The Secret to Knowing Who You Are | Luke Burgis | The Art of Charm

Sometimes this, you know, the smarter you are, the easier it is for you to delude yourself with very rational reasons for, you know, why you've chosen the goals that you have. I would encourage people to think maybe less about thinking for themselves and more about the kind of the way that their desires have been formed. I would always find ways to rationalize my goals and what I wanted. At no point could I did I manufacture a desire out of thin air. I woke up one day when I hit middle age, as many middle-aged men do, and decided I wanted to run a half marathon. When I'm honest with myself, I realize like, no, all my friends are doing that. [music] >> Welcome to the show, Luke. It's great to have you. >> Good to be here, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Uh, one thing that really struck me about the book and I know many of our audience members feel this tension and this feeling of a solid sense of self and then this desire to belong and the struggle between both of them and I think many times the invisible forces that we don't even face. How did it impact you personally and and how did this project come together? >> I've had many existential crises in my life. Um, but probably one of the the more dramatic ones that kind of wake me up to some of the ideas that I've been writing about for 10 years now were when I was I was an entrepreneur living in Las Vegas. I'd moved a company from LA to Vegas and it was growing very quickly. I had a multi-million dollar deal with Zapos in the works to sell the company. And the deal fell apart in kind of dramatic fashion. There was a board meeting at Sequoia Capital and there they changed their minds on like the plane from San Francisco back to Vegas when I thought we were going to go celebrate the deal that night and then the whole deal fell apart um and the company was in trouble. It was kind of a deal that was saving my company but it was there was a lot of money on the line and I remember when the deal fell apart I felt a strange sense of relief and and it was like the most unexpected emotion I could possibly imagine. And I was like really relieved that the deal fell apart and you know relief is data. So I was like what what why am I relieved right now when I should be devastated like what's going on right now? And after 3 to 6 months of really wrestling with with the ideas and and with you know my new sense of identity now right I I was not the exited successful entrepreneur. I was an entrepreneur whose company ultimately wouldn't make it. that affected me at an existential level because I was completely bound up with my identity as the startup founder, as the guy who was growing the company. And I kind of came to the realization that, you know, if you if you don't know what ladder you're climbing, it's definitely not your own ladder. Um, and it's probably somebody else's. And you know at that particular time in my life I was climbing kind of the the startup founder entrepreneur ladder and measuring myself with these metrics of success valuation of my company and things like that. And the sense of relief that I felt was being untethered from the validation that I needed from a specific set of investors a specific set of entrepreneurs in my industry. Um people that I look to that I kind of needed needed something from. And it was the start. I mean this happened. I mean, geez, this was uh 2026. I mean, this is 16 years ago at this point, 17 years ago. But it was the thing that got me asking hard questions about who I am. Um, why do I want to belong to certain groups and communities? How do I lose myself in some of them while maintaining a healthier sense of who I am in others? Like, I do better in some rooms than I do do in others. And I wanted to understand that like you throw me into, you know, a group of investors in San Francisco and I I like quickly lose myself, right? Um, but I can go into other environments and not lose myself. I was like, what is there something about myself? Um, and I kind of realized that one, I was chasing things through mimetic desire. I was uh catching desires from other people that I'd never really even thought about. I thought they were my own, but they weren't. And second, I didn't have a very solid sense of self. In other words, my myself was incredibly malleable based on the city I lived in, the the kinds of people that I hung out with, and I found I found myself experiencing a kind of whiplash. Like, I had to be a different person with my entrepreneur buddies, then with my fitness friends, uh, with my church friends. I was kind of going back and forth between different communities, feeling the need to change, um, what the way that I spoke, the way that I talk, the way that the goals that I had. Um, and that's a relatively exhausting way to live. Um, so that got me started on this 16-year journey now, which I eventually had to write a book about. Um, so I don't write books because I have answers. I write them because I'm trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I'm really struck by the the different tribes that you are a member of and and just how spatially far apart they are in terms of the way you behave, what you talk about, what is in, what is out, and and that desire to blend in in all of these rooms and feel that tension of like leaning into one part of yourself and then not showing another part of yourself. And I know so many audience members hear this trope like find your tribe, find your tribe, but often we lose part of oursel in joining that tribe by trying to fit in and trying to stick with the the trend line that that tribe is putting on us. What was that tension like for you as I hear those different tribes? Like they are vastly different. >> I think there's 10 books a year that are written about how to find your tribe, but I've never seen a book about what to do once you find it. And for me, that's always when the really hard work begins. like I found it like now how do I stop myself from like getting dissolved into it, losing myself and I've never quite fit in. I'm an only child, you know, maybe I there's like some social skills that I didn't learn when I was growing up. Um I didn't have any siblings. Uh so it probably took me longer to learn how to read a room than other people. Um but I did always kind of feel like I never quite fit in in any kind of group or community that I was a part of. And I used to think that there was something wrong with me because of that. Um, and I now realize that if I'm not feeling any kind of tension at all, then that actually is probably a bigger danger because I I I have a personal belief that in this world there's like no perfect community. And if it starts to feel a little bit too comfortable, you might have to ask yourself like do you have like a solid sense of self anymore? Because there there should be friction, right, in anything. I mean, even in a marriage, right? Like it's like um that's you need to learn how to work through it. And the world that we live in, partly through technology, has made it frictionless to move in and out of groups at alarming speed. You don't like a group chat and you just leave it. Um, it's also very easy to join them. And I think that's kind of contributed to how easy it is to be a pseudo self and surround yourself only with people that kind of, you know, um, agree with everything that you think and and, you know, just we can overvalidate, right? And I I sort of realize that the tension is is a really important signal and to sit with it and realize like I I I every person has two simultaneous drives. We have a drive to belong. Um you know we're tribal creatures. It's not a