The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Wise As #@%!: Simple Truths to Guide You Through the $#!%storms of Life by Gary John Bishop

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

Wise As #@%!: Simple Truths to Guide You Through the $#!%storms of Life by Gary John Bishop Compelling and straight-shooting wisdom for coping with whatever challenges life throws at us from the New York Times bestselling author of Unfu*k Yourself. In Unfu*k Yourself, Gary John Bishop taught millions of readers how to silence the negative, self-sabotaging voice in their head to thrive. In Wise As Fu*k he expands on his ideas, redefining what it means to be wise and showing how to tackle problems and improve our lives and those of others. When the shit storms of life hit us, many of us don’t know what to do—whether it’s losing a job, suffering a broken heart, or just feeling a lack of purpose. We need wisdom to help us navigate forward. While the internet is full of seemingly good advice, it isn’t helping us actually change our lives. Wise As Fu*k breaks through the bullshit, providing insight to inspire us in the four areas we need it most: love, loss, fear, and success. Written with his widely admired no-nonsense style, Wise As Fu*k provides a welcome fresh perspective to help us transform how we approach a variety of life’s problems. But Bishop makes clear, the work doesn’t stop there. Now that you’ve unfu*ked yourself and and are wise as fu*k about these touchy areas, you can apply the lessons to make a positive impact on the world.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming here with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys being here and tuning in. And we want to invite you. we're sending out invitations today these are special invitations to go to the youtube channel you go to youtube.com forward slash chris voss and you can actually see free for unlimited time the video version of this discussion i think you'll like it this gentleman's uh he's really good looking i'll tell you that and he's scottish so he's got that great voice so if any ladies out there uh you know whatever you want to check him out you can come see the video on youtube.com four cents chris voss uh go to thecvpn.com you

can go to goodreads forward slash chris voss follow all the books i'm reading over there and reviews and all that sort of good stuff you can also go to facebook.com forward slash the chris Voss show. I like the page over there. See all the great authors we're doing over there as well. And, of course, there's lots of groups for the Chris Voss show on Facebook as well. You can check that out. Today we have a most amazing author on the show.

We have the most amazing authors every single time. I don't know how we get these folks. They just come out of the Google machine and they bring their books. And we're just like, holy crap, how do we get the best authors? So anyway, this is perfect for our times, especially we've been going through the last week because it's crazy. And I think no matter which side of the political spectrum you're on, we can you can say it's been a weird time. He has written the latest book that just came out October 13th. His name is Gary John Bishop. He's written the book Wise as Fuck. We can say that in the air, fortunately. Simple Truths to Guide You Through the Shitstorms of Life. And it's part of the Unfuck Yourself series.

He's the author of four to five books and another one coming out he began his life and journey in glasgow scotland the grit and wit of his early life has contributed to his irreverent tough love in your face approach to personal growth he's the one-time senior program director to one of the world's biggest personal and professional development companies, Gary has created the kind of no-frills message that cuts through the fog of people's lives to transform the real issues that consume and anchor themselves to their self-limiting behaviors and beliefs. Or basically, as he puts it, unfuck yourself. Welcome to the show, Gary.

How are you? I'm awesome. Thanks for that magnificent and generous introduction. I hope I'm not a disappointment after all that good stuff. I don't think you will be. You like how I took that bio and gave it that end spin? I liked it. I'm going to edit it right down to that, so we're good. So let me hold up your book here. We've got a chance to read it. And this is the book Wise as Fuck. And, of course, if you're Googling this, you may have to go F-U-star-K. But I think if you put in Gary John Bishop, it should come up. I think I Googled it and it came up.

So, Gary, give us the plugs where people can find you on the interwebs, learn more about you and order the book. Well, I'm on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. You can catch me at my website, GaryJohnBishop.com. And yeah, I'm on YouTube. I mean, everywhere you would find you, I mean, you're probably going to find me hovering around the same channel. And then you can get my books everywhere that you might find good books, I guess. Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Books a Million and all those great places. Of course, Audible.com and iTunes if you're interested in the audio books. He's on the interweb, folks. It's a new technology that's come out.

There's tubes that go through the, and they deliver really interesting content. So this is a really cool book and probably an appropriate book for our time, Simple Truths to Guide You Through the Shitstorms of Life. It seems like every day we wake up, especially the last four or five years, to interesting things going on in our world. What motivated you to want to write this book? You clearly have a series going on, but what motivated you to put this one out?

