The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - E36: Ambition, Motivation and Imposter Syndrome

Episode Date: August 2, 2019

In this weeks solo episode of The Diary of a CEO, I discuss how important it is to build and share your story when creating a brand or a business. I talk about how we are naturally obsessed with being motivated and ambitious, and explain how being...

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. Okay, so the first point in my diary this week, I've just written, everyone forgets about stories. And I think this is applicable to everybody in every context of your life. And here's the inspiration for this point. There are so many kids in my DMs and in my emails that start dead clothing brands where they've effectively picked a foreign sounding word

and they've made an Instagram page and they're trying to sell t-shirts with this ambiguous random word on it to millions of people and they're messaging me because nobody's buying their stuff. Here's the truth. You cannot expect to win in a saturated competitive emotional industry like fashion if you have absolutely no story. I have this jumper at home that I bought and it literally

has two words written on it in a terrible font and I paid $200 for that jumper. If any of you had made that top, I would not have paid $5 for it and I certainly wouldn't have worn it because to be honest with you, it's ugly. However however I bought this jumper at Coachella and at a sort of exclusive shed that Kanye West had created when he did his first ever public appearance of the Sunday service event which I'm I'm sure a lot of you have heard about it's basically this amazing unique gospel experience and they did this they made this man-made hill on the side of Coachella, and you had to arrive at 6am in the morning to get there. That jumper is ugly. But the reason I paid $200 for it is because it holds tremendous story value to me. The top has literally zero value other than

the value held in the story attached to it. And the truth is, stories are brands. Stories build brands. To be honest with you, stories build people. But I think generally speaking, we neglect the value of stories. The true value of almost everything is not in the resource cost that it costs to make it or the labor cost. The value lives in the story attached to it. And I don't think we appreciate that enough on a daily basis. Think about it. Mona Lisa is probably worth about five pounds in natural resources, about $5. But its estimated worth is nearly a billion dollars.

Mona Lisa's story, the journey it went on, the fact that it was stolen for 100 years, is the value. The iPhone, the iPhone generates a 250% markup. Nike, Nike can make a shoe for $10 and sell it for $100. Louis Vuitton make 2000% markups on their bags and suitcases at times. Even gold, gold isn't the rarest metal in the world. It's certainly not the most useful metal in the world. So why the worship of this yellow metal? Because of the story.

Banksy, he is the most pure example of a storyteller. Anything he touches becomes significant. Because it's like how Cupid can fire a bow and people fall in love. Banksy can touch anything with his brush and it instantly becomes a significant story. Stories build brands and stories build people. There's probably nothing more important when it comes to attributing value to an object than the story attached to it. We are all stories. And some of us are more interesting stories than others, to be honest, but we are all

stories. And in some cases, the world knows your story. In other cases, your friends and family are the only people that know your story. You make your story every single day, every time you get out of bed. In fact, your story keeps writing itself when you're asleep, every second, every minute, every month, every year, every decade. And here's the important thing. If you can create a great story and you learn how to tell it, whether that's through new mediums like podcasting or social media or the radio or writing or music or other, your life can drastically, drastically change. And the power that your story gives you is also an incredible weapon to change the life of and the world for others. Let me give you an example of how much value you can bring to an object or a person with

a story. There was this experiment they did called the Significant Objects Project. And it was really simple. I guess the experiment was, what happens when you hire a group of creative writers to make up stories about cheap trinkets and ornaments? And what happens when you then post those stories alongside those items online for sale? This was exactly what Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn did back in 2009

as part of their storytelling experiment. For example, they found a tiny little globe ornament that they bought for $1. And after writing a fake story about this tiny little globe and sticking it on eBay, they sold that globe for $200. Why? Because the stories in the handwritten note that came with the globe resonated with buyers.

This insignificant object became highly significant to someone else. This experiment proves that as human beings, we are drawn to and we connect with stories like nothing else. We feel stories. Data and statistics, not so much, but stories can change the world.

Stories are a driver of emotional value, and they can transform insignificance into significance, valueless into valuable. So many of you will start businesses, you'll pitch ideas, you'll try and become public speakers, motivational figures, entrepreneurs, and more, without really, really, really, first and foremost, focusing on your story.

