Modern Wisdom - #205 - James Smith - How To Design A Life You Love

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

James Smith is a PT and not a life coach. Following your default desires and social norms is a surefire route to misery, yet we're given very little guidance on how to design a life we love. Open wide for today's red pill . Expect to learn James' principles for avoiding a dreary existence, his best tips for a first date, how to overcome anxiety, why wealth can't just be quantified in a bank account, why dick pics aren't that bad and much more... Sponsor: Shop Eleiko’s full range at https://www.shop.eleiko.com (enter code MW15 for 15% off everything) Extra Stuff: Pre Order Not A Life Coach - https://amzn.to/30VkVdb Join James' Academy - https://www.jamessmithacademy.com/ Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - 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

People of the internet pepper your angus, right? Even James Smith today on Modern Wisdom. This is an episode I've been looking forward to for ages. I mean, James kept missing each other. We've been trying to schedule this in for literally years. But finally, the stars aligned and today does not disappoint. If you're not careful, life can end up in a place not only that you don't want to be, but that you didn't even mean to get to and following your default desires and society's norms is a surefire

route to misery. Now James is not a life coach, however he is someone that reflect a lot on his experiences and today we get to hear his principles for how he designs his life to be as happy and fulfilling as possible. This includes how to avoid a dreary existence, his best tips for a first date, how to overcome anxiety, why wealth can't be quantified in a bank account, why dick picks aren't actually all that bad and much more. If you are new here or even if you're a long time listener, make sure that you've hit

the subscribe button, you are still getting three episodes every single week, Monday, Thursday and Saturday, with the most fascinating humans on the planet, just like James. It would make me very happy, indeed, the show is growing so ridiculously quickly. During the month of July, we did over 800,000 downloads, which I don't even know what to think about that. Thank you to everyone that continues to support the show. I love you to bits. Yeah, hit the subscribe button. Make sure that you do it, right? You're doing a miss one of these episodes. Oh yeah, final warning. This episode is a little bit sweary, slight language warning. Does get a bit sweary. James is sweary, I can be a bit sweary as well, so yeah, there's a few

fucks in it. But yeah, it's game time. Please welcome the wise and wonderful James Smith. James Bloody Smith in the building. How are you doing, man? I'm very well, thank you. Thank you very much for having me on. I think this has been quite long overdue. Very, very, very long time coming. Yes, so the internet, the internet is waiting on Tenta Hooks to hear what we've got to say today. So just to clarify, you're not a life coach and you also didn't write a diet book. So who are you then? I'm still trying to figure that out myself mate. I'm still, I like, I felt like I was someone that didn't belong to the fitness industry, but I was in it.

And then I certainly don't want to belong to the life coach industry, but I still want to venture into it. I feel like I'm almost like a lost sheep amongst everyone else. Like getting into fitness, I had such passion for it, but I'm sure you'll appreciate this. I fucking hated most of the people that I was with. And what I didn't want to do was recreate any of their work in the slightest. And finally enough, the name for that first book came,

I was pissed with my publishers at Hawksmore. And you go to Hawksmore for a nice lunch in London. It's like 5 to 30 pm, we're doing shots at the table still with the last people in the restaurant. And someone's like, well, what are we gonna call it? Because it's not a Dietburg. And I was like, smashed, I was like, that's what we're going to call it. Yeah, fucking, fucking great, that mate. Three more kilos, please.

Yeah, that was pretty much it. And it was kind of like a nuanced title because everyone in the fitness industry brings out their own like fucking Dietburg or their system or whatever it was. And I wanted people straight from the off to think are not another flipping personal trainer releasing another stupid book about broccoli and burpees. And what pained me was there are people in the fitness industry that I raised my eyebrows when I read their books and I was like,

their books perfectly right, they did talk about the calorie deficit, they did talk about this. But then the book was fucking boring. And I was like, and I'm not going to name any names. And I was like, how can I do this? How can I kind of come in with enough anecdotes, information, and not try and talk about broccoli? The big thing that I've realized upon doing this podcast and speaking to people, like multiple, multiple New York Times best sellers and the guys that are the top writers in the world Understand that context is important to deliver a key point

It's the same reason why when you're scrolling through Instagram you see an inspirational quote which might be The condensation of an entire life's work from one of the smartest people on the planet, just synthesized into a single sentence, but why doesn't it change your life? Because it's in the wrong context. It's like, booty picture, booty picture, dog photo, funny cat video, inspirational quote, booty picture, booty picture.

You're not in the right frame of mind, there's no context to it. So I think that you need to have that framing around the message that then actually delivers what people want and that improves retention, which improves compliance, which actually means it becomes effective. Yeah, 100%. I mean, even Tim Ferris, I'm 50-50 with some of his work and others.

In the four-hour work week, the way he buttes up his points and uses stories, anecdotes, travel, you know, all of these things things and then brings you to a salient point and you're like, wow, you've almost been like warmed up, like four play. And then that point when you read it is, is so much better because you're enthralled in it rather than, you know, if he was just open the first chapter and go, the opposite of happiness is boredom.

You've got to fuck off your American cliche, you know. So you're 100% correct. And it's almost probably having a physical book at first, I didn't appreciate that you've got someone's full attention, whereas social media is like, it's like chatting up a bird while someone else started chatting up five minutes before and they've not finished talking. That's a good analogy.

So talk us through this new book. What's going on? So the interesting thing that I found from the first book was when I met people on the tour and I traveled, no one was, no one would sit with me and go, fuck, and I'll mate, that the way you broke down if it fits your macro has changed my life. No one was really like, mate, the thermic effect approach him is fucking exciting. The things that like really made people excited, they were like, James, I've realized the sunk cost fallacy is affecting me. I realized after reading your book that I've only with my boyfriend because of how long I've

already been with him, not because I want to be with him. And there was one girl in particular, and she was like, I've just broken up my boyfriend. I was like, when? She was like, yesterday. I was like, how long have been with them? She was like eight years. And I was like, holy shit. Like, I was like, at the time, I was like, I'm sorry. She was like, no, no, no, don't be sorry, don't be sorry.

And the feeling I got from that was, it wasn't the first time this has happened, because I actually did this when I was a PT. When I was on the gym floor, and someone would come in and they'd vent about their boyfriend. I was like, what didn't you break up with them? I've been together for four years, you know, and I was proactively doing it back then, that's how it found its way into the book. But to me, it was, it was those conversations that I had with people that really resonated the most. And then when I stripped it back, I realized the things that people liked from

the first book wasn't fitness stuff. So I was like, I might have to do this again without the fitness jargon. Just as well, it's not a diet book, but it should have been even less of a diet book. Yeah. Would have, would have been a hit even harder. But then I still think it would have been a perfect companion for someone starting that journey because I'm sure you're well aware that when you're trying to get people to start a new chapter or begin a new identity, they do need to strip away a lot of relationships.

I'm sure you've probably run a lot of people the wrong way when becoming more successful. And you're like, are we were friends? But this person's going to slay me down. And arming people kind of the knowledge to do that is one thing. And I suppose the second book, not a life coach, give me, I don't want to be this guru. I don't want to be there like, you know, hey guys, you can accomplish whatever you put your mind to, but I want to step in and be like, right, there's an interesting part in the book where I talk about dating.

And I say to people, we live in a world where we don't chat each other up anymore because we're fucking petrified. We're petrified of engaging with people. Because of how social media has changed us, a DM is now the way you can be chivalrous. And you know, it's they're going, hey, I think it'd be a fork and have a number. We're down like, what's your inch to a babe? And we've completely deconstructed this whole, you know, approach to dating. And I personally see around me a huge dropout rate

with first dates based primarily around the fact there's a lot of anxiety from both parties. But the anxiety is shared. Catfishing is getting worse both sides through people not portraying a real identity of themselves from data apps. We've got face tuning, we've got angles, we've got Adobe Lightroom, fucking pull in five years off of you from data apps. We've got face tuning, we've got angles, we've got Adobe Lightroom, fucking pulling five years off of you, you know? And suddenly because of this, people are becoming more and more apprehensive to meet people and they're worried about so many factors.