Yeah, I think it is a kind of messed up time for a lot of people. And, you know, it really is a time that I feel as if you need to find something to ground yourself in because there's a lot of noise out there. But that happens in life. You know, it's not just this time. It could be a very personal thing, you know, like or you know your business tanks or whatever um so i've always been fascinated by what is it that makes knowledge and wisdom different and how can you give people knowledge in such a way that it becomes a wisdom so that was i guess the furnace that was fueling the whole thing yeah i saw you talk about this on your Facebook page on a video,

and of course in the book, where you really define, you know, the difference between what people, we fill our heads with a lot of junk. Like, I mean, especially if you watch the Kardashians. You know, we fill our heads with a lot of junk, a lot of useless crap, and then we have this self-talk, of course, that's always gone in the back of our brain with our ego mind where we're beating ourselves up all the time i have one of those demons um so give us an overview of the book and we'll get into some of the details yeah so um well the book initially really again it was it was that idea like how do i get wiser and do i need to know more stuff to

get wiser and mostly i think we think of wisdom as experience so like there's something i did and now i'm wiser for the experience which isn't really true there's there's tons of shit you've done in the past and you're still doing it and you know it doesn't work so there goes the experience thing so I really looked at four key areas of our lives uh one being love um another being loss another being success and another being failure and I really took a dive in like okay so what does it take to be wise in these areas and if I was wise in these areas how would it change my life and that's really what I got into in the book is like, you know, some principles, some fundamental things that I could hang my hat on

and in certain times of life, I could turn to it and it provides me with a pathway. And, you know, I'd really feel as if I'm pretty happy with myself for the job that I did there because I think it really does provide it for people I think that are there is a really sound pathway for you to kind of get grounded in your most tested testing moments and and I like how you um I mean you you wrote a beautiful book here but you you you you give it that sharp sharp shock, sharp, if I can quote Pink Floyd,

effect where, you know, you don't rosy it up anyway. I mean, there's sometimes you can read motivational books and you're like, at the end, you're just like, so what am I supposed to do now? And you get right to the point of what's important. Yeah, I think that's part of my, I mean, I'm like the anti self-help, self-help guy, you know, like I'm not a fan of the genre at all, which is really why I wrote my first book.

And part of my problem with it, it's a lot of just this kind of vague and too strategic. And when questioned, does it make much sense? And my books are always short, not because I don't have a lot to say, because I think sometimes you can, you know, it's like gilding the lily, you know, like, how do I get into it with somebody, provide them with some insight, and then let them think, you know, people are smart. If you give them a chance, you know, you don't have to lead them all the way down, you know, you can open somebody up to something. And I feel as if that's where people take their biggest ground is when they're exposed to something and their brain starts popping and then, you know,

they, they actually start to forge their own pathway. And that's the, that's the challenge. A lot of people have, I mean, I, I have two where you, you know, you try and instigate change. You try and, you know, I'm going to do this. Just before the election, I was fasting and I started a new fast and a new diet and started losing weight and feeling good. And then I got into a crisis mode with eating my feelings and decided, well, maybe it's better to wait until the election for me to try and work on some things. But we've all done that where we're like hey i'm gonna i'm gonna change my life i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do new things and then like two years later

like all of it's gone you can probably fill in new year's resolutions failures here um but you get in how to really change these things in your mindset so gary uh you've built the the book on these four different principles on the uh issue and the foundation of wisdom. And you also have a chapter on bad wisdom. So before we get into the four, let's talk about what wisdom is in your book and how you've described it and what bad wisdom is. Yeah, I think there's I mean, you know, if you spend more than 10 minutes on social media, it's just bad wisdom. It's everywhere but there's a bunch of things in our everyday vernacular things we say to each other that that seems like you know

good wisdom but in fact it just ends up being really bad advice um and so there's a take a poke at that in the book like how there's this notion of wisdom but it's not really you know like one of my pet peeves is the one you know everything happens for a reason but that's a really shitty wisdom right i mean that's just really like what i mean just random reason right um so no everything happens for the reason that you give it yeah that's you know that's a little more active perspective i gotta write that down and remember that you give it. Yeah, that's an interesting perspective. I've got to write that down and remember that. There's no

universal fucking reason for the thing that's happening and it's all applying to you. Another one that I love to poke a stick at is the universe has your back. No, it doesn't. The universe doesn't give a fuck for you. It's not. Again, it's not that i mean again

that's all that you know me me me me me idea um i mean try telling the universe has your back to the guy that just get hit by a train right i mean universe never saw you there like it has attention on somebody else in that moment i get it as a context i understand it as a context. I understand it as a context, but people use phrases like that to somehow just kind of muddy their way through the lies. And so I separate this notion of what is good wisdom, what is bad wisdom. And for me, good wisdom makes you think. Good wisdom exposes you to something like a certain kind of truth. And if you confront that truth, it'll illuminate a pathway for you. You'll actually see your way through something. Good wisdom cuts through, right? It absolutely cuts through. You know, one of the examples that I use in the book is something that I had said, and I'm arrogant enough to think that I might

occasionally be wise, but something I'd said a long time ago, and it was you have the life you're willing to put up with. Now, if you sit in that statement for a couple of minutes, your life starts talking to you. And then your brain starts activating and it starts going, oh, yeah, oh, hold on. And so then you start seeing things in a different light. And you might see things you need to deal with or see things you've been tolerating or stuff you've been putting up with or stuff you've been pretending or lying to yourself about.