bad thing. Um but we also have a drive to be known as who we are to differentiate ourselves. And those two drives exist simultaneously in in us. And when we don't realize that we have this the drives both and that we have to honor both of them, we tend to go to one extreme or the other. So like I think isolation and fusion are both ways that we flee from just actually sitting with the tension and asking ourselves what is it that we're feeling? You know, what do I need to do in this situation when I walk in this room? Am I just trying to manage my anxiety and my nervous system? um and just you know saying whatever I need to say, doing whatever I need to do to just keep my anxiety as low as possible or do I actually exercise my solid self like a muscle and you know say the thing that might you know cause other people to feel uncomfortable or myself to feel uncomfortable and by doing that we learn a lot. We don't just learn a lot about ourselves. We also learn a lot about who's our real friends like what what like why does this community accept me? Do they accept me because I'm just the most loyal person or do they accept me because I can actually make a contribution based on my real convictions and who I who I truly am? >> Well, that's it right there, right? Those are the those are the two drives and how they work together. So, the drive to want to belong and then how to individualize yourself within that group so that people know you're there, want you there. uh rever you, respect you being there because for us just to be there, it's certainly not going to be enough because then we just blend into the crowd. And if we blend into the crowd, are we really there? >> There's a lot of groups today that would never know if you go missing, you know, right? >> Um nobody would even notice. And that's not the kind of group that I want to be be belong to, quite frankly. >> And communities, I think community is quite actually pretty easy. Like we hear community, we're building community. I think it's one of the most overused words of the last decade. Um, partly due to Facebook where everybody's building a community. And I'm not saying that community is bad, but but community, there's like a pseudo community that's like an easy community. Um, and it's not a community that is based on differentiated selves within it. And sort of communion after differentiation, right? Like community that actually helps people evolve and grow. Like that's that's I use the word communion which is I think is something a little bit deeper than than community. And I I'm always like nervous when I sort of encounter a group or a person and one of the first things they start talking to me about is just like join the community. I'm like wait wait wait wait a second you don't you don't know me yet, right? Many of us have seen the opposite end of being ostracized and isolated online. The push back, the cancel culture and that fear is also extraordinarily high now. So, we're feeling loneliness as we become more and more embedded in the digital layer. We're seeing people being publicly ostracized and kicked out of communities and the downfall, the negative impacts of that publicized. So, it can feel very strange to to be in a community, feel like you want to speak up, but then also have this pressing fear that well, if I'm ostracized or I'm kicked out of this community, that survival mechanism and drive kicks in and and that is not something that we feel comfortable managing. >> [snorts] >> Yeah, it's a fight orflight response. You know, it's it's just a hardwired into us. And I I think that we most people choose flight um when it comes to communities. And I think one of the ways that people are doing that now is through technology, right? I mean, specifically AI. Um you know, it's like it could be our friend. It can validate us in a way that's very different than the way that a human uh would validate us, by the way. and you know, it can sort of make us feel a sense of solidarity that I don't really know is real. Um, and I I worry that it's kind of a substitute for doing the hard work of learning how to be with other people and how to reconcile with other people. Um, I haven't got into too many fights with my AI. I mean, I do get in fights every once in a while when it doesn't want to do something. Um, but you know, there I can easily convince him to [laughter] >> it's every morning while yours is a lot nicer than mine. So my my AI is maybe more of a solid self than yours, right? Um because he just, you know, I can I can he he negotiates who he is in real time with me pretty quickly, which is the definition of a pseudo self, right? You're negotiating your kind of sense of identity in real time. Um and I'm not just talking about like I think it's a good thing to generally adapt yourself in the way that you speak in different rooms. There's a social skill in that and that's a good thing, but I'm kind of talking about things that really touch the core of the person, right? like your integrity, sacrificing your deepest convictions and you know the a AI is is I think going to be um sort of a substitute for the hard work of learning the social skills necessary to be with other people for a sustained period of time, right? It's like not something we learn in school really. Um you know, you don't like your school, you just switch or I don't know, um find new friends. And um there's very few communities that actually kind of force the development of the solid self. And I worry that, you know, uh, the digital tools are just making it easier to find something that's that feels like a substitute for them. Well, we talked about this recent study of relationship advice from AI and and how with it being trained by Reddit responses and most people using Reddit in cases of turmoil and the advice is usually flight leave the person, they're wrong, you're right, you need to cut out your family, you need to move away from this person. Well, that's what AI has been trained on. So, its response is in those moments where we're contemplating, what do I do in this situation? How do I handle the messiness of human connection? If its advice back to us is, well, you're right and they're wrong. You should leave them, we're going to be in a constant state of just joining new tribes and constantly losing ourselves in committing to finding that next tribe. So, I draw a lot on the work of Murray Bowen, who was a family systems uh psychologist at Georgetown, and he's the first person that applied systems theory to the family unit. And you know he realized that we learn to differentiate our emotions and our ideas and our thoughts and feelings in the family right he said the early family is like an undifferentiated ego mass you know like um you know mom's upset I'm upset and even now I feel like I I have two young daughters and it's like if they're both crying at the same time like both my wife and my anxiety is higher and I'm like much more likely to snap to snap at her even though it's nothing to do with her it just happened that our babies are crying right it's like if If I can't regulate my nervous system and like be the the calm one and reverse that cycle of like emotional contagion, then we're all in trouble, right? It's like a very important skill to learn. And Bowen Bowen said we we learn we have to learn to separate our emotions and thoughts and feelings even from our other family members. And that actually allows us to be in deeper communion with them. And one of the and he says like emotional cut off is actually um not a mature way to deal with uh anxiety in a family unit or in a community. It's actually one of the easiest things is to emot emotionally cut off other people. And you know I know