nuance that I will add to that is that there are often cases within a relationship that is already well established on trust where somebody is just kind of dropping the ball. And uh and is not showing up in the way that even they would intend to show up. Not acknowledging certain things. Maybe he has a blind spot around something. Maybe he's going through something, right? You know, uh has some difficulties going on in their life. So, it's one of those cases where it's like it's I think it is marginal like on the margins it is not only normal but it's healthy to ask like say like hey I'm kind of feeling unacknowledged or unappreciated in our relationship right now like can you can we work on this can you help me out here it'd be nice if you did this or did that or you know showed up to my birthday party or whatever um but if it is on such a macro scale that like you're asking for it to exist in the first place then it's there's nothing there um and I think I think the reason this resonated I think the reason this resonated so much is because there's so many people out there who are they confuse that that macro problem with the micro problem correct right so they're they're in a relationship with somebody who's like gives zero shits is not showing up for anything is not acknowledging anything and in their head it's actually just a marginal issue of like hey it'd be nice if you like answered my phone sometimes yeah like um so anyway that's that's some nuance to apply to that there's a difference between telling somebody that they should think of you and explaining what your love language is exactly right like there's a difference between asking somebody to show up and explaining how you would like them to show up correct >> this person is applying effort they're being thoughtful they're considering me they're just maybe doing it in a a different sort of a way than it would maybe be optimal versus this person just isn't considering me or the imbalance of consideration is so great and also you said when there's been a an established level of trust right that you kind of know what this relationship has in store typically right what if it's never shown up what if this has never actually been there and the only reason it is there is if you kind of constantly you're constantly refueling this gas tank with requests and beratement and compulsion. I'm going to keep dragging you to do this thing, to think about me, to reply in a timely manner. I'm going to keep on reminding you that this is something that's important, full stop. After a while if you've done it a lot, either in the macro or to be honest, enough micros makes a macro in any case, you just have to admit to yourself, you go this is just incompatibility. Like if you have to make so many bids and this person after a while is just going to feel like, well like who are you in a relationship with? Because I'm showing up as me, you have to assume that people for the most part are showing up as themselves and the goal should be to find somebody that you need to instruct and train as little as possible. Yes. >> Because some people have a big tank of growth, some people have a small tank of growth, but regardless of how big or small the tank is, if you start really close to the destination, you don't need to drive as far. And then, let's say that someone's able to grow a lot, then you can both grow together and become better than you ever were before. But if almost all of your you you want to go to bed at 2:00 in the morning cuz you love going out partying and your missus wants to go to bed at 9:00 p.m. because she likes an early night. In order for that relationship to work, both people are going to have to compromise on the thing that they want. Now maybe that would expose you to some really important routines that might make your health better and maybe that would expose her to some really exciting nights that she wouldn't have had otherwise and it'll be really enjoyable. But also maybe you might be better off with someone that you can party with until 2:00 in the morning and not have to compromise and she'd be better off with someone that wants to watch Peaky Blinders at 8:00 p.m. and then fall asleep. And that is kind of what you're looking for overall. How is this kind of compatibility and are our incompatibilities complementary as opposed to competitive, friction-inducing? I think there's a component of intention here as well, where there there is there's a compatibility dimension to it, right? Where it's like you're just two completely different people and you're not well suited for each other. And then there's and I think really what that post was like what it was kind of poking at is that sometimes you just have a partner who like is not prioritizing the relationship. And and so if you go to them and you're like, "Hey, I need to be acknowledged. I need to feel special. I need like it'd be nice if you cared more." >> [snorts] >> The issue isn't that they're not returning your calls, they're that they're not, you know, showing up for your after-work thing or whatever. The issue is that they don't care. It's not a priority for them. And you can't change somebody's priorities. Um I I would say too there's like it's there's a certain amount of like but if there is if there is kind of a bedrock of trust, if there is kind of an overall compatibility, there is still this like maintenance process that happens over the years. >> Um Like a simple example from my life. I'm I'm like a hopeless workaholic and I go through these cycles where boom and bust. Yes, I kind of get like ramped up and my wife is super patient and supportive. Um but I'd say every three or four years like we hit a breaking point where she's like, "All right, dude, you've got to take a Sunday off or like we have to go on a vacation." >> to hang out with you. Yeah, exactly. She's like, "I feel ignored. I feel like I never see you anymore. I feel like you're working all the time. You're always tired. You come home, you don't want to talk cuz you've been shooting all day like all all this stuff and um and and she's 100% right. And so I'm like, "Oh yeah, I should like back off cuz I'm like but it's she's also not just doing it for herself. She's doing it cuz it it's like it's for my sake as well. >> She she's like an external conscience to you. She's augmenting your life as opposed to working against it. >> Yes. Yeah, I mean that's such a good point that if you're not being prioritized, Stan Tatkin's got this wonderful audiobook and he refuses to come on the podcast which is very sad to me. But um he's got still got the best relationship book that I've ever consumed and it's only available on audio uh and it's called Your Brain on Love. Stan Tatkin. [ __ ] brilliant. In it, he says all a relationship is is a set of agreements. Typically a set of agreements about how you'll behave. He says the first agreement that every relationship needs to have is the relationship comes first before everything else. And I think if you are in a relationship, especially after a while, where that agreement is met by one party but not by the other, you just need to accept that this is going to be a high friction environment specifically for the person who is more invested but also for the one who isn't cuz they're going to feel like they're being pressured and pulled along. And if you want to be in a relationship with somebody who prioritizes you at the same level that you prioritize like leave that person to go and be with someone for whom the relationship is their fourth priority. >> Yeah. And they may be happy or they may end up realizing that oh [ __ ] I actually wanted to be in a relationship with someone. The reason that this relationship was so good for me is that I felt prioritized and now that I no longer am because I wasn't doing it reciprocally, that [ __ ] sucks. But yeah, if you're not being thought of and here's the other thing like some people aren't choosing to not do that. Some people simply don't have the time. And their lifestyle and their current setup is not accommodating of the level of attention that you need. You go, also fine. Just because they're not choosing to do it of a variety of other options because they're currently in med school and this is just all they've got to do or they're training for this big thing and they can't spare any time because their ultra marathon's coming up and they need to make this happen cuz it's really important to them. That's also a choice. >> Mhm. That's also a choice by them. Yeah. And [clears throat] you can go and choose someone who chooses you as opposed to choose someone who's choosing something else. I would I would add emotional capacity to that. Um And I think so, the agreement thing is great. I've not read that book. I should read that book. >> [ __ ] money. Just keep hold on that, right? The reason it's so good, and I wonder why the more people are going to do this, he's obviously a super wizard expert of his area of expertise. I don't think that he wrote it. I think that he just had bullet points and he reads it like a lecture. Hm. And he he he speaks like this. Yeah. One of the things that we need to realize when we're talking about it's so listenable. And what it's made me realize is listening to most audiobooks that are scripted performances Hm. of what was meant to be written and meant to be read in written form are actually be horribly unlistenable [snorts] Yeah. compared with someone who is allowing themselves to just play with the language a little more. And what I would wonder is when people do audiobooks moving forward, I don't know how many authors already do this. I'm sure some do. But what if you allowed yourself to add a sentence in Hm. here or there. Authors seem to be almost prisoners of their own work Yeah. when presenting it in a medium that that wasn't meant for. You go, "Hey, maybe add some stuff in. Yeah. It allow yourself to have a pause. Is Is the goal to represent the book in its most sterile form? It's the exact presentation of this thing. Cuz pretty soon some company, ChatGPT, or whatever, will open AI will just allow you to record 5 minutes of you speaking and then pitch perfect Yeah. get you to say the book. So, what's the reason for it? Right. Hopefully, it's so that you can add some emotion, you can ham it up, right? dramaturgically. You can add a little bit in. So, I wonder whether I don't know. That I would appreciate that. As a listener of audiobooks, I would appreciate it if authors Hey, you get an extra half paragraph here that's just me just say a You know, I really thought this is an important idea and doesn't >> your audiobook I You can break ground. