The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - E33: I Made A Mistake

Episode Date: June 19, 2019

It’s been a while since we last spoke which I apologise about! In this week’s episode of The Diary of a CEO, I discuss how a bad reaction of mine lead to a lot of regret. We are all on a journey of self-development and in this particular moment my ego...

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. hello it's me again it's uh it's been a little while since we've last spoken and whenever i go a big duration without uploading a podcast there's something inside me feels like i owe you an apology so i'm sorry but i but i want to give you the context as to why that is and why that sometimes happens basically I'm very very busy and I literally work all the time which is something which is something that if you know me you know to be true I work all the time and when I'm not working I'm probably traveling and even when I'm traveling I, I'm probably traveling. And even when I'm traveling, I'm working. And over the last eight weeks, I've spoken on nine different stages in every corner of the world imaginable. I've been on stage in Brazil and Italy and Newcastle and London and the Ukraine, you name it. In the last couple of weeks, I've been there. I've been to Atlanta, New York, everywhere, right? And so getting the time to get into this flow state, which allows me to produce this podcast is a challenge and it's an increasing challenge these days. But what I'm doing is I've dedicated a day every single week now, starting from this

week, where I'm going to focus on production of content for my podcast, for my Instagram and for my other channels as well. So let's see how that goes. Usually it's Sunday, but I'm going to change that up a little bit. So let's see if I can achieve a little bit of consistency. This episode is going to be interesting. There's one central theme to this episode, and that's probably the first time I've had like one consistent theme and I'm going to be looking out for your feedback on that on Twitter and Instagram DMs and so on but without further ado I'm Stephen Bartlett and this is the Diver CEO. I hope nobody is listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself. Okay, so the first point in my diary is a little bit of a confession.

I've just wrote an stolen tweet, how that felt and what it taught me. And let me give you a bit of context as to what happened and what I learned and what this means. So if you go to my Instagram, I post one of two things. I post a screenshot of a tweet that I've done, or I post videos. And I always, always think of those tweets and videos myself. I write every single word myself, and I pride myself on the originality of that content. I get so much out of the process of summarizing a thought in 280 characters that I wouldn't do it if it was me just copying other people. That's where I get my enjoyment from, right? And a couple of weeks ago, I posted a tweet on my Instagram, which I did not tweet. So it was kind of a mock-up,

but I didn't actually tweet it. I just posted a photo of it looking like I tweeted it. And it was something that relates to my ex-girlfriend and something I learned from that relationship. And that post was my best performing Instagram post ever in terms of an image. It reached 2 million people. It did 70,000 likes. I think it did 2000 comments. It was crazy, right? And it meant a lot to me that an experience I'd had with my ex-girlfriend, something I'd learned about myself, resonated so much with so many other people. And really, that's why I do all of this. I self-analyze, I self-analyze my experiences,

I analyze my thoughts, and then I produce little pieces of content which explain those thoughts in the hope that other people have those thoughts. And hopefully, I try and provide some sort of practical solution or way through if you two are experiencing that or thinking that. So when it got 70,000 likes and reached 2 million people, I was overjoyed. And here's what happened next. A young entrepreneur on the West Coast of America in California, who's kind of like a self-help guru type person, saw that post. He copied and pasted it and posted it to Twitter. Now, although my post looked like a tweet, it was actually photoshopped and I'd never actually tweeted it. Long story, don't ask. But his tweet, which was a complete copy and paste of my post, including the exact punctuation, every single letter the same, went viral. And when I say viral, I mean crazy viral. He did 300,000

retweets or something mental like that. He must have reached hundreds of millions of people, I'm guessing. Staggering, staggering numbers. He was quoted in press. He was everywhere. He gained thousands and thousands of followers. an instagram page with 15 million followers quoted him and shouted him out for having that thought he relished in all of this praise he was screenshotting everyone praising him and posting on his story it became his identity and there i am sat watching something that i'd produced something that i'd created something that I'd created, something that I'd written, completely be stolen from me. And watching someone else revel in the success of all of that. And I am imperfect. I'm imperfect. The process that I'm on is a process of self-development. It's a journey that will