So even in one part of the book, I was like, here's a different approach. Don't go for drinks or dinner on a first date. Ask someone if you can walk them from their office to the tube. Why don't you take the dog out for walk? Why don't you grab a coffee? Why don't we deconst drinks or dinner on a first date. Ask someone if you can walk them from their office to the tube. Why don't you take the dog out for a walk? Why don't you grab a coffee? Why don't we deconstruct this kind of notion in society

that we need to go balls in on a first date because we've all been on a date with a person in front of us, we're wondering, can we go fucking arm, gonna have to get smashed? I'm gonna have to get smashed to enjoy this. And I was like, there's one part of the book, I was like, why don't we just do something shorter, sweeter? You know, saying someone just get an ice cream, oh, you train at the gym, just a quarter

a mile from me, why don't we have a protein shake together or something? Because then you can deconstruct that anxiety for that first proper date, just in short, we meet in someone. And that's just a very small strategy to to help someone with their life. And that's not Tony Robbins shit. That's just me going, hey, this is something that I've started doing. Why didn't you try it too? And my friends around me are doing it and I was like, this is so valuable. And just changing the way that we approach things to improve their success rate is supposedly what the book's all about. And that's just one of the bits. Like, have you ever found yourself

doing that? Absolutely. Yeah. I had a conversation with Amanda Kudah, who is a female coach in America dating, big into sobriety, which I am dipping in out of myself. And her number one idea for a date is a walking date. Like she has a, you know, you've stumbled upon something that's like, that's, I've got a question here that was why should anyone listen to life advice from you? But you've already answered it and it's the same reason as to why I think people resonate

with my content and perhaps yours as well, is that if you live enough life and reflect on it and then iterate forward and allow an evolution of ideas to survive, the ones that you left with inevitably end up being alright. And by the time that you've hit 30, 35, 40, you've got a bit of an idea of what's going on. Like, under the age of 25, you are completely clueless. Like, even the most actualized, transcendent individual,

under the age of 25 years old is essentially just like a child stumbling through the world's desperately trying to work out what works. But after sufficient failures and successes, you start to see common themes, right? And I'd sort of like to try and get a bit of an insight as to what it is that you, or why it is that you think that you've been able to sort of get these insights. So you've particularly reflective. Do you tend to try and look for these common themes throughout stuff?

Where's this come from? I think that the part of your brain that really analyzes certain areas of your life in my brain is certainly very active. So it's very easy for people to go, why are you giving me relationship advice? You've not been in any meaningful relationship that I've seen. And I'm like, okay, but have you ever seen me stay in a relationship I didn't want to be in? You know, and my friends say to me, they go, fair place, they're like,

I'm, as soon as you realize a relationship, it's not what you get out. And I think that comes back to being very appreciative of time. And then when it comes to business over the last few years, I've learned a lot of business lessons. I've learned, in essence, life is all about protecting like a little bubble that you have around you of energy. And also I'm very big into how my soul feels about certain things. And it sounds quite a bit hippy thing, but the dating thing, the business thing, everything revolves around to what's going to make my soul happy. And me meeting someone for a very formal date with drinks, I feel a bit suffocated. I'm like, what if I don't like this person, whether I don't like the energy they're giving off? So by improvising that tactic to meet that person

for swimming the zero and ice cream, it makes me feel better about having to go see someone. So it's like a tactic that's kind of brought into play. And I have these tactics all around my life, you know, and even like when you're fucking picking the time of day type of wink, I mean, you've got to get that at the right time. You've got to have that at the right time. You've got to fit that in before you're wrong. Then you just fucking fucking you ruin you ruin your you don't want to do it for a training session right because then you go into a training session you feel nostalgic right. You do it just for an app you're gonna you know you're gonna go under pretty quick you don't need to set your podcast time it's eight minutes after one of those and I know it sounds

crass or whatever it is but like there is I see so many people tripping themselves up. I suppose this is a good way to answer your question. It, to me, is obvious where people trip themselves up, but they don't see it. And people probably think both of us are very motivated, but we're probably not. We just probably don't trip ourselves up as much as the normal person. The key in life isn't being clever. It's avoiding stupidity. That's a shame parishes and from phantom street. And it's totally correct. When people hear you as someone who does multiple solo IG live sometimes in a day, and that takes to the normal person a huge amount of confidence and overcoming of anxiety and all this sort of stuff. But even that is just a craft that you've learned.

And the fact that you're able to identify well actually in order for me to feel a little bit more comfortable on a first date so that I am unconstrained and can free flow and meet this person, I choose to do something which allows me to feel that way. Whereas someone might just say, oh, James has got bottomless pit of confidence and endless amounts of charisma and all this stuff. So if it's good enough for you, it's good enough for everybody else as well. So what are some of the most common mistakes that you think people make when designing their lives?

So there's quite a few. First of all, I think that everyone's kind of following this blueprint to life, which someone else has designed. And from generation to generation, I think it's quite dangerous that we take the blueprint from our parents because they lived in a very different life to us. And when people start at school, they go to school. And then when they finish school, they think that their time of development is done. People think that school's done, education is done. That's a very big flaw because the best things I learnt in life all came from after school. Get my teachers to expect me to fucking enjoy reading of mice and men, for instance. That's the worst fucking book I've ever read, mate. Why the fuck is that in school curriculum? You can feel me getting annoyed about this.

There are so many excellent fiction books as well. Give me the Hunger Games, give me something that is I'm going to actually, from a start, we cannot rely on the educative system, but anyway, that's that's one thing. And then suddenly our parents come off to lead us down the path of becoming the most fucking qualified, but really, who does that benefit? Fair enough, there are some people that need to have qualification, be a doctor, be a nurse, but really, who does that benefit? Fair enough, there are some people that need to have qualification, be a doctor, be a nurse, but for a lot of other people, they're doing it just by time. But then we hit the 20s, and I feel that no one is ever really taunting life, that if there's something they enjoy, they can do it. And one thing that Australia

really helped me understand was people here are a lot happier doing their job. And you go to a coffee shop here and you struggle to understand why someone who's 23 or 24 can enjoy making a coffee for someone so well. And the truth is that they love their life, their job is just a part of it. When I'm in the UK, I see a lot of people doing jobs they don't enjoy. And in Australia, that person who's making that coffee probably clocks up at 4pm, goes for a surf, takes their dog for a walk, meets up with their friends, and does whatever. Whereas in the UK, the blueprints are a bit stronger to get into the 95,

to aim for that six-figure salary, and this is actually the path that I was put on, and no one ever stopped me or questioned me. I put on a suit to go to work for like four years, and I fucking hated every second of it. But in my head I was like, how am I gonna buy a house? How am I gonna support a family? How am I gonna earn enough money so I can then go to rugby training in the evening? And the biggest mistake I feel is

that we'll put on this trajectory. Not once was anyone ever stopped me and said, you enjoy what you're doing. Because if you enjoy what you're doing, you don't need to be motivated, you don't need to launch out of bed. And I feel so many people just follow the fucking tracks of, go to uni, do your best, get a two one, tell everyone you got a first, go find it, go to the fucking office job. Bouncing and unfortunate, bad relationships with people that you don't actually like and

you realize after six weeks, but don't split up until after six months. Exactly and then you know get on the bags after work because you just need an escape, texting your dealer at 4pm, fuck say you haven't even had a beer yet. Then people are so worried about their pay slip and then fiddling their fucking LinkedIn profile and changing the months from 10 months to a year to the point that they don't even know how their fucking CV looks, they've lied to themselves so much. And for what? For more money so that you need more extravagant holidays to escape your dreary existence in life. And again this is one of the points I wanted to make in the book that wealth is subjective. It can't be quantified just in a bank account. that wealth is subjective. It can't be quantified just in a bank account. Objectively speaking, it can, but subjectively speaking, I believe that someone who's hustling with their own business

making £25,000 a year is far more wealthy than the recruiter making £100,000. So stressed, he's dick doesn't work when he comes home to fuck his misses and he does more bags a week than he does have wanks. You know what I mean? And no one blinks at that. And it's going on all around us. And probably another fucking deep point is, if you look at the biggest killer of people before retirement, it's suicide, right? And people, no one's questioning people's professionalize.