Like, to me, that's what good wisdom does. It makes you think. And then when you go beyond that thinking, you start to see that pathway. You start to see a way through certain things. It's not like that pathway will be particularly easy, but it will be a path. You won't be muddying your way through something. You really will have a method for handling life. Wisdom has got nothing to do with your feelings, by way wisdom lives outside of all of that you have your feelings and then the wisdom tells you what to do and now you got to handle yourself as you do it and a lot of people like like we talked about they they they subscribe to a lot of stuff that is a lot of bs like we fill our heads with bs like yeah you know stupid stats kardashians i mean i can spend hours on tiktok watching idiot videos uh but there's probably not

a lot of wisdom right there right yeah it's it's uh you know it's the kind of idle talk that heidegger would have called it a german philosopher man heidegger would have called it, the German philosopher, Heidegger would have called it idle talk. And it's all like Novocaine for your existence. We don't, I mean, look, it comes down to it. You know, I mean, I guess, you know, my thing is based or grounded in existentialism. And the fundamental principle of existentialism is responsibility.

Now, I'm not talking about the way that the word responsibility gets thrown around in a political sense. That is not fucking responsibility, by the way. In fact, if people got responsibility the way it truly is, we wouldn't even have fucking politicians because there's really nothing there that exhibits responsibility in terms of being responsible for who you are and what you put in the world right so but existentialism is like so if you use something like like say sadness okay and you say can you be responsible for your sadness what what do you where do you even start like can i be responsible for my sadness

can i be responsible for the degree to which my sadness is impacting the quality of my life and those around me oh well that's different that's, I'm sad, but can I be responsible for my sadness in a way that I actually have a say in how it plays out in my life? Can I be responsible for being suppressed or down? Like, it doesn't mean it's not. Responsibility isn't about blame or guilt or, you know, like pointing the fingers. It's got nothing to do with that. It's nothing to do with victims and all that stuff. Responsibility is when you start to realize

that you have a say and um and and to me that's the a big part of the message that i want to give people is you have a much bigger say in this than even you believe you do but we get wrapped up in this idle talk we get wrapped up in this nonsense because the idea of responsibility seems like a burden, seems like something you'll have to shoulder. Rather, when it's not that, by the way, responsibility, the moment you get that it's your responsibility to be you, the moment you get that there's an integrity to you as a human being that you need to guard and you need to be responsible for and what you're putting out into the world like what are you putting up you know it was all defending yourself and and justifying yourself and arguing for yourself or are you bringing something else to the table and and mostly it's something else mostly it's all

well mostly what we're bringing to the table is our commentary and how everybody else is fucking doing you know you you've given me an epiphany to some of the ways i've let anti-chaos sneak in because you know i am an atheist and i believe in in chaos and i don't believe that there's some guy up in the sky who's a masochist sadist and and it's got nothing better to do except torture me and and people on the earth all day long. But I have been guilty of saying that where I've said to myself, well, this this must have been, you know, like you said, the way it was supposed to happen or or this is and and uh you know i see people too it's one of the things that makes me mental when i see people in a tragedy where like nine people are slaughtered at church by a gunman and the one person who he lets survive she says well it's god's will which is like laughing in the face of the other nine people that were killed uh that somehow god's will was

to slaughter them and and their lives and ruin their families and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. You're just like, what is this entitlement exceptionalism? But I realized that from what you said, that I've been guilty of that as well. And sometimes I use it in the form of karma. I go, well, this is karma as if there's some sort of order to the chaos in the universe, which is the synthesis of what I personally actually believe and i've just realized that you've you know that and entitlement seems to be a portion of your book where we that's where we really fall into the trap of thinking that we're entitled that we're exceptional and that life shouldn't be bad to us and then we shouldn't experience fear loss and and have issues with trying to attain success etc etc., etc. You know, when you get how mind-numbingly ordinary you are,

that's quite an extraordinary insight. Yeah. That's quite like, oh, shit, I think I'm not special. You know? But that's great. I mean, I think I'm not special. You know, like, but that's great. I mean, I think one of the things that we, look, there's been, I talk about this in the book a little bit. Me and I wanted to jump in, but I'm always conscious of how, you know,

keeping my books really short and sharp. But we've been involved in this conversational revolution for about 500 years or so. And the revolution is one of freedom. So we're looking for new expressions of freedom. But that evolution is a conversational one. So what do I mean by that? I mean, the freedom is in what we're free to talk about, right? Now, I don't mean in the way that it's painted in American politics, which is just got nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

In fact, we're finding new ways to capture life and language. We're able to distinguish things and tell the difference between this thing and that thing and that thing and this thing. And it's been increasing over hundreds of years. We can now capture life and language in over hundreds of years like we can now capture life and language in ways that 300 years ago we couldn't we couldn't even explain that thing it was just a thing we'd shrug our shoulders and point to the fucking sky but now we've and and with a genius of language we're able to disseminate distinguish and take apart and see differences

between that and that you know i mean i read somewhere, I think a thousand years ago, there was no word for blue because the color blue didn't exist for us, right? Which is like the weirdest fucking thing ever, guys. But that's how that goes. So there's this revolutionary language, and it's all about freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom for us as human beings. The problem is in that unfolding of that revolution which is going to

keep going now because the genies are at the bottle and it's awesome and it's amazing and people are finding new expressions of freedom and language um but the problem with it is we're becoming much more singular we're becoming much more like me me me me me yeah but what about me but what about me but what about me? But what about me? But what about we? And there's a tremendous value in that. And I don't want to kind of play that down. But you have to keep reminding yourself of the humility of the context.