last forever. And every now and then then I act out of character and I slide back into somebody that I do not want to be. And in that moment, here comes my ego. Watching someone openly and publicly take credit and reap all of the rewards for your work, for something that genuinely took you two hours editing, right? That might sound crazy, but the things that post on my Instagram, I obsess over them. And I later, later on, I showed this guy the whole process of me writing those words. But also something that was very personal to me because it came from a situation with my girlfriend, watching someone just revel in that, take it from you and get all the credit from it wasn't easy. And I'm

someone that doesn't really care about credit. And I genuinely, I'm self-aware enough to know that's true. But in that moment, it wasn't easy for me. Here's how it played out. I messaged him. I said, mate, please, can you just credit me under the post? He put a little thing under the post, not really crediting me, but kind of just tagged me underneath the post. And that was fine. I let it go. Two days later, someone comes up to me in the office, Paige, who works in the New York office. And she said to me, look, your tweet has been posted by one of the biggest publishers on Instagram. And this guy has taken the credit. It just so happens that I know that publisher well. I've been speaking to them about potentially acquiring their business. So I messaged the guy,

I said, hey, how did you get hold of that tweet? It's actually my post and my piece of content. He said, well, the guy's going around and telling us all to post it and credit him. And that's when I reacted. That's when I lost my cool. Because it just annoyed me. It annoyed me that this guy, after we'd spoken and after he'd said to me that he would credit me, has been going around and telling everybody to publish it to tag him and to give him the credit even though he now knows where it came from and he was telling people that it came from a magazine he read years and years ago which is just fundamentally untrue and he admitted that later but I reacted and this is something that I'm not proud of but if I'm not honest about it then I'm almost telling myself that I'm not proud of, but if I'm not honest about it, then I'm almost telling myself that I'm unwilling to learn from it. And I really, really want to learn from this because it's

fundamentally so far from who I am today. And it kind of, it reminds me of a less mature, less developed, less self-aware version of myself that I've moved away from. Here's what happened. I've got very good friends at Twitter and Facebook, et cetera. I've got very good friends at Twitter and Facebook etc I've got very good friends at all the major publishers I messaged him and I told him that I was going to have him deleted everywhere and I was going to have his tweet deleted by Twitter and I was going to have him striked on Twitter which is like a DMCA strike if you copy other people's stuff and within two hours he was deleted everywhere by every major publisher that the account with 15 million followers deleted him as well and they all posted correcting it and twitter gave him a dmca strike removed his tweet that did 200 300 000 retweets and that was earning him a lot of followers

and it was over it was gone i felt good for maybe five seconds and then i felt like a piece of shit i wasn't angry with myself and I wasn't disappointed with myself because of the outcome, because the outcome's probably fair, right? I was disappointed with myself because I had reacted and I'd lost control of my composure, my class, and my values. The way I spoke to him was very, very angry and antagonistic and it's so far from who and what I want to be. And I think at any time when you react, you really lose yourself, because a reaction is instant. It's driven by the beliefs, biases, and prejudice of our unconscious minds. And when you say or do

something without thinking, because of emotion, because your survival mechanism has been triggered, that's the unconscious mind running the show. A reaction is based in the moment. It doesn't take into consideration the long-term effects of what you say or what you do. A reaction is survival orientated. And on some level, it's a defense mechanism. And in this case, it was a defense mechanism. It might turn out okay when you react, but it always seems to be one of the things that I regret later. I don't regret all of my reactions, but everything I regret is a reaction. Does that make sense? I'll say that again. I don't regret all of my reactions, but everything I regret is a reaction. A response,

on the other hand, as we've talked about in this podcast, usually comes slower. It's based on information from both the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. It's considered, it's thought through, you've taken things into consideration. And it's much more aligned with your values and your goals and who you want to be. The more reacting we do, the less empowered we are, the less in control we are. And the results of reacting live somewhere between horrendously regretful and slightly embarrassing. And listen, the more successful you get, there's a correlation between your success and the amount of people that piss you off. And I've come to realize that the things that come from the unconscious mind can be absolutely life-saving

