Modern Wisdom - #1034 - 23 Lessons from 2025

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

It’s the end of 2025 and to celebrate I thought I’d run through some of the best lessons I’ve picked up over the last 12 months. This year has had over 10,000 minutes of episodes produced so there was a lot to choose from but I ended up settling on 23 insights from some of my favourite conversations, both inside and outside of the podcast. Expect to learn why I try to stay out of internet drama, how not to care about what other people think of you, why you shouldn't have shame in small fears, how to use vulnerability to your advantage and show true strength, why procrastination is often about fear, what the Atlas Complex, Input-Output Delusion and The Anorexic Hermit Crab is, and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy App at https://rpstrength.com/modernwisdom Get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and your first month for free at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thank you. Wow. hmm hello everybody welcome back to the show it is an end of 2025 episode and these are some of my favorites i get to go through some of the best lessons i've learned over the last 12 months stuff from the newsletter and the podcast and everything that i've gone through and before we get into it, I want you to say thank you very much for making Modern Wisdom the eighth biggest podcast in the world, according to the Spotify charts this year.

Spotify Rapp came out and are still not too sure what to think about it. Just really, really grateful. So thank you everyone for supporting the show and me and gassing me up. It's unbelievable. So thank you. Also, it's nearly the end of the year. And you need to do an annual review process. you need to learn your lessons and set your goals and the review that I have done every single

December for the last nearly a decade is available at chriswillex.com slash review. Hundreds of thousands of people have done it and it's totally free. You can just copy it into your note app of choice and fill it in and it means that you'll get to reflect and make some memories and understand what you're trying to do next year. And it's based on all of the best people that I've ever followed and I've stolen all of their best bits and I've put it into a single process plus some of my own. and that's chriswillx.com slash review. All right, let's get into it. First one, the parental attribution error.

We love blaming our parents. It's practically a right of passage in modern psychology, but there's a double standard buried in the trend. We attribute what's broken in us to our upbringings while claiming that what's strong as ours alone. Call it the parental attribution error, like the fundamental attribution error where we blame others' actions on their character

but excuse our own by pointing to circumstance. I cut that guy off because I'm late for work. He cut me off because he's a dick. It's a skewed way of assigning credit and blame. We externalize the bad and we internalize the good. You're quick to blame and slow to credit. You say you're anxiously attached because no one held you when you needed it, but isn't your ability to be alone with your emotions and to endure discomfort quietly also forged in the same crucible. You blame your parents for pushing you too hard in school, convinced that it made you perfectionistic and neurotic, but when was the last time that you acknowledged that same pressure gave you ambition and discipline and drive? You point to a childhood where mistakes weren't tolerated

as the reason that you fear failure, but what about your meticulousness, your standards, your refusal to phone it in? You complained that no one ever asked you what you wanted growing up, but could that also be why you're so tuned in to what everyone else needs? You say your low self-worth comes from never being praised, but isn't that the same fuel that makes you outwork everyone around you? You trace your conflict avoidance back to all of the shouting at home, but isn't that also where your talent for de-escalation and emotional radar came from? You chalk up your hyper-independence to not being able to trust anyone,

but isn't that also what made you capable, adaptable, and calm under pressure? You say you're emotionally guarded because no one took your feelings seriously, but isn't that also why you're steady when the people around you fall apart? You've labeled yourself a people-pleaser because you had to keep the peace at home, but maybe that's also where your social fluency and emotional intelligence were born. You blame your poor boundaries on parents who didn't respect yours, but isn't that also why you're so careful not to cross anyone else's? You say your fear of being a burden comes from being treated like one, but isn't that the same fear that now makes you

reliable, disciplined and impossible to disappoint. You attribute your sensitivity to criticism to all of the judgment that you grew up with, but that is also what makes you thoughtful, receptive, and serious about getting better. You say your nervous system never relaxes because your home was unpredictable, but isn't that also why you're perceptive, quick thinking and never caught off guard? The traits that you are most ashamed of are often just the dark side of something light. Your sharp edges didn't appear out of nowhere. They're often the byproduct of something useful. A strength turned up too high or a gift handled without guidance. Think about a sword. It's powerful, precise, designed to cut through resistance. But

But if it's double-edged, and most swords and strengths are, then sometimes it nicks you on the back swing. That doesn't mean that you throw the sword away. It means you learn how to hold it properly, because most traits worth having come with risk. The truth is messier than a single cause, because every trait that we have is entangled. Wounds and gifts often share a root. the self-reliance you're proud of might come from the same childhood where you couldn't rely on anyone else the confidence you carry

may have started as a defence against ever feeling small or dismissed again even your drive to succeed might be rooted in the fear of not being good enough but this perspective requires maturity it is simpler to cast yourself as the victim of bad parenting than to reckon with a complex

implicated inheritance. It's easier to say they hurt me than to admit they shaped me in ways that I'm still figuring out. The cultural narrative rewards blaming your parents more than it does understanding them. Therapy turns them into villains. Instagram makes them punchlines. But how often do you thank them in the same breath that you critique them? None of this obviously excuses abuse or neglect or dysfunction. But it does ask for honesty. If you are going to draw a straight line from your childhood to your flaws,

you should trace that same lineage to your strengths. If you can't let your parents take credit for what's right with you, maybe you shouldn't be so quick to make them the villains for what's wrong. And I think that this is everywhere. It really is a right of passage to lay at the feet of our parents,

our shortcomings. And why would we want to own our own shortcomings when there is such an obvious germinator of it from our past? But I think just naturally there is this desire to own our successes and to outsource our failures. It is a kind of victim mentality, even for people who don't call themselves a victim, even for people who have alchemized stuff that was really off-putting and a big setback and a huge hurdle to get over from their childhood. It's a complicated inheritance. I think that's the right way to think about it. The impact that your childhood had on you, that your parents, your upbringing, the way the kids in school treated you, all of those things are contributing in this big melting pot. It's an eye of newt and a monthly,

of being ostracized in gym class and a mum that didn't give you enough physical affection and it's all mixed up in this big soup and then you don't know what it's going to turn into and it's really hard to draw the line to work out where that lineage comes from but I have seen in myself and in lots of other people so many people on the internet this desire to blame their parents for their anxious attachment and the fact that they don't ever feel regulated and the reason that they struggle to connect with people or their low self-esteem or their inability to open up or whatever it might be and you go okay but all of those shortcomings typically have something else going on which you're really proud of

and Ryan Long, Canadian comedian, sort of first got me thinking about this about a year ago when he was talking about how he writes these sketches and he's sort of completely obsessed and it totally consumes him and he's thinking about exactly how to perfect each different line and just to refine this bit a little bit more for his next stand-up on stage and then it bleeds over into his personal life, into his friendships or his relationships or his family life or the way that he thinks about his apartment or whatever. He doesn't get to turn off the obsessive, perfectionistic, hard worker, like that sort of hard-charging mindset.

