Know Thyself - E152 - Mark Manson: Life Advice that Doesn’t Suck: Happiness, Identity & Success

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Mark Manson dives deep into the messy reality behind personal growth and self-help, challenging the myths and misconceptions that hold most people back. From the hidden struggles that shape our identity to the sacrifices no one talks about, Mark unpacks why real change is so difficult—and why most advice fails to deliver. You’ll hear about the traps of chasing perfection, the struggle to live authentically, and the backwards logic that keeps us stuck.Try Pique Life tea and save 20% for life & get a free frother:https://www.piquelife.com/KnowThyselfAndrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyself.one/books___________0:00 Intro 1:12 How Our Struggles Shape Us2:57 Building a Life Based on Your Values10:00 Uncovering Your Hierarchy of Values16:28 The Struggle of Transforming Our Identity 22:46 Breaking Free from an Inauthentic Version of Ourself 26:37 You Don’t See the Sacrifice that Leads to Success27:49 Ad: Pique Life29:11 Sacrifices that Lead to Success34:10 The Backwards Law: Self Improvement vs Acceptance38:38 What True Inner Freedom Means43:44 Success & Failure Aren’t What They Seem49:45 Worst Advice in the Self Help Industry57:35 Self Help vs Self Obsession1:02:19 Simple Formula for Massive Change1:08:27 Beating Procrastination with Meditation1:13:28 Allowing Ourselves to Evolve1:17:36 Conclusion___________Episode Resources: https://www.instagram.com/markmanson/https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson/https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcasthttps://www.knowthyself.oneListen to the show:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9lApple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

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these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. What, in your perspective, is the biggest fault of the self-help industry? Where should start? There's a lot of advice that is optimized for making you feel very good in the short term.

You run into a little bit of a paradox. The spiritual goal is a universal acceptance of what is. But if you're universally accepting what is at every moment, how do you ever get anything done? When does self-acceptance just become complacency? Are you in a place where the pain of inaction feels worse than the pain of action? Does the struggle of not doing something feel worse than the struggle of doing it? The advice that works to actually apply something into your life is so brain dead simple that I feel like an idiot, like even saying it out loud. The simple part is it's easy to give up something that's not working.

The hardest thing is giving up something that is working, but it's not fulfilling you. And then ironically, I think it's that willingness to risk it all is like ultimately what A helps you make something great and then B, like attracts people to it. fear is there because it is valuable. Mark Manson. Welcome back, my friend. It's good to be here. Who you are is defined by what you're willing to struggle for. Elaborate.

Well, we all have to struggle with something. You know, that's Buddhist precept number one, literally. But we have a choice. We have a choice of what we get to struggle with. You know, we have a freedom of choice. And so I think, to put it in practical terms, It's like trying to be something great is a struggle. Not trying is a struggle.

Being with people is a struggle. Being alone is a struggle. Being successful and making a lot of money is a struggle. Living frugally is a struggle. So pick your struggle. And we all pick different struggles. And I think that that is ultimately how we come to know who we are. That's what differentiates us.

Yeah, if who we are is defined by what essentially is worth struggling for, you know, and the inevitable challenges that come up after endeavoring after anything in life. And what we're worth struggling for is defined essentially by our values directly. I loved your new endeavor with Solved, the podcast, diving deep into these different topics. The first one you did around human values and knowing yourself. I think it's a good fit for this podcast. Yeah.

But how do you differentiate and how would you support people and kind of delineating between what values and needs are and sort of discovering what is really worth kind of positioning themselves towards in life? Sure. So needs are universal. They're very basic. They're almost like, you know, a physical need is like food and sleep. something everybody needs, it's, it's, there's no discussion or debate around it. And there's

certain psychological needs as well, right? Like we all, we have a need for belonging. We have a need to feel connected to other people. We have a need for personal autonomy. We have a certain need for a certain amount of certainty or predictability in our life. Otherwise, we've become very anxious and scared. And what you notice with these needs is that when people don't, when they don't, when their needs are not being met, their mental health suffers pretty consistently across the board. But what's interesting is that different people develop different strategies to meet their needs, right? So my strategy for meeting my need or belongingness may be to, I don't know, join a church. And your strategy for meeting your need of belongingness might be starting a church.

Starting a church, there you go. You know, and it could be anything, anything and everything, you know, from the pickleball group you're in to the run club that you join to staying in touch with family, you know, back home and calling your mom every day. Like, these are all different strategies that we develop and employ to, like, meet our needs. And what's interesting is that those strategies are very diverse and they're different. And generally speaking, those strategies kind of fall into different categories. different ways of approaching meeting our needs. And you could say that there's like different prioritizations. Like if you're a very extroverted person,

you probably meet your need of belongingness by surrounding yourself by a lot of people and interacting with a lot of people. If you're very introverted, then you probably meet your need for belongingness with only a few people, but you spend a lot of time with them where you're like very deeply connected with them.

And these different strategies, they result in prioritizations. And those prioritizations are ultimately what we value, right? It's like I don't value the pickleball club because that's not how I meet my need for belongingness. I value something else because that is how I meet my need for belongingness. It seems like our behaviors in life directly reveal what our values are, right? Because it's easy to get super psychological with it and thinking about it. But ultimately, like, we move through the world, motivated, inspired,

by what our values are. If somebody's thinking right now to themselves, what are my values, as it's an important thing to reflect on because it's going to inform so much of the subsequent actions that are derived from it, what are the first steps that you like to look at?

Well, you already named it, which is look at your actions, because a funny thing happens with all of us is that we wish we valued things that we don't, or feel socially pressured into it, or bought into a narrative at some point of like, oh, this is something I should value, or my friends value this,

so maybe I should value that. Yet we struggle to actually follow through on it. I'll use a really basic example that comes up all the time. So I hear from a lot of young people, right, who they grew up, they went to a great school, got a great degree, you know, maybe became a lawyer or a doctor. And then one day they wake up when they're 30 and they're like, I don't want to do this.

And I don't know why I don't want to do this. And likely what happened along the way is that they adopt, they convinced themselves that they valued something that they actually didn't. They thought they wanted to do law. But really what they wanted was maybe the approval of their parents. Or maybe all their friends were going to law school and they didn't want to feel left out, right? That is actually what they valued. And so there's this kind of like game of honest.

that you have to play with yourself when you look at your own actions, like really ask why are you doing that or why are you not doing something? And be uncomfortably honest with the answers that you allow to come up. Because ultimately your actions never lie. Our minds and our malice lie all the time. It's often without even us knowing it. It seems like as we grow and evolve as human being so, to our values and I've heard you just speak to how in many ways values are in effort to fulfill

our needs in some different ways. And of course, that's going to change throughout the different stages of our life. What's something that used to be a value for you that isn't and like what are some of your primary values now? Oh, yeah. I mean, when I was young, what's interesting is that there's, there are patterns around this too. Like it's generally young people really value exploration. You know, it's when you're a young adult, like everything's new, everything's exciting. You want to learn everything. You want to try everything. You want to date everybody.

