Modern Wisdom - #189 - Kyle Eschenroeder - How To Work Out What You Want To Want From Life

Episode Date: June 27, 2020

Kyle Eschenroeder is a marketer and a writer. You do not want to live a life that you regret at the end of it. But working out what you WANT to want is a topic no one ever talks about. When you follow your default desires, you're much more likely to find yourself at a place in life that you didn't really want to be, or mean to get to. Today, we learn how to step into our programming and actively design our direction in life. I love this topic. Sponsor: Sign up to FitBook at https://fitbook.co.uk/join-fitbook/ (enter code MODERNWISDOM for 50% off your membership) Extra Stuff: Read Kyle's Blog Post - http://www.kyleschen.com/2017/04/11/what-do-you-want-to-want/ Follow Kyle on Twitter - https://twitter.com/kyleschen Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, hello people in podcast land. Welcome back. My guest today is Kyle Eschenroder and we are talking about his fantastic blog post. What do you want to want? I stumbled upon this at the start of the year and was just totally blown away. Working out what you want to want is the most important fundamental thing that you have to do in your life. We do not want to live a life of regret, and if we're not careful, we can quite easily end up at a place in life that we didn't really want to be or mean to get to. If you follow your default desires, societal norms, your evolutionary heritage, the programming that you've got, the way you've dealt with your traumas in the past, this is what's in store for you. You will be buffeted by the wind of life, just like a kite in the breeze. So today we are learning why and how we need to step into our programming and actively

design our direction in life. I adore this topic. And considering it's a subject area that I literally didn't know existed before I read Kyle's blog posts it's amazing I really really hope that you enjoy this episode and take a lot away from it you need to go and check the actual blog post out as well it's a 60 minute read but it's it's wonderful so linked in the show notes below go and enjoy it thank you to everyone for the feedback about modern wisdom university I'm blown away by that Again, just the support from everyone on this show

is beyond anything that I've ever had before. So thank you so much. The other thing I wanted to say was, I haven't asked for this for a while, but if there's an episode that you've enjoyed recently over the last few weeks, or months, please send it to a friend. The only way that this podcast grows

is if you refer it to other people You probably started listening to modern wisdom because someone told you hey You should check out this guy from the north of the UK. You should see his podcast is not that bad So be that person for me if you can send it to someone or throw it in a group chat Just find a link share it to someone that is the best way that you could repay me and it helps to keep growing which means I can continue to access more and more weird and wonderful That is the best way that you could repay me and it helps to keep growing, which means I can continue to access more and more weird and wonderful guests. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Kyle Eschenroder in the building, how are you doing man?

Very well, how are you? Very, very well indeed. I'm happy to have you on, it's been a long time coming. First and foremost, for the listeners that don't know who you are, why do you think that I'm speaking to you today? Why do you think I reached out? Oh, man. That's a good question. You may have had a lapse in judgment. No, actually, I you know, I think it's an interesting time. I know you found this article about asking ourselves a question,

what do we want to want? It has a lot to do with re-evaluating our values and our desires. And I think a lot of us are being forced to do that throughout this COVID situation. So it's kind of a good time to talk about that and see if we might be able to do it in a more strategic or skillful way. I think you've answered my reasons pretty accurately there, man. Yeah, I stumbled across your blog post. What do you want to want on your blog?

And I was blown away, man. It's a 60-minute read or so. And I absolutely adored it. And I was 10 minutes in. And I was already scouring around online trying to find your email address and it turned out that you already followed me on Twitter which made everything an awful lot easier. So yeah, I have got you on because I just want to go through this blog post. It's one of the most fundamental concepts that I've never had spoken about before. And I think there's an awful lot of people listening,

I know a ton of audience members who will really benefit from this. So that's why we're here. We're going to go through it. So first things first, why is working out what you want to want important? Why is working out what you want to want important? So mostly, because you don't want to live a life that you regret at the end of it, right? I think that when we follow our kind of default desires, we're much more likely to find ourselves at a place in life that we didn't really want to or mean to get to.

So I think that's kind of the big one. But there's a lot of things along the way. It's not like that can benefit from asking ourselves this question. So actually, I knew you were going to talk about this, so I kind of pulled some of my favorite quotes from the article that I think emphasized some of these points better than I could. I love off the cuff. Yeah, so Ralph Waldo-Elm Emerson in Self-Relines has this line, my life is for itself and not as spectacle.

And I think our default desires so often push us towards trying to create a life that is as spectacle, something that looks great to others, but itself feels kind of maybe empty or off of what you know off center from what we would truly want for ourselves. And actually that reminds me, I mean your audience may be more familiar now with the idea of memetic desire that's gotten really popular since Peter Teal started talking about it.

It's this idea that originated with the sociologist René Gerard. The basically means that we naturally want what those around us want. So those are kind of our default desires. And Teal and his book, Zerda Wynne, he talks about how kind of realizing this helped him switch tracks from a legal career that he was getting really far into and had an incredible outlook and switching into tech, which made his life a lot better. I mean, you have better outcomes and it was just more aligned with his true values. I think if you get, so if we get stuck in these memetic or default desires, they disconnect us from our actual ones.

And I think there's a really beautiful, it's a two sentence quote from Proust from Swan's way that gets into I think the nuance of why desiring, you know, our defaults can be dangerous. He says, to think that I've wasted years of my life, that I've long to die, that I've experienced my greatest love for a woman who didn't appeal to me, who wasn't even my type. So, like he was experiencing desire, right? He was chasing this woman and he actually, like, longed to die.

Like, he was willing to give everything to her. And then, at the end of it, he realizes that she wasn't even his type. So, I think that, you know, it's how these default to diars can be super seductive. And if we don't apply some level of awareness, you know, they're going to take you places you don't want to be. So this, you know, then I'd add just a couple, a couple extra points.

So I think, you know, I think that we've experienced a couple of extra points. So I think that we've experienced a lot of kind of breakdowns in trust in society to the point where I think there's a significant portion of the population who is afraid to desire anything other than immediate comfort or, and I think that, you know, reassessing desires and realizing they don't need to be what those around us kind of think they should be can be a really healthy way of rekindling healthy desires. And then also inevitably in the long run, we fall into our desires, create our path of least resistance. And in the long run, I think that we all end up

following our path of least resistance. Robert Fritz talks about this really beautifully in his book called The Path of Least Resistance. But so I think, I think, if we can shape our desires even a little bit, it can create massive, massive changes in our lives. And it allows us to trust ourselves and experience flow more often, right? Like if you can trust your desires to be in your best interest, then it can make life a little easier in some ways. Man, I really agree.

I think it's such a fundamental question and that's why I found it so fascinating when I began reading the article. And for the people that I think, no, this article sounds great, it will be linked in the show notes below, of course. But to everyone that's listening, ask yourself, what do you want to want?