No one's biggest cause of death in men under the age of 40. Yeah, and you know, everyone's like, that'd be so good to retire at 45 and live my days, go here, go there. And I'm like, yes, sweet, but fundamentally, I think there's something wrong. And no one's, no one's talking about it. Everyone's just like brushing it off. And I was like, people fundamentally aren't enjoying their professional life. And they're, they're all dreaming about these big salaries, six figures and retirement. And to me, it overlooks the fucking, the best part.

And that fundamental is what I think people are doing wrong. And saving it all for the end is something that I can't get on with. I can't. And there's a life with more freedom for everyone if they choose to take it, but a lack of belief, a lack of motivation, a lack of confidence, a lack of self-worth, or preventing people from doing that. And if I could give people the tools to just start that journey of feeling like they have more of that, then they can start to break away from this blueprint, because ultimately I think it's letting a lot of people down. But the thing is, it didn't let our parents down. You know, my dad worked in the same

business for 50 years, started at the bottom, made it to the top, and he's a very happy guy, and he's actually happily retired. But I don't think that generation is comparable to us. Hey, great. I agree. I heard Andrew Scott, if I've got his name wrong, I'm going to feel embarrassed. Andrew Scott, who recently wrote a new long life, she's a book talking about the economics of the fact that everyone, each generation lives eight years longer than the generation before. So you versus your great-grandparents, you're actually going to live for another generation

on top of them, which means even just from a temporal duration perspective using the blueprint that came before isn't going to work. And then when you think particularly about the changes that people my age and your age have seen, you know, if you were born millennial, if you were born early eight, eighties, early nineties, you've seen such a huge paradigm shift from what your parents experienced to your life. And that means that all of the things, all the lessons that our parents taught us, like bless the hearts, like it was great and it was the best that they could

give us. But really like fucking rules of the game have changed now mate, like it's gravity boots and upside down basketball and not And you know, I mean, like it's everyone's flying around in space and there's, you know, there's dick picks and all these sorts of stuff like. Right, right. It's exactly that. And people are often comparative to being overweight in their jeans and whatever. And I say to people, fuck you, I was like, even as a child, we would have to walk to the fish and chip shop to get fish and chips. Now when I order Uber Eats, I don't even want to go to the door to get it. I buy my house. I buy them some things so I don't have to go to the door. When I'm

hungover on a Sunday, I'm like, I'm that voice. Anyone want to make flurry? Yeah, I'll get my moment flurry. So when that door knocks, I don't have to go get it. I'm like, come on me. I've got you, McFlurry. Go get that. But it's funny you say that about dick pics. I had this conversation with someone the with me and I was like, did fair enough, if you send a dick pic to someone without consent, that's a dickish thing pardon the pun. But in our lives, there are a lot of men probably listening to this right that have sent a consensual dick pic and they worry about it. And I often think that whenever we're wanking on our laptops, we always get scared for that second that the web comes on. We all do.

And anyone listening, you say it, you're a liar if not. And some people get really severe anxiety. And I got a bit of it. I was like, fuck an album. I released this book. There are probably some videos for blurry, a flurry of dick picks that are just strewn around the internet, distributed across the seven continents that could come back up here. Yeah, denied to you, die. But then I was like, do you know what? And this again is another tactic.

I used to deconstruct that. I'm like, is it really that bad? Is it really that bad? If I was the only person in the planet sent a dick pick as a teenager when I was drunk to a girlfriend, then yeah, but I wasn't. And people need to get over themselves. And again, when I talk about cocaine, everyone's like, oh, you're talking about,

I'm like, listen, it's a five billion pound industry in London. Who do you think that's going? Your doctor, you know, you're fucking on, on, on, on, on, on, cool, like everyone you know is doing this behind closed doors, but no one talks about it. And again, psychedelics and people are like, James, it's really a response for you to talk about psychedelics. I was like, no, everyone, when you talk to someone, even there was a program on Netflix

about all the celebrities that came out and were talking about it. I saw that. And do you know what, that was liberating for me because I'm not saying that drugs again is such a broad spectrum of things. Some can make your life better, some make your life worse, some cue from illness, some don't. Everyone's so quick to go, oh no, dick picks are bad.

Hold on, someone might have sent one, someone he wanted one. It was like, webcam for porn, everyone's watching porn. These are big, big industries. And again, with like recreational drug use, it's watching porn. You know, these are big, big industries. And again, with like recreational drug use, it's going on. And Elon Musk did a tweet where he goes, wow, five years ago, marijuana, or maybe longer, was illegal in the States,

but cannabis dispensaries remained open during COVID, which means they are now an essential in the American way of living, yet people are still in jail serving their sentences from dealing it. Paradigm shift, man. The world is moving significantly quicker than the policies that are in closing it. And even further than that, it's moving so much quicker than our evolution, which is a huge challenge, right? Because we are not evolution really fit for the environment that we're in. We're not built for hypernormal stimuli, bings and bongs and a million fucking messages, dopamine kicks from left right

and center. We're not built for the amount of radiation we take. We're not built, we're not even built for fucking artificial light. Like it's supposed to be dark when it gets dark and light when it gets light. and there's not supposed to be some fucking I've got over there. I've got a brand new very good sleep mask like so that I can get better sleep Between the hours of like six and fucking seven on a morning when it's it's sunny in the UK like that even that I'm not evolution I really fit for that so people that presume and talk it like with so much fucking fit for that. So people that presume and talk with so much fucking vehement certainty about how authentic we are or unauthentic stuff is talking about how dirty it is to discuss drugs or how inappropriate it is to discuss dick pics and stuff like that. Like it's fucking

bollocks. Like look at the way that life manifests itself now. And I think me and you share the same stance on this, which is that if you lay out the way that the world is for people, they are free to interpret it however they want. We have to have faith that people are sovereign individuals who are able to make their own fucking decisions and their own, they have agency over their own lives, right?

Like what's the alternative? To pretend that dick pics don't exist. Like, to pretend that cocaine doesn't exist. To pretend that psychedelics aren't being used. Like, how does that help prepare anybody? And it's actually really insulting to the people that it's talking to. It's basically saying, you are so much of an infant

who doesn't have any agency or control over what you think or believe that I'm going to wrap you in cotton wool and put those little fucking foam cups that go on the edge of sharp stuff so that children don't run into it. I'm going to put all of them around and then don't worry, it will just shuffle you into the fucking grave. If you see monkeys in the zoo, they're playing with the dicks in front of dozens of people. You get arrested for these things. Yeah. And again, like you say, there's one thing that I've

probably struggled with from the only thing I worry about from a mental health perspective is this growing worry of when your brand and your identity increases, your ratio for what you're allowed to get wrong, diminishes. And if someone out there sends a racist tweet and there are nobody, no one, no one does anything about it. And that doesn't make it fine. But even the fact that like Ellen DeGeneres didn't quite get the hashtag right, people were demanding that she donated money to certain charities off the back of not getting the hashtag right and You you kind of worry that you know a Dick pick from a random garage at roulette. That's fine

But if it's a major celebrity, you know suddenly everyone's out to get them everyone but hold on that's the same offense between the two and Suddenly people saying something wrong. There's this very it's a very scary time at the moment in social media where I've noticed people's posting frequency since the black square diminishing massively. Because people are petrified of doing something wrong, because the repercussions have never been worse. Have you felt this kind of nervousness amongst social anxiety? Yeah, ambient anxiety that we're all swimming through, man. Like, so Elon Musk was on Joe Rogan.

