The Unspoken Pain Most Men Carry In Silence - Hamza Ahmed

talk to me about the dangers of Monk mode that you've discovered so monk mode is an intensive period of self-improvement that loads of young guys have been on recently it's where basically you'll cut off everyone even you will start spending less time with your family your friends and you'll go hard on self-improvement going to the gym meditating eating clean journaling you can grow a lot during that time but the danger is that then self-improvements comes detached from social skills and then you become what I call a self-improvement artist which is these guys who are you know doing the hubman morning sunlight routine and they're meditating 15 minutes a day and they're doing the zone 2 cardio but they're just [ __ ] weird they don't know how to interact with other people they can't hold ey contact they can't shake a hand they've got weird body language when they stood next to people and I I've realized how many guys I had actually led to that point because I had been doing those intensive monk mode periods myself but the caveat was that I had already been like a party boy and I had those years of social experiences first whereas many young men have never actually had an intensive social experience like University College before so these days I don't actually recommend monk mode to most young guys because I think that being able to navigate your relationships with other people family friends being able to be in the middle of like a social event party date whatever and actually navigate that in a way where your present and Charming is so important so I recommend something which I I created instead which is what I call the Adonis Pro to call which is kind of like monk mode but we add in at least one social event per week and if you want to as well one date with a woman as well yeah I think monk mode is a very good excuse for people that are introverted to feel Noble in their introversion and it turns something which is like an aversion to going out into the world an aversion to making friends or putting yourself in uncomfortable social situations it turns that from something which is a flaw to something which is a virtue and you begin to get Prestige for actually not doing that thing and so many people there's this idea called the inner Citadel by isai bin and it basically says that if you can't get what you want you must teach yourself to want what you can get um so you injure your leg in battle and if you try and fix it but it doesn't work you chop the leg off and announce that the desire for legs is misguided and must be subdued so so many people reverse engineer a life that puts them on a pedestal the same thing as how many people that are polyamorous here in Austin uh that have tried to make a um a monogamous relationship work a couple of times got their hearts broken and then going oh well this is because we're not designed to be that way so people Retreat into their inner citadels all the time and uh I think monk mode in in many ways is that and you're right the goal of Monk mode is to be better as a human so the retreat from distraction from social life or and I've done I did a thousand days sober 500 days without caffeine 1500 sessions of medit like I did the things right very very intensively but that was with the goal of then reintegrating and the strange thing is that self-improvement can become this sort of recursive cycle where you never actually bother to reintegrate and you go oh i' I've just created myself a new prison now that I just feel a bit more comfortable in well people do that with all kinds of things like with money when I was broke I was like oh yeah money is not going to change your life you know money doesn't make you happier there's a stu that said that 70k a year it's like no but you just don't have it this is what so many guys in the Internet space will be saying about beautiful women like oh yeah all the all the beautiful women they're all brain dead they're all shallow they're all no no no bro you don't get laid that's why you're saying this when when you start to achieve the thing that you haed on you realize oh it's actually pretty cool like making money is really fun it's actually super valuable it's it's helpful for your family but when you didn't have it it's so easy to criticize it because you don't have it and it's more of an insecurity it's like the the guy who doesn't currently go to the gym says to the bodybuilders like oh yeah you guys are just gay it's like well bro you wish you look like me let's be honest yeah it's uh I had a friend who was training for a bodybuilding competition uh that I lived with and he was like a bit of an introverted guy and he through his prep went hardcore monk mode but obviously all dedicated toward the bodybuilding competition and then it finished but the habits didn't finish he stayed in the same sort of very retreated very insular kind of life and I thought oh that's sad that's that's someone who has found a way to make something that is a weakness become a a noble virtue and now he's like attached his sense of self-worth to it and he's probably very nervous to then go back out into the world and be like Oh I'm how do I even do the social thing I kind of haven't done it for a while Everything feels a little bit awkward and you just get into habits as well it's not even that conscious in that front brain it's like well I just go to bed at 9:00 like 9:00 is my bedtime or whatever it's so easy for the guys who are watching me to say sleep deprivation is really bad and I have the bedtime and I stick to it every night there's a party I'm not going to go guys and everyone will be like oh yeah Legend oh Sigma male and you know people will validate him for that but they don't realize that if that kid goes to the party he would have learned more in that 5H hour space than him reading 10 books on social skills for the guy who who's saying oh yeah women aren't worth the destruction bro he'll have more personal development from going on a date with a girl and be even if it doesn't go well let's say even if he gets rejected than if he just stays at home and then does another gym session which you know he's already in the comfort zone for so people don't want to be pushed out of their comfort zone and it's really easy to criticize the thing rather than to just admit oh yeah I'm a little bit scared of it going wrong when you're doing personal development and it's either Guided by yourself or it's in a very controlled environment which is basically what monk mode or any kind of social Retreat is you make probably quite consistent progress but it's very linear you never have any huge Black Swan events but doing things with other people like if you go on a night out and you get drunk in Manchester and lose your keys and have a fight with your friend that's a big Black Swan event you find out a lot about yourself and about how you deal with pressure and you maybe you get into a fight or maybe somebody tries to to like rob you or you you get into a relationship with somebody and then you have to go through a breakup or you get jealous or you have to learn about how to integrate emotions all of these things are huge huge step changes in terms of your learning experience and you're right like it's people who think that all of life's uh goals can be achieved from the comfort of your desk seat and it's not that's that's the training ground the actual competition flaw is out there in the world I've read a lot of books on social skills relationships none of that will compare to the one night out in Manchester where I ended up stumbling across my old best friend who I used to live with and I had backstabbed this guy like I fully fu [ __ ] ruined his life me and him fell out we had arguments I hated his girlfriend it was like this we had we were close to fighting each other and I remember before I left the apartment we lived in I sent an email to his mother basically like writing on him that he had already dropped out of University that he was if being a criminal he was starting fights he was this he was this like I was just being you know I was like a [ __ ] basically 21 years old and I stumbled across him one night and and it's awkward at first but we're in the smoking area and he comes up to speak to me and this is like this this cool black guy I always looked up to him he's Charming as [ __ ] he's so much cooler than me and he bursts into tears and he's loud like even in front of girls like I was you know holding the composure thinking wait that's not cool you're not supposed to do that right and he let it all out and he said like I saw you as my brother you were like a brother to me I can't believe you did that that was completely off limits you shouldn't have done this he he didn't hurt me but he grabbed it like grabbed my shirt like this he expressed anger and it was it was so interesting cuz in my mind I was thinking like wait you're not supposed to act like that you know like as you know like alpha males don't do this 5 minutes later I could see that he had actually moved on from the situation he expressed everything he needed to express and he moved on yeah I kept it in my mind for another still talking about it yeah I'm still talking about it right now yeah talk to me about this is one of my big arcs at the moment talk to me about what you think the role of emotions and integrating them and using them are for young guys yeah there's a really good debate about this actually I feel like in the modern times men are being pushed to be far more liberal and feminine and expressive of their emotions in ways that isn't actually beneficial for them like for example they say like open up about your emotions to your woman and that's problematic because if you have a a man who then becomes emotional that's deeply unattractive and it's not valuable to society to have a man who basically can't control his aggression his sadness his anger his disgust but what I've learned from the spiritual teachers that have studied and from like spiritual friends is that we still need to honor the emotion that we currently feel so we need to be able to say and and be aware that I am feeling angry but then find the the discipline to not need to express that in violent ways so we can feel anger like I remember a breath workk teacher actually said this to me he said when you feel anger let let yourself like breathe the the energy and let yourself honor it and actually think to yourself like oh I'm angry I'm pissed I'm this I'm this and when he said that to me I actually remembered my my friend I was just talking about that you're able to say it and even convey it but not be violent with it because the men who are violent are the ones who either have expressed it immediately in a violent way because they had no control of themselves basically they were emotional or The Men Who bottled it up for so long and then it exploded as well so it's like you can go either way you can just be the the cute guy who wears the skirt and who's just you know expressing every emotion and you're you're listening to the modern day advice that they're telling men which then is isn't going to get you to where you want in a happy polarized relationship or you can be way more of the the traditional man which then also has the risk of you exploding and so I think somewhere in the middle where you can honor the emotion you can be aware of it and think to yourself yeah I am angry right now and then unleash that into something that you know with a A logical mind is safe to do so so you take that anger into the MMA gym and you go into the the heavy bag and you unleash it there for a few rounds and it's like you're too tired to even care about the situation afterwards yeah it's interesting I had a last person that was satting that seat with me was Matthew hussy it's probably the number one dating coach on the planet and he's on a huge Arc at the moment big change from where he was 10 years ago even from when I first met him and uh he's huge into being as open as possible with your partner but his openness comes from a place of extreme power to be honest because what he will say is exactly what you mentioned it's like hey uh that thing that happened earlier on this is how it made me feel that he's not trapped and owned by the emotion but he's helping his partner to regulate along with him and I'm not sure whether an emotional man is an unattractive man I think a needy man is an unattractive man I don't think that emotions obviously the should you open up about your vulnerability to your partner thing has being done to death on the internet but to me it doesn't seem any more powerful or masculine to feel things and then pretend that you don't feel them like that to me isn't control control is integrating them control is going because what else is going to happen let's say that your chick does something that maybe is a little bit Petty that you shouldn't find UNC or you feel there's some shame and some guilt which is also an emotion there's some shame and some guilt about the fact that um she uh stays late on an evening time and you know that her boss fancies her and you go hey look I I just I want I feel like every evening when you stay with your boss I always feel a little bit UNC comfortable I I wish I didn't and I don't really know how to say this but I I'm sort of working through this and I don't want to get ratty with you I don't want to say something to you that's going to that's going to piss you off but I I just wanted to put that out there I felt like it was important for me to like that level of truthfulness absolutely can turn some girls off you do not want to be in a relationship with those girls like it is on them they are the problem if they can't accept you being open honest truthful direct like that to me for a guy to overcome the shame and the guilt and the fear and the concern of saying that that says a lot more about a man's bravery to face emotions and then to put them out into the world remembering what we were saying before not just the monk mode equivalent of emotions which is the heavy bag but the integrated version of emotions which is doing them in unison with somebody else because the alternative is that you're just going to continue to like eat this [ __ ] the this scenario this situation that keeps on going it's like hey I would really love it if when I came through the door you gave me a kiss on the cheek and asked how my day was it makes me feel like it makes me feel like a king and it's amazing they want you to be happy if you're in a relationship with someone that's antagonistic and I think this is one of the problems with so much relationship advice both people are trying to play this transactional game where neither of them wants to get hurt so neither of them wants to invest so neither of them actually cares about making the other person better and neither of them wants to make the other person feel happy it's like well okay that's what maybe many relationships are but that's not what I want and that's not what anyone that I know that's an integrated man wants what they actually want is someone who says I want to do everything that I can to make