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I was still, you know, in shape. but my training was, you know, sometimes two days a week, sometimes three days a week. it would be, you know, 60 minutes, maybe 90 if I got lucky. um, and i had this realization. and it was during this year, 2025, where I was like, you know, i have all this money and I can do whatever I want. and I was like, and i can't even have my workout be as long as I want it to be.. And so I basically made a rule for myself that I will not work out if I am rushed. that's the deal.. And so I will work out for as long as it takes to work out And that's that. And so that means that if my workout takes two hours or it takes two and a half hours or I'm with a friend and it takes three hours because we're just like talking between sets and having a great time.. there are three things in this world that bring me joy. working out with somebody that I like, eating food with somebody that I like, ideally after I worked out and writing. the three things that bring me the most joy in life. and I was like,, why am I sacrificing one of the only three things in this world that I know that I enjoy to get something that I hoped would buy me the freedom to work out as much as I wanted whenever I wanted.., And so what are the things that I put on the altar of the success? what are the things that I sacrificed for this, this god of achievement? And I was like,, this one, I'm not willing to sacrifice anymore.., And so I think part of the reason that like has been a life, a lifeboat for me, or a life raft, while this kind of worst season has happened is like I put on like 20 pounds of muscle so far this year because I've been able to, like I've been using that as a really wonderful outlet and I was like, man, and I'm focusing more on this, like my training partner every day. I'm like, dude, thank you for doing this with me. like this is this is awesome like this is great like my I won the day like if I did nothing else I get to the end of the day and I'm like I crushed this workout and that was and that's it's a big pivot, dude. and it's one that i think everybody that's driven by the sort of hatred of past self, whip yourself into submission, puritan work ethic thing will inevitably come to realize after a time. there may be some outlier for whom their their capacity for discomfort and for sacrifice is literally greater than the duration of their life. yeah. that they would have got there eventually. they just died first. yeah. you know, and but i think that for most people it's not. and you reach i would call it something like sort of uh, lifestyle escape velocity uh where you go i'm i all of the objective metrics are right and the subjective ones aren't. which is a good example uh of sort of what you've hinted at. and you go, how can i assume that the solution is fixing subjective metric problems with more objective metrics and and and then and and i'll say this for anybody who's in the season where like listen, you're 22 years old and you're like, i need to work my face off. you do. you need to you need to work your face off. but the thing is is like there will get to a point we're fast forwarding, you know, however many years, but there's nothing like i don't regret the amount of work that i've done. um, and i and i i i don't regret it at all. and i think that it was absolutely the right decision. and i work a lot now. but people make this extrapolated moment. they take a moment of your life and they will extrapolate it to forever and assume that if you change your mind that what you did before this was wrong, but it wasn't wrong. it was right for that time and then we got feedback during a different time and this is right for me now and so i'm going to course correct now and if something else changes guess what you're free to change your mind tomorrow. yeah. I i love this and i think about it so much that one of the issues with asking anybody who's successful for advice is that they tell you what they do now. yeah. not what they did when they were in your position. thousand%. and you should not ask somebody how are you maintaining your success right now. how did you achieve your success when you were at the stage that I was at? that is the question that you need to ask. and it's the same thing. and stupid people see somebody changing their mind as a weakness, not as a strength. and if you are the sort of person who goes, "huh, this strategy worked for me previously or didn't or I thought it worked for me and it didn't, i'm going to update the way that I operate." perfect example. i've been on this sort of a flex similar to yourself. I would say my uh lifestyle escape velocity, I needed to reach a lower altitude than you. so, I was, you know, getting into coast uh as opposed to still using the booster rockets earlier. um, but I started talking about how uh like purposeful deoptimization uh you know what is it that you're doing the things for? transitioning from the work until your eyes bleed to a different mode of of reward and stuff like that. and some people that i think don't understand me super well, which is fine because no one's supposed to understand you, especially not random people on the internet, but people will see snippets of whatever's been sort of the most salient narrative. and uh a bunch of them said something to the effect of, "uh, bro sold us the problem, now he's selling us the solution." yeah. and i was like, "huh, that's really interesting." because what i'm doing is saying, "this works for me right now." and what i was saying in the past was this works for me right now. nothing has changed. and this is why there's often when it comes to sort of internet advice, it's very patronizing the way that the audience is treated by people that are critics as if they're sort of these agencyless undiscerning sponges. yeah. that are totally incapable of applying or filtering. huh? well, Alex doesn't have five kids and no wife, right? like, I'm a single father, a five kid. what, you know, living in Brooklyn and a single bedroom. okay, I I think you might need to adapt some of the things that he's saying or I'm twice as old or I'm half the age, whatever. like, you should ask somebody what they did when they were at the stage that you were at, not where they are now. so many things I want to respond to. so number one, my my embedded command to everyone is use if useful. use if useful. number one. number two, this is a documentary, not a sermon. this is a showing, you know, like at least my content is like this is me showing what's going on and I try to be real and that means that if I change my mind, then it'll change. third, model the rise if you want the rise. model the plateau if you want the plateau. and so saying, "oh, you know, Warren Buffett says he had a great year if he only makes one good decision." it's like saying, "oh, to get rich, I should fly private." doesn't really work that way. I should play basketball. I want to get tall. it's your you're you're conflating variables, right? I should I should go to the gym once I have energy. I should start saving money once I'm rich. uh like that's when I'll do it. it's just it just conflates sequence, right? it's a win-win fallacy. um, and so I think the the man I I haven't talked about this in in I don't I don't even know if i ever talked about this. the greatest skill is the ability to discern what things to use and what things to cast out. it is the is it