Modern Wisdom - #789 - Neil Strauss - Why The World’s #1 Pickup Artist Left The Game Behind

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

Neil Strauss is a journalist, writer, and an author. Neil was the world's most famous pickup artist who kickstarted much of the modern dating discourse. So looking back 20 years later, what has he come to realise about what really matters in life and how to find love and connection? Expect to learn the trajectory of Neil’s views on relationships over the years, how Neil reflects on his book The Game, why Neil is having a baby with his ex-wife, what went wrong with the world of pickup, why faking status is not such a great idea, how to measure success in a relationship, how to rid yourself of other people’s expectations and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and more from AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/wisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://www.shopify.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get up to 32% discount on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: http://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: http://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: http://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Neil Strauss. He's a journalist, writer and an author. Neil was the world's most famous pick-up artist who kick-started much of the modern dating discourse. So looking back 20 years later, what has he come to realize about what really matters in life and how to find love and connection? Expect to learn the trajectory of Neil's views on relationships over the years, how Neil reflects on his book, The Game, why Neil is having a baby with his ex-wife, what went wrong with the world of pick-up artistry,

why faking status is not such a great idea, how to measure success in a relationship, how to rid yourself of other people's expectations, and much more. Neil is a really fascinating human. He's also the guy that wrote Rick Rubin's book that broke the entire world over the last like two years. He wrote the truth.

He's ghostwritten a ton of bestselling books. I think he did Kevin Hart's biography or autobiography. He is a very insightful guy and I very much appreciated speaking to him today and getting to hear his insight as someone who's been at the forefront of the world of dating commentary for like two decades. Very, very interesting.

Lots to take away from today. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Neil Strauss. Talk to me about your trajectory of perspective on relationships over the last few years. What's the story arc that you've gone through there? Yeah. I mean, there's, I have like my private story arc and the public story arc and they're kind of the same. And so I'll just tell the arc, I, the best I can, which is basically, basically what I do is I just try to,

I'm new. I do the same thing. You die. Just try to figure out things in life. And when I get stuck, I just do all the research and talk to all the people, as well as have all the experience that I need to, to learn. And so, the first place I got stuck in my life was just dating. And as a guy who was writing for the New York Times and Rolling Stone about music and around on tour with rock bands, around all kinds of wild decadence, I felt like I was a guy on the outside watching everyone else have all the fun. So the first book, obviously not the first book, I think it was my third or fourth, but the game was probably the most infamous one was me trying to figure

out dating and being in this world of, and being fascinated by this world of these pickup artists and all the social implications of that at that time. And so that was me trying to solve the problem, let's say of courtship in my life. And then great, dating was a lot easier to solve than the next problem, which is relationships. People complain about their dating issues. When it comes to relationships, they don't just complain, they really struggle, grieve, go into locked boxes of stress and trauma and confusion that almost no one else can enter because it's fun to hear people talk about their bad dates.

But talking about a bad relationship, most friends after one or two or three years, someone experienced the same problem actually get tired and this person stuck in the situation. I mean, it's, it's, it's tough. It's easy to stop dating someone. You're you have a bad date. You have a date with someone who's horrible. You just send them a polite text or I guess ghost them, right?

People do that, but if you have a bad relationship, how do you get out of that? And does the other person accept your boundary that you wanna leave? Usually they don't, usually as soon as they feel abandonment, they start chasing you and not letting you leave. Even if they don't wanna be in the relationship, that rejection is so much to them.

So the game was the easy book, but figuring out the relationship part, and especially looking at my own issues and relationships and my own patterns and taking a tough look at myself with relationships and not even what drew me to the game and those pickup artists, that was like the next step. So that was the next step of the journey. And that's the next book. And maybe the third book is, is, uh, so ended up through everything I learned, having an awesome marriage, have a father of an eight-year-old, a nine-year-old now, and it's like the best. And I also have like an amazing divorce. Meaning that I'm like best friends with my son's mom. I feel like we really are like a mate. I love co-parenting

and looking at the other side of how do you end. I guess it's such an amazing divorce that we're actually having another child together with my son's mom. Your ex-wife and you are no longer together in the traditional sense, but are having another child because of how well you get on as parents. I think we're great co-parents and I think we get along wonderfully and ready to take that journey together in a new way. Wow. Interesting, right?

That is, I've never heard of that. No, I know it's funny. I saw your face when I said that. And- I've spent a lot of time researching mating behavior and that's the first time. I mean, what an irrational way to look at something as, so is your perspective around your previous marriage.

We work as co-parents, but not necessarily as partners. Exactly. They romantic and sexual energy may not be there, but, but we're really, how are you going to make the baby? The baby's already made. Okay. How did you make the baby? So it's about four months.

Um, I'll tell you the old school way. I'll tell you about that. I'll tell you about that. Let me backtrack for one second and then I'll tell you how we got there. It's, it's, it's, uh, people are going to have, people may have, it'll be interesting. I'll tell you that. I'm happy to share. Um, but let me, let me talk about the divorce for one second because like, I'm, again,

I'm always fascinated by what is happening in my life now versus what already happened. And I thought about this a lot. I haven't heard people talk about this, but learning everything I did about trauma, divorce, I think it can be, it's tough if you're a child of a divorce where the parents are fighting with each other, but it's also tough if you're a child of parents who aren't divorced and fighting with each other. You just don't want parents fighting with each other in front of you, at least. So when we got divorced, I thought, well, how do I make this a positive experience in that person's life, being in our child's life? And I thought he needs a couple things. One is that it has to be a value add to his

life, not something being taken away. So what does that mean? So for him, he had a friend who recently moved to a new house and he thought that house was cool. So I said, how would you like two houses? He said, just one house. You're gonna get two houses now. I remember we trot him off. Me and his mom brought him together to the new house and I remember he got out of the car and he was so excited. He was just like so happy and like, shit, we're doing this right. Like I think the mistake, and again, there's nothing wrong with it.

People do what they, the best they can is when you sit the child down, you prepare them for bad news. It doesn't have to be bad news. It's great news if it's, if you're both happy, which isn't always the case. Then the second thing I think you need besides a value add is no interruption of service and the service being the love of both parents. And so that has to continue or get bigger. And this can be a positive experience in a child's life. So given that we feel like we have a great child and raised it well, I guess you want me to talk about this part. So I'm cool. I'm cool with what I haven't talked about it. So we thought, yeah, let's have a child the regular way,

but literally maybe the divorce was maybe five, six, five years ago. They actually celebrated our anniversary. This is all all gonna be about divorce. You're like, you're gonna talk about relationships and dating and now we're just talking about divorce. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, we celebrate our de-anniversary, meaning that I think getting out of a relationship is harder than getting into one.

Mm-hmm. Right? And so we should celebrate the fact that we're able to like compassionately get out of it. So last night was our anniversary. So we celebrated together with, with, with, with our son. Wow. Okay. Talk to me about how you made the baby. Okay. Got it. I know I've been crossing.

I'm going to keep pushing. Yes. So yeah. So, so, um, this is the craziest thing. Uh, I feel like I'm going to get some shit over this, but I'm fine with it. It is, it is what it is, or maybe it won't. I don't know. But I feel like there's people out there with a certain narrative and nothing I do will fit anyone's narrative. That's kind of the pattern of my life. But so we thought, well, we're just going to have the baby the old fashioned way. And then it just kind of felt weird. Like literally she's like my sister. We're literally like best friends and that. And so it just felt, it just felt weird. Doing that with your best friend, your sister, sometimes that energy just not there. And so,

so, so syringe in the bathroom. Okay. Yep. Yep. She, she went in the other room and syringed it up. One shot and it took. It was the craziest thing. It was like, wow, you went turkey baster. We really went turkey baster in just one time. We're just one terrifyingly fertile. Stay away from me. Yes. I don't want to be pregnant.

Yeah, exactly. But, but it's crazy, but it made me realize how easy it would be for somebody to just get themselves pregnant with your stuff. Oh yeah, I mean, do not disagree. I think there's even now, there was a video going around on TikTok about how to sort of entrap a man, like what you can do. And I always, I'm always so skeptical about stuff on TikTok. Cause I think, is this just a conspiracy of a conspiracy? Like, is this someone trying to go viral by saying something that's absolutely insane? Yeah. Um, but yeah, that's definitely a risk that is, I mean, you managed to do it with one, one cup and a Turkey based on so. Yeah. So

someone could easily easily, easily. I just didn't realize to that moment how. Perilous. How, yeah, how, yeah. That we should take care with stuff. So talk to me about the common thread through all of those experiences going from. Thank you for changing the subject by the way. Of course.

Yes, we really went out of the tangent. Not at all. But you have inception, the game, pick up, it's sort of courtship and dating and validation and sort of casual stuff. Then you have the truth, you have integration, relationships, love, unpacking trauma, then a pivot out of that into sort of non-monogamy,

then a pivot back into that, then the pivot into divorce. Like is there a... Yeah, so I see nothing as a pivot or as a brand. And meaning, and by the way, in between those, I did a book which feels like tragically relevant now called Emergency, which is really about learning the other skill of survival. Like when this shit hits the fan, there's even an acronym for it in that survivalist community, right?

When the shit hits the fan, what do you do? How do you save yourself? How do you save your family? So the other piece probably between these things was realizing that, well, you want to be able to protect your family, you want to be able to be safe, and you want to be, you don't want to be a victim of history family. You want to be able to be safe and you want to be, you don't want to be a victim of history and history is happening right now.

It's really about how do you do your best to be self-sufficient and not depend on the system. We both know Tucker Maxx, who is ultimate doomer, prepper, optimism man, only maybe 30 miles from here with a million rounds of ammunition. Um, yeah. What is the, what was the thread? The thread is literally just like, there are stages of life that we go through and I'm

just doing my best to figure them out when like the way I was raised or what I learned or what I know don't hold out for me. So if I get stuck, I make it a project and if the project's successful, I make it a book. And so there's some projects I started that either they weren't successful or I just lost interest in and take them all the way. Or I didn't get a big, big epiphany at the end. And then I didn't make that a book or it didn't feel like worth sharing. Was it difficult or has it been difficult for you to let go of the past versions of you, those previous identities?