Like genuinely, what do you want to want? Not what do you want? Like I want that piece of cake, I want this car, I want whatever it might be. Like what do you want to want? The ability to program our desires to choose our own path is something which has never been gifted to us in as high velocity as it has done right now, right? You know, we have the depth and breadth of freedom

that no other society in history has had. The first ever society whose problems are problems of surplus, not problems of scarcity. And with that in mind, it means that you get to do things that you usually wouldn't be able to, but because of this memetic predisposition that we have, where we reflect the people who are around us and their desires, and this path of least resistance, which you mentioned, which is kind of a number of different things, like a genetic predisposition towards certain bits and pieces, and then you compound that. This is the real penacious thing about it, that you compound that over time, and that becomes patterns of behavior which are increasingly more

and more difficult to change. So your desires that you have now, which as we've identified very well may not be chosen, they're just kind of emergent from you never actually looking at what you want to want. Over time'll become increasingly harder to step out of that valley of, right? Because like a river, it cuts a path that's ever deeper. And then after time, you're like, well, this river is now like Niagara Falls, and it's going to take an extra human, superhuman effort in order for me to redirect this flow of water. So yeah, I think, man, it's a really fascinating thing to think. And you mentioned there about the quote where this guy had realized at the end of his life that it was a woman who wasn't even his type. I was talking to Greg McEwan,

guy that wrote essentialism. And he said he was working with some huge tech execs from Silicon Valley, and this guy who'd made it to the top of the corporate ladder was very successful basically said that his relationship with his son was breaking down as his teenage son who he essentially can't speak to they can't have a Conversation is someone to leave the room and every end to the, they're just that terrible, terrible relationship, you know? And that is someone Greg said, who won at the wrong game. And holy shit, if that's not the sort of thing that makes the hairs on the back of your next stand up, you know, this guy who's dedicated his life towards something that he thought

would give him purpose and meaning and a sense of fulfillment and is actually, you know, in every by everyone's definition has dedicated himself to a thing. But dedicated himself to the wrong thing with time that he can never get back. Like, man, that's hell, you know, that's hell in car on earth. Yes, pretty terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying. So, okay, so we understand that working out what we want to

want is important because it allows us to program our desires, which in an essence in programs our life forms a foundation upon which our behaviors can draw from. And also, I like the idea of it being kind of like a trustworthy friend. You know, or a good advisor on your shoulder that if you have designed desires, you know that what you want to want is a what you want is a good indication of what you should want because it's designed as opposed to emergent. Next up, what should we want?

We've decided that we should want design our wants. What should we want? Got an entire world out there to choose from. Awesome. Yeah, one thing I wanna bring up, there's this great before I answer that. I don't want to make this sound easier or something. The article was written a few years ago, and I'm not here pretending to have mastered my

every desire. Right? So I'm very much like this is very much a work in progress and do as I say not as I do Yeah, and I well, I think of this great line that The Confucius had and cute so Confucianism was like basically all about reprogramming your desires so that you could you would behave properly and You know basically what we're talking about here. Your desires would line up properly with what you want to want. Or, you know, what, assuming you wanted

what confusionism was pointing at, and he talked about how he measures progress over decades, you know, not years or months or anything. So I do think like simple things, just even stopping and asking yourself this question could have huge dividends, but we're talking about like fundamental programming. And there's definitely ways to support change, but none of them are easier painless. I also want to say, so I do think that there are things that we can all agree on, you know, we should, you know, we should want that we would love to want rather than, you know, the opposite. But I think above all, self-reliance matters. So the core thing here that I think is the most helpful is the question

itself. And like you said, you actually kind of invited the audience to consider the question. And I always love this Indian sage Krishna Murdi. Like every time he would give this talk, a talk, he would kind of force the audience into engagement with the ideas. Don't take the ideas and like organize it, file it away, you know, you're ever known. Like this is something to engage with now in real time, in reality. So, that being said, self-aliance matters, there's a lot of you know, a lot of this gets into a kind of moral territory and I am not suggesting that I or anyone has kind of moral superiority over, you know, over, over you want you think or trying to tell you what you should want. The suggestion is that if you do dedicate yourself

to some degree to considering what you want to want and shaping those, there will be benefits. But, so anyway, but with that all being said, I think that there's some that most of us can agree on. So, you know, ultimately, the idea of wanting what is to some degree seems pretty desirable that's essentially achieving, you know, Nietzsche's amorphity. But then if we want to get, you know, more specifically, it seems that life would be better if we were to want the things that were nourishing for us in the long run.

Naval, the founder of Angel List, the other day on Twitter had a really good tweet. He said, he's good at tweets. He said, the modern devil is cheap dopamine. So I think that's a really great heuristic for what we don't want to want, right? You know, we, ideally we are not designing ourselves to desire cheap dopamine hits above all. Cheap dopamine hits being like, you know, candy or the intellectual equivalent, you know, like a bad, a bad, Twitter feed or, or read it

or, or things like that. It goes, it goes to everything as well, right? It goes to that reply from a random girl you've never met on Instagram DM when you've got a girlfriend to bolster your sense of whatever, like it goes to texting in the car while you drive. There's so many iterations of that. That's a great example. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'd like to, and I also, I'd like to imagine spectrum of desires. So it's really helpful for me to envision the enlightened sage on one side. side and who in, for our purposes, whose desires lead to you pneumonia and human flourishing. And then on the other side, we have a caveman or something that's completely driven by their id, by their lowest desires. And this isn't perfect, right? There could be, there's the noble savage idea and stuff

that I think we can talk about a little bit more later. But I think that that spectrum helps you, like what side of this spectrum does this desire land on? And I think that's a helpful way to orient our desires. Are you agree? I think that learning what you shouldn't want to want first is a very easy way to work this out. So people who listen to episode 69, the most ever played on mental models with George McGill will know the power of inversion. It's really hard sometimes to work out what makes us happy, but it's quite easy to explain how you would make a happy person depressed.

And then if you flip that on its head and you say, well, okay, if that's how I make a happy person depressed, if I either choose to do the opposite of them, I don't do the things that would cause it, or I do do the things that would stop it, like, that's how I make myself happier. I need to wake up on time and get sunlight and exercise and see friends and drink water and have healthy food and blah, blah, blah, and it's the same for this, right? What would be when it comes to wants, ask yourself, and this is a full deep throat red pilling that me and Kyle are giving you throughout today. This is an active podcast. This is not a passive one, as Kyle has already said.

But ask yourself, what are the things that you really should not want to want? Should you not want to want the appreciation of people who you don't care about that are not in your immediate circle? Should you not want to want a whole host of very shallow, very meaningless friendships and or relationships and or sexual encounters with people. Should you not, you know, continue to iterate

on that as much as you want, but like ask yourself, you know, what would make, what wants if you took them to their end degree would guarantee that you led an unfulfilled life? Because man, I can make a list that's longer than my arm of those things. So I think that's a pretty good place to start. But you actually created like four areas that you moved through in the blog post, right?

There was four different sections. Why did you choose those four? I think they were pretty fundamental. Pretty, I don't want to say not controversial, but I think they're pretty well-founded. I actually, a lot of them came from inversions. So taking desires I had that I felt were unhelpful and figuring out, looking at them as closely as I could, and figuring out where, could they be helpful, were they pushing me

in a healthy direction or not? And if not, how could I change them? And so, we looked at, you know, switching from wanting fame to actually doing something making change, from wanting extreme wealth to wanting frugalugal heart from wanting to be extraordinary to wanting the ordinary and from wanting an easy life to actually desiring struggle. I think that little paradigm thing that you've created I really like and it is high level wanting an easy life wanting to be somebody wanting extreme life, wanting to be somebody, wanting extreme wealth and wanting to be extraordinary.

Those are for very, very common wants that people want, but probably don't want to want. Certainly not when they actually fully appreciate what the implications are of wanting that want. Would you agree? Yes, I would agree fully. Full heartedly. Good. Well, it's just as well, because I've taken that learning from your blog post, mate. So also, I am banning you from doing any more caveats throughout the rest of this podcast, man. Like your article, your article is fantastic. And it is extensive, not exhaustive. And if anyone's got a problem with the fact

that you don't go to the end degree or the end of the earth to explain all of the different possibilities, then my DMs are open, they can come speak to me. You're just unloading wisdom today, man, and everyone else can fuck off. So let's get into it. Wanting an easy life versus wanting a life of struggle. Why would someone not want an easy life? Why should they want a life of struggle? That sounds shit.