I've been reading in the news there's like a trend right now among Gen Z not to throw them under the bus but like of like cutting off one's parents or cutting off the family. And you know, I I I have to wonder if that has something to I'm not suggesting there are no situations, right? Abuse, trauma where it breaks, separation is not um probably a healthy thing. Um but for it to be the default thing, right? Like the default go-to thing. And the AI does often do that, right? Um, and I think it's incredibly dangerous to go to an AI about uh very complex social circumstances and relationships for which the AI does not have the history and context. It just has what you prompted, right? It doesn't have like the wealth of sense like information that an embodied living mind and soul has about a situation. And so it gives incredibly superficial advice on these things and validates us in all kinds of ways that I think can be dangerous. I mean, I I have a father with Alzheimer's and I remember I had I had uh I've I've used the AI to help me navigate the the VA system and the care system. Um he lives in a home and you know I have the AI like check in on me, right? And and and say things like that must be that's this must be difficult, Luke. I'm like f you. You know what I mean? like like this is like you you don't you you don't have like the the the you don't have like the freedom or the experience to use these kind of unreal words on me that are kind of masquerading for real experience that you've never had. And but it can seem incredibly real when we need it. And you know it's it's uh I I I just think this this topic of validation is actually really really important and it's what I see that the the AI is actually trying to do. It's like the way that it operates and the way that it makes people feel so good that they have to come back and keep using it. >> An important part in all of this is most of us are using AI in situations where there is turmoil, there is trouble, we're contemplating something, we don't have an answer, we're searching for something. We're not using AI when we're happy and things are smooth and and everything's humming along. We don't think to then engage with AI. So we default to it in these negative moments and we're reinforcing what it is saying back to us in ways that can really harm our connection to our family, connection to others to, you know, leave tribes that might be good for us even if we feel that there was a little of emotional frustration or there was some conflict and to default to AI's read on the situation with it having no real understanding of the situation only what we're sharing no real understanding of us at a deep level even though we've been prompting it throughout time like it doesn't have the full picture of us to be giving us that advice. >> I think people often use AI even to validate things or to get sort of um a pat on the back even when things, you know, are are going well, you know? I mean, it's just like cuz it's it's just so rare to get it from other people these days, right? Um it's rare to find a friend that just wants to celebrate successes or something like that. Um and you know you can't really give validation that you yourself desperately need and um it's it's you know so it it's so people are really bad at it right people are people are are bad at recognizing the gifts and talents and and just validating the basic thoughts and feelings and emotions of other people and because that's a skill that is so deprecated and degradated in our society um the AI kind of steps in and basically is like one of you know one of the only people doing it even though I don't think it's real. Um, so it's something that we should we need to learn how to do and only a person with a solid sense of self can truly be good at doing it. >> You mentioned pseudo self and now the solid sense of self and I know this is drawn on Murray Bowen's work. So for audience who's not familiar with this concept, what what are we talking about here and and how do we unpack this to recognize what our solid self truly is? >> Bowen says that the the pseudo self is kind of the default mode of the self. Um it's the part of ourselves the the the layer of the self is the exact language that he uses which so that's different than having two selves. He's talking about layers of the self and the pseudo self is the layer of self that borrows and catches by contagion the emotions, beliefs, thoughts, opinions of the emotional system that we're in. Um you know we sort of absorb it by osmosis right starting in the family. Um and then you know in the groups that we become we identify ourselves with after we leave our family uh without having really examined them um and understood where they come from. We just kind of the uh the things that we absorb the ideas and especially emotions and then the emotions and the ideas start to blend together um and that can be kind of dangerous because we you know we attach like feeling good with certain ideas. And Bowen says, you know, we we learn to sort of um differentiate our eye uh in the family or or we don't learn how to do that. All right? And um even just on an emotional level, you know, like um mom's upset, but I'm not upset, right? Or something like that. Dad's mad about this political thing um and he wants me to be mad about it, but I I don't really know anything about it. And just like just like recognizing that I'm that I'm not mad, right? And he Bowen calls that the differentiation of self. And he says the differentiation of self which we learn through just that awareness and and acting um in ways that that are not always oriented towards um keeping the emotional equilibrium in the room that we're in. Right? So a person that does acts of differentiation, you're not doing it just to piss other people off or just to disturb the peace. You're doing it right because you actually have a conviction or want to say something that is true, but you know that it might upset somebody else's ego or the emotional equilibrium of the room. And Bowen says through acts of differentiation, we learn to develop a solid sense of self, which is the deeper layer of self, which can walk into a room and not constantly be, you know, the nervous system doesn't go through the roof. You're not constantly reading the room and wondering like what exactly to say to get other people to like you. Not negotiating one's convictions in real time. And you know, the solid sense of self is what I had to learn to develop as I was navigating my way between me, as you noted, like many very different kinds of communities that I was part of in my early life. And I I had to admit to myself that man, if I had more of a solid self, it wouldn't feel so like unnerving as I go back and forth between them. And is there a layer of myself that I can access to be able to walk into rooms or be parts of communities where I don't feel like I'm sacrificing something that's integral to who I who I truly am when I'm at my best. And that's a that's a different kind of confidence. The solid self is a a kind of confidence that we that we still have when it's not being when other people are not, you know, giving us the thing that we need. It's it's a kind of deeper layer of confidence. For me personally, becoming a dad really put focus on that family system that I grew up in and the behaviors that were rewarded, the behaviors that were frowned upon. And much of my reflection on it is just recognizing the emotional immaturity in my family system where if a parent figure was feeling a heavy emotion, everyone was expected to feel that same emotion to feel the wrath and the impact of that emotion. And there was no opportunity for differentiation. And