Unfortunately, he can't exactly compartmentalize it only around work. So he has to contend with this complicated set of traits, which is the thing that he really values in one area can actually be a vulnerability or weakness or frustration in another area. And that's an obvious one, because that's the same thing. But sometimes it's different things. It's, well, your comfort with solitude, which is meant that you're fine to be an entrepreneur or take risks or travel on your own, is something different in a different area of your life where you struggle to open up. The lineage between those two is a little bit harder to work out, but they still probably have a similar sort of route. And so much of this as well is fucking genetically predetermined. like we look at our upbringings in an environmental standpoint and we say well this is something that could

have been changed but so much of it is just our predisposition genetically and that couldn't have been changed because if it was changed you wouldn't be here you wouldn't be you it would be someone else it would be the next sperm by the way if you're a guy who has performance anxiety and are trying for a baby with your partner just so you know every day different thrust. If you finish on this thrust or the next one or three after that, it's a different child, just in case there wasn't enough pressure on your performance already. And I don't know why I thought about that at some point this year, but ever since I thought about it, I can't not think about how precarious different people being brought into life are. Oh, you decided to, you flipped her

on to her back for a while, but then you actually decided to turn it the other way. And that changed That changed the entire course of your life and brought a different human into this world. So, yeah, I don't know how I ended up on thrust contribution to, like, human consciousness from parental attribution error. But anyway, that's the parental attribution error. Next one. Advice hyperresponders. There's a problem with how we all take advice when pursuing personal development, as far as I can see. guidance doesn't sculpt us into something new. It exaggerates what we already are. The pattern is almost cruel. The people who least need the medicine are the ones most likely to overdose on it, while the ones who need it desperately are immune. So another way to think about it would be advice doesn't land evenly. It finds the path of least resistance, and it tends to be absorbed by people.

who already lean in its direction. For instance, the post Me Too instruction, don't be pushy with women, made conscientious and anxious men even more timid, while the guys that were steamrolling boundaries still didn't take any heed. The prescription to just work harder is devoured by an insecure overachiever who's already bleeding effort into every crack of their day, while the genuinely lazy person coasts past it. Unchanged. The men should open up more lesson is swallowed whole by the sensitive expressive guys while the stoic boomer who equates vulnerability with weakness ignores it completely. And the call to take more responsibility encourages the ones who already think it's their fault to carry even more of the load while the ones who constantly point the finger

elsewhere, never change. A TLDR would be people who really need to hear advice often don't notice, while those who could do with the opposite message will take it as gospel. And you could call these people advice hyper responders, and history and myth are full of them. So Icarus was already reckless, intoxicated by freedom and glory, and his father Daedalus told him to keep to the middle path, don't fly too high or too low, but Icarus exaggerated the part that matched his impulse. The one that he already had, he sawed higher and higher until the wax melted and he fell into the sea. Don Quixote was already romantic, imaginative, and desperate for purpose. When he read too many tales of knights, he didn't just enjoy them as fiction, he treated them

as instruction. The lesson to be noble and brave was amplified into absurd. until he was charging at windmills and humiliating himself. Even the budder before Enlightenment was already austere and obsessed with self-mastery, and as a young ascetic, he followed the prescription of self-denial so literally that he nearly starved himself to death, only later realizing the guidance had become poison and creating the middle way to correct course. Why does this happen? Well, people filter advice through their existing traits. So it amplifies predisposition rather than correcting imbalance. We've got this bias. We're already moving in the direction that we worked previously. We all want to be good.

So we over-index the guidance that flatters our self-conception as conscientious, virtuous and hardworking. But maybe the most influential thing is the fact that instructions which bite deepest are the ones that match our inner fears. The anxious man doesn't just hear don't be pushy. He feels that it confirms the fear that any move he makes is already too much. The sensitive man doesn't just hear open up more. He feels it confirmed the worry that he's emotionally inadequate, even when he's already oversharing. The insecure overachiever doesn't hear just work harder. He feels that it confirms the suspicion that he's never enough. The self-blamer doesn't just hear take more responsibility. He feels it confirms the fear that he's guilty even when he isn't.

The trouble is that good counsel, when misapplied, can be worse than bad counsel or none at all. The resistant ignore it while the receptive overdo it. And the net effect is that imbalance gets amplified, not corrected. Self-improvement doesn't distribute like medicine. It distributes like alcohol. The ones who should abstain are drunk on it while the ones who could do with loosening up don't even sip. The problem isn't a lack of advice. It's the inability to tell when guidance is seductive because it confirms your existing tendencies like your biases, your flaws and your fears. Much advice doesn't balance. us. It exaggerates us. It makes the disciplined more rigid, the sensitive, more fragile, the

responsible, more burdened. The trick is not discovery, but discernment, not hearing more, but knowing when to stop listening. And this is one of the big problems, I think, with blanket advice. And it's one of the reasons why this year more than ever, I've caveated, I think, to a degree. I've learned the fallibility of one-size-fits-all advice. There's some things that for more people are right, being in bed for eight hours a night, having a consistent sleep and wake time, not drinking too much, having friends around, etc., etc. But when you get to, you should work harder, or you should open up more, or you should be less pushy with women, well, that's actually really specific, because I need to know a lot about your behavior to work out whether that's actually

true and if you are already doing a thing, it's likely that something which confirms your biases is going to push you to do it more. Oh, I knew I was right. That makes you feel good. Or you have a fear about a thing, which is usually the genesis of a lot of these feelings in any case. Oh, I knew that was too much for women. I shouldn't. I should not. I must not. Or you were shy. Or you were timid. Or you were already working so hard because you think that you're not enough. So something which reinforces you're not enough because you're not working hard enough. It's like, oh, yes, I knew. I knew it was a piece of shit. I knew that I should work harder.

It's vicious. And this is... It's not a universal rule. It's pretty fucking close. Advice hyper responders, I think, create a kind of like cognitive echo chamber of one. Like just one person only letting in bits of advice and guidance, which reinforce their fears.

and they are already predisposed to agree with because it backs up the sort of behavior that they've been doing all along. I think this is a big deal and I think that that line at the end about being less about discovery and more about discernment to me makes a lot of sense

because there is an unlimited amount of content that you can find online and if you have this bias to find things which confirms your fears and reinforces your existing biases it's like going through it's like going through the internet or going through advice and books and information

with a set of blue light blockers on where anything that is certain colors will come through and anything that is other colors will not so you see confirmation bias it's a personal development confirmation bias would be another way to look at it. it. I like it. I like it. I think it's a big deal. And it also explains why people become such sort of single-minded evangelists for a lot of the ideas that they follow. Because not only is it

something that they found, which they think works for them, but it feels deeper than that. It feels resonant in a way that's existential because they already had this, they already kind of felt this thing, and this is now amplifying their set point, the position that they were coming into this situation with. And then, of course, they're going to ardently sort of be a flag bearer for this position. Not only is it basically where they were previously, but it's now being confirmed by somebody else's oh I knew I knew that that thought I had about myself it wasn't just me I knew that I was too much or I knew that I needed to work out or I knew that I was too I was not sharing enough and I needed two more so yeah advice hyper responders all right next