You know, the game was such a sort of cultural moment that you're now the pickup guy, even though you were kind of a, like, um, you were doing anthropological observation basically of this world, stepping in, observing what was happening, coming back and telling everyone. coming back and telling everyone, how difficult is it to let go of the previous versions of you, especially when the public has an expectation? I mean, super easy for me, hard for other people. Why? Because like it's done. Like literally if I have an experience

and then I write a book about it, that's my best telling and my best version of that experience. And then I move on to the rest of it and move on with the rest of my life. I think it's funny that it's surprising at all because it would be a tragedy to get stuck in a version of who I was and what I thought was right 20 years ago or whatever it is and then keep marketing that. I really feel that people try to brand themselves. I was even looking when you were podcasting, there was like someone who was the, they're always the something something, right? The hormone wizard or the decorating guru or the-

The fat loss magician. Exactly, exactly. And then like, but there's a great saying from Leonard Cohen, the songwriter, and he was speaking at a music festival and the music festival was like just, it was going off the rails. It was just the kids were going off the rails and very similar. Our culture always goes to these moments. There's, you know, right now where we have the, there's always these amazing moments. And he goes, he said this great quote. He said, those who are married to the spirit of their generation are doomed to become widows

in the next. What does that mean to you? What that means is if you just plant your flag and you say, this is it, guess what? You keep evolving. The world keeps evolving. Life keeps evolving and you're stuck in the past. I've certainly sat there with people who had a big health message that they were really tied to, who no longer believed it, no longer ate that way, but because they have a certain following that expects that, they keep

doing that. What happens is you get a split in yourself, right? And you're saying one thing while doing another. And that, and I think ultimately the goal at the end of the day is to just like yourself, right? And you're not going to like yourself deep down if you're a hypocrite. Or if you're still saying something you no longer believe or move down for, because you're like so much of what you talk about, so much of what your guests talk about is just having freedom of choice. And if you do one thing that's successful

and then your audience expects that, and then you start catering to them, like you're not free. It's a horrible way to live. Yeah, and you will begin to resent the people around you as well, or the audience that you have. And it doesn't work, and it doesn't work. And people can see through it.

I always say like your audience only expects what you've done before. Cause they don't know what you do next. So they just, they don't know that. And so surprise them and give it to them. And I like, I think I've tried to never be afraid to move in whatever direction I feel called to, uh, and trust that if I just care about it and I do my best that it's gonna find its right audience, whether it's my audience or another audience. I don't think that way.

Is there something that you rely on to continually prioritize that sort of authenticity and that linear path from spirit to sort of world? Because people do get captured, and it's not like they're all doing it because I've found that talking about keto means that I can make some money and therefore I'm going to be the keto guy. There's just a fear of becoming someone new. Is there something that you rely on to help you stay authentic when you're looking at

moving on to the next phase of life? I would say it's more nuts. It's more not something I rely on or something I do. I think it's a, it's aation of all the things I don't do. Right? So, and so I think there's nothing you have to do, but it's letting go of attachment to stories. The story of who you think you are,

the story of who other people think you are, the story of what supposedly works. Cause the fact is no other stories even work. You know what I mean? Like, eventually you're saying the same message and people get bored of it and sort of move on. Uh, it becomes predictable or you just seem like you're in the past or behind the times or something. So I don't even think those strategies really work for people. And by the way, side note, there are some kinds of people who really have one message and that's

their message they want to share and that fulfills them. I've certainly met people I'm sure you have on this podcast who really have one message to say, and that's really authentic they want to share and that fulfills them. I've certainly met people I'm sure you have on this podcast who really have one message to say, and that's really authentic to them. And they don't have this curiosity that you and I have. And so many of your guests have, uh, and that's true to them, but, and, and that's cool. Right. But I think it's just about being true to yourself. And like honoring that above all. Yeah. I mean, even thinking about the transition from the game to the truth, like,

ex-player chooses monogamy, is a very convenient cultural narrative. It makes for a great headline. Which is, and because they're games we play, right? So that is what the book is about. So you're talking about the truth, and for sure, the narrative was pick-up artist chooses monogamy, but the book and for sure the narrative was pick up artist chooses

monogamy, but the book had nothing to do with being pick up artist and the end result wasn't about monogamy. It was about really choosing the end. The message of the book is if you're unhealthy, any relationship style you choose is going to be unhealthy, whether it's monogamy or polyamory or ethical monogamy or whatever, what have you. And if you're healthy, whatever you choose is gonna be healthy, right? So it's really about and letting go of our attachments to this is right or that is right. In other words, you can get be in a relationship

and it can evolve and you might decide maybe it's time to evolve and open it up and maybe it's time to shut it down and really be committed to each other and I think a relationship is a negotiation and a discussion. In other news this episode is brought to you by AG1. 90% of Americans are not getting the nutrients they need every day to be healthy. Everybody knows that food is always first. Many of us will eat well some days, even most days, but no one has the perfect diet and signs keep showing us

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So if you want to replace your multivitamin and more, start with AG1. Try AG1 today and get a year's free supply of vitamin D3 and K2 plus five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to drinkag1.com slash wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash wisdom. Do you think our current mating culture is at odds

with our evolved psychology? Elaborate on that question a little bit. We have what seems to be ancestrally a monogamous or serially monogamous approach to mating that somewhere between four and seven years, that's kind of the cycle. It's enough to get a child to be energy independent. They can go off and look after themselves and then you and your partner are going to go separate ways.

Yet we live in a culture that even though casual sex is allowed and even though casual sex is often promoted, I think when children come into the picture, it's like you're supposed to be together for life. There's something sacred about this union. We have confluent, the confluent era of romance. You know, it's not because your next door neighbor has cows and you have goats. And then if your son marries their daughter, then, you know, you can combine your lands together or something like that. Is that, is the word for that confluent? So the most recent,

the most recent era is the confluent era. So there's a phenomenal researcher that I had on the show who has done a cultural assessment of romantic traditions throughout the ages. And the confluent era is what he says we're in now, which is we can be in a relationship for as long as you benefit me and I benefit you. And if either of us stop benefiting each other,

then we go our separate ways. That's the era we're in? That's the era that he's defined it as. Here's another theory on that that I heard. I think that's interesting. I don't know about that. I don't, I'll just, I'm thinking on that. So I interviewed Stephanie Koontz who wrote a book, A History of Marriage.

And her take on it is, you know, we kind of went from, you know, what you were saying that it was this, you know, extra workers and inheritance rights and things like that to this idea of love, to now she sees as a pick and choose thing. And I guess I'm an example of that, which is like, okay, do I want kids or not want kids? Do I want monogamy or do I not want monogamy? Do I want kids without marriage or kids with marriage? Do I want, we sort of have this checklist and we can kind of design the thing that we want. In my case, like, okay, I'm having a child, but without the marriage and you know, and I think so she sees it as this sort of pick and choose era. And I don't know if there's a name for it or word for for it, but that feels more right to me than the kind of fluent thing

is like I'm with you as long as you serve me and I serve you and then we move on. That almost sounds like what it was before. When it was like, well, it serves me to have more workers in a division of labor. Well, you also know that more choices don't necessarily make us happier. Like the paradox of choice is a big deal.

If it's like, okay, here is the one relationship style that people go for, this is the direction that it's in, you have a village of this many people, constraints on choice actually enable satisfaction in many ways. Oh, totally. I mean, think if we were, if there were arranged marriages, we're like, and again,

assuming there's no emotional or physical abuse, like we'd be like, let's find a way to make this work. You and I with our minds, and I keep saying, and again, assuming there's no emotional and physical abuse, like we'd be like, let's find a way to make this work. You and I with our minds and I keep saying, you and I, because I think we think similarly in terms of like having this learning growth mindset, be like, okay, I'm gonna make it work. I'm gonna adjust myself.

I'm gonna see how we can work it out. So for sure, I think I agree with you on the paradox of choice. And that's certainly the challenge we're having now with like the court in the courtship world as far as there's just so many apps and these apps are throwing so many people at you that people are pricing themselves out of the game in the sense that they're just serial daters who go on dates literally all the time and that's just what they do because they like that quick validation.

And then the interesting thing we're dealing with on the apps as far as this goes, and I realize we're jumping all over the courtship relationship divorce for doing it all backwards. But the interesting thing about apps I find so fascinating, I met one of the co-founders at Tinder, reached out to me and he says, you know, part of the reason we started this app was because I read the game. And I thought, oh, that's so much work. Wouldn't it be nicer if you just already knew when someone was attracted to you and can take it from there?

So it's interesting, but I think it's like you said, I think it is a lot of admin. But the other thing is if you're hiring for a job, it's tough. But if you put an ad out because the same unemployable people keep circling the job pool, right? They get a job for a couple of months and they get let go or they can't find a job. The same is true of the dating apps. A lot of the same undateable people keep circulating and circulating and circulating. So if you're on them regularly, it's easy to get cynical about your prospects.

Are you familiar with LMS? Do you know what that is? No. Luxe, money, status. Right, it makes sense. So it's the triage priority list that a lot of guys in the Black Pill Movement rely on and say is most important. Luxe is most important, then money, then status. For men?

Yes, for men. What's your thoughts? Ah, my thoughts is it's like like it's a sad way to think it's a sad it's a sad way to think and I Guess like I'm just I'm just kind of thinking out loud. I got a bunch of thoughts on the stuff you're saying But to speak back to your to speak back to your what what you were saying about what it's like to be Someone I think like I think mostly we're're all living our own stories of what it's like. And I think like, if you choose to see the best in people, you can notice the best behavior. If you choose to see the worst in people, you're going to notice the worst,

worst behavior. And I think you're, it starts with I think that, I mean, I think probably, I think they got it wrong. I think that, I think that there's, that, and how would they define status? I guess I'll ask you. I wouldn't be too sure. I would guess something like popularity. Right. So I would say it's high status behaviors.

And I mean, I know this because I went and hacked it in the game, right? As a guy who is not that good looking, as a guy like who, at least at that time, didn't have any like, you know, wasn't someone recognized, didn't have a lot, didn't have status, didn't have money, didn't have looks, didn't have fame. We realized, and I also was a guy who once I wrote the game, I had the people with the most looks, the most money, the most status calling me like this fucking five, six big nose, you know, dude who keeps saying, you know, and can't even articulate a really clean sentence, calling me for advice. The same shit I thought I was alone dealing with, they were dealing with the same thing.

And I think it really goes down to like how you, how you, the story you tell yourself more than money looks and status, and then how you reflect that story. As a simple example, I've seen a lot of people with money looks and status As a simple example, I've seen a lot of people with money looks and status engage in low status behaviors, meaning being insecure, being doubtful, not caring themselves well, not speaking, just always being worried about what others thinking about them. And whatever those gained for them, they lost it. There's a line, there's like a troubadour poem that's something about the, when they were first sort of talking about making romance into art in that era, that's like the eyes

go forth to seek an image which they can then recommend to the heart. And so I think the money looks and status like might get your foot in the door. But after that, it's who you are that enables you to stay in that door. Unless you're dealing with someone who has similarly low self-esteem, right? And it's just out there looking for a target who has those things. They've got their own wounds. They feel like that gives them safety. I think let's go, sorry, go ahead.

Just one of the interesting reflections that a lot of friends who maybe in the early 2010s were trying to do game and pick up and day game and stuff like that. What they realized was they became quite disenchanted, I think, with the world of dating because they saw what they needed to do in order to be attractive to women and then realized the distance that that was from who they really were or what they thought they needed to do in order to be attractive to women and realized that I can get what I want, but what I want doesn't actually see me.