is the the the central narrative of noise versus signal. and the reason that i've spent such a disproportionate amount of time focused on behavior was because there's so much noise that if people cannot translate their quote advice into what i should do, then there's nothing useful about it. which is why i think the density of useful information uh people i think people are blood hounds for value. um, but i think that value gets translated most in the most crystallized, distilled, concentrated manner when it can be translated into do this instead of that. period. and everything else, the amorphous words that people use, especially the, you know, the motivation manifesto, the the the or just manifestation, we'll get into that one. uh, people get triggered on that. um, that is what leads more people astray. and so they take the entirety of someone and without all of the other conditions that apply to that person and say, "oh, i will take this and apply it to my life." and if you cannot pull out what is useful for you, you will never win. and that is a really strong statement, but because all you're going to be doing is trying to, and I love this is my favorite tweet that i've heard from um Andrew Wilkinson from tiny. m here are the numbers for my winning lottery ticket. every entrepreneur explaining how they were successful. and so like the next google isn't a search engine, right? the best version of your life isn't copying hormosi or copying williamson. it's being able to with nuance apply the principles that are generalizable across domains but then having the wherewithal yeah the discernment to apply the nuance to your specific circumstance and being able to map those two things I think is the skill that has gotten me the disproportionate return on my life. I have bought and I've been public about this. I've been, you know, very the earlier part of my career is very involved in what I would consider the alternative education, you know, space, right? people, you know, the the courses, the the world that has, I would say, a relatively bad reputation. but I have yet in my life to have purchased anything from anyone that I have not had an exceptional return from. and is that because of them or is that because of me? who knows? but I can say that when I even had bad experiences, I could say these are all the things that I will not do to a customer. and then I have my notebook of the the crinkled can and the end that's off the center. and that ability to observe and pause before immediately taking action. like there are some people that I have met where I know I'll tell you this story because it's it's heartbreaking. I've helped a lot of gyms in my career is, you know, probably my second season of entrepreneurship. um, one of the things that we'll do to a gym to make it more profitable is we, you know, we adjust pricing. sometimes we write send a price raise letter and this, you know, this thing's tested. we that, we've done it hundreds of times. a guy, you know, reaches out and said, "hey, I did your the whole price raise and 90% of my members left." and I was like, "what? like what h like how what happened?" and so he explained that he had a $29 a month gym and then he raised it to $200 a month. that only works when you're a service business, not a what I consider a facility usage business where you're just like $10 a month crunch and it's just like you can use the gym whatever you want. you have equipment. my model was for people who had trainers and who who were teaching, you know, classes or sessions or semi-privates. and so in those instances, if you're at 99 and you go to to $200, you're not going to lose half your customers. you might lose a third, but you still make more money, you have more profit, etc. but he had taken what is otherwise something that has made so many gyms profitable and successful and he applied it to a specific context. now he says, I'm a gym owner. he said gym stuff.. why did but then what happens is for you and I or anybody who wants to make content, if I were to say, okay, under these situations, under this part, you know, particular context, if you have a decent relationship with your customers and you have ongoing communication, then you can say it's like you you don't, it takes 10 minutes of disclaimers to get to the point, right? And so then this is why fundamentally like winners will always win because they will still be able to find, you know, the, the silver lining even in the terrible experiences that will make them better. And my favorite, my favorite visualization of the type of person that I want to be is and this is a a Harry Potter reference. uh, but the sword of Gryffindor uh, was made of dwarven steel and Dwarfven steel in the in the mythology of Harry Potter. um, could only take in that which made it stronger., And so it's not to say that the sword of Gryffindor couldn't cut butter or couldn't you know, uh, just get into a sword fight, but if it happens to, you know, kill a basilix, then it will absorb the poison of the basilisk.. so like so many people lose because they want to prove that this too did not work. When in reality, it was that you don't know how to make it work and it has been easier for you to complain and say this did not work the way that I would prefer, right? Rather than like, how can I make this work for me? How can I turn this into something that has been that can still be a W.? And I think that one skill has probably been the single unlock that I've been able to have. Because like I, I learned these alternative,, you know,, the this this alternative world of education of like, how do you sell?, how do you how do you run ads, how do you how do you sell, you know,, courses,, how do you do coaching, all this stuff that has a really negative kind of vibe.. but the thing is, is the fundamentals of persuasion. There are so powerful. they were just being used to sell stuff that's not good.. But the thing is, is that there's so much buyer resistance there that if you can sell stuff in that market,, when you go to sell insurance,, you murder. And so I think people fail to take into consideration the context of the person who's given the advice and what piece is useful that they should use. And the rest you can cast away. figure out what you want. ignore the opinions of others. do so much work, it would be unreasonable that you fail. realize it never mattered to begin with. help others once you get there. you've already achieved the things you said would make you successful. yeah,. the first five steps there is my, um, is basically my my master life plan., um, figure out what you want, which my first boss, um, I had, I I had a pretty terrible first out of college experience of work. um, but from that I learned some of the most important life lessons that I still take to this day. and uh, that boss particularly said one thing to me one day. she said, um, figuring out what you want is 99% of it.. she said once you know what you want, getting it is the easy part. and I I kind of adopted that as a worldview because it's like once you're really clear like this is what I want Everything that's not that is what I'm willing to give up to get it. now that thing can change and I think that's the part that people miss is that like once you learn how to get stuff then it's like, okay, well, he said he was willing to do it's like, yeah, well the thing I wanted changed is do I have your permission to change what I want and I think we