now as I think about how I want to be a dad and and what the space I want to create in our family, like I really recognize the importance of that. But for many of us, we usually don't recognize it in our family. We start to recognize it when we join other groups and and when we have these encounters in other situations where we can't muster the differentiation. We can't speak up when we're feeling the friction. We hedge our opinions to avoid the friction or we say things that we completely don't agree with simply to keep the peace. When we're growing up like we don't know what emotional maturity is. We just kind of we kind of assume that the family that we grow up in is just is the way that people are. like we we have no marker. We have no perspective whatsoever. Um and it's why um when we join other groups, it's the first time that we gain perspective. Like for many people, it's like going off to college usually, right? Cuz our family is the most normal thing in the world to us until we actually go out into the world and we're like, "Oh, wow. It's like really easy for me to kind of be myself or something like that in the community." Um, but now you know all of these people come from different systems and it sheds light on on on our own and like the the goal here of differentiation is not separateness. It's actually to allow us to be in better relationship with other people. So in fact like as I had a more of a differentiated self, I was able to have a better relationship with my parents. And you know, one of the things that I noticed is that every time that I would call home, my parents would pick up the phone at the same time and we would always have a three-way conversation. Um, and you know, there was never an opportunity for me to just have a one-on-one conversation with either one of them. And that's just like a a very little step that we can learn. Like if we if it makes us more uncomfortable, like if we always need to have the third person or the fourth or fifth person and we never want to like talk to or hang out with one person directly, like why? It's like and like so like like developing the one-on-one relationship is a little bit harder. So I got to a point where I was like, "Hey, I'm just going to call dad and I'm going to talk to dad and mom." And we would do that separately. And I began to develop a deeper relationship with both of them. And but you could apply this to all kinds of circumstances in life where you know we we we we kind of need to triangulate in order to be comfortable. And that is usually a way of kind of avoiding the solid the development of the solid self in Bowen's terminology. >> What's important to recognize here is that that tension is a good thing because it actually creates space for authenticity. And we hear authenticity thrown around all the time. But what does it really mean if we're constantly joining tribes that are creating inauthenticity and and not allowing us to manage that tension or even remotely try to differentiate ourselves? And I think what's counterintuitive for for many of us is like when you actually step into that differentiation, the relationship strengthens if it's a healthy relationship. If the person on the other end is coming from a healthy place, it's a good thing to be differentiated. It's a good thing to be in a tribe where you can speak your truth and you can actually talk about the friction that you're feeling. It's not a good thing if you're in a situation where you can't do that or people who do do that are ostracized. you know, one of the tests that I I kind of have for evaluating the strength of a community or a tribe or a group, uh, because I get invited, you know, I get invited to be part of all kinds of things. And, um, it's interesting when you look at the delta between the way that somebody speaks and acts while they're in the group versus like while you've got them out for lunch, you know, one-on-one. And like pay attention to that, right? like when they're in the in the group meeting or when when other people are around or they sort of following scripts certain scripts and then all of a sudden when you get them one-on-one it's like you can almost you know hear them you know breathe for the first time and it's like ah now that we're alone let me let me tell you this and this and it's like that's a little bit concerning right there shouldn't be that big of a difference between the two so you know I I I often make a very intentional effort to not interact in the one to many basis but try to interact on kind of a onetoone basis and then pay attention to how we change and how I change too, right? In the communities that I'm a part of, right? Um because I I noticed that in myself. >> Well, many of us find this emotional triangle through gossip, right? So, our first encounter in that situation that you're talking about might be, well, now the colleague is out to lunch with us and they're happy to unload about the boss. But in the group meeting where the boss is saying something that you've heard through the grapevine and you know through gossip that they're not agreeing with but they can't speak up. That's the emotional triangle being created. And this happens in work environments. This happens in social environments. But often times we look at the gossip of like, oh, I'm getting a bit of information. I'm getting something that wasn't said in the group. And we we feel the dopamine hit of that. We don't recognize the emotional triangle that's being built. >> Yeah. Bowen would say that the um the smallest stable relational unit is a triad. It's a triangle of three people. And you know a diad or a relationship between two people is inherently a little bit more volatile because two people can become rivals. Um two people can avoid each other. There can be passive aggressiveness. Um and the way to manage that conflict, the unhealthy way to manage that conflict is to bring in a third person either, you know, physically or through gossip, right? Person doesn't need to be physically present for us to bring them into um a relationship to help us manage it, right? We just find somebody or something else to talk about, right? Um, and I found that like really really fascinating. Like we triangulate in order to manage our anxiety without actually just dealing with it with the person in front of us. And it's why, you know, a lot a lot of people use their own children to do this, right? It's like, you know, um, you know, if if I'm having a hard time with, you know, talking to my wife or um, you know, at my in-laws house or whatever, well, now now I've got a child that I can just kind of like throw in the mix and we can just focus all our attention on the child, right? Yeah. And in the moment, you know, when someone is confiding in you and someone is gossiping with you, it it feels good. There's a dopamine release to getting that tidbit of information or or finding out about someone else's darkness or some some other struggle that's not your own. But we often don't recognize the dynamic at play. And and very rarely are we pushing that person to just go have the conversation with the person they're gossiping about, like deal with the conflict headon instead of involving us. Yeah, I think the important question to ask is, you know, what does it say about myself that I need to engage in gossip? Like what what kind of insecurity is it in me, right? Um because it's usually the pseudo self that wants to gossip. And you know, the self is not really a democracy, you know? I mean, I think that the pseudo self is the, you know, the part of ourselves that's up for a vote, right? Um and the solid self is the part of our is the layer of ourselves that is not up for a vote. Um, and