And that distance between the two of I'm having to tell them about the midget fight outside and you do my keynote escalation and ignore the and do all the rest of the stuff that I think caused a lot of them to become very disenfranchised and disenchanted with the world of dating. Yeah. I think, I mean, a couple, couple of thoughts and, and to go back. So again, these are like the stories we tell ourselves. Like I think that there's a learning process and maybe you learn. If I look back on the game, you know, there's so many different issues around it, negative and positive and everything else.

But I see it as a lot of sort of neurodivergent people trying to learn how to socially interact, including myself, right? And so for me, I needed those little, I didn't know just tell me what to say, like how to angle my body. I was so uncomfortable around people. And then once I learned it,

then I could let it go the same way you learn anything, which is sort of learning the rules and then throwing them out. So second, I got three points to make with your, again, these topics are so interesting, right? Second thought is that another perspective on the LMS thing you said, which the second perspective is people don't know what they want. So they might, what they want are the things behind that. So a way to think about, for example, it used to really hurt my self esteem when I read personal ads and everyone wanted a guy who was six feet and taller. How tall are you?

Five, ten. Okay. That's great. Right? I'm five, six, you know, maybe five, six and a half at a stretch. Right? And it took me a long time to realize that it wasn't height that they were looking for. What they were looking for was safety. I want to feel when they're, when maybe, what is, let's just say, what does money represent? Money represents that some degree of, you degree of security. Competence. And competence, that was the word I was looking for.

Exactly, competence. So if you look at the reasons underneath these, and you embody the reasons underneath these, which anybody can do, the other stuff doesn't matter. Yeah, I think that's where the sort of disenchantment came from, which was not feeling like you had the actual foundation, realizing that you could create the glitzy sort of mystique. Like you do not need to see how much money I have.

You do not need to see how much money I have. And then going, oh, I can get what I want by pretending to play this game. And deep down, I still don't feel like I'm worthy of it. I don't think that they see me. What they see is this persona. As soon as you're saying, I don't want you to know how little money I have.

You're like that influencer we were talking about earlier, who's promoting a vegan diet while eating meat for dinner. You know, you're creating a split in yourself. So here's the other thing you were talking about is, I think these people you're talking about, do you know the concept of locus of control? Like there's external locus of control concept of locus of control, like there's external locus of control and internal locus of control, and I'm probably going to

get these wrong, so apologies if I do. The idea is like, are the things that are happening to me the fault of others outside myself, which is a nice thing to believe, right? It's just women are like that, thus I'm opting out. Men are like that, thus I'm just not dealing with that. The world, you know, and so we're just saying, we're creating this, it's everybody else's fault, so I don't have to change.

I can just hate on them, right? Or B, the way I am and the way I think you are, is that like, this is going on, how can I do better? How can I change? How can I be better? How can I understand? How can I be better? How can I understand? How can I be empathic? And like, it's a lot more work,

but man, you're a lot happier. Yeah, I think the benefit, from the cynics perspective, the benefit of never trying is never having to feel the pain of failure. Yeah. That's, I came up with this idea called the cynicism safety blanket, which is basically that.

That's why it exists. It's sour grapes at an existential level. Yeah. And so I noticed myself, if I ever start to, and I don't even do this anymore because I stopped it. Like, if I ever start thinking something negatively about someone who's successful and start comparing their work to mine and my, you know, I just stop instantly and I just think, you know, what can I learn from that for myself?

And, uh, again, most of your listeners, I feel like are learning growth minded, but I think we can understand that there's certain people and I've come across them that if you're, if somebody is doing better than you, you can either try to do better or you can try to bring them down to your level. And that's like, that's a split in the world, but the people who try to bring them down are the loud voices right now. Correct.

In the culture. Correct. So you, do you still run a men's group? I did for a while and now I just sort of do, not really. Okay. But you've been tangential to men's worky things. Yeah, I'm in a men's group as a- Participant.

Yeah. Yeah, okay. So given the fact that for, for best part of 20 years now, you've been in one form or another observing men's development, emotionally, relationally, spiritually, psychologically, therapeutically. What do you make of the current state of men's friendships, mental health, masculinity, role models. It's a very common talking point. What's your perspective on where men are at at the moment? Yeah, I've heard you talk about it a bit on the podcast, but what's your kind of take now in a nutshell out of curiosity? I think that men are being made to pay for the sins of a patriarchy that they no longer feel like they're a part of at the moment. They're being told how privileged they are and how fortunate they are to have all of these different advantages. And quite rightly, there are outliers at the top, the Elon Musk's, the Bezos's

of the world, the NBA players, the NFL players. But I don't think that that fully captures the main experience. And I think that a lot of men don't feel like they're, they feel like their worries are being dismissed out of hand by a whining class, this sort of chattering class. Meanwhile, suicide, depression, friendlessness, loneliness, sexlessness, health, all of the problems that we know that men have. And I think that it's making them feel quite embittered

toward the world because what they're saying is, I'm suffering and you don't care. So fuck you. I'm not going to play your game. Right. And now who in this story is you? Who in that story is me? No, you, you don't care when they, when you're saying you, who is the you? This might get to the point I was thinking of the world. Yes. Okay. So I think we had this split Yes, okay. So, I think we had this split that we think the world is the stuff we receive from our devices and from our computers. That's a game we don't want to play.

So, there's an unhealthy game of thinking that the voices that are loud online and the TikToks that could fed into our feed and the tweets we see are somehow the belief of the culture. And it can really mess us up. And I've seen you had on the podcast, the woman who did that wonderful JK Rowling podcast. And there's somebody who like literally just, she just got sucked into this, sucked into this hole and she's now living her life out of her trauma. That was, again, I'm just really smug thinking about that. You can get taken off course by just

listening to these voices and thinking that the culture thinks it or people think it. It's just one of many stories out there. I, and I think it can get confusing if you have less of a grounded sense of self or if it plays into your personal trauma. I think the problem that a lot of people, especially young people at the moment are facing is that their experience is the internet. Their world is the internet.

You know, if you're spending between six and eight hours a day on screens, online, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, video games, that is more real than the real world. What do you mean the fucking real world? Like this is my real world. You know, I'm, I'm observing it. Like what are the, where are the countervailing narratives that push back against the fact that maybe people do care about the fact that men are suffering. Maybe people do care about the fact that I'm really struggling to get a job or a girlfriend,

or I feel I'm neurodivergent and I don't understand what to do, I can't hold down a relationship or I don't have enough friends or whatever it is. Like if you're not going out there into the real world to see the alternate storylines. Yeah, and I think that's exactly the point, that it is very real for people. And when it becomes that real,

it actually does become dangerous. And I would say that, I would say it's happened to everybody. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't matter what your identity is or how you identify yourself. There's some vector of attack that is really making you feel like you're doing it wrong.

You're not enough. If you step out a lot, you get slapped really, really hard. And really, that's why it's important, going back to what you said, for me to be in a men's group or for me to be in a world, in a community of a small amount of people who really, really care, who support you in the best way you can, where you can really get that feedback. And you can say, you know what, I've seen this stuff online and it's stressing me out in this way. So I think the point being, I mean, all these, there is a real problem in terms of these are not contributing to anyone's mental health. And I think a few things are important. I mean, one is to really

try to stay out of a victim story. To start, because once you get into them, there's that saying and I think it's the most true thing ever that all perpetrators perpetrate from the victim position. I mean, look at every war going on. And the main thing is, is there's a victim, I'm not saying that whatever's right or wrong, but all sides are the victim. Right? You know, like whether it's with Hitler was in encirclement, Putin was encirclement, right? We're surrounded by enemies where the victim like, so we perpetrate from the victim position.

So like the first step is if you really want to get any, any a reality on it to stop and, and get out of the victim story, cause this is when people start, that's where that leads to the hate, or that makes it okay to sort of perpetrate. But we can say there are all these variables around us and how can we curate these variables so they help us.

And I do think these, it's insane, it's wild to me that all these companies that pretend to care about people don't have that algorithms working to actually help people versus market to them. I would love something, and it's to the way the system works and capitalism works, but what if the algorithm was not like, what can we sell you or what can we market to you? But like, how can we improve your mental health, right? How can we make you, and I think that would help the world and actually create better consumers anyway. So I hear what you're saying and I get to the point of view that I don't want anyone

to tell me what my identity is, what it should be, how I should be within that identity. I probably identify myself on other factors more than. I think a lot of, especially guys, but also girls increasingly now are lost. They don't know it. We're in this completely new world. If you're either millennial or Gen Z or Gen A, your parents don't really have the skillset or the awareness to be able to work out

how to exist in this world. What does it mean to be technologically native? What does it mean to be in a world with porn and Tinder and OnlyFans and expectations and boob jobs and BBLs and stuff? What does it mean to exist like that? So people are quite rightly looking for Archetypes and role models. I want someone to give me some advice to get me out of this. So I don't disagree

Many people like the idea of agency and sovereignty over their own direction I don't want anybody to tell me who I am or what I should do or the way that I should do it I want to feel like I am the captain of my own ship and yet there are people who also need Some fucking guidelines. How am I supposed to exist in the world? What does it mean to be confident? Where does my self esteem come from? Where should I seek validation and not seek validation?

These are questions that people look for role models. And unfortunately, I think culture is just offering up like very few. And here's my, like my spicy meteorological take for the future. I think that male body dysmorphia will overtake female body dysmorphia and female crisis of femininity will overtake the crisis of masculinity within the space of about 20 years. I think that we're feeding the seeds of a unbelievably fragile narcissistic generation of women and a unbelievably aesthetically anxious generation of men. And add to this computation, add AI is going to create these archetypes

that like no human being can live up to a perfection. I was seeing some of the, so like on one hand, the culture is getting into sort of body positivity, body positivity. On the other hand, AI is creating these like archetypes that go like beyond what filters do. Fibonacci sequence perfect ratio. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know exactly what you mean. Yeah.

So it's like, I think we're, but here's my thought. I think there's, I'm a big reader. I think we're talking to other podcasts about reading and I love reading and right now I'm reading this amazing, so Penguin did a box set of the great books. It's called Little Black Classics, I think. And it's, there's a box set of 80 of the greatest books throughout history of the last, I don't know, 3000 years. And then there's about 40 or 50 books beyond that. I'm going through them all in order, right? And, and what I'm learning from it is when I'm reading about a monk in Japan, the Kenko, I forget what century he was from, but at least four or five centuries ago, to reading Mozart's

letters with his dad, to reading Socrates, to reading Camus. These things you're talking about, maybe the language was different, but everyone was still dealing with that. The trial of Socrates is like, people are telling me who I should be and how I should be. I don't follow the common beliefs. There's all these rumors being spread about me that aren't even true. He's literally dealing with the same stuff. And sure, there's more of it and the devices are different and it's being blitzed this other way, but I think they're this human nature and these problems we dealt with. There is a timeless quality to them, even though they seem really unique generationally. We'll get back to talking to Neil in one minute, but first I need to tell you about Shopify.