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I'm going to be out of a job in a variety of different places. Even in jobs that I haven't yet started by AI, [laughter] apparently. Um I want to come back to the agreement thing because this actually ties into the the the friction and the sacrifice thing as well. It's like that agreement because I think one thing I've seen a lot is that people think they have a partner who is in on that agreement, but is actually not. And it's it it can actually be difficult to accurately detect if you are being prioritized or not. And I would say the the way to accur- accurately perceive whether you're being prioritized or whether you're actually prioritizing the person is how much How much is each person in the relationship putting the other person first when they have nothing to gain from it? Mhm. I think where people get mixed up a lot is they have somebody who's really into them, who's like love bombing them, giving them tons of attention and affection, is like excited all the time to see them, but they're also getting something out of the situation. And so, they falsely perceive it to be like, "Oh, they're in on this agreement with me and then a couple years go by, conditions on the ground change, and suddenly that person is withdrawing. Well, also, how are they behaving when they're busy? Mhm. Like, maybe that person was just on a off period. Yeah. From work. Yeah. Had a little bit of downtime, and they're showing you attention in a way that was or maybe they were going through a a hard time, and they needed you, they needed that you know, or maybe you were particularly available Yeah. at that moment, and it was easy. But when it gets hard, that person's unable to show up in the same way because it was easy in the beginning. >> Which is why the friction is the filtration. Correct. Right. Send them weird psychology articles. >> Yes. Telling you. Send them weird [laughter] psychology articles. Uh yeah. In other news, I've been in the gym for nearly two decades now, and it wasn't until the past few years that I had the best training run of my entire life. And a huge part of that was the RP Strength app. Actual scientists built this thing around one obsession, having a science-backed path to maximizing muscle gain. It tells you how many sets, how many reps, the amount of weight that you need to use. So, all you have to do is show up and do the thing. It adjusts automatically every week based on how you're actually progressing, and there are over 45 pre-made training programs and more than 250 technique videos built in. So, you're not just lifting, you're lifting optimally to get the most out of your workouts. A lot of the time I have less than an hour to be in the gym, and what I love about the RP app is that it takes that into account and adjusts my workout on the fly. So, I know that I'm going to maximize how much time I've got available. For me, following a proper evidence-based plan has made a huge difference. And if you're serious about training and the gains that you want to make, I'm pretty sure that it'll do the same for you. Right now, you can follow the exact same training plan that I use and get up to $50 off the RP hypertrophy app by going to the link in the description below or heading to rpstrength.com/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's rpstrength.com/modernwisdom a modern wisdom at checkout. Beware, learning more is a smart person's favorite form of procrastination. Guilty. So [ __ ] guilty. Um I think I think this is, you know, learning is safe to a smart person. It's something they know they're good at. It's something it feels like progress. Um And it's relatively easy to convince yourself that it is going to help you do the thing when it finally comes time to do the thing. Um But you and I know that's like not always the case. It's often not the case. And And there is such a thing as um cramming too much information into your brain cuz then you start you know, creating obsession, perfectionism, um you're actually generating anxiety where there where there was less before. Um So yeah, I I mean the the learning as procrastination that I mean that's just that's like [ __ ] bread and butter for this industry. It's it's everybody struggles with that. Like you know, we we all like to think Well, let me you know, let me just buy a couple more books on this and then then I'll start. Then I'll figure it out. Then I'll know what to do. And it's the truth is is you need both simultaneously. You need to learn, but you need to practice. You need to do things. Yeah. I think about this with um people who constantly go back to couples counseling. Mhm. You know, if your relationship is held together on a bi-weekly co-journaling session to work through the difficulties of the last 3 days and regular therapy and CBT, you're after a while, like this is just you putting off the fact that this thing isn't working. And the same thing goes for learning more is a smart person's favorite form of procrastination. If if you keep on learning, you never actually have to engage with the fact that this thing might be too difficult for you to achieve, that you might not be good enough. Or that you could be good enough, but it's going to take an awful lot of work. You're insulating yourself, right? You're inoculating yourself from the pain of potentially failing publicly by postponing your stepping onto the stadium floor privately. Yeah, I don't need to do it. And uh I guess Well, it you bring up an interesting thing with the marriage counseling because I would say in the in the the personal development world, the self-help world, um you could easily replace learning with insight. Insight gaining more insight is can also be a smart person's way of procrastinating. And you see this a lot of people who sign up for a million seminars and they need a What I was thinking about. They need three They do the Hoffman process >> an IFS and Tony Robbins >> and I'm going to go do this like meditation retreat and ayahuasca and like you know, over and over and over again. It's a it's At a certain point you need to digest all of the insight that you've gained and the only way you digest is by like living and doing other things. I'm curious like where where have you procrastinated by learning more? Cuz I mean, clearly you like learning. Mhm. Where have I procrastinated by learning more? >> [sighs and gasps] >> Well, before I started the show, that's one example. Mhm. I knew I wanted to do a podcast at the start of the middle of 2017, but it took me until the February of 2018 to launch. Because I was working on what's the perfect name going to be. That took like two months to come up with Modern Wisdom. Crushing It Tuesday. Crushing Crushing It Tuesday. It was a Brains and Brawn, actually. Um Uh that was a a part of it. Then the artwork needed to be perfect. Then I needed to listen to Tim Ferriss's how to start a podcast podcast and game my way to the top of the Apple charts, which actually worked. So, thanks Tim. And then um what's the I'm going to start the channel the YouTube's going to launch at the exact same time as the Apple podcast going to do do do do. And in some ways I actually think that feels very justified given that that would turn into a project that was 1,100 episodes. And you know, the URL that I registered at the very beginning of that is the same one that we use now. All of those things are locked in. So, it's just as well that I got it right. But also, you need to be able to pick your battles because you can't spend 6 months or many years doing that. So, that's one part of it. Um certainly when I was at university, I did 4 years of my bachelor's which included a placement year and then I did a master's. I already while I was thinking about doing the master's at the end of my bachelor's, I couldn't remember half of my bachelor's. I couldn't remember the stuff I was learning as I was learning it and I just assumed that the next thing because I'm like, "I don't really know what to do." And I'm like, "More business." My choice of degree. That's a perfect one. My choice of degree. Like, "Really interested in psychology and really interested in philosophy. But what? I'm going to get a job as a psychologist or philosopher? That obviously those degrees are useless. I can't imagine how What is the most applicable degree to making money? Well, business cuz business makes money. So, if I do business, that means that I'll understand what I'm doing." I'm like, "I dude." That one of the biggest one of the biggest regrets of my early life is doing something that I thought would be transactionally useful instead of just doing something that I was interested in because the thing that I was interested It just took me a decade and a half to I guess like 6 years from leaving uni or 12 years from starting it to make my own amateur version of that by speaking to the world experts on whatever subject I wanted, most of which were about [ __ ] psychology and philosophy. So, I'm like, "Hey Jay, you know, had I have gone and done the degree, Modern Wisdom wouldn't have existed, but I wouldn't have had to wait 12 years to get started, you know?" I don't know. Uh Yeah, what about you? What what what stands out for you? Uh health was the big one for me. I dude, I read every I was I was the fat guy who who could tell you everything about like metabolic dysfunction, insulin resistance. >> an expert? Yeah, >> [laughter] >> yeah, I You did used to be fat. I was in >> Which uh looking at you now as a [ __ ] slim trim 40-year-old people wouldn't believe. Um Yeah, I mean I mean I mean I'm in the best health of my life, um which is crazy cuz I spent years. I mean I read all the blogs, I understood all the different workout protocols, I did a bunch of different workout protocols, I didn't stick to any of them. And stop drinking. No. Oh, dude, dude, >> [laughter] >> didn't change a [ __ ] thing. I was pizza every day, you know, whiskey every night, uh going to bed at 3:00 in the morning, waking up at 11:00, uh and reading books about, you know, health, you know, yeah, yeah, this this specific type of uh you know, calorie is going to cause inflammation and [ __ ] up your gains, you know, as if any of it [ __ ] any of it mattered. >> [snorts] >> Um and yeah, eventually it just took I had I just had to hire a coach and who who was like, "Dude, just go to the gym." And I I I was that obnoxious client who um would try to kind of debate him. I'd be like, "Well, you know, I I heard that like this rep scheme wasn't