you know, I think when we gossip, when we do those things, um, we're looking for votes, right? We're just we're looking for somebody else to we're trying to find something, some common ground. And, you know, it's easier to do that by by finding something that we don't like in another person by actually trying to engage at a at the level of the cell itself. >> So, many of our audience members are super analytical. They're advanced in their degrees, in their career. They're logical. and in listening to this, you know, they might be sitting here thinking, well, I think for myself, you know, that that might be what you, AJ, Luke, and John are struggling with, but I think for myself, and they don't really maybe realize the impact that the relationships have had. And and I've had this moment in sharing my own experience of of recognizing the success ladder in my own life that my family was creating for me. So when we started the podcast, I was in graduate school and I was doing everything I could to please them and and check their mile markers of success for me. And then when I made the decision to drop out of grad school and pursue this completely against what they thought success would be for me, uh I felt the pain in in differentiating from my family. And then when I would share that story in in the program with clients, many of them would sit there recognizing, wow, okay, maybe I've been making these decisions around someone else's success ladder, largely from the family system that I was in. And that's kind of the first recognition. But it can be hard to hear this if you are planting that flag that I think for myself. Like I' I've moved out from my family's house. I'm not in that family system anymore. And in the groups in I I feel strongly that I think for myself. What do you say to them? >> Sometimes this, you know, the smarter you are, the the the easier it is for you to delude yourself with very rational reasons for, you know, why you've chosen the goals that you have. And I think intelligence is kind of um, you know, o overrated. I mean, it's probably going to become maybe less important in in an age of artificial intelligence, right? And kind of the the soft like social skills, right? The ability to develop relationships and to understand where our desires come from is going to become more important. But I would, you know, I would encourage people to think maybe less about thinking for themselves and more about um the the kind of the way that their desires have been formed and kind of the the the social nature of their lives. I mean, it's really interesting, right? I mean, from from a very young age, and research has shown this through and through, like babies begin to imitate other human beings um and but not interesting, not machines and not robots, right? This is very interesting when it comes to AI. So, we're more interested in other people than we are in what any machine thinks. Like they you can they they've done a test where they can show an adult human and a machine um modeling the same behavior for the baby and the baby will only pay attention to the the human person. So, from a very young age, humans, right, the the the the need to connect with other human beings is very very present in us. And um we we you know one of the most important things that I learned learned from Rene Gerard as a person that you know felt very self-sufficient like to think of myself as smart was realizing that I wasn't paying enough attention to what I wanted and my desires and where those desires came from. Uh and I would always find ways to rationalize my goals and what I wanted. And if I was honest with myself, my desires always had a model, right? They always had a model. They came especially like once I had all my basic needs met, I would look around and wonder what it what was worth wanting. And you know, Gerard's insight was that human beings are the don't know what to want and we rely on other people to show us what to want. And I just found that that that was just like empirically true in my own life. Like at no point could I did I manufacture a desire out of thin air, right? Because I'm a social creature. There's no like desire that I just woke up. There was always a reason for it, right? I I woke up one day when I hit middle age as many middle-aged men do and decided I wanted to run a half marathon. And you know, I thought that that's just like a good healthy thing to do. But when I'm honest with myself, I realize like no, all my friends are doing that. Saw it on Instagram, right? I need to I need to get on the marathon band. It's about that time of my life when I should be doing things like that. And you know, I just think like we're when we're smart, we're able to like rationalize and and and convince ourselves that our desires are completely our own. And it's not that we can't own our desires and make them our own. But I just think we we we have it takes a certain level of humility to understand the way that people have shaped what we want for good and for bad. And there are positive models of desire. And one of the the the goals is to actually realize that we are affected by what the people around us want and to surround ourselves with people who want the kinds of things that we want to want maybe before we even want them. >> Well, what's funny is you mentioned Instagram, right? And I think many of us don't realize how the algorithms have come into play with this mimisis that we're feeling. So all of a sudden you you for a split second see your friend in that half marathon gear and you you hover on that video a little longer and now the algorithm is like great I got to start sending you running shoe ads and I got to start telling you about the next race and I got to show you that everyone on this app is now running and that artificial desire is now created and part of it is the marketing engine that drives social media. I mean, they're getting all of their revenue from people marketing these products to us, creating desire with us. But that reinforcement is stronger than it's ever been. You know, we were part of communities in real life where there was mimemetics around the car you drove or the type of house that you were the style of house that you were buying and you can go to suburbs and see they're all the same style. Why? Because, well, yeah, we want to be like our neighbors. But now we're we're having this reinforced every time we pick up our phone. And it can be very hard even for the the most analytical mind to poke through what is that underlying meaning behind this desire for me or is it just being reinforced by technology and my use of technology >> and the people that are building the most addictive technology understand how mimetic desire works. Um Bernard Arno who's the the the CEO of LVMH he he said that he's in the business of generating and creating desire. You know, I mean, we typically think of business. I I teach in a business school. We think of business as like, you know, people know what they want and there's such a thing as demand and that the job of the business person is just to meet the demand. Find the demand, satisfy the demand, and you have a successful business. Um, but that's it's kind of a boring way to do business in my opinion. Um, and and we actually are as entrepreneurs and creators, we're we're literally generating and creating desires all the time. Like we're showing people new things to want. And when you realize that's kind of the way that it works, um it's kind of it's kind of scary, right? It's like an enormous amount of responsibility. Um but but you know, we we we do it and when we do it, we realize how it actually works on us, right? Like marketers know you can't just talk about