you feel better and I want you to do everything that you can to make me feel better because that's what a partnership is like that's how a team Works what did Mark Manson say in in uh models that vulnerability is one of the most important traits and it's being able to convey what you actually feel like authenticity you know I can say the the most intensive development period I've had in a relationship is when I started to convey that with my anxieties of like ah I'm anxious that you're doing this I'm anxious that you might be cheating have you ever cheated cuz previously when I had tried to convey that or I had those thoughts and I kept it inside it was toxic for the relationship and like he said it's you don't want to be bottling that up till in some point it either comes out in a bad way or even in just the monk mode way where it's just on the heavy bag you're actually so right there because when I've conveyed it to the other person I actually had the biggest moments of transformation with like anxieties that I had from childhood I don't know I was like loved inconsistently or something and that's it was triggering that and I was able to really find a lot about myself and the most important thing is it actually is a great assessment to see if whether you and your woman are actually compatible because if you're able to tell okay this is how I feel about this situation if she's got the ick from that then you're clearly not compatible you're not a match yeah because you're going to continue to feel anxious about these things and there's two choices lie to her or break up MH right so yeah I think a lot of incompatible relationships would be saved much more quickly if people were more open and honest about how they felt like yes do you need to titrate the dose like you don't need to tell them about your chronic flatulence and athletes foot on the first day but you know just as things come up when the time is right and I get it you know there's these videos of like I asked him to be open and emotional and honest and then he did it and then immediately I dumped because I don't fancy it's like hey darling you suck like you suck as a partner and no one wants you so feel free to advertise this to the world and that guy is now liberated to go and find someone who is emotionally mature who is going to be able to support him in the right way or maybe they're just not the right match maybe she wants to be with the old school like Boomer parent guy like you know just drinks his problems away or hits them you know punches a couple of holes in walls and maybe she feels like that's love but I think for a lot of the people that'll be listening to this both guys and girls they'll want something that's more emotionally integrated something that's more that's more truthful and and giving yourself the opportunity to grow from that relationship and in the relationship it's like wow as opposed to just being two people doing personal development that get to cuddle and have sex every so often you know it depends what you're optimizing for I think like with with the red pill space it's all about optimizing just for the just for sex basically and if you're just going for that and you want the highest probability to find a damaged girl who wants to have casual sex with you then you don't show her any emotion go with full alpha male stoic mode you're most likely going to get laid at that point but if you're trying to actually optimize for a long-term relationship where you get to co-regulate with each other and you got this cute like long-term compatible relationship of someone you actually want to be next to you're going to have to admit like these vulnerabilities you're going to have to look to her and say like I feel good when you do this I feel bad because it's like why why the [ __ ] wouldn't you like when she touches you and it's like that feels nice cuz your love language is touch tell her bro otherwise she's not going to keep doing it yeah train them train them treat both men and women treat your treat your partner like they're a particularly slow golden retriever you know what I mean like that's the way to train them bring out an em speaking of the uh speaking of the red pillar though Dan Bilzerian now monogamous I messaged him the other week yep massively monogamous had this big uh big video that went viral I messaged him about it and he was like yeah man like you know I'm it's weird but I'm kind of really enjoying it it sort of sex is better and and I feel happier and uh Tate said like is it not that [ __ ] all of these women is gay like do you not think it's gay dude like just you know [ __ ] all of these different women so I can't tell from from Tate's perspective I can't tell whether that's like kind of the new Optics thing because I do think like a lot of what's going on is kind of Optics as opposed to like genuine this is where I'm at with my life and this is how I'm moving I I don't know how Optics so the way that he's positioning himself I don't know how much of what he saying is like this is actually a personal transformation that I'm going through and this is something that sounds cool on the internet right it's such it's the WWE character thing like I'm I'm I feel pretty confident that Dan B areion actually thinks the things that he thinks even if they're wrong and even if he's maybe he might be uh like doing denialism or he's you know self deceptive or whatever um I think he believes what he's saying I'm not sure that the same is true of but my point being there are lots of former red pill people that are now talking about the virtues of marriage and or of long-term relationships uh and then there's still a good Fe that not yeah who's I mean this is from the start of the red pill I'm trying to think back of the original guys who were like rou he was like one of the first major pickup artists then he disappeared Christian and marri Neil stra living here in Austin Rolo tomasi's married um Tu Max yeah Tucker Max the guy that created the frati genre I hope of beer in hell he wrote like three New York Times bestselling books about having sex with girls and throwing up on the floor in nightclubs now five kids and a ranch out in Bastrop Texas a million rounds of ammunition and he's just gone like full sort of Doomer optimism prepper mode yeah did did five years of daily Psychotherapy five years of daily Psychotherapy how many content creators on the internet would call that gay yeah like hang going to say I'm pretty sure Tu Max has been through more chicks than you do so like pick and this is one of the things it's so funny I had this conversation with uh hosi I know you just got back from Vegas congratulations winning the school games thank you um uh I had this conversation with him when you get into kind of a weird unnecessary competitive streak with somebody maybe it's on the internet maybe it's someone that's one of your friends or whatever there is a a masculine urge to want to try and beat them at a game that they can about even if you don't care about it but you know that you can beat them at it and you know it's like the whole I I'm stronger than you I'm richer than you because you know that that's a thing that they care about or I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to get really big and because he cares about being big and if I can get bigger than him then that will make him feel lesser obviously you've immediately lost before you've even started because they made you change the game that you were playing but I do often think with like the toax thing how many people think that that's that's like a suboptimal existence mean while he knocks fence posts in retired off the back of a huge company and just gets to chill out and homeschool his kids like who's managed to reach success more the person that's still playing the game that's still comparing themselves on the Internet or the dude that doesn't even know that it's happening it's interesting that I see this bridge between the red pill guys where they start off and they're basically always the Little Nerd loser Virgin childhood TR Dr learn the skills to pick up girls red pill go out nighttime Day game basically life your heads on a swivel finding the closest girl you can go cold approach to and and you know the highest probability lines and the peacocking colors and everything and then it's like you enjoy that you indulge and you get to the point where you start becoming sick of it and that that's when the fantasies of like monogamy that's when the fantasies of a good girl comes in cuz um myON said this he said now that he understands girls he can't respect them and I think there's truth in that but I think it's just slightly misguided it's that it feels like many of us men have been sold a lie of what women are and I really do think that when you do go through the red pill Arc you you understand they're not the princesses that they were made out to be you see like the the dark feminine energy you see how quickly she'll certain girls will get into bed with you you'll see how certain girls will speak about their boyfriend and husbands and I think some men need to go through that or like you know men who are born into amazing households with no trauma they get a girlfri from and they're 16 years old get married okay sweet awesome but there's guys who like there's guys who were born [ __ ] up right there's guys who had the dad in and out of the house alcoholic cheating mothers cheating this this this this and if it feels like I don't know you have an incessant need for the intimacy of more than of of what more than one woman could ever give you because of the inconsistent love that you receive from your mother I agree I that to me is there's two fixes right you can either continue to satiate an insatiable hunger or you can stop being so hungry and stopping being so hungry is self-work therapy if you need it the meditation the breath work the spending time actually unpicking and unpacking those patterns why is it that I don't seem to ever feel validated by the world no matter how much I achieve why is it that I never feel comfortable or safe and secure with a part with one partner so I need to go and see five or 10 I need to be dating as many as possible at once like what is it about me that needs that void filling inside of me there's two ways you can do it you can continue to feed the beast or you can stop the beast from being so hungry were you red pilled at one point H I don't even know what that means um I have never identified with that group I've never been a part of the manosphere I know Evey I'm pretty sure I'm the only person from the manosphere that's actually spoken at a symposium for like human behavior and evolution which I did last year um I understand the Dynamics I disagree with most of the methods even if most of the diagnoses are correct it's like it's the classic thing of like the diagnosis is is in many ways accurate and the uh prescription is [ __ ] atrocious so it is what it is like it's it's horses fores I think a lot of the time what people are doing is just confirming their biases you know if you're someone that's an avoidant person that needs an awful lot of validation you will find a life philosophy that allows you to feel Noble in your same as the monk mode thing it's the guy it's the introvert that just wants to retreat into spending his time in the house oh but this is a virtue now I have Prestige because of the thing that I already was it's just like an amped up version of that it's like hey if you just need endless amounts of validation from the world well only chasing [ __ ] and money and Status that's a really good way to make the thing that you already were the thing that everyone is supposed to want to be does that make sense what okay you're saying that the prescription of the red pill is bad what would your prescription be for a 16-year-old right now he kind of wants to date but he's heard that women aren't worth the distraction and that there's degeneracy everywhere but then he wants to have sex and he doesn't want to watch porn and he also would like to find a good girl but he doesn't want to be distracted what would you say to him I would say to do what feels right I don't think that at the age of 16 you need to be overthinking the way that you're going with your life plan and it comes back to what you said at the beginning which is you will learn so much more by just experimenting with things anytime that I get my audience is older than yours but anytime that I get a message from someone in their teens you like 13y olds 14y olds that send questions in for the q&as that we do like bro just exist like you're already evidently very self-reflective you're introspective you're doing the rumination thing you're going to assess your behavior you're going to reflect on the things that you did so for me I just accumulate as many experiences as possible I wouldn't do it forever so I'd be like okay well I'm going to try dating I'm going to see what this is like and maybe I'm going to try monk mode I'm going to play around with that I'm going to be super social for a while maybe I'm going to get into the gym like what do I like you don't know what you like I'm still find I'm 36 and I'm still finding out things about myself that I like about how I like to regulate about what I want to spend my time doing about what the perfect day looks like for me and I've been playing with this for a decade so just live life and find through experimentation I think trying to have too much certainly are there things that are better for you to do than others yes should you have a physical practice yes should you be trying to weak clean yes should you avoid uh getting drunk five nights a week yes but does that mean that you shouldn't ever drink does that mean that you shouldn't ever miss a training session one of the things that you do which I do as well is you care a lot about your routine and about getting dialed you wouldn't come and do a podcast with me in London because it would drop your HRV too low um but there is a Peril of over optimization because you then become a prisoner of all of that stuff and if you get yourself to the stage where the things that are supposed to serve you now own you what life are you living like who's in charge here you or your whoop strap like is your whoop strap there to tell you how life is going on or to tell you how to live life I think you need to get it the right way around there's a quote I've been saying to my students recently all of the greatest men were sleep deprived so here here we are okay hubman said I've got to get sunlight in the morning then don't get blue like I'm wearing the orange glasses and stuff like a nerd oh the whoop strap is red so I'll take the day off training and stuff there is no great man in history who had perfect sleep all the time not even not even like great sleep all the time most of them I am sure would have been deeply sleep deprived they had sleepless nights they had they were awoken at 2 a.m. because that's just the things that you need to do to sometimes get to the the top level in a chaotic world and we love these routines and this isn't like people have taken this wrong way and