as effective as I and he just look at me and just be like, "Dude, just go to the gym." >> [laughter] >> Like like, "Why are we Fat as [ __ ] >> Yeah, why are we talking about Fat as [ __ ] Why are we talking about this? Like just go to Brazilian girlfriend can outlift you. Yes, like you're you're hungover. You You have You've been You ate a pizza last night. Like, just go to the gym. You're a mess. You're a mess. And I think this sort of the over-optimization thing I think is really falling away. Like, if I was to Me and my friends play a game of bear or bull pretty frequently, which which is just anything. Pick anything. A trend in the world, an individual, a type of fashion, a product, whatever you want. tree, a culture. What do you bullish on and what do you bearish on? What would you invest in and what would you what would you bet against? And I think that over-optimization I'm heavily, heavily against at the moment. I think people are drowning in information. They're drowning in advice. And what they want is a degree of simplicity. And more than anything, they want connection. This is the thing. Talking about the relationship stuff, I kind of tracked my journey of learning about relationships. And broke down into a few different epochs. So, I guess I became interested in what was happening with mating and dating. You see these stats around sexlessness and stuff like that. And you think, "Oh, wow, that's interesting. I should do some research." You look at Pew. You start to look at the the Institute for Family Studies. And you go, "Oh my gosh, that isn't it strange?" And then you go, "Well, I wonder what's going on." So, you start to learn evolutionary psychology. You think, "Okay, well, I'm going to learn about the physics of the system, the principles that are maybe guiding some of these decisions." And but that's still not enough, right? And then you combine them. And that's where you get to something akin to red pill or a more sanitized version of red pill, right? Or you know, feminism tries to do the same thing. And I'm going to look at mismatch. And I'm going to work out why the current situation and and sexual programming, how they're coming together, right? What what that's causing. But that's still not actually what a relationship is. Right. A relationship is your nervous system interacting with someone else's. Like relating has nothing to do with any of these. >> It does This is it's totally the midwit meme of like the It's like just go talk to girls. And like the Jedi's like just go talk to girls. >> Exactly. It's like >> [laughter] >> She makes me feel good, bro. She makes me feel good, bro. I must ensure that my mate value is matched with hers with an optimal fertility window so that we can ensure that our children like No. No. Like eat protein, lift weights. Eat protein, lift weights. Yeah. My intra window workout window must be pre-digested and ensure that the Like no. No. No. No. Can I put you on the spot? Yeah. So, I think it was maybe 2 years ago. Maybe a year No, maybe 2 years. There was a point like I a couple years ago I saw you and you said that you or maybe it was one of your Q&A's. You said that you were going to make um finding a wife, starting a family like a big priority. Mhm. Do you think you're doing this with that? Like finding more insight or do you feel like you're making headway? Uh trying my best. One of the challenges there is that you can't do it solo. Mhm. >> Uh you can put all of the time in that you want, but inherently what you have to do is have another person to dance with. So, uh certainly to a degree. I think I wanted to bring this up about a talking point that both you and the Scott Galloway push and I think that it's done in real good faith. Mhm. But speaking as somebody that is the child of that the progeny of that philosophy Mhm. uh I think contributes to it. And this is the single most important decision that you make in your life will be the person that you choose to spend it with. Right. And this may be an important piece of advice for many people, maybe even most people who don't think about that. Who fall backward into a relationship with someone they met when they were 24. Right. And then before they know it they're kind of living together but they didn't really choose it and they've kind of got a dog and then I guess we're engaged and [ __ ] we've got a kid. Do I like this person? Like are we are we actually good for each other? And they were too unintentional about it. Yeah. But on the flip side, especially as people are dating older and older now, that advice I think can create an awful lot of anxiety and it's meant to say treat this decision with appropriate care because it's very influential. Yeah. But I do think that and I've said this too, right? Cuz I believe it. Right. But that when that rubber meets the road, like functionally what that ends up being is well, I mean I I really should spend an awful lot more time scrutinizing this person, which is the opposite of the other one. You just what's the good Tuesday look like? Marrying those two and that's certainly been a challenge. There is a curse of knowledge when it comes to Yeah. uh dating. And yeah, I've definitely decided to jump in at the deep end with that. Yeah. I can see that. It's interesting because I think it's it's one of those things, it's one of those talking points, the importance of like choosing your partner. It it's I think it is objectively true in a vacuum. I don't know how helpful it is when you're sitting across from somebody, right? Like because ultimately the majority of whoever you do end up marrying, the majority of that marriage is not going to be found, it's going to be built over the course of the relationship. And so it it's almost like it's almost like and this is going to sound really trite, but it it's almost like finding a business partner. Like you it's not you're not looking for somebody who's had who has it figured out or has you figured out. It's almost just like is somebody I can work with. Like Can you build with this person? >> I can build something with this person. We we get along well, we fight well, which is equally as important. Um They're high integrity, good character, we have some things in common. Awesome. Challenges make us stronger, not weaker. Let's see how far we can go. And and at a certain point you just you just opt in, right? It's like the Let's incorporate this business. Yeah, and it's it's a one-way door, and it's the fact that it is a one-way door is what keeps you guys keeps both people fully invested. >> Yep. to keep working on it. Which is why situationships are so damaging Yes. To people. >> Because it's a halfway door. Yes. >> And typically a situationship is a one-way door for one party and a revolving door for the other party. >> [laughter] >> Yes, pretty much. Yeah. >> Yeah. All right. Neediness occurs when you place a higher priority on what others think of you than what you think of yourself. Anytime you alter your words or behavior to fit someone else's needs rather than your own, that's needy. Anytime you lie about your interests, hobbies, or background, that's needy. Anytime you pursue a goal to impress others rather than to fulfill yourself, that's needy. Whereas most people focus on what behavior is attractive or unattractive, what determines neediness and therefore attractiveness is the why behind your behavior. You can say the coolest thing or do what everyone else does, but if you do it for the wrong reason, you will come off as needy and desperate and turn people off. Pulling out the classics. >> That's an old one, too. The old hits. That's from Models. Um It's going to be 15 years old this year. Unreal. Everyone needs to go and read it, dude. Anyone that needs a new book, go and read an old book. And then that is now an old book. >> It is. So that and Mate by Geoffrey Miller and Tucker Max are the two-car garage of dating books for men. Yeah. That's it. And it's still relevant now. It's mad that like, "Hey, a T-shirt that fits and jeans that don't have stains on them is still probably revolutionary advice for a lot of guys." But yeah, it's it's [ __ ] it's money. Yeah. Um But the whole thesis of that book, for the people that haven't read it, >> neediness is unattractive. Yes. >> Basically, you could summarize the whole book for men as in dating, Yes. >> neediness is unattractive. >> It it it's really funny because uh so people people listening who don't know, like I started my career as a dating coach and from like 2008 to like 2013, Models came out 2011, but I was meeting dozens and dozens of guys in person. I was taking them out to bars and clubs and helping them meet girls online and you know, giving them advice on on dates, on relationships, everything. And it was so funny cuz at the time it was like the whole men's dating advice space, it was super fragmented. There was almost like different classes you had to take at a college, right? There was like texting game and and then there was like the first date that you had to master and then there was the opener that you had to like figure out and I I just I kind of wanted a unified theory of men's attractiveness. Cuz I I what I noticed is that guys who were supremely attractive in one moment in one like in one phase of the early relationship, just seemed to not really have any problems in any other part. It's not It's not like there were any men who were like amazing at meeting a girl in a bar and then went on a date and just embarrassed themselves. Like it just didn't really happen. It was you kind of either had it >> Winners and losers. Yeah, you either had the skills or you didn't and there was nothing special about like a text message or uh you know, a a second date that like you couldn't figure out if you if you had the fundamentals in place. So I was like kind of searching for this this unified theory of of like men's attractiveness and what I noticed it what I noticed about all of the men that I knew who were incredibly successful with women regardless of their circumstances in life, you know, how old they were, their appearance, money, background, anything, was they just had this they prioritized their perception of themselves over the perception of the girls. Like all the guys who were who were terrible with women and who struggled with what women and even some of the ones who could kind of perform like a dancing monkey and like maybe get a little like a hookup here and there, but they would lose the girl inevitably within a few days. I noticed that everything that motivated what they said, what they did, how they dressed, how