anything goes with emma chamberlain - integrity

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

a lot of people have cheated their way to the top in this world. people have fucked over others, or lied to get ahead, and for what? fame they didn’t know what to do with? power but with a terrible conscious? and we’ve all been tempted to do it, me included. but i think there’s something to be said for going about life doing things the right way. maybe you won’t get ahead as fast, but you will eventually, and you’ll be in a much better place when you do get there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello. I hope you enjoyed those cat sounds. I enjoyed them. Although I will say pets are so cute when they're not yours. And then when pets are yours, their cutest qualities become mildly frustrating sometimes. Like don't get me wrong, I adore my cats. My cats are my pride's and joys. I literally get anxiety when anyone comes over to my home just because I'm scared that they're gonna leave a door open and one of my cats will escape and one of my cats will get hit by a car. Like I protect these cats with

everything in my being. I love them with everything in my being but at the same time when I'm trying to fall asleep and one of my cats decides to start chewing on my blanket in purring, I get frustrated. And like for example, right now, as I'm trying to record this episode, my cat decided to come up and start making muffins on my leg. If you don't know what making muffins is, it's when a cat needs on your leg or on any soft surface. I read somewhere that they being the cats find comfort in needing because they used to need on their mother's breasts for milk and so Now as older cats when they want to feel comforted they

Do that same action on a soft surface that reminds them of their mother's breast so that is cute, but You know when my cat decides to do that at inappropriate times, I, it's not cute anymore. I'm sorry, it's just not. But anyway, drink of the day, today I'm drinking just a cold brew, a classic cold brew. I'm in a classic mood. I'm in a mood where I just want something familiar and I want something reliable. If you are a coffee nerd,

then I will share with you that I'm drinking a light roast today and it's actually a new Chamberlain coffee blend called the Butterfly blend. And when you're listening to this, it might be available. It's a light roast, which means it has a lot of caffeine, and it's a very bright and florally flavor. Anyway, check it out if you want.

But let's move on to today's topic. Today, we're talking about having integrity in life. Now, before we go into it, let's define the word integrity because I could try to do it myself, but I probably wouldn't do a very good job. According to the dictionary, the definition of integrity is the quality of being honest in having strong moral principles, having moral uprightness, the state of being whole and undivided, being honorable, having good character, good ethics, good morals, character, good ethics, good morals, being a noble, high-minded person, etc., etc. So integrity to me is staying true to yourself in all senses of that phrase, like creatively, morally, etc., etc.

And having integrity probably looks different for everybody. Like I have my own set of morals, and I have my own set of things that I think are right or wrong. And someone else might have completely different ideas of that for themselves. So I started thinking about this a lot because I've been thinking a lot about people that are considered successful, whether that's in the present moment

or successful people of the past. And I've been thinking about how many people we consider to be successful, that got successful without integrity. They reached their peak of success through cheating, choosing money over creativity, choosing the well-being of yourself over others, choosing attention over peace and tranquility. You know, like, people who gain their success in ways that are far from admiral. This especially came about because I watched a documentary about a CEO of a huge company and how the CEO fucked over their employees and their factory workers and everybody, like, fucked over everybody. Yet they are still one of the most successful

people on this planet right now. And to get there, they fucked over infinite levels of people. Yet, they're still successful. And not only are they just successful, but they're one of the most successful people on the planet. And that made me think,

is this person proud of themselves? Like, is this person able to be proud of their success and truly reap the benefit of success? Because they didn't get there in a very good way. And then I started to think about people who I believe have succeeded in a way where their integrity remained intact throughout their career. A good example would be my dad. My dad is an artist. He paints paintings and puts them in galleries and sells them on the internet and does things like that. He makes his money through painting paintings. And he's a successful artist because people enjoy his art and he sells it for a living.

Like he has technically succeeded as an artist. Now my dad, as an artist, doesn't necessarily make tons and tons of money, right? But yet he is so proud of himself and he truly reaps the benefit of his success because he's proud of what he creates. And even though he's not a trillionaire billionaire or millionaire, he's still proud of himself and he still

reaps the benefits of his success. Even though he may be deemed less successful than the mega-mind billionaire CEO that I mentioned earlier. So the real question is, does success mean nothing when it isn't earned with integrity? You know, like, have you really accomplished your goal if you had to cheat your way to accomplish that goal? Can you really reap the benefit of accomplishing that goal if you had to cheat your way there? That's what we're discussing today. Now it's obvious that in life, like we are surrounded constantly by temptations, money, fame, success, blah, blah, blah.