in terms of the wisdom, the intuitive feelings about people or situations, what we call our gut instinct, but they can also be devastating. Our unconscious mind can be our worst enemy because it's based on prejudices, biases, fears, and limiting beliefs. That's been proven in study after study. Malcolm Gladwell found out that his subconscious makes him a racist, you know, so we cannot be led by our unconscious mind because the main goal of our unconscious mind is survival. So anything that might threaten our survival becomes the enemy. If someone offends you, if a colleague gives critical feedback, if someone wrongs you, you risk losing your class, your values, your composure, and doing or saying something that you will fundamentally regret. And as I said, as a leader,

you will be pissed off by more things and have more negative emails and more critiques and more, press bullshit than any other position. So if anyone has to be in control of their sort of conscious and their irrational decision making and their cognitive processes, it is you. The higher you go, the more composure you need. And words, words are powerful. Just a few words, a few regrettable words can destroy a relationship. We've seen words destroy careers. We've seen words destroy reputations, progress, and lives. Throughout human history, our greatest leaders, our greatest thinkers, have used words to transform our emotions, to galvanize us to fight causes, and to shape the course of our destiny. Words are

powerful. Words are maybe the most powerful thing. We can all remember one time someone said something to us when they were angry or acting from their unconscious mind, and we'll never forget it. We'll never forget how much it hurt, how it changed our opinion of them forever, and in some cases, how it made us question ourselves. There are very personal things that friends and family have said to me, flippantly, when they were angry, that I've never forgotten. I won't share them because I don't want to, you know, get anyone in trouble, but those things have stayed with me. And you can always change your mood and your mood does change, but you cannot take back words. So it's so important to choose them wisely. I can't

express that enough. And in this instance, I didn't know the difference between my ego and maybe self-protection. I deeply regret losing my class and I regret the way I spoke to him and I regret the way I reacted. I really should have just put this whole situation in context. People copy me all the time. The only reason I was pissed off was because it did so well and he got so much credit. And that's just an ego play. And the truth is, like the game I play is not protectable. And if I let situations like this piss me off, then I will spend my life pissed off. The bigger I get, the more people are going to copy me. Like I said, the more successful you get, the more challenges you have against your ego and your

emotions. And the more followers I get, I've got half a million followers on Instagram now. When that gets to 1 million, there's going to be another 500,000 people that are capable of copying me. I don't mind if they copy me. For some reason, I was pissed off that he copied me, took the credit and did really, really well from the credit. So in future, here's what I'm going to do. And I want to give you a little bit of a conclusion to the situation. About 24 hours passed and I messaged the kid on Instagram and I just apologized. I said, sorry. I said, this isn't who I want to be. I'm much better than this. And in this instance, my ego got the better of me. And I apologized to this kid unreservedly. And the key learning from this is, A, if anyone copies me at any point ever,

I'm not going to do anything about it. It's the nature of the world. And I do not want to get emotionally controlled by that which I cannot control. And B, if this ever happens again, I am not going to react. And C, if I do end up reacting because we are all imperfect, then I just want to apologise as fast as I possibly can. And again, try and learn from it. Speaking of being classy and composed, the second point in my diary is about Barack Obama. Some of you may know that follow me on social media because I did shout about it a lot. You'll know that last week I had the absolute pleasure of speaking on stage with Barack Obama, sharing a stage with him in Brazil in front of thousands and thousands, up to 15,000 people. It's one of the honours of my life and Barack Obama is someone that I watched when