And then slowly you start learning what you really like and what you don't and what works and what doesn't and what's worth it and what's not. And then you eventually kind of as you age and mature, you become pickier. So I'm in middle age now. And so I've just become a lot pickier about the things that I'm willing to put my time and effort into. So when I was young, I wanted to go to every party. I wanted to talk to every cute girl. I saw I wanted to visit every cool place. I wanted to read every book.

You know, there was a, there was like a genuine kind of young excitement about it. And sometimes I get very nostalgic for that because I don't feel that a whole lot anymore. But I think what I have now that I didn't have then is. is a deep sense of peace of I know what I value. I know what I care about. And I have been fortunate enough to successfully build a life around those things that I care about. So I have the privilege of spending most of my waking hours

doing things that I like with people I like. And so while I may not have all the fun and excitement and crazy whacked out stories, that my 20-year-old self did, I definitely, I'm very satisfied. Yeah. In, like, seeing how there's a hierarchy of values, I'm curious what your thoughts are

in your own personal life of, like, a couple things that you value. There's probably one that you value more than the other. Right. Which, you know, maybe there's still, there's still some part in you that does value networking and connecting with people, or maybe that's completely abolished at this point.

But there's another value that, you know, there are many more that just feel way stronger, you know, more present in this age in life. Yeah. So, yeah, as it's evolved in your life now, I'm just curious your thoughts on allowing that to shift and because it gets really easy to kind of get calcified and how everybody is responded to what we think our values are, how we've been rewarded for living in accordance with old values that aren't, you know, exciting for us anymore.

Sure. or fail us, right? Like, that's another way. You know, there's kind of the lack of excitement, but, you know, often value change happens due to some terrible event in our lives, right? You know, a breakup. You lose a job. You lose a loved one, right?

And it shakes up your values, what you care about. It makes you question a lot of things. Like, wow, I used to think this was so important. And now I realized that I was misguided or I didn't see the full. picture, right? But what you were saying about the value hierarchy, like ultimately, and this is one of the things I talk about in my books is like everybody ultimately wants the same things. Like we're all human. So like we all like the same stuff in the abstract. We all like attention and validation and we all want to be loved and we all want to be admired and we all want to enjoy nice things and

experience a sense of status and it's all like it's all actually very unoriginal and and this is why I find the struggles that people choose is actually a much better indicator because it's just like when you look at the dreams and the fantasies and the pleasures that people have um they're very similar they're very almost monotonous sometimes and and how identical they are uh so it's it's not that like have certain values and you don't have them at all. It's just what changes from person to person is like the place on the ladder that we put them, right? So for one person, their highest value in life might be family. And it's, and if you walked up to that person, you said, you have to be willing to give up your career to make your family more stable and successful, that person would in a heartbeat

beat, say, absolutely, I'll do it. But then there's probably other people whose top value is their career. And if you offer them the same proposition, they would go the other way, right? And so, again, that's the differentiation. It's like, which one are you willing to sacrifice for? And that determines where on your hierarchy the value is and kind of what the order of those values are. and then when life comes and, you know, kicks you in the ass, which it does all of us, it shuffles that order a little bit, you know? It's like maybe you value your career for 10 or 20 years and suddenly you wake up in your 40s and you're like just profoundly lonely and you feel isolated and you look at all of your

friends and coworkers and they all have loving families that they spend time with in your just like, oh my God, I can't believe I mess this up, right? Like that shifting, like moving one value down a peg and one value up a peg, it's like an inherently uncomfortable experience because you're literally like rearranging who you are in that moment. And so there's a lot of, it comes with a lot of emotion. It comes a lot with a lot of psychological tension. it comes with a lot of like confusion and sometimes like guilt or embarrassment. You know, it's like you go out with friends who used to know you for being one way, but you're not that way anymore.

And so you feel out of place and they're confused by your behavior. And so there's like all these awkward kind of moments of like you're trying to figure out who you're supposed to be and they're trying to figure out who you're supposed to be. And so it is like a very inherently deeply uncomfortable process. And this is why I've just said forever that, like, change is inherently difficult. Like, there's no, nobody's going to throw you a parade for, you know, discovering who you are. It's probably, you know, it's probably more like crawling through barbed wire is probably more equivalent. I think we do have that, a really idealized notion of transformation.

Yes. You know, and the reality of growth is movement and expansion, which is often rarely comfortable. Yes. Hardly ever. Yeah, I do think there are moments on the other side where you feel profoundly, like, deeply grateful and proud and joyous, you know, of like, oh, my God, I just, I overcame that or I worked through that. but in my experience that's usually it's usually an experience that happens after the fact when you're looking back and when you're in it you're like this sucks get me out of this as soon as possible um there's a quote i love from Freud he said uh he said in in retrospect

uh your your greatest struggles will strike you as the most beautiful and i've always loved that That's so good. I think there is a shift where when you orient yourself to be more process oriented than goal oriented, you can actually find the joy throughout, in pockets of joy throughout the process of the struggle, you know, and I think it's more easily accessed when it's kind of slow, habitual changes in your life and you can, you know, experience the pleasure of exercising your body even though it feels difficult at many times. and it can be a enjoyable process for sure.

But nonetheless, usually the most, I feel like the most painful aspects of expanding ourselves is the transformation of identity because we hold it so close to us as us, you know, and becomes the most hard to let go. And as it relates to transforming our values and identity in life, it's nearly impossible to get someone to understand. something or to change when their entire self-worth depends on them not understanding it or not changing, you know? Right.

And we can get caught in this cycle of being rewarded for an outdated version of ourselves. Yeah. So as you've grown on your journey, both in the world and as a creator and an author and content creator, but then also as a partner in your romantic relationships and friendships, I would just love to get your perspective on this evolving identity and how alluring it is and painful it can be to hold on to these past versions of ourselves. It's natural. Like you should evolve.