Did you see the second one? Did you listen to that? Yeah, yeah. And he uses this term and holy fucking shit if it's not correct. Joe asks him why he's selling all of your possessions, Elon weight for 45 seconds in silence and then says, I see it as an attack vector. That's what it is. It's an attack vector. Your fame now is an attack vector. My platform, so I said this yesterday, I launched a Patreon yesterday. We've got an Academy launching, which is like a different side of the modern wisdom universe launching

in a couple of months time. And I'm like, feeling more and more anxious now, just low key ambient anxiety, because I'm like, before when I was doing a thousand plays a month, it didn't matter. But when I'm doing half a million or a thousand plays a month, it didn't matter. But when I'm doing half a million or a million plays a month, now everything has been ratcheted up. Everyone now, there's a reason for people to want to take you down because people resent success. There's more people to see what you're doing, which means there's more likelihood of someone

that takes offense seeing the thing that is going to then erupt into all of that. And once you leverage all of that together, you'll like, hang on, I actually care about this now. You care about your academy, you care about your clients, you care about the content that you put out, you care about the message and the books that you write and all of this sort of stuff. And it's your legacy, right? You don't want someone on this increasingly large audience with this increasing disposition

and reason to attack you to then take down what is now an increasingly large audience with this increasing disposition and reason to attack you to then take down what is now an increasingly large operation. Like everything, all of the fucking stakes have been raised. It's crazy at the moment there's currently, it's probably happened about four or five times. There is a organized group of people that jump on my Instagram lives to try and get me to say words that are racist by breaking them into names two part names and Then they come on and say they're trying to catch me out in their obviously stream recording So they're trying to get me and catch me out and go you need to apologize to this person and I've checked these accounts and they're real so there's an organized group of people trying to trip me up

They're then saying to me. I'll saying to me, we've seen the tweet. We've seen it. It's come up. We found the old tweet. And they were saying they're making these accusations. And on the live, I was like, no, I don't know. You know, my Twitter accounts don't you worry about that. I've got nothing.

I've buried those. And yeah, like, and I was like, fucking, I was like, it's pathetic. And this is the world we live in at the moment where people would actually try and out you on something like that. And then the other day, my issue was not rising to something. And I had a picture up from our IFS events in Barcelona.

And someone went to the trouble of counting how many people in the picture were black. And sad face, sad face. Oh, I can't believe there's only three black people in this photo. And at first, I was like, okay. And then I went and I did a looked at statistics of skin colors, of non-UK citizens that reside in the UK.

I'm from a statistical standpoint. It was actually spot on the amount. So if you say that that was just broadly, U.K. following that, pretending there's some in Spain for the amount of people in the crowd for the amount of black people, that was actually perfectly acceptable. Yet someone had proactively gone and tried this is maybe four weeks after I posted the picture. Someone's gone back. They must have scrolled. What can I be offended about? What can I be offended about? Here we go. There's only but three black people in this photo. I'm really upset that there's not more Black people in this photo. I was like, what's going on? What, what, what do we live

in? I don't know, man, like, to me, I don't, I, I don't think like that. So when I see people acting like that, like this whole, the, the, the, the real kind of malicious online atmosphere that's been occurring recently, I understand the principles behind it, but the people that are taking these sorts of things that are just virtue signaling and trying to find a problem with anything, I'm like, I don't even, I can't map their mode of thinking into my existence. It almost feels like I'm watching, like that person, it almost feels like I'm watching a different species or a different universe or something. Like what? What is this mirror? Yeah, it's so strange. So let's get back to the life thing. So you

talked about the sort of blueprint, this classic upbringing, what's some of the other mistakes that you think people make when it comes to life design? So, I would say relationships is a big one, which I touched on there before. A lot of people are in almost like relationships that are more platonic. They almost go away from sexual and then after a while they share more gonic, they almost go away from sexual and then After a while they share a mortgage together and there's so much on the line they've been together for so long they struggle to walk away Now this is another thing that conflict with kind of the other blueprint in which we have them having a family life but I sometimes think to myself People are staying together in a miserable existence

To bring up a family and it's a tough one because it's like a double-edged sword when kids are involved but you have to question whether or not two happy entities bringing up one or two children or whatever would be better than staying together for the wrong reason. I see that happening a lot as well as far as professional life. One of my favorite areas would actually be sport. I love Brazilian Giu-Jitsu and I think that if you're in any form of martial art, there is this sense of humility. No matter what you do, you turn up to training, black belts, brown belts, purple belts, blue belts, white belts. No matter what your

income, your ethnicity, your religion, whatever it is, you line up in order for how good a student you are. Not on athletic ability either, because someone could be 30 kilograms lighter than you, squat half of what you do, but if they're too bouts above you, you're not going to call them out for a role. And I feel that a lot of people become lost on this path of being a student. And when you, even playing rugby, I never really got better playing game on game. You're just out there with the boys, you know, getting on the pitch on Saturday night, you go training, you learn your lineouts. And I feel that what's amazing about Giu-Jitsu is you can set your

own rules for success, so I suppose values. I don't want to be the best Giu-Jitsu athlete in the world, and I know I'm not going to be there. But just the process of improving where I'm at, is what I love. And the same with your podcast, one we're speaking on right now. Although you know Joe Rogan's there, you're not there like, oh, how long time I can pick him off at the top spot. Your pre-share is there.

But you're just working on you. You're like, who can I get my next guest? What kind of engaging conversation can we have? And your podcast won't exist more than one conversation at a time. Like, it's too nothing exists more than one session at a time. One transition, oh, that's interesting. One new way to take the back. Oh, that's interesting. And being a student and only transitioning in this blinkers down mentality is one of the most satisfying things

I've ever experienced in my life. And I feel like a lot of people don't have that. And when training for physique, or going to the gym to be in shape, fundamentally, I see this big floor, the people don't really enjoy their training, so they don't really enjoy the process. They're still mating a bit, and they're in this constant state of battle enough. Do I want to enjoy the quality of my life and drink wine and eat crisps? Or do I want to be lean and hungry and you know not feel fucking energized the whole time. And if people could just find something, whatever it is, Taekwondo,

kickboxing, boxing, jiu-jitsu, something where they can become a student, it can distract you from all areas of life. And again, a big part of the book is to get people into just trying jiu-jitsu, just try it out. And again, a big part of the book is to get people into just trying to get to you. Just try it out. Are you the front end of the funnel for every Giu Gitsu gym that's across the world? Do you know what? It's honestly been such a great place for my mind to wonder. And for me, I don't take my phone near the mats often.

I go out there, nothing else exists apart from the training. And there's a lot of being humble. nothing else exists apart from the training and there's a lot of being humble, keep your shoes away from the mat, keep your hygiene high, shake hands with everyone, and you know what we were saying before about a monkey wanking in a zoo and we're in this world where everyone seems to think they're perfect. No matter what human you find, we're all kind of apes at heart and there's a certain amount of times you can flick someone on the forehead before they're tight in the face. You could be the fucking nicest person in the world. Mother Teresa, you piss her off, you

could piss her off enough, you fucking tight in the nose. And I think from a primitive standpoint, humans have always been combative. They've always wanted to go toe to toe, but we're living this society where you're not allowed to express your emotions anymore. You're not even allowed to be angry. Being angry is a very normal fucking human emotion and we have these social and professional hierarchies that suppress a lot of people's emotions. If your boss is a cunt to you, you can't call him a cunt and people sit on these emotions all the time in the suppress them which I believe amplifies them.

But when you go into a combat sport or a Jiu-Jitsu gym, you have somewhere you can channel that and you can vent it. And I think that's very healthy. And a lot of people can't understand why the nice girl from the office loves boxing or why, you know, this dude loves Jiu-Jitsu or whatever. But she seems so sweet. Did you go out with any brothers? No, only child. Okay, do you have, when you're a kid, do you go out with any brothers? No, only child. Okay. Do you have, when you're a kid, did you ever need like play fights?

Yeah. Like and play fights were fun. The mom and dad's in the house. If you're yours or someone else, it's the head round to be like, right, there's no punching. But you know, just, just don't break anything, right? And we have all these things taken away from us in these social constructs. But having a play fight with your mate, he puts the cricket on.

