#722 - 15 Lessons From 2023 - Jordan Peterson, Alex Hormozi & Elon Musk
01:00:47 Share

Hello, friends, welcome back to the show. My yesterday is me at the end of twenty twenty three. And to celebrate, I thought i'd run through some of the best lessons have picked up over the last twelve months. This year has had over ten thousand minutes of episodes produced, so there were a lot to choose from, but I ended up settling on fourteen insights from some of my favorite conversations, both inside and outside of the podcast. Expect to learn what toxic compassion is, why alex homos y needed to do damage control this spring.

The reason you should just be yourself, why getting what you want isn't always when the reason you don't want to be elon musk, why trajectory is more important than position, how a terrible job can be a huge blessing, and much more IT goes without saying that this year has been the crayons of my life. It's been the most change. It's been the most surreal and flattering and and unnerving and sort of tremendous and terribly beautiful all at the same time.

And I just went to say thank you to everyone that has tuned in. IT really does mean the world to me. I did this long before anybody listened, and I will do IT long after I am cancelled as well.

But in this beautiful middle section between those two things, i'm so glad to have you here with me. So yeah, thank you very much. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome me.

Hello, everybody, welcome back to the show. IT is an end of twenty twenty three. Review is the best lessons that i've learned over the last twelve months. I did one of these a year ago, and IT went down really well, and I really enjoyed the process.

So do IT again, if you want to do an end of your review, I have a free template, which you can actually go and do right now, can download IT. It'll help to structure your end of twenty twenty three review and give you plans for twenty four. You can go get that at Chris will x dot comet flash review completely free, can just copy IT and fill IT in and use your notes APP of choice Chris will x dot com flash review all right, let's get into IT.

First one is you should just be yourself not because IT it'll make you more likeable IT won't, but because it's only by being yourself that you'll find people who like you for who you really are rather than someone you're pretending to be not from grinder bogle. This was one of the biggest realizations of my twenties. The the advantage of doing this thing where you're sort of push off who you really are is that no criticism will ever fully land because your one degree removed from the person whose being criticized.

The disadvantage is that you're also removed from the person whose being complimented, and if you only playing a role, do you never fully feel connected to the successes that you have in your life? Any accusations or warmth that you receive won't resonate properly in your heart because it's not you who's receiving IT. It's the character that you're pretending to be, Albert marker said.

The persona is incapable of receiving love. IT can only receive praise, and this is how you can feel alone in a crowd and hollow in Victory. If you haven't shown your true self to the people around you, you are inevitably going to feel disconnected from them, and the people who would have fAllen in love with the true, you will pass you by, because that person is never presented the persona subsumes the person.

This isn't the people around you fault either. Like you need to take responsibility for this. There are reasons to fear truly showing up, but they pale in insignificance compared to the reasons to hide away.

Like even if all that you want is success, your highest point of unique contribution involves you fully embracing. You forget the actually, zing yourself forward and offering the world something which no one else can. Now all revco says, no one can beat you.

What being you? The absolutely best that you can hope for if you're playing a role is to be the second best in the world, that being someone else. I did this research for a telex talk that I did a couple of years ago around salvador di.

So dali's parents gave birth to a child about nine months before dali was born, who was also called salvador. And they were added that he was the reincarnation of their lost child. Like that was how he entered to the world, which might explain kind of why he was a bit crazy late run in life. When he was a child, he used to throw himself down the stairs. He was a master s used to enjoy throwing himself down the stairs.

He once gave a speech, keynote speech at the university had to be reached out of a deep sea diving suit that he d put himself into mid talk because he was suffers, citing the woman that he ended up marrying, he married this lady who was got this lady away from a marriage he was in one, so as he, they both separated, came together, and he literally thought that he was his muse, that he was like divine. He immediately bought a castle and then send a formal letters of request in order for him to be able to go in visitor in the castle that he bought her. So it's just super eccentric guide.

But the point is that is part and parcel of south adi. If he hadn't done all of those other things, the world would have been fundamentally less. Because, as brilliant as they were, michelAngelo didn't do dully and devi didn't do dari.

So had something or been anything short of his absolute, unapologetic showing up self to the world. The world would have been fundamentally less. He would have been a pale ima of something or someone else.

So yeah, that insight from winter around you should just be yourself not because they'll make you unlikable, but because you'll actually find people who like you for who you are rather than someone you're pretending to be like. Tend different reasons to do that. But I also understand that it's scary.

And if you don't have confidence that who you are when you fully expose yourself is someone that's likeable IT means that, well, you wanna do IT but again, like having people fall in love with some fake version of you doesn't seem like IT would be very fulfilling either. Next one, it's one thing to get what you want, but it's another thing to want. What's worth getting that from shame parish? This is just like a really great insight that the danger of not spending time working out what you want to want can cause you, no matter how hard you work, to move in the wrong direction.

Your life, as far as I can see, you should be lived by design, not by default. This guy, kyle action roda, explained. IT, so well said, blindly following your desires makes you a slave to your impulses, a slave to the assumptions of those around you, the advertisement to expose to, and the confused chemical signals of your body.

If we don't pause and ask, ask ourselves what we want to want. We will spend our lives focused on unhealthy aims, define for us by others the worst parts of ourselves. We will pass these bad assumptions about life onto our children and loved ones.

We will reinforce these boring ing, desperate default in everything and everyone we encounter. To achieve freedom, we must be able to think for ourselves. If we don't cut to the call and programmer wants that, our best case scenario is to be a rich, famous or successful slave.

