Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - You’ll Fail at Love…Until You Realize This | Simon Sinek

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

What if our deepest human needs, for connection and belonging, hold the real answers for navigating a world racing ahead with technology?On today’s episode, we sit down with Simon Sinek, globally renowned thinker, bestselling author, and long-time friend of the show. Back for a second conversation with us, Simon brings his trademark clarity and storytelling to the questions that matter most: What does it mean to be human in an age of measurement, data, and artificial intelligence? Why do friendships not only enrich our lives but help us survive? And how can we reorient toward what’s real, irreplaceable, and deeply fulfilling?In this conversation, you’ll learn:Why friendship isn’t just “nice to have,” but essential for health, happiness, and survival.The hidden costs of measuring everything, and how it can pull us away from our humanity.How to think about AI not as dystopia, but as a reflection of what makes us uniquely human.The practices Simon uses to deepen belonging and strengthen relationships.How to reframe success in a way that aligns with values and meaning, not just metrics.This conversation cuts to the core of modern life. Simon challenges us to rethink the dangers of over-indexing on performance metrics, from sleep scores to step counts, while reminding us of the profound grounding power of authentic friendship. He also invites us to view AI not as a looming threat, but as a mirror, forcing us to ask bigger questions about meaning, aliveness, and connection.Simon’s insights remind us that mastery isn’t about optimization, it’s about being more deeply, fully human. Tune in to reimagine connection, technology, and the art of living well.Links & Resources:Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindset!Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Finding Master is brought to you by NutraFal. In many of my conversations about high performance and well-being, I often come back to this idea. The mind and body is one of the most beautiful ecosystems. And when something's out of sync for too long, like stress or hormones or nutrition, it often shows up in visible and sometimes invisible ways. One of those signals, hair thinning, hair loss. That's what intrigued me when I was introduced to NutriFal and their founder, Georgios Settis.

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So if you're looking for a smarter inside-out approach to hair health, go to Nutrafall.com and take their hair wellness quiz. You can also get $10 off your first month plus free shipping with the code finding mastery. Again, go to Nutrafall.com, N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L, Nutrafall.com and use the code finding mastery for $10 off and free shipping. I've gone on dates where literally the person I'm on a date with them, like, have you ever been married? And they said to me, what's wrong with you? Why haven't you been married? And the stress that I've carried for decades, for being a failure, and I am bad at relationships. What if our deepest human needs for connection and belonging hold the real answers for navigating a world that's racing ahead with technology?

I have a friend who was in a 16-year unhealthy relationship. She admits freely that she should have been in it for one year. Society looks at her and says, she did it right? I did it wrong. Welcome back. We're welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I am your host, Dr. Michael Jervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. Now, the idea behind these conversations is simple.

It's to sit with the extraordinarily, to learn, to really learn about how they work from the inside out. Today's guest is the brilliant and engaging Simon Cinnick. He's back for a second time on the podcast. Now, in this conversation, we discussed the deep value of friendship, why it's not just a nice-to-have, but it's essential for survival and happiness. None of us can achieve happiness, success, any kind of satisfaction with this very difficult thing called life alone. We're not Great White Sharks. We don't roam the seas by ourselves, but in groups we're absolutely remarkable. And we take for granted that friends are more than a nice to have. They're essential for survival.

and the ability to thrive. But are we good at friending? Most people think they are good friends. And then you peel the onion just one layer, and you discover that most people are pretty bad friends. Plus we dig into AI, not as a dystopian threat, but as a mirror forcing us to re-examine what's real. The value of human is now going to go up

because the value of machine is low. Your pottery barn mug, it is perfect in every way. But a Japanese ceramic mug made by hand with its imperfect, sides, And the wonky glaze, it is more beautiful because it is human, because it is imperfect. With that, let's jump right into this week's conversation, Simon Sinek. Simon, every time I get to sit with you, you keep me on pins and needles, like I'm on my toes where it's like there's something brilliant that you're about to reshape the way I think.

Oh, my goodness. Yeah, standards are high now. Yeah. So I, one, this is me saying thank you for, for, well, I'm here to disappoint. Let's not do that. But I have such an appreciation for how you think the discernment you go through to get to clarity of ideas, the way you tell stories, the way you understand, the experience that people are going through right now.

And so I'm stoked to sit with you again. Oh, thanks. Thanks for having me. I always, I always like talking to you. Yeah, it's fun. It's really fun. I feel like we have inhabited different worlds, but have some. similar ideas. And so before we started, I was just generally asking, what are you most interested

in right now? And you reminded me the importance of friendships, that that's where you're spending a lot of time, friendships, relationships. So in general, where does that come from for you? None of us can achieve happiness, success, however you want to define success. Like, it doesn't matter to me. Any kind of satisfaction, fulfillment, or ability to cope with this very difficult thing called life alone human beings are not supposed to we're not we're not great white sharks we don't roam the seas you know by ourselves we are social animals we are pack animals we are very weak as individuals we're not very smart as individuals but in groups we're absolutely remarkable we can solve any problem we can overcome we can we can fight animals much stronger than us when we're

in groups you know we hunt together you know we're kind of remarkable we take for granted that friends are more than a nice to have, they're essential for survival and the ability to thrive. And there's a frustration with that, right? Which is we actually have to work at being friends. The great frustration is it's actually not very natural. Like, yes, we could all make friends, kind of, sort of, you know, but are we good friends? Are we good at friending? And I'd say on that standard, the answer is pretty abysmal. You know, I talk to people and you say, are you a good friend? And most people think they are good friends.

And then you peel the onion just one layer. And you discover that most people are pretty bad friends. Open that up a bit. I mean, I'll give you a perfect example. Let's talk about, I mean, I'll tell you me. My friends for years would accuse me of being a bad listener. And I would say, you know what I do for a living, right? Like, I'm a really good listener.

Yeah, you are. I took a listening class and that's when I discovered I am an exceptionally good listener with people who I will never see again for the rest of my life. But the people who I loved, terrible. Absolutely terrible. The skills that I had never applied at home. And so I literally called my friends one by one and said, oh my God, I'm a bad listener. And they're like, what took you so long, you know? We are not very good at asking for help. We are not very good at holding space when our friends need help. I called a friend. I was in a bad way. And I called a friend and I said I just need to talk to you for a few minutes and they went yeah of course

and I started just letting it all out and I think I got interrupted a couple times I think they interrupted me you know I didn't even got my thought out and they well-intentioned trying to tell me what I should do and I would just oh I just wanted to hang up the phone that's not good friending you know I've been that person on the on the other end of the phone as well when that somebody called me and all I did was going to fix my That's not good friending, the inability to read the room, the inability to understand what somebody needs. And when we are bad friends, what ends up happening is we leave people feeling unseen, unheard,

misunderstood, alone. And that is bad for anyone's mental health, that's bad for anyone's inability to cope with stress. But that's also bad for anyone's ability to think through problems and seize opportunities. It's not just difficult things, it's the positive things as well. And so when I look at my own life and my own career, I am so grateful that my friends have been patient with me through all of my stupidity and idiocy and selfishness and self-involvement. I'm so grateful that they pushed me when I didn't want to push myself, that they held me

when I wanted to be alone, and I wouldn't be where I am and I wouldn't be able to call myself happy if it weren't for these remarkable human beings around me. And so to take what I've learned about friendship, some of them hard-learned lessons, and share those lessons with as many people as I can, I think I have to. Finding Master is brought to you by Square. One of my favorite local spots here in Southern California, it's a small cafe near the ocean. There's nothing fancy. It's just good food, great people.

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And one of the ways to help drive consistency is to find ways to remove blockers in your day. Like get ahead of it. You know, those blockers, those moments of indecision or delay that can really derail building great habits. So for me, nutrition is one of those areas where if I don't plan ahead, I can easily slip into whatever is available to me. And then oftentimes I will be disciplined enough. to not make that fast, easy choice. And then what ends up happening is I just don't eat. That's equally problematic.

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as you were saying it. I don't know if you were completely tuned or aware to it, but it's striking when you're on the other side of it, when you see somebody fully embody the words that they chose. And so can you just stay here for a minute? Like, what did you just do? I honestly don't know. Does it sound like what I'm saying is completely foreign to you?