one vulnerability is true strength this disannoyed a lot of people vulnerability is true strength vulnerability is hard fully feeling your feelings gets in the way of life they slow you down, make you doubt, open you up to mockery and cause pain. Embracing your emotion sounds great in principle, but it feels frail in practice. That being said, I want to try to prove to you that embracing vulnerability is true strength. Joe Hudson's got this great definition of vulnerability. He says vulnerability is speaking your truth even when it's scary. So a question to ask. is truly the braver person, the one who lets themselves feel, or the one who flees, the second an emotion gets too close, the one strong enough to carry the full weight of their experience

emotionally, or the one so fragile that they have to suppress it. Brené Brown has got this line, without vulnerability, there is no courage. If there's no uncertainty, no risk, no exposure, you're not being that brave because there's nothing on the line. We are, so quick to praise suppression as strength. We call it control, we call it discipline, we pretend emotional detachment is a sign of maturity, but fully living your life means actually feeling what fucking happens, not just performing composure while something inside of you quietly breaks. The enemy here, as far as I can see, is toxic stoicism. Not the grounded, reflective Ryan Holiday kind, instead the hollowed out kind, the kind that rewards

shutdown that teaches you to be proud of how little you feel as though restraint with the same thing as resilience. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Look, 2026 is the year that you're finally going to launch that business you've been thinking about for ages because, as you've heard me harp on about making a to-do list for the thing isn't doing the thing. Telling people you're going to do the thing still isn't doing the thing, but here's the good news. Shopify makes it unbelievably easy to actually do the thing. They make it very simple to create your brand, open for business, and get your first sale. They've got thousands of customizable templates. So all you need to do is drag and drop. You don't need coding skills or design skills. Can manage things like

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As far as I can see, fearing vulnerability turns your inner world into a minefield. It teaches you to treat emotions like threats, so you tiptoe carefully through your life, trying to not set anything off. Proud of your control, but slowly growing more disconnected from life around you. This isn't strength. It's avoidance. rebranded. Resilience is not what most people think it is. It's not about not feeling the pain or being impervious to challenges or setbacks. It isn't about people who suppress or ignore their feelings. It's also not about people who are delusional and think they don't have feelings. Resilience is about

people who feel their feelings deeply, but are able to act despite them in their best interests. It's a slamming insight from Mark Manson. This common mistake, especially among high-functioning, high-achieving people, is believing that vulnerability is weakness. But vulnerability is being scared of speaking your truth and doing it anyway. It's choosing presence before protection. It's the willingness to be seen, even when what's visible isn't tidy or filtered or finished. Imagine, picture in your mind, two people receiving bad news.

One's hands shake as tears come, the other's face goes blank, jaw locked, and later that night their three drinks deep, scrolling their phone, feeling nothing. Which one is really stronger, the one who can show their emotions or the one who has to run from them? As far as I can see, weakness is pretending you don't feel. Strength is feeling deeply and staying open anyway. We call it coping, but often it's just abstaining from reality. The executive who prides herself on being unflappable while quietly burning out. She calls it professionalism, but it's really a fear of having her true self-rejected.

The partner who insists, I don't do drama, when what they mean is, I can't tolerate intimacy. every deep discussion becomes an emotional threat so they fake calm at the cost of closeness the person who posts about the value of vulnerability online while being emotionally unavailable offline they are fluent in the language of openness but allergic to the practice of it the society obsessed with authenticity

but terrified of sincerity rewarding shallow confessions that trend while punishing the real ones that linger. The children who learn that silence equals safety growing into adults who apologize for their needs before they've even voiced them. The influencer culture that sells performative rawness as a brand, monetizing emotion while sterilizing its reality. Different symptoms from the same disease.

People who are so afraid of being broken by their feelings that they never let themselves be shaped by them. The real fear isn't just the emotion itself. It's also what the emotion might not receive. We're not afraid of sadness. We're afraid of being sad in front of someone who shrugs. We're not afraid of grief. We're afraid of grieving and being judged for doing so.

That's the abandonment we're trying to avoid. Even if we know that feeling our feelings is braver than denying them, the people around us still might think less of us for opening up. So we keep things hidden. Not because we want to, but because we don't want to feel alone in the sharing. Men, as far as I can see, have this harder still, as almost all definitions of masculinity have some version of emotional control as a core tenet, which makes feeling pride in showing emotions as a man even tougher.

But you cannot connect with the world or anyone in it if you never truly show yourself. Intimacy only exists to the degree that you reveal yourself, your sadness, anger, joy, desires, boundaries, everything. When you hide your flaws or your feelings out of fear of shame, you block intimacy and authenticity, the more that you expose the closer you are the less you show the more distant you become which do you want to choose vulnerability isn't weakness it's rebellion it's not how little you feel that makes you strong it's how much you can face and stay open it is saying i'll go first i'll be honest even when it's scary not because i'm fragile but because i'm brave enough to be fully seen.

I think this is so fucking cool. I think this is like so on the money around what openness really means. And the fact that what is it that so many people look for in parisocial relationships with their favorite content creator or writer or thinker or TV personality or whatever, they want authenticity. but society is obsessed with authenticity and terrified of sincerity. The fact that that is so fucking true

then creates a world of performative authenticity like the stripped back behind the scenes I don't need no makeup or no script but then you find out that what this person's actually doing is some fucking five-dimensional jiu-jitsu chess where they've managed to flip you into believing that what they were actually doing was naturalistic when really it was super, super contrived.

I think we like the idea of authenticity and sincerity, but when it comes into land, when it actually makes, when the rubber meets the road, it feels really uncomfortable because there is nowhere to hide from someone who is truly, truly showing their emotions. Someone who really opens up,

who says, like, this is a flag that I am planting in the ground, and this is something I really fucking care about and it's going to I'm going to shout and scream in excitement or I'm going to cry and whimper in like pain at what this thing has caused me to feel. Like that is big. It's a very big situation to be in. Think about the Overton window.