I was 16 years old and I stayed up all night watching him on my brother's TV as he got elected. I was inspired, I was overwhelmed, I was emotional and it just meant so much for so many reasons. And when people have asked me what I want to be when I'm older or what my objective is, one of my objectives has always been to just do myself justice. And what I mean by that is to reach my potential. And Obama is somebody that I look at and I think, you are great. You've achieved greatness. You've reached your potential. I want to reach my potential in my career, as a friend, as a boyfriend, a dad, in terms of fulfillment. I don't want to be the best. I don't want to be the biggest. I don't want to be the strongest, the most successful, the richest, because all of those things are just comparisons against other

people. You are measuring and ranking yourself, your performance, your happiness, whatever, not against your own feelings, not against your own fulfillment, not against your own satisfaction, but against somebody else. And that feels like a completely pointless thing to do. Anytime you're measuring something against an external benchmark, you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons and you'll probably never be satisfied. Because then what? What happens when you become the biggest? You realise that that as a goal, as an objective, was completely empty because it was extrinsic. It wasn't for your own fulfilment, it wasn't because you cared about that, it wasn't because you enjoyed that, it was literally just

a status game. And as Naval often says, status games are unfulfilling. I've also made the same change within our business. I think businesses typically get caught up in the idea of winning the best place to work awards or being the biggest or having the most revenue. But really, for a business to be sustainable, a business needs to just focus on being happier or being better at what they do. So I did a big presentation to all of our teams globally in which I communicated our new sort of goals and all of these things are measures against ourself. We want to be 20% happier this year. We want to be 20% better in terms of our environmental sustainability and we want to improve our revenue by X. These things matter more. These are self-comparisons and by

focusing on yourself, not others, not comparisons, The funny thing is you just might end up being the biggest and the best. But anyway, back to my point. I've obsessed about personal improvement, not matters of status or comparison. And it kind of begs this question internally, how far do I think I can go? If I'm saying that really my aim in life is to do myself justice and to, you know, get closer to my potential what is my potential here's the truth I genuinely genuinely in the soul of me in the the core of who I am believe that there is no limit I believe there is no limitation to how

far I can go I think often in life when people are so vocal about their ambitions and their ambitions are big we are intimidated by them Sometimes we try and tear them down and the reaction is never really good. And we're also personally, individually quite scared of saying who we think we can become. Society makes us play ourselves down to be humble and whatever. But I genuinely, genuinely think that there is no limitation on how far I can go. I feel like through all of the conditioning from society and social media and school that tells you to just be happy with something, I feel like it's taken me a long time, but I've finally broken out. I've broken out of caring about other people. I've broken out of caring about people's opinions, strangers, friends, family, and all of that. I feel like I've broken out of a prison. I've broken out of Alcatraz and I've ran to the end of the island's cliff and I've jumped off. And as I was falling, I learned how to fly. And now my only limitation is time. Nothing else. The distance I travel will be purely based on time. How much time I have and how I use

it. And I don't think this is just me. If you know me, if you've seen me speak, if you've met me in person, or if you've asked me this question, I've never ever believed that I'm special. I still don't. The truth is, I think everybody has the potential to be great. And this kind of leads to the next point in my diary, which is about greatness. I've literally just written, Obama is great. How do I become great? Okay, so I'm going to try and answer this question. The question is, how can you become great? How can I become great? How can anyone become great? And in the past, I've always thought that great people like Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela or Ruth Bader Ginsburg or, you know, Rosa Parks,

became great because they took on one singular great challenge and won. But I've started to completely rethink that based on a little bit of research and a little bit more of a contextual understanding into all of these people's backgrounds. For me, there's a kind of unspoken secret about greatness, and I'm hoping I can articulate that. For me, to become a great person, you have to have great achievements. And achievements take time. And achievements live in hindsight. They live in the past. Therefore, greatness is a reflection of a period of effort. With that said, the most important factor of great people has to be consistency. Let's be honest, nobody

that wins the lottery is considered great. We'll either say that they did good or they were lucky or something like that. But Nelson Mandela, he started marching in 1943 and now he's considered great. Consistency does two really important things. Through momentum, it kind of compounds your success, kind of like going to the gym where muscle builds on top of yesterday's muscle. And if sharing a stage with Obama was my greatest speaking achievement, then we can dig down into that and figure out what actually happened. Let's look at it. So the organizer of the event in Brazil where I spoke with Obama saw me speak on a different stage in Texas at South by Southwest. And when they saw me in Texas, they were impressed.