Yeah. So first of all, it can kill you. So, so, so, so, yeah, I mean, there's this shell did a study of these employees that retired at 55 versus those at 65 and the people that retired at 55 died significantly sooner than those that retired at 65. And that's been, you know, there's tons of studies that'll show you that. If you retire early, right? And you live in normal retire life, you will die earlier. There's also, so like struggles universal, there's nothing we can do to eliminate it.

So if we're able to embrace it again, to like whatever degree is possible for you now. It makes life, you know, you're fighting against life a little bit less paradoxically, right? Kelly McGonigal actually has, she has a ton of great examples in her book The Upside of Stress. But my favorite is, is this bit where she talks about how our bodies actually release different chemicals depending on how we perceive a stressor. So if we think that a particular stressful situation is just bad and regret having to

take it on and kind of try to avoid it, our bodies will put out less helpful, healthy chemicals. So it's basically, they pump out this chemical mix that's more cortisone heavy, sorry, cortisone heavy, than if we embrace the stress as something healthy and that can provide energy to get past obstacles. So if we allow ourselves to embrace a stressor, our bodies will actually respond different physically and release different chemicals into our system that will give us healthier, better energy. Man, that's so fucking cool. And to link that back, you may have heard Sam Harris talk about this.

He uses hilarious analogy where he says, imagine that spontaneously you just were given the full physiological sensations that you have at the end of completing an incredibly hard high intensity workout. Like you're just driving down the street and that happens. Heart rates jacked up through the roof, you're sweating, like you're panting, you're tired, you can't breathe, all this stuff. You would be terrified. through the roof, you're sweating, like you're panting, you're tired, you can't breathe, all this stuff. You would be terrified.

You'd think, holy fucking shit, what is going on? Am I going to die? Darling, darling, ring the ambulance immediately. But reframe that, reframe that at the end of a workout, that is the signal you're chasing, that is the discomfort you're leaning into because it is a marker that you have done something. So that immediately shows people for millennia have been avoiding cold.

It's been a thing that has killed countless, countless humans. And now all of my friends do cold exposure first thing in the morning, they go and get a cold shower because they see that as a signal, that is something. So that shows exactly, not only is there a mental reframing, which changes the way that we see that discomfort or that struggle, there's also, as you've identified there, the reframing then is reflected physiologically with how our body responds to it too. That's super cool. Yeah.

And the examples go on and on. Two thirds of trauma survivors that have actually experienced post-traumatic growth. And the difference between the ones that experience growth versus not is purely mindset. And again, that's just some degree. There is a breaking point. And Nietzsche's idea that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger is obviously not 100% correct. He lost his mind and physically weakened and never... He reached a breaking point just like everybody can. and never, you know, reached a breaking point, just like everybody can. But the amount of pain that we can take

is often surprising to us. Again, an adult who latent life actually experienced more struggles throughout their life, reported greater satisfaction with their lives and a stronger sense of purpose and made more original contributions than those who reported having a more consistently pleasant life. And you know, there's, you know, Victor Frunkle, the author of Man Search for Meaning, actually considers suffering well to be one of only three sources of

meaning in life. The other is being doing work you consider significant and caring for another person. So the case for struggle is significant. It seems pretty, seems pretty robust. Man, so here's one, here's a red pill moment for all of the Taipei go get us out there, two actually. I don't know whether you've heard these, you probably will have done, but I'm going to give them to you anyway, Kyle.

First one, anybody that's ever owned a business or has ever been to uni or done any group work or worked on a project that they care about, think about what your favorite part, some of your favorite memories that you have when you're talking to other people about that project. The favorite memory is never like when it was easy going, when everything was sweet, when you got to rock up to work late, and everything was still moving fine. The best memories, the ones that you recall, are the 3am finishes where you had to order dominoes direct to the office and you slept under your desk

and you grind it and grafted, but you got it done, you got that proposal finished and then you got it, you did the thing or you worked your own, you're painting the shop and then you finally, it's launched and you finally just got there by the skin of your teeth. That is what you remember. That is the love that you have for your project.

That was the best memories that you have. That's a, from Ben Burjorn's chasing excellence podcast, a really, really eye-opening insight. And the second, the other side of that, if you're a Taipei personality who really, really wants to struggle, especially if you're a business owner, tomorrow, don't touch your phone, don't look at a screen and don't do anything, don't read, don't meditate, don't exercise, spend the whole day doing sweet fuck all, and that will be, that will be the definition of a day of struggle because you're just going to be itching to go and

do shit. But yeah, both of those things kind of map onto that easy life versus wanting a life of struggle somewhere. Yeah, yeah. I think I love that second example. It's beautiful. And I do, I want to say, you know, you said no caveat. And this is not really a caveat. But I just, I, you know, people can take this the wrong way, right? So this is in no way trying to promote self-flagilation or fetishized suffering or belittling

suffering that is, you know, super intense and unhelpful. So it's more of a call to flinch less when something bad happens and to let ourselves try things that are pretty much guaranteed to add obstacles into our life that's going to make it more of a struggle, but also very likely more meaningful. So it's not about adding drama or any unnecessary drama. It's about how you act in the face of struggle that already exists and enabling yourself to choose harder paths in life that will ultimately be more fulfilling, but will also necessitate more struggle.

Yes, I like that. I like that. I like that a lot. Okay, so wanting an easy life, people think, I just want to coast along, but they're going to die sooner. They're not going to find as much meaning. They're also going to have worse memories. Victor, if Victor, uncle said it, then it's correct. You know, so that's line drawn under that.

People should want a life of struggle, or at the very least, lean into the struggles that they have and embrace them, and see them as challenges to overcome, rather than kind of curses to bear, I suppose. Up next, wanting to be somebody versus wanting to do something. How does this map? So yeah, and this is, this one is tough right now, right? Because everybody wants more attention, right? I mean, and it gets murky, right? Because attention has become valuable, right? Like you can build business off of the amount of attention you get, right?

So this one gets the nuance here is very important, but fame is, you know, absolutely dicting. It's one of the most addictive things. Adam Smith said that to those who have been accustomed to the possession or even the hope of public admiration, all other pleasures sicken and decay, which you can kind of see. Like, you know, if you, the, the, the, the pain of a waning celebrity is, you know, this rule, and you can see it in their decisions that they make, right? They'll make kind of, they'll agree to, and sometimes it's about money, but a lot of it is often about squeezing out the last little bit of attention that they can out of a career when they go on like these humiliating game shows and stuff like that.

So, and another huge, huge danger with fame is that it puts our happiness on the wins of those to whom we're famous. So the person who seeks fame is making their happiness largely dependent on the opinions of other people. So those people who have the power to build you up have the same power to tear you down. And, you know, we see this all the time,

kind of in scapegoating, right? Everybody will just pick a celebrity who did some kind of minor, made some kind of minor in fraction and just tear them apart. Kevin Kelly wrote a great article made some kind of minor infraction and just tear them apart. Kevin Kelly wrote a great article just on advice and he pointed out that anybody who's read a famous person's biography should understand that you don't wanna be famous.