The Overton window of acceptable speech, right? These are all of the words that you can say and within that is a bracket of words that you're allowed to say. It's kind of the same with emotional doubt. that there is a whole breadth of emotions that people can feel and despite the fact that we say what we want is authenticity, sincerity, openness, truth. When somebody steps outside of this sort of emotional Overton window, most people, most people, especially people online, are triggered in one way or another. It's very triggering and maybe it's triggering because it reminds

them of the emotions that they're hiding from. Maybe it's that their inability to regulate themselves causes them to feel dysregulated by seeing someone else who's suffering. Maybe it reminds them of all of the things that they're numbing themselves from. Maybe there's a degree of jealousy that this person is brave enough to put it out there. Maybe there's a strange kind of pity that's tinged with being seen that I don't want to be reflected in this and uh yeah it is it is so fucking fascinating to watch people talk about the need for openness transparency vulnerability truth connection relationally in in terms of communication online and then when when the fucking chips get laid out onto the table everybody shits themselves everybody's so scared

and I really get the sense. There is no such thing as being brave if there's nothing on the line. Like being brave without feeling scared is not bravery. If you're the sort of person, let's say in an alternate universe, I plucked you out and I made you a soldier, but you had one change to your mental makeup that you didn't feel fear. And you were the best super soldier ever, Delta Sealed Team 6, kicking down doors, shooting,

and bad guys. Would you say that you're brave in that world? Well, kind of. I suppose like you're acting bravery. Bravery is being performed. But it's also, you would know that there's a difference in that kind of bravery versus someone who is terrified and does the same thing. There is no bravery without being scared. And I think that that means that if there's no uncertainty and no risk and no exposure and there's nothing on the line, you can't really be being that brave. And this is just a like transactional detached philosophical argument about it. This doesn't get into the fact that all of your emotions, all of your experience of life is dependent on you actually fucking feeling something or else you people are going through life like a pee zombie the philosophical

zombie this idea that uh someone who acts like an automaton like does all of the things has you stab them and they say ow you hug them and they cry you you know give them something nice and they smile but they don't actually feel anything on the inside and it's crazy that that is the kind of avatar that a lot of people are moving towards that's sort of their dream Everyone's got this fear that the world's going to be taken over by AI and robots, and yet at the same moment is trying to make themselves as automated and robotic as possible. I don't want to be at the mercy of my feelings. I don't want to be distracted by these pesky emotions.

But what I'm feared of is being replaced by a robot. What you fear will happen has already happened. You are, if you don't connect with yourself fully. if you're not prepared to speak your truth even when it's scary, especially when it's scary. What are you here for? And maybe you don't feel fear all that much, and that's great. Maybe you don't feel vulnerability.

Maybe you don't have stuff that you need to open up about. But just because you don't feel stuff, I don't think that that is a reason to point the finger in sort of laughing mockery at the people who do. after all they're the ones that are braver for having spoken up about it so yeah i've been thinking about this a lot and i'm going to keep hammering on about it and the internet fucking hates it especially coming from a guy who looks presents like me like some budget andrew tate meets fucking mark zuckabberg and i don't care i don't care because i know that i'm right about

this i'm right but i'm only on the vulnerability is true strength thing and um it will land for the advice hyper responders it will land differentially there will be people for whom they will feel really seen by this and there'll be people that will go what the fuck you on about me what do you mean you get me to you want me to cry

fucking gay isn't it cry no no what oh yeah talk about my feeling what to her no no to them at the pub nah nah no dad didn't all right cool

this is this is for the people that it's for and they'll know. But my proposal to you is to see these as offerings and to see where they land when you hear me talk about them as opposed to having a knee-jerk reaction and we will be able to see based on the sharpness and the stupidity or smartness in the comments below. All right, next one. A story about procrastination. In 1830, Victor Hugo was catastrophically behind deadline on the hunchback of Notre Dame. His publisher had given him only a few months left, but Hugo was a spectacular procrastinator,

entertaining visitors, wandering Paris, and finding excuses not to write. Desperately, he invented a bizarre discipline system. He gathered all his normal clothes, gave them to his servant, and ordered them to be locked away. He kept only a massive wool shawl that draped around him like a monk's robe, and he was too embarrassed to leave his house, dressed like a hermit,

so he can find himself indoors. He also bought a huge bottle of ink, a literal symbol of his siege that would go down over time, and each morning he sat half-naked at his desk, the cold air biting with nothing to do but face the manuscript. From that point on, his study became a cell. According to the legend, Hugo would draft furiously and then slide the finished papers,

under the door where his servant collected them for safekeeping. He was so cut off that even small needs had to be negotiated through the barrier. Food and fresh paper were passed back the other way, so the routine never broke. Adele, his wife, said he had entered his novel as if it were a prison. It was a less jail and more self-imposed monastic cell. And the result was that in a feverish burst, He wrote day after day, often for 12 hours straight, and finished the entire novel within the lockdown months. By January 15th, 1831, the manuscript was complete. Frantic burst that birthed one of the great novels of the century without that desperate, almost theatrical punishment system, the book that cemented Hugo's legacy might never have been completed. Basically, you will be

amazed at what you can complete when you have no other option. And obviously, the modern world is the antithesis of this. We have an infinite number of other things to do, parties to attend in Paris and virtual meetings that we can go to, even if we're not actually a participant. We're just observing them. I think when you commit yourself fully to one thing, and it's one of the reasons why multitasking in the macro, not even in the micro, is such a bad idea. When you commit yourself fully to one thing, you can really achieve an awful lot. I certainly know that it's one of the, if not the, biggest unlocks that I've had ever, with anything that I've ever tried to be good at, whether it was playing cricket as a kid

or building my business, my first business, club promoting, trying to DJ, the modeling thing, the fucking learning thing, the podcasting thing, the moving to America, the fucking 01 visa thing, like every single big achievement that I'm really proud of has had, it's required me to do some version of this Hugo jail cell thing where fuck dude, like, I bumped into a girl at Breathwork a couple of days ago and we haven't seen each other for two, three years. And she was like, I just wanted to say, like, I'm, you know, I'm really, I'm really happy for how everything's gone for you. And, you know, it really seems like, like you've got on well. Because I remember when we were talking about three years ago, and I'd be speaking to you, and it would be 11 p.m. at

night, and you'd just be in your office editing audio files for hours and hours and hours. And I'd be out with my friends, and I'd be asking what you're up to. And you'd just tell me that you were editing these audio files. You must have, I guess you have people that edit the audio files now. And that's like, yeah, thankfully that's not a task that I have to do anymore. But I had to. And so will you up until the point at which you don't anymore. But you can't get to the point where you don't have to do the stuff without having being the person that has to do them.

I mean, it's different from Victor because even if he writes the hunchback of Notre Dame, it's not like he gets a ghostwriter in to write his sequel or his next book. But in other news, this episode is brought to you by RP Strength. This training app has made a huge impact on my gains and enjoyment in the gym over the last two years now. It's designed by Dr. Mike Isratel and comes with over 45 pre-made training programs, 250 technique videos, takes all of the guesswork out of crafting the ideal lifting routine by literally spoon-feeding you a step-by-step plan for every workout. It guides you on the exact sets, reps, and weight to use. Most importantly, how to perfect your form.

So every rep is optimized for maximum gains. it adjusts your weights each week based on your progress and there's a 30 day money back guarantee so you can buy it train with it for 29 days and if you do not like it they will give you your money back right now you can get up to $50 off the RP hypertrophy app by going to the link in the description below or heading to rpstrength.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout that's rpstrength dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout yeah that thing in the macro i think which is just maybe worth lingering on is you can't multitask.