And the context is us, right? And it can't just be me and those that think like me. It has to be me and those that think like me and those that don't. And, you know, that's why, like, I mean, I mean, if you look at it from an American perspective, right, which I guess I'm forced to do, but on one side of the political divide divide you've got like those are kind of the progressives and out there on the left and then you've got those are way out there on the right too right and similar both ends of the same fucking spectrum we need those points of view though we need those conversations why so that the majority of people, or the kind of growing majority of people towards the middle of it right now

can have a conversation and see what works. But if all we ever do is just locate ourselves out there, we can't have a conversation about what works. And those are the most powerful conversations we can have. Why don't we talk about the four different points you touched on? We'll just go through all four of them if you want. Yeah. Love is probably an important one.

People have a lot of issues with that. What do you get into in the book regarding the topic of love? Well, there's a big part. I mean, love is such a complex thing for us as human beings at times. There's so much, quite frankly, just nonsense. And that is something that I touch on in the book is there's a lot of bad wisdom out there you know just a lot of bad wisdom and uh and that section about love i started to really expose you to the idea that it's all coming from you that the thing you're looking for

is actually coming from you even when you find it by the way you generate your own experience of love and one of the big mistakes that we make as human beings is we hold somebody else accountable for that experience so like if i want to feel love you got to give me the goods um which is a treacherous pathway you know i mean it's fraught with all kinds of bullshit and uh so one of the things I get you grounded in is to start to confront the degree to which you've done such a thing in your own life, where you've held somebody else accountable for your experience. And it's not like people don't do shitty things.

It's not like people don't, you know, like, there's infidelity and all kinds of stuff when it comes to this notion of love. But I think if you start to embrace the idea a little more that you're somebody who can generate it in the most crazy situations and that it's all coming from you and they notice how you you can shift yourself um and when you let go of having somebody else on the hook for that you're just a lot happier do you do you have to focus on self-love first i mean in in in loving yourself and just having that core i mean i know a lot of people pursue that right i don't i don't i don't talk about self-love i talk about expressing it fuck

that self-love right well well i just never i never just it's like a lot of stuff in this genre i just never rung my bell i was just just, I was like, well, okay, well, here I am fucking loving myself. Now what? But what I really love is the idea of like, well, it just, it seems like I'm kind of going down there. Right. Like it seems like I'm sending myself a fucking Valentine's day card or something. Fuck everyone else.

Right. Like Scott, you know, I i'm awesome so you're all screwed um but but uh but i'm the idea of like if you call it that you you're somebody who can express it and it's available to you and you do have like a limitless ability to express your love for people um which again i'll explain in the book some people say well i'm always you know loving, but I never get it back, and that's the problem. To love is just to love. It's not looking for anything. That's something else that you're trying to handle there that gets conflated and confused in there

and makes it even more complex. But love is very simple, and love is never disappointing. Love itself is whole and complete as itself. What gets in there is disappointment, of course. Yeah. I was having a discussion with somebody on Facebook, one of my friends, this morning, because they made the comment that if you give in relationships and you try and make the other person happy, it'll work out. And I said, that doesn't always work.

You know, I've had, I've had relationships where I've had great love and I've given and, and gotten it back and, and, and everything was fairly fine. Uh, and then I've had relationships where it's just a bottomless empty well, the other person, like I've actually said to some of the people in some of my relationships, I could crawl onto a cross, nail myself to it, you know, cut open my rib, just like Jesus, and bleed out in front of you. And you still would be complaining that I just cannot love you or give you enough. Like, there's just no fucking bottom to your well.

Right. I've been there too. I mean, I've been in those situations where, you know, up until about 15 years ago, I lived my life the same way that everybody lives a life, which is this notion of, well, you do your bit, I'll do mine, and somehow we'll work this shit out. And I had this, you know, like massive aha for my moment my moment for myself

when i go and you just do whatever the fuck you're gonna do i'm here to love you that's it you know i'm i don't need and i when i told my wife she's like oh thank god i said i don't need shit from you you know like just be yourself you know i don't you know and but But my promise is I'm going to love you. And I don't always feel like that, by the way. I'm not floating around like Gandhi here. It's not always on. Sometimes I'm cranky and I'm like, fuck this shit. The same as everybody else.

But I get to bring myself back to that point where I'm reminding myself, like, you know, I think it's important for us to understand if you always go by your feelings, you are on the roller coaster. And sometimes you have to kind of step out there beyond your feelings. That doesn't, you know, kind of invalidate how you feel. But, you know, I realized, you know, a number of years ago that if I just continued to go with how I feel, how I feel, how I feel, this is not good for me. Like, I am not enjoying this. And, you know, some of my greatest victories in life have been in spite of how I feel you know and and many people it's the same if you look in your life you've you've done great things with a shitty mindset

yeah so let's talk about the wisdom of fear yeah yeah I uh it's always a good one you know because if you ask somebody about why they don't do certain things the first thing we think of is fear and it's it's rarely that it's always something else that manifests itself as fear like it shows up like i'm afraid but it's actually something else um but but i really you know one of the things that i think a lot of self-help is about is grounded in some idea that you're not you're not okay like there's something fucking wrong with you right there's nothing wrong with being afraid it's appropriate you know it's like being overwhelmed like you're supposed to be sometimes you know you don't have to wrestle with it it It's just there. And it's funny because a lot of the ideas that I'm talking about are hundreds,

if not thousands, of years old. This is philosophy. But a lot of modern psychology is now coming around to this notion of, yeah, don't wrestle with how you are. Just let it be. It passes through. And so I say in the book, to fear is to be human, and to deny your fear is to deny your own humanity.