If we never appear into our programing, that we may end up being the clever is right in the room. But that's hardly worth celebrating. In short, your defauts factory settings are shit. Don't follow them. People who will never actually the people who do this and never going to fully actualize their potential either for happiness or for success, does this quote from Sunny says they do not what they intended, but what they happen to run across.

So you can imagine it's the difference between being A A cock bobbing around in the ocean, which moves, but IT doesn't move on its own steam or with its own desire, and it's on direction, and being a boat which actually forces itself through the environment toward the direction that it's chosen. So if you think about IT that your desires define your own pathless st resistance, what you want is to able to arrive at a place where the things that you want are the things that you want to want. And that's why desires are important through deliberate training that at first feels tedious.

You can eventually arrive at that place where what you want is what you want to want, and that's where the life should be lived by design. Not defaulting comes in because your default factory settings send you off into like such strange, sub optimized areas of life, like whatever the current societal norms are, all the way you've dealt with past trauma or what your parents made you think that you are supposed to like. All of those things aren't things that you necessarily want to want.

They could be, but you need to get like stress, test this and work out whether or not IT is. So yes, a life should be lived by design. Not it's one thing to get what you want, but it's another thing to want what's worth getting next.

One, toxic compassion. So this is one of my favorites. By the way, everyone gave me shit the last time that I was doing a solo episode because I was drinking.

Just why I I drink on the Normal episode. De, as well, i'm talking for an hour. I need some sort of mostly and and hydration in my face differences.

I can usually mute the mike and do IT while the other person is talking when it's a two way episode. So forgive me that I need to be hydrated. But someone accused me of not having any rate.

It's obvious that does nothing in the country. Why would you be lifting this to my face, if doesn't anything in IT? Anyway, I will be drinking through out solo episodes.

I apologize. I'll trying to drink quietly. The toxic compassion, toxic compassion. Is this really, I love IT. I I is one of the coolest ideas that i've come up with this year. And I was looking for a name for this phenomenon that i'd seen for so long.

And I cycled through was like the shallow pond of empathy, a fucking like something like the inverse of satan's love. I like all sort of weird and wonderful other words. And then as toxic compassion just came to me, and I thought, that's IT so toxic.

Compassion is the prioritization of short term emotional comfort over everything else, over the truth, reality, actual long term outcomes flourishing. Everything IT optimizes for looking good rather than doing good. And this is seen in much of popular culture as the desirable, fair, empathetic thing to do.

And it's everywhere. People would rather claim that body fat has no barring on health and mortality outcomes to avoid making overweight people feel upset, even if this causes them to literally die sooner. I'll have a worst quality of life over a long run. Parents would rather allow children to play computer games or what screen. And as a social media, every night, instead of dealing with the discomfort of take me away from them, even if IT ruins their brain development, social skills and self, the steam people would rather to say that children growing up in single parent households suffer no worse outcomes than those from two parent homes.

Even if this misleads parents, children and teachers about why kids behaved the way that they do, campaigns would soon as shout, defend the police as a response to what they perceive as the unfair treatment of criminals, even if this results in more crimes being committed against people from minority backgrounds due to the abandonment of police officers from those very areas. Elan mk recently responded to some criticism about his political alignment and contribution to climate change and skepticism of that, I think. And then he identified how big of a shift tesler had caused in the electric vehicle market and the downside impact of that on the environment.

He said he's done more for the climate than any other human in history. And this quote from him is, what I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of IT. And what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil.

Important trade off with all of those examples, including islands, is between appearing good and actually doing good. So telling people what they want to hear, giving them immediate gratification and avoiding saying anything that could cause distress, prioritizing the former of looking good, of the latter of doing good. And the net effect is usually wildly negative.

It's it's like a toddle who wants to eat ice cream every night? Sure, that might be what they want in the moment, but it's going to be wildly unhealthy over the long term. I Jordan Peterson about this on our last episode.

He said that's exactly what the edible situation is, is the prioritization of short term emotional comfort over a long term thriving. It's going to hurt now, but the long term consequences are positive. If you give up your children to the world, you will keep them. And this prospect of appearing bad while doing good is obviously not very enticing.

Like do you get all of the negatives up front of not appearing like somebody that cares and is empathetic even though yeah sure enough, down the line people will benefit from IT, but you're going to be lambasted and criticized and seem like someone who doesn't care in the moment. And the opposite of this is performative apathy, saying whatever is required to look good even if you don't actually care. And on the internet, the gap between words and actions has never been bigger.

You can be the least virtuous, the minus most dishonest human on earth. But if you say the right things, if your thugs literally hit the right buttons on a screen, you look like a saint, and no one ever stressed tests the words coming out of your mouth. So means that appearing good actually becomes more important than doing good.

So this, the incentive of performative apathy, kind of creates the basis for toxic compassion. As as a trend, posting about myself at groups is more incentivised than actually helping mistreated groups. All of the people who have put a flag in the bio but have never actually donated to a charity.

And this isn't me saying that you can't do good. Whilst also talking about IT. It's that many may be even most of the people who proceed ze about how virtuous and caring they are and about how is everyone else who is evil and didn't caring in the enemy are allowing their morality to stand on the shoulders of limited scrutiny, Peterson said.