Instead of telling me why your product is cheaper, better designed, or why your motivational talk has more data to prove it's correct, you must always, always care more about the story you're telling. And quite honestly, especially in industries where competition is high, as far as it relates to the success of my business and the success of my personal brand, sharing a great story has been everything. I've spoken on hundreds and hundreds of stages all across the world. And anybody that's heard me speak will tell you that regardless of what I'm there to talk about, the information is always embedded in a deeply emotional personal story. And that's, in my opinion, why we've been able to do so well in

getting our message out there. You are a story. But if you want to be a great, valuable story, and if you want to increase your value by 2,800%, like that tiny globe, you have to first create a great story that involves pushing yourself, doing things that others didn't want to do, and going to places that others weren't willing to go to. And once you have your great story, you have to be an open book. And being an open book is scary. Telling your truth your way is unbelievably intimidating, but it just ends up being so fucking worthwhile. Stories are everything. What's yours? Okay, so the next point in my diary, and this is something I've wanted to talk about for a long time, is the amount of bullshit surrounding the topic of motivation naturally we are all obsessed and fascinated by the word motivation its origin how we obtain motivation how we keep it fuel it

and how we create more we have motivational speakers self-help books gurus who are all available and ready to tell us how to stay motivated. But motivation, like so many other human emotions or thoughts, it rises and falls. It ebbs and it flows. It comes and it goes. I get asked one question so often. The question is, how are you motivated all the time? And here's the truth. I'm not motivated all the time. Anybody that tells you they are is lying to your face. Nobody is. In all walks of life, regardless of your career, sometimes you'll have to do things that you don't want to do. And the crazy thing is, according to science, you can lose motivation to do the things that you once loved doing if you start getting material, extrinsic rewards for doing them.

I'm not sure if you quite understood what I just said. If you get paid to do something or it becomes your job, according to science, you can start resenting that thing. Artists, creators, and creatives will understand this. For example, they did a study on two groups of young children. One group of children were told to draw a drawing in order to get a certificate. The other group of children were told to do a drawing for no incentive at all. Later when the same two groups of children were asked to do a drawing again the kids that first did the drawing for a certificate for a reward were less likely to

want to draw again. This is one of the crazy revelations I've had in my own life over the years. Incentives actually kill creative motivation. The more I have to do something I love in order to pay the bills or to meet a deadline, the less motivated I am to do it. This is why big YouTubers, when they get big, often get burnout and fall out of love

of making videos every single day. Their creative passion becomes a mandatory job. Extrinsic rewards destroy intrinsic motivations. The other thing that's really important for motivation is ambition, which is a strong desire to do or achieve something. But true ambition is reliant on true self-belief, believing that you are capable of doing or achieving that thing. When you have someone that is truly ambitious and truly self-belief, believing that you are capable of doing or achieving that thing. When you have someone that is truly ambitious and truly self-believing, you have someone that is truly motivated. However, the reason I use the word truly when I talked about ambition and

self-belief is because often we don't actually want the thing on the other side of hard work as much as we tell ourselves we do. I genuinely think in our generation there's a lot of people who fake ambition for the sake of being considered ambitious in a particular pursuit. We pretend we want to go to the gym because we want to be the type of person to please our self-image or to please societal pressures or friends that wants to go to the gym, not because we actually want to go to the gym, really we want to want to go to the gym. Not because we actually want to go to the gym. Really, we want to want to go to the gym, but we don't actually want to go to the gym as much as we want to watch Netflix or to chill out with friends. So often, people struggle with motivation to do something that deep down, they have a fake society-led ambition to achieve. That is a losing battle,

and it will drive you further and further into personal despair. This is a situation that's unfortunately made worse by the social media world we live in that tells us, tells us all, I guess, that we should stay up all night hustling but wake up at 5am. We should all be our own boss but we should avoid isolation. We should be vegan but we should travel the world and enjoy food. We should love ourselves but we should be critical so that we can improve. We should drive a Lamborghini, but also an electric-powered, environmentally-friendly bike, be a millionaire, but also a philanthropist and donate. We live in a world where these strong public narratives contradict each other profusely. And they have tremendous influence over us, more now than any other time in recent history, due to the social media reinforcement we all get by abiding by these

rules. So now more than ever, we're confused sheep playing along to a set of societal rules that we don't understand, don't genuinely care about, are extrinsically rewarded to do but aren't intrinsically interested in, and therefore we are incredibly unmotivated to follow. The key is breaking out from the story of how you're meant to be living your life and establishing freedom from as many of these societal narratives as you possibly can. Being more honest with yourself about what you actually want to do and why you want to do it and vice versa, what you don't want to do and why you don't want to do it. And if you do this, you will be more motivated than ever before. When you're doing things that

you actually want to do for your own reasons, not that you feel you need to do for money, for work, or to please your family or friends, you'll be more motivated than any time in your life. But here's what I call the creator's paradox. When you find something that you love doing because it's internally fulfilling, playing the piano, writing, art, photography, there's a pretty significant chance that you'll become so good at it that people will try and pay you to do it.