they presented themselves, it was what is she going to like and what does she want to hear? And um and so it it it kind of it it became this what I realized around that time is that ultimately and I think this is true for women as well, but I think it's more true of men, that your attractiveness is really dictated by your comfort with yourself and how deeply you have explored your own life, your own identity and your willingness to share that with the world. Um and the result neediness was kind of that glue that held everything together or the concept of non-neediness, right? It's like don't do things for other people's approval. Don't don't change your lifestyle for other people's approval. Don't work out for other people's approval. Don't say some [ __ ] line in a bar for other people's approval. Like it's just it's all the same thing and it's all just being needy for validation and approval. Um and it it's I guess I I I'm fortunate it's just a very timeless concept. It's as true today as it was then. Yeah, and it probably always will be because it's I think it's if I was to describe my career in like a simple phrase, it would be taking very abstract intangible concepts and like concretizing them in a single phrase or a single term in a way that like an average person on the street can understand and use them. Like that's entire like that's essentially my entire job and like [clears throat] why I'm here and why I've done anything. >> [snorts] >> Um and I think I think the non-neediness was like my first real success at that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, essentializing, distilling things down. Someone once the two best descriptions I've ever heard of Modern Wisdom. One was uh Brains are brown. Yeah, it was crushing [laughter] a Tuesday, actually. Um dispelling comforting myths was one. And another one was uh it feels like spirulina for my soul in an environment filled with fast food for my amygdala. And I was like, that's that's that's lovely. >> poetic. >> But yeah, like look, essentializing something. There's this big fluffy concept. Like what were we saying? Over-optimization, too much information. I'm feeling all Like I don't think that you're going to get even with where LLMs are at the moment, I don't think you're going to be able to get the unwieldy world of human attraction distilled down to prioritize your approval of yourself over other people's approval of you. Mhm. Don't be needy, right? That just That is a distillation that kind of requires a human in the loop. Yeah. Because it's about language. It's about, okay, what does this mean? Not what is it if you synthesize it, right? It's not synthetic idea, it's still quite an organic one. But yeah, when I think about the the problem with the neediness thing, it also explains why so many guys felt like I mean, the red pill movement was born out of PUA hate. Do you remember that? >> Yeah. Yeah, cuz that was your era, but the PUA hate thing. So these are guys who had >> God, I remember that forum. found success or found failure with pickup artistry. Yeah. And I think that both of them are quite deranged. The guys that had found failure with pickup artistry saw themselves as so broken that even the most evidence-based system to ensure that they could get laid couldn't help them. And I mean, that's pretty dispiriting. But then the guys who did find success with it also felt like they were dispirited cuz they said, "God, look at how much I have to contort myself Yeah. in order to be remotely attractive to a woman." And this is an example of none of them stopped to consider that it's just maybe the system is wrong. Like the model is incorrect. And so they just assume, "No, women are incorrect." Right? It's like it's the problem isn't uh uh that like every woman on the planet is broken. It's the problem is is that your model of dating and human relationships is broken. And but you're not willing to toss that out because you're so psychologically dependent on it. Um I Fun thing. So, I name-checked you. Um I did. You know Jubilee's surrounded? Yes. So, I just shot an episode with them. >> What for? What was the thing? One man versus the manosphere. No [ __ ] way. You went up against the manosphere? Yeah. Who was in the room? Anyone that I'd know? Um I don't think so. >> No big names? No huge names? >> No. There's been a couple of them that just did I'm [ __ ] fascinated by this. A couple of them had uh people who were sort of moderately well known Yeah. going in, but maybe you're not deep in the manosphere enough to know who was that. Yeah, I maybe who knows. Maybe there was a guy there that that is kind >> Fascinating that they chose you, especially somebody who came out of that world. That's a unique choice. That's cool. It It's interesting cuz I I I told the producers. I was like it it in the pre-production call. >> I'm proto-manosphere. Yeah yeah. I told them. I was like Well, first of all, they were concerned. They're like, "Are you ready for that?" I'm like, "Dude, I The first 5 years of my career, I spent arguing with these [ __ ] guys. So, like, yes, I'm more than prepared. Um I know all the evolutionary psych and all their like silly theories. Um, but it was interesting cuz I told them I was like, you realize that like half these guys are probably going to be fans of mine and they they're going to have read my book and and they were actually all for it. So, they were like, "No, no, no, this is like we kind of want this dynamic." Um, so it was really interesting. Uh, it actually went really well. They were like way more respectful than I expected. And um, and some of them were super smart, which I I been around enough of those guys to know that like a lot of them are super well-read. Um, but it it it was funny because afterwards a few of them were like they said they're like, "I can't believe we debated you. I thought we I thought I was going to be debating like some women's studies professor, you know, from UCSF or something." Um, but I I name-checked you because like one of the things that one of my talking points was like I I said, "It's it's the manosphere is the incorrect solution to the correct problem. The correct problem is young men are struggling. There's a real crisis going on and it's not talked about enough. And you and I both know that. But this is not what's going to work. Like this is this is not helping. Um, and so the issue isn't And and then of course a lot of the guys came with like, "Well, there's this great advice and like Andrew Tate got me to like get my life together." I'm like, "That's great. But the problem isn't the advice, you know, the seed of advice advice is embedded within the manosphere content. It's the problem is the packaging. Like you can go find that advice anywhere and it's great that that particular packaging reached you in that moment, but you need to be able to let it go. Um, and so a couple of the guys they're like, "Oh, well, what do what should we listen to instead?" And anyway, I I I threw your name into it. It's [ __ ] go, dude. I'm I'm sufficiently sanitized. I've got the seal of approval, buddy. I appreciate that. Hey, man, I I [ __ ] I think this is I've said this to Meg. I know Jordan's in in a bad way at the moment, but the timing of Jordan Peterson to get ill and also aggressively do the god pivot Yeah. highly [ __ ] inconvenient for where the culture was moving because I think that a lot of what you're seeing with the more cantankerous sides of the manosphere would not have had the oxygen Mhm. [clears throat] and the fuel to be able to get big had you had still had Jordan floating around. I Yeah, it's almost like he was too early. Uh He did. He timed the market. He was right, but early and then created the gap and then stopped supplying the demand. Yeah. He created the demand and then stopped servicing the market. Yeah. I and I have to give him credit, too, cuz um I mean, I I've always appreciated his work, but I remember I remember back when he first kind of got big uh and he was kind of going on about a lot of this stuff. I was I was like, really? Like is this really such a like do we really need to be talking about I thought we solved this, right? Yep. Yep. Um but it it's been it's been pretty eye-opening how just in terms of of like correctly identifying a a cultural catastrophe years before it happens. Yeah. Prescient as [ __ ] Like so prescient. And I go back and listen to you know, golden era JBP of which, you know, I've got many episodes with him and I look forward to him coming back with a fully functioning brain. Um it gets more true. Mhm. There is big one of if you want a real adventure in life, tell the truth. Mhm. [ __ ] me. Like every single time that I think about there's a problem in my life, it's because I'm not telling the truth. Every single time. Yeah. Like Jesus Christ. It is it was really, really good. And he got embroiled in things and became in many ways like he got deranged by the level of aggression that he was being attacked by. There's wonderful article from Ethan Strauss on Substack that people should go and read. It's called "Criticism Capture Is More Deranging Than Audience Capture." He basically says that it's the criticism, not the compliments, that sway the way that we move. Yeah. And in my experience and watching a lot of people on the internet, that becomes so true. Look at anybody who is really really militant and and gregarious with the way that they sort of communicate about stuff, and you're like, "Wow, like that's a [ __ ] that's a firework of a of a of a world that's going on there." Are they very um uh unforgiving, uncompromising in the way that they talk about things? Almost always people who have been very heavily attacked. Yeah. Uh rightly or wrongly, you know, Trump became more Trump because of how much people were pushing back against him. Tate became more Tate because of how much people were pushing back against him. Hasan [ __ ] became more Hasan [ __ ] because of how many people were pushing back against him. This happens to everybody. I don't see the same thing being true for people that are just regularly complimented and don't get haters. Yeah. >> So, I do think that it it causes people to react in a way where they dig their heels in and they become more spiky about their beliefs. Yeah, I could see that. I I also I it one of the things that I've grown to appreciate over the years is that and and I really I really learned this being around Will Smith when I was working on his book in kind of in his orbit, some of the other like very famous people in his orbit. Like there's a certain amount