It's like, look how good I am. Well, if the look at comes before the how good I am IT really works, how IT with the claim. I think the the big lesson here is just beware the people who prioritize saying good things because they might not actually be doing good things.

This baLance tween, what is that, that you're saying? How does that look and what are you doing? What are the outcomes I see everywhere? And this idea of toxic compassion, I think, is it's useful.

It's a useful frame. And I don't know everyone kind of has this in the back of their mind. There's a degree of sketch m and scrutiny, anyone that says something good online.

But we all know that there are huge, huge sweets of people who are probably not that nice, probably not that caring, probably don't really give a shit about whatever the topic or movement is that they are getting behind or supposed to be a front run for liza, liz supposed to be this paragraph virtue and supporting these girls and giving them a platform behind the scenes. She's body shaming her dancers. She's forcing them to go on fast.

When SHE isn't making them eat, banana is out of the vagina of amsterdam strippers. Allen to generous Jimmy fallon, you know, allegedly, allegedly all of these people that outfront to these sort of qc nici y people. And behind the scenes, the staff that have worked with them, who know them best, say that the tyre super mean.

So yeah, I just think IT is not really a way around this. I be interested to try think of way around this because what you supposed to do, it's easier to see someones words and is their deeds. Deeds can be faked as well.

And there's always going to be an incentive for people to just say the right thing again, say an increasingly complex or um convincing set of mouth face thun ISIS. So you believe whatever is but yeah I I thought toxic compassion. One of the probably top five means that that come out of this year aren't next one.

This is elon as well and this was on like this show such a good insight. You know you look at elan as somebody who is um probably quite admit by lots of people in the internet, wealth, status, influence, all the rest of IT. And lex asked how he was doing and sort of what it's like to be him and elon replied, my mind as a storm.

I don't think most people would want to be me. They may think they would want to be me, but they don't. They don't know, they don't understand.

And this is why jealoused sy is a stupid emotion. In fact, envy is one of the at the only one of the seven deadly scenes which doesn't actually feel good. Think about that.

So naval says about jealousy. I realized that all of these people, I was jealous. I couldn't just Cherry pick and choose little aspect of their life.

I couldn't say, I want his, I want her money. I want his personality. You have to be that person. Do you actually want to be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, the happiness level, their outlook on life, the self image?

If you are not willing to do a whole sale, twenty four, seven, one hundred percent swap, with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous. IT seems obvious, but it's so counterintuitive to how we all relate to the people that we admire. We look at humans that we are jealous of as ubiquitous success is this sort of brilliant college worthy of lifetime de admiration and MV.

And we presume that we could add the elements of our life which we love, like taking clothes of a rail, but that's not how life works. The outfit that you are imagining trying on is head to toe, not pick and choose. It's a one zy right on our cart wardrobe.

The Price that you would need to pay to be the the person of the people that you admire is often one that you wouldn't put the biller. And this is what we're seeing with elan as well. That this do is, you know created potentially one of the coolest, most innovative cars in history with the cyber, a truck that just got released a couple of weeks ago.

Then he's on stage doing like with robot dances in japan, the sending rockets to mars, you trying to make humanity multiple anette species like you look at him and you think, well, he must if he doesn't have its sorted if he's not the guy who is one of the wealthiest people on the planet, you bought twitter just basically for fun well, he's saying, my mind is a storm people think they would want to be me but they don't, they don't know, they don't understand. Like that is the ground truth, reality of his life. And yeah, I just think again for reminding us that people who outward have lots of things going for them inwardly can be suffering and have completely unadmitted undesirable internal state.

In fact, perhaps the people who are most desirable externally may corporate. With being the least desirable internally, IT gives us couple of things. First of, IT can give us a little bit of empathy that success outward doesn't fix all problems internally.

And IT helps us to stop accusing things, is of being first world problems a lot. And secondly, IT helps us realize that just because someone does have lots of things out would need that we might desire. That doing mean that we should actually be in any way envious of them or that there are particularly good person doesn't mean they're good just because they're successful.

Speaking of that, there was this i've caught that a lot this year. So sorry if you got this one before. But the documentary following Lewis cadia around as he's going through this big change in scrutiny and status and fame, does his first album, which goes super well, and then he's got to make the second one, and he develops a nervous tick.

I think it's to read. He sort of starts doing this like and it's not good you i've seen videos of him in front of however, many tens of thousands of people at glass be unable to sing because of our nervous y is and I think this was only this summer. So the documentary tries to finish like an uplifting oc, where is? And I went, indeed, some yoga n breath work.

And now my fucking in mental health is under control. But it's not it's not under control. This guy is still as one of the most successful breakout artists the last five years.

This study is still fAiling on the biggest stages that there are to fail on. You know like glass and bridge doesn't get much Better. Me was like leads festival or reading on something instead.

But this guy is struggling, really, really struggling. And he's got this line in the documentary where returns to the camera and he says, fame doesn't change. You IT just changes everyone around you.

And again, like, I have niche fame, I have micro, micro influence and niche fame. But there is something disconcerting, and it's hard did is so hard to talk about this. I spoke about this.

One of the live in is IT really is divulge to talk about this on the internet without being accused of being full of you self or or having a massive ego or thinking even more important than you are, or complaining you about first world problems. Don't you know about how hard people of the people have got IT? You just get to dick about on on a Cameron a microphone and have all of this stuff I get IT, all of those things I get IT.