Or did you say, or are you internally, privately going, wait, what is he saying? Or yeah, I did feel. it, but I didn't quite notice it at the time. But now that I, that we're talking about it, yeah, I do feel what I say. I think I always feel what I say. I don't, it's a little bit of a little bit, like I don't know how to respond, to be honest. I don't, I don't know what you saw.

I saw your, something happened in your eyes, your micro expression around your eyes changed, and your voice inflection shifted. And when you're really into it, you look down. You were like in your own world feeling the great. gratitude for your other people. You weren't kind of musing up like this. You weren't making these kind of wild eye contact to like it's too much. You were just in your world experiencing gratitude. And it's worth pausing because all of your insights are always crisp. They're really good. Every insight that you share, I go, yeah, that's good. Oh, that's good. Oh, that's good. Yeah,

friendship. Okay, good. There's a difference between people who practice gratitude. and people who check the box of what they're grateful for. You were just practicing gratitude. And if we're going to set somebody up to train themselves to be more tuned to their emotional state, especially the, I don't know, the more like aperture opening emotions like gratitude, you don't want them just to write it down and check the box. You want them to fully feel it, which is what you just naturally did.

So that's why I just wanted to pause and ask, like, what was that like for you? I'm relaxed. let's keep going look we have a problem and again it goes back to good intentions misplaced and you and i are part of the problem right which is we dispense perspective points of view advice ideas again that we believe will help somebody live a better life a higher performing life whatever it is they're trying to achieve. And the problem is advice is followed very literally. The number of times you and I have told people things

and they've done it and we're like, that's not what I meant. Gratitude being a good one, you know, checking the box of gratitude, doing your gratitude diary, you know? And those people who've made a whole cottage industries out of selling us gratitude diaries and the like. I'll give you a really funny example of this, of the danger of these things that are not embodied but practiced.

I met this wonderful couple madly in love with each other. And they were telling me how it's really important that they have oxytocin when they hug each other because they want that real connection. And they read an article that it takes about 16 seconds for oxytocin to start flowing when they hug. so they always make sure to hug for at least 16 seconds of course what I'm thinking is you've got to be kidding me

the woman later on that day or the next morning I can't remember and she said you want to hug I said I'd love a hug and we start hugging beautiful beautiful warm embrace and I stop I interrupt I go are you counting

she goes yeah I'm like I can feel it I said stop please stop I'm like, the human body knows. The means to an end. It knows.

Some scientist plugged some frickin' electrodes in somebody and said, can you hug please and counted it's however many seconds for it to flow. Good for them. You don't need that number. Your body knows. Stop counting and feel. You and I will both know when we've connected. So let's try again, okay?

Just be with me. And we hug again. Sure enough, however, I don't know how many seconds. Some short period of time later, we felt really good and it felt really warm and connected. And I held it a little longer than that. And then I stopped and pulled away and said, do you feel that? That's oxytocin. Stop counting, start feeling.

And I think we've become so metrics obsessed. And again, you and I are partially to blame, right? We've become so metrics obsessed that we've actually missed the point of it. That some scientist was able to discern how many seconds you're supposed to do this or how many times you're supposed to express gratitude or people who become close friends spend at least 50 hours a week. Blah, blah. It doesn't matter.

They're averages and they're largely irrelevant. Like, you know. like there's no metric for how in love you are there's no metric for like a parent's love there's no metric for trust or belief but we all know when it's there and we all know when it's not and in our metrics obsessed world I know people are going to mock me because I'm wearing an aura ring right it hasn't been charged in over two years I had it it it fulfilled its utility. I thought it was hilarious. Like it told me I had a bad night's sleep, which I knew because I've been up since 3 o'clock in the morning and I'm incredibly grumpy today, you know,

but it was given to me as a gift and I got used to wearing it. I haven't charged it in two years, right? But it was fun. It was fun. And you know this better than I do, that there's now data to show that being obsessed with the metrics is worse for you. Like there's data that shows the stress you experience from eating chocolate cake, the cortisol that's released from eating chocolate, like, oh my God, I should need it, oh my God, I can't, is worse for you than the chocolate cake. Correct. The obsession with the sleep metrics and the gratitude metrics is worse for you than just missing a couple of days or having a bad night sleep or having an unhealthy meal. Chronic stress versus acute stress. So I become so interested

in, dare I call it, feeling your, like feeling, being feeling in friendship, I don't even have a word for it. So I went to this longevity summit recently. I was dragged to it. It wasn't by choice. Longevity is not something you're interested in? Not the way that it's practiced. Like, sure, I want to live a long and happy and healthy life. Absolutely. But obsessing about my longevity is not something I'm interested. But I went to the conference, right? To be a good friend. To be a good friend. I'd like to say I went with open mind, but I'd be lying.

And, you know, I took a test where they scanned me and they were doing it for everybody. And I had to hold some electrodes and spun some cameras around me and who knows what it did. And it's a data point. I think these things are interesting. I don't think they're false, but I don't think that it's gospel either. But I like data, you know, as a marker. And I'm, I eat well, but not the best. I exercise, you know, now and then, but I'm not obsessive.

You know, the one thing I'm obsessive about is my friendships. You know, that's pretty much it. And I got the fifth best score in the room, in a room filled with longevity, health-obsessed, supplement-taking. Your bio-age versus your actual... So that was a different story. So that was a different one I did. Okay.

So that's not what this one. That wasn't this. This is some, I can't remember. Best score based on, quote unquote, best score. I don't know. All I know is I got the fifth best score. They're like, you got the fifth best score. That should be not right.

I should have the worst score in the room. Yeah, because you are not. Because I'm not that. Hyperfocus. Not hyperfocused, not taking any supplements, you know. So I did the other thing. I did the blood test. Yeah.

Same thing. I did my glycan age, which actually, that's actually pretty good science. You know, they did my blood test. And same thing. They asked me to fill out the survey so they can compare my results to my lifestyle, you know. they said anything better than eight years if you're eight years lower than your actual age

you're doing really well my glycan age was 22 years younger than my chronological age 22 years younger and they told me that the people who are obsessed with the metrics and the longevity have the worst glycan ages the worst and they all poo-poo the science

because they're not getting good numbers right and what they were telling me is it's because of stress, that because I do all of these things, but I'm not obsessed to all these things, my stress levels are lower. Because I care about my friendships and being around people and companionship. It helps me manage my stress. My stress is lower. Because if I work really hard for a week, I'll take a day off because I earned it, you know,

which is stress. And the longevity obsessed people, it's okay to do some of it, but they're doing all of it. So when you do intermittent fasting, you're adding stress to your body. When you do a really hard workout, you're adding stress to your body. When you do a cold plunge every morning, you're adding stress to your body. Any one of those things is good and healthy, that sort of artificial stress. But when you stack all of them every day, it's too much stress on the body. And not spending time and focusing on friends.

Because one thing that I've discovered when I started talking to a lot of these people, these people who are health obsessed is a lot of them aren't that happy. They're not that happy. And so the question is, you're living a long time, why? You know? And when you ask me, am I not obsessed with my longevity? I want to live a long happy life. Of course I want to live a long happy life. But the word happy is in there inextricably linked with long. That's right. A long miserable life. A long miserable life. I don't want to live a long miserable life. I'm a long happy life. My point is, is I think we need to go back to human. And it's no one's fault.

We live in a digital world. Digital has overwhelmed us. We know it. This is not news. There's already some rebellion against some social media and some rebellion against smartphones. Like, it's not news. We all know about dopamine now. You know, when you and I were talking about it, you know, 15 years ago, dope a what, you know?

Like, it's a thing now. Everybody knows that our devices addict us. We all know the science. It's all pretty basic now. And what we're asking is we're asking the machine, we're asking the counter, we're asking the ticker to tell us how to be human again.

And the body knows. And this goes back to trust and gut and all of this stuff. Entrepreneurs, we always say, the most successful entrepreneurs, what's your secret? I trusted my gut. So if we allow an entrepreneur to trust their gut and kind of know what decision to make, and this is what we try and teach people,

why do we not allow why do we not trust ourselves to know like when we're doing well in friendship or not we're we're not properly calibrated yeah i want to hit three things i want to hit stress i want to hit calibration and then uh the gut bit so on the calibration let's go back 200,000 years ago it's an easy story because we're outside a lot that we were calibrated to the rhythms of the world, sunup, sundown. You know, and you got to kind of get it all done before sunup and sundown. Okay. So there's a calibration. And not get eaten in between. Basically. So there's a easy calibration story that we can grok to there. And then if you fast forward, we are looking at our devices more than we are looking at humans. So we're decalibrated from other humans.