Not only have I spoken hundreds and hundreds of times to get to the point where anyone would be impressed, but the organizer of the event in Texas saw my videos online. And that's why I was in Texas in the first place. And I've been improving the delivering content of my videos for three years, almost every day. Consistency created the opportunity, but consistency also made me ready for the opportunity. And this is where the second upside of being consistent is so evident. In terms of personal development, consistency teaches you rapidly through trial and error. You try something, you fail, you learn, you improve. And if you're consistent, you try again, you fail, you learn, and you improve even more. The problem is it's not easy to be consistent for any of us. We've

all been there trying to go to the gym, trying to eat healthily. Consistency is hard. They say consistency comes from discipline, but I don't think that's particularly useful information if you can't tell me where discipline comes from. The truth is, in order to be disciplined, you have to be fulfilled and enjoy the process. And that's made it easier if you believe in the rewards and you believe in delayed gratification. So instead of me thinking I have to do one more thing to become great, have one more idea, say one more thing, launch one more business, perhaps great is just good repeated. I'm going to say that again. Perhaps great is just good repeated. To become great, we must be consistently good. In the mind of society, in order to be considered a great person,

you have to apply that consistent effort to a noble, worthwhile cause, as Martin Luther King did, as Rosa Parks did, or Mother Teresa. Because if we all become great at the things we're repeatedly doing, well, for some of us, that means we're great at navigating Netflix or texting on WhatsApp or scrolling through Instagram. For others who have focused their consistency in areas with more substance, according to society, that means that they've become great philanthropists, great entrepreneurs, great speakers. Perhaps great is just good repeated. Society hands out the medals in this area, but you should focus on becoming great at the things that intrinsically matter to you, not to society, to you. The things that will lead you to personal inner fulfillment, becoming a great dad, a great friend, a great

artist, perhaps great is just good repeated. That's my big takeaway. And instead of obsessing about the big, you know, the big move I'm going to make to make myself great, I'm just going to try and be good consistently. And I think according to the evidence, that should be enough. Okay. So the next point is something that I've tried to summarize for the longest time. And about a week ago, I posted it on my Instagram because I finally managed to put it into words. Here's the context. Don't we all know some people who read the most books? They are the most intelligent people on paper. They've got the best grades. But when it comes to society and being a stand-up, productive, self-aware citizen, they just fall down. Some of the smartest people I know that read the most books are the most stupid when it comes to

emotional intelligence and understanding the impact of their behavior. And this is probably also why people who do really well in school often don't go the furthest in life. They were incredibly good at memorization, but when it comes to taking what they've learned and being able to apply it to themselves in terms of that self-awareness, they fall down. What I wrote in my diary this week is you can read as many books as you like, but if you're unable to read yourself, you'll never learn a thing. From the ancient Greek aphorism, know thyself, to western psychology, the topic of self-awareness has been studied by everybody, philosophers,

psychologists, for the last couple of centuries. We all know smart people who are rude, self-centered, egotistical, and continually demonstrate the same character flaws time and time again. No matter how many books they report to read or how book smart they get, the most important lessons, the consequences of their actions, seem to go and learn. When we're able to focus on and learn ourselves, we evaluate and compare our current behavior to our own internal standards and values and to who we want to be. We become self-conscious as objective evaluators of ourself. When we do this, we learn. And when we do this, we grow. And when we do this, we can progress and become better than we were

yesterday. And as I said earlier, that's one of my key, key aims is just being better. When we do this, we're able to take information we've read and act upon it without the flaws in our characters getting in the way. Some of the smartest people I know have the biggest egos and their egos stop them from ever implementing what they know and have learned. The truth is we need humility to grow. We need to be able to reflect objectively, analyze, critique ourselves. And that's the required foundation of all progress. And I've really, really thought long and hard about a practical thing I can do to get better

at reading myself. And honestly, the most productive thing I do in this area is this podcast. Think about it. Throughout the week, every time something happens, you'll see me quickly pull up my phone and write something in the notes section in my phone. And at the end of the week, I sit and I analyze it and I share it with the world. I pick it apart, I learn how I can improve, and I really think about those moments. So just think about that for a second. If I live 10 years and I'm analyzing everything that happens to me, my progression in those 10 years, my learnings, the amount that I'm going to sort of self-analyze and then improve is going to be exponentially more than someone who's not