If you become super obvious that a life that makes a really great story is not necessarily the life that feels best to live while you're in it. And again, there's obvious value to fame. A few things matter more than your reputation. But the point is here that we should shift the order. So if you desire impact more than attention, then any fame you achieve will be based on a solid foundation

and your happiness won't disappear when the attention does. So if somebody makes an individual breakthrough contribution technologically or something, they'll become famous for 15 seconds. But in most cases, when that fade fames, as it inevitably will, because they're not the type of people who are doing the work to increase their fame or maintain their fame daily. Their happiness doesn't go away because the work to increase their fame or maintain their fame daily, right?

Their happiness doesn't go away because the work that actually is meaningful to them, which is creating change, creating, in this case, whatever technologies, still is there for them, right? And so, you know, they might feel a little twinge, but it's nothing like, you know, the pain that a little twinge, but it's nothing like, you know, the pain that a celebrity feels when the spotlight is fading. It's famed for famed sake, isn't it? And, man, the, I actually think, I actually think that in all of the article, in all of your blog posts, the wanting to be somebody is probably the biggest red pill

to swallow in there. It's certainly one of them. And I don't know how much you know about my background, but I was on a couple of reality TV shows in the UK. So like that's the weather, blue take, wanker and all that sort of stuff comes from. I want to air with the celebrity. Oh no, no, please for the love of Christ. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, is people don't get to win that show, or be successful on that show, because of something that they do, or even something that they are,

it just completely dilutes everyone down to the lowest common denominator. The people that win might be very talented at a thing, but they don't win because of their talent. They win because of the fact that they chose the right girl or guy and have abs and got a tan and Said the right thing at the right moment. Like there was a real talented boxer on there. There's been doctors on there There's been also two people. They didn't do well or badly because of anything that they actually did or created or had impact or worked at, they were just there and gifted fame

for no reason. And the challenge with that is, as you've hit the nail on the head, like those who give it can take it the way. And if you put your sense of identity and your sense of happiness around that fame and that fame is simply hollow, when it goes, you're left with nothing. Whereas if you have it on a foundation, a very firm foundation of it being built on something that you love to do that you create, that scales over time. That becomes anti fragile. You know, I'm sure there'll be times inventors

if there's anyone who's listening who's ever got famous and then had it go away, especially if you're an inventor, you might be actually like, right, thank fuck all of those, that attention's gone. I can now actually get back to doing some work. Right, yeah, if it's all right, I have a couple questions. Hit me. One, do you think that the cast, and I don't know if you've kept in touch, but did life

get easier or should say better or worse for the majority of people after the show. And two, do you think your was was the show and kind of recognizing the danger of that fame or that taste of attention that you received? Did that was an impetus to start the podcast and explore some of these other ideas? Got you, yeah, two really good questions, man. So with regards to the other people on the show, I still follow some of them online, I don't follow any of the girls, I didn't speak to the girls while I was on there, so to point

at me what following them when I'm off. But some of the boys are doing good, a couple of them are on other reality TV shows or doing whatever. There's certainly a little bit of a case of some of the guys who've got a taste of fame and are now sort of clinging onto it. Some of the guys have now embraced normality again and just see it as what it was, which was a good experience. The problem is that people want fame for the purpose of being famous. They want to be famous for being well known, not famous for having done something. And it's so dangerous dangerous man. Like, I log on to hear people talking on live streams about their reputation or what people are saying about them

which was created off the back of nothing. Like, it was picked up out of the back of no virtue. No, just nothing, nothing happened. They were selected the same way as a lightning selector victim, you know, like just with a tiny, a tiny little bit more discrimination. And I don't know, I think that all of the guys, certainly from my season, I think that they will, they're slowly on the path to kind of integrating those two different worlds, like the post sort of fame world or the poster relevancy world and the world where they still were.

And then on the second one about kind of my insight into that, yeah, it certainly identified in me that I was playing a little bit of a persona, that that route wasn't really the one that I wanted. Like don't get me wrong, man. If I was able to get the sort of traction that the top level people, because the show's kind of got exponentially biggest since I was on it five years ago, if I was able to get that sort of traction because of this podcast,

or because of other stuff that I do, maybe some writing, maybe some whatever it might be, if I was able to get that kind of traction from something that I genuinely care about, I would love it. But even if I didn't, I don't care. I do this podcast. I don't like, I love the audience. Everyone that's listening, I love you to bits and thank you so much for being a part

of this journey because it is the most fun, most engaging, most exhilarating activity and project I've ever worked on. But in the nicest way possible, if you all fucked off tomorrow, I'd still do it. Like I would still be here, still speaking to people, still loving this process. And that's the most robust situation I think to be in. And I hope everyone that's listening finds a thing in their life. And that could be being a mother, being a brother, you know, being a good friend, being a good community, so that could be

being a high performing athlete or a good businessman or someone who's creative, whatever it might be. Like if you find that thing that makes you lose yourself in it, the fame, notoriety, wanting to be somebody can come and go, but the joy of the activity itself remains and that's really pure. Hey, man. Yeah, especially, I think, like you pointed to in creative work, where, you know, oftentimes the thing that you think is best is maybe least appreciated.

And so you have to, and you know, the thing that gets, you know, most popular might make you feel misunderstood or some, you know, like, hey, almost betrayed by a fan base. So it's like, and obviously for a long time, you have very little chance of monetizing creative activities. So if you find that you would do either way, and doing something for attention is an incredibly fragile endeavor. Yeah, I think that gets, it's been magnified, right, by social media, because the content, often which is actually the best, or adds the most value, or hits people the deepest, is also some of the worst performing shit that goes out on there, you know?

Like I can put a trailer out for an episode, which is taken two hours to research, two hours to record, another couple of hours of editing, and then put us a 60 second subtitle trailer together on Instagram or something, and it kind of does okay, some people supported, some people don't. But then you put up a topless photo with a couple of emojis, and it absolutely flies. And you're like, well, you gotta play the game. And you know, it is what it is.

You can't hate that, but it's so seductive, right? Because you think, well, I just keep on chasing what people, the B somebody route, right? Why should I bother doing something when I'm not getting the volume of attention that I do when I want to be somebody? Yes, and I think this is, you pointed to the order mattering, right?

Like the thing that you care deeply about is what's important, and then you're doing these other activities that are essentially marketing to sustain and build. Got to play the fucking game, Kyle. Got to play fucking game. That's right. Yeah, you got to be able to, I mean, I'm a marketer. Getting attention is a good game, right? 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, of what you are doing. Like, are you wanting the attention or the likes on your photo because you genuinely think

that that's going to bring you happiness? Or are you playing the game because you know that if you do that, it furthers something which you truly care about. That's the difference between Matrix and Red Pill. Amen. Cool. Okay, so we should want to do something not to be somebody. It's going to make us more robust if and when the somebody that we have become goes away.

It also means that we don't have our sense of self worth. Lynch pins to other people's opinions of us. And that's so important as well. Like before we move on. Fuck man, like being in control of your own happiness or not giving other people that control. Like that's one of the principle reasons that young people's relationships fail

because they're so terrified of opening up to another person and another human being, that they're gonna be like, they don't ever actually end up being fully faithful to them because they're terrified of what that means. They don't ever end up actually fully opening up to them. You know, like it's, it's so important, I think, to not have your sense of self worth leveraged up against other people's opinions for you. So we've got, we want a life of struggle, we want to do something not to be somebody.