You want to watch the football, you're there, you're like, let's go, let's do this, let's settle this. And looking back, there's some of my favorite pastimes, now I get to experience that as an adult, and I think there's something hugely healthy from a mental health perspective of engaging in combat with other humans,

and you never wanted to hurt your friend, but you wanted to make him suffer. And that's almost the whole sport of Jiu-Jitsu. That is a sport of Jiu Jitsu precisely, yeah. And I wish that more people would do that because it's been when works tough, when I'm stressed, when I've got that, and Diren and I are the same grade, we can go out on the mats and there's no egos, there's, there's nothing apart from this game of human chess.

And when I'm working in the mornings, I do a lot of work. When my food comes, I shut off my phone, I get rid of WhatsApp and I get a YouTube video up and I'll study like a 10 minute YouTube video of Jiu-Jitsu while I eat my food. And for me, it's just nice to dream off into another state and learn something. And I think that I couldn't imagine life without it.

That's beautiful, man. That really, really is. I think you having found something which is a common architecture outside of the thing which most people would presume is your calling in life being what has now become James Smith. Having that is what allows you to do everything else, right? Like it's the foundation that allows you to pull yourself out of that.

For me, it's podcasting and learning about myself and the world around me. When you rang on Skype earlier on before I was ready and all hell broke loose. Everyone that's been FaceTime knows this, like you two phones go off and your iPad and your laptop and it's all coming from everyone. I thought, what the fuck's going on? And I was listening to Ben Shapiro and I'm like, full fucking flow listening to him talking about Trump's speech at Mount Rushmore over the weekend. I don't really care. But at some point on a podcast over the next two months, I'm going to get to drop

some staff from that and I'm going to go, yes, fucking nailed it. You didn't know that did you, you couldn't. Like, that's what I want to do. I've got this one here about the hustle memory. So you were talking earlier on about how you don't want to necessarily even go to the door. The level of convenience has been hyper normalized in modern society to the point where we don't want to even fucking Netflix the best films on the planet to our iPads. So we don't need to leave bed and then we uber our way to the date so that we can go home to deliver our food and all the rest of the stuff. But everyone that's listening, think about some of your favourite memories to do with any project that you've been involved with. It was never when the project was going super, super well and super, super easy. The best

memories you have from anything that you do and this will include you will be the night before you launch James Smith Academy.com and you rushed until five in the morning and we nearly didn't make it and the coder, the coder broke down and we got the dominoes in and oh fuck we did it, we did it, look, and we made it and it went really, really well. That is the meaning, that struggle is the meaning, the obstacle is the way, you know, like that's that's what that's how it works. And finding something which is both challenging and worthwhile, mehile, chick-signy-hiles, flow, state, right, like that is we are chasing that we are chasing something that's just at the right, the right distance of our domain of competence. Just

hard enough for us to believe that we can continue to do it, but just like hard so much hard that we want to do more. There's a comment who said it where they said we need to spend 30% of our time with people at the same level as us, 30% of our time with people above us, 30% of our time with people below us. And for me that's 30% rolling with white belts where I can fuck them up and try any stuff. 30% of my time with bluets of equalability where I've really got to bring my game, but then 30% of the time with purplebelts were humbled by them. And to me that's the perfect balance and that's like the higher I could live with blackbelts from with higher blackbelts, but you've just a second ago, you're excitement of listening to that podcast. Remind me of another part in the book which I call the invisible

game. I play lots of games every day that no one else knows about. Other people are involved in them, but the people involved in them don't even know that I'm playing it. I did this throughout my whole career very early on where. You listen to that podcast you probably without knowing it gamified your life a bit and I still love gaming when I'm younger I still play called you now. And it's all about waiting for that right time for those points to be played and I still love gaming when I'm younger. I still play quality now. And it's all about waiting for that right time for those points to be played. And I found myself, I even made a list of all my competitors when I first started out as a PT and everything that I did became a process to beat them. But it wasn't about an ego or a cock off because

they never knew that I was doing it. And I really like gamifying certain parts of my life so that I can remove myself from them in the daily actions of it getting out of bed on time that's ten points you know like well you know when you start studying something that sometimes you're there listening to podcasts and you're like fuck this is dull I remember listening to a 57 minute podcast on caffeine and it was was dollars fuck the guy was the most boring fucking the world, but I was like, no one else is listening to this. I'm going to someone else to me on a fucking live. And I can recite this thing about caffeine, holy fuck. That's when I'll pull the adenosine pathway bomb on everyone. They're going to go. Yeah.

That's it. And I saw a bit of myself then when you were doing that because to meet there were quite dull and dreary processes in life, probably like Trump's fucking speech. But if you remove yourself from it and think someone else could be playing this game, and I've got to make sure that I get the high score. It really helps me, you know, stay on top of things. And that's, that's, and it's not an ego thing. It's just my way of how I approach things. And, you know, that there's

no top score really, like in college, you just keep prestige and just keep prestige and there's never, you're never going to be the best, but you might as well keep going. It's interesting that creating those structures is such an important way to externalize motivation. I think that's what helps me. I have, man, those invisible games are everywhere from how long I'm prepared to count down in a cold shower from. And if I start to bitch out, then I'll add 10 on. Like, if I think, if I think, I should leave, I should just leave early, then I add 10 seconds on. And I'm like, oh, the

fuck's sake, you did it again. You stood there and you're like, this sucks, it sucks, it sucks, it sucks. Like, wrote a bunch of, I've got this academy thing launching in a few weeks time. So yesterday, I wrote a bunch of agreements to myself, I wrote promises to myself about what I wouldn't, wouldn't accept. Like, I'm going to get up at this time. I'm going to make sure I go promises to myself about what I wouldn't wouldn't accept. Like I'm going to get up at this time, I'm going to make sure I go for a morning and an evening walk, I'm going to just like the little basic structures. So one of the things I wanted to try and get from you are, what are the principles or the daily structures that you try not to compromise on ever? What do you need to do in your day-to-day life to ensure that everything else goes well?

So from a business perspective, business, it sounds really basic, but my inbox, and my inbox is actually a lot more open to people than they think. And because it's so open, I think it helps me where if any of my members need my help, they can always come to me direct. And I've always said that. So I love to clear that, that my email marketing campaign, email marketing is one of the biggest overlooked areas of business that everyone overlooks. If I don't write an email, I almost feel dirty. I feel like I'm accomplished anything. From 200 over and I don't get that done. That's the poor moment. I checked that. Yeah, it is made big times. made big time. James, have you said that fucking email? It is. Paul.

He's sending you mail to get paid. That's one of my non-negotiables, but during the last year or two, quite a lot of my daily things don't revolve around work. It's about having time to myself, training, learning something, having a bit of downtime. But yeah, as far as like the business part of things, I suppose in my mind, clearing inboxes, I probably spend about an hour a day in my social media inboxes, which is tough because I can't read them all, but I like spending time there. And just having conversations with the right people, I'm very fortunate now that I've got my business partner, I've got my events manager, I've got all these people. And if I talk to them and just have conversations to them every day, everything looks after itself, I'm not actually that organised, I've been

very fortunate over Covid where I haven't set an alarm to wake up in about three months. And it's funny, I still wake up about six, six, thirty, but not having an alarm gives me peace when I go to sleep. That's interesting, man. That's how everyone that I've spoken to that knows what they're talking about to do with sleep. That's their suggestion. Just wake up.