doing that. That means in 10 years of living, I might get 20 or 30 years of knowledge and information about myself. I cannot believe everybody doesn't do this. I can't believe that. Listen, the thing you'll know about me, the thing you'll come to learn about me is I don't share things that I don't believe in. And I'm not the type of hocus pocus, bullshit motivator, whatever that sits around reading books, searching for something to give you. When I give you something or when I tell you something that I'm doing, I tell you it because it's fucking changed my life. And I'm almost internally angry that everybody isn't doing this because I genuinely, genuinely want you to be more fulfilled.

That's my key objective. And I think the process of understanding ourselves will make us more successful, will mean that our inputs result in the outcomes we desire, and then ultimately you'll be more fulfilled. So please, just try it. Try it for a week. Try a little bit of micro-noting in your diary

or in your notes or on your phone or whatever. And at the end of the week, review it and write about it. Try it for a week. Try a little bit of micro-noting in your diary or in your notes or on your phone or whatever. And at the end of the week, review it and write about it. Do a newsletter, an article, a blog, whatever you want to do. It's so cathartic, it's therapeutic, but it's incredible for personal development. Okay, so the next point in my diary, I've just written correlation between giving less fucks and success, happiness, peace, composure, and great achievements. And, you know, I was sat on my sofa in New York and I was just thinking, I was in a bit of a flow state where my mind is completely clear. And it just dawned on me that the situation I've gotten to now in my life where I really, really give less fucks than at any time in my history is the most happiest, the most successful,

the most peaceful, the most composed and the most full of achievements, right? And there's this clear correlation in my life between me saying, do you know what? I'm going to do it anyway. And do you know what? I don't care what people think or say or might think or say. I'm just going to do it anyway because I want to and my happiness. And I genuinely, genuinely believe that without even realising it, nearly all of us are living a life in some way to fit in. We're doing things to make us accepted, to avoid anything that might lead to criticism or negative gossip from friends, family, total strangers. And after spending years, and in some cases decades, being conditioned by our societal bubble, after

years of conforming and reading the script and playing the part and living the life we were told we were supposed to live, some of us have totally lost a sense of who we actually are, what we actually enjoy, the things that make us fulfilled. And this act has gone on so long and is now so deeply ingrained in our behaviour and our sense of self that some of us, and I know people like this, are unable to distinguish this people-pleasing behaviour that pleases everyone but ourselves from personal passion that pleases the person that matters the most. We are unable to break free. Because of this, the stats say, especially young people are depressed more than ever before.

The suicide rate has started going up again. That's according to my friend who's the clinical director at the NHS. We feel trapped. We can feel totally alone, totally misunderstood and totally isolated in a room full of familiar faces. Here's the truth. We live someone else's life because the life we're supposed to live, the life we want to live, the things we want to do, come at the cost of criticism. In some cases, it might mean you lose your job. It might mean that you lose close friends. In my case, I know that there were so many people talking shit about me when A, I started

posting some of my achievements publicly, but B, I started doing all of the personal brand stuff. So many people talk shit about me. And here's the catch. I know they still do. I'm fully aware that they still do. In some cases, being yourself might even cost you your family. As I told you when I dropped out of university and called my mum, I didn't speak to my mum for another two years. And the path to getting there feels so unknown and so uncertain and sometimes so unworthwhile because of the cost,

but it always feels slightly unachievable. Here's the thing that I think has the highest chance of making you fulfilled in your whole life forever. I never really need to revisit this topic again once I've said this. One of the bravest things anyone can do in 2019, where we live in a social media, capture everything, share everything, then compare everything world, is to be our true selves. It's never been harder to be you because it's never been easier for society to give their opinion of you. But when you look at the data and you see the rise in youth depression, anxiety, loneliness, it's clear that it's never been more important to try. To try and be you.