Like even without getting into all the stuff that you and I are into, right? Like it's just being a human. You should, your preferences should change. Your values should change. Your lifestyle should change as you go through life. That's just a natural, a natural part of being human. But it is, I guess the most, the thing that's coming up for me, listening to you, ask that, is I think one, One mental shift that just helps me a lot

when I'm kind of in the middle of the confusion and the dissonance is reminding myself that like this is part of it. You know, like there's, I think there's a tendency when we're struggling or when we're confused about who we are or what we should be doing. Somehow like work off the assumption

that like this isn't supposed to happen. Like I'm supposed to have it figured out. Like, you know, Jim's got it figured out. Mary's got it figured out. I should have it figured out. And really it's like Jim and Mary don't know what the hell they're doing either. And like this is part of it.

part of it. It's like everybody is completely confused for a large percentage of the time. And I think it's just finding, like reminding myself of that consistently is like very comforting and removing the expectation to like feel like I have all the answers. To the social point, you know, I think it's, I have found that it's like both in my personal life and then also, you know, in my professional life with my audience and fans and everything, it's, it's, I think when you build relationships authentically, like when you're transparent and very clear about who you are and what you care about, um, the door is then always open to have those conversations of like, hey, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of changing. Like, I don't really, this thing I used

to like, I don't really like this anymore. So I'm going to go to this other direction. And because, like, You know, with my wife, we have this long history of transparent communication around this stuff. She can then be adaptable to that. And I think it's the same, you know, with my audience that it's, I'm very fortunate that I chose at a very early stage of my career to just be very authentic and open with my audience of like, I'm not going to pretend to be anything. I'm not. So when these moments do come where I want to take a left turn or pivot out of something or, you know, stop making a certain type of content. Like, I don't think, I would hope, like, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I think

for who you are, like, for who you aren't. Yes. Yes. I think I posted that pretty recently. Um, because even when you're disliked for who you are, I, you are, and, you are, there's a certain honesty. It's interesting. A good friend of mine grew up in a really dysfunctional household,

like very dysfunctional parents, and their father was abusive, and then the mother was not. But it's interesting because this friend has all of this resentment for their mother and not the father. And I was talking to him once. And I was like, why is that? Like, your dad used to beat the shit out of you. Like, but you're always pissed at your mom.

Like, what is? And they told me something really interesting. They said, you know, my dad is an asshole, but he never pretended to not be. I always knew who he was and I always knew where I stood with him to this day. My mom thinks she's a sane and, like, is completely delusional. And I have, there's like no way. to for her to touch reality. And that drives me crazy

because I never know where I am with her. And so there's like, I think there's kind of like a broader meta conversation happening here of like this assumption that struggle is bad or pain is bad. You know, if your pain and struggle is what defines you, like that means it's not necessarily a bad thing.

And I think similarly in relationships, like having. animosity or dislike or disapproval between two people, it's not always necessarily a bad thing. If it's coming from a very authentic and transparent place, you might not like the person, but you respect them and you trust them, which is a weird thing.

Whereas if everybody's just nice and kissing each other's asses all the time, like, sure, it's pleasant, but it, like, doesn't mean anything. There's something else here now. Something new. From... exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls Scary as Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real.

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human being or they're an asshole. If they are them, there's a certain level of respect, I guess, because you're able to, there's a porousness there. Yeah. You know? And it can be easy when we compare our lives to other people's highlight reel to kind of forge a version of ourselves that is not actually authentic to us. And thus, people might love us for a version of ourselves that we're not. Yeah. So how do you help people break free from that? I think it's very seductive.

Like, there's kind of like a shallow level of approval that is easily transmitted and easily, like, visible to others, right? You know, if you just think about, like, I don't know, buying a fancy car or, you know, having, like, amazing photos on Instagram. or whatever. Like, it's, it's like the cheap candy version of belongingness. And there's, like, almost no sustenance there. But it's very, it's very easy to make that appealing.

Like, it's very visible and obviously desirable on, like, a very superficial level. Whereas I think the deep, meaningful sense of belongingness, that sense of, like, I can be who I am completely authentic, warts and all. Like, there's a certain level of discomfort and unpleasantness that is inherent in that. That is, like, is not easily transmitted on Instagram or in a YouTube video. Like, it's not, you can't really advertise it. Like, there's no magazine ad in vogue saying, like, 15 awkward conversations to help you be yourself with your partner on a random Tuesday night.

Like, that's just, it's not a sexy promotion. Like nobody's like clicking the buy button for that. In a way like our needs get hijacked relatively easily by like the exposure, the amount that we're just purely exposed to. And I think there's a lot to be said of cutting a certain amount out of your life. I'm a big proponent of there's different names for it, but I call it an information diet or an attention diet. So, like, being very mindful and thoughtful of, like, what content and information you're consuming and being careful, like, the same way, I like the metaphor of a diet because I think it maps really well to kind of the information age that we live in.

Like, it's fine to have some of that content, you know, that, like, sexy social media content. Like, it's fine to have a little bit of that, just like, it's fine to have, you know, a little bit of dessert here and there or, like, you know, a candy bar every once in a while. but like if that is your primary diet day in and day out, then your mental health is going to deteriorate. The same way if you just ate candy bars all day every day, your physical health, just like completely deteriorate. So I think it's useful to think about like what is like the vegetables of an information diet

and making sure that you have like a strong, sturdy portion of that in your life. And then like anything that is candy for you, like just being very conscious of how much of it you're consuming and when you're consuming it and like and put guardrails on yourself because ideally we would all have perfect self-control and we would like be able to manage our but it's not we're we're fucking animals dude like it's just put guardrails on yourself make certain things off limits delete apps block certain pages at certain times leave your phone out of the bedroom like you know it's like all this like basic mental hygiene stuff yeah um that is it's becoming commonplace,

but it's becoming commonplace for a reason because it's just like, it's becoming like the nuts and bolts. It's becoming like the brush your teeth and floss of the 21st century. It's just like, put your fucking phone away, you know, like stop following accounts that make you feel bad.

Yeah, there is an interesting tinge when it comes to, I suppose, more of the self-help industry as it relates to this. But another quote of yours, I'm just pulling these Mark Madsen writings. Bring them out. What a good author of that guy. But that you only envy the life of people whose sacrifices you don't see.

Yes. And it's an alluring and persistent delusion, you know, to idealize people's lives that we see, whether it's through social media or in different spaces. And it's one thing to have something that's admirable and have it be inspiring for you to take action in life. It's another thing to think that people didn't work and have to forego many things that you don't want to to get there. Yeah, it's because nobody shows the sacrifices. Again, it's like there's no Instagram account of like all the sacrifices in somebody's life. Like nobody wants to share that with anybody.

Nobody wants to see it. But it's it is, it's inherent. And like anything that's good, it's whether it's, you know, developing a skill or being respected or being loved. I don't want to say you have to earn it because I think that's like a bad model. Like you're not earning things. But it is, it's just that like the sacrifices component of it. It's like the part of the iceberg that's underwater. Hey, fam.

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The link in description. As always, I hope you enjoy. I imagine you're not a sports fan. You don't strike me as a sports fan. I watch like the NBA finals. Oh, yeah? Kind of the postseason I say I paid more attention to. Yeah.