Okay. So now we've got mother nature. Now we've got decalibration from other humans. And then when we think about what makes us really pretty special is our ability to name our emotions, to feel them and to be aware of those feelings and put words to them, what kind of grade do you give on interpersonal connection or intrapersonal connection, meaning your connection with yourself? I think it's pretty decalibrated as well. I don't think we're well calibrated to what's happening inside of us. So much so that I think the number is like 36% of people can accurately name the emotion that they're experiencing. that's pretty bad you know like three at four out of ten are good at the thing that is really remarkable to be human the upside is we got a lot of room to grow and if you're checking in if you're muting oh not even to mention alcohol drugs and other numbing devices from kind of the

feeling experiences so if you're all dopamine related all dopamine if you're dysregulated there if you're more tuned to technology and you're disconnected from mother nature it is reflexively easy when you have an aura ring, which I think it's a really good product, up until you start to over calibrate to the technology. Exactly. So the thing, which is why I stopped charging. That's right. Because I realized I was looking at it too much. Yeah. So then what, that's my, it was a me issue, not a not a, not a aura ring issue. It's an, it is you. Yes. It's an us issue. It's me too. And I, I, that, I should stress that. Yeah. So what I do with athletes, so if somebody is listening right now, you might find this to be a normal experience is you wake up in

the morning and you flip over and open your phone or whatever device to see the number that you got and there's something really satisfying about getting something back okay everybody likes to be a winner you got a 91 I won sleep I won sleep the problem though is that you're you're relying on the second order data abstraction to tell you about yourself so what I ask athletes to do is look at the numbers for a while a couple weeks you're looking at the numbers cool and then play this other little game, which is when you wake up in the morning, where am I? Red, yellow, green. And then flip open the device and, oh, I was right, green for green.

Cool. Then, fast forward a couple more days. I think I'm green and I think I'm low green. Flip it over. Oh, look, scores 92, right on. So now you're actually calibrating to this other thing. That's a proxy between self-calibration and technology. The one that I always struggled with was great sleep score and tired all day.

Yeah, right. Or terrible sleep score functioned just great all day. Totally fine. Yeah. So at some point... These are not perfect measures. But at some point, I'm obviously recognizing that these are just data points, and I like data points. Correct.

It's when I found myself to your point, which is waking up every single morning and not being able to start my day without looking at that score, and even having a competition with my girlfriend, And it's kind of lost its meaning, which is why I stopped charging it because it was, it was, it lost its utility. I want to take a minute to talk about the Happiness Lab podcast. Over the years, we've talked a lot about what it means to live a great life, a fulfilled, meaningful life. We know it's so much bigger than more money, a better title, or that craved for attention via social media. That's why the team and I have been loving what Yale professor. and researcher, Dr. Lori Santos, is doing on her podcast, The Happiness Lab.

Lori has found that many of us do the exact opposite of what will make our lives better. On the Happiness Lab, she takes you through scientific research and then share some surprising stories that just might change the way you think about happiness. Join Dr. Lori Santos this fall with episodes on her hand-picked back-to-school reading list for adults looking to lead fuller, happier lives. Listen to the Happiness Lab, wherever you get your podcast. Body Mastery is brought to you by Fatty 15. Okay, let's talk about longevity.

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to help you live healthier, longer. Get 15% off your 90-day subscription starter kit by heading to fatty15.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout that's fatty fatt t y 15.com slash finding mastery start investing in your long-term health today if you're decalibrating yeah based on the technology we're not in the right but if you if you're using it to to be the tuning fork that's very good you're the tuning fork first and then you look over there and i i do ask my wife like after i've tuned and she's done her job hopefully to tune um how'd you do and it's not like

right away yeah but it's a way that i can go um and say she says who tough one i got a 72 um how do you feel like that'll be she'll ask me or like but how is it actually i'm cool and she goes yeah i feel it then i know that okay i'm on dish duty i'm on trash duty i'm on doing the things that you know know that I just want to carry extra water if you will. Yeah. And that helps me in some respect. And I realize as I'm saying even like, why am I not doing that all the time? You know, I think that. Yeah, there's a, there's a partnership in there where if she's like, oh, you're tired, I'm going to carry your bags for you. And if I look over her and she's tired and I'm like, let me carry the bags for you. There's something cool about that. Yeah. Yeah. So anyways. I think the thing that

we forget, and we've definitely forgotten this in business. You know, we've become obsessed with metrics and business and quarterly results, and again, we think of business in terms of winning and losing. We've talked about finite and infinite games before, you know, that we forget that metrics, unless it's a finite game, unless there's a score and there's a beginning of middle and end, which is the characteristics of a finite game. Which is a finite game. A finite game is always a beginning and middle and end, where the metrics absolutely are the score and the end of the game, the score actually matters. for an infinite game

like nobody's going to win sleep right nobody wins business but we have metrics in sleep and business and the problem is that we have to remember that those are just markers they're indicators of speed and distance

how fast am I going how far have I gone right that's all they are they're not absolutes and this is one of the problems with putting metrics on feelings on sleep on all of these infinite components

we treat them with a finite mindset And that's where the problems are. That's why we're having stress because we think we're losing. Or we're smug and we think we're winning when we're actually unhappy, right? But they are simply indicators of speed and distance. How far have I gone?

How fast am I going? And so going back to your sleep metrics, which is I am doing better. I am moving faster. Like I'm recalibrating to use your language, which I really like. And I think we just have to, we have to contextualize the value

or what the metric means relative to what we're measuring. Is it a finite thing or an infinite? Yeah, that's cool. The relative is like that's what I'm using with my wife. Like, who cares what our actual scores are? Who cares what the actual scores are? But the point is like, let's say that I'm at 100 and she's at like a 92, happy days.

Like you both had a good night's sleep. Yeah, she's at 100. I'm at an 85. Happy days. Yeah, you both had a good night's sleep. Yeah, but when one of us has a delta, then it's like, oh, let me, let me okay good let me use that she likely or I would likely tell her throughout the day even if we didn't have this technology man last night was rough right and then then I would go

oh yeah uh okay so note to self let me let me help out and I think that this is just an excuse you know how like I don't know some psychological assessments are kind of excuses to start a conversation which is fine yeah they're not actually kind of diagnosed with great clarity some are actually commercial grade and some are medical grade but many of them are conversation starters to to really understand what's happening and in some respects technology can do that for us as well but again what you're offering is context context and that's what that's what matters here yeah which is which is i'm fine with all these metrics right i don't actually have a problem unless it's a bait and switch you know i don't actually have a problem with any of them but they are points so two other

bits here. One is when it corrupts intuition, we're both going to have a problem with that. And I saw it, I still feel it. I saw it early and I still feel it in elite sport when old school coaches that value the hardened, the tested, the tried, the true principles that have led to mental toughness and mental agility and like bonding between people and doing hard things and there's a gut feel that these coaches have tuned over time and then you've got folks that are in the science world that say hey but listen there's a lot of data that you're missing out on and the early tension and still there's tension now is coaches don't want to have data corrupt their intuition and vice versa you wouldn't want data I'm sorry you wouldn't want to lose the

intuition to the day so both points of view are both are right valuable yeah It's figuring out the intersection between the two that is pretty complex. And both are right. And this is, I mean, we can't help but go into the AI conversation from this because the value of doing the work, you accumulate wisdom. The value of doing the work is what makes you smarter and hone the machine. If we just ask AI to do all the stuff for us, the results would be incredible. That article you wrote was amazing, by the way.

Thanks. AI did it for me. But because you don't know how to write an article, you can read it and say that was good but because you don't know how to write it you're actually not getting smarter, better, faster, any of those things. In other words, your intuition isn't honing.

And so the obsession with metrics, the obsession with, I wouldn't even call it metrics, the obsession with the result means you're not doing the work, which means you're hurting yourself and you're not honing the intuition. And the example, I'll give a comment which book it was.