There is no such thing as multitasking. Like what people think about when they think about multitasking is parallel processing. There is no such thing as that. Even switching between tasks has a huge fucking cost in terms of what you can achieve. But then doing it in the macro too, you miss out on all of the big context window, a word that everyone knows now from AI. The bigger the context window, the more information it's able to pull in and the more connections it's able to make. I'm watching George Mack write his book at the moment

and the size of the context window he's got is fucking insane. That he is, all he does is read, write, train and sleep. That's it. That's all he's doing. He's just obsessed. He's so deep in this process. And it made me realize if I was trying to compete with him for writing a book while doing all of the other bullshit that I'm doing, I'm going to get eaten alive. I'm not going to get anywhere close to the types of insights because I'm not playing with the different ways that all of these ideas can lock together. And it doesn't matter what you're trying to achieve. If you commit yourself to your health, we're about to go into 2026, you would be much better off having 90 days or 180 days on a single goal and then changing it for the next

three quarters or half of the year, then you would be trying to do all of those things. Well, it's important to have a balanced life. And you know, you'll burn yourself out if you do too of one thing. It's like, no, I fully disagree. Find something that you can get obsessed about, allow it to climb inside you and wear you like a fucking parasite. And then once you are done with that thing, you will make more progress. Here's a best example. You will make more progress in six months of dedicated training than in two years of half in half out training. And you will learn more and you will be spending all of your time fucking trawling forums and watching videos and doing all the rest of it. That is the unlock. There's another insight about

procrastination. I've been thinking a lot about procrastination this year. Procrastination, as far as I can see, is often about fear. We like to pretend procrastination is a time management problem. But regularly it isn't. It's more like a self-protection strategy wearing a fitbit. When we delay doing the thing we know we should do, we're sometimes not wrestling with our schedule. We're wrestling with our self-worth. And the logic goes a bit like this. If I try and fail, everyone will see. So if I never try at all, the failure is private and deniable and safe. This is the psychological sleight of hand at the heart of much of procrastination, as far as I can see. It feels like avoidance, but it functions like armor. You convince yourself the task is scary,

or the conditions aren't perfect, or you need to feel ready first. But really, you're just terrified that doing your best might not be good enough. So you don't do anything. On the surface, procrastination looks like laziness, but underneath it's fear wearing a pajama top. And the tragedy is how elegant the trap is. Number one, you procrastinate because you don't want to look bad. number two this fear stops you from doing things number three you were afraid of failure but by

procrastinating you guarantee failure you inoculate yourself from failure publicly by certifying your failure privately you get to say well i could have done it if i'd actually tried this is the safety blanket it's an emotional insurance policy the psychological loophole that allows you to stay intact while your dreams slowly starve. It's, weirdly, one of the few behaviours where we congratulate ourselves for executing a strategy that literally delivers the opposite of what we want. It's like a man who refuses to play the game unless he can guarantee victory, not realizing that refusing to play is the only guaranteed loss.

Every time you hide in procrastination, you choose the fake safety of hypothetical excellence over the real messy human business of trying and failing and trying again. You choose the version of you who could have done great things over the version of you who actually might. And this is the uncomfortable truth. Procrastination is often not about indecision. It's a decision to live in theory rather than in practice. Once you see it clearly, the whole game changes. The question stops being, why can't I get started and becomes, what am I so afraid will be true about me if I actually try? That's a much harder question, which is why most people never ask it. They just carry on congratulating themselves for their caution while quietly guaranteeing the outcome that they fear most. The antidote isn't motivation. Motivation comes and goes. The

antidote is surrender. You lower the stakes. You let yourself look foolish. You accept the embarrassment of being a beginner, the awkwardness of doing something badly, the exposure of your real effort being put on the line. Because once you remove the need to look good, the need to start becomes easy. It turns out that the hardest part of any meaningful work is not so much the work itself. It's the identity shift that you must endure from someone who protect their image to someone who risks it. If you can do that once and procrastination stops being a dragon, instead it becomes what it always was, which is a flimsy emotional habit built to protect a version of you that was never meant to survive adulthood. You don't need courage to begin.

you just need the willingness to be seen beginning. Procrastination is a massive problem, and there's practical limitations, usually two, as far as I can see. The first one, you don't know what to do. You have this big project. You don't write a book, you write a sentence, or you open a word document, or you do research. Don't know what to do?

Relatively easy solution, what is the next physical action? I need to write a book. Okay, well, where are you? I'm in bed. Okay, well, I fucking throw the covers off you. then you need to get one leg out of bed, then another leg out of bed, then you need to stand up, then you need to go to the bathroom, then you need to put your pants on, then you need to go into the living room, then you need to get your laptop out. That is the next physical action. Most people can go one more step, but can't run a marathon in a single go. The same thing is true. Second big practical reason is you know what to do, but you don't know how to do it. And that with the world of chat GPT and Google and YouTube and friends that you can ring, and experts and coaches is pretty easy to fix. Like, I don't know what to do.

Break it down to next physical action. I don't know. I know what to do, but I don't know how to do it. Ask somebody, including a fucking AI agent. But the big bit, I think, when asking, why is it that I'm scared of even getting to that stage? Why do I not want to answer that question myself? It's because of this.

It's this identity problem. It's the fact that you would rather assure your failure privately, inoculate yourself from failure publicly by assuring your failure privately. And yeah, there is this bit of you that it's a kind of a coward in a way. It is. Not a coward, that sounds too mean. Look at me, look at how gentle and fucking soft signal of effectiveness I'm trying to be here. It is maybe cowardly, but it's understandable.

the thing that I would say is that version of you, that bit of you that needs protecting doesn't actually need as much protection as you probably think. It's quite a juvenile version of you. It's immature, it's nascent. And what it doesn't want is to look silly. It doesn't want to be judged. It doesn't want its self-worth to be damaged.

because it's failed at something. It doesn't want other people to think less of it because it's not performed in the manner that it should have done. And it's one of the ruthless things about imposter syndrome. And especially as you progress, imposter syndrome doesn't necessarily go away that quickly because like every higher rung on the ladder that you climb just gives you further to fall. Oh my God, look at what my minimum level of output has to be now. And this means that the procrastination thing, if you're not careful, if you don't turn around in face, or pick up that sort of part of you that's worried about being seen, that's worried about failing, that's scared about being judged from people.

If you don't turn around and deal with that, he will or she will follow behind you, and every time that you try to sort of take a step back to run at something, you'll step on them and they'll yellp and they'll go, oh, no, what if we mess up? And I don't think that that's a good situation to be in. And, you know, the final point is, do you know about what the people... Do you know what the tasks that you didn't go for made other people think about you? Nothing. They don't think anything about you because you didn't try.