Wake up and out and alarm. That's what it, that's how it should be. The alarm is cutting into your sleep. Presumably, you want the sleep as much as you need, not as much as you want to, like your, your alarm should tell you. Yeah, I got, I got on it a bit of the weekend and I woke up like really late on Monday. Yeah, what is it? Yesterday I woke up at 7.45 and I was like, James, you dirty bastard. And I got to the cafe, right? I got to the cafe and they were like, the girls at the cafe were like, you gone for coffee somewhere before this? And I got to the cafe right, I got to the cafe and they were like, the girls at the cafe were like, have you gone for coffee somewhere before this? And I was like, no, no,

I was like, I'm just working up. And there were no seats because it got too busy. And I was like, you fucking deserve this James. You wait outside like the dirty fucking stop out that you are. They're outside for a table. But yeah, I really like that. And again, the people around me, they're doing lots of talk to me in the mornings too much. Sleep is actually probably my biggest non-negotiable where, first of all, I'm really weird about sharing a bed with people. I'm not sure if this is a lie that I told women, so they'd leave and that I've actually started to believe myself, but sleep's like a big one, that even if I'm on a date, I'm like, come on, let's meet a bit earlier so I can, you know, get back to bed. And they're like, you fucking kidding

me. Like I like lights out 10 p.m. every night if I can. And prioritizing my sleep has improved my quality of life massively. I think very few people realize what life could be like if they got eight hours of sleep every night. And this pregnancy pillow that the viewers will be able to see. I first of all just had like a tubular long pregnancy pillow. I think I could have been one of the first people ever to fly business class with a full size pregnancy pillow. And the hair studio that stood to me, she goes, is that a pregnancy pillow? I said, yeah, she goes, where'd you keep it? I was at my backpack. And she was like, it's only thing I was in it. I was like, no, my whole backpack was

for my passport, my headphones, my pregnancy pill. I slept for about 30 or 40 hours from Sydney to Abu Dhabi. And she was, at the end, she was like fair play. But now I've got one of the C shape pregnancy pillows, which is better, but this is going to be another kettle of fish to get on a flight. But you're going to have to go in wearing it like a mid 90s rapper would wear, you know, like one of the old, like, mint coat things. You can just wear it as what do you mean? What do you mean? This is just part of my outfit.

I've been thinking about this already because at some point I'm going to have to come back to the UK and I was like, maybe I'm going to go to the lounge and say, excuse me, can I keep this here? But no one at an airport is gonna let me leave a fucking bag and a lounge, you know. I'd be like, it's a pillow relaxed. And then I was like, maybe I could check it in and ask them to take it to my seat or whatever. But now that I've done it, I cannot fathom the idea

of flying without my pillow because what strikes me as crazy as, let's say you fly, return to Sydney, it's about 4,000 pounds, which is extortion at amount of money, but I value my sleep that much. I'm not even being a diva. The idea of not sleeping on top of jet lag now kills me. I'd rather have one less holiday to Ibiza and fly laying down than I would any other way.

That's the price to pay. That's how that's the equivalency there. Ibiza, how many of Ibiza trips is it? I don't know how much it costs, Joe, I don't know how many of Ibiza trips it is. Any other way. That's the price to pay. That's how that's the equivalency there. A beth. How many of you beth trips is it? I don't know how much it costs. Do you want to know how many of you beth trips it is? The funny thing in Insidney is $300 for a bag. It's about 150 quid if you want a bag coat.

So our friend told me, wink. And we had to get the washing machine fixed once. And I was like, how much is it? Two bags. And you're like, two bags. No, two bags are $600. Oh, I'm going to go. It's just is it? Two bags? You're like, two, no, two bags are $600. I'm going to be like, oh, so two bags. It's quite a fun way of doing it. But what's crazy is that people, I once said to myself, I right I'm gonna take this pregnancy pillow on a plane and I think cost the most expensive one cost 40 pounds

So if you weigh it up against the cost of the flight Even if you left it on the plane and had it as like a disposable pillow Yeah, and obviously I took it home and I've used it now my mom's like James You got pregnancy pillows all around the world. I got them in Sydney. I got them in London But like you know four grand on a, fine, but you get a pillow that's fucking half the size of a travel pillow. You're supposed to sleep on that for 12 hours, no chance. So for anyone out there, if you're going to stretch your legs on the plane to your own pillow game, pregnancy pillow. We need to change the name of it. So it's not

just for pregnant people. It's just big. It's big lad pillow, isn't it? It's achy shoulders pillow. That's what it is. That's right. Anyone who, so I played the Pregnancy pillow game for a long time, the challenge I had was, and you'll be familiar with this, if you want to change from side to side, often you wake up because of the complexity of having a pull your arm

out from underneath to then turn to then slide the other arm in and under like it's moderately complex, I mean it's complex to do when you're awake let alone like when you're asleep. So it's a, it's a jet-to-move, it's called a hyperscape. So you revert. Okay, so you're drilling the hyperscape in the middle of easily, that's one way, that's one way to maximize your gains. So what I've actually upgraded to now is a hourglass shaped memory from pillow that slots between your legs right up against the, the gooch,

like right, right up against the gooch. And that still does the same as your memory, your pregnancy pillow will do for your legs and it separates your thighs, which especially for guys, until you've slept with something between your legs, something bigger than it is now, something really big that separates your thighs,

you do not know what true comfort is when you go to bed. It is just wonderful. It's not a day that goes by, from an evolutionary perspective, what the fuck were we sleeping on for so many thousand years? Like what were we, like what we before cotton before wall before springs, I'd and you think from like a biomechanics standpoint, my back hurts laying on the beach. How did, how, how have we gone that wrong? Like my hit flexes, I'm so fucking lordotic that like I get a sore lower back laying on the beach. And they were there a human 25,000 years ago

First oven was being made what were they sleeping on? We need to find out man. It's one of the Regular guests on the show you sir slept on the floor for three months Neely nearly broke his relationship apart because he wouldn't end an experiment of him sleeping on the floor and his girlfriend Refused to sleep on the floor quite rightly. She doesn't have to be a part of this bizarre experiment. Do you have a pillow? So he put a mattress topper on the floor.

So this much, and the reason for the mattress topper was simply so that when he went into his bedroom, people didn't think it was weird. And he stepped on the floor for three months and did, but there's some fairly good arguments for it. Like firmer beds, benefits, posture and all the rest of it. But yeah, man, I don't know. As well, there's an interesting, you'll have seen these advertised online, anxiety blankets,

weighted anxiety blankets, you've seen these, like hyper heavy blankets, and they've been advertised everywhere. And it's supposed to afford some sort of calming effect. Like, what's a pathway that that's operating on? Because that's not someone thinking, I really want someone heavy to lie on me. So it has to be instantiated from our evolutionary heritage. Well, that reminds me of something like sleep paralysis,

where some people take too much MDMA, they feel like someone sat on their chest, didn't they? I don't know where that was, I'm from, that's quite an interesting one. I think it was Brett Contreras that goes, you sleep in the same position for eight hours, you don't wake up stuck in it. So shut the fuck up about your posture, and people are like, oh, don't sit like that because you're

going to get, you're going to get froze. Them hamstrings are going to shorten. He was like, fuck off. He was like, you're not a week. He was like, you're not a week. That's why you stood like that. Which I don't, I haven't read in the studies behind it, but it's not like we get out of bed in the morning like I'm fucking stuck. Yeah. I can't move. What life lessons do you wish that James from 10 years ago knew any big ones? It sounds really reductive, but not to worry about stuff. And this is something, this is a bit morbid.

It's another topic in the book. Like, me and my mate, we had this, we had a few too many beers one night and we came to the agreement where we said if we ever found out that we were going to die, we had to look at each other, we had to get a room, say you there with your family, friends, your loved ones and the doctor goes, you're going to die in a week, we had to say as loud as you could fair play. That was it. To everyone's shock, fair fucking play. And he said to me, if we don't live our life that way, that we can happily

say that when we find out we're going to die, then we've really got to change the way we live in. And I don't think there are many people out there that can say fair play if they were going to find out they're going to die next week. So I've been making sure the last 10 years that I've been living that way, where I've not been given a fuck about mortgages, I've been given a fuck about savings, I don't care about the stock market. I would rather spend my money on a potential dinner with my friends than I would invest in it and stocks because this whole saving it for later mentality that so many people are caught up about, I don't see the point of worrying about it.