But if you genuinely are interested in finding out what IT feels like to go from completely as Normal person as possible to still unbelievably Normal person with micro influence and eh fame, like i'm telling you that this is how IT feels or at least this is how IT feels to me, which is it's disconcerting like it's it's very nice and it's flattering. But imagine you woke up tomorrow and everybody immediately started treating you differently and you didn't understand why, because you see yourself as the same person, and maybe even the things that you do are the same. Nothing changed.

Lose capote singing the same songs that he was seeing when he was seventeen, eighteen years old in working men's hubs around scotland. Those were the same songs that he then belted out across a global to billions and billions of streams. Thing doesn't change.

You IT just changes everyone around you. You haven't even changed the thing that you're doing. And everybody else refers to you in response to you and react to you in a different way.

That is the reality, at least from where I am at the moment. That's like part of the reality of changing status in summer gards. That like it's beautiful, flattering, but like disconcerting as well.

Everyone is you just see yourself the same person. Maybe people, maybe it's just the epic more confident may be it's got nothing to do with the position here and now. But yeah, that's like that's something i'm kind of battling with at the moment, trying to work out what that means and how to deal with IT and stuff.

So yeah, anyway, enough online solo therapy between me in the camera. Next one, Jimmy car. So Jimmy may become francia. And he just has his really wonderful idea about the difference between trajectory and position and how important trajectory is, how much more important to is the opposition.

So if you are number two in the world, but last year you are number one, that is way worse than sitting at number one hundred and fifty. But being on this huge upward slope from being number three hundred twelve months ago, the number one to number two, number a one fifty from number three hundred. And there's a few reasons for this, I think so a recently bias.

If your value is increasing right now, then IT means that you have to be popular at the moment. And by looking at recent trajectory, you are selecting for only the people who are trendy right now, which a lot of the time is all that we can remember. We can also romanticize where someone will be in future if they're currently hot stuff.

You think about how high this person might climb. Maybe, maybe we'll get to the top. Maybe we'll go beyond the top humans struggle to realize and that everything is temporary, including growth and decline. Instead, it's easier to label people as heroes and losers based on what we know of them right now so that we don't have to predict a messy future.

Was talking to this, uh, to run long about this is a massive final, jimmie and ryan said, does an old saying that these three types of people on a ladder, one of the bottom, one of the DDL and one of the top, which one is the best to be the one that still climbing? Interesting, right? This I don't think IT works just for status, but IT works for possessions and achievements and wealth and sex and everything else.

And it's not just how we see other people, it's also how we see ourselves. But we know when we're moving up or down when life is getting Better or getting worse. We have this internal like altimeter is what IT is, an altitude metre.

We have one of those. We know where we were before all of these different domains, status, money, possessions, achievements, education, competence, confidence. And we know we we can predict whether things are going up or down.

What was that? Will Smith in this biography? Gaining status is amazing. Being becoming famous as amazing, being famous as a mixed bag and losing fame is horrible. It's just this sort of hodgepodge of lots of different things.

Andrew tape, you know, one of my favorite insights that I think i've learned over the last couple of years, having things isn't fun. Getting things is fun. There's something feel like it's a kenrick lam online as well that people don't love you when you've got something.

They love you when you're on the way to go to to getting something. Another way to look at IT is any accomplishment is just a new hia bar for you to get over in future. So let's say in our own work that we do an episode that hits a million place in the first day, amazing.

That a very exciting new record that we can feel proud of almost immediately. wow. That also means the every video in future is now going to feel and impressive until we hit one point one million or more.

And in this way, rapid increases in status. I'm more accused than a blessing and this theory got cosign by dumble arian. So you know, it's legit.

Even though we might want our goals and accomplishments to arrive immediately, maybe smarter strategies to actually stretch out the achievement of our dreams we shouldn't wish for overnight success because we would then need to be able to beat IT pretty soon, or else we're going to feel like we're declining. Instead, slow, consistent progress is a much more reliable way to maintain satisfaction. So I came up with this idea of slow success strategy as a way of.

Making sure that you're going in the right direction of of on gating out that journey a little bit more. So let's say that um you got a pay rise and you are able to afford your dream car or one of your dream cars, but you're jumping from you maybe haven't update your car in a very long time. You have the opportunity instead of going from total shit box to the ultimate car that you ve ever wanted, you have the opportunity to chunk that up.

Maybe you could go halfway and take a bunch of satisfaction from that because once you got the dream car, what is the after that you want to go the dream house? Once you ve been on the holiday, you ve always wanted to go on. If you have the opportunity of maybe making a couple of small jumps in between the aren't the massive leap to the very top, I think that you can stretch out that sense of progression.

And you know, it's one of the reasons why you literally should pray to never win the lottery. Y in summer regards, IT would be the most amazing and most terrible davia life, because how you gona have a Better day than that, given the fact that trajectory is more important than position, I I absolutely think that this is true. Project is more important than position, given that what you want is to always continue.

You wanted just have this very nice sort of slow, steady rap up, and then you can just flatten out toward the end of your life. What you don't want is to have this huge Spike up and then be the art, where do I go? I'm just floating in the statistics. Where do I go from here? And this relates to another lesson I learned from adam mastery oni where he explains what happens when people sacrifice their happiness and their passions in order to achieve success.