Other than that, no. Okay. I watch chess sometimes. Oh, nice. Or a Jess guy. Nice. There's a story about Kobe Bryant that I love. So I think it was the 2008 Olympics.

Kobe Bryant was like the best player in the world. And the U.S. team was in Las Vegas practicing. And all the guys on the team like worshipped Kobe and thought he was like a god. And so they're like practicing with him every day. And he's just, he's just kicking everybody's ass. And of course, all the other. players like it's Vegas so they go out they're at the club they're drinking they're partying they're doing all this stuff and one night they're out to like five in the morning and they leave the club

they're like absolutely hammered and they started like heading back to the to their hotel rooms and they hit the elevator and the door is open and it's Kobe there with his gym bag and the guys are like whoa Kobe what are you doing here and Kobe's like I'm going to go practice what are you doing here. Like all the guys were just like, oh shit. Like we need to get our act together. So I just, I love, I love like little anecdotes like that because it's just that's shit you don't see it.

You don't see the guy in the gym at five in the morning every, you know, every day. Like you, you see the highlight reel, right? Yeah. Yeah. Black mamba. Black mamba. Yeah. Yeah.

It's so true that what you do in the dark. shines in the light and you don't see what other people are doing in the dark. It's like not only do people not post it, it would be hard to really show that because there's so many nuances to it and there's so many internal dialogues and conversations and things that lead up to the next iteration and, you know, development of what you're doing. Yeah. How have you found that personally in your path? Like, uh, as it pertains to evolving your own style of content, the formats that you want to, you know, express yourself in? Like, have you struggled with any of that? Honestly, like, I think probably, like, half the reason I'm here at all is, like, for whatever

reason I seem to be able to do that. You know, one of the things I point out to people is that, and the subtle art of not giving a fuck, there are four stories in that book about myself. And they're literally the four most painful experiences of my life. And I've, like, talk to fans and point it out and people don't realize like I don't think it registers consciously that it's and I did that very intentionally when I wrote it I was like I want I want people to know that this stuff is normal and it's okay and you're not like a freak show or a weirdo if like something like this happens to you and and I think people really identify with that but like it we don't we miss the fact that like okay yeah the person sitting across room is like going through something right now or that insecurity that we feel so deeply,

you know, our friend is experiencing a similar thing, but they're just not talking about it. Like there's just, there's this like delusion that we all develop that like we are the only person in the world who understands the suffering that we're going through. And I would say that one of the things that's been very therapeutic for me is like being on the other side of this, you know, for years and years and years, I've received thousands of emails from, readers and fans, you know, telling me about their life problems. And it's, it's almost comical how consistently people will start an email with, I bet you've never heard this one before. And then they go on to describe a situation that I, like, literally heard every single day

for years and years and years. It's just like, it's really like human, human struggles are just, They're like so typical and consistent, but there's something about being in our own heads that we convince ourselves that they're not. That there's something like cosmically unique about your suffering and nobody will ever understand it. So yeah. Yeah, it helps build significance in our own perception of these things. I think in seeing how they actually aren't that incredibly unique, it helps dissolve the weight we give to them. Yeah. And at the same time, going through struggle,

going through pain, going through experience from the first person perspective sucks oftentimes. Yes. Yeah. And so, yeah, I think it's an interesting, interesting balance. But I think when it relates to kind of blossoming as a human being and wanting to develop ourselves and our skill sets and our capacities in life, there's both the perspective of improving the things we can improve and then also accepting the parts of ourselves, which are I think conflated quite often. We think they require the same things. And I would love to just kind of,

even though we did a bit in our last conversation, which was a couple of years now, and it's been read by millions of people in your book, but like the backwards law and kind of diving a little bit deeper into that as an understanding of relating to our internal process. Sure. Because I think that positioning helps reframe what we would normally think of

as, oh, I just got to keep improving all these aspects of myself. Yes. So. Yeah. Which at a certain point becomes part of the problem. Right. So, yeah, the backwards law, it comes from Alan Watts. It's very simple.

So the way I phrased it is the desire for a positive experience is itself a negative experience. And the acceptance of a negative experience is itself a positive experience. And so you get a little bit of this like Yen and Yang type thing going where the more you just kind of embrace your struggles, the more meaningful they become, and the more they empower you. And the more you chase the shiny object

and the success, the skill, the admiration, whatever, just happiness in general, the more you remind yourself of how unhappy you are, the more you drive yourself into unhappiness. And so you end up with this kind of tricky thing, you run into a little bit of a paradox that you run into, I think, a lot in spiritual practices, which is that, you know, the spiritual goal is kind of a universal acceptance of what is in any given moment. Like, that's kind of what you're driving towards. But if you're universally accepting

what is at every moment, how do you ever get anything done? Like, how do you ever improve? How do you ever strive, you know, who's going to make, build a bridge or, you know, cook dinner tonight. Like, it's just you can't be like, so there's, I think sometimes there's a, there's a little bit of attention of like, you know, when does, when does a constant drive to improve yourself become toxic? Like, when are you actually, is it just like a thinly veiled form of self-flagellation? and then similarly, when does self-acceptance just become complacency and in action? I'm curious if you've, like, dived into that at all or, like, what your thoughts are of that. Yeah, I feel like I kind of go back and forth this tension internally also.

Like, I forgot who said the quote, but there is, like, I no longer am accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept. You know, so there is that tension and balance of accepting what is and around you, but then also realizing you're a human being who has the power to influence reality in a powerful way. Yeah. And so, yeah, I feel like for me and my own internal process, it's like, how does one come into right relationship? It's changing the things that I can and moving in that direction and then accepting the things that are outside of my control or require confluence of different external things.

factors that may or may not happen, you know, but it's not upon my own self-pointed will that is going to only happen, you know? It's hard to know what's worth, like, changing what's worth not, you know, like, that's, I think that's where we, most people get tripped up is like, because it's unclear, you know, my first Zen master once said on, on a retreat. How many have you had? Well, not that many. Just a few.

But this was like my, I think it was probably my first retreat. His Zen Master just casually threw out there while everybody was sitting. He threw out, he said, you are already perfect as you are, and you can always be better. And I think I'm still trying to sort that one out. Like, it just, that's always stuck with me. Yeah, my good friend, Peter Crone, says you're a masterpiece and a work in progress. Yeah, totally. Same thing.