That's why I bring tomorrow's problems to today. And yeah, I'm literally just going through life, just taking it as it comes, doing what I want. I don't know why I fucking want for dinner tonight, let alone what I want to do tomorrow. And everyone's so caught up in the future. And to be quite honest, we don't know where it's going to hold. And the last 10 years, I've become a lot more focused on the present. And whenever I take psychedelics, that's the only thing I think about and I wish so many people could let go of the past because it's happened. From, I use space facts quite a bit in the second but when we think of our planet going around the solar system, the sun's going to be

psychedelic talk. We think of all the planets going around the sun, but we felt and neglect the fact that the sun is also moving around the Milky Way. It takes about 800,000 years for it to do a full circle. And I was like, when something happened in the past, it physically existed on a spinning ball, going around a spinning ball of fire that went around a spinning fucking black hole. That point in time and space time, we're not going to revisit that as a planet ever again. why you revisiting every day with your thoughts. I may have come across that in the DMT trip anyway and. People let me get caught up about the future we have no idea what's coming so why worry about it and you know we have today's problems to deal with our today's obligations we have today's. You know state mind to look after.

of today's state of mind to look after, just look after that. Even tomorrow is another day's today. So for people that are worrying about stuff, just don't. What are some of the ways that people can try and instantiate that? I want some of the tactics that you used that helped you to actually make that happen? Because it's all well and good, someone listening and going, it sounds fucking great, that mate.

Like, but I am worried about my. But I am worried about my mortgage. I am worried about my job. I am worried about whether or not I've got enough money or whether I'm going to be seeing one of the stuff like that. The worst case scenario for a lot of what we think is the worst case scenario. It isn't. An elephant in the room that I found is when people face adversity, which is what they're worried about, they often do their best, and we're worried about this point in time where we can't afford to do things. We worry about this time where a business does go tits up. I worry about the time, and I'm sure you do, that everything's going to fucking internally combust. But I tell you what,

should it do that? I probably get out of bed that bit earlier, I'd probably hustle that bit harder, and I'd probably try harder. And everyone can sit back and say, oh, that's right for you, but everyone's capable of it. No one, I'm not come across anyone that's, you know, I don't even think we have stupid people on the planet. We don't, I don't think we come in different engine sizes, you know, people seem to think, no, there are 1.2 print on, someone else has's V8 supercharged. We've not, we've all got the same fucking brains and the same fucking heads. And people need

to understand that. And you know what, if the worst case scenario comes, I'm sure you'll buck your fucking ideas up and have a new set of, and have a better attitude on you. And yeah, there's no point fear in that. And you said again, upscalers the way, if things go good, great, if they go shit, I'm sure you sort of out. There's an interesting concept. Everyone that listened to the episode I did with Oli Marchon will know this example is a guy called Andrew Tate. Do you know who he is? I heard the name.

Okay, so he's kind of like, if James Bond was an evil super villain, son of a chess grandmaster, world kickbox champion, multi-millionaire, who lives in a fortress, a bat fortress in Romania, driving fast cars, and like fucking porn stars. Like that's his life. And he's got this concept where he talks about having faith that future Andrew will sort it. So he spends money very freely by a new car, do

with this. And he doesn't worry about that. He says the reason is because he's like, look, I have faith in my future self. I've faith that the future version of me will make the money back. If everything went to shit, I have faith that the future version of me will make the money back. And I think it comes, it kind of loops around to what you're talking about there. It's trusting your future self to sort whatever challenges arise. But for a lot of people, if you haven't built that trust up in yourself, why would you trust your own word? If you keep making promises to yourselves about, I'm going to start a diet, I'm going to stop cheating on my boyfriend, I'm going to do this,

I'm going to do that. And you don't do it. Inevitably, you're not going to have faith in your word, the same as a friend, if a friend kept breaking promises to you, you wouldn't have faith in them either. That's exactly what it is. I couldn't put that down into words and you take sounds like a fucking legend. And I had this discussion with Durin, where two years ago, three years ago, I already told you that flying business class was a fucking waste of money, like what the fuck? I said, give me that money, when I land, I'll go out and spend it. But first time I flew, I actually first time I flew anything apart from economy, I flew first, and it was fucking crazy. I was like,

when do we eat? She was like, excuse me. And when I sat there, I couldn't afford it. I made, I did a certain, I did two seminars back to back. And I thought, oh, with the money I've earned from that, I'll just buy this ticket. But I hadn't taken into account tax costs, the facts that I couldn't expense things I could. My accounts were fucked. So pretty much I spent five grand on a flight that I couldn't afford and From the outside pragmatically looking at that that was fucking stupid But I can never explain someone the emotions that I felt sat in that seat First of all I felt like I'd won the seat even I spent 5,000 pounds on one way ticket I felt like I won it and I couldn't get rid of this I couldn't shake this feeling that I didn't belong in that seat But then after a while because the long fucking flight, I was like, I best start fucking enjoying this. So I had some champagne, I had some wine, I sat there on my own, I'm watching a film, I've only ever flown an economy before, and I, not even that I got a taste for it, I made a promise to

myself that, from this day on, I'm going to do whatever it takes on a daily basis to ensure that this isn't the last time I do it, And I got, I actually got really emotional on my first ever first class flight. I sat there and I literally felt like well enough was like this is fucking crazy, this is mad, I've got a shower on a plane. And everyone's probably thinking oh, it's one of the few you can fucking thought I couldn't afford it. And looking back now, I think that making that leap and doing that fucking stupid thing and I actually got a blessing from my dad when I did it and I went into the kitchen I was like I was hoping he'd push back. I was like dad I'm thinking of

spending a fucking stupid amount of money on a flight and he was like your longtime dead son you might as well fucking enjoy it and We didn't say it doesn't swear, but I Went on it and sitting there was such a wonderful thing and I said this to Darren. I said Darren by that fucking flight Even if you can't afford it, because once you sit in that part of the plane, you will find a way to afford it, and you will hustle harder, it'll improve yourself worth it, it will enable you to do so much. And I wish more people did that, because even those people that are worried, saving for a house, saving for a mortgage, hey, guess what, if you rent to your 40, if you rent to

your 50, if you rent every single day you're on the planet, not only do you not have to worry if the boiler breaks, it's not your problem. You know, no one can take that away from you that you have the freedom to rent. That doesn't make you a failure. If you rent a house with a smile on your face, then fucking hats off to you because it's not something that we need to get caught up about. And I feel that so many people are wasting their positive energy on their living situation or on something trivial or on money they were supposed to say.

But like you say, the future version of yourself is going to have you fucking back. And if they don't, remember your parents. Yeah, fuck it. There's always a spare room, isn't there? Everyone that's listening has been fine so far. By virtue of the fact they've made it here to this very point with me and James Smith coming in your ears, you have made it. You have been fine. Like that is reality reflecting to you that you are a capable, competent human being. Yes, maybe you've fucked up tons.

Yes, maybe you aren't everything that you could be. Yes, maybe your potential is unfulfilled. But you're actually fine, aren't you? You're here with a set-head phone in or in the car drive, you know, whatever it might be. You are okay. Why would you not presume that that is going to be the way that everything continues to scale moving forward?

Like you will be fine, a situation will occur, a challenge will happen, a tragedy will strike, and you'll be fine, you'll deal with it when it happens. Cool quotes relating to what you were talking about there for materialism. It is easier to fulfill your material desires than to renounce them. It's Naval Ravakan. And what you means by that is that it's significantly easier for you to say, I don't need the Ferrari when you just saw the Ferrari or I don't need to live in Australia when you've just left Australia. You want to complete these things. A lot of people moving through an aesthetic life where they have renounced all of their worldly

possessions. I don't really care about this, I don't really care about that. That is a very easy excuse for you to just not play the game. It's a very easy excuse for you to just decide I don't want to compete on a material level. Yeah, I agree completely with that. Again, what you're saying there about people that might have these worries in life, like, if people aren't happy in life, I always like to challenge them on whether it's because they're trying so hard to do things that they don't actually need to do. And people need to be very conscious of what makes them happy. And I don't think people often ask themselves that question.

And, uh, fully enough, I was in Norway about eight years ago. I was seeing an Norwegian girl and there was a guy on a check out and he was a good looking lad. I'm a check out in a soup store. It's probably like 23, 24. I'm on the left. I said, I said, it's mad. He seemed really happy doing what I thought was quite an average job. That's a lot more naive at this point.