Next, wanting extreme wealth versus wanting a frugal heart, what does that mean? So I think, are there a show up and how has this line that I think frames this whole point really perfectly. He says, money is human happiness in the abstract. He then, who is no longer capable of enjoying happiness in the concrete, devotes his heart entirely to money. So, like we just talked about, right? If you are trying to go after fame for fainseg, that's almost like it's an abstract version of love versus doing something where you actually have to pour love into something, right? So in this case, it is, you know, when we have no other more meaningful or purposeful or

Yeah connection in our life Money is kind of the default that we assume will fill that hole And so another way to look at this is actually another Peter Teele example from Siri one he He talks about definite optimists versus indefinite optimists. Definite optimists are optimists about something in particular. So entrepreneurs tend to fit in this category. So optimistic about sustainable energy and what exactly that should look like.

What specific piece needs to improve in order to make the world better. And then indefinite optimists tend to, they think the world's going to get better, but really they don't care how and these people tend to be in finance and are obsessed with optionality. Because really, I think really because they lack vision, right? And so if money is the most interesting thing that you think you can collect, you know, like, and you don't have more concrete reasons for achieving that, right? In some level of optionality is incredibly freeing and useful, right? But if you just keep going on and on and on and playing the same game, it's just,

you haven't been very imaginative, right? So, yeah, so like fame, wealth is super addicting and it's easy to think that happiness lies behind the next financial milestone. Obviously, if any of us who have been lucky enough to make some money know that that's truth. And then, you know, obsession with extreme wealth also is dangerous to your morals. I think we need some level of humility to admit that.

But so on our way to acquiring wealth, we may give ourselves more slack in the actions that we take to acquire it. And then once we're wealthy, it's super easy to listen to the sick fans around us that hold us to less strict moral standards than they do to their peers. So we begin to feel that, you know, moral rules may not apply to us in the same way. So I think the reframe here that I find really helpful actually comes from Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media. He's been in the tech world forever, he produces a ton of like how-to guides for programmers and things like that. But he has this metaphor that we should think of money as gasoline on a road trip. So it absolutely sucks to run out of it, so you have to pay attention to it. You have to make sure that your tank is reasonably full. But the trip is not about getting gas at all.

So that's not the purpose. The purpose, the gas has a purpose to power your trip. But the trip is in no way, like you would never plan a trip around going to the gas station, right? Unless you're preparing for a longer voyage. So, yeah, another antidote is to stoke our desire to develop the frugal heart. So that's the switch, right? So obsessed from obsessing to extreme wealth, right? And that's where I kind of use the word extreme, right? Because obviously wealth provides so many powerful options and enables so many important things in life that it obviously matters. But from that kind of moving from the obsession to extreme wealth to developing a frugal heart.

And I stole that from this novel, Zorba the Greek. And it's basically the ability to enjoy the little things in life. So like anyone who likes hiking knows that life doesn't get better than a really good hike with someone you love and those costs very, very little. So, if we're able to enjoy more things about our life as it is, I think we're less likely to go into debt for things that we really don't care that much about or add unnecessary stress to keep up with the consumption of those around us.

And I think, you know, a frugal heart also creates freedom by just lowering our personal burn rate. You know, so if you can get through life without, you know, the most expensive cars or, you know, cars or brand new clothes every month or whatever it is for you. If you can lower your burn rate, it creates freedom and possibility and choices that go away once you have a certain, you know, you have to maintain a certain lifestyle. Man, I had Morgan Houseell writer on Collaborative fund and X Motley Fulwreiter as well on here, one of the best Twitter accounts for finance and wealth management stuff. And he said, he has this amazing definition of wealth. He says, wealth is the Ferrari that you didn't buy. It's the square footage in the house that you didn't purchase. Wealth allows you to do what you want

with who you want, when you want, for as long as you want, with, it allows you to do what you want, with who you want, when you want, for as long as you want, with no one telling you to do anything else. You're like, there you go, that is what it is. It's an allowance of freedom. But the frugal heart thing, the wanting to do something and the wanting to embrace the ordinary, those three go together for me. I think the wanting an easy life versus wanting a life of struggle actually sits outside of it, but this is something that people that listening might have realized or noticed in themselves during lockdown and other i certainly have, that i've never paid such close attention or taken such joy from tiny little things. Like I do a morning walk every morning. I know the order in which the trees on the street that I walk down on my morning walk. I know the

order in which they leaped. I know this one went first and that one went about two days later and this one's got a little bit of flower blossom on it and this one's got that and like I know the shape of them, I know the color of them, I know and it's sound like I've turned into some horticultural fanatic or something like that which I haven't. But the point is that because the amount of novelty that was going on in my life got down regulated because there's so much less stuff that I can do because the pandemic's brought that down, I'm now paying closer attention to things that were right under my nose the whole time and I'm now actually taking joy from them,

despite the fact that they haven't changed. Like my garden's been the same garden as it's been for five years, but I never actually watched the, some of the plants and the flowers in my garden bloom and it will and then leaf and then do all these other bits and pieces. But I'm taking joy from that, you know? And it's like that there's definitely an amount of frugality that's occurred due to the increase or the reduction in novelty.

I think that the the pandemics caused. Yes, man, I load your leaf example. Like, I know you're a lot of culturalist over here. I, there's nothing. I actually, I caught myself one day staring at a single leaf on the ground for like 15 minutes. And it's amazing that these things that we normally will just walk by, like you said, if you attend to them, just place your attention on them and you keep it there, they cease to be boring and they become impossibly interesting and beautiful. Right? Like, any little mundane thing, especially biological organisms, like a leaf.

And yeah, I think that that is the perfect example for developing fruit. Hey, I've been thinking, I've been reading your blog post a lot. I put it on my, oh, here's one for the people who listen to the most recent life hacks episode. It's a long blog post. I didn't want to read it on my laptop. I used the sent to Kindle Chrome extension to send it onto my paper white and it was delivered with all of the formatting retained. I was able to edit the font size, send to Kindle on Google Chrome extension store, go and get it it's free and it will turn your e-reader into an article reader at the, literally the click of one button and it will turn your e-reader into an article reader. The literally the click of one button,

and it keeps the author's name, and as tightly as it's absolutely phenomenal. The final thing on the frugal heart before we move on, another Morgan House-Soulism from when I spoke to him. I was talking about the fact that I feel like there's a genetic set point, it's obviously socialized, but it comes so early in life, I don't think that you can read a class it as that, or you can class it less as that, shall I say.

You have a spending set point, a materialist set point, mostly that you've probably inherited from your family, your siblings, your parents, if your parents were very keeping up with the Jones Zizi, they were always buying a new car. If people were spending a lot of money on birthday presents and Christmas presents and the relationships were always shows of gifts and showering each other in this sort of thing, you will have grown up with that.

And if you are unable to deprogram that desire, you'd better hope that you get a good performing job that pays a lot of money. Because if you don't, you're going to spend your entire life chasing more and more in an attempt to try and fulfill that materialist desire. Whereas the frugal heart side of this, the person who's just happy looking at a leaf, I know that's another like a stupid extreme example, but the person who would be happy spending an afternoon with the person that they love going for a beautiful walk and having a nice meal on the evening time, as opposed to it being some five-star hotel, trip away to the seychelles with fresh fruit, float in basket and fireworks and all this

sort of stuff, you know. The difference between those two in terms of enjoyment is the same but as you identified the leveraging of the system in terms of how much they need to work to achieve the same level of happiness because presuming that your the money that you earn is a function of how much you have to work It's totally different. So yeah, man, Fregalha, I'm all over it. Yeah, and like you pointed to the point isn't to, you know, make less and go join a commune or something, it's the point is to liberate yourself from the unending need for more. So it's not

about, you know, doing less, it is, it is about enjoying more. Got you. Okay, so final section wanting to be extraordinary versus wanting to embrace the ordinary, we kind of already touched on it with the leaf thing, right? Yeah, I love how you tie those three together. And I think they do. There are some kind of, I think that you can really get at some core shifts. But if you tug on one of these, you're

going to see a lot of change, right, in maybe unexpected areas. But yeah, so the idea, this is another one where it's a little bit paradoxical, right? Because there's nothing that I can think of that's more common in the West at least than the desire to be extraordinary or to be special. And I think this kind of obsession gives us a odd relationship to other people, right? Because if the ideal is the extraordinary or the special, then who are these people around us who are not extraordinary or special?