of skill or personality that is well suited for fame. And and I think it's some people's some people just naturally respond very poorly to a lot of attention and a lot of fame, and some people naturally respond very well, and they function very well with it. And um And it just And this is not a knock on him. I He just from a I don't know him very well. I've only met him a couple times, but like just as an outside observer, he just strikes me as somebody who like it it was not it did not do him any favors. And um And it was probably It was so much, and it was so like intense, and it was so critical um that it's I I sympathize a lot for what he probably went through. I think about people who have the skill to become famous, but not the disposition to deal with the fame. Yes. Uh Lewis Capaldi is a phenomenal example of this. So, writes his first album, billions of streams, global tour, needs to write a second one, gets put into so much pressure that he gives himself a Tourette's style tic where his anxiety has pushed his body beyond a limit that it was able to cope with. Then he steps out on stage at the O2 or and Glastonbury, I think, and is under so much internal pressure that he can't get the words out. Mhm. And he can't sing. And And then goes away, completely goes away, and then comes back maybe a year or 2 years later, main stage of Glastonbury again, and plays a new song, which is all about his desire. He says, uh I swear to God I'll survive even if it kills me this time. Mhm. And just but like looking healthy, super regulated, but there is a world of people who are good enough to achieve fame, Mhm. but just straight up don't have the disposition to be able to cope with it. And that's a a ruthless position to be in, because the thing that you want is in your hands. Yes. And kind of through no choice of your own, there's another thing almost everybody wants to be successful but doesn't have the talent. Yeah. And there are very small bucket of people that get to become successful and of them, there's a proportion who can become successful but for some reason just self-destruct. >> Yeah. Detonate this thing that they've worked their entire lives to try and get. And that's like no one's going to give them sympathy, velvet [ __ ] prison champagne problem, which is a unique kind of pain. Yeah. To get to the top of the mountain and find that you threw yourself off. Well, in that that that throwing off, like I mean, it can be catastrophic. I mean, if you look at what he's gone through the last few years or if you just classic celebrity stories, right? You know, Kurt Cobain or Amy Winehouse or like who >> P. Diddy? Yeah, P. Diddy. >> [laughter] >> Got you. Yes. Yes, that is one way to self-destruct. Uh but it it's you know, you can see it play out in a lot of different ways. The other thing that like I really grew to appreciate being around Will is like there there's a system of a systemization of fame. Like you him and his team had like they had guardrails built around him. They had uh you know, they had systems of like here's how you deal with unruly fans in a way that like doesn't upset anybody. Here's how you like guarantee his privacy in certain places without like disturbing his weekend. You know, here's how you make sure he gets enough time to like rehearse and you know, learn his scripts. Like they they had they had protocols for all of this stuff that it was literally just protocols to maintain his ability to function. There's a middle area of fame I I haven't been exposed to. I've only ever been exposed to one or two people that have got that. Becoming friends with someone right now who basically lives with a team of SAS guys 24 hours a day to keep him on the straight and narrow so that he can continue to produce the things that he needs to produce. But it's a very small number of people that have that, and a very large number of people that would really benefit from that that I know of, who are in sort of the middling level of fame, where it can disrupt your life and get in the way of your relationships and hurt you and stuff, but no one's handed them the pamphlet or the playbook to be able to deal with it. And dude, it's introducing friction back into back into your life, right? Because that's what happens when you achieve this insane level of success and fame. It's like it removes all the barriers and guardrails. Now you have all the money to do whatever you want. You have all the people who are going to say yes to whatever you want. And so the only way to like stay functional is to like intentionally reintroduce limitations. Those limitations, the the friction. Yeah. Yeah, and this is similar to one of yours. You only envy the lives of people whose sacrifices you can't see. >> [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. >> [sighs and gasps] >> Um I mean, it's it's easy it's easy to just want the benefits of something. Like it's it's so it's the default, right? Like it's almost childish to just want the benefits of something. Um it's it's a very naive way of seeing the world, and I think it's not only is it important to want the costs of something, check and make sure you want the costs of something before you actually start pursuing it, but again, it comes back to like that's the part that makes it meaningful. Right? If you just got the benefits of things, you would never appreciate those things. It's the fact that you like struggled and sacrificed and crawled through [ __ ] Isn't that wonderful duality? You only envy the lives of people whose sacrifices you can't see. So, if you could see the cost that somebody had to pay in order to get to where they are, you probably wouldn't want the life. But, if you were able to get to the place that they got to without the sacrifices, you wouldn't appreciate it. Bingo. It It's the It's the Elon quote you mentioned earlier, right? He's like, "You don't want You wouldn't like to be me." >> No. My mind's a storm. People think they want to be me, they don't want to be me. Yeah. There's a line from James Clear that plays off this, which This is one of the best things that I read over the last few years. It doesn't make sense to continue wanting something if you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. If you don't want to live the lifestyle, then release yourself from the desire. To crave the result, but not the process, is to guarantee disappointment. Mhm. [ __ ] money. It's such money because how many people want something, but George Mack's got this idea of the the difference between Call of Duty and war. He says a lot of the time people think that they would love to play Call of Duty all the time, but that's not what war is. War is the smell of burnt gunpowder and your friend getting his leg blown off. Right. And you want to become a musician. You want to become a world-famous guitarist. You're okay. Well, what does that look like? You're going to have to learn to play guitar for a decade to no one. And then, if and when you start a band, you're going to be playing also to no one with no promise of whether or not this is going to work. Let me cut you off there, cuz that was my life. So, that is so dope. The real That's That's >> unfamously unsuccessful musician. >> Yes, as a failed musician, let me tell you that that what you just described is That's still like the most fun 5% of it. Like, the 95% of it is you're sitting in a room by yourself practicing. Yeah. And there's no applause, there's nobody watching, there's nobody It's frustrating and difficult. You You're playing the same song literally hundreds of times. And it's the the the thing in music that they they always say is is that you're not practicing until you get it right, you're practicing until it's impossible to get wrong. Yeah. So, it is you know, if it takes 100 repetitions to get it right, you need to get to 1,000 to never get it wrong. And it is so monotonous and tedious and just like absolutely soul-destroying unless unless you love it, unless you just genuinely can't imagine living without it. Um So, yeah. Well, that's the your line about um what sort of pain do you want in your life? >> Yes. And every pursuit worth having comes with some degree of pain, struggle, and sacrifice. So, choose what flavor of [ __ ] sandwich you want to eat. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's a it's funny on the the idea of the the really unsexy stuff that becomes sexy when reflected in the glory of you standing on stage Yep. and doing something really cool. But if you don't want to do something, if you genuinely don't want to do something, it's almost impossible for you to get yourself to do it. And that's the it doesn't make sense to continue wanting something if you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. Or not even willing to do, like wants to do, ideally. Because you can be willing to do something, but the amount of willpower that it's going to take in order to get you through that is [ __ ] insurmountable. And also, it's going to detract away from all of the other things that you should do in your life. Now, it's unfortunate that some people never get an obsession that's worth anything. I was thinking about this a lot. Mhm. That I would call call myself, you know, there's that term serial monogamist. Mhm. Uh I I would call myself a serial obsessive. Okay. But around about every 7 years or so, I get a new obsession. And it was cricket from the age of 10 until 18, then it was club promo from 18 until 25, 26, 27, and then it was personal development until early 30s and then it's been the podcast from then until now. And that's cool because all of those obsessions largely have not been that destructive and maybe have even been beneficial to me and the world except for the cricket. I will stand my ground with that. >> [laughter] >> You're a [ __ ] Philistine. You're an uncultured American Philistine. Okay. And >> Okay, it's it's And anything that is in America is derivative of something that happened in Britain. It's more boring baseball and considering how boring baseball is. I disagree. [laughter] I disagree. It's a sport that's only played when the weather's good. Okay. It lasts for 5 days and sometimes ends in a draw. It's almost Jesus Christ. >> It's almost mandatory to drink. >> This sounds like a circle of hell. No, it's not. It's It's England. [laughter] Okay. >> And Which is a circle of hell. No, no, no. That's incorrect. That's incorrect. That's highly I I love it. >> It's highly It's highly offensive. >> I love England. And you good good good good. Uh here's 10 years of therapy summarized in 1 minute. Number one, no