should all have permission to change what we want in any given moment and not having basically sunk life bias of like I put 10 years into this thing and that's okay And that's what I needed to do at that time And today I'm willing to I'm going to change everything. And what's really interesting about if you look at like addicts and alcohol people who need to you know quit you know uh whatever bad habit they have there's a really strong frame Ed mlet talks about it which is basically one more and it's been super helpful for me to not think of my changes as permanent Because it's been it's allowed me to make such dramatic changes in my in my life or my business much faster than I think most people have been willing too Because there's this this weight of forever on top of everything. like we extrapolate like you're in a relationship. she told me to pick up my socks. she's going to nag at me forever the rest of my life. we need to break up, right?? Or I can do this for today and tomorrow if it still works, I will do it for tomorrow. and if 5 days from now or 25 days from now, if I work this way, I then say, you know what, I need a day. people like, oh, he's burned out. it's like, I took a day cuz that's what I needed that day. and I think giving myself permission to have that freedom has allowed me to take significantly faster action in what apparently looks like higher risk scenarios because who am I apologizing to? realize it never mattered to begin with. what's that? cosmic irrelevance. so like we're willing to sacrifice everything that we have for the thing that we want. and then once we get the thing that we want, we want back the things that we sacrificed, which really just goes to the heart of the human condition, which is we want it all. and we're not willing to make trades. and so one of the reasons that i've actually, i would say, largely tossed out the deathbed regrets of most people is that what they do typically is they will have the bias of wanting the other path they could have taken without considering the cost of that path. so they say, "hey, i was really successful and i did all these things, but you know, i i would give it all up today to have my family." it's like, well, yeah, but you didn't because you actually chose the path that you're on and you weren't willing to do that. but what you are saying right now is that you want it all. sure. so does everyone. and so, um, i've had a, you know, a few moments of clarity over the last, you know, year or so, but if you want it all, life will give you nothing. and that has been helpful for me because in pursuit of we want everything without the cost and everything has a price and you will never be able to get the sufficient price tag paid on everything to reach critical mass to achieve a monocative success in any domain unless you are willing to trade from another. and I think that that has significantly minimized my regret. before we continue, if you struggle to stay asleep because your body gets too hot or too cold, this is going to help.. 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I wouldn't keep hopping on about it if it wasn't a massive game changer. so, I highly recommend that you try it. and they've got a 30-day sleep trial. so, you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 nights. and if you don't like it, they'll just give you your money back. plus, they ship internationally. right now, you can get up to $350 off the pod 5 by going to the link in the description below by heading to 8le.com/modernwisdism using the code modernwisdom a checkout. that's ei.com/modernwisdom and modern wisdom a checkout. we give up our 20s for our 30s. we give up our 30s for our 40s, our 40s for our 50s. and we trade everything we achieved in our 30s, 40s, and 50s to get back to our 20s. we give up the thing we have most of for the thing that we have least of. and we give up the thing that we want for the thing that's supposed to get it. right. i i i will become happy when i'm sufficiently successful. and I will sacrifice my happiness in pursuit of success so that I can become sufficiently successful so I can finally be happy. yeah. we're the problem. yeah. that that's that's that's reliably the takeaway. but I think it's a really really good point. this um like retrospective life reprogramming thing that people do uh where we spend our 20s wanting to be richer and older and have a family. then we start that in our 30s and we gain more wealth and do the family thing and then we get back to get to our 40s and we've got more responsibilities. we've accumulated all of this stuff and then we think, "god, if only I could go back to my 20s." but you were miserable in your 20s. this is a great uh lesson from Morgan hel. fantastic. I think I sent you the nostalgia artist. yeah. um people should just search nostalgia uh what's his fund called? uh collaborative fund. nostalgia collaborative fund. it's a great essay. um and in it he's talking to his wife and Morgan's wife is uh discussing with him what their plans are when the kids are going to move out. and Morgan starts talking about their time in their 20s where they could lie in on a Sunday morning and and and they didn't have any responsibilities and the kids didn't need taken to soccer practice. and he says, "well, god, wasn't that the golden years? like how amaz do you remember? do you remember how amazing that was?" his wife turns to him and she goes, "honey, you were miserable. you hated it. you had no idea whether you were going to be successful. you were constantly concerned about money. you were desperately needing validation from all of these people around you. you were were permanently in dissatisfaction about this stuff. and he realized that in retrospect, he knew that all of his worries were a waste of time, but at the time he had no assurance that they weren't something he should fret about and keep himself up at night. we already know how the movie ends when we go back and say we want to relive it. and you can't relive it into the same context because uncertainty is the largest part of the story. I had a personal example that was similar to this which was Leila and I were talking and um, I said, you know when we you know, didn't do any of the speaking and all this other stuff that we're doing and all we did was just own the portfolio companies and get distributions. I was like man, life was so chill like we just we could do whatever the we wanted you know we we didn't have an office like we didn't have to show up we just did whatever we wanted and she said you were the worst [laughter] and so, and now we're working like maniacs, right? I've I i haven't worked harder than i have in the last 18 months in a while. um, and she's like, i prefer you working the way that we do now to when you didn't have enough to do. And so i i i only partially say this for the one person that this this affects, which is that like even like we seek freedom, but it's really that we seek we seek options. like the idea of freedom is a blank calendar, but a blank calendar that never gets filled is not a fulfilling day. and so we want the ability to have whatever we want during that day.. And so I think being deliberate about what are what are my what are my good day moments that I can try and recreate every day.. And I have it on my wall. I have two things on that are permanently on my in my office wall. logic evidence utility and what does it mean? how do you know and why does