They'll book you to do it. They'll pay you to perform. And once those external rewards creep in, according to science, your internal motivation will likely creep out. So in this context, burnout might not be the notion of overworking yourself and running yourself into the ground. Burnout might just be when your voluntary creative passion becomes a mandatory, externally motivated, monotonous job. If you want to be motivated to do it, you have to protect your creativity. Okay, so the next point in my diary was inspired by

something that I actually saw on Instagram. It was a picture of Kylie Jenner, and it had five to six million likes on it. And it's this picture of her on a boat. She's wearing Chanel underwear. You know, she's very open about the plastic surgery that she's had. There's this amazing backdrop of, it looks like paradise in the background. She's on a yacht, right? She's wearing gold jewelry. And six million people liked this photo. And on Instagram, when people like photos, you get to see a little bit of a preview of which one of your friends liked that content. And all of the girls that I know and follow on Instagram seem to like this image.

And it really got me thinking about the influence images like this are having on all of our minds at all times. This is something I've been incredibly vocal about on my podcast, on my YouTube channel, on my Instagram, everywhere. This idea that you cannot follow fake and expect to find real. We're all suffering from a lack of real. We idolize fake people like Kylie Jenner, and I think it makes us sick. We associate with fake people in our lives, and we're suffering from a real inherent lack of realness. And when I see this image of Kylie

Jenner, I genuinely, genuinely feel like it's toxic, like it's eroding the mind of our generation. You cannot follow fake and expect to find real. One of my favorite books by Johan Hari beautifully details how our generation are being misled by junk values. It talks about how in your life, if you're being influenced by junk values, the chances are, according to a professor called Tim Kessa, you'll be more anxious, more depressed, and you'll experience less joy. I'm going to keep it facts.

In life, some of our guilty pleasures that seem so harmless are silently causing us tremendous mental harm. And one of those things is following fake people and their fake lives as they push their fake junk values onto you. It's not good for you. Just like going to McDonald's and eating burgers isn't good for your body, allowing yourself to be influenced by the wrong people on social media or in the real world is not good for your mind. One of the most important things I did last year was unfollowing and or muting people across all of my social media channels and in my real life that was subtly influencing me negatively. Just like their subtle influence can quite literally ruin your life,

their subtle absence has quite literally changed my life for the better. You should do this on your timelines right now, but also in your real life too. It's hard to stop the damage a bad influence can have on your life, but it's easy to prevent that person from ever having the opportunity to do the damage in the first place. And you can do that by unfollowing them, by cutting them out your life. Stop giving them your time and your mind to pollute.

You can't follow fake and expect to find real. Okay, so the next point in my diary is something I've puzzled over for many, many years. And it's something that upon thinking about this in my diary over the last couple of weeks and writing it out and really processing it, I think I've solved a lot of problems in my life as it relates to love, as it relates to business success, as it relates to going to the gym, as it relates to healthy eating and everything in between. What I've written in my diary is maybe life is so great because of restraint. Now, if you know me, you will know that I have been rebellious in the name of freedom and being my own person my entire life. This led me to being kicked out of school when I was 17 years old because my attendance

hit 30%. It led me to walk out of university on day one, because, you know, I thought that I wouldn't need it and that I was going to be just fine without it. It meant that I walked out of jobs in Manchester, probably six, seven, eight jobs after a month, because again, I felt like I could do whatever I wanted to do without any restriction whatsoever. And in some respects, I guess it's made me a very disruptive entrepreneur, which has led to great success. But on a personal level, I've come to realize that this sense of rebellion could risk me being unhappy and it could hurt my chance of long term progress in a number of very important areas. You know, the risk taking side of me is important and it's something I'll never lose. But there are some areas of our life that require restraint. The truth is, what we think of as acting from free will because we want to be