And I even encourage people who practice being afraid. It's a limitation when you use it as a limitation. But it gets interesting when you start to question it a little. Then you start to become someone who not only is aware of your own fear but you've actually you're actually developing yourself as someone who can who can find ways to go beyond it that's a great point we used to have a thing in my company called look into the mouth of the dragon and when we made major decisions or made major purchasing decisions and stuff like that we would um look into the mouth of the dragon.

We'd go, okay, what can go wrong? What can happen? What do we fear could happen if we make this decision and it's wrong? And we'd address all the issues and then we'd make a logical conclusion at the end, be like, okay, the, you know, the X, Y, Z risk factor, whatever. But yeah, I, you know, I think I've been guilty of that in my life where there's a great irony. You have a fear of having fear and being afraid. And as you say, it's the human experience. And so if we embrace it and look the, you know, as I like to put it,

the dragon in the mouth, then you can deal with it. But if you're constantly running from it well you're never dealing with it right yeah i mean we're wired for fear okay so one of the things that i like to say to people is look i could take you drop you naked in the middle of the forest and you're actually hardwired to come out the other fucking side yeah that's wednesdays around here right so you're wired for this thing called survival but included in survival is fear but but we've in this modern age in this you know as we continue to evolve and develop our intelligence we're fearful about the most insane shit like we're afraid of a fucking conference call like it's inappropriate

right it's like are you gonna get killed on the fighter flight right and we do and so and that's and i actually think in many ways and i've seen this so often like we apply fear in the absence of true risk so we'll put it into things where there is no real risk but we'll just make it seem like there is i do have a jeffrey tube in fear of zoom calls though now uh well well uh i think the less said about that the better but i'm not i'm not uh i'll ruin your career by jerking off on i'm not partaking in that kind of thing it's just not like you know i've realized like that behavior and cell phones or computers it's not a good combination yeah it's it's not especially when you're broadcasting the world yeah yeah it's always the risk yeah so it's interesting your approach to

fear i like that um where people you know i think so many times we try and bury that human experience instead of just embracing it and addressing it and going, hey, it's okay. You know, and it just being afraid of fear and then being afraid that you're feeling fear. And it just seems to create a snowballing shitstorm of it just makes everything worse. Right. Because you don't deal with it. Because the more you're going to go of going and the more internal you get the worse you'll get and that's just that you can take that one to the existential bank the more

internal you go the more fucked up you'll get so the more you try and change how you're feeling the act of trying to change how you feel keeps how you feel in place. So that old saying, you know, whatever you resist, persist. That's true in the domain of human beings. So if you resist your fear, you'll constantly be being faced with it. And it's a practice. And I have to say to people, I don't even expect you to be practiced to be perfect, but I do expect you to practice how to have fear and act, how to be afraid and step out there anyway. I've done that more times now than I care to remember in my life.

Does it make the fear go away? No, not at all. It's still there. And so what, you know, I don't want to be lying there in the closing moments of my life saying, well, at least I didn't get too terrified. Yeah. Or I hope there's not another zoom call before this is over. Right. Right. There's always that too. The so let's talk about loss. That's the third tenant in your book.

Fear of loss. Let's talk about loss. That's the third tenet in your book, fear of loss. Let's talk about that. Yeah. So when I talk about loss in the book, the immediate thing that seems to come up for a lot of people is somebody dying. And that is a form of loss. It definitely is. But we're experiencing loss all the time. In fact, if you look at the whole pandemic thing from the beginning,

as it started to grow in the conversation in our society, what people are experiencing is loss. And this is the same of all kinds of loss, by the way. Loss can be defined as the kind of pausing, the stopping, or the ending of a future that you had in mind for yourself and your life. So that includes somebody dying, a pandemic, going bankrupt, your husband or your wife leaving, your fucking dog dying. It's the end of a future that you had in mind. It might not be a future that you were fully

cognizant of. You might not have it all fleshed out in your mind, but in the back of your mind, life is supposed to unfold a certain way. And so when something like this pandemic comes across our bows, it's like you can't see that future. So people get all messed up. They're trying to make what we have look like what you think you should have. And that's a blunder because you're not available for what's here. You're scrambling to make some sense of this.

And there is no, you can't make sense of this by using a life where this wasn't here. Right? You'll drive yourself nuts. This is a, I would call this, you know, a very challenging time for all of us for a slew of different reasons right and it's i hate having this conversation like it's fucking political because it's not a political thing i'm you know i'm scottish and i look at how this situation get handled in scotland it wasn't handled politically it was just handled in terms of you, the potential of it, right?