I'm curious what you think about the tension between this notion of freedom in our life. A lot of us think that it comes, that freedom means having as many choices and the optionality to do whatever we want in life, which is a sort of perception of freedom. But there's also a profound depth of freedom through commitment and choice. And so, yeah, this also just goes hand in hand with the backwards law, too. And so I'm curious how you think about freedom in that context. I love this topic because this was personally huge for me. I personally think American culture or Western culture maybe,

I think we often conflate freedom with optionality. I think it was Isaiah Berlin had this concept. He called it negative freedom and positive freedom. So he said, I might be getting these backwards. But I think he said negative freedom is the freedom from constraint, is that there's nobody's imposing anything on you. And then positive freedom is being able to do and accomplish whatever you set out to do. And he argued that these are actually very different forms of freedom.

And I think the negative freedom tends to be the Americanized one, which is like, you know, I'll do whatever hell I want, when I want, you know, I'll shoot whatever gun I want. Like, it's, I'll do all the things. I'm free, God damn it. I've got 20 different types of cereal I can eat and 50 pairs of Nike shoes in my closet. That's what freedom is. And it's just this like just this lack of constraint. But the problem is like without constraint like the value prioritization we were talking about earlier, like to value something that demands that you constrain yourself.

It demands that you give things up to prioritize one. thing. And so there's this, there's an inherent tension between, I guess, negative freedom or optionality and then actually like valuing something, finding something meaningful in your life. And so positive freedom, which is, I think, probably more typical in Eastern cultures. And also, I think, was the understanding of freedom in the ancient world with the Greeks and Romans is actually kind of a constraint-based freedom. It's like having the discipline to do something. So like from a positive freedom point of view, if you want to get in shape and I don't know, lose 20 pounds, but you can't bring yourself to go to the gym, from a positive freedom point

of view, a person would say you're not free. You're, you are essentially being oppressed by your own lack of self-control or lack of discipline. And I think there's a There's a lot more that freedom is like where where the meaning and I guess self-definition is found, right? It's like because that that's the form of freedom where you are. It's almost like the freedom that choose what you're giving up. It's the freedom to choose what you're not going to do. Like that's, that is actually where I think the power is.

Yeah, I think, I mean, you've spoken to this many times. the more you run on that hedonic treadmill and just follow the whims and dopaminergic, you know, urges throughout your life, your experience of life will not be free. Yes. You know? You'll have, you'll have, if you really value the sense of agency

and be able, in choice in that way, it's like your experience will be one of lethargy, essentially, you know? And so I think the etymology of the word decide means to cut or to cut off. And so, like, by becoming single kind of pointed focus in our decisions and our, commitment and devotion. It's interesting how those things build, like, are those latent faculties and those attributes

of self that feel actually free, which is like open, like having an adaptable mind, having a flexible and strong body, like all these things that require effort in many cases. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's tricky too, right? because you don't want to constrain people's ability to choose or decide, but at the same time, they need to be capable of choosing and deciding for themselves. And I think we've probably, in the name of getting rid of the former, we've like ended up in the latter, which is by trying

to remove anything that could be potentially oppressive or constricting, we've ended up with, like, largely population of people who like are incapable of decisiveness. And the spirit of counterintuitive insights, which I feel like you are a proponent of, suerting. It's my bread and butter. Success never feels as good as you had hoped. Failure never feels as bad as you had feared. Things are rarely as good or bad as they seem.

Yes. It's so, again, alluring to... put our, to project our ideal state of being in the future and also the worst case scenario. And so I feel like this is an insight earned through experience also through living life. Right. Yeah. What inspired that. It's funny because that's a facsimile of like something that I told, I think my dad early in my career.

Because early in my career, I really struggled. And to the point where, like, I was living on a friend's couch. I was in debt. Like, it was my girlfriend at the time was supporting me. Like, it was, it was a mess. And it was kind of, like, when I started, when I quit my job and, like, decided I was going to do this internet thing, I was basically kind of living the worst case scenario. And I remember talking to my dad, who was, like, obviously very concerned.

I remember telling him, I was like, well, if this is, I'm already at the worst case scenarios. And like, this isn't that bad. So I think I'm okay. And he thought I was absolutely out of my mind. But I think I noticed that on the other side too, which is when my career took off and I hit all my goals. I mean, don't get me wrong. It was great. Like, not complaining.

But like, it never plays out the way you think it's going to. Like, it never feels as good or sad. as you thought it was going to feel. And when it does feel as satisfying, it's like it doesn't last very long. You know, you're always, there's something else you want pretty soon after. There's no there there. Yeah, it's, it's, um, and so yeah, I just think it's, it's, it's, the conclusion I've come to, I guess, is that our, our minds are very dramatic.

And so when we invent the stories of our imagined future, you know, we add a little Hollywood into it. We make it, you know, we make it very emotional and very like, oh, this would be incredible. Everybody will know how badass I am if this happens. And it's like, no, no, life's complicated. People have different things going on. Some people aren't going to notice. Some people are going to really notice.

It's like everything is a little bit messy in reality. And I think one thing to just understanding the psychological literature is just like understanding just how bad we are at predicting how we're going to feel. Not only are we bad at predicting how we're going to feel in the future, we're also bad at remembering how we felt in the past. Like it's just there's a certain amount of, I think, distrust of those assumptions that is healthy. I'm sorry, I have to throw this back at you. Have you found the same to be true? because you've had a roller coaster of a young career. I wonder if there have been moments where you're like,

I thought this was going to feel better than this. I don't know. I feel like I'm really just enjoying the glaying brick by bricks day by day. I don't feel like I don't feel by any means I've completed what I've set out to do. Even though I in many ways have accomplished. things that I probably still have yet to acknowledge, you know, fully. I think as it relates to both sides, whether it's an idealized future that, you know, we hope for or the negative. Mark Twain has something along the lines of like the worst tragedies in

my life never occurred or something. Yeah. We live in this matrix of mind where. Totally. And often the worst case scenarios are the ones that our mind has made up that then it's spending its energy trying to prevent. and it's all like made up within itself. It's so trippy when we realize how we're living

in this sort of mental reflection of our own creations. Yeah. It's funny too because it's like, because we lose, yeah, like, we lose that perspective. And sometimes I have to remind myself that my biggest problem today is something that I would have killed for 10 years ago. Yet it's still my biggest problem. day, you know, like it just, you forget, like, how what the whole trajectory is and, and, you know,

how far you've come or, or even that you chose this, right? It's, it's like. Yeah, because growth happens, like, gradually. And so, like, you don't notice the differences day to day. Of course, you can look back years after and be like, oh, there's a big change there. But almost, I feel like, for success or, like, our goals to become materialized, there's a part of us that has to expect it and see it as possible. Yep. So that when it comes, it's like, it, the, yeah, I guess how enchanting it, we thought it would be at one point, it just becomes normalized and like, yeah, like, I'm worthy

of that. It makes sense that I have it in a sense. Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think you make a really good point there that, like, there's almost a certain, I don't want to say delusional level of optimism, but like a heightened level of optimism that is very advantageous for achieving goals. and I think maybe that same heightened optimism is what causes, you know, once you do achieve the goal, you're like, oh, okay, well, that was cool.