There were these firemen who were fighting a forest fire fire in a field and the wind kicked up and the fire started chasing them and these guys are running for their lives they're just running like crazy right and the fire is coming and they they will be able to outrun it except for the fact that there's a hill and the old timer screams get down get down get down and the young kids ignore him because the fire's coming he jumps down puts you know his hand his hands over his head and what had what his intuition knew from years of fighting fires which was never taught is he knew the fire was burning so fast and it was burning through

the grass really quickly that it would just burn it would just fly over him and so he hunkered down the flames went right over him caught up with the kids who got caught up on the hill and they all died right you got a you got to fight a lot of fires to have that instinct to just know. And eventually that knowledge can then be passed down and be taught in a lesson. But the lessons have to come from somewhere. We can't teach something we don't know. And somebody has to either succeed or like I'll give you a really, really, really funny one, which I just realized the other day. And I don't even know this is biologically or anthropologically true. I just really like it. And again, this is because human beings are smart. Have you ever noticed that when

somebody throws up, the sound, the visual, the smell, the only thing you want to do is join in. You just want to throw up too. And there's no other bodily function that if somebody does it, you want to join in. Right? Yeah, good framing so far. Right? There's none, none, just that. But now go back. We're trying to figure out what we can eat to stay alive. And somebody in the group tries a berry, and we've all just been trying the berries. And they lose it. it. Instinctively, the rest of us are being like, if Kenny lost it, probably safer we all lose it because I don't want to find out. And so we all just heave home because Kenny got vomited from the berries. Why? To keep us alive. Accumulated. And then somebody goes, don't eat

that berry now. Like, we learned the lesson. And thankfully, nobody died because we all threw up. Don't eat that. The point is now you can pass down. that accumulated wisdom and now it's a lesson. And that's the same for everything. But if we have the machine do all the work, what happens to accumulated intelligence? What happens to accumulated wisdom? What happens to discovery? Do we just rely on the machine for everything? And look, I think AI is an amazing tool. I am not an anti-AIist. But it's the difference between somebody who wants to have surgery to have big muscles, but they'll still be weak if they don't work out.

Like we can put all the implants in, and your body will look amazing, but you're weak, right? Which is it will look amazing. The press release is amazing. That article is amazing. That drawing is amazing, but you're weak. And I choose to write my own books. I choose to write my own blogs.

Not because I think they're better. I definitely know it's slower. I'll have the AI fix my grammar, because that's annoying, you know, because I want to be stronger. I want to be smarter. I want to solve logical intellectual problems by having to go through the difficult thought process of making it work on a page. That's my choice for my body and my mind. And I think what's going to start to happen is it's probably already happening. which is the value of human is now going to go up because the value of machine is low, right?

So, like, things that come off an assembly line are perfect and not special. Your pottery barn mug, it is perfect in every way. But a Japanese ceramic mug made by hand with its imperfect sides and the wonky glaze is more beautiful. It is more beautiful because it is human. because it is imperfect. And I think we're going to start to want imperfect, and we're going to want handmade and hand-drawn and hand-conceive and hand-written because we want effort.

Effort has value. Very cool. I know we're going to want quickly to discern if it was real or not, and likely because we want to make sure that we're not being duped by something that's not real. until AI becomes real. You know, like we have, I don't think we're at that chasm yet. This idea, though, about intuition.

Very philosophical conversation, rather. It is. I enjoyed it. I really did want to get to how you're thinking about AI. But before we take this any further, I do want to understand how you do storytelling and insight. You are, the mechanics of storytelling are not complicated. You know, Joseph Campbell kind of laid the blueprint.

you obviously understand the beats that you're walking through. I'm wondering if it's rehearsed or you are working the beats as you're going or there's some other way you're great at storytelling. You're really good at it. But then you have a clever, and I don't use that despairingly. You have a wonderful insight from the story to go take action on or to see something differently. So can you just like help me understand

and how you ready yourself to tell the stories and how you draw the insight in your unique, Mr. Cynic Way. You're going to hate my answer. I'll be the judge of that. I have insatiable curiosity. I don't like reading things in my own category. Don't read leadership books

because I'll either just nod and agree or be annoyed and disagree or I'm sure there's something I can learn always, but it's a lot of effort for very little gain if there's a couple of insights in there, or there's a turn of phrase that I'll really like, but did I have to read the whole book for that turn of phrase? I'm an oral learner,

so reading to learn doesn't help me. I have to talk and listen. And I love to learn things of which I know very little about, and some of my curiosities I don't understand. I don't want to learn something about everything. I want to learn things about things that I find interesting. interests like everybody go in and out of fashion. Sometimes I see a movie and there's a character or a time period that I like and then I go down a rabbit hole and then I discover something. I go

deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And then I start connecting that stuff to everything else. And because I'm an oral learner, because I don't read textbooks, like anybody, I remember things, I remember stories. That's how I learn. That's not unique to me. That's why we do nomenon devices, because the stories, the rhymes that, you know, they help us remember things. You know, my ADHD, which makes it very difficult for me to read, and I've carried a lot of shame for that for many years, because as an author, people would say, what books are you reading? What's on your nightstand?

I buy books like they're going out of fashion. I do not read them. And it always sounds like a joke every time I say it, but it is the God's honest truth. I have written more books than I've read. And where I used to carry shame, I now realize it's an absolute superpower. the only way for me to remember something is if I remember the story. And so I pursue stories.

So when somebody's explaining something to me, I genuinely don't understand it. Like, my brain just doesn't work that way. And so I'll always say, can you tell me a story to help me understand what you're trying to explain to me? Not unique to me. They tell me a story, now I remember.

And now I kind of get the gist. And so it's very easy, you know, people think I have this amazing memory. Talk to my friends. How often I forget birthdays or plans or somebody asked me to do something. I say yes. And if I didn't write it down, it's not getting done. My brain will, it'll disappear. And to the point where people think I don't care, my brain just doesn't work that way. And I feel very guilty every time. Tell me a story? I'm golden. That's okay. So it's easy for me to recall the stories. I can recall. People think I have this amazing memory. I have amazing memory for one kind of thing. Stories. Stories. Stories. And you have tuned your ability to retell a story with all the right suspense, with all the right, oh, no, uh-oh, oh, I get it. You know, so you have the right kind of beats on a story that is... Well, it's because I'm enjoying myself.

As you're telling the story. I'm telling the story to myself. And are you seeing it in color? I see it visually. I don't see it in color. You see it visually. Do you see it as pictures or do you see it as a movie? Oh, that's a great question.

So here's what popped in my mind as you asked me that. The way I would play as a kid, right? I had these little toy plastic soldiers and where a lot of kids would be like they'd hold the soldiers, I'd be like, that's not what I did, right? I would have a scene, a vast scene in my head, a story. And I would come down to the basement and I would set up my soldiers to capture one photograph, one snapshot,

of the story that was going on in my mind. I'd spent hours setting it up that one photograph. And then I'd go for another day or two upstairs, and I'd plain, you know, be a kid. And then, you know, some time to go back to the basement. And the story had progressed in my imagination. And so I would move all the soldiers just slightly because it was the next scene.

And so whatever that is probably persists today, that it's always moving in my head, but then I'll capture a piece of it. Yeah, it's like a story. it sounds like. And so that's why I think I can tell I can stand up on a stage and tell all these disparate stories that all go together because I'm telling you I I know the movie in my head and I'm picking and choosing stories from all over the place to help me communicate the scene that I'm at in this moment. So you could so you're moving along with me. So I can tell a story of

Martin Luther King or a story from the military or a completely fictional account of something or some hypothetical, you know, done with beautiful local color. And I can, but what I'm doing is advancing my macro story with all these little micro scenes that seem to come out of nowhere. It's very cool. Thank you for the way you've said that up. Yeah, that's awesome.

And then, so you're scaffolding the stories around your core ideas or the stories disrupting the core ideas to make new ideas. I treat everything like a jigsaw puzzle, which is every, think about a jigsaw puzzle. All jigsaw puzzles start the same way, right? You have all of the pieces scattered. You flip them over.

You flip them over, right? And the first thing you do is you lean the box against the wall. Right. Right? So you know what you're building. Look, you're doing it again. And you know you're doing it again, though. What?