one is coming to save you. Being a functioning adult means realizing you are responsible for everything in your life even if it wasn't your fault. Number two, strong boundaries make for good relationships, weak boundaries make drama. Number three, many of your problems don't get fixed. You just learn how to live despite them. Number four, your mind lies to you all the time. It will tell you that the world is ending when it's not, that a mistake is fatal when it's not, that everyone is thinking about you and laughing about you when they're not. Learn how to tell your mind to shut the [ __ ] up. Number five, stop trying to convince people to like you. The right people won't need to be convinced and everyone else is just going to get very annoyed. Number six, sometimes the best thing you can do is let a dream die. No one likes to hear that, but it's true. And number seven, only a few people in your life are going to matter in in run. When you find them, treat them right, make time for them, keep them close, be grateful. You know, sometimes when I when I put together stuff like that, I I I'm like hearing you read that back to me, like the the thought that comes to mind is like, how is this not taught in schools? Like how >> [laughter] >> how are we just how is this not just part >> Discover this at 34. Right. Like why [laughter] why do people have to listen to podcasts all day to like hear some of this stuff? Um I I it just seems so fundamental. You know, but it it is interesting one of the things one of the things that my perspective has shifted, you know, I've been doing this for 17 years. Too long. Yeah, a lot yeah, a long time. Um And when I look at at things that I've I've either changed my mind about or changed my perspective on through over the course of my career, I think one of the big ones is that, you know, early in my career I I I really thought it was all about just like ideas, information, knowledge, right? It's like finding there's like a few pieces of key knowledge that if you can kind of figure it out, if you can dig through enough psych studies and find the application, like it's just going to be a key that unlocks all these areas of your life and I think if you are a consumer of personal growth advice, like that the experience you have often feels that way. But I don't think that's true. I think actually what is true is that there are just certain concepts, ideas, um principles that are pretty obvious and you we all kind of already know them, but we we lose it's it's extremely difficult to keep them in front of our face through day-to-day life. And so we need we need rituals and reminders consistently. And I actually think that for most of human history, I think religion was that mechanism of those reminders to like keep people like, "Hey, nobody like you're responsible for this. Hey, treat people well. That person matters, you know, like let go of the the small stuff." Um but I think in in our modern our modern world, you know, it's people most people are losing that. And so you're you're almost seeing this like reinvention of those rituals online through like what you and I do, through podcasts and Instagram and YouTube and all this stuff. Of and and I do it as well, right? It's like I've got my shows and and I've got the channels I follow and the people I follow and it's like they it's it's not that any individual piece of information is like changing my life, unlocking this whole area of my life. It's just like, "Oh yeah, it's a good reminder." That's so true. I think because the modern world is filled with novelty anything that we've seen before we don't usually want to hear again. Yeah. We think, "Well, I already know that." Even if you don't. Even if there's 10 things that you basically just need to hear over and over again. What you need to do, I think, is play the game of novelty whilst just redelivering the same core message. Yes. And that's going to be anti-memetic and wholly unimpressive to people. This is the [ __ ] clean your room thing again. This is the tell the truth thing again. Oh, and neediness, is it? And you go, "Okay, well I can lie to you and create this sort of fugazi gaslight thing where I say, "This new thing is the big unlock." >> Right. Or I can just try to repackage stuff that is the existing concept, so it satisfies your desire for novelty and my own desire for novelty whilst reinforcing the principle that is most accurate. Mhm. And that's really I think what a lot of the game is now. And we we were talking before we got started, I think that very, very dense information like consumption and over-optimization is kind of dead in the water, and the alternative is reminding people stuff that they already know in a manner that just You know how the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve works? They like It's spaced repetition. It's why Anki flash cards and stuff work like that. Um basically, you need that but with novelty added in so that people are just regularly reminded, "Ah, yeah, like I I just need to like go for a walk and sleep more. Yeah. Ah, right. Yeah, I just I probably need to say how I feel to my partner when something upsets me." I I've started one way I think about it sometimes is that a lot of this advice, it's almost like having a fire extinguisher in the room. You know, like it's it's You've probably had the experience where, you know, maybe you read something 5 years ago, and you're like, "Yeah, that's obvious. I I I know that." And then something happens in your life, right? It's like you get dumped or like somebody dies or you move across the world, and you're like Suddenly, you're like, "Oh my god, I need this so bad right now." >> that. >> [laughter] >> Well, one of the most embarrassing things is to realize that the problem you're facing was solved by something that you learned long ago >> Yes, but didn't appreciate. >> And yeah, and then and [laughter] then have to now go and relearn. Yeah. You're like, "Fuck." Or that you're now facing a problem that you faced in the past, and that you not only learned something, but a specific type of pain that both me and you do. You go, "Oh, I wrote about this. I [ __ ] wrote this thing." >> Dude, tell me about it. >> And I'm like, "I [ __ ] wrote about it." >> [laughter] >> So, I I I had a speaking of like, you know, ascending the mountain and struggling to deal with fame, you know, when my book took took off, um you know, I went into a real identity crisis. I think I've talked to you about this before on the show, but you know, I had that that first year or two when my book was number one everywhere, it was like just all these crazy things happening. Um I felt super disoriented and like very lost and kind of went through a little bit of a depression, became like >> everything I ever wanted and it made me depressed. >> Yeah, pretty much. And like massive imposter syndrome for for a period of time. And started started saying yes to a bunch of things I didn't want to say yes to, right? And so then I ended up in this situation where I'm like, I feel trapped in my own career. I'm like obligated to do all these things for these people that I don't really want to be doing. Um I'm like stressed all the time, I'm anxious, my health's going to [ __ ] and and it it's I'm fat and I'm fat on top of everything else. >> [laughter] >> Add insult to injury. [ __ ] fat. And uh >> [laughter] [gasps] >> And it's [snorts] so funny cuz I I remember um when I was doing my film, um you know, it was that we were doing a film on the subtle art of not giving a [ __ ] And I hadn't really read the book since I wrote it. And um and [laughter] so I went back, I'm like, well, I should probably read my book again. So I went back and I read it. It was like 2018, 2019. I went back and it was like all the [ __ ] I just I've been spending the last 2 years dealing with. It was like in my own book. And I'm like, I'm I'm [ __ ] all of this up. I'm like I'm saying yes to things I don't care about. I'm like overloading my life with all these distractions. I'm like not standing up for myself. I've like lost clarity on what I value. Like just like chapter by chapter by chapter, I'm choosing the wrong struggles. Yeah. And I I just I it was rough. It was really rough. I like I had to really have like a a heart-to-heart with myself of like, dude, what Get it together, man. Yeah, it's like >> [laughter] >> it's like personal growth Groundhog Day. Whereas Uh one thing that I think is is kind of important. I I understand how you can say, "Hey, look, there's a small bucket of principles, over-optimization, thinking about your life too much." All of these things like they you're majoring in the minors, etc., etc. That is true once you've been through it. Yes. It is not true before you've been through it. Breaking the rules of the game before you've learned how to play the game is not breaking the rules of the game and being an innovator or being some essentialized distiller of cool stuff. It's playing a different game. And this is why I highly recommend that people become totally obsessed with personal development and productivity and David Allen's Getting Things Done and James Clear's Atomic Habits and Morgan Housel's Psychology of Money and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a [ __ ] for like probably between three and six years. And then once you've done that, you can sort of get your black belt, put it on, and go, "Okay. Yeah. 95% of that was packaging. Here are the bits that really matter, and I'm now going to spend the rest of time trying to just maintain that momentum and not overcomplicate stuff. And maybe once a year there'll be a novel insight which is genuinely principled and fundamental that I just didn't know yet. But you can't get to that level without having gone through the first bit. And uh maybe it's just the case that the world of everybody went through the same, "Holy [ __ ] like this is novel." But talking about like choosing your struggles appropriately or even neediness and stuff like that, that was novel when it happened, but that area of cognitive real estate, that territory is now being You know when you play a video game and the map's all fogged out? >> Yeah. And then after you've played it for a while, the areas get opened up. It's like, well, that area is opened up now. So, assuming that you've gone through this process, previously it was kind of like um uh humans were moving at the same level that technology developed. Yeah. But, if you start doing personal development now, there's so much technology that you can speedrun all the way up to the top. Whereas, for