Like, what's next? It's so great that we're both part of an industry that really gets to support people by oftentimes just, you know, sharing our own journeys. and yet man it's a trip being in and what you might call is the personal growth the growth or self-help journey in different contexts and different slightly different avenues but what in your perspective is like the biggest fault of the self-help industry oh where should I start yeah um this episode is brought to you by nespresso hear that that's your next obsession every coffee a new world every sip a new taste this is the new espresso one touch endless possibilities. Iced, flavored, long, short, because some days call for that espresso kick, and sometimes a smooth, silky latte just wins.

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Steep. Flip. Or that. And enjoy. Via Rail, love the way. There are two things that really bother me. I think one is kind of severe. It's like a severe problem.

One is not. It's more just me being obnoxious. I'll start with the obnoxious one. It bugs me that there's, it's, like, we have enough scientific basis to like, no, With a reasonable amount of certainty, like certain pieces of advice are probably better than others in most contexts. And so I just think there's like, I feel like we're long past the point of like just bad bullshit advice. It shouldn't exist anymore. Like the information's out there.

It's all free. Like we have the internet. You have Google. You have a fucking AI. Like it's it's not hard to find. Like if you're somebody like us, like it's just like do your research and like know what you're talking about. So that drives me a little bit crazy. But that's more just me being an asshole.

Because the truth is, is that everybody needs to hear something different. And sometimes even bullshit advice works for people. And so who am I to say, like, what somebody needs to hear and what they don't? So I'm like, that one I'm willing to like. Just bad advice. Yeah, that one, I'm just like, I'm, that's probably more my issue than. you know, than the industry. But I would like to see, I mean, I do think the quality of advice has gotten a lot better over the last 10 or 20 years.

And I think it helps to see how I forgot the axiom or what the title of this is, but like what we can often attribute to malice can be well accounted for with ignorance. Right. You know, so it's like, it helps when you see a lot of it is actually coming just from a place. you know, the road to heaven or hell is paved with good intention, as they say. Absolutely. Absolutely. So like I'm, that's fine. Like, that's fine. And like I said, I do think the trajectory is going in a good direction. Like, I do think the advice has gotten a lot better over the last, you know, 20 years. The one that I do think is a problem is misleading marketing and misleading expectations with people.

I think, and I do think, again, I don't think there are many, like, consciously bad actors on this, but, like, the thing that I get deeply concerned about is that ultimately this is a market that a pretty large percentage of the consumers are, like, people in vulnerable places in their lives. Like, they're dealing with depression, anxiety, a tragedy, like trauma, a lot of stuff. And so there's, I definitely feel like a certain moral way. in not promising something or setting expectations of something that is unrealistic or unreasonable. And the sad fact of the matter is that the financial incentive is to make those promises and set those expectations because you're going to sell more shit if you do.

And again, I don't think most people like consciously do this. I think a lot of people, because I think what happens, is there's, there's like, there's not perfect information. So like, let's say somebody has a seminar and they spout their whole spiel and do their thing. And it's all kind of made up whatever. And like, and then one person comes up to him afterwards. Like, it completely changed my life.

Oh my God. I'm a new person. And like, it's very genuine. Like it genuinely worked, right? So the person who just put on that seminar, they're like, wow, I'm killing. it, right? You know, whereas, like, what they're not hearing from is the 50 people that were like, what is this guy talking about? And so I think what happens a lot in this industry is that you, you don't get, there's not a proper feedback mechanism for the practitioners of like what's actually

working and what's not. And some, maybe that's by design. Sometimes that's just due to ego or like an unwillingness to, you know, to hear from people who got bad results. The financial incentives alone, I feel like, is enough of an explainer, though. Yeah, or there's also a tendency to, like, I've seen coaches and leaders do this, too. It's like, if somebody's like, hey, this isn't working for me or it's making me feel worse, the coach is like, well, that's your problem. You're not doing it right, right? And it's like, in this industry, you're dealing with a lot of people who are going to believe you if you say that.

And you can hurt them. So it just, it is, it is, and I, there should be more kids gloves, you know, like, it's, like, we're dealing with, like, delicate, fragile topics. And I feel like that's not respected enough. And, and again, yeah, the financial incentives, I think, nudge people away from considering those things. And so you do get, you do get some bad behavior. And you do get some, some horror stories that come out. periodically. Yeah, it seems like the best barometer internally for anybody navigating or deciding to like dive deeper into someone's modality or teaching is like your own growth to be able to actually discern what's real, what's BS. But I think part of being on the path and in those more vulnerable states is you don't know what you don't know.

And so. Totally. Yeah. If you never feel like you've grown before, how do you know what it feels like? And the thing is, is that a lot of, there's a lot of advice that is optimized for making you feel very good in the short term. There are a lot of people who are very good at, like, getting a group of people in a room and, like, for 24 hours, making them feel amazing. And in telling them, you just grew. You just had a breakthrough, right?

And then those people go home and they sleep in the same bed and they shit in the same toilet. and they go to the same dead-in job and get ghosted by the same X. And like, did anything really change? You know, so it's, there's this, and this comes back to our point earlier, is that like, like, genuine growth is generally an uncomfortable, unpleasant experience. Like, it's generally drawn out as well. And so I, I, um, it bugs me, like, just the false expectations and the false promises, like bug me a lot.

And I think it enables a lot of bad behavior. How do you, from the individual level relating to this, how do you discern or draw the line of discern between self-growth and self-obsession? Like a lot of what we might label as a noble pursuit of self-development is actually avoidance, kind of masqueraded and rebranded. Yes, it's like spiritual narcissism. Yeah, yeah. It's a great question. I would say the best thing you can do, if you think you're like,

even potentially this person who's like too in it and doing too much and it's just like constantly obsessing over like optimization and improvement all the time, just stop for a while. Like I, one thing that I've found with people,

like they'll come to me and they'll be like, I'm like obsessing over this stuff. I'm feeling worse about myself. I'm just like constantly thinking about all the things I'm not doing instead of actually doing things. And it's like the simplest answer, but it's just like, stop. Like just stop trying to grow.