This such a cool um analogy he is is here he says this is an extra special type of tragedy, a tragedy that didn't folds while everyone cheers struggling your passions and exchange for an illite to life is like being on the titanic after the iceberg water up to your chin with everybody telling you that you're so lucky to be on the greatest steamship of all time. And the titanic is indeed so huge and wonderful that you can't help but degree, but you're also feeling a bit cold and wet at the moment and you're not sure why struggling your passions in exchange for an elite at life. I love that inside.

Like, what's the pointing success? If the roads to get there is paved with nails and you don't care about the place you arrive at in the end, don't forget, having things isn't fun. Getting things is fun, but once you have them is not that fun. The journey is the destination.

And if you struggle your passions in in return for elite life, remembering that when you get to the very top, not only if you ve got nowhere to go from there, or as you start to get to the top, the bar of increasing your trajectory becomes harder and harder. If you are miserable, you're sacrificing the thing that you want, which is happiness for the thing which is supposed to get IT, which is success, and that is the boss who will being turned upside down is very dangerous. Then i've been until with James, which is being good, not so much fun.

I've learned an awful lot then trying to not help on about IT because that that must be boring, like I sometimes don't like IT about. Someone goes on some formative experience in all that they talk about for the next year. Is this like one trip to fucking peru? I'm trying not to be like the two or guy, but IT has been very formative.

It's been very strange to watch, you know, like a few thousand people over the space of a couple of weeks come out and see you live. But while I was watching James, one of my favorite lessons that I took from him is this idea about, imagine how could you be at something you loved if you're winning at something that you hate. So committing to decisions that you failed drawn toward making often makes you feel nervous.

IT is an existential poll toward a new dia life direction changing, a joyful leaving in relationship or moving to a new city. It's hard. It's often hard to let go of the fear around what this new situation might have in store.

But his justification is that you are sleep, they can, because if you're not happy right now, you're not risking anything. In any case, what's the worst that could happen? You leave a job that you hate to take a chance on, one that you love fail and still have the one that you hate there to go back to that still a success.

In fact, it's more than a success because you closed the loop that you had in your mind that was ramping up anxiety cost for ages and ages in the back of your mind. And you don't need to worry about IT anymore. And this is the difference in life between playing to win and playing to not lose.

A more difficult decision is if your life is OK, but not perfect. And this is the region beater problem, right? You don't hate your job or your relationship with your city, but they're not fulfilling you as you thought you would.

How do you know when to give up the good for the great? How would you even know what good and great are? How do you know when you're deceiving yourself into thinking that the grass is Greener? And in fact, the problem is your perspective on the situation, not the situation itself, that is messy.

But if you've got something where john y from john y, you said proper and fitness, use the sing to himself on his way to his old accounting job, singing. I don't want to go to work. I don't want to go to work.

I don't want to go to watch just over and over again and is misses one day tend to move like i'm not sure i'm not sure that you are fully fully filled. So oh, you think like he created the entire song about not a good song, but I created a song, you singing a song himself about not wanting to go to work. If that's you what you giving up.

And if you're being successful, if you're being effective at something that you do not enjoy, how great could you be if you are fired up and you couldn't wait to hit the the alarm on the mornings that you could get out and going do IT so yeah, if you're succeeding at something that you hate, imagine how amazing you be at something that you loved. And then phillip block in had this idea. This is from Douglas murray.

E, who told me about IT. He said, A, I felt like I been shunted to the side of my own life. Often times there's a thing we must do, something we're called or compelled to do, and yet we can ignore this sense and proceed in a different direction, not take the risk, not try to think or make the change.

This is how we shut ourselves to the side of our own lives by ignoring the things we feel cold to do in place of things are fears rationalized that we should do. Instead, we can protect ourselves from fAiling publicly by ensuring that we fail privately. Even though IT doesn't seem IT in the face of a big scary decision, the pain of regret hurts much worse than the pain of failure.

So you need to get out of your own way as best you can here. And that idea of being shunted to the sign of your own life, like you shouted, you were meant to live a different life. You want this? I remember who I was.

I think IT was maybe George mac who was telling me about how imagine that you met god at the party gates and he said, you did all right. Did OK. What do you just come with me? And I can show you what you were supposed to do.

This is the life that you were supposed to live. And IT was you taking the chances? IT was you having the conviction to follow your your courage and to go after the things that you truly wanted? IT was you playing to win, not playing to to not lose.

And that would be pain and that's the same you know the true hello is on the person you are me, the person you could have been like. Perhaps that would be true how um but yeah this this robot supposedly thing as well which kind of relates to the journey destination idea. But I haven't been able to stop thinking about a human posted a screen shot of IT on his instagram a couple of weeks ago.

And I I just can't stop thinking about IT dopamine e is not about the pursuit of happiness. IT is about the happiness of pursuit, so much of life and enjoyment is about the anticipation of things coming. In fact, the anticipation is often actually more enjoyable than the experience in forests.

Used to book these vacations years in advance so that he would stretch out that anticipation for so long, basically like free holiday before your holiday is he was excited and thinking about IT. IT puts a new perspective on it's not the journey is the destination, because there actually is no destination. Each arrival at the destination simply Marks the beginning of another journey toward the next destination.

Morgan household told me that when he went on holiday, after months of planning, you got all of these kids and organizing, and he writes the collaboration fun, and he's got to find. And he, like this big guy, and the shit arrives, steps out to the the first night. He looks out sunsetting over whatever, and his first thought was, wow, we should told to come back here next year would be great if we came back here next year.