Like what is their value? And then also what is your own value? So until you achieve this extraordinaryness, you are less than, which I think is unhelpful in a lot of ways. We also, we also, like, one of the other kind of boring things about the desire to be extraordinary is that we all basically want to be special in the same way. It's like we want to be more famous, we want to be more rich, we want to be more powerful, we want to be more powerful. There's very few of us who are like, I'm going to be extraordinarily loving or kind or caring. There's not a lot of that, I mean, there's a lot of people saying that, but they're saying it

loudly in a way that makes it look like maybe they want fame more than actual caring, right? So, and actually one of the things that I anchor to on this one is it comes from Jack Carrowack. And I was read, this must have been 10 years ago now is this brain picking posted a bunch of writing advice from Jack Kerrowak. And it was just three words, respect your experience. And so Emerson later put it this way, you know, he said, trust th trust myself every heart vibrates to that iron string. And so the paradox here is that if we can drop this need to be special and extraordinary, we then free ourselves to be more creative, productive, happy, and authentic.

So because we don't have our sense of what is ordinary, right, is our life as it is. And the need to be extraordinary, then puts this layer of disrespect on our life as it is, right? So we come from this anxious place of needing this very specific, very like we talked about, boring vision of a world, of a new world for ourselves, but if we're able to take a step back, we can free ourselves from kind of that memetic, you know, like memetic desire of needing what our neighbors have to actually doing the things that are most energizing and exciting and meaningful for us. And this, you know, I return to that Emerson line, my life is for itself and not for a spectacle.

It's like, we're not here to create a life that somebody can go write a book about and make it a best seller, right? That's not the point of living. I mean, you know, again, like I'm not moralizing. Maybe that's, but that sounds like an absolute nightmare to me. Like the point is to craft a life that is lived beautifully and well, and for me, as generously and, hopefully, just a good life, right?

And you want that to be an internal experience. So yeah, and I think, I think if you can release even just trying to, you know, release this desire for specialness, it can be really liberating. That sounds or that might be taken by some people as accepting a life of mediocrity. Yeah, and that's the big caveat on this one is that when I was sending us around to people, you know, that the article to get, that was a big place for pushback is, you know, you know, we don't want a mediocre life, right? And so the point isn't at all that we shouldn't strive, right? The first thing we talked about was struggle, and the point isn't at all to be small. The point is to be more yourself, and Kevin Kelly actually has this really great advice to

find the thing that only you can do and do that. But you're never going to do that if you're trying for some very, if you're starting trying to be extraordinary, right? At least I don't think so. I haven't seen it. The people who end up doing the most interesting, fascinating, unexpected things are those who find some interest that they have in their life and then follow that and follow that and and amplify that. And that's where I think some of the most interesting art comes from, some of the most

like touching, you know, speeches or writing, right? Someone who sets out to write a book trying to communicate as authentically as possible their idea of something. It's going to be much more pleasant to read. And paradoxically, probably have a higher chance of success because they can actually speak to someone, then someone who starts out to write a magnum opus. I'm going to write my great work. And people, you can get away with that

if you're already super experienced in ridiculously skill or have some like genius intellect, right? But like, especially in starting, starting out, I think, you know, if you start out from a foundation of respect for your life, your worldviews, you're going to, you're going to create something much more stable than if you start from a place of, well, my view doesn't matter until I achieve X, right? Or I get X followers. So I think the shortcut there is to respect your own life, respect your own struggles, and respect doesn't mean give into, right? So, if somebody is respecting your experience, if you're struggling with overeating or laziness, whatever it is, it doesn't mean that you should just keep doing that right like obviously you

don't that's like your deep desire is not to continue on that path but to look at it respect it actually reminds me that Carl Rogers this psychologist has this line he says the the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am then I can change I think that's what this shift is about, right? If the extraordinary is what who we are not, then embracing the ordinary is embracing who we are now, even if we want to grow. Yeah.

So there's a long way of getting there, but I think, does that, I... I love it. I really like the idea of wanting an extraordinary life being disrespectful to the person that you are. I think it's I think that's very, very true as well. You know, any of the the sort of type A, people as well that are listening, you'll know what it's like. You can do the thing that you said that you were going to do and still feel dissatisfaction in having achieved it,

because that's only the thing that you did at your level of doing, rather than it being well, like that person's obviously doing it at that level. I know I did it my way, or I did that workout. I ran the did it my way or I did that workout I run the the marathon in four hours and ten minutes, but Elliot Kipchul get running in two hours You know, so like who the fuck am I like it was all right, but you never actually allow yourself to Pat yourself on the back for your own accomplishments because there's always this desire for more it's the It's the inner soul equivalent of a materialist wealth mindset, you know, it's like this sort of hedonic treadmill for self-worth

almost And it's constraining right like it narrows your vision Which you know like in in certain types of athletics can be really helpful But in a more kind of like open world game if you will it's way less helpful because like we talked about earlier You can get stuck very easily On the wrong hill you can you you can get you can you can you can win the game and then realize you were playing the wrong game the whole time. Yeah, man. So, we've gone through the four different layers. I want to revisit my favorite passage from the blog and then I'm going to get you to

give everyone who's listening some tips and some advice on how to sustain change. We've read pilled them, but what, you know, what are some of the next actions that they can take as they move forward? Also, going to give you an opportunity to make any changes that you've changed. You've altered your mindset on in the last four years since then, but this is my favorite passage. And this was kind of the one I think that made me really fall in love with the article. So my biggest fear is to live a life I regret. It's easy to fall into the trap, proud is talking about, and spend life blindly chasing something you never actually wanted. Blindly following your desires makes you a slave

to your impulses, slave to the assumptions of those around you, the advertisements you're exposed to and the confused chemical signals of your body. Our default is to spend our life as rats, blindly chasing the next dopamine hit. This isn't a setting easily adjusted, but it's worth shifting our aims and becoming fully human. If we don't pause and ask ourselves what we want to want. We will spend our lives focused on those unhealthy aims defined for us by others and the worst parts of ourselves. We will pass these bad assumptions about life onto our children and loved ones. We will reinforce these boring, desperate defaults in everyone we encounter. To achieve freedom, we must be able to think for ourselves. If we don't cut to the core and

program our wants, our desires, then our best case scenario is to be the most successful, rich, or famous slave. If we never peer into our programming, then we may end up being the cleverest rat, but that's hardly worth celebrating. Asking yourself what you want to want can help you avoid wanting the wrong things. That's it man, you nailed it with that, so good. Thank you sir, yeah that I think that that summary did yeah makes me want to ask the question. So good anyway so we are moving on first things first. What have you changed your mind about on this article since you did it? Maybe nothing, but have you changed your mind on anything? So you gave me, yeah, I love this opportunity to get to revisit this.