Like just hang out on the couch, play some video games, man. Like it's, and then ironically, that will make you grow, right? Because it's like you're not trying anymore. It comes back to the backwards law. Like you're not, you're not chasing the shiny object anymore. You're simply accepting that you're imperfect. And so, yeah, I almost think it's like, you know, if you look at like fitness and workout advice. Like, there's no fitness plan that's like, go to the gym four hours a day every day

for 10 years. Like, nobody tells you that. It's always, you have like six or eight weeks on and then you're supposed to take two, three weeks off. And then you're supposed to do six or eight weeks on and you're supposed to be two or three weeks off. And like, that actually ends up being the optimal way to like grow or develop your body. And I think the mind's the same way. Like you, if you're on all the time and you're obsessing about this stuff all the time, you're just going to burn yourself. out and you're going to become obsessed with yourself. You're going to lose track of other people in reality, you know? So it's just like stop caring for a while.

Stop giving a fuck, right? Like just like, yeah, you know what? Just like, just going to chill for a month. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's difficult on the personal level when you place so much importance on an aspect that needs to change about yourself. And it's like the more attention and weight we give to something,

the more has evidence for its own existence. Yeah. Totally. Yeah, it becomes self-induced at a certain point. And I guess one way to think about it is like coming back to that paradox of like self-improvement, self-acceptance is like, you know, maybe you just kind of like seesaw between them. You know, you have your self-improvement period where it's like, okay, I'm going to like drive on my goals and try to change things. And then you go into your self-acceptance season of like, okay, I'm just going to like embrace who I am and like chill out. It feels like in an ever-growing landscape of more personal growth advice and podcasts and books, both of which were a part of.

It's become easier than ever to listen to and watch and read all this great advice oftentimes and wisdom and not actually implement much into your life. So this is what we were kind of also just speaking to about how self-improvement can very much so be to self-avoidance. when we're not integrating these things into our life. And so, yeah, I'm just curious what you think about that tension. And for, like, anybody who's listening who has maybe even listened to many of these podcasts or read your books and is on that pursuit, which, you know, like, watching and feeding and exposing your subconscious mind to positive content is going to be more beneficial in the long run than reruns of SpongeBob.

Yeah, totally. But yeah, it can also become this trap where it becomes entertainment and it's not actually, you're not integrating shit. Absolutely. It's sometimes they say that like some people have self-help as a hobby. Like it's like their favorite hobby. It's like, oh, I'm going to buy the new book and study this thing. But I agree with you. I think that trap is becoming more prevalent because the information is so prevalent and out there.

You know, like back in the day, like, it used to be so hard to find, like, just this conversation, right? Like, when I was a teenager, like, you'd go pay thousands of dollars just to hear anybody talk about the stuff we're talking about, right? And now it's like, it's just a million podcasts and Instagram clips and TikToks, like, every day, everywhere. So the information is ubiquitous at this point. And so I think it's, I feel like that trap is larger than it's ever been. Because if you just want to binge on info, you can. It's easy. The implementation piece is, it's frustrating because it's one of those like simple, not easy things.

It is the advice that works to actually apply something into your life is so brain dead simple that I feel like an idiot like even saying it out loud and when people hear it they're like it can't be that easy but it like it really is it's just the hard part is actually just doing it the simple part is

take whatever you want you know whether it's change careers find a partner lose 20 pounds whatever break it down in the small sub goals find the minimum

I call the minimum viable action, which is the minimum, the smallest step that feels easy to do today. And then you just start there. And you do that. And then the next day, you take the next minimum viable action and you just slowly work up.

And you kind of develop a snowball. And it's like absolutely maddening how simple it is. And yet nobody does. Was it including myself? Yeah, we want those existential solutions. So what's a very practical problem? You want the lightning bolt that it's just like, oh, that's it, Eureka. Now I meditate an hour every day with no effort.

Yeah, it doesn't happen. It was funny because the way I, the minimum viable action thing actually came from a friend of mine who's a meditation teacher. And it was so funny because I was living in New York at the time. and I was kind of complaining to him. I was like, man, I'm just like really gotten away from my meditation practice. I just can't really bring myself to do it. And he was just like, can you do 10 seconds?

And I was like, well, yeah, anybody can do 10 seconds. He's like, so do 10 seconds? And I was like, wait, are you serious? He's like, yeah, sit down and do 10 seconds. So I sat down to 10 seconds. He's like, yeah, you're meditating again. And I was like, God damn it, dude. I really don't have an excuse, though, do I?

He's like, yeah, tomorrow will do 20 seconds. I was like, I still don't meditate. But yeah, it's... Sometimes I think there's an emotional piece of this that like... Because again, the information is brain dead simple. The... I think what has to align for people is that there needs to be a certain amount of combination of carrot

and stick, you know, pain and pleasure that kind of lines up to the point where you get fed up and you're just like, I'm sick of this, you know? And there are like things you can do in your environment. You can kind of control incentives and, you know, find an accountability buddy or like sign up for a gym with a friend or something. Like there's all like little hacks and stuff like that, but like really at the end of the day, it comes down to emotion. It comes down to are you in a place where the pain of inaction feels worse than the pain of action, you know? Does the struggle of not doing something feel worse than the struggle of doing it? And there are ways to to kind of manipulate the situation to set it up that way.

But I think ultimately at the end of the day, it's an emotional thing. And I think sometimes to come back to your point about like everybody has a different journey, like sometimes people need time to get to the point. where they're like struggling enough to be like okay i can't do this anymore like i'm like i'm getting this handled now yeah the saying of uh when the pain of staying the state when the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change then you'll change and it feels like we all have a different barometer for that and it's such uh it's like it's it's relating to our lizard brain like we we want to have it be more like our frontal brain and have the intellectual

reasonings for doing things, but it feels like so much of our, like 90 plus percent of our behavior is driven by this mammalian emotional center. Yeah, it was funny. We did, so our second episode unsolved was procrastination. And we did a nearly five-hour episode on the science and philosophy of procrastination. So if anybody wants to procrastinate anything in their life, you can go listen to our five-hour episode on procrastination. But it was actually really funny because it's like, I mean, we went, we dug in the whole, like, we went back to, his procrastination was like a, it was a big topic with

the ancient Greeks. They called it a crazier. It was like this philosophical problem of like, if you know something's good, how is it possible to not do the good thing? Wouldn't that suggest it's not actually good? So there's like, there's philosophy on it going back thousands of years, research on it going back hundreds of years. And yeah, at the end of the day, it's just like people do what they feel like doing. That's like really what it comes down to. And so if you want to do something that you're not doing, like you need to find ways to make yourself feel like doing it.

And you can do that by you can make it fun. You can set up accountability for yourself. You can set up punishments for not doing it. Like that actually works really well. It's actually really funny. like when you look at the when you look at the research on like what interventions

actually get people to like adopt a new habit you want to guess what like the top intervention is hmm no what is it you pay them isn't that disappointing like you just fucking give them money and then they start doing the thing it's just like like I said man it's it's like

this whole area it's just it's like disappointing how simple it is. It's like I wish there was a magic formula. I wish there was a lightning bolt somewhere. It's wild to see how much mental energy we will spend in resistance to not doing something when in reality doing it would like take much less energy. Yes. You know?