So literally, during the supposed enjoyment of the destination, Morgan was captured by the a law of the next journey and is hilarious, but tragic. Like the dangerous thing about anticipation is that can cause us to lock over the shoulder of the present moment, to always see what's coming next, so that we never actually experience what's happening right now. And this has been one of the most common questions that we've had at the Q.

N. A. You know, I I don't want to leave growth and and achievements and experiences and life on the table. I want to feel like I left IT all on the field of play, and I maximized my time and all the rest of IT.

But I want my mind and my sort of spirit to be where my fear, I want to be able to take pride and pleasure and gratitude and happiness and peace in the things that i'm doing whilst continuing to trying achieve. Like how do I how do I find this baLance? And it's been it's been really tough.

This is something I struggle as well, looking over the shoulder of the present moment to see what's coming next. Always peers in my mind when something great happening. And i'm always thinking about already, thinking about whatever gona happen next. One of the solutions, I think, that you can do is to celebrate microware as much as possible, lots of little way markers as you move along, you know, lots of tiny, little destinations put along the journey.

Any excuse, I think, to celebrate a Victory, celebrate a win, celebrate a new recorders or or, or just a degree of satisfaction? IT doesn't need to be a big celebration, but I really think that that's one good way of chunking up long destinations into shorter journeys. James Smith was talking about how his client, a lot of the time i'll say, I want to lose ten kilos.

He goes, well, hang on, why did we lose one kilo and then lose another kilo and then lose another kilo? That seems like a way that you could celebrate the win, presuming you don't celebrate IT with a massive like three thousand five hundred calorie cake, that seems like a much more enjoyable way to go about this. But yeah, I think so much of so much of what I ve been thinking about this year and and what IT seems like from the live shows and the questions and the Q N S.

That you guys have to, is this baLance between becoming and being, between growth and presence, between wanting to achieve as much as possible and wanting to be great, grateful for the things that we've already accomplished like this. BaLances is a tough one, and if anyone's got the cheek code, please stand IT in next one. Self worth and White.

So tRicky to get right is, again, another chAllenge, because you are built to care about the opinions of the people that are around you. And fully dispensing with this impulse is a super difficult task. But turning down the volume is not only achievable, but I think also crucial.

Outsourcing your sense of self worth to the crowd is unbelievably dangerous. Not only will you begin to change how you act to fit in with the expectations of everyone else that they have of you, you sometimes lose who you really are in the process. And again, this is kind of like that first one, that if you're only playing a role, you're going to basically be marinates by your of what the people around you want to see.

That super dangerous. The winter bogles got this beautiful idea where he says they exaggerate. The more idiosyncracy facets of their personalities become include caricatures of themselves, caricature quickly becomes the influencing distinct brand. And all subsequent attempts by the influencer to remain on brand and fulfill audience expectations require them to act like the caricature.

As the carrico ure becomes more familiar than the person, both to the audience and to the influencer, IT comes to be regarded by both as the only honest expression of the influencer, so that any deviation from IT soon looks and feels in authentic. At that point, the persona has eclipsed the person, and the audience has captured the influencer. This is the ultimate trap in the hall of fame to become a prisoner of ones zone persona.

The desire for recognition in an increasingly atomized world, losers to be whose strangers wishes to be and with personal development, argues and lonely, there is ease and comfort in crowd sourcing your identity. But amid such temptations is worth remembering that when you become who your audience expects at the expensive who you are, the affection you receive is not intended for you, but for the character you're playing, a character you eventually tire of. And so be warned, being someone often means being fake.

And if you chase the approval of others, you may, in the end lose the approval of yourself. Shop an hour, said other places, heads or a retched place to be the home of a man's true happiness. And this outsourcing itself, what to the crowd, this manipulation of who you are, honestly, of showing up in a way that's performative, so that other people will like you, or you think that they will, means that the best you can hope for is for people to fall in love with the projection.

And ultimately, what may end up happening is that you now need to play up to a role which you do not, you do not resonate with, which he is not you. And if you start to deviate from that, even if you're not a country creator, that deviation is going to feel disingenuous even though IT is you moving toward a more genuine invention of you? So it's like audience captures are so evidently perverse and easy to slip into for exactly those reasons.

Next one, I came up with some, I thought, cool idea, the four levels of think saying fuck you. So people talk about sucky money and that was kind of the first level IT to mean. But it's also the truth.

There's an amount of wealth you can achieve when typical restrictions and conventions don't really apply to you anymore. You don't need to suck up to the gatekeepers. You don't need to do things that you don't want to do.

And in extreme situations, you kind of don't even need to follow the law because you can pay people laugh for by expensive solicitors and lawyers and stuff and then bucky freedom is kind of downstream ing from fucker money, but can also be created aside from IT by cultivating a lack of resilience on other groups. There are no on way can travel to, and when and for how long you don't need to show up to work on time or work at all. If you're sufficiently, you will struct.

You don't really even need to care about the state of the economy or the power great or the wider world or whatever. Um this is your classic Austin guy that buys a branch somewhere in back drop of b cava, whatever. And they now live outside of town and they don't really even need to worry about anything.

They the a silo ed little nation out in the middle, nowhere. And then another level that I think he can get to, again, all of these kind of exist independently. It's not like that stacked on top of each other. A, which is significantly cheaper and more accessible and more common and maybe even more powerful, which was the fuckyou family. So a lot of fathers that i've spoken to have told me about how their priorities were completely changed upon starting a family.