You're telling a story. I'm painting a picture. So you're so good at this. I understand now. You're practiced. You're well practiced and it's organic to you because of the way you learn. But you just invited me in. in the clever way that you started the story,

which is it all starts the same way. In other words, for you and me, for all of us. And then you had two commonalities, which is like all the jig puzzle, and I go, yep, that's me. And then leaning it up, I added the stupid little flip them over, whatever, but,

and then the thing you lean it up, I can't wait to see where you take this next. You lean it up, and I go, yeah, me too. So there's a thing that you're using stories to bind or bond me with you in that arc. What I'm doing is, is you don't know where I'm going, right?

And that's the point of the story, which is I know where I'm going, because I'm the one building the jigsaw puzzle. That's right. So the analogy is, first you lean the box against the wall, and now you know the picture that you're about to build. And then you sort of create a little system. I'm going to do the blue pieces over here. I'm going to put the red pieces over here. And you start building the puzzle, right? And it doesn't really matter the order.

And you can do the same puzzle of five different times, and you'll do it differently every single time. But there's a system, and here's the best part. which is you don't have to finish the puzzle for somebody else to come, let's say you move the box away, you don't have to finish the puzzle that somebody can over come over and be like, kittens, right? So I'm fully aware that I don't even have to be complete in my explanations for you to understand what I'm trying to say. I can be completely incomplete. That's how I treat all of what I'm doing, which is I know the thing I want to get to. I know the picture on the box. And then I call upon all of these little thoughts and stories that I have.

I've got some blue ones that I know this one, this story is good for this, this, and this. The story that's good for this, this is. And it's not that prescriptive. It's organic, you know, and I'm filling in the pieces. And eventually, you'll see what I'm trying to tell you, even if I don't get it all out and it's incomplete. It's always a jigsop puzzle. Finding Master is brought to you by Skims. We just finished the NBA Finals.

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Again, that's skims.com slash Finding Mastery and select podcast and Finding Mastery so that they know that we sent you. Today's episode is brought to you by Finding Your Best. It's our signature mindset course here at Finding Mastery. There's only three things that we can train. We can train our craft, our bodies, and our best. minds. And the best in the world, they don't leave any of those up to chance. So let's talk about training your mind. We built an online mindset course called Finding Your Best. These are the same

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head to finding mastery.com slash course and use the code summer 75 to get $75 off that's summer and the number 75 summer 75 at finding mastery.com slash course for $75 off because it's not what you know that changes your life it's what you train some people see um the art of life like a jigsaw others see it as a tapestry well this is the explanation you're asking me how i how i communicate yeah where communicate is jigsaw puzzle so tapestry so it's yeah so this is a communication story process that we're you're pointing to right now it's how my brain works it's very and so the the stories that accumulate are the pieces and sometimes my puzzles can get more expansive sometimes i'll swap stories at sometimes i have my favorites

get back to a i because a i can tell stories too okay how are you readying yourself for the next wave that's taken place both in the readying yourself but then also is equally as interested how you're helping ready other people for what's coming this is the the the magical period magical in quotes of the introduction of new technology and we don't know what to do yet and it's there's when there was when Edison introduced the electric light bulb people were afraid to use them because they thought it would make you sick or disturb the sadness of sleep serious and they would put signs over electric light switches that says

this is an electric this is an Edison electric light bulb it is totally safe don't worry you can use it but there was a learning curve took a lot of years before everybody was like I love this electricity thing there's always fear and uncertainty of new stuff and we don't quite know how much to use it or a little to use it and you look at all the inflection points where that's the printing press or the telephone and the telegraph and you know you know the internet you know all of these things that there's always a period of complete madness where there's you have zealots on one side i remember the early days of internet shopping and the zealots would be like it's the death of bricks and mortar didn't happen but sure we'll go with that you know and then there's the

other side which are the the the protectionists and the theorists you know like oh my god this is the worst thing in the world, the sky is falling. Are you kidding? We're all going to die. Let's be Luddites and dig into the old is what we know. And the truth is somewhere in the middle. And that's the period we're in now. We're in the period of complete madness, complete uncertainty, the zealots, the detractors, you know, and I think for any kind of new technology like this one, to reject it as stupid, don't need to be overly zealous because you're probably overguessing it's utility and you're also forgetting

that human beings are on the using side of it and you won't know how we choose to use it like the crowd will source that one you know

we'll figure out all the new ways to use things that you buffins haven't figured out yet and so I embrace it I find it fascinating I don't think it's going to be

all consuming of our lives things will show up because we demand it we will reject certain things because we demand it and I don't think anybody who's making any predictions really knows and so it's we'll wait and see and we'll find out um and anybody who

lived through the internet we saw it happen we did it we went through it and it's only and like now it's kind of like settled and we all kind of get it but i remember the insanity when the internet showed up so you're not you're not pointing to friendship and relationships as a counter rotation to digital not not not it's not a it's not a it's not a it's not a pendulum it's not a reaction to I recognize that me sort of going deep and talking about relationships and friendships now absolutely addresses a lot of the ills that have been caused by excessive digital

an excessive digital life. I'm fully aware of that. But it's not like I woke up one morning, be like, we've gone too digital, I need to go friendship. It wasn't a reaction. Yeah. It was more organic than that. But I'm fully aware that I get a twofer.

Yeah, you definitely. And that came from usually, I don't know, life-shifting insights or set of practices or ways of living come from some sort of suffering or pain. And I know it sounds a bit brutalist and harsh, but that's been my experience. And I think research holds it up like, why did people change because of pain? I'm wondering, like, are you clear or able to share what happened that led you to wanting to over-index in your life or reinvest in your life? or reinvest in your life on a relationship. So my work is all semi-obiographical. It's my journey.

So when you ask me, is it a reaction to digital world? I'm like, no, it's a reaction to my world. That's right. And it just so happens that it's an antidote to the digital world. Like I said, too far, right? So yeah, I can tell you where it comes from, for sure. My social life, my romantic life, I've never been married. I've had a couple of long-term relationships, but not many.

And I've gone on dates where, literally the person I'm on a date with, like, have you ever been married? I'm like, no. They're like, well, what's your longest relationship? I'm like, about three years. And they said to me, what's wrong with you? Like, why haven't you been married? And the stress that I've carried for decades, for being, and I believe in my own narrative, that I am a failure and I am bad at relationship.

And people like, you have commitment issues. Like, they all diagnosed me, you know. And it didn't sound right, because I don't think I do. Maybe I do. It's stressful and you carry that weight that I'm bad at relationships and I don't know how to make people happy and I let people down. It's a light word. You know?

It's a little heavier than stressful. And just over the past few years, I've had some experiences and insights that have challenged my own narrative about myself. So I have a friend who was in a 16 year. unhealthy relationship. She admits freely that she should have been in it for one year. Society looks at her and says, she did it right, I did it wrong. That's what society would say. That's right. She got it right and I got it wrong. There's something wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with her. Because there's something flawed in you if you can't figure out how to.

If I can't figure out how to do it, but staying in a 16 year relationship that you should have only been in for one that was unhealthy and unhappy and just not a good thing. From the surface. From the surface. That's right. But that's the point. And I realize I'm a very happy person, despite my lack of relationships, because I have great friends. And why is it the society overvalues the romantic relationship and undervalues the friendship? Why do you think that is? I don't know, Judeo-Christian values. I couldn't tell you. I don't know. Probably. But this is the world we live in where there's an excessive amount of pressure to get married,

white picket fence, 1.3 children. or whatever the statistic is, 2.1, I don't know. Right? And in entire economies, entire economies on how to find it, nurse it, get it, make it, right? And yet there's so little on friendship. And if you're not in a relationship, you still have friends. And when you are in a relationship, you still have friends. And in fact, if you are in a relationship and you abandon your friends, you're a bad friend. I would say you've got some... And I'd say you've got some issues. Yeah, that's right. In fact, if you want to have successful relationships, you better have friends to hold space for you when you're struggling in your relationship. And last I checked, every single

successful, happy relationship, when you talk to the people in that relationship and you say, what's your secret? They all say the same thing. It's hard work, and we do the work. Well, if it's such hard work, who's supporting you in that hard work? I bet it's your friends. So basically what you're telling me is the secret to successful relationships is in part friends? And so I just came to the realization and the conclusion that I have great friends and I have

a very happy life. And it turns out you can make out with some of your friends now and then, by the way. So it's like, I'm missing out on nothing. I'm a happy person because of my friends. And so I've... Do you have friends with benefits, as it's called? I have had friends with benefits. Does it work?