the thing um and make people want the thing. You have to show them other people wanting the thing. Like I can't I can't make you want to read my book by just, you know, holding up my book and talking about my book. Um the you know, it's Dak Shepard has to want to read my book, right? It's like that that's like just way way better marketing, right? And that and like like marketers people know that Instagram has engineered the algorithms to when when when they see that we've caught a tiny bit of desire, they just begin feeding it and feeding it and feeding it until we've kind of exhausted the tank on that one particular desire. And they can usually tell because we stop spending as much time looking at that particular thing. And then guess what? They just have to show us a new model of desire or somebody else wanting a different thing that kind of gets us and there's an infinite number of models of desire. So it's an infinite desire generating machine and the strongest marketing taps into your identity. Right? So when you were in the startup founder identity, marketing that was targeting founders would have resonated really strongly with you because you identified as hey I'm this startup founder. I have MR. I'm working towards a series B. I'm hitting all these milestones that map to that identity. And the successful marketers recognize, well, if we can tie our marketing to an identity. If we can put that car on the mountain that everyone that you know who's a mountain man is hiking, well, all of a sudden you're going to want that car because that makes you the mountaineer, that desire has shown. >> How do we choose the models of desire in the first place? Like, you know what? Who who appeals to us as a model of desire? Well, it it almost never happens intentionally. It usually happens under the surface. Like we don't know that we've taken somebody as a model of desire. We normally can't name them. I think it's very important to name them. By the way, like once you know that this is happening, I think it's a really important exercise to try to name, you know, your top three models of desire right here, right now. Like who's somebody if they started to want a certain thing, you would be interested in that thing, right? Then ask yourself why? And usually there's something really existential about this, right? there's like something that we think that they possess some quality of their character or being um uh that makes us believe that they they they know what's worth wanting better than we do or something like that, right? So, we we sort of select them. Maybe they seem more confident than we do. People that are confident make like the best models of desire because they just seem like they know what they want. And usually if we're if we step back and we're honest like I'm not really sure what I want. Right? So confident people the more confident somebody is I think the stronger model of desire they they they are. >> Unfortunately in today's world a lot of that confidence can be faked. It can be pseudo confident. It can be a complete mirage. It can be a fake private jet set that they're in taking that photo or video for their real and not actually on the plane. But we don't know that in the way that it's presented to us, in the way we're interacting with these algorithms. And the flip side of that is like once you start to push back, if you've been in a family system where conflict is the worst thing in the world, that differentiation can feel like you're you're tearing yourself apart. Like you're you're now moving from conflict avoidance to speak to what it is that matters to you and tap in to a level deeper. And and that can feel like I'm going to be ripped from this group. I'm going to be torn apart. So many of us will look at conflict as failure, right? Like if I'm in conflict in the group, like I'm doing something wrong because everyone else in this group seems to be at harmony and seems to be aligned with these desires. >> I think that the fleeing conflict and tension is is the number one thing that leads to the development of the pseudo self in today's world. And you know, leaving a group does not have to be a permanent thing. Um, it it's basically just called undertaking a right of passage. And our culture does not have many well-defined rights of passage anymore. And the simplest way to define a right of passage is this three basic stages, right? You there's some form of separation. There is a liinal phase where you're sort of in a in a state of in in between um who you were the group that you were in and something else. And then there's the phase of reintegration, right? Um either with the family or with the group that you separated from or with somebody else. And rights of passage are literally like how the differentiation happens. Um, you know, there has to be some kind of separation, not separation for the sake of separation, but separation for the sake of differentiation and hopefully a a better, thicker relationship and a thicker community. And I, you know, I, it's hard to even name like effective rights of passage today. Like I feel like college for me was not a very effective one. Um, it just kind of seemed like a credential. I don't know how much I mature. I probably partied way too much, but like it [clears throat] it it it just it just didn't seem like it created the conditions for me um to actually have to do hard things alone. Um you know, like the the the old school things, right? I mean, we used to have various forms of them um especially for young men that I just don't think that we have anymore. Um and it's like I I think about that with my own children, like what are the rights and passages that they're going to need to undertake in order to develop a solid sense of self? And many of us find ourselves in that in between phase where we were hoping that post college there'd be this reintegration or this ability to move into the next chapter. And and many of us are now again in in the mirage of social media and the way the technology is influencing us feeling just wandering around and and a bit lost with what our desires really are, who we want to be, who we should be modeling. And in that malaise, I think many of us are struggling then to to build real connection with people. And I know that's really a driving force for us in in the show is because much of what we've learned over the years is that the quality of your relationships in your life matters tremendously. I called my book the one in the 99, right? And um the the the title uh you know it comes from the parable of the lost sheep. But what I'm really getting at there is like you know we are both one and and part of the 99. We we're both a self and part of a larger group and we need to learn to sort of exist in that space between them. Um but there's a lot of numbers between one and 99 you know and a lot of people know Robin Dunar's number of 150. you can't really have more than 150 relationships. What many people don't know is that he said that actually um the the the identity is really formed in like the groups of five, six or seven like in these really kind of small networks and communities um where you can really invest deeply in relationships. So you know kind of one of the messages of the one and the 99 is kind of like the five six or seven, right? It's like what are the intermediary institutions between the self and the state or between you know um me and the the whole community like what are those and you you you know if I go to a rock concert with a group of friends five five friends and I lose them in the crowd um it's very disorienting right it's and it's like like who who are who are those people that keep me grounded and help me have