said like oh but Hamza said sleep sleep's like bad for you or something no no no sleep's amazing for you of course it is but obsessing over it is not what the greatest people do they have a great routine which allows them to usually get pretty good sleep most days of the week but if they miss a day they don't view it as like this oh this horrible thing that's happened rather they're actually I can imagine they actually enjoyed it like there's times where I'll wake up at 1:00 a.m. and I'll randomly be full of energy and instead of being upset thinking oh but my aura stats going to be all [ __ ] up now I'll just get up and work for like hour I end up like having this weirdly peaceful time where you know everyone's asleep straight when you try and work at 1: in the morning yeah it's so nice and you do that for like an hour or something just me shouting in my in my house with a bathrob on waking everyone up let's get another video out um but dude I I I think that you're really right I think that uh looking at how you become a prisoner of uh what you want to optimize is so dangerous and it it speaks to me of like massive fragility it's like oh you think that your Constitution balances on such a knife edge that one bad night of sleep that you can't even survive that oh you think that going out and drinking once is going to be the beginning of the downfall of your thing this is coming from the guy that did a thousand days sober but I periodized it and then after that I reintegrated and I did other like it it is all about chunking things I think into manageable blocks how many guys have you got that are are part of your community thing now this morning we have 1,865 1,865 what are the young guys in your community struggling with a lot at the moment because we hear stories of what is it that j z and j a what are the problems that they're finding but a lot of this is coming from self-reports in uh survey data and the kind of surveys that are going be asked they going to be things to do with um the beliefs around the LGBT movement or whether they support abortion or whether they're skewing to the left or to the right or whether they're dating or whether they're not and why they're not but you have like ethnographic qualitative data it's the conversations that you see between people when they've kind of got their gloves off a little bit what are you seeing what are young guys worried about what are the problems they're encountering what are they fearful of at the moment it's very difficult for them to find anyone else like them only with the newest content creators and communities are they finding like-minded people and it still isn't really scratching the itch so for example in in Vegas I just did a little meet up with some of my community members and 15 guys randomly turn up I I didn't even give much notice but they turn up and the youngest guy there was 13 years old he came with his father they drove her 30 hours to get there they came from like Ohio and I and I only gave the notice about 30 hours before we met as well so they literally saw the post got in the car and drove to come see me and he was he was a young killer 13 years old only eats red meat we were all racing each other he was faster than all of us as well which was like [ __ ] absurd he we literally I raced him as well and I wasn't going to go easy on him and he still T hise I had like triple his body weight which is a bit unfair and he um he said as well it's like I think he's getting homeschooled now but he mentioned when he was in school he's not going to fit in with anyone he tried to get a few friends on self-improvement and he said like you know they they kind of got it and watched a few of my videos but they didn't take it seriously and they were never going to meditate it's just at least with my community the problem is they don't find other people who are on self-improvement who aren't being degenerate who are going to the gym meditating journaling eating clean not touching Plastics and stuff it's it's quite like a rare group of people that I've brought together who normally we wouldn't have ever been able to find each other so at least with my community the biggest thing is finding like-minded people but then in just in general let's say the average guy who maybe doesn't watch my videos but who maybe has just discovered them recently then it's the the stereotypical problems that you already know it's like they're watching porn they're in video games they they feel like horrible they're not getting girls I looked at uh I think you posted a poll a couple of days ago on YouTube Community it seemed like being awkward and cringe worrying what people think about me insecurities and the way that I look those are the things I took away from that yeah looks maxing is very popular these days what is Lux maxing it's kind of like you get onto a protocol to look like cuter as a guy and so I have a free community we have like a 100,000 people in there I had to make a post and literally saying like guys I'm not going to lie this is kind of gay these kids are joining and literally we had about a 100 posts a day of guys posting selfies and literally asking like do I look cute how could I make my hair look cuter and I was thinking like do you guys watch my videos I'm there in an angry bathroom buz cut head and I'm like shouting about yeah like you know we've got to be strong guys you know testosterone and all these guys are coming in like how should I make my eyebrows like this or like this should I do my hair like this they really care right now because like young men are realizing just how important the physical appearance is in the modern dating scene where it's all judged on Tinder and Instagram and so there's a huge level of of I don't know need or pain right now for the young guys who who basically aren't fitting in with the the tick tock boy stereotype that seems to be like The Meta of Attraction you said cute why' you say cute not better looking that's so what I found is the youngest guys are optimizing for like teenage girl Gaye which is the Tik Tok boy meta once you get to like 21 22 years old like yeah you all agree with this it's like women aren't attracted to the cute looking Tik Tok boy with the fluffy hair and stuff any woman who's above like 22 23 years old isn't looking for a guy like that but when most of these kids who follow me are 13 14 15 years old they're on Instagram or SnapChat or Tik Tok and they see the the the girls in their classroom who are posting about those Tik Tok boys so it seems to be sham it's I wouldn't know but he's the guy from Dune like the lead actor from Dune he's like quite a quite a feminine guy like a skinnier sort of dude like hair like yeah big floppy hair curly stuff all right so young guy comes to you says I want to Lux Max what do you tell him if we want him to get as much attraction from girls as possible and he's a teenager which is important to mention then the five steps number one most importantly is muscle mass if you can build up the first like Noob gains in the gym the 10B it's the easiest time you'll ever build muscle is the first year so rinse that out there's no excuse why any man should not have activated his newb gains in the gym but along with that is then his body fat percentage especially the younger you are especially for the guys who are teenagers being closer to like 10% body fat having the the jawline like you've got very good like jawline cheekbones and stuff but what seems to be the meta for these young guys is that Tik Tock boy look and all of them you're not going to see a Tik Tok boy who's got like a like skinny skinny fat Indian FY a n bread FY it's all it's all going to be like you know like lean lean Skater Boy kind of jawline cheekbone so low body fat percentage 10% ideally the hair if you're a teenager you go with the Tik Tock boy hair it's like the fluffy like I don't know what they call it like the broccoli style looking hair that like very attractive to like 14 15 16 year old girls and then the style the kind of clothing you wear again it's like copy the Tik Tok boys they're always wearing like um boot C cut pants which are up to the belly button it's like a white vest and like you know the hair and then the little jacket or something it's like the cute fashionable style and then also the the huge one which makes it very easy to attract girls these days is followers social media presence pre-election this is for like let's say guys who are teenagers first of all then if we we it's similar but once you get to about 21 years old the game changes if you're not trying to date like underage girls and you're trying to date like women they're not attracted to some of these things women who are 22 23 years old are not attracted to Tik Tok boy hair they're attracted to more just of the masculine style especially basically how polarity works is the more masculine you are the more feminine of the women you will attract so if you want to date a feminine woman who for example is more nurturing and you have you'll have this sexual polarity with where you feel like more of a strong traditional masculine man next to she's going to be attracted to more of the the dimorphic traditionally masculine traits of shorter hair which shows off like your skull shape for example a thicker neck you still want good things like for example muscle mass but you can actually have way more muscle mass now when you're younger you want like you know a little bit of a lean physique whatever now you're talking 200 lb and they'll like the more feminine women might still want you to be a little bit bigger for for dating women you don't need to be anywhere near as lean and in fact it's kind of nicer if your body fat percentage is a little bit bigger because then you just the size of you is bigger what I'd say is in general if you want to be attractive to older not older but like women women 21 22 25 years old think about just being more of a primal caveman especially if you want to go for more of the feminine girl so for example if you if you wanted some of the most feminine girls ever you would want to look like a caveman daghestanian cauliflower ear type of guy because that's probably as as masculine as you can look in the modern day you still want the follow the intellectual Chad like archetype that you've got is probably what I would say is the meta where it's like you're a very attractive handsome guy but you're not like the stereotypical d dumb Chad who's just attractive but he's brain dead so it's like when you can show off your intellect in like a podcast you basically got if I had to rate right now you have the 10 out of 10 funnel of attracting women right now like I wonder what your DMs are like I'm sure that there's a lot of women Fu Chaos and they're like there's women I can I can imagine right they'll say like oh yeah you know your podcast is like there's I know it's supposed to be for guys and stuff but I'm a girl and I like it too like yeah the uh when I first started the podcast six years ago my friends used to call it groundwork at scale uh so um yeah it it's one of the weirdest things in the world like in terms of an arc you know as a guy who early 20s didn't didn't really feel very confident didn't really know his position there wasn't the kind of advice and content online that we have access to now so there wasn't the same kind of guidance and I remember thinking like a decade ago or whatever like it would be so amazing to be a gym shark athlete like could you imagine if I was legit because then that would be that's validation that means that everything's cool and that that would be good it would be so great to get a Blue Tick it would be so great to like have the this thing to have the that thing all of those things are apparently available if you just have sufficiently weird conversations on the internet like the easiest route to becoming a gym shark athlete is to not actually care about the way you look and just have interesting conversations the easiest route to getting the Blue Tick thing all of that but I I think fundamentally what that is is what is your competitive Advantage because of your predisposition the thing that you like to do and the capacity that you have and you just lean into that because I'm not going to beat seum at like being jacked uh I actually probably can't beat him at the emotional thing either because he's like pretty he's pretty good at that but I can hold a pretty good conversation with him all right well that's my thing so I'll just lean into my thing and it's weird how Stuff ends up coming false Circle all of the dreams and goals and things that you wanted so long ago even if they feel kind of like Petty or juvenile now you there is usually a much quicker way to get the things that you want with far less resistance by swimming Downstream rather than Upstream you know what I mean if I wanted to set up like a wife funnel like a a a protocol to attracting wives I'd basically do the exact same thing that you're doing at first would have started with like Chad archetype I go to the gym I'm on love vland whatever I party and stuff but then I want to stop that rehabilitate yeah like oh yeah I'm mature now guys like but but know one all one big con it's a massive SC up the literally and and the 10 out of 10 topics I'd be choosing is like oh yeah you know the sexual Revolution is kind of crazy guys and you know you shouldn't be taking the pill like message me when you're on birth control honestly dude you are right you've actually called out my meta there which is [ __ ] terrifying um it's it's really strange I think the whole world of like especially for young guys at the moment is it young girls that have got it worse is it young guys that have got it worse I don't think it really matters I think that everyone is kind of lost and this obsession with Lux is so interesting to me because we definitely had it you know I'm I'm 36 now so I guess from your audience it's like two decades sounds like a long time and really was we weren't as obsessed with the way that we looked and uh for girls does it at least a bit of like nobility in vanity for them like you know you women that are in their 50s get cosmetic surgery in the 60s get cosmetic surgery they use makeup they wear heels they accentuate their body shape by wearing certain dresses like it's in kind of in the lines it's it's part of the lineage of your sex the same isn't quite true for men you know so uh there's an interesting stat that says male body dysmorphy is on track to overtake female body dysmorphy within the next two decades that doesn't surprise me at all with men becoming more and more feminine lower testosterone societal pressures to not be as masculine I'm not surprised that so many guys are getting into like am I looking cute or not cuz quite frankly bro when I was in high school and I'm sure it would have been even more so for your generation it was gay like we we saw Justin Bieber and the first thing that any of us said was he was gay because he had this kind of hair and it wasn't even us trying to be like homophobic and trying to make like a some kind of actual point it was just like guys don't do that but these days the younger