that matter?? and the other three are work out with friends, eat food with friends, write something, my good day formula.. and so I I had the desire for freedom. when you aren't sure what things to fill that freedom with, when you know what to fill the freedom with, then you're willing to give up optionality because you already know, you've already pre--selected your lunch for the day because it's your favorite meal.. and so so you are willing to make some sacrifices in terms of flexibility because you'll be able to have even more of those lunches or write even more uh by making some of these. i've tried many lunches and few are better than this. yes. exactly. and i i do think uh the perennial creatures of habit like you are and i think certainly i am as well. um there is a a tendency to disparage new options. so, no, no, no, no. i already know the best lunch. like, uh, you maybe, maybe. and, yeah, you've tried a lot of lunches. that's good. but do you really like you're so, what? so, you're never ever going to try another new lunch? yeah. huh? well, okay. so, maybe. but also, how much of that how much of that could be you excusing the pain of adventure and the pain of potential failure? a bad lunch. I might try a new lunch and it might be worse. what a waste that would be. look at all the time that I've put into trying lunches. look at look at the quality of lunch I could have had compared with the new one. and this is a kind of a lesson of getting older. and this is almost certainly one of the reasons why people's openness to experience on ocean decreases as they get older that they have this sort of experts fallacy thing. um so i've spent time recently around a lot of people in bands and these guys are very artistic. uh they they have uh studios that are filled with torn up magazine sheets and like a sock. Zack, my housemate, had a sock cellar taped to his wall for the two years we lived together. i was like, "what's that doing there?" i don't know. um well, why is it there? and he just cuz he's, you know, covered in tattoos and playing guitar and and and writing poetry and doing stuff. it just to him that doesn't that doesn't really matter. and i was like, i should be around people that push me beyond my limits to do new things more in different ways. yes. yes. yes. i need different levels of stimulus there. just to linger for one more moment on that uh sort of nostalgia golden years thing. um there's this really really lovely insight. perhaps golden years can only happen in our memory. nobody believes that we're living through a golden era right now. we never think we're in the good old days, but the good old days are always now. well, sometimes. i mean co probably wasn't there's somewhat periods during which people would go that wasn't the good old days but when you're 85 and you were 25 in co you give anything for it. true. true. yeah. I guess good good old days can be in many many variet depends on how bad now is. correct. uh but I'm sure that in the whatever like the 80s and the '9s in America, how many people considered they were living through the golden era? yeah. very few. and yet in retrospect, everybody just wants Britney spears back. do you know what I mean? like the old one, not the new one. she's crazy. um, that's what everybody wants. they want this sort of creed, big tackles from American football, 18wheel articulated lorries, and big American flags flying. I have spent a huge amount of mental resources accepting suffering and not saying that there's something wrong with something bad. like a huge amount of mental resources has gone into this because my I I've I've been better and faster at correcting the loop of like oh I am not happy with this particular thing and therefore there is something wrong. yeah. so fix the story that I tell myself as opposed to fix the thing. and that's been um super helpful with the addition of everything that I remember will always be better than it was. and the nice thing is that there's tons of science that backs this up, which is that we learn uh through reward and because it's like well obviously he worked for a decade and then he got there. it's like but if you work for a decade and they get you there you are exceptional. you are already at the very ends of achievement and you did it by following the rule which is that it's just maybe not unpredicted. yes. it's not it's not a surprise. and so I think people conflate surprises with exceptional and it is exceptional in that it's rare not necessarily that it's the only kind of rare. correct. it's rare that it was a lottery ticket more than and of course and I want to be clear maybe he's 16 or and like mr. beast is a perfect example of this. he's 25 I think now. something like that. 256. I know we're getting old. um and so the thing is is that he started I think making videos when he was 12, right? and so it's like oh well he's got 13 years in just one game spending every hour of every day for that 13 years doing it. and so some of these kind of younger guys and I think part of this is just proliferation of information and access to information has just gotten, you know, bountiful for everyone. and with AI, it's been easier for people with fewer resources that to to start actual things, right? the cost of entry financially is significantly lower. and the cost the access to information is basically almost zero. and so when you combine those things, if you're 14 years old, you have high fluid intelligence. like your brain's working. so, if you're like if you're on the younger side, like there's there is no rule that says that an app designed by a 14-year-old is in some way or anyway valued less by a customer than an app that's developed by a 40-year-old. there's no rule. and so I will also push back on one thing, which is if you continue to feel like people don't take you seriously, if you continue to feel like people don't take you seriously because of your age, it might be not because of your age. it might be because you suck. and I think that is a significantly harder and pro and more probable pill that you'll have to swallow. well, especially given that self assessment and reflection is difficult to do when you're young. your own ability to understand where your strengths and weaknesses lie. it's hard. full stop. sure. it's really hard if you're 20. yeah. right. or 22. this is from Mark manson. I had this episode with him this week. it was so good. before you win, everyone will ask why you're working so hard. and after you win, everyone will remind you how lucky you got. holy dude. you know what's funny? I actually okay, so I didn't know that's where the where the quote was going to go. I thought it was going to go um before you win, everyone asks you why you're working so hard. after you win, everyone asks you why you're working so hard. that's I mean both of those work. yeah. and it's it's it's true. but I think in that in both of those situations, both of those things are true. um in both of them before you win, everyone will ask you why you're working so hard. there's no proof that this is going in the right direction. you don't have any evidence that you're actually even good at this thing. the likelihood of a positive outcome is incredibly low. and after you win, have you not yet reached escape velocity where you don't need to do this anymore? um why are you capitalizing on an opportunity? uh why are you capitalizing on um conquest instead of continuing to just start