perspective and help me remember who I am and I think that the kind of like you know losing your your four or five friends at the concert is a relatively like good analogy for the way that life feels especially because many people don't have those four or five people. I mean I stats are wild that like how many adult adult pe especially males like don't don't even have a single friend right. So like I am actively investing in those kind of small communities of people um in my life as kind of a buffer between myself and the 99 because that immediate relationship is incredibly difficult to manage and it usually leads to either the isolation or the fusionism which we talked about in the beginning. What's interesting, and we've touched on this before, you know, how often work culture will try to say, "Hey, we're a family." And they'll try to build a sense of this group that has that strong connection mentally for us. But in reality, as humans, we should have our family groups. We should have a great group at work, but then we also need that social space to allow us in that group of four or five or six to really express ourselves, to hold each other to account, to learn how to respect others and and their viewpoints. And I think many of us in these situations when we feel that tension, when we feel that differentiation, it's easier to hop on Instagram and scroll. It's easier to cancel the plans with people and to watch Netflix or find some other form of pleasure because it doesn't feel good if you've been in situations where you have differentiated and the reaction has been negative. >> The work as family has been like one of the most toxic sort of trends that kind of language you know and um cuz I mean a workplace company is not like a family. Like in almost no way is it like a family. I mean I you know I can't fire my daughter, right? I mean like it's just it's just I I think it's a really unhealthy way to think of that kind of community. And one of the things I noticed one of the reasons why I wrote this book is that I've noticed that there is it seems to me like there's a trend towards groups moving towards a kind of more of a totalit totalitarian kind of mindset. They want everything from you, right? They want your mind, your soul. They want total loyalty in all domains of life to be part of the group. They want everything. Whether we're talking about a political party or a company, you've got to be allin. And you know, I I I don't think that um uh I mean, I am a poker player, but I I generally I generally think that the message of like you've got to be allin is probably doing a lot of damage. Um, you know, there are certain like I'm all in on my marriage, but I don't I shouldn't be all in on like the the the the new I don't know, the new the new club that somebody wants me to, the new local community organization. Like there's there comes a point when maybe we can make that decision. But it seems like more and more the kind of demand to be allin is coming earlier and earlier and earlier. So, one of my goals here, one of the things I'm exploring is like how do we kind of uh resist the the kind of like temptation to sort of overidentify, right? And there's kind of a process that we have to go through where we can test the way that we're in relationships in various groups without succumbing to that kind of over identification too early and maybe never. walk us through if you're listening to this and you're starting to feel like, man, I I haven't differentiated or this group has now taken over those parts of me that I'd like to get back. I' I'd like to get back that sense of self. I've joined maybe the wrong group or I've entered into a community that demands that of me. What are the practical steps that we could start to take to differentiate healthy and also to find that real sense of self and not just default to the pseudo? there's no substitute for um for the kind of separation phase of the of the right of passage, right? And that doesn't mean leaving, but it means creating some space. Um I had the very odd experience of living with 250 other men um in at the age of 30 um as part of this really close-knit community. And um you know, I got to a certain point where I realized that in order to gain perspective, I needed to, you know, kind of go on a on a journey on my own. I hiked the community of Santiago in northern Spain for 30 days. And you know, it's amazing what I kind of learned, not just about myself, but the way that I was in relationship um when I came back to that community. I came back to it with um anticipating the ways in which I slid into my pseudo self because I sort of identified more with I I had 30 days to actually think about what I really cared about, my convictions, who I was when I wasn't trying to perform or please or get patted on the head. Um so when I went back into that community I anticipated my kind of weak moments and there is something to be said like we often kind of have the hubris of thinking that we don't u we don't need to prep or plan for being parts of groups but actually if we think about it even in our own families like you can usually anticipate how the Thanksgiving is going to go and who's going to say what and you know the way that things are going to go and when we do that like we can actually um we can actually prepare ourselves to know when we need to you make sure that we don't slide into the pseudo self. So I think there's no substitute for the gaining perspective through separation and then through actual honest preparation um and then paying attention to what's happening inside of us and then also I you know I think there's something to be said about um you know te you you can def certainly find a small smaller group of four or five or six people within a larger group um to to confide in. I think it's always a good place to start, but I think that there's a healthy form of testing in in in communities that we're part of. I don't mean testing like intentionally being an ass. I don't mean testing by lying or sort of provoking people or or intentionally causing anxiety in other people. I mean testing the reaction of the group by just speaking the the the most real words that you can speak and seeing what happens. Um and that is very very valuable information, right? like when I am when I am at my most solid self like what is the reaction here um and seeing what happens there and that is information that you can take to either um have an honest conversation about why you don't feel like you can you can exist as a solid self within it uh you can choose to leave if the reaction is like unhinged and you know triggering and you're like wow this there's just no no path forward here um and when you do that I think it it also gives other people the opportunity to to be a solid self themselves. I mean, the the people I think that we're most comfortable around are people that have a solid sense of self. And you know, there's a kind of beautiful positive mimetic desire there where, you know, I now have permission to be a solid sense of self myself because I know that this is not a person that's going to be triggered if I express an opinion that they might disagree with. Um, and there's something very freeing about that. And so I think there's like minor micro acts that we can engage in that help give us a sense of the nature of the relationship that we have with the groups of which we're a part and that help us discern what we need to do. For me personally and the emotional scarring from my family system around the outside's reaction to conflict. Um, what I had to work through was really not defaulting to the asynchronous form of communication or the easiest way to step into differentiation