To try and be Jenny, Steve, Isaac, Tom, John, Dave, Lindsay. Try and be you. To do things that make you feel good, not things that make you look good. To try and associate with people who have substance and passion, not people with followers and status. To try and love someone

because of their character and morals, not because of their cars and money. Here is the truth. Most of your potential, your peace and your power is trapped behind other people's opinions. But deep down, deep down somewhere in your, you know, in your inner child, you know who you actually are. But the pressure from your environment has made you very, very good. All of us, it's made us very good at pretending that we're someone else. And we've done that because it's safer. In the short term, it's easier. But across the length of your life, it's the most regrettable decision you can make.

And according to the regrets of the dying, that study done by Bonnie Ware where she interviewed people on their deathbed, the number one regret of the dying is living a life untrue to yourself and living someone else's life for someone else's reasons. You have the opportunity to avoid that regret in every moment. You have the opportunity to change this, to make decisions for yourself, to put yourself first, to value your ambitions over theirs for once, to prioritize your dreams for once, to step outside of your comfort zone for once, and to run towards you. And you can make that decision today, you can make that decision right now, you could have made it yesterday, but today and right now is the best next available

time. And I just implore everybody listening to this. I say this from the very bottom of my heart and the bottom of my soul. The thing that has changed my life more than any other thing is getting closer to being me. It's made me more successful. It's made me happier. It's made everything that I do. I don't have to question whether it's the right thing because it's me and me will always be the right thing. About four years ago, a guy called Ashley Jones, good friend of mine, said to me, Steve, you should start your personal brand. Four years ago, probably about five years ago. And I said to Ash, no. And the reason I said no is because I cared too much about what people would think if I started putting my ideas out there. I genuinely was worried people would think that I was a know-it-all or some kind of arsehole or whatever.

And so for about two years, I just put it off. He said, you should start a YouTube channel. I said, no, I put it off. And the minute I made the decision to do all of those things, to be more vocal, more public, to get out on stage more, everything changed. At that same time, I was too scared. And if you go on my Instagram, you'll do well to ever find a photo of me. I was too scared to even post a photo of my face. This is where I was, right? And by finally deciding that I was just going to fucking go for it, irrespective of what people would think or say, everything changed. My self-esteem went through the fucking roof. My personal achievements went through the fucking roof with my self-esteem. Everything changed. I became happier, more

fulfilled, more successful, everything, just because I took down some of that bullshit that society put there, just because I stopped giving a fuck about what people might think if I was just Steve and I can't explain to you how much it's changed and it just makes me wonder how much of the world's potential is locked and trapped behind other people's opinions how many inventions how many cured diseases live behind someone who is scared of someone else's opinion it's such a tragedy you You know, there's that old expression that the richest place in the world is the graveyard because we all take our potential there. And I just, you know, we're all going to die anyway. This topic genuinely frustrates me. There's a book I read on the plane the other day. It's a psychology book and it shows that so many

of us try and escape ourselves. And in trying to escape ourselves and be someone different, we arrive at two different outcomes. This is a study done in, I think it was like 1813 by a Polish psychologist. We end up in two different outcomes when we try and escape ourself. We either despise ourselves because we fail. You can't be anybody else. So we end up despising ourselves for not succeeding in being someone else or we succeed in abandoning our true selves and either way we end up in despair about our true selves so if we abandon our true selves we end up in despair and if we fail to abandon ourselves we end up in despair and the truth is the kind of conclusion the first conclusion is to escape despair you first have to accept your true self to be that self which one

truly is is indeed the opposite of despair and it's a really famous psychology study done i think the psychologist is called suron krundard probably said that wrong but the conclusion is the most important thing to be that self which one is truly is indeed the opposite of despair. I think I'll just leave it there. Someone came up to me the other day. This is my sort of sign off, I guess. There's not really a point in my diary. And the kid said, Steve, I love, you know, all of the hard work you put in and seeing that and all those things. It's great to see. But the thing that I value the most from you is the vulnerability. He says a lot of entrepreneurs don't show the downsides. They don't show the stuff that happens to them. What he really values is me showing how