But, you know, it's one of these situations where we're kind of getting, we're even getting, like, that's a sidebar now, like we're arguing about how it should be handled, right? Which is even more of a fuck up, you know, if there's a hole in the boat, who gives a fuck who did it, you know? It's like, let's get the water, you know? Right, right. I mean, that's always my approach. i always have that kind of very simplistic approach so uh loss for us as human beings is a

kind of it's a kind of situation that leaves us very much off kilter we're not we're we're we're kind of we want this to be like the way that it was in some ways but at the same time like we're not really taking stock of the reality that we're now faced with and so in in the book i go into i actually deal with like somebody in your life passing away um as a way for you to start to change how you look at loss um and start to look at it like well well, this thing that's happened, I'm either going to have this thing settle with me in such a way that I'm expanded for it, or I'm going to leave this settled with me in a way that it's kind of gnawing away at me. And that's, I think, the single most important thing about loss.

You have a massive say in where it's located for you. And we don't often have a cognitive sense that we do have a say in that. We're just basically trying to get past it. But again, it's a big part of the human experience. The minute I gave up the idea that I'm supposed to be somehow different, I was a lot more at peace with where I was at and able to get to the other side of that. And that's very much the case in terms of loss. I like how you put that.

You made me really think about my identity with loss and my approach to loss because, because, you know, I, I went through something kind of extraordinary in my life. I don't know how extraordinary it was, but I went through like 20, I think it was like 27 years where no one close to me had died. Like no one. Like I just went. And I honestly, in the back of my mind, felt a little mortal. And I had my two dogs, which were my children.

And I, you know, I knew their life expectancy was 10 to 12, 14 years. They had gotten to about 15, 16. or for me it was 14 to 15. But just no one had died around me. I had no calluses to this effect of loss. And suddenly one of my dogs had a seizure and died, and it was a really short shark shop. I had known that she had had seizures for a while, and we knew that that time would come. But, you know, just given my experience, I just had no way to deal with it.

No calluses really built up to deal with it. And so it was really hard. And I think a lot of people that experience loss, sometimes it becomes their identity because they get wallowed in it. They can't get out of it. I think I went through a few years of that and maybe I still struggle with it sometimes. But it's hard when, you know, what you made me kind of realize a little epiphany I've had is, hey, we need to really realize that loss is going to happen in life. Chaos is going to happen. Shit's going to happen. We're going to lose people and there's going to be sadness. There's going to be loss. And, and the fact that I was, you know, in such denial of it

for somebody like, I'm immortal, like we're never going to fucking die. And I even thought my dogs would like probably live after me. Um, so yeah So, yeah, it's kind of interesting approach to loss and just kind of realizing that, hey, it's going to happen and you're going to have to deal with it. Yeah. One of the things that I'm, I mean, I'm always fascinated by, you know, like our own humanity, like, you know, and we do get wrapped up in and things like we we can ignore the actual chaos that's going on around us and we pretend that we live in this little bubble of certainty and so it's never certain and i talked about this at length actually my first book like there is no certainty it doesn't exist It's a human phenomenon. Right? Like bears get, this is fucked up.

You know, I've got to make my way here. Like human beings are like, no, I got my home. I got my car. Like, and you live with the illusion that somehow all of that is concrete. And it's not. We live in a chaotic universe. We could get hit by a fucking asteroid tonight. It's all over um but but that illusion

of certainty is what we're trying to build it's somewhere along the line of you know in our own um evolution the kind of craziness of living in the wilderness that you know we're building huts and now we're building a fort and now we're building a town and now we're building a city all to create this illusion of certainty and it's and the funny thing is though human beings are brilliant with uncertainty like they're freaking awesome with it when they expose themselves to when they let themselves get oh yeah this is all kind of fucking nutty here they're brilliant at navigating it yeah tragedy sometimes brings out our best traits oh my gosh but then what we tend to do those we're trying to keep it so certain that's where

all our attention goes like how to keep this little bubble safe and secure without realizing the thing that built that bubble was your ability to dance in the uncertainty was to dance with loss and fear and and those supposed threats you realize when you're a bigger human being than you give yourself credit for at times yeah you bring up an interesting point that i just realized i mean we're really great human beings in the recovery of a tragedy we're great to each other uh we're helpful to each other we we really you know just like all the shit that we're normally tuned into gets turned off and and and we be you know we always seem to be at our best when you're going to think about it after

tragedies and recovery but it's when we're in the normalcy of day-to-day life that we're just horrible human beings to each other well we are our world is built in survival okay so i mean this is probably a little too philosophical, but I'll do it anyway. So we live in a Western capitalist society, and most Western societies are based in some version of that, right? So that includes this kind of level of competition and getting there and looking at the future and so

we're all working on getting there paying off our credit cards paying off the car going on that vacation buying those shoes all of those things are kind of getting built and you know when the kids grow up it'll be better when i get kids it'll be better when i meet somebody it'll be better everything is some phenomenon of light when i finally lose that 5 10 12 pounds when i finally stop that that that that are when i start la la la la so our lives are always kind of geared towards someday in the future when this turns out and that's that's all survival for a human being. It's all survival. And then occasionally you get these times when it's like, bang.