So the very thing that you were worried of happening, which is becoming irrelevant and people not caring, is going to happen if you don't go for it. And I would much sooner, maybe it's a maturity thing. It's probably going to get easier as you get older because people realize as they age that failure isn't that big of a deal and that somebody who tries and somebody who tries, regardless of whether or not they succeed or fail, somebody who gives it a crack is worthy of respect way more than somebody who has this sort of sardonic, distance, non-earnest, insincere, like, cutting, cool. I didn't need to do that, man. Like, I don't really try it anything, man. all right they're not the people

that I want to hang around with and they're not the people that my friends want to hang around with either so find your tribe you can be around people who have the willingness to be seen beginning

or the people who would rather look cool for fear of failing publicly at something that they might win at all right this is really cool so I was speaking to Elliot Buick who is a host

of the Next Generation podcast and I was trying to explain to him the difference between inputs, outputs, and outcomes. So, this is the input-output delusion. I've got a sense that there are three levels of productivity, inputs, outputs, and outcomes. Most people stop at the first two and then wonder why nothing in their life actually changes. So, inputs are effort applied. I sat at my desk for eight hours. I spent two hours drafting an outreach message. I went to the gym five times this week. Inputs feel noble. They prove that you're working hard, but effort without direction just burns calories. You can spend all

day trying and still be no closer to the thing that you want. This, as far as I can see, is one of the issues that came in the wake of Atomic Habits by James Clea. Phenomenal book, fantastic writer. But when he said, you don't rise to the level of of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. Everybody started optimizing for inputs only, and I don't think this is what he meant, but everybody started optimizing just for inputs. I sat on my desk for eight hours. I spent two hours drafting outreach messages. I went to the gym five times this week. Inputs are noble. Feel like you're working hard. They show everybody else that you're working hard, but they don't necessarily point you in the right direction.

And you can spend all day trying and still be no closer to the thing that you want. So the next stage that people get to is outputs. So if inputs are effort applied, outputs are work done. So I sent 50 emails, right, rather than I sat at my desk for eight hours. I published four blog posts as opposed to I spent hours drafting messages. I completed all my programmed workouts as opposed to I went to the gym five times this week. You could go to the gym and not complete your work account. You could sit at your desk for eight hours and not send 50 emails. So outputs feel even better because you can count them. You can look at the spreadsheet and think, I'm being productive, look at what I made. But outputs don't prove impact. You can send 50 emails and get no replies.

You can publish four podcasts that don't move your audience. You can lift weights every day without changing your diet and see zero results. It's motion, not momentum. So we move on to the third level, which is I think what people should be more focused on. These are outcomes. So if inputs are effort applied and outputs are work done, outcomes are real world results. So I closed three new clients. Not I sent 50 emails and certainly not I sat at my desk for eight hours. The new training plan added 20 pounds to my bench press. Not I completed my programmed workouts or I went to the gym five times this week. My latest article doubled our inbound leads, right? You get where I'm going. Outcomes measure change. They tell you whether your work actually

did what it was supposed to do. And this is the line between looking busy, feeling productive, and being effective. Inputs, outputs, outcomes. Busy people count hours and actions. Effective people count impact. If you measure inputs, you'll get good at trying. If you measure outputs, you'll get good at producing. But if you measure outcomes, you'll get good at winning. So stop keeping score with time and activity and start asking the one fucking question after everything you do, did this actually move me closer to my goals? And if it didn't, doesn't matter how long it took or how much you got done, it wasn't progress. I fucking love this idea. Inputs, outputs, outcomes, the difference between effort applied, work done, real world

results. I really love it. And I think it makes sense why we don't necessarily focus on the real world. results because unfortunately we're not as in control of that it would certainly be much further on the edges of your stoic fork of you know is this in my control or out of my control um you don't control whether or not you close three clients all you control is did you sit at your desk for eight hours and how many emails did you send but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't ultimately be focused on the destination thing that you're trying to achieve like That's the direction that I'm going in and I'm going to have to adjust course and I maybe have to drive faster and maybe I'm going to have to pull an all night or in the car. But the only reason that you're doing this stuff typically in this sort of situation is because of the real world results that you're trying to get.

You're not doing it simply to do it. You're not sitting at your desk just to sit at your desk or to send 50 emails. There is a reason for all of those things. Even the practice in this regard, it gets a bit squirrely because you're so far detached from the outcome. but like why are you doing strength and conditioning training in the preseason if you're an athlete? Well it's to reduce your injury risk or to increase your speed but even that isn't true it's to win the fucking game it's so that you win more game okay what actually happened what were the real world

results of me doing this and the further that you get away from the genesis of your effort and the outcome that that effort generates the harder it is to draw that line and the more that you're going to fight with it. The more difficult it's going to be, the less motivating it's going to be because the feedback loop is not there so quickly. But I think this is huge and I really, I really like it for what it's worth. This episode is brought to you by Whoop. I've been wearing Whoop for over five years now, way before they were a partner on the show. I've actually tracked over 1,600 days of my life with it, according to the app, which is insane. And it's the only wearable I've ever stuck.

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they just give you your money back. Right now, you can get the brand new whoop 5.0 and that 30-day trial by going to the link in the description below or heading to join.org.com slash modern wisdom. That's join.com.com slash modern wisdom. All right. Some lessons about relationships. seven lessons about relationships starts off with eight flags when starting a new relationship number one they don't understand how difficult they are to live with number two they label any criticism as rude or offensive number three they repeatedly apologize but don't change their behavior number four they float with others and dismiss your discomfort number five they frequently tell you your imagining things number six they don't value your love

as a substantial gift. Number seven, they are too in pain to want the best for you. Number eight, they deflect criticism by pointing out your imperfections. That's from Alain de Botton. And I think a lot of the issue, at least Alain's been talking about recently, is this inability for people to see your point of view. It's a lack of resonance or preparedness for them to see you where you are. They flirt with others and dismiss your discomfort. They frequently tell you you're imagining things. They don't value your love as a substantial gift. They deflect criticism by pointing out your imperfections.

All of these situations are an inability to see the world from your eyes. Gently and honestly. All right, second one. An agreeable, thoughtful partner is important for a successful marriage. If you're looking for a happy and long-term romance, pick a partner with high levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness. These traits are associated with longer and happier marriages. Men and women, high in conscientiousness, tend to be more faithful.

That's from Rob Henderson. It's actually missing one there, so there's three. Tai Tishiro has got this work, which is conscientiousness, agreeableness, and moderate openness. So somebody who is thoughtful, kind, and mildly open to adventure. The problem with too little conscientiousness is that they are insufficiently thoughtful. They're not going to be particularly good as a partner in crime and in a time of crisis and to be able to help you do stuff because they just don't have that industrious sort of get up and go, permissionless apprentice, like agency thing. The agreeableness

part is huge and I think does work in both directions, although I think it's more important for women to be agreeable to men and for men to be agreeable to women in terms of attractiveness because if all that your partner says is a stonewall to any suggestion of yours or any conversation of yours, it's not very enthusing and it doesn't feel like you're a team. It always feels like you have to fight for your own opinion. And I think that can become very trying over time. It can become exhausting and it can make you, even if you're not somebody who is disagreeable, it's very hard to maintain like kind, positive sum agreeability. if the other person is being heavily disagreeable

because you're feeling quite sort of soft and you're warping yourself around them and they're feeling quite spiky. That's not very good. Then finally, the openness one is if somebody is too open to experience, that novelty-seeking desire that is what openness to experience is,

may lead them to stray. This is not to say that all people high in openness to experience are going to cheat on you, but it is it is predictive to a degree are they going to change their worldview change their routine change their luck change their philosophy their life approach their values in a way that is so fundamental that most normal people who fall within sort of the bell curve of openness would not but this person is so open to experience that they just get whisked away

by somebody from their work or whatever it might be. So, three things. Conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience. High conscientiousness, moderately high agreeableness, and only moderate openness. Number three on my list of seven facts about relationships. The divorce mystery, so good. Why does so many people divorce someone they thought was their favorite person? It's not really a mystery.