The girl's dad said to me, some people have a very complex life where they just need a simple job. And I never thought of it like that. And I was like, fuck, do you know what? If he was caught up about what everyone else was thinking about what he should be doing, he probably wouldn't be enjoying his day half as much as he was, but he was just enjoying it. And I never remember like getting schooled by, by Norwegian girls, dad. And I was like, fuck, I was like so many people out there, if they've got complexities, trouble, with things going on with their life, you know, they might wanna have a simple job,

they might wanna do simple things, who's to say that you walking your neighbor's dog can't be the thing that makes you happy in life. And the people really need to try and connect with that, because it's almost like people are looking to other people, say, my friend bought a Rolex, I need a Rolex to be happy. My friend just did two weeks in Ibiza, I need a Rolex to be happy. My friend just did two weeks and I be there, I need to go to a B-thread to be happy.

When really all these values are selected by ourselves. Absolutely, man. What question do you wish people would stop asking you? Probably about whether or not I'm going to be bald, because I'm not sure myself. You're just in this hair purgatory where it could go either way for the rest of your life. The thing is my mate's been going to be banned to about 10 years.

I've just got a very fine hair. But, you know, I'm not even sure they go. You can have a hair transplant. I go to, do you know what? Probably won't. I'll probably just shave my head for my nest. And even then, you know, this is something that people ask me questions about and we can get a fucking another hour of this. Going bald is normal for a lot of blokes yet it's become the norm to go

I get hair transplant. No this is pretty fucking normal. Same with women and so are you light and again with wrinkles I've never had a problem with wrinkles. I'll throw something webster under the bus. He had fucking Botox this week. He's like 25. Shit, the bad. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's fucking normal wrinkles. You go a bit bald, whatever it is. It's fucking normal. Just leave it. But yeah, there are people who are going to wear transplant. I don't fucking know. You had the opportunity to ask me any point you wanted about life, happiness, psychedelics, and you asked about the fucking hair. Follow calls. Do you remember when Alan Shira hadn't committed to the fact that he was going bald and he was still doing, I think it was much of the day? And he had, he had like

different districts of hair that were still existing around his head. But he hadn't, he just hadn't embraced it. And everyone, everyone was screaming at the TV. Didn't care about the football anymore, just screaming at the TV, pleading Alan Shira to accept the fact that he was going bald and shave his head. You don't want to be that guy. Like, don't cling onto the comb over his fucking 60 years too late now. Yeah, 100%. And you know what, I think my mom will probably give me the nod. My mom goes, James, it's time for you to let go. Then I'll probably let go.

If you're mother, you can area in the coal mine for this. Nah, she's just, she's straight talking. Whenever I bring a girl home, my mom usually just stands and she's like, nah, she's not the one. Yeah. Yeah. Why is beyond there years? Honestly, man, mothers have just got this.

They've got the third site, haven't they? The intuition, 100%. Yeah, but the reason I'm saying that, this is quite funny actually, this is completely off topic. The reason I'm saying that is so that women around the world are like, I'll prove to his mum. A friend of mine said to me this week, he goes,

for some reason I tell girls, I can't come when I'm getting head. And I was like, what was that? Where's this fucking come from? And then we thought about the genius of it, right? He's been telling girls that he can't come from head. So they want to prove him wrong. They want to be the first person to do it. And he's getting all the blow jobs in the world because of it. He can. And then he pretends every time that she's done something like miracle thing. Ah, fanfare! Yes, the fireworks come off. That is beyond, that's beyond clever man.

There is wisdom hiding in places that you would never think it. Which I was thinking, I was funny. So when I'm like, yeah, you're never getting past my mum. Hope there's a few female listeners going, Mrs Smith, watch yourself. I'm not sure you're how fucking virtuous and good of a wife I'm going, yeah, you're never getting past my mum. I hope there's a few female listeners going, Mrs Smith, watch yourself. I'm not sure how fucking virtuous and good of a wife I'm gonna be. Find a question.

I'll see Diren in Ibiza later this week. What drink or drinks should I buy him to end his world? I love a gin and tonic, although he's getting a bit funny that he thinks that gin is the most depressing, not as depressing, it's the one that slows you down the most,, not as in depressing, it's the one that slows you down the most, doesn't it, gin makes you tired, I believe. I'm not sure.

There's that wives tale thing about, it's supposed to be for recent spinster, divorcey women that are like crying on a set of steps, holding a bottle of gin. I think that's the stereotype. I think it might be Bollocks a bit like how people say to kill us an up he drink, which it isn't. Is it fucking out?

Oh, God. He'll have a gin and tonic, probably something a bit classy or like Hendrix, but if you really want to, you really want to get him, get him a pink gin. He loves his pink gin. Now, one of the thing that's going to hurt him, what does he, what, what doesn't he agree with? Shots of any kind.

Like you, you would never see the life escape someone when you put a shot in front of him Like and he can't even put a facade on these like Oh, thanks. He's just like no, I'm not doing this. Oh, he's blood breath But yeah, and you know you have to get Svengavins in there as well to Yeah, just as I'm over. I saw I outsource the Social pressure to Sven. Good. Put the drink there. Make sure that maybe get a crowd small crowd, probably put it on Instagram. Oh, Diron, I got you a shot and then zoom right in on

his facial expression. Yeah, that'll be it. Yeah, I'll enjoy that. He's definitely found his skin over his environment over there. He's so much happier, so you'd be getting him on a very good day. He seems in a good photo, man. I think having kept, as abreast as much as I can of stuff, you know, like whilst still leading a life, keeping up to date with sort of the way that Durin's been, I think his mindset and mine has probably been a little bit similar during lockdown that we are used to traveling, moving, seeing different things. And there's an upper bound to the amount of satisfaction that you can take from hustling and just using lockdown well. Like you get in terms of messages, which

is very complimentary from people saying it's really good to see that you've capped a lot. We're doing three episodes of a week of this podcast, like every week since lockdown started, like like great, but there's a level that you get to where you're like, fuck, I just need some variety. Like I need to see a different, like smell a different thing, you know, like hear the sound of the ocean do anything. And I think for someone like Dieren and myself and you and Sunni as well, obviously, like used to moving around when you get that taken away from you, you really do suffer in a bizarre way. We were fortunate enough because living in Bondi, it's like I've been on holiday the whole time.

Once we were allowed outside, that was great. But I said to him, I've talked to him during my stays and he was in a bit of a funk and he won't mind me saying this. I said, Dern, you love London because London is the most sociable city in the world. But without, with COVID, remove that social aspect. You're just in a concrete jungle with extortion at rent. And you can't even go pret and sit down. I was like, I would be fucking in a lot of trouble if I was over there. But yeah, I said to him, you just need to change the environment. And he said to me a few times, it's like, mate, you and I, Beether, you're in space, Sun, Sea, you'll be fucking onto it. And again, leaving, even being erratic and spending a lot

of money on somewhere to live there, he will see that money back through being a better marketer and a better human and being a happier person. And people often need to invest in their present like he is now. And the future, as we in their present like he is now. And the future, as we said, will come after itself. I love it, man. I love it.

Look, James, it's been a very, very long time coming. You are a little bit like a bird who is really game, like really, really DTF, but constantly in and out of relationships. So I just need to keep timing it right. Wait for the next lap. Oh, he's single again, right, get him. Like, and then I can just, you know what I mean? Yeah, we'll shoot the shit again.

It's the availability bias. The book, what is it, when is it? How is it? Not a life coach, it's out later on this year, but you can pre-order it now. There is links in my bios on Instagram and on Facebook. Link will be in the show notes below, of course, to James' socials and all the rest of the stuff. JamesSmithAcademy.com? Yes, please. JamesSmithAcademy.com. Go and check that out. Go and check out not a life coach. I'm excited, man. I'm going to have to get you to Newcastle for the book tour as well. We're going to be stopping through. I'm going to make sure of it.

Peace. Lovely. Thank you so much for your time, well. Wait, I'm going to be stopping through. I'm going to make sure of it. Peace. Lovely. Thank you so much for your time, dude. Cheers mate. you