human I am and all of the, you know, the tough stuff that I go through. So what I'm going to do, historically, I've kind of assigned the end of my podcast to talk about relationships and things like that. And I'm not going to do that this week. I'm just going to talk about vulnerability. I have no script. I have no notes on this. I want to share some of my vulnerabilities. So my first vulnerability, the first thing that springs to mind is I genuinely think I don't have balance in my life. I think that if I'm going to be successful in being happy, according to everything I read and believe, I need to find more balance. This means that I need to be more social. I need to spend more time in nature. I need to spend more time with myself and all of these kinds of things. I need to have

more meaningful relationships in my life. And so that's a real big vulnerability to me in the pursuit of success and business and whatever else I do, being a public speaker, all these things, there's been a great sacrifice. And I'm someone that kind of disproportionately sacrifices things. I don't sacrifice things a little. I go all in. When I commit my mind to something, my friends will tell you, I go all in. And I've been all in on self-development, on my career, on my business for maybe eight years now. Yeah, eight years, coming up to nine years. So I've lost balance in my life. And that's something that I need to fix. It's one of my big sort of personal objectives. What else is vulnerable? I guess, you know, on the point of balance, I need to fix. It's one of my big sort of personal objectives. What else is vulnerable? I guess,

you know, on the point of balance, I need to improve the relationship with my family. I need to become better at dating romantic partners. There's something broken in me. I think it comes from my childhood. I think I've spoke about this before, watching my mom and dad argue and watching marriage and relationships be such a negative thing when I was a kid the model of relationships I saw and observed was such a negative one that I almost feel like I can't get a girl like I'm just undateable like I'd be a bit of an asshole boyfriend trying to work on that because if I don't fix that I won't have meaningful relationships if I don't have meaningful relationships I won't have happiness according to the science, right? So I need to fix that. What other vulnerabilities do I have? I don't know. I think that's really it. Those are the things at the moment that are really on my

mind or the things that I want to fix. People ask me, they say, have you ever had any mental health issues? I haven't. I haven't. And quite sort of naively when I was younger, I thought I was immune from all of that stuff. I thought that, you know, I was immune from needing balance. I haven't. And quite sort of naively when I was younger, I thought I was immune from all of that stuff. I thought that, you know, I was immune from needing balance. I was immune from ever getting depression or anxiety or anything like that. But I've come to learn that I'm not. And the truth is nobody is. We can all, all of us, even me, right? We can all, all go through hard moments, tough times. I've had moments where I've been really, really anxious. I've had, I remember about a year ago, there was this one decision I had to make and I

was absolutely riddled with anxiety. That was the day that I learned what anxiety really is. Horrible fucking thing. I wouldn't wish that on anybody, but yeah, we're all just fucking vulnerable, like imperfect, you know, weak humans that are trying to figure all of this shit out and trying to do our best and trying to be loved and admired and trying to achieve status and freedom and financial success. And, you know, on this journey, I guess like what I'm doing here, what I'm doing with this podcast, what I'm doing with my life is just trying to figure some stuff out and figure out what I can't figure out. And most of the big existential questions that exist in my life, I've realized now that there's no answer to them. One of the dangers that we can all fall into

is trying to get simple answers to very complex, invalid questions. We all try and find the answer to what's the meaning of life, or what's your purpose, or find your purpose, that question is just as valid as what color is number nine, right? Just because you can ask the question doesn't mean it's valid. And what I've done over the last couple of years is just trying to detach myself from all of these invalid, complex questions in which society has provided oversimplified answers. It's dangerous, you know? That's a vulnerability that I'm working on, I guess. Anyway, that's the podcast for this week. I hope you've enjoyed it. If you have, do me the biggest favor, just rate it. Wherever you're listening to it, just give it a rating.

And if you do, just leave your Instagram or Twitter handle in the comment section of the rating. That'll mean the world to me and I'll check out your Instagram, etc. If I can, I'll do my very best. You'll see me next week. If you like this podcast, it's the first time listening to it. Do subscribe because they are quite infrequent at times. And I do want to let you know when I post them. Other than that, have the best week ever and I'll catch you guys soon. Thank you.