because often times that actually creates a false response and I found myself even surprised by people's reaction in the face-to-face differentiation. But it can feel easier to send the text or write the email or do it in an impersonal way. And we can shift the blame onto the other person. But in actuality, to find that real sense of self, it's these face-toface moments where you really see what that group is about. You really understand what the other person is about. And you can't get that through text message. You can't get that through an email. And of course, before technology, we we knew that by default, most if not all of our communication was face to face. And now we've found these other forms of communication where I'll just shoot the DM. I'll send the text. I'll write a long lengthy email and get it off my chest and then I'm fully expressed. But in actuality, what you're talking about is you can see the the other person's real sense of self in these moments face to face of differentiation. >> I couldn't agree more. And I think there's there's kind of, you know, there's a real danger in saying like, I'm going to I'm going to um send this email or this text message to really differentiate myself. Um that is not the way that it works, right? There's kind of a a really unhealthy like reflexivity in that. It's like the way that we use social media like how can I say the contrarian thing to differentiate myself and signal this. That is a real that's actually the opposite of of becoming a solid self, right? It's like stepping back and like thinking about our identity relative to other people and it's sort of arriving at a sense of self through this weird kind of like social calculus. um because it is much easier to do than having like the the face tof face conversation and in sending the email or the text. We we do we feel like we've somehow we've done the thing, but it's incredibly easy to do. We might not even want to know what the response is, right? Um it's like we we we we we shoot it off and like then we can like forget about it. Um, so I I do think like, you know, in this world that we're entering now with AI, I think I want to double down in inerson communication and experiences and um there's just so much context in them and it's like why I try to never hire anybody unless I've taken them out to lunch. Um cuz you just, you know, it's like a contextrich environment and you can just learn so many things that you cannot learn in an interview when people are following scripts, right? So, like it's there's there's something to be said about how can you sort of get people off of the scripts um you know through through like like maybe ask a surprising question, right? Like Tyler Cowen in his interview says, you know, what tabs do you have open in your browser? Like nobody's ever expecting that question in a job interview. Um and they and they have to like stop and think honestly and it tells a lot about a person. So I think you know ways to engage in in in real ways where we can't flee unless we want to be incredibly awkward and you know get up and leave. um that that that is the way that is the only way where we can actually not try to differentiate ourselves in a kind of um engineered way right this is not something that can be engineered it's hard work that has to be done repeatedly over over many there's no pill that you can take right you you actually have to go to the gym and you have to [snorts] exercise >> recognizing these forces at play obviously you've now written two books about this I'd love to know what you've personally done to get back to a a place of dealing with this inundation of information mimisis online the digital age what are you practically personally doing about this >> there's many things that I'm doing I think I'm a new father I have I have two daughters under the age of three and you know it's amazing what that has done to just not caring about stupid things that I used to care about before it makes it much easier to say no to various things um that I might have done for some kind of validation before um uh But I'll just give you one very specific concrete example, right? Related to my work. Um, you know, I'm a writer. I just finished writing my second book. And as a creator, as a creative person, you know, audience capture is like a a real danger, right? It's like, you know, I' I've got the one hit and people want more of the hit. And if I just keep doing that one thing, you know, then I'm I'm playing, you know, the same song in a Midwest, you know, a boat riverboat casino when I'm 70 years old. um and you know just trying to give the people what they want to hear and and I don't know if that's necessarily the best thing for my development. So it's funny I I I started to you know write this book and I was like you know you need to write the sequel to wanting and and I was like you know I I I need I need to actually write the book that's wrestling with the things that I care most deeply about. Um even if they're misunderstood even if I'm misunderstood. There's the theology in my book. There's all kinds of things that you know I was told not to do. And you know, I think that I I I just I had to I had to let go of the need for some kind of immediate recognition and understanding um and sort of accept the trade-off there. And I was like, what is the book that I can write that allows me to be the the the solid self and express my solid self in these words? Um I drew a lot of inspiration for Ornette Coleman. There's a whole chapter dedicated to him. He's kind of a musician that um he's now known as the inventor of free jazz, but it took him, you know, a very very long time of getting rejected, but he was true to his craft. He was true to his art and he was true to himself. And I think he he developed a solid self and he was an inspiration to me. So I think I uh rather than I was given the advice in writing this book and I think if you're listening, you can apply this to your own work. I was given the advice that I should uh have a circle of you know 10 people and send you know parts of every single chapter to them and then wait for feedback and go through this highly iterative process um through writing the book. I said I am definitely not going to do that because because I I I basically need to go in a into a cave uh for 2 years and write this book because if I don't do that I will definitely find myself negotiating in all kinds of ways. how is this sentence going to be interpreted in this really like reflexive way that does not allow myself to actually shine through the pages? And I I hope I succeeded, but you know, that's just something that I've kind of learned in my work that I've had to do. Um, and you know, I'm willing to accept, you know, whatever the consequences are might be for that. I mean, I hope they're not too severe, but um, but I feel good about it. And at the end of the day, like, you know, I'm I'm it's not I I' I've just let go of kind of some of the metrics of success that I had earlier in my life, even though they've changed, right? I don't know. Maybe I'm I'm climbing the public intellectual ladder now or something like that. Who knows? But like I I at least at least like the the I know the ladder that I'm on and I know the way that I want to be engaged in it. And it's just a very different way that I was engaged with earlier earlier in my life. >> Well, thank you so much for sharing your creative work with us today, Luke. Where can our audience find out more about this book and your other work? >> I appreciate it. Um, it's been a pleasure. Luke Burches.com and I think you should be able to find my book pretty much anywhere. Uh, you like to buy books. >> Thank you, Luke. [music]