it's mostly because good times are a poor predictor of how you'll handle bad times and handling bad times is much more important to the success of a marriage but as a species and as a culture we have not truly internalized this and this is visacan verasamy and i think he's so right that how many times have a couple split up or divorced and the people around them say i i had no idea i had no idea or these two people within the relationship, they were literally their favorite person. Each other loved the other and had, they didn't want to do anything more than have great times with each other. Why is it that people who love spending time together and enjoy peak experiences and don't

want to do it with anybody else still break up? Well, it's because I would guess on average there are far more breakups. that occur due to a surplus of bad events than a scarcity of good ones. If you argue every two or three days, and they're big arguments and emotionally contentious and they take a while to settle, that is so much more damaging to a relationship than simply not having enough peak experiences. Now, there may be some people high in openness to experience or adventurousness or excitability or whatever, who need that sort of regular adrenaline and dopamine thing,

and sure you can have relationships that are too boring but most relationships occur because of a um too many arguments than too few good times too many bad times not too few good times it's like okay it's perfectly explained by this next one which is by the same guy visicamber me. It's the lows, not the highs that make or break a relationship. A painful lesson over the last 20 years of relationships. In the medium run, it's exciting to feel hype about people who seem to relate strongly in specific ways. But in the long run, it's really how you handle misunderstandings, conflict, confusion, and disagreement that go the distance. So if you combine those two, the divorce mystery, why does so many people divorce someone they thought was their favorite

person? Because how you handle bad times is a better predictor than how you you handle good times. And in the long run, it's how you deal with misunderstandings and conflict and disagreement and confusion that go the distance. People get kicked out the bottom of relationships because they are unable to argue well with their partner. They do not get kicked out of relationships at the same rate because they are not having peak experiences with their partner. It's the lows, not the highs that make or break a relationship. Next one. Neediness is when you place a higher priority in what others think of you than what you think of yourself. This is from Joe Hudson. Every time you show up as someone else to please another person, you're rejecting yourself. This is a huge part of relationships. One of the things that almost anybody wants in a relationship is to say, I just want to be seen. I just want to be enough. I want to feel like I'm enough and I want to feel like they get me and they're not trying to change me. And yet, how many people are not prepared to show up as themselves, that vulnerability issue, right?

That being vulnerable is speaking your truth, even when it's scary. But because it's scary, we don't speak our truth, which means that we show up as someone else to please another person, which means we're rejecting ourselves, which means that we start to lose ourselves because we don't know who we are. And you are placing a higher priority on what someone else thinks of you than what you think of yourself. And this doesn't mean that you're never supposed to change for your partner or that you're not supposed to do nice things or compromise, but there is a difference between fully betraying who you are,

especially over a long period of time, and being a nice person and being a gracious partner. Number six, authenticity wins. In a relationship, roughly, the only thing that matters is if you can be yourself around them. Shared hobbies, attraction, lifestyle alignment is all downstream. If you can't be fully yourself around someone, you're either performing or negotiating constantly. And over time, that corrods everything. True intimacy is being radically unedited and still accepted. And the rest is just set design. That's from signal.

I think that's so on the money. And when you combine neediness is when you place a higher priority on what others think of you than what you think of yourself, you're rejecting yourself when you show up as somebody. else in order to please another person. And roughly the only thing that matters is if you can be yourself around them, truth becomes this sort of solvent. Honesty becomes this solvent that kind of cuts through whatever's in front of you. And this is why it's so dangerous to not show up as yourself. Number seven, pick carefully. You're not choosing a girlfriend. You're choosing your son's mother. Eric Jorgensen, fucking slammer. Pick carefully. You're not choosing a girlfriend.

You're choosing your son's mother. I mean, I see this now, right? I certainly didn't fucking see it in my 20s, but all of my friends are flying or falling based on the choices that they made. All of us are going to be, and this is male and female. You're not choosing a boyfriend. You're choosing your son's father and um does add a lot of gravity to the decision certainly does all right next one the shame of small fears so i wrote an essay about the shame of simple pleasures and it got me it got me thinking about something really similar but on the other side so the shame of small fears imagine explaining modern fear to a caveman well you see gruck people today get to terrified when they have to

send a message Grok blinks message carved on stone no a sentence on a glowing rectangle enemy tribe see message no saber tooth tiger smell message no

then why fear well because the other person might think badly of us. Gruck cries laughing. And yet, that's the whole point. We inherited a nervous system calibrated for lions, and we are using it to navigate awkward conversations

and underwhelming careers. Evolution never updated the software. It just repurposed it. Your ancestors needed courage to keep their bodies alive. You need courage to keep your identity intact. It's almost comic when you zoom out, right? The same species that once stared down hungry predators now breaks into a sweat trying to say

something needs to change. But it's not because we've become pathetic, it's because the monsters changed shape. Old dangers could kill your body, the new ones threaten your belonging. Your entire biology gears up for exile from a village that now only exists as a group chat. your body still thinks that you'll die alone in the wilderness if you tell the truth.

It's the residue of a limbic system designed for a world that no longer exists. And this is where the real suffering begins, not in the fear, but in your shame about the fear. A voice inside says, how dare you be upset by this? Other people had it so much worse. don't you know how small and feeble this makes you? Sure, maybe there were more kinetic threats in the past, but knowing that your life isn't collapsing doesn't stop your heart racing as if it is. It just makes you feel guilty for crying in the ancestral equivalent of a feather bed. It's not just the fear that hurts. It's the feeling that your fear is illegitimate, that your emotions

needed to pass some mythical severity threshold before you're allowed to feel them. This is the shame of small fears, the belief that your life is comfortable and because of that, your panic must be ridiculous. But your nervous system does not know that. It only knows threat and it reacts to a difficult conversation the same way it once reacted to a rustle in the dark. Your biology is ancient and your circumstances are modern and your feelings sit in the crossfire this is why modern bravery is both smaller and harder

smaller because the stakes are rarely life or death and harder because the threats are invisible you can't swing an axe at uncertainty and you can't outrun heartbreak so the new acts of courage are quieter telling the truth saying no walking away from a

career that looks great on paper but feels wrong in your chest, letting your friend down rather than letting yourself down, admitting you want more from your life than the version of you that other people are used to. These aren't heroic in the old sense, but they're valiant in a new one because the modern world rarely demands danger from you, but it constantly requests honesty, and honesty is terrifying. There's no applause for doing the right thing. There's no war medals for ending the wrong friendship. There's no epic poems for learning to tell the truth gently. But these are the decisions that actually shape your life. Bravery now is knowing the world won't end if you speak up, yet your stomach drops as if it might, and doing it anyway.