We're constantly being tempted by these things. For example, with money, you could get paid $5 million to murder someone or get paid $20 an hour to work at a cafe. And if you're somebody who is maybe not super morally sound, you might take the $2 million and go and kill someone because the money was too tempting. Or you might be tempted by fame. For example, you might be someone who really wants to be famous, but you don't know how to be famous, but you don't know how to be famous. And what breeds fame better than drama?

So you decide to insert yourself into some internet drama, create a wild expose video of a celebrity. And your story is not true, right? Your story of a celebrity. And your story's not true, right? Your story is a lie. And you know that obviously, but you are spreading this fake rumor, fake lie, fake story so that you can get famous quick because you know that your rumor or lie will spread like a wildfire on the internet.

Okay, well now you're famous because your video went viral. But is that really what you wanted? You know what I mean? The third example being that in life success is very tempting. Let's say at your job, you know that if someone who works with you at your job, you know that if someone who works with you at your job left their position at your job, that you would be able to take their position and thus get a higher salary, have more say at the company, blah, blah, blah, blah. You might be tempted to sabotage your co-worker so that you can get that spot. But then once you get that spot, does it really feel so good? You see what I'm saying? It's like you can cheat your way to getting ahead in life. But it probably won't ever feel so good. I feel like we constantly

have an angel and a devil on our shoulder that we're fighting between constantly. And this angel and this devil are constantly whispering in your ear. And the angel's telling you, do the right thing, whispering in your ear and the angels telling you, do the right thing. Stay true to yourself, stay true to your morals. Do the right thing and the devil in your shoulders is like, fuck everyone over, cheat your way to the top and who cares who you burn on the way. It doesn't matter, baby, we're going up.

We are going up, we do not care. We do not care. We do not care. And we're constantly fighting between that with every decision that we make every single day with everything. A good example would be when I was in high school, I got an opportunity to cheat on a test if I wanted to, because there was somebody who had the answers to the test, and I had the opportunity to cheat if I wanted. And I know some people are so comfortable cheating on tests. They're like cheating on a test.

Girl, you got it. Like I don't give a fuck. I will cheat right now. I will cheat tomorrow and I will cheat the next day. I was not this type of student. I've always had this really intense and raging conscience when it comes to cheating in any way and so like mentally I could never cheat because I just would always feel too guilty about it and just wrong and that was just me.

I don't judge people who cheat. Listen, do your thing. It's none of my business. Do what you got to do, but I could never cheat. So I got an opportunity to cheat on a test if I wanted to. Right? Someone had the answers. They were willing to send them to me.

And the devil on my shoulder was like, babe, you are a fucking idiot if you say no right now. You are such an idiot. This is such an easy, yes. Don't be dumb right now. And then the angel on my shoulder was like, your conscience is going to pay a dirty price for this, for one.

For two, the test itself is pointless if you cheat on it because the point of a test is to test how knowledgeable you are on a subject. And if you cheat on the test, then you don't know whether or not you learned about this subject properly. And that's kind of a bummer because you're in school to learn stuff. And cheating doesn't teach you anything. And at this time, I wanted to be a very successful student. And so I felt like if I cut corners,

I would sell myself short because I wouldn't be learning fully and properly. Because the best way to learn is to get an answer wrong in a test. And then to go back and be like, hmm, why did I get that wrong? And all of that potential learning will be stripped away if you cheat. So that's what the angel stripped away if you cheat.

So that's what the angel was saying on my shoulder. So I ended up meeting in the middle. I kind of made a compromise with my angel and my devil. And what I did was, is I had this person send me the answers to the test, and then I used them to study, and then I took the test. But I didn't take the answers with me into the test. I didn't memorize them. I just mainly used the test answers as a means to study.

Now, should I have just said no altogether? Yes. In retrospect, yes. I probably shouldn't have done that, right? I should have just said no altogether. But I think that's a very good example of how we have a little devil in angel on our shoulder every day. I think the hard thing about this daily dilemma that we have between going the good way and going the bad way. The hard part about the daily

dilemma is that a lot of times shitty behavior does get a large reward. It's just one of the injustices in life. I mean, I can give a great example. There were kids at my school that used to cheat on their tests all the time. They would cheat on tests. They would sweet talk their teachers into giving them a better grade. They just cheated their way through school

and they got great grades and they ended up going to a great college and it all worked out for them and they were cheaters all the way through. Now, I think with cheating at school, that's less of a big deal. You know what I mean? Like that's just a small scale example.