And that little matrix gets punctured. So like you said, maybe somebody dies. And then when you take away all the survival for a human being, like if you just take all that away human beings want to contribute they want to they want to support each other we are wired for that too but the survival will always win it so we do like helping out we do like supporting each other we do like you know stepping in when somebody's done we we do like it and we feel better about ourselves when we do it why do we feel better about ourselves we do it because it's not about us it's about somebody else and that's when human beings are absolutely at their best yeah but i mean if you really look

at us through the arc of history we were we're the greatest in tragedy. For sure. I mean, but it's amazing how, like, my life changed the minute I got that it's not about me. But I'd spent 40 years making it about me. It was a tough addiction, you know. But when I realized, like, I was a better man when my life was about you. Like, I experienced myself as a better man when my life was about you. Like, like I, I experienced myself as a better man when my life was about you. And I experienced myself as a better husband and a better father and a better friend. And,

and, and it was amazing. It wasn't like I'm doing this so that I feel better about me. It was like, that's just how this worked out. Like I noticed the more I made my life about you. Well, shit,

you know, I mean, most of my stuff pales into insignificance when I write my books about Yale. Well, shit, you know, I mean, most of my stuff pales into insignificance when I write my books for people who are struggling. I don't, you know, I used to have a coaching business and I just didn't want to coach people anymore because they were all doing pretty good

and we were talking about bullshit most of the time. And, you know, I truly want to make a difference for those that feel like they're struggling or suffering. And I noticed that when I do that, and I think it's the same for all of us, when we're in the zone like that, all is pretty much well in our world. Yeah. The fourth tenet you have put in the book is the wisdom of success and all these tenets are built on wisdom i think i quoted the fear one wrong we'll get to wisdom here in a second talk about that the basis of that foundation but uh sorry about the wisdom of success if you would

yeah the it's funny because it ties in a little bit to what i said and In our society, we're bought into the notion that success is something that you're striving for. In my view, that's why we have a lot of desperation in our society. Success is later. If you think about success in that spectrum, you've only got two outcomes. I'm either doing it or i'm not doing it and then what's it like and that's kind of commonly accepted notion of wisdom what's it like for me as if i'm not doing it well mostly you're getting your face rubbed in it by the world

of doing it right i mean and so so it's success and desperation the way that we currently view success. And I don't deal with success that way. And this is what I was giving people in this book. Success is a place you come from. It actually when you come from success, you can actually see what's working about your actions and what's not working about your actions. You're not, you're never desperate because you're always coming from success.

It's always, it's like what it's, it's how you approach everything that you're up to in life. So success, I flipped the whole thing. Success isn't somewhere to get to. It really is a place that you're coming from. And it's not always measured in your bank balance or your followers right thankfully not your followers because there's like fucking cats on instagram that get more followers than me right so there are i mean there's there's there's like pages of feeling I know the feeling. Yeah, there's people who have got pages about their fucking socks that have got more followers than me.

I'm like, what are we doing? So, thankfully, I gave up that ghost a long time ago. But I really do look at it like success for me is every day, like the privilege of getting up and getting to be who I say I am. I'm always coming from that spot. I don't, the book sales are nice and the bank balance is nice and it's all nice, but it's not how I measure success. And that took a lot of pressure off. And in fact, by the way, when I took that pressure off, those things I actually became more successful with.

When I took the pressure off that I needed to get there, I realized that it was all where I was coming from. And so I love to debunk the notion of success as we've come to accept it. Yeah, I've had some friends. It took me a while to get to that conclusion too. I had some friends that are like, you know, I'd be like, what does success mean to you i wake up every day i get up i'm still here i have my health i i'm i'm successful because i'm still i mean life is like we talked about a giant shit show of survival a game of survival of the fittest and yeah and and you know i remember

complaining i think on my 50th birthday about how i turned 50 or something and i was whining about on facebook being a little bitch and uh and somebody said hey man you know you should really be happy chris because there's a lot of people who didn't make it to 50 there's a lot of people not here right now that wanted to be here and uh maybe you should put in perspective there buddy and i took that look it's the same it's the same across the freaking board it's it's so look look there's always somebody in a worse spot than you right and i'm not saying that by the way to stay positive or keep your fucking chin up or something which is all bullshit i hate positivity um but at the same time

you know there are moments in your life when you got to reach for some perspective and why because you're dwelling in something you're sitting in something that really isn't it really isn't a useful um expenditure of your time in this planet you know i'm kind of like the Alan Watts school of philosophy on this one. The purpose of your life is to be alive. There's nothing. You don't have to be

rescuing fucking koala bears or something, or whatever one might think is the purpose of your life. The purpose of your life is to be alive. What you do with that is up to you. But if you confront somebody that is up to you but you know if you confront somebody you say oh yeah like that that thing you're currently doing right now that's what you're doing with your purpose then that's a little bit of a wake-up call not everybody's

going to be a gazillionaire not everybody's going to be you know fucking tony robbins or something not everybody's going to be you be a famous soccer player or something, which is actually called football. I was just being polite there. But not everybody's going to do those things. But that doesn't mean to say you can't live a life absolutely chock full and filled with a purposeful expression of who the hell you are. There you go. I think that's a beautiful statement right there.