Your nervous system does not care whether the threat is a bear or a boundary. It reacts in the same way. So, be gentle with yourself if you get scared by normal stuff. You are allowed to feel the way you feel. And shaming yourself for your emotions only adds a second wound to the first. And as a post script to this, absolutely do not shame yourself for shaming yourself. Infinite regress of fucking shame continues to build I think this is like with a lot of the stuff that I've thought about this year

because it's specifically around emotions you can hear 12 months ago go back and listen to what I said I wanted to work on on the podcast I wanted to get below the neck I want it to feel feelings I have fucking regretted that this year at some point holy shit it's been a challenge because there is nowhere to hide

and as soon as you start to feel what sort of telling the truth and opening up and feeling your feelings feels like you then also know when you don't do it so it's kind of like pandora's box once it's been opened you know what it feels like to not uh and then you you deal with discomfort when you try to cope but your ability to keep going is also not there because it's you're not experienced at all um but this one in particular the shame of small fears, some people, for all of the things I've said today, there will be some people, many of whom, maybe in the comments, will be like, I don't get it. Like, I just don't get it. It doesn't resonate with me. And that's great. That's great. How wonderful that this

doesn't, I mean, that's presuming that it actually doesn't and you're not hiding it from yourself. The fact that it doesn't resonate with you is a very fortunate situation because there are so there are fucking hundreds of millions of people for whom this does resonate with them but this is one of the ones the shame of small fears I think will be something that's a little bit more niche but it's really true and that little voice saying how dare you be upset by this people in the past had it worse and you're still scared of this thing and why is your nervous system so fucking unhappy with this. It's just a conversation. It's just a friendship. It's just a whatever. Like, you should look after you. Your time on this planet is limited and, you know, look at what it's cost you in the past. Look at what it's costing you now. Look at what it will cost you in the future. Look at where you could be. You're wasting your time. You've got in 4,000 weeks and how many of them have been spent on this particular situation. You know, you just, there is an endless number of ways that you can berate yourself.

And what I'm trying to advise here is a little bit of self-compassion, that yeah, your nervous system really doesn't care if it's a bearer or a boundary. It still gets activated the same. And that the old source code, the old operating system hasn't been updated. It's just been repurposed. And you don't get some like Uber Surge discount for the fact that it's the modern world, unfortunately or else we wouldn't have more and more anxiety and depression and yet there are lots and lots and lots of people who have a victim mentality and are using their fear to excuse them from

ever having to try or ever having to lean into stuff given that you're an hour and a bit into this podcast i'm going to guess that that's not you given that you listen to like think about the fucking episodes i've done the goggins the jocco the 20 hours of me and homozy just going stopping such a pussy, stopping such a pussy, stopping such a pussy. I've earned my keep. I understand what it's like to do the fucking just grit your teeth and forget it thing. And I'm just more interested in something that's a bit more resonant and deeper at the moment. And maybe I'll pivot back into like, you know, grind set mode.

But there's something here. I'm pretty sure that there's something here. All right. Last one. The Atlas Complex. I saw a comment on one of my videos this week that really struck me. I wish I could remember who posted it, but I can't, so thank you for inspiring this idea. Why is it that when other people mess up, it's my fault?

But when other people mess up, it's also my fault. Why is it that when I mess up, it's my fault? But when other people mess up, it's also my fault. Let's call this the Atlas Complex. If you care too much about harmony, you end up volunteering to be the scapegoat in every room. someone else snaps at the waiter. You apologize. A partner forgets an anniversary. You bend yourself into origami explaining how you should have reminded them. A project collapses at work. You lie awake replaying how you could have prevented it, despite the fact that six of the people were asleep

at the wheel. It's like carrying around a magnet for blame. And part of this comes from childhood training. If your peace at home depended on you keeping everyone else happy, you learned very early that the fastest route to calm was to accept fault even when it wasn't yours. The problem is that the world will happily accept this bargain. If you are willing to hold the bag, there will always be someone eager to drop theirs into your arms. In Greek myth, Atlas was a titan who fought against the Olympian gods, and when his side lost, Zeus condemned him to hold up the sky for eternity. in life many of us volunteer for the same sentence we confuse nobility with needless burden and we don't notice the chains because they look like responsibility

there is a difference between being kind and seeming kind one nourishes you the other erases you goodwill hunting has maybe the most poignant version robin william's character shawn sits across from will in a therapy session and repeats it's not your fault over and over. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. Will was brilliant, but traumatized and had never accepted it. At first, Will laughs it off. Then he grows angry. And finally he breaks because the most corrosive thing wasn't his own mistakes. It was carrying the blame for the things done to him, things that were never his to own. Self-esteem can't grow if every bruise that the world leaves on you gets mistaken for a self-inflicted wound. The irony is that people who chronically self-blame often think they're being noble. At least if it's my fault, I can fix it. Responsibility feels like agency, but there's a dark flip side. If everything is your

fault, then nothing is anyone else's. You've quietly signed a contract, absolving the world of its share of the work, and that's not virtue. It's self-betrayal. I think relationships suffer the most under this spell. When one partner absorbs all the blame, the other never learns accountability. Boundaries aren't walls. They're the conditions that love needs to survive. And instead of standing side by side against life's inevitable mess, you create a parent-child dynamic. One apologizes and the other is indulged. And love can't breathe in that imbalance. The way out is not to stop owning your mistakes.

That part is beautiful and rare. You just need to let others own theirs too. Bravery isn't bowing your head. It's lifting it and saying, this one's not on me. strength is knowing when to own your mistakes and when to hand back the ones that aren't yours the courage isn't in denial it's in refusing to be atlas refusing to absorb the weight of other people's failures just to keep the peace otherwise you spend your life mopping up after other

people's spills confusing servitude for strength and wondering why your shoulders ache all the time That's it. I love you all. Fuck, this has been a tough year, dude. Holy shit. Thank you for making it to the end. Thank you for making it to the end of the year and the end of the episode. It's been a hard one for me. And the structure that this podcast provides has given me a lot to hold on to when shit's been hard.

because fuck it's been hard like by far by a factor of like two or three times the toughest year of my life maybe more and uh

getting to spend time coming up with these ideas reflecting on my experience trying to turn them into something useful that's going to live on a little bit longer getting to speak to these guests getting the support of you guys is it's really really meaningful and thank you for doing it maybe next year i will have more gumption

and gusto or whatever but i've been really real this year the episodes have been a bit more dour and reflective and introspective and maybe a bit sad but that's where i've been at and uh i hope it's made you feel less alone in your challenges i hope it's giving you uh You know, fucking gratefulness. If you're just flying high and everything's going great, I'm looking forward to a good 2026. If I can do what I've done over the last 12 months feeling the way that I've felt,

fucking God help the world if I get back to full capacity. I wouldn't bet against me. Anyway, I appreciate you all. Merry Christmas. Happy New York. Goodbye.