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in. Do you think that it's possible to game love or connection in a relationship in the same way as you were able to do it with courtship? Um, I mean, I think, I think my short, the short version of the answer is any, and by the way, what are your thoughts on that, by the way? Because I know we have a different thought because I noticed you switched the topic, which is fine. We can go to that.

What are your thoughts on the idea that, and I can give you some, I think if someone reads Albert Camus's Create Dangerously, for example, he literally complains about some of the things people are, he's like about some of the things that people feel like they're uniquely complaining about now. Like some of the lines could apply to today. Or I just think there's probably a set of everything I read, everything I read and I can send you some of these excerpts. Like I'll mark things that literally sound

like it's people talking about- Perennial problems. Perennial problems. But what are your thoughts? Cause I think you see it in a very, we're in a unique cultural crisis of masculinity and mental health. Well, I think from the gaming level,

long-term connection thing, it seems to me that more people are beginning to wake up to the fact that they probably don't want to sleep around indefinitely and kind of be in this weird Tinder admin, like liminal purgatory for the rest of time. That probably doesn't sound like fun. Uh, but no one really talks about love in relationships. You know, even a lot of the evolutionary psychology stuff that I've dug into, and I know that you've looked at as well.

It speaks in a very sort of sterile transactional way it's make value and it's offering for status and protection and resources over fecundity and age and fertility and blah, blah, blah. And no one ever talks about the actual felt experience of being in love or what it's like to be attached to somebody else and be dependent on them and be in union with them and do things that make each other feel good and stuff like that. It's always a very dispassionate look at what's the ledger?

What's the balance sheet of this? And at least as far as I can see, I think that you can quite easily game attraction, but it is much more difficult to game connection. And when you say no one talks about love, you mean like, what do you mean by that? Well, look at the dating advice that you see that's online. Like how much of the dating advice talks about about this is what it feels like when your head

over heels besotted with a guy or girl partner and this is how you can handle the emotions that come up of jealousy and uncertainty and anxiety and fear of being left and all of these things. No one ever wants to talk about that because it seems in a modern world where we, you know, we can predict the weather and we can send rockets into space and we've conquered bacteria and we've got a theory of disease and we've got AI. Love kind of almost feels like God. It's sort of this very unsophisticated wishy washy.

And you talk about kind of love or relationships just in your case. Both. Both. Both, I think. I just don't think that there's a massive amount of discussion about love or relationships and how to build them together in a phenomenologically consistent way. Yeah, I guess, by the way, in my mind, I actually think there's more out there on relationships than courtship. And I guess maybe it just depends on what silo you're in and what you're being threatened. Where's your echo chamber?

Where's mine? Yeah, where's your echo chamber? Because like a lot of people out there are hurting over relationships. They're hurting over a past relationship they were in where they're just traumatized from the experience and they're hurting over one they're in and they just can't get out of. They're hurting over one that's over, should be over, but this person is still in the court system fighting them for their child. They're hurting because they did it a narcissist or a sociopath or someone with borderline

who put them through a living hell and gaslit them and drove them. So there's so much, there's more pain out there from people trying to figure out the relationship stuff. And consequently, I think more people looking to books and podcasts and experts and healing around that, at least in my silo. Where does the healing? But then the other side of what you're talking about is then there's a flip side of it, which is there's a love being marketed to us through movies and

pop songs that is also not realistic to what our expectations of it should be. songs that is also not realistic to what our expectations of it should be. So maybe I can think of your question another way, which is we're seeing the horror stories and we're seeing the fantasies. You're smiling because I'm agreeing, right? But where are we seeing what really should be a healthy expectation of what a relationship is like, right? Which means that, you know, a relationship with zero conflict is a warning sign. It's not a great relationship, right? That means someone is,

that's usually what they call a parallel relationship, two people living separate lives under one roof. It's okay to have, you know, again, as long as there's no emotional or physical abuse, conflict is good. To me, a healthy conflict is good to me. A healthy relationship is how quickly you recover from the conflict and truly get back to where you were before it.

That's a healthy relationship. I've heard you say you shouldn't be using science to decide what to do with your heart. Yes. And I do think a lot about how much people are trying to rationally logic themselves into a effective, satisfying relationship. I do think a lot about how much people are trying to rationally logic themselves into a effective, satisfying relationship. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's true. I think like it's fascinating to the other side of it is people who really have a long list of what they want. And then they just go for the same

broken shit every time the list goes away. And, or they think they think they found that thing they want that meets their list, but that was the mask and they end up in the same broken shit every time the list goes away or they think they found that thing they want that meets their list, but that was the mask and they end up in the same horse or they were before. So going back to relationships, I do think the, I mean, I think the healthiest way to have the healthiest relationship learned from experience is literally just, it goes back to external versus internal locus of control.

It goes back to like, I can control, I love the work of always working on yourself. Like, I just love it. And I think if it's a theme or these places where we differ, it's probably, I'm always blaming myself. I'm always looking at myself. I can't control the culture. I can't control what people think.

But what I can do is control how I respond to it. And to me, it's giving myself the ultimate agency, Right? And so I don't want to get into a story that I'm upset about something outside myself that I have no control over. I want to get in the story of, fuck, I'm reacting to that. Why am I reacting to that? What thoughts am I then having because of that? How can I not be reactive? And then going back to relationships, here's a, I've never articulated this, but I think it's an important idea, which is you don't know whether you're, again, taking aside the edge case of emotional physical abuse, you don't know whether your relationship with the problem is you or your partner until you stop reacting to your partner. So if I'm

in a relationship and I come with a bunch of complaints and I say, well, it's not working, but I'm reacting, you know, they're saying something and I'm getting upset about it or I'm getting hurt about it or I'm going to resentful or I'm shutting down or I'm, whatever it is, until they can have any kind of response. And I can really just be empathic. I can listen without taking it personally. I can not defend myself. I can just seek to understand. I'm not able to judge the health of my relationship. I realize that was a little bit of a tangent. Not at all.

Does that make sense? What would you say to the people who do continue to find themselves repeating the same patterns, whether it's their perspective of the world, their perspective of relationships, the kinds of people that they are attracted to or attract, what are the first places that those people should look? Yeah, I think there's two sides of it, right?

Or maybe there's three sides of it, right? In a relationship, there's three entities. There's you, there's the other person, and then there's a relationship itself as a third entity, right? So I think we can look at, I think we can kind of look at all three of those. So one side is understand again, like attachment theory is so trendy right now that, that I don't even need to talk about it because everyone knows it. But when I first talked about it, like it was really new stuff, but understanding that we're wired a certain way because we love what's familiar. That's the easiest way to think about stuff. We love what's familiar. So consequently, if you had a narcissistic parent, you're probably going to try to meet some

form of narcissist and then try to get seen by them and lead you to immense frustration. Or you had an abandoning parent, you're going to choose somebody who is not emotionally there or not physically there or replicating that for you in some way. You're going to try to heal your childhood through trying to get them to be there to be seen through all these things. So step one is heal yourself instead of trying to expect someone else to heal you. So that goes against what was that word you said about the relationships where we use each other? CB So Confluent. Confluent relationships. So step one is like, what's that classic book on self-esteem that

Ayn Rand's like Nathan, Nathaniel Brandon. He really said about we attract people who are at our level of self-esteem. So whenever someone's, by the way, I hope I'm not throwing too many ideas. So whenever someone, I just love these, I hope I'm not throwing too many ideas at once. So whenever someone, I just love these subjects. They're so fun to talk about. So whenever somebody is saying, complaining about their partner, my brain, I'm always thinking you're dating them or you're married to them. Like what way in which way are you and equal? That's not that your partners, you're so emotionally mature and your partner so emotionally immature. You're dating each other. You're attracting your own level of that.

Maybe you're the flip side of the same coin, but it's the same coin. So the first thing is raising your own level of like emotional health, healing those childhood patterns and wounds, working on the self-esteem piece. Like you want to attract better people, just like literally become a better person, right? All those, that list you have of everything that you need in a relationship,

go look at yourself with that list and you embody those and you'll find that person. You know, I love Byron Katie's four questions and the best part about them is Byron Katie has those four questions where you can challenge your beliefs. The fifth thing is the turnaround and that's changed my life. And here's like a shortcut for using it. If I ever tell myself a story that person's annoying, the turnaround is, and I can list the reasons why they're annoying, I say, I'm annoying. Then I can think of all the reasons I'm annoying, right? I get that my partner's never there for me. What are the ways in which I'm not there for the partner? If I turn things around, my accusations of other people to myself, I can usually see, we can all see usually, but I can usually see I'm not, I'm

just as imperfect. So first step is with yourself. But the challenge in that is, is the best way to learn about how to have a healthy relationship is to be in one. So there's tools and skills you can have in a relationship that you can work on it. So if you're in a relationship that again, but you're not dating someone who is really toxic or toxic for you, uh, is to like work on your own reactions, like literally relationship is a system, right? And so if you change the piece of the system, you can control yourself. The whole system changes. And I can't tell you how many times control yourself, the whole system changes. And I can't tell you how many times in my experience and other people's experience that if I change how I react to things and just respond instead of reacting, if I change some part of myself, the whole relationship

changes and all that energy. Sorry, man. I've got so much to say on this. No, no, no. I'm enjoying it. Honestly. Okay. All that energy people put into changing their partner never works. It never works. It just creates resentment and you're reenacting a parental figure they had when they were younger that criticized them, right? They signed up for that. And so if you just take that energy out, you work on yourself, you change, your

partner will automatically change. Like they'll just change cause the system changes and say, what are you doing? You seem happier. What's what's going on for you? I you're in that men, in that men's group, maybe I should be in this women's group or you're doing therapy who maybe I should get therapy too. Like, fuck man. Just like it's all goes back to like, yeah, it all goes back to like the better you make yourself, the better relationships will be in and the better the world around you will start to look.

What are the modalities that you've found best for unpicking these patterns? Yeah, I think there's a formula that I think of. Your eyebrows raise, I love you, this is like podcast call. Wait, there's a formula? Okay, so it's these three things. I think these work together So people always talk about therapy doesn't work but I think they're talking about talk therapy and I agree that talk therapy is that great for a change because Your problems were developed before you had

The intellectual capacity they the wounds happened emotionally and so I think we need to heal them It's best to heal them emotionally. So I think the formula is these three things. So one is deep, intensive, deep, intensive experiences that are whether the workshops or things where you're really, really unpacking your wounds and you're just a puddle of tears on the ground. So some container where you can block off the outside world and all that social media you're just a puddle of tears on the ground. So some container where you can block off the outside world and all that social media you're talking about and really break, rip off the bandaid and just be a- What are some examples of that?

Sure. My favorite, I'll say my favorite, the one that worked for me, and by the way, people's thing they say the best is usually the first thing they did that really worked. So my bias and the first thing that really worked for me was at the Meadows, which is a treatment center in Arizona. They have a program called the Survivors Program. And it's like an exorcism of your childhood wounds. Like you sit there in a chair like this, and I literally felt like an exorcism. And I remember leaving the therapy.