from opportunity at the bottom? like because you've now reached the top of the mountain, is enough enough? uh or dude, i mean, you know, just so precient to start a business at that time. like you, you know, like you really timed the market or uh i've been learning about um it's not venting, but it's a i can't i can't remember what it's called. it's this particular type of put down that chicks give other chicks. and i i don't think that guys have i frankly don't think that guys have like the lexical capacity to do this socially. um but it's something like uh imagine that a bunch of girls are at a a wedding together and there's one girl that doesn't like another one and she'll say something like, you know, i really admire your confidence. like i would never wear a dress like that and it's just like i'm you know it it looks you know you just with your body type like it's really impressive that you that you decided to wear that today. like that's just you know you've done you're com you've done really well or you know huh you you're prepared to like just eat like i you know i i can't i can't just like keep eating but it seems like you just don't really mind and it's this sort of odd venting come put down you know are you trying to no i'm saying the dress you know it's this sort of culpable deniability of an insult and um yeah i get the sense that the look retrospective but conversation thing is a little bit like that. it's a backhanded insult, not a backhanded compliment. there's a meme from family guy that does this exact thing. it's two girls eating lunch together just trading insults like this. and then it just pans to two guys uh eating lunch after like a 60-second exchange of just insults. and he says, "hey, john, i like your tie." he says, "oh, thanks." and it says, "men, we know how to be friends." that's sick. i was just thinking about that while you're saying it. um, but it's so it's so interesting like i have i have that statement that i said at the beginning, which is um you live your life in a way that i would not prefer. and all of these things boil down to that. and i've had this as my my internal translation mechanism because uh before you before you win, they're saying you live your life in a way that i would not prefer. and then after you win, in mark's example, you have won in a way that i did not prefer. and then if you continue to work, you continue to live your life in a way that i would not prefer. and so at the end of the day, they just cast their preferences on to you. and then somehow they expect you to give a and i think this is where i've lost friends. um, and that's okay. and they're entitled to think that you should care and you're entitled to not care. the problem here, especially again for me and for the people who are the criticism hyperresponders that are listening, if you overindex or even if you just index on other people's input, you think, "huh, maybe for a while you didn't have as many people contributing to your life as you might have wanted. and now as a porpa, how can I reject this penny? someone's flicked me." what you don't realize is that this penny could have arsenic on the other side of it or it might be a fake penny or it might be a joke or it might blow up in your hand or something. you go, "huh, well, maybe maybe this person's comment is like useful. maybe I should take heed of this. maybe it's something that I should I should listen to." and the ability to be discerning when you're not used to receiving feedback. yeah. is a difficult skill. and again, the I can just middle finger my way through life not listening to anybody's opinion is an interesting one, but practically it's very difficult and it's a skill that you need to learn. and you do need to learn. you do need to listen to feedback. like if you had never changed how you did your podcast from day one until now, your podcast would not be what it is. right? if I had made sales presentations, if I had written emails, if I had made products that didn't respond to feedback, then we would not be where we're at right now. it's a really it's a really interesting question of like how do you discern which feedback is good and which feedback isn't. y um and I'm trying to think about what my my perspective is on that. I think it comes down to number one aligned incentives like does this person benefit from me doing better. number two is competence. are they do they actually have sufficient domain expertise where their uh feedback would be relevant? now, i'll be clear here. if you have a yogurt company and you want somebody to try your yogurt and your friends say, "i don't think the yogurt tastes good." well, they probably had a lot of yogurt and they've eaten stuff before and so like they could very well have domain expertise. if you uh have a business that's a yogurt business and then your mother gives her opinion about how the business works and she's never run a business, that's different, right? and so so the second would be uh domain expertise or competence. the first is uh aligned incentives. um and then what do you think? i think that those are like i'm trying to think of i honestly think those two those two are because you can start adding on but it just makes it harder. and the first one ensures that the person is pointing in the same direction as you. the second one ensures that they actually know how to row a boat. yeah. uh so yeah, i like that. i like that. success really just boils down to this. you got to want it more than you hate what it takes to get it. if you're willing to suck at anything for 100 days in a row, you can beat most people at most things. okay. i'm so excited you said this. so, we we we talked a little bit about how well i'll rewind the clock. so, there's this quote that i read from kobe where he said he thought that it was going to be super competitive in the nba, but when he got into the Nba, he realized that people, well,, they figured out that they had made it and uh, weren't willing to sacrifice as much as he was to continue to win. and I would say that that that realization has been somewhat true for me, which is that like winning it's like it it hasn't gotten harder from the actual doing stuff side. there has been the trades that have been different than I expected. um, but especially when you're looking at, you know, the population of everyone to a 100 days of doing something in a row. uh, there was a there was a friend of mine who had a he offered a guarantee on a product that he sold and the guarantee was this. he said all you have to do you can get all your money back if you just open up a Google doc and say what you're going to do every day and at the end of the day you're going to say what you did. that's it. and you just do that for six weeks. that's all you have to do. and if you do that and you don't get the the results, I'll you know I'll give your money back. and what's crazy about that is when he was talking about it, he said, ' do you know what the completion rate of twice a day doing something is? he's like, it's like less than 1%. he's like, so I can happily do it because it seems so simple. and so I think we we we underplay how simple success is and extrapolate an expectation of how easy it must be from that. and then we're disappointed or dissatisfied when it doesn't meet those expectations. like it is harder than we expect, but also the rewards may be also greater than we expect. James clear has this unbelievable insight. it