generation are and I think it's because they're taking on a lot of like feminine traits like like I every now and then I'll I'll scroll on Instagram or something right the algorithm gets me too and there'll be like videos I'll see of guys who it should be a girl who's made it he's like looking into the camera and he's putting on like like cream or some [ __ ] then he's doing his eyebrows he's doing his beard and looking cute then he puts on hair product and he's like doing this and it's like he'll have loads of like validation girls were attracted to him guys were looking up to him but it's very interesting that that's like that's how a girl would be posting on Instagram right now I I guess that a lot of the stuff that guys typically do when they're young doesn't probably come across that well on Tik Tok like it's just you and your boys playing Xbox and your pants your pajamas like in your in your bedroom in your parents house like why is that that's not very exciting I wonder whether this is Downstream at least in part from me too and women being more concerned about aggressive dominant men especially when they're young and vulnerable maybe they haven't had sex or maybe they're starting to become sexually active and they're thinking actually if I'm with someone that seems like halfway like a best friend that's almost like a like an anime character cuddle toy equivalent of a boyfriend I wonder whether they feel more like sexually safe and secure that would be something that I could absolutely see and then with them so many people taking birth control they're more likely to be attracted to more of the which isad we had a kid in Don School actually who who said his girlfriend went off birth control and it's exactly what you had spoke about with L Perry that his um the sex life went to [ __ ] and she they watched your podcast I sent him the link and they said that that's basically what's happening right now yeah I had a friend who uh girl friend who swings both ways mostly lesbian but bisexual name and she'd Eat You Alive you don't want to you don't you don't want to step into that into that war game um and uh for one week out of every month she says that she's straight again like she's not on hormonal birth control but for the week that she's ovulating yeah so that that Chang in that Chang in hormones and this is one thing that I don't think guys really understand just how aggressively women get ragged around by that internal uh manipulation like guys are very hormonal in short bursts and it's not reliable like you can't track it based on the moon's position uh but we are not in the same way that women are and women I think for the most part are a lot more controlled by emotions they feel emot they tend to feel emotions more deeply both as a predisposition and then socially it's more acceptable so they don't Tamp them down as much like it would be like if we could swap places I would hate that like I've just got you know I'm looking on my calendar and I'm like oh yes I've got the podcast with ham on Tuesday and I've got the podcast with Owen mcmanis on Wednesday and oh [ __ ] like I start my period on Thursday and it's going to kill like I don't want that I wouldn't want that uh but yeah it's um it'll be interesting to see what the next few years have inore I wonder whether well actually that's a question if if it's such a case that young guys are optimizing for this super pretty boy Tik Tock look why did Andrew Tate resonate so much with that same age group cuz it's the guys who aren't optimizing for that so it's like let's say the counterculture yeah whatever percentage it is of the guys who are going for the sort of Fanboy look and they you know being proper cute wearing the dress and saying yeah this is positive masculinity whatever there's an equal or even greater number of guys who have just been silent and you know living the quiet lives of desperation where they feel like that's odd but they've not been able to speak up about it because they know that that's hate speech and so when you see take go viral he said basically the things that most men have wanted to say but haven't had the courage to do so so he's just attracted a a different audience compared to the likely fan boys out there yeah for every cultural movement in fact I can teach you to predict the future for every cultural movement that occurs if there hasn't yet been a count countercultural movement that's what comes next so 2020 you have covid everyone gets shut down no one can go outside 2021 Megan the stallion releases hot girl summer you didn't get to party last year So Glam up make the most of yourself go out with your girls have casual sex have a fun time 2022 you have feral girl summer like don't shave don't wash no one cares about what you think every single time for every like simp there's a sigma for every Alpha there's a and carniv every movement has to have it's like a thermodynamic law of culture for every movement there has to be a counter movement for every left there has to be a right and yeah it's uh I I think you could quite easily predict it if and I didn't know that that sort of underground more Fanboy Trend amongst team teenagers was happening but if that's part of the fashion it absolutely makes sense that t comes in and I presumably he doesn't know about it either but he just managed to like strike at the right time yeah one of the other things you've been talking about a lot recently is the life cycle of a Creator The Perils of audience capture stuff like that would have you reflected on that being a content creator who goes viral especially when you're young it's kind of like being the the hot guy in the gym so you'll you'll this okay look you're the hot guy in the gym let's say you're secretly taking steroids as well you go in there and you say hello to the first gym girl then the PT then the other guy the old guy you fist bump everyone you know you're you're feeling nice and relaxing this is your environment you're the king of this location you go over there's other guys there who are copying you there's girls who are looking at you there's guys who are asking if they can join your workout you're hot [ __ ] and you know it and it feels awesome that's like when you're popping off on the the algorithm that's what it feels like everyone wants a piece of you your DM are being flooded it's so cool that guy realizes that steroids are actually not that healthy for him and so he makes the hard decision to take a step back from that and he walks in he's still got resid like residual attention and the same people are still into him but it's kind of starts going down and down and down that girl's not really into him anymore that guy's not paying attention to him anymore those people are copying someone else now the the new gim Chad walks in the one who's still taking gear and that's when it really disrupts you your mental health [ __ ] this is someone else popping on the YouTube algorithm in your space that you were like like the king of so there's like you know other creators who are popping off in self-improvement or masculinity and this is when you get really fickle and emotional okay maybe I should do like that maybe I should start taking gear again and you do it for like two weeks and you're like back to doing that thing again but then you stop it again because you realize it's unhealthy and it's like your brain's all [ __ ] up thinking wait how do I get these people to like me I I I don't actually care about them liking me but like it'd be nice if they didn't like me again like you know remember was the last time I posted a video and it said one out of 10 on the YouTube algorithm it's like crack I need it again there's You' still got like your the ogs who are still watching in and and you know that's nice but it's not enough you're still the guy who for example you come in and there's five people watching you in the gym you're still the guy who posts and there's a 100,000 people who are watching you which is more than basically every Stadium out there but it's not enough because you used to be hot [ __ ] you used to be the guy who gets 500k 1 million used to be the guy who you know had a lot more subscribers and so it it's it can drive a person insane getting that the Peaks and troughs of the content game and I'm in the the trough from last year I basically took a massive step back from YouTube I posted every single day without fail for maybe about a year and a half which barely any of the creators have ever done that daily upload streak that I did and my videos had animation like custom animation people don't realize that it was costing about $1,000 per day to put one of those videos out there and my business was suffering I was literally losing money every month making these videos but I thought it was like a very purposeful thing to send out this message to the young guys of self-improvements and in the end end of 2022 I decided that I just wanted to stop the entire thing I let go of my team I stopped posting to YouTube I started posting like maybe once every few weeks or once a month or so and I put all of my focus into Adonis school which is like my online community that's like kind of like where I bring guys in and we help them with teachers and support and they get advice from me every single day and I put so much effort into that that I just didn't really have the bandwidth to also grow YouTube at the same time even though I wanted to so I became that fickle Entre entrepreneur or the fickle YouTuber who like I'd start posting again daily for a few weeks but then I'd lose the bandwidth because my priority is the you know the guys who are paying the money so I'd go and stop it again then it's like you know I look like I'm I'm like I don't know fickle emotional I'm on and off I'm bipolar as [ __ ] like ADHD where I'll go hard on YouTube again for a little while then I'll drop off again then I'll go hard again then I'll drop off again and I don't really have the regrets because I've been able to build like a wonderful product I just won a massive competition I met Alex hosi some ovens but it it does [ __ ] with your head when you're not at the the top of your space anymore well I think definitely one thing to take away from that is the most popular job that young kids want that are in school primary primary school kids is they want to be YouTuber or content creator influencer of some kind it's like well that right there is what that's if it goes right that's what your future has in store that's that's the best that you have to hope for unless you you absolutely thread the needle and and then you know hit the top and then just keep going uh so yeah I think everybody has this in microcosm it doesn't matter whether you're a content creator or someone that works a normal job you get a degree of selfworth from the content that you put out on the internet even if it's just your photos your family photos from the weekend or whatever like you you Outsource your sense of selfworth to the crowd everyone knows kind of what you've gone through everyone's had one post or one video that's that's kind of popped off on Instagram or Tik Tok or whatever they're like oh yeah that was maybe maybe content creation is my I am kind of funny and you realize you realize how quickly audience capture comes in and you know if you're going to rise with other people's uh inflations you're going to fall when you're on the other side of it too you kind of use this analogy about taking steroids and then stopping because you realize that they're not good for you it seems to me like you were trying to draw some sort of analogy that you like transcended some more toxic type of content that you were producing previously yeah what what was that what was the message that you disagree with your previous version of yourself about the videos that got me viral where one heavily edited and so like high dopamine videos which when I look at it like you know I'm supposed to be helping these guys live a better life and I was making the kind of videos that are like Sapp in their dopamine by I had like hit markers and [ __ ] come up I had you know explosions green screen I had all these like extra animations effects everything and so I felt like I was almost making the the situation with like people's poor attention spans even worse and so that was I just to interject there I don't think that you necessarily were I there's a an idea in internet marketing that you'll be aware of which is uh sell people what they want teach them what they need and like you can come for whatever you think you're going to get like because you are the at the end of the day you are competing with the best on the planet at limic hijack right because if they don't watch you they are watching Mr Beast and Mr Beast is going to continue to play that limic hijack game he's going to have the escalating ever increasing set of stakes and it's going to be tensions it's going to be explosions and his are actually real and I think I I would be I I I would spend some time factchecking just how true that was for yourself uh it's a good story uh and I don't disagree that like fully pushing the dopamine button isn't a fantastic idea but if that's 7 minutes or 10 minutes that someone spent learning about themselves or about meditation or that's the thin end of the wedge that then gets them into some more meaningful stuff I don't think that that's a disservice like we do it very differently but we often use inflammatory titles or thumbnails we very rarely do both but it's like come for the clickbait stay for the insights like um why are 7 million American men unemployed question mark these men are not working it's a really in-depth conversation with the demographer that breaks down exactly why you have this massive unseen group of of guys that are unemployed not looking for work and not in education employment or training their needs phenomenal conversation but like why are 7 million American men not like unemployed it's it kind of a spice it's because of the why should we contribute to a world that doesn't care about blah blah blah blah blah I'm like I am I will push that button all [ __ ] day long because people are going to come and they're actually going to be like wow I walked away from this having a great understanding about this topic so just to interject that I wouldn't do the previous version of you so harshly with that and the same thing goes for everyone else as well like this is an Insight from Sam given you've just seen him I can teach you this one some ofans uh was kind of like one of the original personal development wealth influences he had this Penthouse apartment with a motorcycle in it I have no idea how he got it up there uh all he drank was lroy and Quest Bars um and he's like an OG of internet marketing he now owns school.com which you have a platform on and homos he just invested in um and I went to a retreat with him in August last year and I was asking him why he stopped uploading content and he said because I felt like I had to live up to him private the things that I was saying in public and that made the [ __ ] hairs on the back of my neck stand up I felt like I had to live up to in private the things