us it's like, wow, telling the truth is something this is revolutionary. Not that I've just discovered it, but it's just been said. Yeah. Right? This is This is groundbreaking research. But, because there's so much to go through, and maybe it's just the case that the era that we're in had a formative hockey curve like J-shape thing where wow, there's a [ __ ] ton of insight that's repackaged ancient wisdom for a secular world that's distilled down into good language that's memorable. I should I'm learning this as it goes, and a new book, and a new book, and a new book. And now we're at the stage where much of that territory that's important has been captured. >> Yes. And now, because everybody kind of started the race, whether you were but 18 or 28 or 48, everybody started it kind of at the same time. And Peterson comes along, and you, and James, and da da da da da da. And you go, wow. Like, that's that's now all been done. So, everybody has a degree of personal development fatigue. But, that's not true if you're starting your journey. If you're like, hey, I'm I'm a fat piece of [ __ ] and I'm 25, and I've never done any of this, it's like >> in for the next 6 years. >> Yes. Absolutely. And then And then it is very much after that is it is just about maintaining the practice. Right. Um it is like to nerd out a little bit on kind of the history of this, cuz I I do think this is interesting, right? It's It is we do live in a very unique moment in the fact that this information is so diffuse universally available, completely free. Like, it it when I was growing up you had to go pay Tony Robbins $10,000 to hear any of this, right? You had to go you had to join a graduate program at Cornell and like study psychology for 3 years to hear any of this, right? So, there was like massive gatekeepers. Not democratized. Not democratized at all. Extremely like marketed extremely aggressively and and like very very predatory in some circumstances. Yeah, with another podcast for another day, but it it the internet is what opened up the opportunity for this kind of diffusion of all this information across the entire population. And I think when I look at kind of my generation, you know, me, James, Ryan, um and a bunch of others, like really what we were doing is we were taking the stuff that used to only be available behind closed doors or in really exclusive seminars or you know, deep in academic research and then we were repackaging it for a wider internet audience. And I think through 2010s that was a pretty novel and important function that was being played in within society is but now we're at the point where like you can literally just get on Instagram and see 800 pieces of the same advice any day of the week that you want and it's all free and it's all like widely available and it's all repeated to death. Um and so it does raise an interesting point of like I I do think that saturation of information for people Yep. is probably like you said, it it's it's been speed run speed run. >> Yes. Speed ran? Speed run. Um speed run at this point. You know, whereas like 15 years ago you would have to spend years and years like really digging deep into books and and studies and research. Now you can probably get the gist of that within a year or two. And so it really does make the implementation aspect of it I think more important than ever before. But there's not That's not generalizable, right? You know, [clears throat] so it's like that's that's where the rub is now. So I I In many ways I feel it's like a very weird time. It is It is. It's It's certainly a transition and it's this idea of something that's anti-memetic. >> Mhm. Not just something that isn't memetic, not something that won't spread, but something that is actively pushed back against and not spread or maybe even criticized to the point where it sort of shrinks. Um and unfortunately telling people the new information isn't better necessarily uh or at least not at the speed that perhaps it used to be. The market's slowed down. It might be a way to think about it. Uh doesn't sound very good because if you've got a problem, you want to believe that there's a solution. But if there's a solution that's already out there, the reason that you haven't fixed your problem is your fault as opposed to oh this new thing that's novel, that's what We've got this bias Mhm. >> And um Yeah, it is There's a There's a definitely a transition period going on and that's why I think your solved podcast series is [ __ ] great. That's different because it is so in-depth, whether you want to learn about fear or relationships or whatever. It is so in-depth that that's not been done before. Um some of the stuff that I've got coming up with different guests sat around the table is it's not been done before. Okay, that's unique and at least novel. Genuinely novel and the insights that have come out of it novel. But for the most part, if it's and this is going to get worse Yes. >> with AI. It's going to get significantly worse. So much worse. >> However bad and repetitive and sloppy you think that your least favorite optimization obsessed influencer of choice has been imagine that powered by a [ __ ] infinite robot army. Yeah. That's coming. Yeah, and not to mention a thousand copycats on TikTok and Instagram, right? So it's it's just like anything that gets any traction is just going to be parodied thousands and thousands of times. >> derivative, but now it's derivative at scale powered by AI. Yes. Um So I I actually think we're going to re-enter, speaking of being bullish and bearish. Mhm. Um I actually think I I'm like bullish on authority and credibility over the next 10 years. Um I think there's going to be a a a mass return towards because I I just think there's going to be so much slop out there. And especially in in in this market, like there's just going to be so much crap being espoused by like random stick figures and [ __ ] on YouTube. Like that people are going to lose patience very quickly and they're going to crave like, "Please just show me somebody who like actually knows what they're talking about or who's actually done something." Mhm. Um And so it it's it's actually kind of ironic because it's I think the the the great explosion in the dissemination of this of this information that to people 10 15 years ago, it was kind of the the destruction of like credibility >> will be its downfall. Right. You Credibility doesn't matter anymore, right? It's like if you've got a good idea, you can just write a blog post and everybody can read it, you know? And like that was great back then, but it now it's it's been taken to such an extreme that there's going to be like this incredible demand for authority and credibility. >> I think there's almost certainly going to be a pedestalization of legacy media, mainstream media. I think that if you get placed on 60 Minutes or the new Dr. Phil or whatever, whatever the next version of that is. Yeah. Because anybody can do YouTube. What are you grinning about? Dude, I got a crazy story for you. So >> [laughter] >> So yes, I agree. And and like this is already happening. So So You mentioned it earlier. I I started a a an AI company last year. It's an AI personal growth coach. It's called Purpose. Everybody go check it out. It's cool. >> So when we we launched in December and we hired a PR agency to go get a bunch of publicity in like conventional media. You know, put the logos on the website, all that [ __ ] And dude, it was so funny. So the publicists they go they get all these like, you know, interviews with big newspaper. I'm not going to call I'm not going to name check anybody. Um big newspapers, newspapers everybody would has heard of, TV stations, radio stations, like all traditional stuff, very prestigious, you know. We're we're trying to get the logos. So I go and I do these interviews with like quote-unquote like prestigious journalists. And we talk about the app for like 10 minutes or whatever. And you can tell that like they don't give two shits. Like it's just, you know, they've got some generic article that they're doing about like AI products or whatever and they're just going to drop a quote from me in it and and mention mention the product. And so a very like half-assed 10-minute conversation. And I and and we wrap up very quickly and I'm like, okay, well, this was very fast. And then the journalist would be like, well, wait, while I've got you here. So I'm working on a book right now and I was wondering if I could run some ideas by you. This happened three times. Three times. That base So basically what happened was the journalists understanding their position, which is prestige media. This guy needs a logo for his website, you know, cuz it's I'm the logo. Right. I'm the logo. I'm working on a book. This guy's a huge bestselling author. Prestige for expertise trade. Let's barter. [ __ ] dude. So most of those calls was me GIVING CAREER ADVICE. >> [laughter] >> IN EXCHANGE FOR A QUOTE IN THEIR [ __ ] newspaper. >> I would have just said I would have just said to all of them once they once they've done it it's like I think your idea is [ __ ] That's all right. I think [laughter] your I think I think your idea sucks. Nobody's going to read this. Give up. >> I highly I highly recommend I highly recommend [laughter] that you don't do it and just leave them all dejected. >> Oh man, it was it was crazy. It's it's a weird world, man. Sorry to interrupt your scrolling, but this is a friendly reminder that your time on this earth is extremely limited and everyone you love is going to die one day. So maybe you should put the [ __ ] phone away and go and do something meaningful. >> [gasps] >> Dude, the the death salience thing is just it's it's it's magical, isn't it? Isn't the memento mori like it's just so magical and it and especially like I I guess with like you know, the doom scrolling kids these days like it is um it it's such an important practice, I think to just like take that moment not every day, but like periodically of like is this if I were to die soon, is this what I would want to be doing, you know? If when I'm 80, am I going to look back and be proud of what I'm doing? Um and it's that that's one of those things I'm glad how memetic that is. It's cuz I remember I I remember so in subtle art, the last chapter is called and then you die. And I remember my my publisher was like you know, this is kind of dark. Are you sure you know, publisher thing. >> Supposed to finish it on an up note. >> Yeah, exactly. Um you be all inspiring and and everything. Um but I felt really strongly about it cuz it's