And for the first time, I'm like, fuck, this is who I am without all that shit, without all that baggage I was carrying from mom and dad and all my upbringing, like, fuck, this is who I really am. And then of course, you go back to your regular environment and the same shit happenings and you start having the same response, but now you have a target to get back to. People love the Hoffman process. I think the Hoffman process is amazing as well. The difference is, Meadows is a psychiatric facility and you're getting one-on-one work.

The Hoffman process is group work, but it's also amazing. But here's the thing. I think anything you do where the person and yourself both have the intention of really getting better and it's not a cult is going to ensure it is not a cult. Here's how you know, it's a cult. It's a cult. If part of the treatment involves you signing up other people for the work, simple rule of thumb.

I've been, I've, cause I do so much stuff, improvement stuff. I went to these ones that were culty. It was amazing to see how the brainwashing worked and how effective it was. They like create these loops within the self-improvement teachings that they then pull the strings on months or years later. They get you to follow it like a robot. It's unbelievable. How interesting.

But here, we'll be at one more thought. Sorry, Ben. No, no, no, keep going. We've got two more stages to get through. Okay. So, so this therapy of the Meadows is called post induction therapy. Speaking of cults, the idea is that your childhood is like a hypnotic induction. Your childhood is a, is a cult.

Nice. Is that your, I got to show you a drink. Get it, get it in there. Okay. A little bit more. Um, this is, this is how you get these three hour podcasts. That's correct. Um, so your childhood is a hypnotic induction or

you're in, you're being indoctrinated into a cult. The cult is whatever your parents believe, right? We all grew up. And so the post induction therapy is unbrainwashing you from this cult you're in for the first 17 years, which I love. What was that? Can you just briefly describe the process of, was it like acquisition and pruning that happens in the brain? I've heard you talk about that before. Yeah. So I'll take it. I'll hit the two other things and we'll talk about it. Okay.

So first one, just to round out that first stage of your three-step process of becoming the ultimate human. Deep intensive workshop, like, you know, just one or two a year where you're just emotionally kind of where, where you're going through some sort of emotionally purging. And what, what are the principles of that modality that it's something which is emotionally intensive? you're just emotionally kind of where you're going through some sort of emotionally purging it. And what are the principles of that modality that it's something which is emotionally intensive? Yeah.

And multiple days and in just a sort of safe container. Understood. Okay. There's one. Meaning that simply you're just trying to let and then as everyone who's ever been to an amazing seminar or workshop knows, you get that high, post seminar high, and then you go back and do the same old shit, right? So step two is maintenance, meaning we get this change and our brain gets set right. We go back to our world and the same stuff is happening and the brain starts to go askew

again. So I want to talk about some sort of weekly accountability so you can just keep being reminded of what direction your boat should be pointed in. Here's an awesome thing about these men's groups. And I'm actually not saying go on Instagram and find somebody who's starting a men's group you know and join that when I'm actually saying when I say men's group what I did was I took five or six people about at my level of of work some people you know um and uh and we're at the same place maybe we're have kids or marriage or divorce whatever it is and then we all chipped in for one therapist. So this is really affordable.

It's cheaper than individual therapy. And group therapy has been studied to be more effective, but what's amazing about group therapy is I can say you're the therapist and you have a point of view. I can just say, well, you know, he's wrong. He doesn't know me. Like that's just his opinion and how he was taught.

But if it's you and four other peers who I recommend and they're all saying I'm wrong, like I don't think you guys are right, but you're all saying it. So there must be something there for me to explore. Nowhere to hide. Yeah, nowhere to hide. And with a group between your weekly sessions with a therapist, you can stay in touch with the group. So I strongly recommend it. And you need the therapist there just for the accountability so you don't go off on some- Just becomes a bro evening.

Yeah, becomes a bro evening or you just don't be enforcing some unhealthy behavior. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Momentous. You might've heard me say that I took my testosterone from 495 to 1006 last year. Two of the supplements I used throughout that were Fidogeoagrestis and Tonkat Ali. Hey.

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modern wisdom. That's L I V E M O M E N T O U S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. Big change workshops. Yep. Roundabout one to two a year. Yeah. You know, or for whatever, we have one to two a year. Yeah. You know, or for whatever, we have one or two a year. It could just be one every couple of years. You know, I think the Pasadena retreats are probably great.

I haven't done that thing where you hole up in a solitary confinement therapy thing. A couple of friends have done that. Do they like it? Mixed bag. I mean, whether it's a darkness retreat, whether it's, Peter Atiyah did, I think, three weeks of daily psychotherapy, which was basically like him being sort of locked in a, he was adamant after two weeks, I'm done,

I'm completely sweet. And they were like, you're not done. And he got real frustrated. And then sure enough, like day 19 of 21 or whatever was the day that everything happened. But yeah, there's a lot of these sort of intensive intensive retreats, then a men's group or some kind of circling group.

Some sort of like talk accountability. So with therapy or just a group, it doesn't have to be a men's group or women's group can be whatever group. And the third thing is tools to use when you're in the moment of crisis. Meaning, okay, like one simple tool is like say, reparenting. So my issue in relationships was enmeshment at a really dominant narcissistic mom is by the way, a lot of people who were on that pickup artists deduction world did. So a lot of the idea behind that is I was suffocated by the overpowering feminine. I never want to be victim, go back

to that story of the feminine again. So I'm going to learn a way to empower myself. So that's besides the neurodivergent narrative. That's another group. And out of curiosity, was it, what was your mom situation? Uh, no, I wouldn't have said narcissistic, introverted. Um, I tried incredibly hard. I'm an only child. So an awful lot of, uh, care and sort of precious attention, uh, placed on me. Yeah.

So could you say, and besides narcissistic, there could be a, like a super anxious and super depressed parent would also sort of be in meshing because then your, their needs come before your own. Sometimes what is enmeshment. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. This, this is like the most important idea.

So I'll do it. I'll finish the third thing and I'll do the measurement. And then there's another thing. We're going to get back to it. It's funny. I was like, how are we going to, um, we're not going to run out of stuff to talk about. We're going to have to stop at some point.

Cause, um, but again, like, uh, tools to use in a moment when you're in crisis. Yeah. And by the way, I want to say one thing, pay a compliment, which is, um, you know, when I listened to your podcast, uh, you really let the guests talk a lot as you're doing so nicely to me, but you're also really like connected and engaged and care about things being said. And it's a wonderful balance. I was a little nervous because I love conversation dialogue that's connected

like we're having and like just, um, and, uh, and do a great job of really. Thoughtfully listening and, uh, and letting your guests go on for a while. Not at all. I mean, I'm continuing to draw it out of you. You're a font of interesting things. So let's keep going. Okay. So, so the third thing is tools to use in the moment.

So meaning that, let's say I learned that I was suffocated by the overwhelming parent. So when Ingrid, my wife at the time, my- XY Future of my mother child. XY Future of my mother child, I don't know what it is. This is definitely the next book, whatever this is, this is the book. You know, it's the next stage of the life journey.

So conscious recoupling, conscious. So funny. It's going to be a thing now. It's so ridiculous. That's conscious. Reparenting. Yeah. So, uh, so the repairing thing is when we get, you know, triggered or reactive at something

our parents, our partner does a funny that the, I said parent because we're reenacting something that comes from our parents. So they're critical or they're, we make, we, people make up my partner's making me do this. They're not making you do anything. They're not making big, big monogamous. You can literally do what you want. You just, they're just consequences. The this. They're not making you do anything. They're not making big monogamous. You can literally do what you want. You just, they're just consequences. The ones in making, it's all a choice.

So anyway, anything we react to, um, we can stop. And so the tool for me was if even if she was hugging me out of love, I'd feel just suffocated by it because my parents' love was so, my mom's love was so needy and sucked the life out of me. Right. So I would just tell myself, Hey, it's okay. She's not your mom. She's not trying to sell it. I mean, she just loves you and is affectionate and really appreciates and cares about you. So relax. Just to get into the specifics there. Is that you talking to yourself in almost sort of a, I noticed something arises,

this emotion arises inside of me. I see it and then I begin to have a dialogue with myself about what that means. begin to have a dialogue with myself about what that means. Yeah, having a dialogue with a part of myself that's reacting. I love, you know, Gestalt Therapy and I love these, what's his name, Rempo, and I love these, I love looking at ourselves as parts. So I think of, I think of like there's a CEO, right? That's just your most balanced, stable self.

But what happens is some part of yourself takes over. So in this case, it's like the wounded child, right? I'll try not to say inner child, but the wounded child who is like, oh, this is familiar. I better stop this from happening, right? And then your executive function, your CEO, your admin as you say, says, hey, it's okay. I got this, you can relax.

She's not your mom. She's just trying to system of- But you need to notice that that arises and step in. This is something I've been thinking about more. I'm doing my first sort of big pass through therapy and I've done a lot of time doing mindfulness. But I actually found that a strong mindfulness practice caused me to let go of emotions before I actually looked at where they came from, that ability to

sort of notice something arises and go, okay, just release and allow. That's fine. And I was very, very practiced with that. It feels to me, it feels like windscreen wipers. So my practice from Shinzen Young is a see here feel. So I would swipe left to do see, I would swipe right to do here, and I would swipe down to do feel.

And that's the way it would feel in my mind. It's like nothing's happening, right? It's just the way that I'd come to kind of- I love that. Feel it. I love that. That's really good. That's really good.

And what I noticed and what I've noticed since spending a bit more time trying to integrate emotions and thinking about where patterns come from That's really good. That's really good. And what I noticed and what I've noticed since spending a bit more time trying to integrate emotions and thinking about where patterns come from and stuff like that, is that the mindfulness practice was fantastic at making me more effective, but because it allowed me,

the emotions sort of flowed through me like a filter or something like that. There was less resistance. They just came up and went out. I never asked the question, why does this emotion continue to come up? That's it, that's it. And I love what you said.

And this speaks to like, it doesn't actually matter what you do. So whether you're doing re-parenting or you're doing see, hear, feel, is that right? See, hear, feel? What you're doing is you're widening the space between the stimulus and your response. Correct, mindfulness gap.

Right, right. So whatever version of that you do or whatever, that's why like people argue over what method's better. Like literally any method that works is good enough, right? For you, if it's working, just keep doing it. So what you're saying is a great example of the tools. So the three steps then are the deep intensive experiences, the weekly or regular accountability and the tools at the moment.