that I was saying in public wow I really think that you need to be careful about the stories that you tell yourself about things uh you know you say a lot of stuff with conviction which I appreciate but you need to fact check your uncertainty as much as possible because if you're smart you can make yourself believe things right it's one of the problems of being clever one of the issues of being clever is that you can convince yourself of stuff that isn't true right that's really [ __ ] vicious so with looking back and going oh yeah the you know playing the dopamine game maybe that was like it was like cheap or was tacky or it was whatever it's like all right that that's a nice story but is it true like is that actually what was happening or is there a different angle that I can look at this from and uh I think that's that's worthwhile reflection yeah what you've just said about some has um I don't know it's made me have like an Insight I feel like I don't really even know who I am like I remember speaking to you once probably around two years ago where you mentioned it casually that I had gotten a great deal of of Fame and attention when I was still fairly young you I was 22 when I started YouTube I was 23 or 24 when it popped off and it was on a global level and I even caught myself a few days ago wondering like what do I want and what are my morals and values compared to what I know will get me views on YouTube and it's very hard to distinguish between between the two because it's also my business it's also my financial livelihood and my families and so it's it's a very difficult game to play when you've got the Judgment of thousands of people and you know a lot of people think that the the hardest part of being a content creator is the hate I always thought that that was the problem I'd have to deal with the hate is like it's fine just close your eyes just stop reading the comments it's fine honestly but it's actually the positive comments that that will steal your soul from you because you're getting the the positive reinforcement for a certain kind of behavior from potentially thousands or even tens of thousands of people and suddenly you start acting like that c type of person again and again and again when that might not have actually been your real value to in private the things that you saying you're looking around and everyone's patting you on the back it's like well I'm going to keep doing that thing right it's like every Pat is like a a dose of crack for me of course I'm going to keep doing the thing and it gets years later and you realize wait like I'm I'm not even an [ __ ] I don't know why I'm speaking like this on camera I'm actually a nice guy like yeah dude well let's unpack this a little bit I it's something that I wanted to go through with you obviously you've been through this sort of recent relationship breakup and there's definitely been a lot of pivots like hard pivots that I've watched you make over the last couple of years since we've known each other you sort of went to Dubai for a little while dropped that I was going to go and be a fighter in Thailand then you came back then I'm in my dad era I remember seeing a video from you that's like I'm in my dad era in up in the Scottish Highlands basically completely isolated you in this cheick and then that doesn't work and now I'm in this next next era like I'm in the money-making era and it seems to me like that's kind of the thing that's captured you a lot at the moment like money is the god basically more money is always going to make you better I've heard you say that uh desire is good because it creates dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction is good because it creates success but it only creates a very narrow band of success it creates success exclusively in terms of chasing resources it doesn't take uh give you peace or fulfillment or Solitude that you actually care about so one of the things that you know from a guy that's about 10 years older than you I just tread carefully with your convictions like I know that what your audience comes to you and we are often attracted to people that sound like they have certainty there's a guy called Peter Zion who's a global geopolitics expert that guy has the most [ __ ] conviction of anyone I've ever heard and people pray to him like he's a God because he just says things like this is what's going to happen with oil over the next 5 years this is where China is heading and what will occur by 2050 this is the state of the WF right now and this is where we can see that they're going like it there's no it seems like it's caveat it's like this is what's going to happen and people will be seduced by your amount of certainty it's like I this is what you need to do these are the steps that you have to take this is the way that it has to be but I think the problem you have there is as soon as you posit an ideal you can then compare yourself to that ideal and if this ends up being wrong like if actually the thing that you need to do is become a fighter because fighting men have always been Warriors and then 3 weeks later you're like I don't know fighting is not for me and then it's like I'm in my dad era like I can't wait to start ah relationship's gone like the more hard the stake is that you hit into the ground the more difficult it's going to be to pull back out so if I was to give you advice I think that like treading more carefully and being open and honest about hey look this is what I think feels best at the moment and this is what I'm experimenting with and treating things like a game and treating things like an experiment or a hypothesis to be tested as opposed to like a commandment to be proved um I think would make life a lot easier for you um and you know like I I want to see you do well uh I do but I also can see how you rile other people up I can see why there are comments on the internet That's like [ __ ] why would you take relationship advice from Hamza because it was so certain like if you'd gone in and you'd said dude I you know everything feels really great with the misses at the moment and I I I think that this is what's right but you know there's also this that's in the back of my mind I'm thinking about this and all the rest of it uh I feel like you're bringing people along for the journey but no one likes anything more than tearing down someone that was certain that got it wrong right you know it's the smartass in school it's the guy that has every single answer and then he puts his hand up says the wrong thing and you're like yeah all right mate like so yeah I think I think trading carefully would would do an awful lot to just dampen that blow and it would also allow you to be more open and honest about things because your living up to in private what you say in public would begin to converge more because you will have uncertainties you will be chronically uncertain all the time what is it that I need to do like how should I look to move forward so I don't know there's some insights I fear that if I don't speak with that certainty that my advice won't be taken as seriously that may be true that may be true you're not going to be a messiah who comes in and says well this water might become wine and we might turn this [ __ ] like one fish into 5,000 but H you know it might only be five uh I I don't disagree but like what are you here to do are you here to make popular lies or are you here to tell people on the internet to track the journey that you're going on like you've already got more money than you need than you ever thought that you were going to earn you're already more popular than you ever thought you were going to be so why not have the next period of the arc be okay I'm just going to tell the truth and especially if as it seems you know this is one of the Perils of young Fame if you haven't worked out who you are before you have incentives from people on the internet encouraging you to be somebody else you're never going to work out who you are for as long as you're owned by the people on the internet so ultimately what are you looking to like you're looking to bring this into land at some point I know that you want to have a family I know that you want to get into you know like a committed long-term relationship like do you want to continue to play this game where you're like I'm 36 you're you you become 36 and you're like I still don't really know who I am like do you really want to do that because I don't see what unless you begin to be prepared to be more open and honest online I don't see the moment at which you're able to separate yourself from the content it's it's so immersive you're spending all of your time in the in the forums and again like for the people that are listening this is you every single time that you compromise the things that you do or the things that you say in order to appease the people that are around you and the reason that I can talk about this is because this is what I did for like 15 years right when somebody asked me a question I would not think what do I think I would think what does Hamza want to hear me say so that I will become as high status and popular and well liked in his opinion and i' gotten to the top of the top of the professional party boy industry the love Island thing all the rest of it but you're never ending you're never going to connect with the things that you do or the successes that you have in your life because they're not real they're not you like you didn't do those things the Persona that you made did those things like the Persona doesn't receive love it receives praise you're all always existing one one layer away you're one degree separated from your accomplishments and the work that you do and even if someone says dude I [ __ ] love I love when they did the thing you know in the back of your mind yeah but that's not really me you don't see me yeah you see the role you see the [ __ ] Mystique you know like you do not need to see the real me you do not need to see the real me like that's what you're doing so it's like [ __ ] well played Russell Crow as Gladiator well played Chris Hemsworth as Thor no one's applauding them they're applauding the actor right they're applauding the actual character that they play and that's why people feel hollow in Victory or alone in a crowd because no one sees them they don't see what they're doing the most common compliments I've ever gotten is you've changed my life and it's from guys who tell me deep stories they were suicidal they were depressed they were anxious whatever and when I get that compliment it does nothing to me and I've always wondered why like I don't give a [ __ ] when someone says this to me it does zero things to me even any compliment I get with my work it often does nothing it only does something because I use it as a way to get status and recognition from other people you know it's a screenshot worthy of other people and I've always wondered why that is and I think you're you're so right because what they're really saying is like your persona helped me that cult leader Hamza helped me right it was that's not you yeah and it's you know I think for the guys that are a bit older at least from what I can see uh the message is great the positioning is great the Optics are great all of that stuff's great but you wouldn't be working this hard at trying to do personal development if you weren't like tearing yourself up inside trying to find out who you are so if that's the case like what are we doing here pretending that this is a [ __ ] Messiah like you don't have the answers and that's fine yes people will come to you and you're going to grow the platform from that but I think you have an opportunity over the next few years to really make a hard pivot into I can be uncertain about things I can be fearful I can be vulnerable I can be open I can be shared I can be ashamed I can be guilty I can be all of those things and I can still be proud of myself and I can still be successful and I think that you'll really connect with what it is that you do and this is again I'm saying this to you and you might as well be a mirror of what I'm saying to myself this great quote from Neil Gaiman that says the moment that you feel that just possibly you're walking down the street naked exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside showing too much of yourself that's the moment you may be starting to get it right and I think he's true I think that's the way it works wow well thank you for saying that it's my pleasure I I want it's I wanted to get this across to you uh today because I think that you have the opportunity to be a really good influence on the guys but crucifying yourself on like the cross of your own platform I don't know I think I don't think that's Noble like to do that to play some like massively not that you have been but like some slightly deceitful game for like a [ __ ] decade and then come out the other side of it and be like I don't I don't care about it like I didn't I didn't feel like it was me I didn't do that thing and again this is every single person who at the water cooler when asked a question of like hey how's like give me your opinion on this thing give me your opinion on the new Dune movie and you're like do you know what it is I actually really didn't like it like sci-fi kind of it's just not my thing if dune's popular at the moment right most people probably want to hear you say oh it's so amazing oh wasn't it amazing did you watch it in IMAX oh I watched it in IMX did you get Sour Patch Kids um people don't always want to hear what they want to hear so as a perfect example uh I had a text conversation with like someone that previously I would have not dared ever dared say anything that I thought might have upset them and they asked me about someone that had been on the show and I was like do you know what it is I actually really like him like I think that his takes are great and this is good and that's good and he was like I think he's a [ __ ] dick I'm like all right well like I I quite like this thing he did and that thing he did and I was like there is no world in history where that actually lowers this other person's perception of me that's just my opinion like people don't always want to hear what they want to hear they don't just want you to agree they just want to know what you think like they want to know hey what do when they say what did you think of the Dune movie idiots may want to just hear the thing that they can agree to but anyone that's even remotely insightful wants to go what did you actually [ __ ] think about that movie what do you actually think about that Creator what's your opinion actually on relationships not what do you think is an acceptable thing that will make you popular so that I can like you know like just playing that game that's not what they want to hear what they want to hear is what you actually [ __ ] think about something and that's actually unique like that's genuinely unique because it can't be copied but people can copy anything if it's just a formula it's like no well he's not following his instincts we can just [ __ ] reverse engineer this algorithm well it's very much like what