just like the the kind of being confronted with death had been like so impactful in my life. Um and it it was a big part of stoic philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, a of different philosophies. Um That's one thing that I never expected to be memetic, but it is incredibly memetic and it is I'm like thrilled with how much traction that gets and and that people do resonate with it and they do find value in it and they do respond to it and engage in it. Um So, yeah, I just I just think it's it's a great practice. I'm glad that people stop scrolling and think about it. Yeah, I a few questions that I think are useful. What do you regret from the last year? Like what do you regret that you did too much of and not enough of? Typically, that's the same stuff that you did for the last decade, but you can't remember the last decade. So, if you look at the last 12 months of your life, what did you do too much of and what did you do too little of? If you wanted to make 85-year-old you as miserable as possible when they look back in their life. Oh, that'd be easy. What would you What would you do? What would you do more of? What would you do less of? You know, I mean, there's that famous five regrets of the dying, right? "I wish I'd allowed myself to be happy. I wish I kept in touch with my friends more. I wish I hadn't worked so much." We are maybe just about to breach the first wave of people who are had a good chunk of their life spent on their smartphone and on devices who are about to die. It has to be number one. Yeah. >> It has to be number one. Yeah. There's no way that I wish I'd spent less time looking at a screen. Like it it it just has to jump to the top of the charts. As soon as that wave of people begin to die en masse Mhm. and it's still probably what? Like smartphone's been around 20 just under 20 years now. So, you're 65, 70 like it's still not it's still not quite there. >> Couple more decades, yeah. >> Yeah, one one more decade and that's going to start, but within two it's just going to be [ __ ] I don't know, man. I've seen some good memes. That's true. >> Some really good memes. >> That is true, but you've never the subject of them. That's why. You have the You have the optimal level of fame. You have the optimal level of fame, which is you can get a seat at a restaurant that's very busy, Mhm. but for the most part, people aren't going to make a meme about you on the internet. Yeah, I think that's where you should go. All right, last one. Yeah. At some point, you realize that the permission you've been waiting for all along was your own. Yeah. It I think so often we seek advice when really all we want is somebody to just tell us it's okay. It's okay to want what we want. It's okay to stop doing something, to change our minds, um to be wrong about something. Um I don't I don't get It's It's an interesting, you know, back in the day I used to get a lot of emails, like fan emails and stuff, people asking for questions, for advice. Um I still get some, but it it is amazing how many emails, messages, questions I get that it it you could really just boil it down to this person feels bad about something and just wants to be told it's okay. Mhm. To feel bad [clears throat] about it. >> Mhm. Mhm. And or this person wants to do something, but they're afraid, and they just need somebody to say, "No, no, you should do that." Yeah. That's it. That's all I want. They don't need a a [ __ ] theory or a framework or, you know, a full like breakdown of their childhood trauma. They They just need somebody to say like, "It's okay. You You should do that." >> Mhm. It seems important to you. Yeah, I think the world is kind of split into two groups of people, people who don't know how to improve their lives, and those who are too scared to start. And the first group doesn't care. Like they're going to do what they do. They're not going to overthink it. And then there's another group that's paralyzed by their capacity to think. Obviously, there's people that manage to overcome that, but almost anybody who is thoughtful and making [ __ ] happen in the world has had to overcome their thoughtfulness. Like their thoughtfulness is the fuel, but it's also the barrier to getting there because as we said right at the top, um the degree of uncertainty that you have is paralyzing. It keeps you in place. So, yeah, someone coming along and going, "Hey, man, like it's okay to want that thing or it's okay to not think that that thing's cool. You should try and do that thing. You just should and close the loop and that's fine. Yeah, I describe myself as having a lifestyle-wide praise kink. Which >> [laughter] >> That's [ __ ] I respond well to encouragement. I respond really [ __ ] well to encouragement. And this again, there's two types of British people. There's British people who thrive on mutual piss-taking and there's British people that were meant to be American people and I'm in the latter camp. Like you're you're a very enthusiastic country, right? You basically You basically have permanent first-line cocaine energy. >> [laughter] >> That's what it is. That's what it is. That's it. I don't You know, I want to make enthusiasm great again and I want to re-export it back to the UK. Yeah. Mega. And that that that was just something for me that was a pathway for me. Hey, I'd happy to do the mutual piss-taking, sit around a table with my boys, but when it comes to really going for stuff, I much prefer to be around people that are like, "Yeah, you got this. Go and [ __ ] crush it." as opposed to "Gay." >> [laughter] >> The first one works for me. I've got tons of friends that are back home who they don't care. It just doesn't factor. Piers Morgan had this conversation with Piers. He's like, "I like the piss-taking." I'm like, "Piers, that's because you've got a galactic ego and you need someone to keep your feet on the ground. That's fine. That's good for you." Those of us that are a little bit more permanently unsure, for me it's good. The encouragement thing's good And that's very cringey in the UK. Yeah. export yourself to the US where that's kind of that runs much more in the the pioneer spirit. And I'm like, "Huh, it's okay for me to want that. It's okay for me to say that that's something that I like. It's okay for me when I was 27, 28 to go, 'I'm a club promoter who's going to stop drinking.'" Right? Like that doesn't sound very revolutionary in a world of Athletic Brewing Co, NA beers, near beer, you [laughter] know, Heineken 0.0 [ __ ] Um but I mean, in British culture >> culture, yeah. As a club promoter in 2016 >> Sounds insane. That was yeah, that was me inventing fire. And it Sometimes people can do stuff without anybody telling them that it's okay, but a lot of the time that's what people are looking for. I'm worried about this thing happening and I'm scared. Yeah. And somebody go, "It's all right, man. You got this." Or maybe you don't, but you'll be all right anyway. Yeah. >> I'm okay, you know, no matter what happens. That too. I I tend to notice this as I mean, it's this is pretty proportional to age, right? Like it's young people I feel like need this reassurance all the time. I feel like as you get older, you just start realizing you're like, "Nobody knows what the [ __ ] they're doing." And no one is thinking about you anyway. >> Yeah, nobody Yeah, exactly. Nobody really gives a [ __ ] what you what what you decide. Um It is it is interesting. You know, the British culture thing, hearing you describe it, it it just it feel to me as as an American, it feels like the epitome of the I'd rather be right than happy. Yeah. It's um or maybe it's like I'd rather be snarky than happy. Like it's Well, I'd I'd rather be snarky than cringey, and cringey is being enthusiastic. Yeah. Because if you plant a flag in the ground and say, "This is my position," you create criteria for success, Mhm. which also means you create criteria for failure. Yeah. And that means that if someone can snipe away at it, they can make you fail, but also that if you succeed, you leave them behind. There's this wonderful difference between American people and British people. American people hope that you succeed in case you take them with you. British people hope that you fail in case you leave them behind. Mhm. And I wish it wasn't true, and it's not for everyone. Yeah. But many of the people like the UK had the second highest millionaire exits in 2024, behind China. [clears throat] But China's got like 13 times the population or something. It's insane how much bigger it is. So per capita, we lost the most millionaires by multiples. Why? It's not a very welcoming environment for people that want to do different things, that want to be innovative, that don't want to sort of follow that path. It doesn't mean matter about whether or not you want to be a [ __ ] millionaire or not. But if you want to make a change to your lifestyle or the way that you look or the things that you think or the culture that you're embedded in or the way that you raise your kids or whatever, it's just not that welcoming. And that's why we have the same number of universities in the top 10 globally, but American universities produce five times more entrepreneurs than British universities do. And remember that we have an international [ __ ] cohort. Yeah. So people come, get contorted by the culture, and then leave with this veneer, this sort of varnish that's gone on top of them. Mhm. But yeah, it's a it's an interesting one, dude. Look, I appreciate the [ __ ] out of you. It's it's fascinating to watch this whatever we're in, some renaissance, I don't know whether it's a renaissance or a dark ages. Um >> [laughter] >> that's that's happening, but there's something there's something sort of twisting and changing in this world, personal growth, personal development, and I really [ __ ] appreciate that you're there helping to steward it in whatever way you can. It's It's really cool. Same, man. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um Cool. Thank you. What's where people go? Oh. Uh markmanson.net, Solve Podcast, and uh purpose.app free 7-day trial. Check it out. Mark Manson in your pocket, but without the touchy-feely thing. Yeah, so it's it's an AI that's that's optimized to challenge you. Um so it call call you out on your [ __ ] spot blind spots, challenge your assumptions, um basically all the things like a good coach would do to help you grow instead of just, you know, kiss your ass and make you feel good. Unreal. Appreciate you, man. Until next time. Thanks. 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