Give me one more tool that you found that's been high value for you. A couple of the tools I love. One is another version of widening the space between stimulus and response. I feel like anytime something goes wrong, it's like an opportunity to learn about yourself. So I can recognize that if I'm starting to get anxious about something or upset about something, especially I'm in a conversation or dialogue with someone,

I feel maybe misunderstood, right? Often maybe I might feel misunderstood and then I'll keep trying to drive the point into them to make sure they get it. And all it does is irritate them and then I feel more misunderstood and then I get more like, you know, abrasive with trying to make this point and it's just a horrible sequence. So I can see, oh, I'm feeling this sort of like tightness in my heart and this sort of this electricity to my wrist and that's my sign before my mind even knows it, that I'm

starting to get anxious about feeling misunderstood. So then what I'll do is I'll just, wherever I'm at, I'll just pause and I'll take a break for one second. Same with the phone, I'll say, hold on one second, I'll be right back. I'll walk away. I'll, I say, correct the lie. I'll correct the lie with the truth. Hey, like you're not being misunderstood.

They probably understand you and it's all good. Just like maybe understand them. Cool. And I pick up the phone and say, sorry about that. So what were you saying? Or if I'm going to convert, say I'm in the conversation here, I'm like a step away to go to the restroom. Let's say I'm a conversation.

I can't leave. Like we're here on this podcast. Right. Um, I think to my head, I'll just switch my position and I'll think new moment. And over here, I'm just, there's and I'll think new moments and over here, I'm just, there's a new moment over here and I can be a new person. Just reframing a little bit.

Yeah, so- Isn't that funny that that relates so similarly to what you were doing in the game, but it's like an internal reframing as opposed to an external reframing. Yeah. Looking to create this different sense for me that I feel this way as opposed to how I want someone else to observe it.

Right, the difference is when you're doing this to yourself, you're in on the manipulation. Right? Yeah. You know the magician's trick. Right. And going back to what you were saying about, you asked the question earlier, which we didn't get to about relationships and the game and is this stuff okay to do in a relationship? I think any form of manipulation where the other person isn't aware of the game and the end goals is spiritually wrong. Hmm. Okay. Was there a final modality that you liked from that one, from the third set? Oh yeah, yeah. There's another one, man. It's my favorite thing. Like we could do,

let's just make a note to do a whole podcast out in the future. Absolutely. Uh, it's a nonviolent communication. Do you know that? No. Hmm. Oh man. It's the great, let's, let's,'ll do like a one minute thing and then don't research it. Let's do a whole thing. Okay. Like this is a useful tool to teach people. It's like, it's literally the greatest thing. It's an every principle is radical. So first of all, the problem with nonviolent communication

is it's a horrible name. If you're on a date, you know, you meet someone, you know, you meet someone in RIEF. You propose a date of nonviolent communication. What is your set point? Violent communication? Exactly. Exactly. It sounds like something for like a, like a, like something for like violent offenders. Um, but, uh, so, and then the book by Marshall Rosenberg is incredibly boring.

I literally couldn't finish the book. Like I couldn't finish it, but, uh, but he does have like an audio kind of program. I think it's billed as finish the book. I couldn't finish it. But he does have an audio program. I think it's billed as an audio book. There's a picture of a hand holding a peace sign on it. First 20 minutes are really boring and then it gets revolutionary. So it's a system of communication that, as he would say, violence is when we are trying to criticize, judge, control, make right and wrong, punishment reward or diagnosis like this is what's wrong with you, this is why you're doing that.

And as anyone who's ever been in a business or personal relationship knows, once you start, even if you're right, once you start criticizing, accusing, judging, the other person gets defensive and the conversation doesn't go well. So what this, it's a form of communication that's really, really simple to learn. We could do the discussion, everyone will be experts, but it's hard to do and resist our

impulses to like, start, start, start defending ourselves or blaming others. And it allows somebody, it honors what's alive in someone else. So it honors what's alive in someone else. So as an example, if you're in a relationship and your partner says, hey, you don't pay enough attention to me. And you could say, wait, what do you mean I don't pay enough attention? We were together on Tuesday, we were together on Wednesday, we woke up and had breakfast in the morning on Thursday. We just like went to Sedona for the weekend. Like literally, what are you talking about? That's not honoring what's alive in them. That's, you know, defending and making them wrong

so NBC would be like Would be saying it sounds like you're upset. You're like, yeah, I'm upset. It sounds like maybe like you need more connection Yeah, yeah, I do. I do I need more connection. And so for you, what are some things that maybe we could do that would like bring More connection to our lives. I'd love that too Yeah, you know, it would be nice if we could just do this. And then you can say, well, I don't know if at the time we did that just because of work right now, but what if instead, as soon as I finished this project,

we do that? Oh, that would be amazing, right? Like, isn't that a much more beautiful way to relate? We'll get back to talking to Neil in one minute, but first I need to tell you about Nomatic. Nomatic make the best luggage on the planet. This travel pack backpack is a complete game changer. If you haven't tried properly well engineered backpacks and luggage, it can change your

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in the show notes below or heading to nomadic.com slash modern wisdom, using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's nomadic.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. One of my favorite things to do with criticism for the podcast, if someone says, you haven't had enough people

from X perspective, opinion, viewpoint on, if it's someone that I think deserves a response, a lot of the time I'll say, interesting piece of feedback, who would you suggest? Like who do you think would be really good from whatever it is? And it almost always neutralizes any of the antagonism that you see online. And I think it's because so little communication that we are used to now is done in a collaborative

way and you can have that sort of adversarial antagonistic relationship bleed into your relationship too, your relationship too, your intimate relationship, because you want to be right. And if you see that your partner is mis-viewing the world and reality in some way, you're gonna think, well, if I can just get them to see the truth, my truth,

which may not be the truth at all, obviously. And even if you do get them to see your side, that's not their perspective. Their perspective is their truth. That is what they're to see your side, that's not their perspective. Their perspective is their truth. That is what they're seeing. Yeah. So yeah, that's very interesting. You just nailed it.

That's it. Their perspective is their, what's true is they're thinking and feeling that, and you can honor that truth without ever making them right, without ever saying that's happened or making that wrong. I would imagine that people probably have a concern about, for want of a better term, indulging a delusion. This person, maybe you are right,

and I have spent a ton of time with them recently, some people would be scared that by not correcting that incorrect view of how they're seeing the world, that this person is going to continue to sort of see this non-representative perspective. Whether you do it or not, they'll always continue to see it. Because it's just a narrative.

Like I think we all know if we've ever dated somebody who had real abandonment fears, that there's no amount of behavior on us that's gonna change the way they feel about your lack of presence or not being abandoned. Like, you know what I mean? You could be with them seven hours a day and they're like, oh, you're on your, you know,

sorry, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And you check your phone once and they're like, I just felt so disconnected when you did that. Why did you check your phone like that? And then you can decide, but if you just honor what's alive in them and your, and this keeps going on, it's a pattern. Then you can have another discussion in a way, just say, Hey, I love this. And this is the thing that's challenging for me, can we discuss it? But we'll dive deep into NBC

because there's a little formula and there's a lot of radical thoughts attached to it that you can use when the energy is coming at you to discharge it and also so you don't set someone off. It's I can give you, I'll give you some examples later where things like it literally just created, took a tense moment and created peace. That's awesome. I think a lot of people want that. Yeah. Yeah. It's great.

And all the ideas attached to it are just mind blowing. So your other question was in measurement, right? But let me ask you, you said you were going through this therapy, would you use course or this? I'm just doing therapy twice a week. And what's your, what's your, what are the things you're doing? Just talk therapy, classic psychotherapy. It's like psychodynamically informed in some ways, I guess. And I could probably lean into more of the psychodynamic stuff if I asked to, I could get on the couch and point in the other direction and do the things. And it's just the first time that I've ever done it consistently.

So it's been a bit of an eye opener, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be interested if you ever done like one of those things like we're talking about like the Meadows or the Hoffman process or anything like that. No, I'd like to. Yeah, I think it'd be great. I think it'd like just to crack yourself open a little bit and like see what's there. Because what's your, because it, we were talking about parents and stuff like that. Like it, you seem to have something where you're, I don't know, I don't like receiving heads having two parts of yourself that you're wrestling with. Like a very very analytical part that's trying to understand things and with this great way and this other part of yourself that's just

emotional part that wants to be free. Yeah, I think I've done quite a lot of reflection on this and I realized that I'm a way more sensitive person than I let myself believe for most of my twenties. So I didn't like the idea of being sensitive or emotional. I was a club promoter for 15 years, this leader of one of the biggest events companies in the UK.

I'm stood on the front door of nightclubs, everyone's cool, they're in VIP and they're wearing expensive watches and it's like house music and hip hop and bottle service and all the rest of it. Like that's not the place to very easily show your sensitive side. Plus I think I'd associated sensitivity with, uh,

fragility and vulnerability. And I didn't want to feel weak. I wanted it to be seen as a man. Uh, you know, I was unpopular and a bit bullied in school and socially quite awkward until like probably my mid twenties, to be honest. And then I think that meant that when I got into my 20s, I denied the sensitive aspect of myself. And then it also, another reason that I didn't do it is that it didn't fit with the way that I presented.

So male model club promoter DJ, reality TV person a couple of years later, also kind of sensitive cries at Christmas movies, kind of desperately wants connection Christmas movies, you know, kind of desperately wants connection and affection and attention. And those two things didn't seem to make sense. And I wanted desperately to be understood by people. So when there was discordance between what I felt and how I looked, I was prepared to

nerf one of those so that it fitted in line with the other one. So I think I denied the sensitive side of myself for a very long time. That's something that I'm still working through at the moment. And the other side, so that's the emotional side that I'm trying to integrate. And on the other side, the analytical side is just straight up fear of lack of safety.

And if I can understand the exact process of how to gain muscle or improve my health or be more productive or become successful or make money or do all the rest of those things. The chaos of uncertainty out there in the world is brought under my control. That's why I'm such a fan of intentionalism and agency because that gives me control over the path that my life is going forward. I'm no longer at the mercy of the whims of whatever the world is going to throw at me. I have control.

And these two things are in conflict, right? Because not exclusively, but much of it is in conflict because I want to embrace emotions and have a nature whilst also being the author of my own life and the architect of the direction that I'm moving forward. And I think that for a lot of people, especially guys, but also girls too, this is an odd duality to kind of admit. I have sensitivities and emotions and needs and I want to be seen and I want to be like affectionately validated by the people that I care about and people that I respect.

And also I don't want to, I want to author the direction that this goes in. So it's kind of like, uh, these two things are in orbit with each other. Yeah. And do you think it, do you think it's control or the illusion of control? I don't know what the distinction would be. Right. I mean, you know, as, as an example, I think a lot of people who are, who have super strict diet philosophies in a lot of cases, maybe grew up in a household.

There's a little bit out of control and I'm not saying this is you, but, but, uh, but they feel like, well, I can't control this outside world for whatever world, but if I control exactly what I eat, I feel safe. I'm just putting that impulse. So me, thankfully around the health thing, it's, it's not that much of a big deal, but one of the areas that it is more of a big deal is with regards to success and validation and sort of being requited by the world around me, uh, offering

something so that I am needed. Not quite the same as being wanted, but it's functionally pretty similar. But it's kind of a losing game. In fact, it's an out of control game because how people respond to you is out of your control. Of course. And so you're almost giving them your agency.