And there's a lot of little things I have changed as a writer, of course, but the only big shift that I would make, and this is purely a, I think, phase of life situation, is that I would focus more on shifting into things being nourishing or wholesome in the long run for life rather than kind of emphasizing the struggle throughout. And so I think that would be, that would be like a big, there would be just a tonal shift. Because I think what comes off and what I think I, depends how you're old you are. So a 22 year old is probably needs like the war your mindset.

You're fighting, it feels good to be pushing against something constantly. But then you get a little bit older, maybe you have things shift. And so I think that the tone, and this is why I think self-reliance is so important in asking questions like this, right? The whole point of this is to explore your desires. If you were to choose your desires, what would they be?

And so for me, now the things that resonate more are pushing more towards nourishing wholesome, kind of sustainable shifts. I also add, I think there's a lot of value to accepting current desires, like we just talked about in the ordinary, and doing more subtle work and uncovering our desires. So we talked about the accepting quite a bit. The Carl Rogers line, the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I can change. So although we're talking about shifting very deep parts of ourselves, we have to simultaneously acknowledge and accept those things.

And then also, I think I find shadow work really, really interesting. And that's basically, you know, for our purposes here, finding desires that aren't quite obvious. And so Robert Bly offers a really practical example of this in his book, A Little Book of the Human Shadow. He suggests that we think about someone that you really hate. You can do this right now. Think about someone you really dislike, rubs you the wrong way, or who just drives you insane? And you probably think about this person, I am not like that. And my whole purpose in existing is to be not like that, right? So, and then, you know, take a step further,

think about the traits that make you hate them the most, the ones that get under your skin the most. And if we're being honest, if we do this with a little bit of humility, we can probably find pieces in ourself desires that we have that we really don't like. We can find the things that we hate most and others tends to be the unseeing or rejected pieces of ourself. And I think that's really interesting practice.

Another source for shadow work, shadow hunting, is Dave Chapman, who's the author of the site, meaning this, but he has another cycle, Buddhism for vampires. And so another suggestion for finding these kind of hidden desires is to pay attention to kind of weaker ones or desires that you would normally not act on at all, that kind of are just like a passing wind and grab hold of them and you know, he calls these velities. Emerson might call them a whim and you know, like so if we're trying to discover what we really

want out of life or you know, what do you really want? What do you want to learn? Even if you're just looking to learn about yourself a bit more. You know Emerson said about this kind of shadow hunting that you know he says he hopes that this is better than a whim at last but we cannot spend the day in explanation. So I think our our talkative minds will often reject our actual ones. And then because we've rejected our true natural and maybe more wholesome desires that just happen, we are repressing for one reason or another, maybe it's the sial norms or it's inconvenient or whatever, those are then hidden and replaced by less nourishing, less wholesome desires. So, I think, I think, you know, this isn't something we talked about a lot, but like actually

finding your true desires would have been worth exploring. Well, let's do it. We've still got time, man. Before we move on to that, actually, I want to say about that the the lowest lower level of stimulus thing that I mentioned that allowed me to appreciate the trees on my street or the Maybe made you focus on your leaf for 15 minutes. I think that ties in it's the ordinary versus extraordinary thing.

And by thinking that life should be grander than it is, we almost feel a little bit embarrassed or shameful of some of the wants that we have. So for instance, I hid my intellectual curiosity for probably the best part of a decade. From when I got to uni and became a club promoter, I was like big dick on campus, all this stuff, until pretty much until just after love island, when I got delivered that fatal dose of contrast between me and the guys who were the persona I was trying to play. But I was like a sh- yeah, kind of a shame of it. Just a little bit like I didn't think that that was the vision of what a young man was supposed to be. I was around a very alpha male type of mentality.

And I just meant that I didn't allow myself to indulge in that. I didn't want to admit the fact that I had a desire to watch space documentaries on a night time. I was embarrassed about my empathy. I thought that it was a set of sign of weakness, the fact that I genuinely feel discomfort when I see someone else suffer. And I can't get over that. I was like, oh, that's not what a courageous alpha male does. That's not what a man's supposed to do. They're supposed

to be able to deal with things, you know? Like, so all of these different bits and pieces, I had covered over with memetic or kind of unwanted wants. The want to be seen as a powerful man, the want to be seen as a capable businessman, the want to be seen as someone who a man who is attractive to women because of the stereotypical characteristics that he thinks women find attractive, you know, roll the clock forward as much as you want. And it's only upon doing sufficient introspective work to find out what my the fact that I have crushing, crippling empathy is sometimes inconvenient, but I'm proud of it, you know? Like why shouldn't I be proud about the fact that I desperately care, or that sometimes when I see a dog that looks really happy, I want to cry.

Like, why should I feel upset about that? Why should I feel embarrassed about that? Why should I feel embarrassed about the fact that I've got this intellectual curiosity? Because if I hadn't allowed that to remanifest itself, I'd be two and a half million downloads less without a podcast or a project that I care about. But the fact that I did do that has permitted me to do this thing and meet all these cool people and connect with an audience that loves the project and then find random strangers on the other side of the planet like yourself. Get a piece of work that I think is fantastic. And then use my show as a delivery system to then try and distribute that understanding and learning to make thousands and thousands of other people's lives better You know like if that's not an argument for trying to deprogram the wants that you haven't worked out if you wanted to want like I don't know what it is

that you haven't worked out if you wanted to want? Like, I don't know what it is. Yeah, that's incredible transformation. What do you, what was the, the impetus, or what did those first steps look like? Were they big, were they small? You know, like, was it, was it, you know, letting yourself put on that space document, or like, what were some of the, do you remember some of those early?

Yeah, good, good question again with that. So I think, um, I think that starting to see it was, it was a good time for it to happen because it was the advent of the Jordan Peterson era. time for it to happen because it was the advent of the Jordan Peterson era. And it was a time when sort of 2017, just as he was coming to the forefront, just as Rogan was really, really starting to pick up speed. And you could learn from someone like Ben Shapiro or Sam Harris or Brat or Eric Weinstein or John Peterson, whoever it might be, there was like tons of mindful content floating around. And you were just able to swim in it, man. So that was, that was a big part for me, like learning

to tell the truth was the, the single biggest change that I made. And hopefully today we have encouraged people that there is huge, huge value in understanding what their own truth is. So you'd mentioned something that you thought that we could revisit, and then I also want to look at some of the tactics that people can use to reinforce wanting the right things, or how we can make ourselves want the right things. So, I was actually talking to the examples of the shadow work. So the, you know, recognizing that the people who you hate the most likely are useful mirrors to find desires in yourself that you've repressed. And the exercise of kind of paying attention as closely as you possibly

can to whims or kind of little quiet desires that you normally would just ignore and kind of look into and give those a chance. Those are the two kind of strategies that I would. I forgot. I need to forget, man. I've got another one for you, real small one. Anyone who's thinking, oh, this all sounds well in good Chris, like it's cool that you found a passion, but I don't know what mine is. Think back to what you did between the age of eight and 14, for fun.

Think about some of the stuff that you did there, this example, the world's best color picker, it's a lady and She got asked on this interview. It's like so she makes these amazing designs for Different clothing companies of different interior design companies and stuff like that Selecting just the quite the right shade of of pastel pink to go with this shade of pastel blue and blah blah blah And somebody asked her on an interview, so what are your qualifications?