Sure. After the sex, what happens? You have breakfast. I mean, does it work? Sure. I mean, sometimes it lasts. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the friendship can sustain it and sometimes it can't.

Like, it's a stupid question because it's, it doesn't matter, right? As long as it's too consenting adults who are kind of like, you're single, I'm single. You want to do this? Sure. And sometimes it's mundane, sometimes it's companionship, it's just sleepovers without it. It's just nice to have a warm body to wake up next to. It doesn't matter as long as it's two people who want the same thing. And the friendship allows for that to happen, then those are the parameters of the friendship.

My point is I made myself unhappy because I thought I was missing something and all the time I was neglecting that I had more than everybody else. And amazing people in my life, amazing friends who offered me the love, the comfort, the companionship that I could get from a relationship, but I just wasn't getting from a relationship. And what has happened in my dating life, which is now when I date, I used to date, I'd be like, oh, hope this works, I hope this works. The pressure I'm putting myself, the pressure I'm putting them, it's unfair in everybody, it's destined for failure just because of the pressure.

Whereas now I meet somebody and I tell them out of the gate, I'm like, listen, I don't, I don't know if I'm going to date you or not. What I can tell you is I would like to become your friend because I like you and maybe there's a friendship here. And if there's enough here that we can become friends, we've already won. And if we discover from that friendship that there's more, then I'm open to it.

Sounds like the aperture's wide open. You're really free with this. I'm most interested in... And if I don't have another long-term relationship, I'm cool. Because you've got... Because I've got my friends. And I'm happy.

What was the departure from the narrative that you swallowed and embedded, which is I'm a failure in the eyes of society on how I do my love life, my friendships, my relationships, to what cracked that open? I saw it in a friend, a different friend of mine who's divorced, hasn't really dated since her marriage ended 10 years ago. And her friends give her a hard time. And she gives herself a hard time. And she goes on a date here and there and she's like, what the hell am I doing? you know and she would complain to me and I had the benefit of objectivity by being the outsider looking at a person who's got an amazing family who's got amazing friends of which I count myself amongst them who if she just lets go of this relationship thing like she's got

no complaints and I would be like just look at your life who cares like you get everything you want. You have everything you want. And I was giving her the advice I needed to hear. Yeah. So you learn from others as much as you learn from your own introspection. Yeah. It's all part of the puzzle. Yeah. I got some blue pieces and I got some red pieces. It's a cat. Is that what you said before kidding? All right. Look, so I think you're pointing to one, we know from research, the Harvard study and lots of other studies on well-being that connections and relationships are foundational. It's embarrassing.

We have to talk about it. Yeah. Like, everybody knows this. Like, the fact that Harvard has a 75-year study to say the friends matter, like, yeah. So what do you think goes wrong? Do we don't do the work?

Yeah. Like, we know we have to do the work in our romantic relationships. We just said it. That's the secret. 100%. We know that if you're a leader in an office, in a company,

you've got to do the work. Like, in every, kind of relationship dynamic, we know you got to do the work. Yet for some reason, we allow friendships to be organic and underinvested. So how do you do the work? I learn how to hold space when a friend calls to vent to me. I learn to suppress my desire to fix. If I don't know what to do, I learn to ask. Do you need me to offer some advice or do you want me to just hold space for you? finding master is brought to you by mac weldon if you've been a community member here at finding mastery for a while now you know our position on confidence it's built from the inside out it's not

about flash it's about really knowing who you are and showing up with clarity and conviction and purpose and substance and that's why i'm so bought in with what mac weldon is doing they may close for men who live that same philosophy, understated, sharp, grounded in quality, pieces that don't scream for attention, but quietly say, I've got this, like their latitude bomber. It's clean, it's simple, it travels well, whether I'm heading to work with an organization or just grabbing dinner. They're great. And their silver denim jeans, it's this elevated fit, this great fabric, and somehow they feel broken in from day one. They did a nice job there. And what stands out most, to me is their mindset. Mac Weldon believes, quote, knowing is more important than showing.

That resonates deeply with what we're trying to do here at Finding Mastery, working from the inside out. And if that aligns with how you want to move through the world, I'd encourage you to go check them out. Head to macwellden.com and use the code finding mastery for 20% off your first order of $100 or more. Again, use the code finding mastery at macwellden.com for 20% off. your first order of $100 or more. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Lisa. Sleep is one of the foundational pillars of high performance. There's no arguing that.

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because quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. That hinge that my wife and I use on a regular basis, like something comes up and let's say she calls me. And I know, like, I need direction. Sometimes I miss, hey, how do you want me show up for you on this one? And she's like, look, I just need you to listen. I'm like, great. People know. 100% of the time.

Actually, I'm jammed. I need to hear your thoughts on this. Yeah. Like, I'm looking for a way through this. Great. Got it. And when somebody gets it wrong, just interrupt them. Be like, I don't need you to fix it right now.

Here's what I need right now. Like, either ask or interrupt. Yeah, right. Just give somebody guides. I read this thing that I thought was one of the most brilliant insights for marriages, work relationships, friendships, which is we all live with the fantasy that our partner can read our mind. And we're bad at it.

We all live at the fantasy that our friends can read our mind. We all live with the fantasy that our employees or our bosses can read our minds. Or we can ask or tell. So I've learned to ask and tell. I have learned how to listen actively. Really hard to do. If you do it well, you'll be exhausted at the end of it. It takes effort.

What is listening hard require of you? Here's the analogy. I went to this meeting. It's funny because now I'm hyper aware since the conversation. I'm playing the story in my head. You are playing it. I'm playing the story in my head. I can see it happening.

And so the reason I'm a good storyteller is because I'm telling you what I'm looking at. It's as if I'm describing a movie to somebody who's blind sitting next to me or somebody who's not in the room. Brilliant. Is it faster? Did you see the whole thing or are you doing it scene by scene with me? I know the whole thing. Yeah. And I'm now going back and replaying it in slow-mo and pulling out the bits that I need to for you to.

So I'm in this meeting. And there's a woman sitting next to me. who apparently is a famous yoga instructor and the whole meeting she's on her phone underneath the table I can see I'm sitting next to her and it's not like she's got a family member in the hospital and she's getting updates

I can see she's on social media I'm looking right and at some point you know she's looking down at some point the conversation at the table turns to being present and her head pops up and she says that's why I love yoga because it helps me be present

And I'm thinking, I think you're an idiot, you know. But that's when I realized that we in the West have missed, we've missed the, we've lost the plot of what all of these practices, these Eastern practices are supposed to be and what they're meant for, all of them. So let's take meditation, right? We know meditation has all these benefits to ourselves. We know that. We've done the science. We've put the brain scans. We tell everybody you've got to meditate because it's good for you.

right and anybody who practices meditation they will know that what you do is you're supposed to sit still you can't clear your mind it doesn't exist but you can focus on one thing your mantra your breath a dot on the wall sound it doesn't matter the point is you learn to focus on one thing and if you're distracted if you have a thought that pops in your head you learn to say that's a thought you label it a thought I'll put it out of my mind and I will deal with it later I'm going back to focusing on one thing. And you learn this practice, and you're batted at the beginning. You can do it for two minutes if you're lucky,

then five minutes, then 10 minutes, then 20 minutes, then an hour, focused on one thing, fully present. And at the end, you are, ah, nirvana, you feel amazing. You have a great day. All the brain waves, the science, all the electrodes tell you you're great. Here's the thing we've missed. We are social animals, and we live in paradox every day of our lives. Every day of our lives, we are both individuals and a member of a group.

And every single day, we have to deal with both of those things. Do I put myself first at the expense of the group? Do I put the group first at the expense of myself? The answer is yes, it's a paradox. Right? And so, yes, meditation has benefits for you, but you're missing the pro-social component. You are not present until someone else says you are.