we were saying with dating women and being vulnerable showing your authentic side it's like maybe I'm I'm still trying to learn the skill of showing that to to the world really well it's very hard and God [ __ ] hell man there's a young guy who's still I you're so much further ahead than I was uh and everybody in my audiences like all of the people that are in my audience are like you know there's always those jokes about um me at 14 this generation at 14 and me at 14 was like you know head to toe in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajamas playing Runescape or something and and like this this this generation's like you know partying in a home Hummer or something like that uh but it is kind of the same with personal development too like I look back oh my God these teenage kids that listen to this show or or you know any show on the internet you're like you you're asking yourself questions that it took me to like 28 to even know existed not to answer like to even know that that was a question you could ask to even think that truth is something that's important to even realize that vulnerability in emotions is something that you should integrate not be fearful of or not hide away like all of this [ __ ] you're like wow that's [ __ ] cool for my own personal benefit what are some questions you think I should ask myself if money and Status were no object what would I do if I was less afraid of other people's opinions what would I say what actually makes me happy does success make me happy what is my definition of success what is my definition of success if money was taken out of the equation what is my definition of success if money and followers were taken out of the equation like because that's what you're optimizing for what are the things that I'm hiding from myself what are the emotions that I'm unprepared to feel what are the things that I feel the most shame and guilt around like and again this is I could be drawing from my own [ __ ] Journal here um but I'll send you I'll send you some stuff uh that that that I've written that I think would be useful for you but those are some and most of them are you trying to unpack assumptions about yourself it's like hey I think I think this thing but I really don't know if I do and I really want to work out if that's right I think I think this thing let's stress test it a little bit you are so right I feel like there's um there's a transformation I'm going through which is to really find myself like these have been some very formative years like you know I I finished University I graduated I got into entrepreneurship but I've done uni psychology shock shock horror but i' I've been through this this these last few years with so much change but whilst it's felt like a lot of people have been watching my every step so it's like even the way I I sit or I walk has been crafted yeah it's been crafted for the image and it's like do I actually want to walk like with the alpha male body language do I actually want to be manspreading right now or is it just cuz I'll get like you know there'll be a comment of someone saying that my legs are too close together honestly well I mean dude I'm wearing I'm wearing [ __ ] Crocs and and shorts and I'm sure that there will be a number of people that have got a problem with it but hey guess what that's what I was wearing earlier on like that's what I wear on the house and I'm not absolutely not totally bereft of of being at the mercy of other people's opinions but one guy that you should maybe even do an interview with for Adonis School Dr Robert Glover No More Mr a nice guy Beyond outstanding phenomenal he has three the three uh constituent parts of an attractive man and he says a man who has a mission knows where he's going and is having fun while he's going there it's like hey that's [ __ ] easy to do like having fun while he is doing a thing like okay so he's fully embodying what it is that he's that he's spending his time doing like he's actually integrating that into himself I'm getting so many insights I wasn't expecting this to be like a yeah coaching session well again I maybe maybe it'll be interesting we we haven't done many episodes that where I've opened up but then I also don't speak to that many people that I'm as uh as close to as you uh and also not people that I'm invested in you know like I genuinely do want you to I do want you to become better but one of the you know one of the other challenges I think of of young guys is what does authenticity mean I've heard these things about what women want or the world and for women as well I'm sure you know maybe they uh it's kind of uncool for young women to become mothers or whatever at the moment it's like I just I I really just want a family and I'm terrified if I say that that people are going to think that I've like been conned by the patriarchy or I really want a career and I'm terrified that the right is going to call me some like wannabe Boss [ __ ] chick so people compromise the things that they want to do all the time and um yeah working out what you actually like what what are you and I think that this is the most the most legit criticism that I saw like post your breakup was that talking about trying to keep a like an alpha masculine facad like the James Bond style of talking going like it's it just doesn't work like it it's one of those beautiful things that may work in in uh like Theory but just can't work in practice because no one can keep up at for the rest of their life so the best thing that you can do is just be as authentic as possible with the person that you meet and if that involves you opening up about your weird love of manga or like the fact that you just every Sunday morning I [ __ ] love watching the rugby or like I've got this weird I I I I really love going bird watching whatever the thing is that's your thing like that is your competitive Advantage because there is a chick out there who would fall in love with someone they're like I do you know what it is I don't care about birds at all but the fact that you're an orthologist that you have something that you know where you're going and that you're having fun while you're doing it there is nothing that's more attractive to me than that and hosi says this about Leila who's like I'm sure that if she had the choice I wouldn't wear a vest and shorts to dinner every night but she is way more attracted to the fact that I do what I want to do and she can trust that that's what I want to do than me compromising and doing the thing that she thinks that she wants it's again like she doesn't want you to wear what she wants you to wear she wants you to wear what you want to wear you know what I mean see with the James Bond thing I I've seen the criticism as well maybe I I I probably didn't word the message as well as I should have it's not that you should be keeping up a facade with your woman but rather I think that your time with your woman and with people should you should present your best self to them I think too often in in relationships people get very complacent they start putting in effort for each other so what I what I meant was not to be faking some character some persona but rather like like my mistake was for example when I met my woman i' take her out on dates with we' see each other in this like polarized sexy time and you know I was putting in a lot of effort to be a gentleman 6 months later it's like we we spending loads of time together I'm lying there I've got like stains over my top I'm not even speaking to her in the romantic way that I used to I'm not opening the card let's go back to the beginning there how authentic was what you were doing in the beginning I think it is yeah like how authentic was that to you so why did you zero in on something that wasn't that later on if it was authentic why did it change it depends what you mean by authentic cuz look is it inauthentic for me to be wearing this jumper instead of like the bathrobe I was just I mean yeah like kind of you know I wasn't born in the jumper but if I came here in the bathroom you would have thought I was one of the crackheads on the street right so it's like what what is what's the definition of of authenticity you know it's like I burp I fart and stuff am I really it's like is it inauthentic if I don't don't do that in the podcast like in some ways yeah if I'm holding it yeah in some ways but it's like you know their standards a degree of decorum that's it and so it's like with with your woman I think it's worth putting in the extra effort to keep up that extra like that level of of effort and presentation because it's what they're attracted to and also it's like why wouldn't you use that as an opportunity for you to present your best self to the world okay so let's just run this to the extreme you're a guy or a girl that gets into a relationship and you just every if you're a chick every single night when he comes home your makeup's perfect the hair's done you've got the budoir like five piece underwear on underneath and you've cooked him dinner and you rub his shoulders like that's making an effort but it's also setting an unrealistic standard that you were going to have to live up to later in the relationship the same thing goes for the guy like I the door is held open and every single night there's a different playlist that I've curated that day based on my emotions that I feel and you can pick this however you want you can do the the the perfect cocktail of psychedelic drugs because you're like a new Agy couple or it's the rough sex because you're like a very sexually active couple or it's the gym training session you know pick the pathway that you have I think that the thing you need to do is just like try and be what try and start a relationship as you mean to continue it that doesn't mean that you can't put your best foot forward but people will always feel a change in like an acceleration or a deceleration and if you've set like she's she thinks that she's dating like this guy but when it actually comes to it I really quite like reading for like half an hour and I need my space but I've just obsessed her with physical affection for the last six weeks the first six weeks of our relationship and then when I actually want to do the thing that I want to do which is like hey I uh I I feel like I'm going to go in the other room and I just want to read I like I sometimes need a bit of space to myself like that's cool if that's part of you if that is well he wasn't doing that before that is a big fire alarm I'm really worried that you don't like me because I think you didn't used to do this before and now I'm really wor and then you have to say well actually that is me that that guy is me and what I did for the first six weeks is kind of some like I I sort of shaved that bit of me off so I understand what you mean it's a delicate balance between putting your best foot forward and wanting to you like again you don't need to talk about your athletes foot and your flatulence on the first date but also to be like hey look this is me [ __ ] Crocs and and and bad hair or whatever and all and and weird bird Obsession and and book reading and stuff and sometimes I need a little bit of space but like that's the person you want the person that loves that is the person you want to get into a relationship with because it's got the the greatest chance of longevity because you don't ever need to be anyone else you just need to be yourself and I think that that is what people are trying to optimize for they're trying to optimize for that like hyper authentic approach I think you just need both I think it's like what percentage I remember I actually journaled about this I said that the the problem it felt like in my relationship was that I went to like 98 99 100% of the sort of relaxed this is me yeah I leave [ __ ] stains in the toilet and it's like yeah sure and you know a lot of authenticity especially in a long-term relationship in the toilet authenticity stops at the at the bowl of the toilet but it's it's um you need the right percentage I skewed too far to the side this is why I like I I kind of revolting against the message you're giving right now because I went fully into the sort of natural this is just who I am you've got PTSD from being a lazy guy yeah that's it and and it's I've experienced what it's like showing that side to to your woman but also just to yourself and I don't like that side of myself I I like having your woman as an opportunity for you to dress up nice and put you know like just put on your your best foot so why not turn on like the Charming part of you more and you shouldn't 100% I'm not saying to fake it like I like being authentic and I'm not saying that you need to do that 24/7 but maybe the balance is somewhere like 70 30 50/50 when it starts getting 100% or 95 on each side let's say you're you're almost faking the Charming side of you yeah that's a problem or let's say if you're just being like too relaxed and the only thing you do now with your girl is like you tell her to bring some KFC and come over to your place and that's all she sees you as and your your hair's getting all Scrappy you've not been like triming your beard because you've already got her right you may as well start bulking again like that then that's a problem as well because there's another guy who's putting in the effort who will walk past with like a fresh Fade with a confidence and nice clothes and he'll speak to your girl in like a sexy voice and she's not going to cheat or anything but it's like you'll probably feel like oh damn like I used to be that guy who used to put in so much effort I used to be the guy who' flirt with her and I don't do that anymore I just kind of assume I've got her now that's a very interesting framing to not and I think that that's much more accurate because like the classic red pill approach would be and she's going to leave because Alpha [ __ ] beat a buck and like you know this is the new guy and she's going to trade up and blah blah blah and it's like dude have you ever actually been in a relationship with a chick for a long amount of time do you know the reality bending Distortion feel that is female attachment like it is vice grip [ __ ] no more Nails [ __ ] and they will go to the ends of the other there's women that stay in relationships with guys that beat them that cheat on them that do all sorts of horrific things like and you think that because you've got a bit podgy she's going to leave no but what's it going to tell you about yourself especially if you see that other guy and you go oh [ __ ] well here's another thing actually that's interesting and it'll be cool to see your Arc as you uh slowly plug toward death uh that aging gracefully as a man is something that's really interesting so I've only noticed my age like at all probably since 34 I think so up to 34 every single year just everything got easier apart from like injuries and [ __ ] in the gym uh which is just me being stupid everything just got easier more competent uh energy levels like attractiveness all the rest of the bits and pieces and obviously attractiveness is very subjective but then 35 34 35 I was like hey I got like