But I do think it's a good example. You know what I mean? That's just a small scale example. But I do think it's a good example. You know what I mean? It's like, shitty behavior can very easily get huge reward. I mean, I would say majority of the massive big companies that we see today that are very successful and billion dollar companies. Most of those companies fucked over some people on the way to the top. It's just the way it is. I'm not going to say what they do or what they did wrong, but I think that we know what they've probably done wrong. They probably treated their employees badly. They've probably kicked out business partners

so that they could have more of the money for themselves. Like who knows what type of shitty behavior has gone on behind these massive, huge, successful companies? Or maybe somebody got famous by using other people. They just used, used, used all their way to the top. And took advantage of people and took advantage of people's kindness. But yet, now they're famous. So even though they had shitty behavior, they still got a huge reward.

I think some people choose to cheat their way to the top without integrity in life because it's just so much easier to do. It's so much easier to succeed in a way that's just not morally sound. You know what I mean? It's so much easier to cut corners. It is. It's a lot harder to stick to what you believe in when there are opportunities all around you that are tempting

that may force you to ditch your morals. I think that short term succeeding without integrity, cheating your rate of the top can be very successful. And it can seem like there's no repercussion of bad behavior.

But I think that there's an inevitable crash and burn that comes with it. I don't think that you can continue to cheat your way up and up and cheat your way to more and more success without an inevitable crash and burn. Because at some point, you're going to fuck over the wrong person. Or at some point, you're going to stray too far away from your morals. Or at some point, you're gonna hurt too many people. And I don't know if I necessarily fully understand

the concept of karma, but I'm still gonna say that karma does come back around. I mean, I've seen it in my own life. I've known people who have deceived their way to success. I've known people at school like that. I've known people in the industry that I'm in now that I've done that. I've seen it all across the board of my life.

And what's so interesting is that the people that have deceived their way to the top have had a crazy crash and burn in life. I've seen it happen. And that's what's crazy because in the moment when I was watching these people around me behave without integrity and choose the devil on their shoulder in order to succeed. I would get frustrated because I would be like, how is this fair? I feel like I'm following the good path. I'm listening to the angel on my shoulder and I'm doing everything with integrity in my life. And it's taking so much willpower, like I am, I just

frustrated because why are they getting to take the easy route to success in life? Well, I am over here working 10 times harder and getting way less benefit than they are. Why is the cheater succeeding more than me who is someone who's living with integrity? How the fuck is that fair? How the fuck is that fair?

And the crazy thing is, is that it all works out. It all works out. It's crazy because the people who were deceitful, who cheated, they succeed quickly, but they fail quickly. Whereas working hard and working with integrity will lead to success a lot slower, but your success will blast forever because it's rooted in a foundation of honesty and good morality.

That kind of leads me to my next point, which is that a lot of the most creative, inventive, extraordinary people I know. My dad being a great example, he's an amazing artist. But there's many more. A lot of the most incredible, talented people I know never reach the level of success that maybe they want. And I honestly think that the reason for that is just you know, to a certain extent, there is some luck in succeeding in life. There is. And if luck isn't working out, then you got to cheat. But a lot of people who are really creative and really special and talented, a lot of people like that don't want to cheat because they're like, I'm too good for that.

I'm proud of what I do and I don't want to have to cheat my way to get to the top. So I'm just going to accept my success for what it is. Be proud of where I'm at and leave it there. I mean, you look at famous artists of the past even like Van Gogh, for example. Van Gogh was an extremely talented artist. We all know that. He's amazing. I mean, I love his art.

Like, I know it's a very, I'm not, I'm not giving a hot take here. Everybody's like, yeah, I'm a van Gogh makes great art. He's fucking van Gogh, like shot. But, okay, van Gogh makes amazing art, right? And I think we can all agree on that. I don't know anyone who's like, I think van Gogh's shit, right, whatever. But when he was alive, everybody told him his art was terrible. And they were

like, this sucks. Like, you need, you should quit because you suck, right? Everybody was telling him that. But he kept painting paintings and creating art in the way that was true to him, in the way that was the most inspiring to him. He kept his integrity, even while everybody was shitting on him and telling him that he was a failure. He kept his integrity. And unfortunately, he never saw success in his lifetime,

but now his paintings are some of the most expensive paintings on the planet. You see what I'm saying? It's like Van Gogh is the icon that he is because he stayed true to himself no matter what came in the way. He stayed true to himself. and he continued to create with integrity and work with integrity. And now he's an icon, AF.