So when you're sitting with a friend and they're telling you about their amazing day or their terrible day, you are not waiting for your turn to speak. you have learned to focus on one thing and one thing only what your friend is telling you and when there's a bang over there or a conversation in the other direction you ignore them, you are not interested

and when you have your own thoughts you label it a thought and you put it out of your mind and you say I'll deal with that later right now I'm focusing on what my friend is telling me and at the end of the conversation you know that all of that meditation that you've been doing has now successfully been applied for your friend

you will know that you are present because your friend will say to you at the end thank you for listening I feel heard my goodness I feel whole thank you for being present for me congratulations all the meditation was worth it that's active listening it's hard work to put aside the thing you want to say when you really want to say it it's hard work I've had to learn this so like somebody who's telling me a story I'm getting to know somebody and they tell me a story of how they went to Hong Kong. And the first thing I say is I went to Hong Kong too,

because I want them to know, I can share and understand their experience. Wrong, wrong. Wrong. Somebody tells you they got in a car crash. Don't tell them you got into car crash. And they were traumatized by it. You go, oh, yeah, when I was 12, like I hit a bumper.

And yeah, it's scary sounds. Totally missing the point. Missing the point. And what I've had to learn to do is though my desire is to match their experience, to show that I can relate. That's my intention. What I end up doing is interrupting them, not making them feel heard, downplaying their experience

simply because I'm talking about me. And so I've learned to put all of that away and say, oh my God, that sounds awful. Tell me more about it. How was your vacation? How was Hong Kong? What was your favorite thing about it? And I've learned to be curious

and make them feel seen, heard and understood, I will have my turn later. Now, I'm not perfect. I still screw it up all the time, but I'm way better than it used to be. That's accurate. Yeah, the space of it is great that you provide yourself. Are you more curious about their thoughts, their feelings, their behaviors, or tripwires? All of the above is a good stack, but where do you naturally fall to? Depends on the person. Yeah. So if you think they need a little bit or would benefit from a little bit of the feeling side you'll ask more about that or is it more i don't know if it's that i don't know if i think about it that much to be honest i think if i like somebody and i want to know more about

their experience if i had a good night sleep i'm full of questions do you sleep well yeah i do you do sleep well yeah yeah how do like the ADHD helps meaning that you're just like a lot of deep sleep yeah and you're buzzing throughout the day so by the time you get to pillow But I think, I think it's a known thing that people with ADHD sleep hard, sleep deep. I sleep deep. Like once I'm, it takes me a while to fall asleep. But once I'm out, it's Sionera. What do you, what are some of the best practices you have?

Because you live a pretty vibrant life. I could drop the word pretty. You live a vibrant life. What are your practices? Relational, we got it. Value sleep. It sounds like you got it. What else are you doing?

Moderate exercise, I think you would say. I think the thing that I've learned over time, is grace, just to give myself grace and recognize that what works for one person doesn't work for everybody. And my goal isn't to learn what works for somebody else. My goal is to learn what works for me. So I'm chronically disorganized, right? So I've tried a system to keep me organized or downloaded some app and it was great for a week or two and then I abandoned it. And then I'd feel guilty that I couldn't stick with it. Or I'm messy. So I get to the point where I'm like, I'm so annoyed, and I like organize, I like rip out everything out of the shelves and put

it all back. And I'm like, I'm going to keep it this way because it's so good. It never, ever happens. And I used to like beat myself with like, why can't I stay organized? Like, and then like, or why won't the system work for me? I'm going to find a system that works for me. And then I just allowed myself grace, which is the system worked great for two weeks. And then I'll find another system. And it's just made me less stressed about like I have periods of disorganization and periods of hyperorganization. I have periods of stress and periods of total disconnect. I have periods of productivity and periods of complete no productivity. And it's all fine. So I'm always trying to get better, but it's all fine. Grace is the anecdote to self-criticalness.

So it sounds like you were. And it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean resignation. It doesn't mean whatever, just this is how it's going to be. I'm always trying to be better. I'm always tweaking the system. But if it doesn't work for me, then it doesn't work for me. And that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the system because if it works for somebody else, then that's great, but it doesn't work for me. Or it only worked for me for a short period of time. And so when you talk about the vibrancy of life, I would even say that that comes in fits and starts. I think it's my life is moments of unbelievable vibrancy. And And unbelievable, whatever the verb of the noun is from mundane, mundanity.

Do you slip into melancholy, depression, or are you more on the anxious side? I think I used to get lonelier than I do now. I used to feel like I needed somebody around me all the time. And I'm, even that, I've given myself grace. My friend Rick, who's like, it's like a monk. you know he's not is a monk he's like a monk um i asked him i'm like do you ever get lonely he said no i'm always with myself and i fell in love with that i like the company i keep i like the company i keep and i sort of do you like yourself i do it's important sounds cheek

i don't like aspects of myself it's an important question to wrestle with i think but i think that's the i think we we have to give ourselves the same grace that we're supposed to give other people, right? Which is you never label the person, you label the behavior, right? You don't label the character, you label the behavior. So you wouldn't say to somebody, you're a liar. You say, you told a lie. We can, you know, you don't attack someone's character, you attack someone's behavior, or you criticize the behavior. We're supposed to learn that. That's correct. Well, we should apply that logic to ourselves. There are behaviors I don't like that I've done or that I do.

There are things that I don't like about me. But as a character, as a thing, yeah, it's good. There's a Woody Hoberg, Dr. Hoburg, is, I think he's like the best of us. He's a friend. He was on the podcast. He, M.I.T. Ph.D. NASA astronaut got up to the ISS International Space Station and then was nominated for the Spacewalk.

And he is phenomenal. But he's a nice guy. too he's his character oh so annoying yeah i mean he is the literally the best of us i think the thing that i i asked him this question when you think of living your best life how do you think about going about that he paused he says yeah i think it's like just making if i have a thousand choices throughout the day i'm just trying to at each one make the right choice for me at that time and it's backed up against the value proposition and it's backed up against or in its counterbalance to the vision he holds of what could be and i don't think it's that more complicated

it's a really simple thing now where it gets tricky is when you make when you zig when you know that zagging was the right choice and you zig and you know that you made the easy sloppy wrong expedient whatever decision right how do you work with yourself when that takes place. Can I just take a quick sidebar there? So I got to meet the head of the human space program, the person in charge of like the astronauts at NASA. And the question I asked was,

what's the single most important characteristic in a human being you look for when you decide someone should be in the astronaut core? And the answer I got was they have to be nice. Yeah, I think somewhere in the DNA of their job is to be ambassadors for human potential. I don't think that's it. No. I think it's simpler than that, which is we're going to put you on a space station for six months with other astronauts.

Oh. And there's going to be six of you living in close quarters. You better get along with people. You better get along. And what they know is, is that if you're nice and you get along, it also means you're better at asking for help, you're better at problem solving, you're better at teamwork. And so they don't care, like, how smart you are and how good an engineer you are and how good a pilot you are. Yeah, sure, that stuff's important.

Second. But if you're a good person, you make a good astronaut. Because fundamentally, it's a very, very dangerous job with an incredible amount of stress in very, very dangerous conditions. And you can only solve problems as a team. And so you better get along with other people, otherwise it's not going to work.

Yeah, I mean, but the point is it's pro-social that we're taking the most austere, the most dangerous, the most difficult conditions of which the whole outside world is trying to kill you at every moment, and you better get along. And by the way, there's a whole book about this that I didn't read, called Survival of the Friendliest, which makes the case that for human beings we've misunderstood Darwin, that when we talk about survival of the fittest, it's actually not strength and brawn. we got it wrong. It's how pro-social you are. It's how friendly you are. Because it doesn't matter how strong you are. If you don't get along, it's not going to work out. And I saw this happen

at the Marine Corps. When I visited boot camp, 13 weeks at Paris Island, the adrenaline structures were telling me that for the first two weeks, everybody's trying to prove that they're good enough to be Marines. They're all trying to show off how strong and how great they are. But the Marines, what they start to do after a couple of weeks is they put them in situations where they cannot succeed in the task by themselves. They're going to have to rely on each other. And they say something remarkable happens. And they're just observing. Like they're not paying attention to the anthropology, right? Something remarkable happens. The group will organically eject the weak ones who refuse to ask for help or refuse to try and, you know, and the group will organically

reject the very strong ones who think they don't need the group. And the group organically rejects them until they both learn to ask and accept help. And you better help the group because it's not just about you, big guy. And they have to learn to ingratiate themselves back into the group. And this is proof that survival of the fittest is the ability to put yourself second and put your strength and your brawn and how smart you were and hire you want to show off and show how great you are and say, no, no, no, I'm going to be a valuable member of the team. and then it works

we are much more like a coral reef than just about any other analogy I can think about we need each other to survive well and you know there are sharks that swim amongst the coral reef that are dangerous and they're predatory and there are you know all the different fittings that but we need each other in this ecosystem

so if if an alien were to drop down and say they just got to observe you and you're the end of one to recognize who humans are. Okay, so you're going to say he's smart. They're going to say, oh, he's great at storytelling. Oh, yeah, he really values relationships. He's a little disorganized.