Gray beard hairs here and like I actually if I sit in the Sun for ages and I frown like it takes a little bit of time for the frown to go away that's kind of Str that didn't used to happen before and it does take a little bit longer to recover from workouts like that is and I sometimes I like have to if I've drank a bit more water than usual but nowhere near as much as I used to I got to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I'm like oh that's what getting older is like those things there that's what aging is as a guy and uh I don't think that we have a particularly healthy culture around teaching men how to age gracefully because for women there's a lot of talk about that and it's ruthless because so much of their value is like kept in their youth which is proxy for their fertility but for guys it's like oh guess what you're never going to be as strong as you used to be you're never going to be as lean as you used to be you're never going to be as fast as you used to be and that's going to continue happening and you're like well I took so much of my selfworth from my strength and my leanness and my speed I took so much of my self worth from the fact that I could outwork or out hustle or out grind people it's like well I you're kind of Fighting Gravity here uh and that's something I've been thinking about recently it's pretty interesting does that not like terrify you not particularly um I think that there is a good argument to be made for every guy that takes a lot of value from his looks going through a really serious injury uh because as soon as it rips away your ability to take yourself Confidence from your physical condition you have to find it somewhere else so for me it was the perfect timing uh two disc herniations followed by an Achilles rupture like one year one year one year oh sorry one year one year a year in between and then another year uh and it meant that as the guy that had taken all of his self worth from how big he was and being like the most jacked most lean guy in most gyms I like oh [ __ ] like I'm not I'm not that guy anymore so where am I going to take my self- worth from and I think your looks are a depreciating asset your mind is an appreciating asset invest yourself worth wisely like what are you focusing on you really got is this this is it your the way that you look is going to be the thing that you derive the most of your self worth from for the rest of time but are you investing in uh the most highly volatile stocks and bonds and oh actually I know that this one goes down like guess what this one isn't just volatile I know it goes down like that's not where you'd invest yourself were it wouldn't be where you'd invest your money so it is it's it is but like it's happening like you there will come a day when the first grade beard comes in first grade beard hair comes in you're going to go all right well like Chris warned me about this and I kind of guessed at some point it was going to happen so I guess this is what like aging feels like am I going to just am I going to fight against this or am I going to be like well just as well that I don't take all of my selfworth from the darkness of my beard m I think about death all the time but you know the momento Mory like stoic practice where you think about your death and it makes you more grateful for life and honestly I I do that with a smile on my face I do it with this like wholesome feeling where I feel grateful and I've had a good impact on people what gets me the most is when I think about family and people that I love dying and I have to stay alive for it like if I think about my mother passing away she's getting old and now she's like not old but you know 50 something that's what that's what scares me the most I see the you know the trend it's like when you see your parents getting older and you're like oh damn like you know people get older like people's parents pass away and you I don't know why but like you saying all this just gave me the Insight of why I've always found that so hard to think about why it's always broken my heart to think about it because there's so much left un said there's there's like there's a non-abusive non-traumatic relationship era that we've not had just yet we like coming from like my household and a lot of your brown followers will know this is like there's a lot of abuse trauma and and neglect and and hardship and expectations and we've kind of crossed that now it's like we've gotten to this point where there's actually quite a lot of respect in our household you know I've retired everyone my siblings work in my company now but it's like there's so much still left un said and so it's when you you visualize someone passing away before you can say what you needed to say to them before that they could say and it's like it's not going to come out because if it does everything comes out it's it's the bottled up emotions that I've had for 20 years right why was I loved in consistently you should speak to Charlie hoopet about this so Charlie took his entire family on an MDMA facilitated did you read did you see him yeah I mean speak to him speak to him about it he'd love to have a chat with you um and yeah he he I think he had a tense Rel relationship with his dad and I I may be getting this wrong so I'm sorry if this is misquoting I'm pretty sure that his his intention was to like bring the family in and he's got a brother maybe a sister and then Mom and Dad and uh his goal was to like kind of try and repair his relationship with his dad a little bit and and and do this stuff and uh he sudden turn of psychedelics he was like full on psychedelic Warrior so he thought this is going to be fine like I'll hold space even though I'm going to be under the MDMA influence as well I'll hold space and you know it's going to be beautiful and Dad's going to you know like open his heart he's going to see all the rest of it 5 minutes in Charlie's crying his eyes out and he was like [ __ ] it's supposed to be the other way around and uh yeah I I I don't know man I mean I can certainly tell you this that as your parents get older the incentive to tell them things that you know is going to hurt them gets less so there is no better time than basically right now and every day after this is going to get worse because after you say a thing after you have a difficult conversation especially with a parent especially with a parent if they haven't done a ton of um like introspection and self-work and and they haven't maybe got the emotional tools to be able to does this mean that I was a bad parent does this oh my God like you know I thought I'd rais this son and what does this even mean for my sense of identity it could really hurt them the goal is to help them understand you and help you understand yourself and all the rest of it but it's going to take time to reintegrate that but the old older that they get the closer that they get to end of life the more the voice in the back of your mind is like what's the point like why do I need to oh wow why do I need to have this conversation am I really going to like let this memory linger like toward the Twilight of their years it's like that now is the time to do it once you've done a bit more therapy then's the time to do it I I say to to my boys that gratitude has been one of the most important habits that helped me with my family a lot of young kids think like it's it's the money and you know that's what will improve your family relationship in some ways it might do if your parents are working like undesirable jobs but the the greatest thing that I've done to improve my relationship with my family was writing them gratitude letters where I took some time to to write down what I was grateful for and I remember the first time I actually thought of doing this I was watching like some online course about mental health and I was in this like resentment mood of like no but like what do I have to be grateful for you know they did this they did this they did this but I started to write anyway like one thing after the other until it all came out and it was the first time I promise it sound like a dick but it was the first I was 21 22 years old that I actually thought like nice things about my parents that they had actually been terrific for me that they went through so so much they they brought me to the UK when I was 3 years old and I even just thought about logistically like how difficult that would have been back then before you know the internet was really a thing my dad used to used to like you know like lining up outside of a building but you didn't have Google Maps you didn't even know what time it opened like for us like that's scary as [ __ ] is like how do you how do you just go where like I need to check the Google reviews first but my dad used to tell me this like I asked him at this point actually thanked him for it sent him like a picture and I asked him like it must have been so hard to bring us here and he said he in his exact words was in Pakistan I had 500 people who worked below me like he had status in his job in the UK I worked as a laborer but no regrets I did it for my family and I asked like what what even was the process back then to move us to the UK must have been so difficult and he said he had to go to Islamabad like a different city of of Pakistan you have to and he said you have to line up in the mountains and stuff for like 3 hours 4 hours before the the building opens and it always used to piss him off because he'd be lined up next to basically the peasants and all these nice cars would pull up just before the doors would open and the owners would step out and replace themselves with their servants who' had been waiting for them you know they' outsourced their position in the line you'd come in and he didn't even know if you were going to get the visa that day or not you have to come a few times fill out the forms and stuff his Visa got declined and yeah and you know it must have been such a process to bring us here we our application got denied then he had to do it again and we came to the UK and we suffered so much racism he he had a decline in his status for 20 years straight he's worked as a laborer as a a guy little you know like a brown Corner Shop Taxi Driver taking all the racial step St types taking bottles and punches to the face from drunk people picking them up at like 3:00 a.m. outside nightclub cuz you know that scene very well imagine a Pakistani Taxi Driver outside of nightclubs that's what he did for years to put us all through like the education system my mom's always been like a housewife so she never brought an income which meant that he's worked like a mule for us this was all going on and I literally still struggled to write down what I was grateful for up until the the tap opened and I feel like so many young men when I speak to them and they say oh you know my parents don't support my dream and they're doing this and they're like this and my dad's done this well let me fold something that's even more difficult in how guilty do you feel about your resentments towards your father knowing how much he sacrificed for you yeah quite guilty it's awful yeah it's awful it's one of the most difficult things that people can deal with to think there was so much that they did that was perfect for me and look at all of the things that my mom stopped working for 10 years dad uh uh to raise me uh dad managed to get an entire family through on like you know 3/4s of a person's we uh State primary State secondary State six form first person in my family to go to university all that stuff but then to think look at all of those sacrifices and yet look at the patterns that I wish that I hadn't developed from the things that occurred from the externalities from the the unmet needs even though they weren't they didn't know that they weren't unmet from the emotional coping mechanisms that I ended up having to do from the things that I kept from them because I was so ashamed of talking about them because I didn't feel safe enough to be able to express them and then to go oh how on Earth can I have that as a problem when they did all of those things for me look at all of the sacrifices how ungrateful how how shameful how how atrocious is it for me to say oh my emotions and my integration and what about my regulation and stuff like that it's like look at all the things I didn't it's like yep and yet that exists too it's like the of someone that I think is emotionally mature is being able to hold contradicting emotions in your heart at the same time like hey guess what resentment is a thing and like sometimes you some days you're going to feel resent resentful and some days you're going to feel grateful and I think that uh trying to marry those two is a rough one you know you saying that made me think about my own actions and the man that I'm becoming where I'm I'm ruthlessly optimizing for business and it's I'm optimizing for kind of the same pathway that my father did right it's just the finances and if other things are neglected if I'm that that ADHD father who's really loving with full conviction yeah I love you guys so much and then I just [ __ ] up and contradict myself imagine my children just seeing me in a bathroom and showing up well that's the that's the question I asked you earlier on when I was saying like uh um desire is good because it pushes you towards success but like it's what what is the definition of success now for my dad and for your dad that didn't have the luxury that me or you have their definition of success was put food on the table don't get kicked out of the house right like pay mortgage make sure that lights are on maybe have money for like Christmases and birthdays and and stuff like that like that was their goal but if you have the luxury of choice it's like okay well what does success look like for you why are you playing by the same rules that your workingclass underclass immigrant father did to just optimize for as much money as possible is there not maybe a different definition of success that you could use which is a little bit more balanced what if you know like again you you've already said the the father that kind of shows his love through his toil but emotionally or in terms of like affection time maybe isn't quite there probably like quite a classic immigrant mentality first generation thing all right well you have the opportunity to be the Breakwater here like you don't need to pass down this weird ancestral trait this this this odd like habit it's like you get to choose and you've got the luxury of doing it because you don't you don't have the you don't have the the necessity to keep the the bread on the table for the family you know is this a cope if I say that chasing after the business results and the money is kind of like the fun thing that you mentioned before like Ali abdal said this he he interviewed someone and he said oh yeah it's just it's very convenient that all the the rich people say that you know it's really fun for them that making money is the thing that you find fun it's very convenient is am I am I so you're in a citadel yeah am I like so so um deep in the conditioning that chasing after the money