And all of the previous status games that they used to play seem quite petty, because the admiration in the ginseng ship that they used to play in order to impress people in power or those with status, seem juvenile and shallow. And retrospect CT. And much of their aniele about whether different people like them or thought they were cool or whatever evaporated.

The only person that they really needed to care about impressing was the one five feet to sleep above them in the house. And maybe the person that was next them in the bed to their kids, they were the cool lest richest, strongest, most torc person on the planet. And this gives dads IT seems a very powerful kind of liberation IT seems to me that much of what Young men get up to are, sorry, good activities until they finally become a father.

This isn't to say that all fathers have become like plastic soy boy hippies, or that having kids knew to your ambition, but IT definitely seems to open up a new realm where dad care far less about the flota and jetson that used to occupy their lives. But then I heard a story this weekend about a fourth type of saying fuckyou which is fuckyou fame and this is I guess, where's the the family and the freedom and to some degree the money pulls you outside of the existing uh hierarchy in the existing game. This is winning the existing game so well that you are no longer at the mercy event and that is the example that was used was, uh, racial l macao's doesn't have social media.

So you're so ubiquity, you're so well known, but your fame Carries itself, and you don't need to any longer play the fame game. And Rachel mcAdams not having a social media MBA rassle ly, apparently Rachel mcAdams doesn't have social media because if I well known SHE was an idea question whose Rachel meade's. And then realized that someone had done a song about her I think IT was dave on that or whatever it's called little Bobby.

I've ruined that. Whatever whatever that fucking sick m is that has been going around that just got Andrew sand. No, no, it's pretty that there is a sung by ration meade's in that, I think.

But of that, I didn't know who he was. Famous actress doesn't have social media. She's played the fame game to a degree where she's so high. She's not outside of IT and SHE doesn't need IT, which perhaps is why I didn't know who he was.

I wanted for a little while to find a justification for a homos y quote that I loved, which was we're not afraid of fAiling, were afraid of what other people will say about us if we fail. And that IT seems to make sense. IT seems honest and truthful to me, and IT seems accurate.

FAiling when you're on your own doesn't matter. No one really kids. If you trip over when you're in the house, apart from pain, there isn't any embarrassment.

But if you tripped over while you're on stage in front, five hundred people, that would be okay. So failure is inherently to do with other people's judgments of us, not intrinsically what that thing is itself like. If you are playing a game of keeps up is against the wall, you might be frustrated if you drop the ball, whatever.

But it's not the same. It's no one near the same as if other people are watching you or scrutinising you, or you know, trying to criticize you, whatever. And then rob Anderson brought this idea up, which is, why do you feel shame when others falsely accused you have misconduct? Your heart rate elevates your cheeks flush, your body temperature feels like its rising, even though you didn't do anything wrong.

The reason is that social devaluation by others is sufficient to illicit the emotion of shame, even when there is no wrong doing. The true trigger of shame is negative perceptions by others, not by the self. And that actually has a source for IT.

So I really love that idea, the fact that being accused of something that you didn't do, apart from the indignation, right? The unfairness of IT, the factor, I don't know. I didn't.

I didn't this this this isn't true. This isn't honest. On top of that, why do you have the response if IT was about the thing that you did and not the judgments of of the people around you? That shouldn't matter.

And yet, IT obviously does. We're not afraid of fAiling, afraid of what other people will say about us if we fail. Next one, neediness the definition of neediness. This is mark manson, who, again, I keep forgetting about, like he so obvious as a person in self development.

A lot of the time I like overlooked for a good chunk of a good while like overlooked a lot of the insights that he had ah yeah yeah mark manson or whatever you trying to look for whoever the new diamond in the rough is. Mark just got so many amazing insights and this one about the definition of neediness. Actually comes from his first book, models, just like from two thousand and fourteen.

I think he was a picker parties, but kind of like ethical picker partisan. Needing this occurs when you place a higher priority on what others think of you than what you think of yourself. Anytime you alter your words or behavior to fit someone else's needs rather than your own, that is needed.

Any time you lie about your interests, hobby or background, that is needed. Any time you pursue a goal to impress others rather than fulfilled yourself, that is needed. Whether most people focus on what behavior is attractive or unattractive, what determines neediness that for attractiveness is the why behind your behavior.

You can say the coolest thing or do whatever else does, but if you do IT for the wrong reason, IT will come off as needy and desperate and turn people off. Turning people off is definitely not optimal, but doesn't even bigger Price to be paid here, which is your own self worth. Like imagine a world in which you're unanimous ly adored by millions, but you hate yourself.

Are you happy? Is IT worth IT? Probably not. Now imagine a world in which you're disliked by everybody, but you love yourself. Not optimal. But I would propose that self of you would ultimately be happier, because in some towel round about way, the reason we want validation from others is to give us a good enough reason, the validate on sounds.

And if you compromise yourself in order to gain faith with other people, you'll know, even if you think you're not keeping score, your subconsciously, and this sacrifice of the thing that we want for, the thing which you supposed to get IT sacrifice, the thing we want self worth for, the thing which you're supposed to get IT validation means that we need to prioritize ourselves and Marks contention in models, basically with the entirety of models as a piece of advice for mail, dating is needless. Is the attraction killer. Therefore, you cannot prioritize other people's opinions of yourself ahead of your own any time you want to.

Your words to your behavior to fit someone else is needs rather than your own that's needed. So I think there's a lot in that. And neediness is not really spoken about much interesting.