So I think we know what traumas at work in something when what we want is giving us the opposite, right? So if you're saying, well, I need to control these things to be safe. Are we really safe? And are we giving away our control by being dependent on these things and dependent on other people's outcomes and things like that? So- And measurement. Yeah, measurement. Then the other thing I wanted to ask you was,

oh, the emotional part of it. And I'm just kind of guessing, so you can just correct me if I'm wrong or right here. But like what I was picking up is that growing up in your household, I think it was just you and your mom, you said? No, and dad. I guess my thought was, was there any version of like there wasn't space in your household for whatever your needs are? That would be correct. I think I subjugate my requirements and my desires in order to keep the

peace in order to make everybody else. Okay. Like it doesn't matter about me. I'll happily be unhappy in order to not make someone else unhappy. And what was the okay you needed in your household? Just to not have, it's not that this was what was needed, but functionally what ended up happening was that I wouldn't make a fuss about things that I needed, especially emotionally. Boom. Well, that's it. That's where it's coming from. That other stuff are just symptoms of that. You were taught early on that

your emotions, you're making a quote, fuss is a burden to other people or it has negative effects on the household. And so not making a fuss and keeping that in is you're wiring, right? That's the way you're wired. So it wasn't that being a bouncer and a male model and a reality show, this is what I had the mask I had to wear. That was a mask that was comfortable and familiar to you. So when the job called for it, there you are to put it on. And measurement, measurement. Yep. Tell me what is it? when the job called for it, there you are to put it on. Mm-hmm. Enmeshment.

Enmeshment, yep. Tell me, what is it? Yeah, we'll hit. Okay, we'll do enmeshment and then if we want, we can do the brain thing and then we can wrap there. Sound good? Cool. Okay. Awesome. Right. So it's interesting. Enmeshment is such an important concept and so few people still know it, which is, enmeshment is the opposite of abandonment and that's why we don't recognize it. So if you're abandoning, we all know what abandonment, I think we know what abandonment is, which is there's an absent parent, but abandonment also is when a parent is emotionally absent. They can just be there present for you all the time,

but just like be there emotionally, whether it's because of addiction, whether they're just shut down emotionally themselves, whether they just are tough. So, and don't show love or don't show emotions. This is what you're working on. So you could be a great non-abandoning parent. So, in abandonment, a parent's not there to meet your needs, whether emotional or physical. There's the short way of saying it.

And enmeshment, what do you think that is then? An over-reliance on each other for emotional needs and support? Well, the child needs to rely on the parent. That's healthy parenting is the child relies on the parent for their emotional and physical needs and they get them met, right? And so the enmeshment is when the child's role is to meet the parent's needs. Here are some examples, right? And so we don't recognize this because

abandonment is disempowering. Like at least those self, I'm like, if I mattered, that parent would still be, if I mattered, they'd care, they'd be here. Sometimes if we're like four or five and a parent passes away and we're too young, maybe three or two, we're too young, we can still take responsibility for that. You know. There are a lot of things that might, whatever the parent's intention

is, it's the way we receive it. So, in measurement, examples are, so examples in which children meet their parent's needs could be, one is a parent who's really depressed and you're trying to cheer him up. I remember interviewing Jay Leno for Rolling Stone and his mom was super depressed and he was always trying to cheer her up and thus he becomes a comedian, right? So a sign of abandonment is feeling sorry for yourself. A sign of enmeshment is feeling sorry for the parent. So a highly anxious parent.

So an example is if a parent is saying, the parent says, come home at this time because they feel like that's a good boundary to set. Sounds like healthy parenting. The parents saying, come home at this time because I'm going to worry about you. It's making your worry their problem. And then the same behavior can be sort of in measuring. So highly anxious, highly depressed. A lot of times a parent makes, in my case, makes a child your surrogate therapist, right? The parents coming to you and complaining and talking about

their life and you're fulfilling the role of a therapist or of an emotional partner, right? So you could have a dad or a mom when, I'll give you a quick story of this, when you're so you could have a dad or a mom when I'll give you a quick story of this. When you're, when you're, when you're, when they make you their best friend or they make you like something that's reflected on their self-esteem, daddy's little girl, mommy's little man, whatever it is, this is enmeshment. I remember I was doing makeup for a TV thing and the makeup artist was saying she'd never been in a healthy relationship and she just like at some point gets her partner gets too needy and she breaks away. Like, oh, interesting. I bet you were enmeshed. And I tell her what it is. She rolls up her sleeve and has a tattoo that says daddy's little girl. So like, so basically what it

is when you're forced to parentify or adult yourself too soon, right? It could be just you're taking care of the family, you're filling that role or you're managing their divorce and making the peace in the family. You lose a part of your childhood. And so when you're experienced love again, you're like, oh no, oh no, I'm not doing this again. This is familiar. I'm not going to be free. And so consequently, people who are enmeshed and tell me if this is your pattern at all, they'll choose, they see the role. It's hard for them to have true intimacy because they see the role is to help and fix. So they date projects. They date people they can help and fix because if I can't help and fix you, what good am I? That's my role, right? And then what happens after a while is they realize they

can't help and fix the partner, the partner's too needy, they get resentful, they start to break away or cheat or act out in some other way or just get resentful. So that's kind of it. How do people unpick enmeshment? Undo enmeshment? Yeah, in adult life. Yeah, I think like, sure, I think the steps are first is the, and this goes for anything, first you need the self-awareness, right? Number one is you need to say, you need the self-awareness saying,

this is how I raise, this is how I respond. Self-awareness is the hardest step of everything because when we're self-aware of shit, we usually keep doing it, then we just beat ourselves up afterwards, right? So the next step is what we talked about earlier, something, some sort of release, some sort of deep you know, deep therapeutic work where you just release that energy. And then the other steps were kind of what we talked about doing the, doing the reparenting piece. And I think there's a forgiveness piece, people put it too soon, but I think that forgiving yourself and forgiving the other person and letting go of that energy. So I think we can sort of, I forget exactly the way I think about it, there's four or

five steps of healing that starts with awareness and sort of the release and the accountability and the reparenting and the forgiveness. So interesting, man. Looking at why we behave the way that we do, again, as someone who's such a huge fan of being the author and architect of my own direction. And then realizing that there's these patterns, maybe even pre-verbal, maybe even things that you can't remember that are marioneting you from, you know, beyond the infant grave. Yeah, it's like parental, it's cultural, it's, you know, genetic, it's ancestral,

there are all these strings. And I do think one of the goals of life is to recognize the strings and cut them and be free. I think a lot of people, again, especially guys, are struggling with authenticity, with working out who they are. Like I think a lot of people would say something to the extent of, I don't really know who I am. Yeah, and you don't, you can always keep learning. And I think I don't like the authenticity.

By the way, there's, I do understand authenticity in terms of like who I'm presenting on the outside is who I'm like, who I am on the inside with appropriate boundaries, you know? But I think when I talk to someone who's saying, I'm trying to find my authentic self, like, man, that's just like, it's like a, it's like a mental game. How are you ever going to find your authentic self?

Like how do you know which part of you is authentic? Because you and I, for example, have been through many phases in our life and each time it felt very authentic, right? Right now we're relating authentically and I can only hope that four years from now we listen to this conversation and I'm like, God, what nonsense is this talking about? So I have another way I think about it, which is because it's easier to quantify, so you'll appreciate this, right?

How do you measure authenticity, right? So the creative self versus the destructive self. So the destructive self is harmful to myself, harmful to others, making a mess of things, right? Breaking relationships, beating myself up versus the creative self, which is good to myself, good to others, putting great things out into the world. And so I just think of my, is the behavior,

if I can quantify creative destructive, it's an easier way that I can find a path of certainty or a more certain path, there's no certain path, but find a more clear path to move on. My favorite question around that is, what would you tomorrow want you today to do? What would you tomorrow want you today to do? You have this decision in front of you,

whether or not to eat the cookie or not eat the cookie, whether or not to sleep with that girl or not to sleep with that girl, whether or not to say this particular thing in this particular way or reply to that tweet, what would you tomorrow want you today to do? I like that. And I like the perspective. or whether or not to say this particular thing in this particular way or reply to that tweet, what would you tomorrow want you today to do? I like that.

And I like the perspective. Yeah, tomorrow is easier than thinking at the end of your life. Correct, it's too hard. It's way too hard. What's gonna be on, do you really want this on your epigraph? Like, I don't fucking know, dude.

Like, I don't know when I'm gonna die. I don't know what next week's gonna bring. But you can quite easily think, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow with this decision in front of me that I'm going to die. I don't know what next week's going to bring. But you can quite easily think, I'm going to wake up tomorrow with this decision in front of me that I'm considering making right now. Yeah, it's a way of asking yourself really, like is this after this, am I going to have shame or not? Correct. It's regret minimization,

but it's done on a time scale that's sufficiently tight in a feedback loop way that you can probably make it work. Yeah, I like that. I think that's a really, I think that's a really good, that goes to that list of tools, right? Like just having 10 nice tools that work for you and doing these other things is awesome. And so I'll just answer your last question then we'll wrap because I don't want to be conscious on the exhaustion, which I, not exhaustion, but I really feel like, I don't know how long we've

been talking, but I really- Approaching two hours now. Okay. I think that's plenty for everybody else. I could go and talk to you forever. I want to have mercy on the people listening to the 1.5 speed on their podcast app. Um, that, uh, that, um, you were talking about the brain or other question. I think that I've got to your questions. I want to, I'm such a storyteller that I always want to close all the loops. I try to remember the things we don't get to. But you were asking about the way our brain is wired and the pruning and everything, right? And my caveat is if this is not scientifically correct, then consider it a metaphor and a useful way of thinking. And the fact is,

again, I hear people on the podcast and they always throw out research and sometimes you challenge them and ask where it's from. But literally, most studies aren't replicable, you know? And everything, we have a feeling and a thought, and then we look for facts to back it up. Almost no one works the other way around, and the very few people who do are really amazing, right? But we just look for facts to back up the way we already feel and think about things, right? up the way we already feel and think about things. Right? So, this is my rationalization

for my philosophy on how we're wired, which again, is true if you read the right articles, like everything else. Right? By the way, I think the world needs a healthy sense of doubt about everything. I think uncertainty is another form of freedom too. Yeah, it's difficult for that to not tumble into cynicism though. I think a lot of people have confused appropriate doubt for, I can just be as cynical as I want. It's cynical as a position. I think the other side of it is a spiritual position to say, I don't know. You know, I'm not sure, but I hear what you're saying is really important to you.

And that's something you really believe in those studies did those things. That's really interesting, right? Synicism is just saying, and it is like denial, right? Believing in his acceptance and I think saying, I don't know, there's a line that did that creative act book with Rick Ribbon. And he has this line, which I love it. I think about all the time of connected detachment. Did that creative act book with Rick Ribbon. Uh, and he has this line, uh, which I love it. I think about all the time of connected detachment.