Why are you so good at this? And so why, I've done a lot of continuous pressure to professional development and this and the other, but really, it all stems from when I was nine, and for Christmas, I got the biggest box of Crayola from my mom and dad that I could get, and just ever since then, you know, I've just loved matching colours, I've loved doing that. And I think back to my childhood between the age of eight and 14,

and what was I spending a lot of time doing, I'm an only child, so I was listening to audiobooks, like audio tapes, like his dark materials by Philip Pullman, like, 40 tapes, 40, like 40 tapes, 40 double-sided tapes, back to back across three tomes, like 60, 70 hours. And what is the 2020 audiobook if it's not a podcast? So that's a good way, I think,

to kind of look at some of the things that used to bring you joy, especially if you've spent a long time perhaps Mapping over that with societal norms and path of least resistance and all that stuff. Think back to what you did as a kid. Think back to the stuff that you enjoyed Yeah, that's that's perfect. I mean, I took that's an awesome example. It's super quiet. Love the idea you Running around with like tapes in it It's super cool. I love the idea you running around with like tapes in it Backpack or whatever. Yeah, Maddie was cool. It was really cool. Okay, so how do we make ourselves want the right things? What's some of the tactics people can use to reinforce wanting the right things?

So the article has a ton. I don't want to Use up our audio here to go through too many of the little ones, but I think, you know, the core ones are your community. So paying really, you know, do the people and communities you spend time in want to want the same things that you want to want. So, you know, and this is, you know, CrossFit, I, Iowa is like obviously an incredible place for someone who wants to desire to work out. You know, there's a few better places to go if you want to, you know, really want to

work out. I think of like worship communities for people who want to get, you know, grow spiritually in some way. Even, you know, so, and this is all, you know, various sizes and play different roles and affect different desires. So, like, I've been experimenting a lot with book clubs, just as ways of, even with just me and one other person, where we're reading a book together and then talking about, you know, it's like picking someone who you want to want like, you know, and finding ways of just spending more time in their presence, right? Your marriage, right? Like your partner is obviously

a huge, huge, I mean, I think Ron Hottie said that's the best life hack ever. Just getting a good partner. Yeah, like if you can get a great partner whose desires are maybe even a little bit of headiores on certain spectrums of these desires that we are talking about, that can do a lot of work for you. And then the company that you work for, what's their culture like, what kind of desires do they add? So anytime there's people involved,

I think that's probably the highest leverage area where we can start shifting our desires. I think regular reflection, especially journaling where there's a record, right? So you can see, or if you are desiring or failing to kind of push yourself in a certain direction, like you see that over time, right? And it's painfully obvious how little attention or how frequently you're struggling with a certain desire. And I think those reminders go a long way.

Internal scorecards are popularized by Warren Buffett who he basically talks about how he has an internal scorecard for investing and that internal versus external. So an external scorecard is, you know, what are the returns on the fund versus internal am I executing on my strategy in a way that I believe is good, right? And being able to separate out, you know, this is, it goes back to the fame versus doing thing, right? If you have an internal scorecard that is measuring what you're actually doing and taking action on, that's going to help a lot in pushing you through these asymmetric activities where you have to do a ton of hard work that may or may not pay off, especially in the short run. And if you're just using an external scorecard, like, what's my follow account, how much money am I making?

It's going to de-energize you very quickly. So I think those three are pretty powerful, especially, again, the communities. I think everything follows from that, honestly. Well, you're re-jigging the mimetic predisposition that we have to your advantage, right? Yes, yes. It's such a, it's such a cliche. You are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. But you've got to think now, like, there will be some people in lockdown, some people listening right now, perhaps for whom I am one of the

people that they've spent the most time with during lockdown. You know, like they've listened to this podcast more than they've seen the fifth, the bottom fifth person in their life. Does that make sense? You know, like some guys, they've looked at a huge gift of podcasts, right, as they have total control. If someone, they're not finding what they need in there, like in the physical area around them,

it's so podcast is such a low friction way of like spending time with different types of people. Feeling connected, you know? Yeah, yeah. So I think you're totally right with that. Like getting yourself a squad of people who are like the person that you want to be like. And obviously, what that, the implication of that is that you need to work out what you want to want or else you're just going to think, oh, well,

that guy over there, he's got, he's the one with the Ferrari or he's like, oh, hang on a second. I listened to that podcast with Kyle and Chris and they said, frugal heart. Let me, that means I probably need to go back to a little bit more work. And then maybe you're fully actualized and you're like, actually, yeah, I do want a Ferrari because it's shit hot. Cool.

If that's you speaking your truth forward. Yeah, I think that's great. The internal scorecard thing as well, man. Like, that is the marker of someone who is so resilient. Like, everyone will have that friend who just seems not unflappable, but just like they're always on their own path, you know? Like, stuff will go right, stuff will go wrong.

But they've just got this higher, higher purpose, this kind of road that they're walking. They don't really ever seem to get kind of flustered if they do have setbacks, they overcome them. I've got a buddy, a sunny webster who's been on the show twice. A lot of people listening all know who he is. X Olympian Olympic weightlifter. And man, that guy just keeps on coming up against big setbacks in one form or another. And he just steam rolls them.

He absolutely flattens them, which is easy when you've got like 28 inch legs, but he completely annihilates whatever happens to him. He's like, oh, okay, cool. That's a thing. But doesn't matter. I'm just doing my thing. I'm on my path, completing my journey. And he doesn't give a fuck, man.

It's so inspiring. I love being around him. I adore being around him. That's awesome. I always think of that as somebody is so interested in their own game that they don't have time to be worried about their score on a game that they're not playing, right?

Like they're so fascinated and they, you know, into their own game. And I think that's that's the goal. Bro, that is it. When you are so interested in your own game, you don't care about the score on a game you're not playing. Fuck, yes. I love it. Look, man, any parting remarks, any parting thoughts, any anything that you'd want to leave the listeners with, we've sort of thrown a lot at them. Obviously, the blog post will be linked below so people can go and read it in full, but yeah, anything you want to leave them with. Yeah, I think, you know, I just hope you sincerely ask yourself what do you want to want, especially in hard times,

especially when you're being forced to reconsider values anyway. It's a perfect opportunity to say, is that what I really wanted anyway? Is it possible that this is actually an opportunity to go after what I truly want. And yeah, yeah, so I, you know, asked a question over and over and over and over again, and I promise it can be helpful. Man, how amazing. Look, where can people find you online? Have you got any plans 2020, considering writing

any more stuff as well? Yeah, I need to. It's been, yeah, I'm on Twitter, a chialetion, but actually I have a draft of something that I've been noodling on, maybe I'll have to run it by you. Oh, dude, you got to get it out there, man. If it's even a hundredth of what you want to want is then you got to get it out there. Look, I'm really glad to everybody that's made it through this podcast. I know there's a lot to take in. I know there's a lot of kind of different concepts and it can sound a little bit sort of, I don't know, like, erudite and esoteric sometimes where we're talking about these real fluffy concepts, but I wouldn't have gone out of my way to try and deliver

this message if I didn't think it was something that really can move the needle in your life. Like this is, we are talking about the fundamental underpinnings of why you are here. And then on top of that, what the implications are of that relate to how you're going to operate within the world. And the things that you do very much so can constitute the legacy of what happens when you're gone, you know? So you should very, very seriously consider everything that we've gone through today. You should totally go and read what you want to want on Kyle's blog, which will be linked in the show notes below. And if you've got any questions, if you want some clarification about bits and pieces, if you just got some ideas at Chris will X or at Kyle S N, which

will also be linked in the show notes below. On Twitter, wherever it is that you follow us, Kyle, man, thank you so much. And thank you for your work as well. You know, this is a, this really is a fucking magnum opus of a blog post. So, you know, congratulations from someone who's five years late on saying it, but, but really appreciate your work. Thanks so much, man, this has been awesome.