doesn't make sense to continue wanting something if you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. if you don't want to live the lifestyle, then release yourself from the desire. to crave the result, but not the process is to guarantee disappointment. yeah. holy super true. i mean, um, i think naval quoted this blog a long time ago, but desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. and if you never if you basically know that you're never willing to put the work in to get the thing. yep. that's an iron law. like that James clear thing is an absolute iron law. if you don't want to live the lifestyle, then release yourself from the desire. there is a path between where you are and the place that you want to be. MHM. if you're not prepared to do that walk, still wanting to reach the end of the path is just guaranteeing that you're going to live an unsatisfactory life. and so when I hear that quote, I immediately go to my operational side of like, okay, how do I release myself from a desire? so I thought about that and I actually think it's a lot like dating. so hear me out on this. so, there is the old saying, I think it's a girl saying, um, well, I'm going to assume it's a girl saying, which is if you want to get over somebody, get under somebody else. all right? now, there's a point to this, which is, I don't think you can release desire, but you can replace it. and so, it's like if you have a terrible breakup, there's basically some totem of reinforcement that's been removed from your life. getting over something or someone is simply giving getting enough exposure to enough new things from the time that you've bought back from this reinforcer being gone to find another reinforcer. which is why i genuinely think that the idea of like, oh, I shouldn't date for a while after I get out of a breakup is just complete stupidity. like why would you like what why what rule is there? well, you have to heal. healing for most people is defined as I find something else that brings me sufficient joy that my baseline returns to normal. but if I'm going to bring somebody else into my life, that person's also going to serve that same function. and so like I could I can replace it with tennis or gardening or business or just the next person I'm going to date. and why is one better than the other? to clear's uh-releasing of desire, I think it's just choose to want something else.. so if I were to say if I were to give someone the direction release the desire, I would say don't try and release the desire. try and justify or reason why wanting something different is better. well, also maybe be a little bit more open--minded about how that desire could be fulfilled. it's like, huh? and I, you know, to push back on the why you should have a little bit of a break between partners, I would say that there is a specific type of learning that comes, especially from intense and emotional experiences that takes a little bit of time for you to embibe. and that if you very quickly move into a new relationship, you're trying to find the direction that you're going in while you're also rowing the boat and trying to fix the holes from the last one. I get the sense that there are certain realizations that come about by we're often very bad at taking lessons from a thing while it's still happening. And I wonder whether you very quickly move into the I can't take lessons from this thing mode because I'm focused on the new thing as opposed to let's sit down and debrief a little bit after this. And what does life look like? Perfect example of this. Alander bottom has a a beautiful insight where he says, uh, people rarely change often not in relationships and never when you ask them to. it seems that most people's changes in the way that they show up in relationships occur between them. now I would guess that a lot of this is because change is very emotionally painful and breakups are emotionally painful. therefore, people change when they break up. it's like my world got ripped out from underneath me. mhm. but I do wonder whether moving on very quickly stops the reflective process that allows sense making to occur by immediately giving you new novel stimulus that is distracting. so I so I will I will challenge back um, which is one um, it assumes that we must change. um,, if we take that if we take that frame, which I wouldn't necessarily accept in all cases. um,, number two, uh, it assumes that the change that we're going to make in between is something that's going to increase the likelihood that we find someone that we like, which may or may not occur. third, I do think that change would happen no matter what Because you've you've removed somebody who was altering your behavior. and anyone who says that the person they date doesn't alter their behavior, like, i don't know what you're talking about. like, of course, they they give you little kisses when you do stuff and they say thank you. of course it you have reward cycles and punishment cycles that exist constantly and so like oh she's always different when she's in a relationship. it's because they have somebody else who's deliberately uh changing their behavior and that's normal and we do control and counter control to our partners all the time. people don't like using the word control but it's exactly what you do if you want your husband to pick up the socks then you do you say thanks and you give them a afterwards whatever like you do some sort of rewarding contingency in order to you know get more more of the type of behavior you like.. And also you say, hey, don't say that when they say something that you they said, hey, are you going to finish your dinner And you're like, I used to have an eating disorder and my friends used to say I wasn't eating my food, blah, blah, blah, right? And so, um, with the relationship piece, I think that you're going to change when you have reward or punishment stimulus that changes And until those things change, nothing is going to change to Ellen Debot, Len's name that him um, and so if you get out of a relationship, you will change regardless because the conditions have changed And so your behavior will change And so and all of these things I then posit as the question is like, and do I need to do this in order to find the person that I want. how many people have gotten into relationships where they've changed the things that they like to do? They've started uh staying up late because their partner stays up, they started getting up early because their partner gets up early. let's say just that cuz, it's kind of simple. and then they get out of this relationship and they ask themselves the question still going to bed late or waking up early, right?? Because they've habituated that type of behavior, right?? they ask themselves, "well, huh?, I kind of forgot that I used to go to bed early or stay sleep in. I forgot that bit of me because for the last 12 months I've been in this relationship with this person and I adapted. we sort of met in the middle or maybe they really changed me or whatever it is." well, is that the way that I want to be? is that the actual change that I want to make or do I want to go back to or do I want to uh alchemize both of these things together and and create this this new world? I'm not convinced. in theory, maybe. in practice, no. and in practice for most people, certainly no. it takes time for this stuff to filter through. yes. particular landmark events that you go through