He's an icon as fuck. But with Van Gogh there's an interesting point which is that, okay, yeah, he might be an icon now, but he was miserable when he was alive, right? Like, he was fucking miserable. He had no money, you know, he struggled mentally. He didn't have the resources probably to help himself mentally because he wasn't making a large income. People shat on his creative endeavors.

Like, he was miserable, right? So even though now he's an icon, who cares? Because when he was alive, he was miserable. I need to read Van Gogh's book, because I know that there's a book about his diary or it's a book of his diary, like it's a published version of his diary that you can read. And I'm curious to see if he managed to find happiness in creating art even though he wasn't succeeding at it. I wonder if it still brought him joy.

It must have, because why would he have kept going? Something's not making you happy and you're not succeeding at it, then you're sure as hell not going to do it. So he must have gotten some sort of happiness from it. I think the moral of this story is, and this discussion is, is that accomplishments, success, fame, money, all of those things,

mean nothing if they weren't accomplished with integrity. Because for majority of people, you'll never feel like you fully earned it. I wholeheartedly believe that there are people out there that have cheated their way to the top and feel great about it. And to those people, I say all power to you as long as you didn't hurt anyone in the process. Like if you had to cheat on a few tests and if you had to, you know, steal $100 from your grandma one day in order to reach the success you're at now. Your grandma's probably fine without the hundred bucks and your teacher doesn't really care that much if you cheat on your test at the end of the day. So, you know what I mean, if you didn't really harm anyone

on your way to the top and you feel good about it, then maybe it's fine. Maybe there is a gray area because there are definitely people who have cheated and love it, you know what I mean? But, and then there are psychopaths who like literally kill people on their way to the top, probably, and feel amazing about it. But they're also psychopaths and are not a part of this discussion.

Because that's an outlier that I do not have the time and energy to handle right now. I think that the lesson that can be learned from this is that when comparing your success to others, you know, because that's an inevitable thing that we as humans do, when you're comparing your success to others, I think it's so important to keep in mind that you don't know how they got there. And they might not have gotten there in an honest and truthful way. You don't know. And they might not be able to be proud of themselves because of the dishonest way that they accomplished what they did. You know, they might not be able to even be proud of themselves. You don't know the story behind anyone's success.

You don't know what loops they jump through, what corners they cut. You don't know. So it's just a further reminder that you got to just stay focused in your own lane. There's no benefit to comparing yourself to others because you'll never know the full story. And if you can find a way to stay in your own lane, focus on your own life and focus on living every day and working every day with honesty, integrity, and good morality, then that's the best thing that you can do as a human.

In long term, you'll be in a better spot. Short term, you might feel a little bit behind because the cheaters might be winning, right? But long term, you're gonna end up in a better spot. And there might be moments when you listen to the devil on your shoulder. That's okay. That's also human. Nobody on this planet is only listening to the angel on their shoulder. I listen to the devil on my shoulder on accident sometimes, sometimes the devil on my shoulder is like you should order a new air fryer on Amazon right now and even though you don't even like air friars because you're bored. That's the type of shit that my devil on my shoulder says. Sometimes I listen to that devil, okay? And sometimes you might listen to that devil.

But what it's really about is just doing your best and take pride in the fact that majority of the time you work with integrity. I don't know. I just thought it was an interesting conversation to have. And I've been tempted many times in my career on the internet, not tempted. That's not the right word. But there have been so many moments throughout my career where I have been tempted to listen to the devil on my shoulder. Like I got an offer to promote a product that I didn't really like.