He knows it, though. So humans are disorganized. They're good friends. Fill in the blank, fill in the blank. What do you want them to see or to know about you that you're not there yet? it's not it's not totally apparent to the alien that drops into space or from space i think it's a flawed question because i'm not there for everything yet everything is a pursuit okay but that's the answer that would be your answer the question still is i'll spar with you

on this the question is to invite where is the unfinished business for you and your response is I mean, all of them. It depends on the week. You know, sometimes it's, it's, I'm focused on work and so I'm trying to be a better leader. And then some weeks, everything's running automatic and I'm good. And like, the team's fine. They don't need me.

And I, I, I'm focused on somewhere else. And so, I mean, like, it's, it's all. Let me double click one more time, which is. I don't mean to be evasive, but it's, it's like. No, I don't think evasive. I think I want to, let me see if I can drill it down. One more niche, though, which is what is the part of you that you're, yearning to have more evident.

Part of me I'm yearning to have more evident. Closer to the surface. I think my grapple is the same as everybody else's grapple. You know, I think it's a journey that some of us are further ahead and some of us are further behind, which is to be fully myself all the time everywhere. You know, like when do I edit myself? When do I hold back? And when do I allow reckless abandon to just, you know, so I don't think that's unique.

to me. And I think that's everybody's struggle, which is to be fully yourself all the time and have it not be performative either. Like people who like, they're sort of annoying and sort of in your face about things. And you're like, you want to settle down a little bit? Like just being myself. I'm like, really? Is that the self you want to be? Yeah. I think that's, I think we're in this. I think people forget that being yourself includes I interact with other people. And that's part that's the struggle, which is you don't want to be so much yourself that you just end up offending and pissing everybody off, even though you're just being authentic, quote unquote. But at the same time, you want to be so restrained in such a pleaser that you've hidden who

you are as well. And so it's a very difficult question. It goes back to what I was saying before, which is being human is to live in paradox, which is I am me, but I'm also a member of a team, a member of a family, a member of a church, a member of a community, a member of it, whatever. We're members of groups every single day. At the same time, I am me and I am an individual. And every single day I'm trying to be me, but every single day I'm also trying to be a good member of the group. And it doesn't always line up well. And sometimes we're confronted with big or small decisions, which one of those things has to be sacrificed or subordinate to the other, if not sacrificed. And it's unresolable. I really appreciate the,

the nuance that you and the tribe, we are trying our very best to be our very best, to be ourselves. And there's a paradox embedded in that. And there's the likeability piece and the authenticity piece that is interplay that's really complicated. So is it fair to say, like if the alien was to watch, they'd say, oh, humans are really, I'm watching Simon

and like he's trying his best to be himself. And I think that humans are, really trying to get free to be themselves. I'll tell you a story that I think captures what I hope. The aliens think about us. My girlfriend and I were having a fight. It went something like this. Here's what I did right.

Here's what you did wrong. The response was, well, here's what I did right. And here's what you did wrong. I don't understand what you're saying. I've never had this argument. And you can see how this goes. Well, here's two things I did right and four things you did wrong. right how can you say that and it's getting heat more and more heated and i i was had enough

wherewithal to recognize this was going nowhere fast and so i literally interrupted i literally interrupted the fight and said this isn't working i'm changing the rules for this fight here there's the new rules for the fight i literally said this these are the new rules for our fight i'm going to tell you what i did wrong and i'm going to tell you what you did right and then you're going to take a turn okay i'll go first. Here's what I got wrong and here's what you got right. And she goes, yeah, well, here's what I got wrong and here's what you got right. And I went, yeah, well, here's something I got wrong that you freaking nailed. And within 20 seconds, we both realized we were trying. And even though we were idiots and making a mess of it, we were trying. And I think that if you pull back at a macro

level, whether you want to look at politics or the world order, everybody's doing their best. They're trying to provide for their families. They're trying to provide for themselves. They're trying to solve all their own problems, deal with their ambitions and their insecurities. We just want our kids to grow up kind of happy, kind of healthy. We all want to be safe going to work and going to school and then coming back at the end of the day

and not have to worry about our safety. And we will be able to make a living and feel proud for the work that we do and feel like our work matters and that we matter. It's pretty much for the long. whole entire planet. Now, we debate the right way to do that or how we should do that, and that's the messy part. But everybody's trying. And if we have the empathy to see that and change the rules and say, let me tell you what my party did wrong and what your party

did right. Let me tell you what my nation did wrong and what your nation did right. And if we can just flip the script and recognize that there's accountability in this in this thing for everybody I wonder everybody's trying I wonder if you took a second pass at naming your company the optimist company would you just demonstrated brilliant optimism in the framing if you would if you would name it the empathy company because no optimism is the the first principle optimism no empathy is a soft important yeah what you just you just anchored both of them and so optimism and empathy together feels like a superpower but you you were saying

empathy to me is a mechanism empathy is a is a is a is a is a thing you learn a thing you do it's a lever you pull and it's necessary for all the things it's one of the skills yeah it's Optimism. Optimism is the outcome. Yeah. So you... Optimism is the direction.

It's the vector. How do you practice? I know it's a loaded question. I'm kind of rounding through this here. How do I practice optimism? Yeah. How do you suggest people practice optimism? Optimism, I think optimism is not blind positivity.

It's not like everything's great. You know, that kind of positivity can be quite toxic in dark times or difficult times that some leader, well-intention, bounces in and goes, this is great, guys. Like, we have each other. amazing. Like, everything's good. Like, look at the bright side. Like, like, you want to punch that person, right? It's dangerous. It's dangerous. That's not optimism. That's toxic positivity. Optimism is the undying belief that the future is bright. And optimism can exist in darkness. In fact, it thrives in darkness. You know, this is the darkest time we've ever been in.

I don't remember a time this difficult. I don't know what to do. It's going to take a lot of effort and we're there's going to be a lot of pain but there's one thing that i know which is if we stick together and we help each other out i guarantee you we will come through this stronger better and and brighter than we went in and that to me is optimism does your capture of optimism embed a sense of agency agency meaning this felt sense that i'm powerful we're powerful i think it embeds a sense of responsibility to the other yeah which is I cannot be optimistic by myself. I don't have that kind of strength, but I can be optimistic for someone else. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Right? Because that's my responsibility. So, I mean,

this is a trick for people who are afraid of flying. I don't know if you know this trick. For people who are afraid of flying, if you're on a plane and the plane starts to bounce and you grip the seat and you freak out, they'll tell you if a little child was sitting next to you who is having the fear you're having, what would you tell? them it's easy to find courage when you're looking after somebody younger and more fragile than you and we're all fragile and so i find it much easier to be optimistic when i have responsibility to a team or to a friend or to a loved one but if you leave me by myself in a dark place no i'm not i'll go i'll spiral like anybody else in this conversation you've been you've demonstrated a sensitivity to yourself

to others to like the hopes and dreams that you have and you've allowed it to come right to the surface which i really really really appreciate and so thank you for the way that you've shared who you are more importantly than your insights your insights are always brilliant and clever and smart and actionable but i've appreciated how you've showed up and the way you've done it today so i just want to say thank you again simon appreciate you thank you very much for having me always you know what makes a great leader or partner, but chances are you're getting one thing wrong. Tune in as Dr. Travis Bradbury joins Dr. Javei to reveal why emotional intelligence is the real game changer, how to know if you're lacking it, and the simple practices you need to build it.

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