It's like IT was a formative powerful book and IT sold pretty well and there's lots in IT. But the modern world of dating doesn't really talk about readiness. They talk it's been transmuted into a attachment theory, right? That persons got avoided attachment or that persons got anxious attachment, that person got secure attachment.

So no, sometimes I remember I went back home and was talking about, like trying to reverse engineer some evolutionary psychology insight, and you know about the ability for man to detach their emotions from having sex and women strugling with IT and all the rest of bit, you know, come up with this big, long, like, high fluting idea about IT. And then I met, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, birds catch fields. Like, birds catch feels yeah, like that. That's what IT was.

So the same thing with the needed ss, I wonder how much has been played on top of a fundamental a law which is neediness is an attractive especially for men, but also from women, that if you see someone who overly liable and overly responsive and doesn't seem like they're got much else going on, IT seems like it's an an immediate indicator of low value and that's not something that you want to have to deal with. So yeah I want to um how many ideas are us just refer posing shit that and we all already knew and maybe there's like a colloquial term that probably actually even makes more sense, right? One m alexa mozy.

Um when we did our episode at the start of this year, on the first one we did, he was used to collect from IT the very start and he got made a bit about IT because we put IT, they put IT on instagram. And taken out of context, people were quite unhappy. And he posted basically kind of A A press release, a rebuttal against IT.

And I really like that. So this is what IT is info. If you had disadvantages, I agree with you.

You are right. It's harder to be successful if x happened to you. Replace x with gender, race, birth to form different language, different country abuse at SATA. The main point, the longer conversation, is that despite the advantage, you only have one choice.

What are you going to do about IT? Number one, take action anyway and become prove to other people like you, your people also born into or abused into this tragedy that you are, that they too can overcome IT. Number two, blaming, complain.

And to be clear, do whatever you want. I support your choice. But only one of those decisions will make you Better. And I wish I could say this without getting attacked.

But you know who wins by you not being successful, whoever or whatever you blame and fuck them, or fuck that you can lead a rebellion of one and blame one thing that you can control. What is you, in your mind, redefine the word blame as give power to. And when you do that, there's only one person you're gonna want to give more power to.

And that's you for everyone who's had shitty circumstances. I'm on your side, your long term side, the side that wants you to win. So do IT anyways with all the disadvantages and still tell them to shove IT and win.

I want to be clear again, if you had tough shit happen to you, IT sucks and it's not your fault. But now what, why do we go my two cents win anyways, and prove that you can win even when the chips stacked against you and your delt allows the hand. Because we can't get dealt a new hand, we gotten play the cards we got rather than hoping the dealer rules in our favour.

So again, what do you do with your shitty hand? The only thing possible, you play at the best you can. And this is a nice reframe to lovely reframe against the cynical m sort of black pill external validation, or extreme c locals of control, external locations of control.

The thing that's been going on, which I don't like, I don't like IT, it's I understand that there are lots of immutable truths about the world and that there is a whole distribution of people. You have advantages and disadvantages all the way along IT. But ultimately, despondency kind of just puts you at the mercy of whatever happening to you.

And that doesn't seem particularly heroic. I don't think that going to look back on IT and consider that there was a life I live again like alex xy, like you are free to do what you want. You have free to make whatever decision, choice or approach to completing life that IT is that you want to go through. But I think you're going to look back with a lot more satisfaction and pride and you will overcome the bitterness and the envy that you have of whatever the thing or the people or the situation or the movement or the incident was that caused you to feel negative in the first place because you're going to know that despite the city hand that you were dealt, you continue to overcome in. And no, that that seems like a more heroic c way to to look at IT.

Trying to think about kind of what the what the metathesis this year has been, at least based on the lessons that we've gone through today and seems like there's some stuff around performing, not performing, trying to just be yourself um finding a place that you have something that reliable and honest and and and truthful for you to go to in hard times, right? That you want people to accept you for who you are, that you want to show up in a way that people genuinely feel like they have a connection with you and so that you're not just doing this like performance, so that you're not just this dancing monkey, I guess the performance of pathy toxic compassion thing. A lot of what that's talking about is kind of the uh outward equivalent of the same as supposed to you wanting validation if you just wanting to appear good when IT comes to the social group overall.

Um but yeah, i'd luck guys. I this has been crazy. I can't believe the changes and the growth and all the rest the stuff that happened this year. And i'm trying to like not lose my head along the way, which is some days is easier than others uh, and i'm trying to be open, honest about what i'm going through.

If IT was me and I was a fan of this show, and someone was going through kind of formative learning experience about changes in life, I would want to know. So i'm trying to avoided accusations of being full of myself, or considering myself more important than I am, or getting in the way of these interesting guests that come on. But I also trying to open up about what the experiences like of going from very insured person, very unconfident person, to person who does a bit of salt work, can build a little bit confidence, but still has no good chance of need for validation and fear and people pleasing tendencies all the way long.

And then that just gets projected and magnified out across, you know, a few million people, like forty million people, fifty million people a month. It's an interesting chAllenge, but I appreciate you all for being here. I appreciate every single person that's genin forever, but especially the ones that have joined this year.

There was a spotify start. That said, eighty four percent of the modern west audience joined in twenty twenty three. So for the sixteen percent of you, seventeen percent of you, whatever that joined before that, thank you for be taken about.

And for the ones of joined this year, thank you as well. I hope you have a good Christmas. I hope you have a good new year. The season.