spontaneous and, you know, make our own decisions is often the opposite. We're often just acting from our automatic unconscious habits. Say you feel angry at someone and you have the urge to lash out at them. If you don't pause to investigate that urge, you end up making a remark or acting in a way that you 100% of the time will regret later when you calm down because you let your unconscious habits take charge. Say you have the intention to go to the gym today, but without stopping to think you grab a pizza and you eat it

and you don't go to the gym. Was that wisdom or was that freedom of choice? Really, that was probably your unconscious habits running the show. Our lives are full of these unconscious habits that are, without us realizing it, running the show. And in many cases, we pass it off as us just living life or being spontaneous, but it's honestly the opposite. Some of these habits are insignificant and others will interfere greatly with our happiness and our well-being. Without restraint, we stay stuck in the same old cycles and it keeps us bound and limited. Cheaters keep cheating on their partners

and destroying meaningful relationships. Unhealthy people keep eating unhealthy food that is making them overweight and depressed. We can't break the cycle because we're allowing our unconscious habits to run the show. Restraining ourselves offers and creates a window of opportunity for change to happen. When we pause before the habit has us barreling down the road, which always leads to the same disappointing outcome, we create a chance to finally discern between the appropriate, conscious, desired response and the dangerous cyclical habit. We've all been there. The common meaning of the word restraint speaks to holding ourself back and repressing and trying to keep cool, right? The implication

is that by restraining ourselves, we relinquish freedom and sacrifice spontaneity. That's what people generally think when they think of restraint. They think of giving up your freedom and your spontaneity. But in fact, when I really, really think about it, the opposite is true. Real freedom comes from not being ruled by our unconscious habitual patterns and desires that are nearly always driven by fear, insecurities, or bad experiences from the past. Real spontaneity arises when you have control. It arises from the space that remains when the habits are put to rest and when you have control and clarity to make the decision on your own. I have not been in control in so many elements of my life when it comes to trying to achieve a certain outcome, whether that's trying to get big

muscles in the gym or trying to be, listen, I've never cheated on anybody, just for the record. But I think I've avoided relationships in the past because I was unsure whether I could commit to somebody because of my lack of restraint in certain situations. How I've gotten to 26 and not cheated on anybody is because I've avoided relationships, right?

I'm just being completely honest. If this makes me sound like a dick, then listen, you listen to this podcast for honesty, right? And I used to think that being able to get whatever I wanted in life was the key to my happiness. But the problem I encountered in all areas of my life was that you often can't have everything you want, because some things exist in opposition to something else that you want. You can't have waffles for breakfast every morning whilst having a six pack and a great physique every day. I couldn't start a successful business at 18 years old whilst also maintaining a great social life and never missing a night out with

my friends. You can't kiss all the girls and boys that you meet that you think are pretty while still maintaining a meaningful relationship with a girlfriend or boyfriend. Things exist in contrast and in conflict, right? I'll be honest with you. At times, I felt so frustrated that I can't have the best of both worlds in my life. For example, I'm currently working really hard in the gym to get in great shape and to get a six pack for summer. And by the age of 27, which is in about a month's time, I want to look really good, you know? And I really, really would love to get a six pack, which means I can't eat waffles. But the problem is, I really, really like waffles. In fact, most things that taste amazing

would cost me my six pack. So philosophically, I started thinking about why I can't just have everything that I want at once, and why life and the world is designed in this way. I imagined, for a second, a world where I could have everything I want, where I could have a permanent six-pack and all the waffles I want every single day for breakfast, right? And it slowly dawned on me that the only reason I value having a six-pack is because it's hard to get. The reason why people go, oh my god, you have a six-pack, that's amazing, when they see you have one is because it's rare. So in fact, the scarcity, the shortage of it in the world, the amount of work it takes to attain it is really the value,

not the thing in and of itself. Which relates back to my first point about how the majority of the value that exists in the world lives in the stories, not in the thing itself. A six-pack isn't inherently valuable or desired, but people are impressed because a six pack tells a story of discipline, hard work, and restraint. And on that point of restraint, maybe the thing that makes the things in life feel so valuable, desired, and therefore special is not being able to have everything at once. It's that scarcity. The thing that makes your relationship so special is having one relationship, not 100 relationships. The thing that makes the waffle taste so good is having one relationship, not 100 relationships. The thing that makes the waffle taste so good is having one a month, not one a day. Maybe the thing that makes all of life so enjoyable is scarcity, is restraint, is having to pick between one choice and a supposing

alternative. Maybe the thing that's been frustrating me is in fact the thing that makes life so enjoyable. And maybe, just maybe, the life of abundance where I get everything I want and the best of both worlds is the most empty, meaningless reality anyone could live in. Maybe this is why my billionaire friends that have every car, multiple girlfriends and every material possession are so often the most miserable people I know. Maybe. Okay, so the next point in my diary, I've just written how to get a deadly sword. Sounds pretty vague. Let me explain. Someone asked me the question, how did you get so good at public speaking? And I paused. And then I spent a few minutes trying to think of tips and tricks.