What's that mean? Connected detachment to me means I'm detaching from all my, I'm connected in a way that I care and I'm relational with you, but I'm detached from whatever my thoughts and opinions and the way I think things should be so I can stay connected, but detached from all these layers of stories we're talking about. That's the way, I mean, I think he was talking about a different context in the book, but I love that idea of connected detachment, that that's a goal because it's easy to just detach, I don't know, so I'm not going to get involved versus connected detachment, like I really care and whatever the outcome is, we don't know if it'll

be good or bad. We can be given the best advice possible, but someone, it could lead to something bad for someone, it could lead to something good for someone else. We don't know. So anyway, long prologue. So we were talking about the way, and this is the way I think about trauma, and this is the way I think about behavior, and this is the way I think about myself, which is, you know, we're born with certain predispositions and, you know, genetic predispositions. And I talked to one of the leading geneticists who said,

most things are, most, a lot of gene expressions are turned on and off by the environment itself. So you might have the gene, for example, if we're being a sociopath, but maybe some trauma has to happen to switch that on, whatever. So we're born with certain predispositions and resilience.

And then we land in this family and basically we have our brain, like all the neurons, it's been a little while so I might get some of the facts wrong, but all the neurology of the brain is there, all the neurons are there, but the connections aren't made. So very early on, the brain starts wiring connections at a really rapid rate, right? So most of our, a lot of stuff happened pre-memory, but the pattern remains the same with our parents. So like we were in bed and our parents have maybe a cry it out philosophy, right? So they have a cry it out philosophy means we're crying and we're hungry, and our needs

aren't met and that after a certain amount of time becomes a pattern which is no one's going to meet my needs, I need to meet them myself. And these are the people who are afraid to ask for help, let's say. So for the first three years, the brain is like putting these neural connections together at a rapid, huge rate. I think the three-year-old brain has more neural connections than the adult brain. And after three, this process, and again, roughly this process called pruning takes place where the connections

you don't need start disappearing. And then this brain where you built all these connections, removed what you didn't need, now becomes the prison you live in. And so can you start to recognize that this thought, this belief, this behavior I have was wired in because of these certain things? And now I can make the choice going back to agency and control to say, how can I rewire this with these tools? That every time here's a tool, and being compassionate with ourselves because these were wired in for 17 or 18 years, so it's going to take a little while to get the new behavior going. And sometimes you'll backslide and fall back and get cynical and say, what's the point? And, and just, if you're patient with yourself and you're consistent,

you can really, really change your beliefs about yourself and the way you think. And I think that's one of the purposes of life. What's your advice for people who want more self-compassion in that way? A lot of the people listening to here's a tool for that. Here's a tool for that. I think one thing we do is when you were saying earlier about being a bouncer and you were saying, or you're saying, I'm not someone who like expresses, I forget what we said, but it was an I statement. Like I don't really express myself emotionally, right? I'm not the person who does that. I think anytime you're making an I statement, um, you can actually correct that because that's not who you are. You're, you're, you can say is, uh, expressing myself emotionally.

Wasn't something that was encouraged or I felt safe doing my household consequently, I don't do it now. And then you're not owning that anymore. To lack of identification with it. Right. So, so in the same way, something I did is I realized, say I'm, I'd always say I'm parking or something. I was, when I moved out, I was a horrible driver and I'd always hit the curbs.

My friends called me Kirby because I always hit the curbs when I was driving. So I'd be driving, hit the curb and be like, Oh God, I'm such an idiot. Right? So as soon as I catch myself talking to myself in a non-compassionate way, I'll stop, um, and I'll literally imagine throwing the thought out of my head. I sometimes even make the gesture with my hand of throwing the thought out of my head, a little correction with the, with the truth, which is you're just learning to drive and you hit the curb, and that's okay. And so when we talked about reparenting earlier, most of us who lack

self-compassion were being the parents to ourselves that we had. Whether that parent was critical, again, maybe it's for the right reasons. I'm not saying your parents are doing the best they can. We're not blaming the parents. We're just looking at these as variables that make us who we are. There's no blame. But so a critical parent, they might want the best for you. Again, I was reading Mozart's letter with his father

and oh my God, his father is a fucking, you gotta read their, his father's just always criticizing for everything, he's always doing everything wrong, he's always catastrophizing. And Mozart's even like, hey dad, don't worry about this. The dad's like, you tell me not to worry, but I need to worry because you're like this and you're going to do this. And so consequently, we talk to ourselves like the parent we had.

And the workaround is we want to talk to ourselves like the parent we needed, not the parent we had. So self-compassion is talking to yourself like the parent we needed, not the parent we had. So self-compassion is talking to yourself like the parent you needed and not the parent you had. Yeah, any inner voice I think is usually the echo, unless you've done a ton of self-work, is almost always the echo of an outer voice that you once had.

I've got this great story about Churchill that I need to tell you. Yeah, tell me. In September, 1893, Churchill was admitted on his third attempt to the Sandhurst Military College. He wrote to his father, I was so glad to be able to send you the good news on Thursday. His father, a former chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, wrote back a week later, You should be ashamed of your slovenly, happy-go-lucky,

harem-scarum style of work. Never have I received a really good report of your conduct from any headmaster or tutor. Always behind, incessant complaints of a total want of application to your work. You have failed to get into the 60th Rifles, the finest regiment in the Army. You have imposed on me an extra charge of some £200 per year. Do not think that I am going to take the trouble of writing you long letters after every failure you commit and undergo. I no longer attach the slightest weight to anything you may say. If you cannot prevent yourself from leading the idle useless Unprofitable life that you had during your school days

You will become a mere social waste role one of the hundreds of public school failures You will degenerate into a shabby unhappy and futile existence. You will have to bear the blame for all such misfortunes Your mother sent her love Churchill was 19. Wow, by the way, you read that so well that I almost felt the heat, the sting of the discipline. Did you have a date with your father? Disciplinarian? No, mom was more the disciplinarian, I think. Yeah, but you read it so sternly.

I felt it. I think anyone that's been held to high standards, I certainly was held to high standards. And that's something that resonates. The reason that that story sort of really hits me is, you know, you've got maybe one of the greatest leader of the 20th century being told, happy go lucky, harem, scarum style of work. You're going to be a mere social waste role. Like I no longer attach even the slightest sense of honesty or truth to anything that you're ever going to tell me. And it makes me feel sad for Churchill, you know, whatever it was, June 30th, 1945 V-Day. And I bet that even after defeating the Nazis, he probably still didn't feel like he was

enough. And this is the next book I'm writing. So I might use that letter in there if that's cool. Absolutely. It's okay with Mr. Churchill. But thank you for that because the next book I'm writing and this maybe will wrap here is called, it's called The Power of Low Self-Esteem. I love that title. Yeah. Wow. But thank you for that because they're in the next book I'm writing and this maybe we'll wrap here is called it's called the power of low self-esteem.

I love that title. Yeah. Wow. And it's really about how these, a, it's how these great figures had really low self-esteem and we do great things because we, it's okay to not feel like you're enough and let that inspire you to do good, to do great things. You know, and, and, and, and so I love the title. I absolutely adore the title of that. Dude, I love the title. I absolutely adore the title of that. And so maybe the greatest self-compassion we can have for ourselves is being compassionate for ourselves when we don't have self-compassion for ourselves. Meaning that like, listen,

we're never going to have control over everything as we were saying earlier. We're never going to be perfect. We're never going to get rid of all our trauma. We're never going to always love ourselves. We're never going to feel like we fit in and belong. And accepting that there's like, that there's a reason for that. And it's great to sometimes feel like you don't belong because maybe you're nicer to people because you want to belong. It's great to feel maybe like you haven't done enough because you're going to want to do more and improve the world.

So all these things, instead of striving for perfection, we can see the gifts in them. Dot, dot, dot. And that's okay. I think that's, it's very interesting. So all these things, instead of striving for perfection, we can see the gifts in them. Dot, dot, dot, and that's okay. I think that's, it's very interesting. I've spent so much time over the last probably three or four years, being obsessed by the price that elite performers pay

to be the person that you admire. You know, Elon Musk was on Lex's show about six months ago and he, you know, you're talking about richest man in the world doing robot dances on stage in Japan and sending cars into space and stuff. And Lex asks sort of what's the texture of your mind like, and Elon thinks for a second and he says, my mind is a storm. Most people would think that they want to be me, but they don't know.

They don't understand. And I I'm obsessed with that question about the price that people that we admire pay to be the person that we admire. That's exactly it. You said about Elon can go back to having empathy. So some people might say like, what's he doing on Twitter? This is toxic that whatever it is, some people, whatever your opinions may be, you can say, okay, here's a person who needs to be in chaos and intensity just to feel normal.

And he's replicating that and it's not about anything else. Nils Strauss, ladies and gentlemen, Neil, I really appreciate you. It's been so great to catch up. It's been a long time coming. What should people expect from you over the next however long? What are you working on? Uh, yeah, man, I'm just, I'm just to do it just that the next new books, I'm really into the meeting and talk about these, uh, podcasts where I'm just, I'm just to do it just the next new books. I'm really into the medium and talk about these podcasts where I kind of find

missing people or I love them. Where should people go? What's that one called? Uh, the new, the new one's called to die for it's like about a Russian, uh, seducer or one who was trained in seduction, but the reverse side of it to like get the secrets from men and sometimes kill them. Wow. And it's fascinating by the way, which is, so when I interviewed her, uh,

you'll have to wash it. But, uh, but, um, she, in this case, like anything else, it doesn't matter, it's how you use what you have, let's say, but a lot of things she was learning in like the early two thousands in the FSB, the kind of successor to the KGB was like exactly what the pickup artists were doing at the same time. Wow. She's the female Neil. It was fascinating.

But more vicious and deadly. Yeah. That's awesome. So people can check that one out. What's that called? To Die For. To Die For. And you've done some other.

Oh, To Live and Die in LA was just like a missing, again, like I think I just followed my, whatever I'm excited and curious about, I just followed. There's no brain. It was just someone missing in our name, my neighborhood and myself and, uh, Ingrid, my wife at the time and a couple of neighbors, uh, Mike, who you should have on the show, Mike, I'm sorry, from Incubus. He's a great, brilliant guy. Him and his wife, our neighbors and Marie, we, uh, just tried to help. And it, and so, so, uh, that was this to live and die in LA podcast.

People should also follow you on Instagram. I very much appreciate your, uh, pithy aphorisms on that. My favorite one from last year, which I must have repurposed a gazillion times. Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments. And that by the way, that's a quote from a therapist in the game. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah.

You were the one that repurposed. That's such a good line. and we're close to just because it's a good thing to think about unspoken Expectations are premeditated resentments. It's so so deep. I love normal. No, I appreciate you. Thank you man. Thank you