I mean, so many people, like you say, they, they wait to live their life. Well, I'll be happy when I make $3 million a year. I'll be happy when X, you know, when someone loves me back. Right. You know, I, I, I mean, I was guilty of this one time when I was young, but the concept of you, you know, you got to find the one and marry them until you find the one person you know your soul mate you'll never be you know you'll never be complete so people just walk around with these broken glass uh how fucking arrogant is that like there's eight billion people but there's only fucking one for you you know i mean like well that's the height of

arrogance there's fucking tons of there's probably at least a couple of million a million fish in the sea i mean those are i used to hate when people used to tell me that and i'd be like oh fuck just anyone like give me give me the perceptions like anyone will do really um but that's not true it's just it's just there's a there's a lot of combinations of stuff but you know we we walk around these broken things. I think one thing that is hard for people when they deal, and I'm jumping back to loss or tragedy and stuff, is a lot of people, you know, they have different things that float them through life. Me, I'm an atheist, but I see a lot of people that struggle with this that believe in a God or religion. I'm not saying they really want that, but one of the problems they have is they're confronted because that's their security blanket now in the chaos of life. They're confronted like, why did God do this?

This is God's will according to my beliefs, and why is he being a jerk to me and my friends and everybody in life? Yeah. I got a simple answer to that actually and it's you know so for people who are people of faith if you're if your faith is not empowering you if the context of your faith isn't empowering you then you're looking at it from the wrong the wrong perspective right so you're kind of coming at it from a singular way. And I wouldn't call myself a person of faith. I would loosely term it, you know, like spiritually Scottish, I guess.

I might say I'm a little bit more there. But it's all contextual. It has to be a context that empowers you and and i assert that that's what most you know face are designed to do they're designed to empower you as a human being so if it's not empowering you you you gotta shift gears and that doesn't mean change your faith it means that dive in a little deeper find a way that you get nurtured and empowered by it rather than dwelling in something that's sucking the life out of you.

Definitely, definitely. And I think you bring up a good point because this falls into everything you've been talking about. Instead of looking for something else to fulfill you or make you happy or fill that bucket that you have, make yourself happy. And so if you're constantly, you know, if you're a religion, you're looking for a god or a deity or a demigod in politics or or whatever you're looking for in life to make you happy the therein lies the problem of why you're never that bucket never fills is because you

yeah yourself i mean this your search for happiness if you think about that right the phenomenon right the pursuit of happiness for instance by the way which is a nice idea but it's a shitty place to start because if i'm engaged in the pursuit of happiness i'm i'm admitting that i'm not i've had that in my relationships too like where i i've had you know it's like trying to find the combination to safe with 50 different combinations and you're just like, they're like, you just don't make me happy. And I'm like, what do I have to do to make you happy? And they're like, I don't know.

And I'm like, well, if you don't know, how am I going to know? Because I don't know. I mean, I'm married to a ridiculously brilliant woman and, but we, you know, we both said like, it's not my job to make you happy well it's not my fucking job and i even do i've got three boys i got three sons the oldest is 15

the youngest is six and they'll be like i'm bored and i'm all right well there you go it's not my job to unbore you right it's it's not my job to unbore you right it's not my job to bring joy to your life now luckily you have the kind of father and the kind of mom who loves like inspiring and being around their kids like you know i adore it but at the same time you know when when they're in that space i'm like well you know you're the only one that can get you out of there so what are you going to do now and it's not and i see that as probably one of the biggest things that i've ever given my children in terms of of wisdom is you know like the like the george bernard shaw quote the world will not devote itself to making you happy what

what it's fucking shocking when did this start i didn't get this memo i know it's crazy the world doesn't revolve around me i know it's absurd it's absurd i think there's somebody in this world we need to send that message to her maybe they're well they've got the message they're just not getting it yet anything more we need to know about the book gary as we go out no i'm just pretty delighted to have this conversation with you. It was very interesting. You asked some great questions. And it's definitely like your perspective on this book

is definitely a keyed into one that I'd want people to have. That is challenging yourself to think and be challenged by what I'm saying there and allow yourself to have new thoughts. Well, you give me several epiphanies during the show if you if you're listening at this point you haven't listened the whole show some reason you jumped in the middle watch the whole show uh i've had several epiphanies so i guess gary i can say that you are wise as fuck tie that right in there uh good there you go guys uh check out the book wise as fuck simple truths to guide you through the shit storms of life which sometimes we feel we're going through every day but according to gary maybe we should get some perspective on that he's the author of the new york times bestseller on go and fuck yourself or i should just say correct that un-fuck yourself gary where can we find you on the interwebs i'm at my website

garyjohnbishop.com but i'm very active on instagram on facebook and on twitter and uh you know i love giving people little nuggets every other day or so just to kind of keep them thinking and keep them on their toes there you go guys we live in interest may you live in interesting times i think is the saying bobby kennedy repeated it from i think a greek philosopher something like that and we certainly do but how our perspective is makes a difference great book to take and get a and his other books as well go to amazon.. You can also go to our shop on Amazon. I think it's amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash Chris Voss. Order up the book.

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