that are very traumatic. I don't even think it's landmark. I think you can change behavior really quickly and it's just not a huge thing. like leila used to say in the very beginning of our relationship, she said, "haha, you're stupid." she would make that joke and I say, "hey, I don't really like that." and then she stopped. it's just a very small thing. it wasn't like this traumatic thing. I just said, "it's a preference of mine if you don't say that." and she said, "okay." and then that was it. um, with regards to the the staying up late thing, the contingency of reinforcement that was the other part partner who was there is gone. so now the reason that they were doing it before was that they didn't have this reinforce reinforce introduced so they're willing to change their behavior to accommodate this later you know timeline. we don't have transparency with ourselves though you know I don't know what that means. we do not see all of the reasons for our behavior and where they came from immediately. do we ever rarely but we will get more with distance I think to go huh I'm no longer receiving the stimulus. it's like I tried to run on I tried to run on Jupiter. Jupiter was really heavy. I adapted my running style. huh. I'm back on Earth. I need oh, this is going to take a little bit of time for me to get back into this new running style. so the reason so I'm I'm I will continue to to die on this because I I feel no I I like what i'm describing has been the central worldview that has been responsible for a great deal of my material success. and it's rapid behavior change. rapid behavior change but also being able to accurately view the world.. at least to my I I think I I view it more clearly than I did before. and my decision quality has dramatically increased by isolating variables that are dependent that actually change behavior, change outcome. and so when you said knowing why, it's like a it's like a bingo red flag for me. not red flag, but just like a, you know,, pay attention thing because when when we say, "oh,, I figured out why." in my opinion, for the vast majority of people, when they figured out why it means that I have crafted a narrative that I accept, which may or may not have any bearing on reality. And so I focus purely on the observable because they are far more predictable in terms of predicting your own behavior and predicting other people's behavior.. And so with regard to the relationship, it's like people have many counter controls that they do. And so because of that, you change your behavior and then all of those things are removed at once.. now were there other things that are also variables in your life that occur during that period of time?? of course,. do we know them all?? No,. And so I take the position that there are so many variables. why do I need to know why? and I never will anyways. and so why would I waste my time trying to figure out whether do you think you're this way because your father didn't hug you enough? I don't know. I know that I am this way. period. and might be 20 different things because we're going to generalize work-ethic to your dad didn't hug you enough when it might be like I write because I've had enough reinforcing contingencies around writing that I'd write and that's different than what I'm willing to speak which is different than when I do podcast which is different than all these others. and so when we get into the basically we extrapolate out reasoning by analogy works really well. when we get really down to what are the behaviors that changed when you were in the relationship versus not in the relationship. And if you can get isolating on that, which you can be specific about, not necessarily why it happened, but that it changed and what behaviors changed, then you can look at your laundry list of, okay, these are the changes in my behavior that I have continued to keep post relationship., are any of these, uh, conducive to me getting a more attractive or better partner in the future?, now,, if the person that I was with got me to go to the gym because they went to the gym and then the gym itself became reinforcing, because, uh, basically totems of reinforcement can shift uh, over time, in terms of the work itself can be reinforcing.. I might say this was a laundry. this is one of the items that changed when I was in this relationship, and I am okay with it.., and so if we have that laundry list then again why do i need time? and so i anyways i i push back on this very hard because me discovering why I did something gives me zero value. that's interesting. i i would class myself as a uh understanding why especially around myself is one of the greatest sources of pleasure that i've got in my life. okay. this be maybe where me and you differ. oh no. i'm gonna we're gonna jam on this. i love this. okay. so, i will give you i think a perfect analogy for this and the reason that I'm in general uh somebody who's not the biggest fan of therapy as is traditionally practiced. if I were playing tennis, right, and i went to a coach and they said, "hey, i need you to change your grip from this to this straightforward." would i spend the vast majority of that session with the coach being like, "let's try to discover why you hold the grip that way. who cares? i do. now, when we get to why i used the word control before, if we can understand the dependent variables, then it means basically if you can predict, it means you can control, which people don't like that. but if you can predict what's going to happen, it means that you know what the variables are and you can influence those variables, which you can influence the outcome, which means you can control the system. and so knowing why um from a narrative perspective, i think again you'll never know why. you will have a narrative that you've accepted. and so what? because then what do i want to do next? i only want to ch like we have a set of behaviors or skills that will increase the likelihood of goal achievement. whatever that goal is, being spiritual, being a good husband, whatever it is, these behaviors will do that. to increase the likelihood of me doing these behaviors, then I have to have more good stuff, less bad stuff. I will I will die down that hill. beyond that, what does anything that happened prior to this matter at all in so far as it only works if I can use that same variable? and then and then use it again to change my behavior yet again to be conducive to the goal.. what if I love this? Yeah,, I can tell. I can tell. I can tell it's either the nicotine or or the debate. Uh, so what if the actual outcome that you wanted was the pursuit of trying to work out? why?? because for me, and tried to word that relatively carefully, not finding out the actual why, but the pursuit of trying to work out why. uh, it's the reason that I fell in love with evolutionary psychology because to me, it started to explain why we are the way we are.. it's one of the common themes in this podcast over 900 and something episodes. it is a place for people to come to try and get some approximation of why they are the way they are.., And even if that's wrong,, yeah,, even if it does not fully explain, partly explain, the process of that discovery for me is fascinating.. I have a a, a journal entry from a long time ago when I was on mushrooms and I was it was post post party or post whatever. and I was back at the house and I had some music on and I was just thinking through ideas