And I had to say no, even though it was kind of tough to say no, because I was like, well, I don't really like this product that much, but they're going to pay me to talk about it. Like, it's hard to say no to that sometimes. Sometimes it's easy. It's gotten way easier now that I'm at a different point in my life. And I've had this realization that I just discussed now. It's become much easier in my life. And I've had this realization that I just discussed now, you know, it's become

much easier in my recent years. But when I was younger, it was hard for me to say no to opportunities that maybe weren't the perfect fit. I would always say no, but there were moments when I'd be like, oh, it just be so much easier to just like say yes to every brand deal and just involve myself in drama for more views and just talk shit about people for more attention and become friends with people that I don't like so that they can benefit me. Like, you know, there's been moments

where those opportunities have been dangling right in front of my face. And I could grab them if I wanted, but I never did. And now I'm at a place where I'm so happy that I didn't. There was one period of my career where I felt like I kind of lost my integrity a little bit. And that would be when I was making YouTube videos every week and I got an editor. Now for the first few years of me having a YouTube channel and growing that YouTube

channel, I edited all of my own videos. And then it became too overwhelming for me. I couldn't be consistent on YouTube and upload my own videos and be mentally stable. I had to choose only two of those options out of a three. I could be emotionally unstable and ended my own videos. I could be emotionally stable and have an editor. Those were my two options. And my editor was incredible.

I mean, he's an amazing, amazing, amazing editor. He was so good. He's so great. And a great guy. Like, everything about that situation was great. But it made me lose some of my integrity a little bit with my videos that I was posting on YouTube. I wasn't as proud of them because I wasn't putting my blood sweat and tears into them. And that over the long term made me feel less excited about the accomplishments that I was achieving on YouTube because I felt

like I wasn't achieving them properly because I wasn't doing the work. You know what I mean? I was handing off the hardest part of being a YouTuber to someone else. And even though there's nothing wrong with what I did, I didn't hurt anyone in the process. I didn't cheat anyone in the process. I didn't like whatever. I just didn't feel like I was sticking to my creative integrity. Because for me, editing videos on YouTube

was where I was being creative. I wasn't necessarily being creative in how I was filming videos. I was being creative in how I was editing my videos and and then when I gave that job away to someone else That also was giving away my creative integrity that I had on YouTube because again The only creative part about it for me was editing. And so I didn't feel like I was able to fully enjoy my success

because I wasn't being true to myself there. And what I learned from that was that for me personally, I would rather create quality over quantity. When I got an editor for my YouTube videos, I got this editor so that I could upload more videos, more frequently. And although the videos were edited incredibly, they didn't have the same quality in my heart. So I think in this scenario, I didn't cheat anyone else to get to the top, but I cheated myself in a way.

I cheated myself out of my own creative outlet. And I chose uploading videos more frequently over uploading videos that were heartfelt and that I put my blood sweat and tears into less frequently. Because I feared that if I didn't upload YouTube videos weekly, that my career would be over. So I kind of thought that this was my only option.

When in retrospect, I Could have just uploaded two videos a month that were edited by me that I was really proud of because I did everything I made everything They were a 100% creation by me. I could have done that less frequently and Yeah, maybe I wouldn't have grown as quickly on YouTube. Maybe my views would have went down. Maybe I would have lost followers.

Who fucking knows? But I would probably be, I probably would have been proud of myself though. And I would have been proud of those videos, regardless of what affected on my level of success. It's all just food for thought, really. It's really just all food for thought what we're doing here right now.

I don't know. Maybe that wouldn't have been the case. I don't know. Anyway, you guys, that's all I got for today. That was today's discussion. I hope that you enjoyed. I really appreciate you listening to me talk and ramble for the past, what, 45 minutes, I don't know.

I love hanging out with you guys. It's always such a pleasure. If you wanna subscribe to anything goes, you can do so on any platform that you stream podcasts. You can follow anything goes on Instagram at anything goes, you can do so on any platform that you stream podcasts. You can follow anything goes on Instagram, at anything goes, and you can follow anything goes on Twitter, at AG Podcast. And you can rate anything goes on Apple Podcast, leave a review, and let me know what you think of the podcast, and that's pretty much all I got.

Oh, and you can check out my coffee company, Chamberlaincoffee.com. We have lots of fun stuff. We have lots of delicious coffee. We just came out with instant coffee sticks that are literally, in my opinion, revolutionary because there's coffee sticks, instant sticks that you can mix with water on the go that don't taste like

shit. I haven't had one that didn't taste like shit before this one. So anyway, check that out. We also have a new blend, the butterfly blend. It's a light roast. And there's lots of other stuff over there. Anyway, thank you guys for hanging out. I love you all so much and we will talk soon.

Next week to be exact, we will talk promptly next week. See you then. Love you.