and the business success is the thing that I find fun or is it just genuinely enjoyable because business is a very like it's it's basically a game and it's got trackable metrics and scores which is very addictive you have like a positive impact on the world if you're doing it in the right way it's the money itself is very beneficial as well but but like for example this season where I'm really into entrepreneurship genuinely I'm having a great time now I could be I could be coping right maybe I go home and cry about it like oh yeah [ __ ] like I'm actually depressed am I doing yeah I don't know I I certainly think that periodizing anything uh is a good idea and I think that that's one of the reasons why just caveat your conviction conviction especially given to yourself public facing and this is again the same for anyone that that doesn't have a platform but just start saying things around the water cooler or to their work friends or to their family or to their spouse they like well you said that thing and now you have to feel like you live up to it right what you say in public you feel like you have to live up to in private the advantage of periodizing anything whether it's monk mode or even a relationship is like okay well I'm just finding out I'm just finding out if this is for me and if it's not it's no value judgment on me or not what I get to do is close this Loop and like tick that off so nval says it's far easier to achieve our material desires than to renounce them basically you can drive a [ __ ] car if your last car was a Ferrari because you know what a Ferrari feels like and I think that the same thing is true here it's like you don't know if you like or loathe entrepreneurship until you've gone both feet into it for a good amount of time then you come out the other side and you go okay well is this still serving me or am I serving it is this a habit that's in control of me or is this the sort of thing that I maybe have outgrown or is something else I'm going to do I had to do that with the way that I looked like from the gym from The Nightlife thing from standing on the front door I had to even during that career I had to periodize things because I was the guy in the front door and then after a while it was like are you really going to be the dude that all the 18-year-old chicks come up to wanting VIP bands at 29 like is that really what you're going to do or are you going to pass this down and delegate to some of the bo s had to take myself out of that I'm okay I'm not going to be the front-facing guy anymore I'm going to be the exec I'm going to be the dude that recruits the dudes that are going to be the new Chris okay well that that that's like a loss of identity how how do I go through that so I don't know whether it's a cope or not I certainly think that asking yourself questions like if Money Was No Object what would I do with my time like when do I feel the most alive not dopamine like connected genuinely connected one good frame that George Mack has is a dopamine George and serotonin George and there ctis all George as well and he says the more time he spends in serotonin George serotonin in George is um melodic deep house walks in nature conversations with friends amazing quality coffee it's pickle ball it's learning a new sport it's it's going and watching live music it's it's all those things right it's love it's affection it's connection it's it's ringing your mom and telling you that telling you like something cool that happened in your day it's that dopamine George is growth of the the business and it's it's a great thread that Elon just retweeted on Twitter and it's more newsletter subscribers and it's money in its bank accounts and it's travel and it's novelty and it's new and it's intense and it's rushy and it's compelling but he wants to be in serotone in George and then ctis all George is all of the executive function problems but ctis old George doesn't exist in any way related to serotonin George you're never getting Court disol from the serotonin [ __ ] you do you only get it from the dopamine [ __ ] you do so the bad and the half good are related together and then the bit that's in the middle is the bit that you really like and I think like optimizing for seratonin Hamza would probably be a pretty good idea like where do I where can I get that from not the like oh this guy sent me a message that said that I really changed his world and it's like yeah that should be serotonin Hamer but it's [ __ ] not it's dopamine Hamer right because it's another one on the dashboard of look at how many people's lives have changed and all the rest of it because you're not sitting in the emotion and like Ah that's something that was meaningful to me that really really worked okay so a first uh first analysis serotonin Hamza two things are coming up it's one a great workout like when you're hitting PR after PR it's not even about the dopamine it's just like it feels awesome that you've worked hard and you're seeing the progress of your efforts especially if it doesn't feel random you know those random moments when like you haven't had good sleep you had [ __ ] diet you still hit a PR it's like what the [ __ ] is this like it's when you've actually really worked hard on it you've been nailing this sleep laying in the diet then you come in you hit a PR feels awesome especially when you're coupling that with friends that leads to the second point which is like not just the Deep conversations but I feel like for me I really like the goofy ones I like when I giggle it's like you know I've got to do the alpha male thing but like I like giggling bro I like like telling funny jokes and just laughing at my own jokes and everything they're the two I can think of right now which bring the the realest part of me out yeah for me it's uh going for dinner um with people that are coming through town like showing them a really cool restaurant that they've not been to before and then going for a walk afterward and you know you're digesting your food and you maybe playing with ideas and this is interesting the other one for me is pickle ball like I just lose myself in this basically in tennis you know in this sort of Racket B sport I'm outdoors and I'm getting fresh air and there's competition but it's there's DOP mean Chris is [ __ ] left on the edge of the Court like I'm not doing it actually this is a lie I was playing with a a girl a couple of weeks ago and she said um it would two games to two best of five and uh we're walking back to the Baseline before we're about to start the next game and I'm like just fully in the competitive like hyper masculine thing and I'm like right okay so that girl the chick on the other team like her back hand's really really po if we can look to push it across there and we need to like when we're driving we need to be up to the net a little bit quick both of us are a little bit slow on that and I really like the thing she's like hey hey hey yeah and let's not forget to have fun and I was like yeah yeah that too i' just totally forgotten it so we get captured Even in our most like serotonin moments we get captured by the dopamine side dude I really appreciate you I'm really glad that you came to see me and uh I'm looking forward to seeing what happens over the next couple of months for you what can people expect what do you think is going to be the next what's the remainder of 2024 got in store honestly who knows every every week is different I might have children soon I might not I might I might turn to Islam I might not tune in next week in F before we finish there's a quick question I I had to sa for you your ability to articulate your thoughts is amazing do you have any advice for someone trying to learn that skill I work very hard at it so I purposefully practiced for a long time I have done 760 770 podcasts in six and a half years so that's a lot of time and attention right um I listened back to probably the first 50 or 100 episodes that we did and cringed at all of the weird verbal ticks that I had and deprogrammed most of them consciously there's this great story about Tiger Woods so Tiger Woods gets towards the top of his game he's one of the best in the world but there inefficiencies in his swing you know he started playing golf literally as soon as he could walk probably even before uh and he's just brought with him some uh old patterns that he needs to get rid of but the problem is for him to reinvent his swing he's one of the best golfers in the world world to reinvent your swing you're going to get way worse you're basically starting from scratch you're not even starting from scratch you're starting from scratch with habits that are going to creep in that are going to ruin the new thing that you're doing it's even worse than kind of starting from scratch in some ways but he did it and that allowed him to take himself from being one of the best in the world to being perhaps one of the greatest of all time and I thought about that when for probably about 18 months from maybe 2019 start of 2019 to the middle of 2020 actually probably more like 2020 to the middle of 2021 the show got worse because or at least my communication skills got worse because I wasn't just saying what I felt I was obsessing over the way that I said it and you can't think about the thing that you're doing whilst being in the process of doing it like it it takes you out of the what you want is the flow right what we had to there's an idea and H it's kind of not right and it's this thing it's a blah blah blah that's what you want but if you're thinking okay make sure that you pronounce your s's correctly and what's your tongue position and we mustn't say the word like and don't say m too much and blah blah blah blah you can't do both of those things at once so the show got worse so the tips that I would give would be you need to speak in a rigorous Manner and what I mean by rigorous is that you're actually trying to be as precise as possible Precision is what people want with speech and precision is using the right word it's not the one that's too fancy it's not the one that's too simple it's not more it's not less it's precise it's the number of words that you mean reduce the friction from brain to mouth okay so you want to be rigorous with with your speech what are some of the ways that you can do that have a 30-minute conversation with a friend once a week where you record a fake podcast so phones are out of the room except for one that's in the middle of the table put the phone on the table in front of you and have a conversation have a conversation about something that one of you's interested in maybe even text each other earlier in the day and say hey we're going to talk about what's going to happen in the 2024 election or we're going to talk about who's going to win between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson or we're going to have a whatever it is pick whatever you're interested in and then listen back and listen back to all of the awful toe curling ticks and and strange things that you say and that you do and realize that you I I found the first ever episode I did of this show I kept saying mhm all the time because I wanted the guest to know that I was still listening that I was paying attention and I was this is good go on hey guess what you can do that by just nodding like you know the invention already existed you didn't need to do that so I okay well that's I I don't like the way that sounds when I listen back how can I do something that achieves the same end without completely molesting the listening experience with me so uh fake podcast once a week with a friend 30 minutes listen back to it uh I would say listening to people that communicate in a manner that you like and immersing yourself in that content some great communicators Jordan Peterson still uh especially old Jordan Peterson like 2018 2017 2018 2019 Peterson's phenomenal aland baton from the school of life is maybe one of the most easy to get into because he's not got this unbelievably slick uh communication style but he gets the words out in a beautiful manner so especially for the Brits he's British guy he's sort of a like a bit of a bumbling kind of likable British man and he he he sort of talks a little bit sometimes he gets a bit up and but it still comes very nicely oh okay so he can kind of add his charm and his personality in uh Shapiro obviously fantastic Rogan also really really great Sam Harris so like yeah but pick your creator of choice but find people that speak in a precise manner immerse yourself in what they say and listen carefully and don't listen at two time speed hear the Cadence where are they leaving pauses how are they using silence correctly how are they actually sitting with the body of are they saying words that sometimes elongate are they are they over articulating words some ways to add a little bit more emphasis on it and just after spending enough time doing this you go okay well it's just like being around a friend you know like the you are the average of The Five People You spend the most time with you are the average of the five YouTube creatives that you listen to the most um so those are some things and then finally if you do really really want to turn it up or if you just feel like this isn't enough of a hammer blow uh going to an improv class will be phenomenal I did that before my live tour that I did last year I did uh two courses of improv um if you think that you've got social anxiety or that your mind doesn't work quickly enough go to imp problem for a couple of weeks everybody gets it wrong and everyone sucks you know they they celebrate uh successes and the way they celebrate successes sorry they celebrate failures and the way they celebrate failures is when you do something when you mess up like they're playing a game and you said Bing instead of bang or whatever uh you have to put both hands in the air and say I failed and you bow and everyone collaps and it's getting rid of the the social anxiety okay it doesn't really matter so much doesn't matter I don't care about that it's okay it's all right to fail it's safe safe for me to fail uh improv is great speech coaches are great miles at speak well.co is the guy that I uh I use uh still do use phenomenal um Toast Masters I haven't done it but I've heard that it's okay but honestly most of that stuff and it's just time and detention and then when you're speaking to people in a bar or whatever just think about okay Precision say the thing that you mean to say dude have you seen that most recent whatever whatever what and there you go it's like okay that's a conversation I'm just saying the stuff and you once you get out of your own way it it gets a lot easier well thank you for the conversation my friend my pleasure man where should people go they want to keep up to date with the stuff you do uh just search Hamer on social media you'll find me the most well-known Hamza on the internet dude I really appreciate you thank you for coming to see me what's happening people thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode you will love my fulllength podcast with Dr Andrew huberman which is available right here go on stop it