Totally. Like we'll spend so much time thinking about how we don't want to do something that by the time we could have just done it. Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's so fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's just a lot of inertia.

Like, there's like mental, emotional inertia in our lives. And it takes a lot of force to kind of like. I will say, though, for, in my experience, meditation and self-inquiry and contemplation on the self and also the nature of our own thoughts and emotions, which I know sounds like a lot of things I just riddle off. but they're kind of, you know, the core thing that one awakens to through the practice of a meditative technique helps dissolve the resistance to existence,

the friction that we have in relation to our own self, our own desires, our encounters and experiences with other individuals. And so, like, to me, meditation is, in many ways, it's a weird way of saying it, but kind of like a great, like, lubricator of your experience of life. Yeah. And it makes making decisions and doing hard things less hard.

Yeah. Yeah, it does. Because there's less of an egocentric perception and the sense of I who needs to do the thing and the sense of eye between me and what I want. You know, it's like you're just more with flow, I feel like. Yeah, it widens the gap. There's, it's interesting because it's in that procrastination episode, we dig in. there is some data on meditation, and it is meditators procrastinate less.

And I think it's, the theory behind it is similar, like, I guess, kind of the scientific explanation of what you just said is, is it better allows people like disidentify with the uncomfortable emotion, right? It's like, I got to go to the gym, I'm tired, I don't feel like it, you know, blah, blah, blah. when you meditate, you get that gap between, you know, I guess your experience or who you are and then like the emotion you're feeling in that moment. And in that gap, there's like freedom and liberation to be like, okay, well, you feel this way, but you can still go.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating to see the studies in down-regulating activity in the default mode network, the sense of I, who is the large, who's the, that area in the brain is in neurocorrelate for the fast amount of suffering that perceived eye experiences in life. And so why aren't you meditating these days?

It's funny, man. That's a good question. I meditated a lot. I got into it probably 18 or 19. And I meditated a lot through my 20s. And then around 30, I kind of got away from it. And then it was like kind of on and getting off again. And then it's just been off for like four or five years at this point.

And every once in a while I'll go back to the mat. And I'm like, you know, I'm going to like start this back up. You know, like pull up Sam Harris's app or something and do a lesson. And it's fine. And then I just like, I don't know what it is. But like I guess the kind of where I've landed at this point is that there was something I really needed it for when I was younger. Like it was helping me resolve something or make sense of something or gain awareness about

something. And I guess the only way I can kind of put words around it is just like I don't feel like it's showing me anything that I don't already know recently. and and I totally understand that there's like deeper levels and it's like if you commit yourself and go super hard like there are layers to it and and I guess there's just yeah I'm just not like I haven't like ponied up for that commitment I'm like yeah I'm good I'm pretty happy yeah also shaming ourselves or trying to force herself with a militant discipline towards a meditation practice and is almost defeating in and of itself exactly so it's like where is it coming from

you know exactly yeah one note to sort of wrap up on is I feel like through a living life you get to depending upon our own like evolutionary path and how we evolve and our identity and values and preferences and needs like we spoke to at the beginning of this conversation to kind of wrap a bow on it I feel like so much of our self-discovery is coming through our creative acts in the world and allowing that to be fluid and flow and change, change careers, change formats of forms of expression. And I listened to your first, your podcast about like why you stopped your podcast, why you rebranded it and you're doing a new format, which is like diving deep into one area of topic and getting to the bottom of it.

And I really appreciate the authenticity and staying true to what's exciting for you, you know, instead of being on the rat race of like, well, the podcast circuit works. And I can get, I have access to all the guys. and it becomes this thing that is rewarding financially and the views grow and everything. I think there's this leap that you took with that that a lot of people probably can relate to in their life when they're going from something that maybe even is working really good.

Sure. To forego that, to jump into the unknown of not knowing whether or not the next thing will, you know. But what have you found in your experience of what happens when you stay true to what you actually want to do in your experience of what's bringing you in through, enthusiasm in life. Well, that's the hardest thing, right?

It's like, it's easy to give up something that's not working, but the hardest thing is giving up something that is working, but it's not fulfilling you. And that's like the scariest part. But, you know, it's funny, like, I've noticed this repeatedly throughout my career and, and I think it's true just in life in general. It's like, it's almost like the scarier something is, the bigger, like, the more important it is, like the bigger the opportunity is, like if it wasn't so scary, like if it wasn't such a big, it didn't have so much potential, it wouldn't scare you that way. And that feels like a

lesson I have to learn over and over again. And I was telling you before we went live, like, with the new podcast, like, it really was a leap of faith. It really was. I sat down with my producer and we kind of hashed out like, this is the format we want to make. We just want to get super, nerdy and like go ultra ultra deep on a single topic and maybe half the audience leaves and things were annoying and like never comes back but are we okay with that and um and we kind of wrestled with that and agonized over it but eventually decided that we were and and then ironically I think it's that willingness to uh to risk it all is like ultimately what A, like, helps you make something great, and then B, like, attracts people to it, right?

Because they see, they're like, oh, that's bold. There's like a stronger resonance in connection with people who it's meant for. Totally. And I just think that's true in life in general, you know? Like, it's going out on a limb, it seems scary before you do it. But then it's like, once you're out there, you're like, oh, this is like the most obvious thing in the world. And so it's, it is, that is something that, like, I have. have to like remind myself or I guess relearn that lesson repeatedly throughout throughout my life

but it's I guess for anybody out there who's like has a leap that they're afraid to take it's um that fear is there because it is because it is valuable not because it's you know it's not about what you're potentially losing it's it's like what you potentially stand the game is is probably what's so scary it feels like so much of the fear it feels like so much of The fear is wrapped up in the anticipation of it, too. I'm sure. I'm curious, like, when you first sat down to do your first one and then, like, you get in the motion of it, it's like, okay.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, when the first cut came in, I was, like, terrified to open it. I was just like, please, for the love of God, be good. Like, don't be bad. You know, and then you get, like, 20 minutes in, you're like, okay. I think we're okay. Epic. Well, for people that want to find that will,

leave a linked down below. And any last words, man? This was fun. Thank you. Oh, dude. It's always a pleasure. You know, always thrilled to be barefoot, barefoot and cross-legged.

The only, like I said, the only podcast I can come in and rub my feet on the carpet. Good coffee, dude. So, yeah, always a pleasure, man. Thanks for having me. Of course. Everybody, thanks for tuning to this episode. And let us know in what ways something in this episode ignited a perspective. and insight for your own personal journey.

And until next time, be well.