like this. And I could feel this game of tennis occurring in my mind as I thought a thing. And then I asked why. And then I asked why. And then I asked why. And then I asked why. And it felt like this sort of movement, almost, probably certainly was default mode off. and you know, hemispheres talking and all the rest of. and I wrote down not what I was thinking about,, but I wrote down the sentence,. I love the way that my mind works. because I like that conversation of tighter and tighter spirals of sort of deeper and deeper questions.., and for me,, I enjoy the why such.. it's something that in and of itself brings me joy to try and work out why we are, the way we are, or why I am the way I am.. I, I wholeheartedly accept that learning things is enjoyable.. and I think what you described more or less was that the, um, I I come purely from the perspective of changing behavior and the why is super important and not always knowable.. and so I, I push back on narrative so heavily because in a way, and like, take this not as a as a slight. I see a lot of that as mental masturbation. I would agree.. and I do not decry that in any way.. if someone wants to do something with their time,, awesome,. play video games. do whatever you want.. MHM. if we want to say this increases or decreases the likelihood that we achieve a goal,, then that is where I will, because that we can know.. does this increase or decrease the likely that we achieve a goal? And the difficulty with ascribing? why is that we cannot know because we cannot relive the same circumstances again? and so in any equals one situations, it has and i and I say this as somebody that um obsessed for a a long period of my life. um,, and this is not to say that now I'm better or different or anything like that. um,, over the wise, but when I the reason I have two two two three statements on on on my wall, the good day and those three. what does that mean? how do you know that?? and why does it matter? and so if we say these are the changes that occur in this relationship. Okay,, that's what it means Rather than like I'm stressed now or you know what?, she rubbed off on me because she was really anal. What does that mean?? okay,, it just means that she counted her calories and uh, I now, you know, when i go to a menu, i order like a diva. whatever, right? like these are the two behavior changes. when i say anal, this is what i mean. great. okay. how do you know that? well, did i do that two or three times or is this every single time that i go out? and so, okay, now i know the extent to which this thing that i have now defined. and who cares? why does that matter? i'm anal now. well, anal just means i change the way i order. does that matter? no. okay. and so instead of trying to maybe i maybe it was because i sought out approval from her and other people because i have this hole inside of me and i i wanted to gain um some sort of you know in-group outgroup. i wanted to be accepted by her and her friends who also do that. i think maybe that's what who cares. and so it was that that's does me counting my calories and being a diva when i order decrease the likelihood that i find the next mate? if the answer is yes, then i'll change the behavior. if no, it. interesting. i'll be uh the pursuit of the why to me improves my well-being and the quality of my well-being is a goal in and of itself. so let's say that one of the few goals that you have is to be in moment to moment happiness or satisfaction or something like that. for me, the pursuit of the why is a source of that. so i'm aware that that's like a lexical jiu--jitsu move, but um i've thought about this a lot and it's been one of the most sort of common themes in the show and uh it's even if it's pointless. yeah. kind of like uh like skimming rocks or something that it only occurs for a small moment and accumulates nothing over time. um i like it. yeah. so uh this is the second half of that quote from above. the bar for excellence has never been so low. most of your competition quits after the first sign of difficulty because they've never known what hard feels like. if it's hard for you, it's hard for everyone. and most people avoid hard things. which is why you can beat most people by just trying. i think the vast majority of people don't actually know what it looks like to put tremendous effort into something. and i think one of the most valuable things that the office, which now you're going to have, um, has given me is the people who now work in my proximity, one of the number one things that i get back as feedback is like, i really didn't understand how much he works. and like he doesn't stop. and it's it's easy to say these things and it's hard to act because one of the difficulty especially the vast majority of successful people have one thing in common which is they're consistent and consistency you cannot see in a snapshot. you can't see consistency in a sound bite. you can't see consistency in a real. and so consistency is one of those things i think you talked about un unlearnable lessons. i think they are difficult to learn without large amounts of exposure. and so those and i think those are the types of lessons that become unlearnable is that you need large amounts of exposure in order to encapsulate the lesson itself. you and so trying is one of those like the act of trying. yes,. And so I so uh, Ila had a mentor of hers say this, uh to her and I've been and it's it's lived rent free in my mind since then. um,, so we had this thing The 'play it out' method is a cognitive strategy designed to address fear and anxiety by confronting vague fears and mentally exploring their potential outcomes. It operates on the principle that fear often thrives in ambiguity and resistance, rather than in specific, examined scenarios. Key Aspects of the 'Play It Out' Method: Confronting Vague Fears: Instead of avoiding or resisting fearful thoughts, the method encourages individuals to "sit in" their fear. This means actively engaging with the fear rather than allowing it to remain undefined. Specifying the Worst-Case Scenario: The core of the method involves playing out the feared situation to its logical, most negative conclusion. For example, if the fear is about losing money, one might imagine the absolute worst financial situation, such as losing all assets. Realizing Survivability: After identifying the specific worst-case scenario, the next step is to recognize that even in that dire situation, fundamental needs are often still met. For instance, if one loses all money, they might still have access to shelter (e.g., sleeping on a friend's couch) and food (e.g., from a shelter). This process helps to counteract the brain's tendency to catastrophize, which often equates failure with death or complete ostracization. Reducing Anxiety and Increasing Control: By making the fear specific and realizing that the worst outcome is often survivable, the method provides a sense of reassurance. This reduces the overwhelming anxiety associated with vague threats and highlights one's capacity to cope, even in novel or challenging circumstances. The method essentially transforms an undefined, overwhelming fear into a concrete, manageable problem, thereby demonstrating that one's capacity to cope still exists, even if the situation is new or difficult. ( , , , , ) Would you like to explore how this method can be applied to a specific type of anxiety, such as public speaking or career changes?