And after several minutes of stumbling around, trying to sort of summarize how I got good at public speaking, I eventually rattled off a couple of tips. They said, thank you. And the conversation ended. And that was that. Several days later, when I was in a different country, sat at home, I started to reflect on why it was so hard to give them tips. And I started to think about what the true answer was as to how I've sort of mastered anything in my life or any particular skill. And I started to think about what the true answer was as to how I've sort of mastered anything in my life or any particular skill. And then it dawned on me. This person had effectively seen me holding a really, really sharp sword. And they had effectively asked me, how can I get a sword that sharp? The reason I stumbled was because the sword they admired took me 10 years to sharpen. I'm 26 now, I started speaking at 16 years old.

I can't break those 10 years down into easy to emulate, easily digestible tips or tricks. What I should have said is it took me 10 years to get a sword this sharp. So if you start practicing now in 10 years, you'll have a sharp sword too. But the truth is, nobody wants to hear that. Everybody wants to know the shortcut. We all have shortcut syndrome. People inherently believe, and I think they want to believe, that the secrets to success or the secrets to becoming great at a skill, their secrets to a problem they're experiencing, or the secrets to their ambitions and great experiencing or the secrets to their

ambitions and great accomplishments that they want to achieve can be found in something as easy to emulate as a few tips or a cheap and accessible £10 self-development book. This shortcut syndrome is a massive industry and self-help gurus and get-rich-quick schemes feed off it. The truth is, as the cliches go, all good things take time and Rome wasn't built in a day. Shortcuts lead good intentions to dead ends, rinsed wallets, good things take time. And if you really care about mastering any one thing, be prepared to give 10 years of your life to it.

If you're not willing to, don't bother. Do something else. Okay, so the next point in my diary, I literally have no notes written to this, so I'm just going to tell you what I think and why I wrote this. I've literally just written, people with imposter syndrome procrastinate the most. It's just something that I've noticed in my life. People who feel like imposters in a pursuit or a discipline procrastinate more than anybody else. This is facts. And I'm trying to understand why this happens.

And I think the first reason why this happens is because people with imposter syndrome are scared of putting themselves out there more than they already have by fulfilling a role that makes them feel like an imposter. So when it comes to completing a massive project or getting something done, people with imposter syndrome spend tremendous amounts of time dwelling on the topic, thinking about what could go wrong, overthinking. And generally, when you're experiencing imposter syndrome, the safest

place to be is exactly where you are. I've worked with a number of people over the years, over the last five, six, seven years that have told me they have imposter syndrome or that I believe have a sense of imposter syndrome. And when it comes to sort of big innovations or extending themselves or getting big tasks done, they struggle the most. So what I really wanted to do is highlight this. Here's the thing. Everybody procrastinates. Everybody. I procrastinate tremendously at times, right? For various reasons as well. Usually because of my perfectionism, but people with imposter syndrome procrastinate for a variety of other reasons. And my advice to anybody who is experiencing

a little hint of imposter syndrome, and statistically 70% of you will at some point, is to throw yourself violently at it. When you experience procrastination, you've basically got two choices. Choice A is to sit back, to think, and to fall into sort of inaction. Choice B is to throw yourself at it ASAP. And I started in my own life, whenever I feel myself procrastinating or whenever I say to myself, oh, I'll start that at 10 p.m. I just need to clean the house first

or I'll start that then. I want to do this task first is I grab the thing that my mind told me to avoid and I run at it. And doing that over the last couple of years has dramatically changed my life. The compounding effect of throwing yourself at the things that your mind is telling yourself to avoid is fundamentally life-changing. And yeah,

I just wanted to share that with you because I know we've got a lot of imposters out there, and I probably am an imposter to some degree. I think we all fundamentally are. If you're not an imposter, then you're probably not challenging yourself enough you've probably not gone deep enough you're probably not in a unknown territory you're probably not in a growth moment or a growth zone it probably is the case that the thing that comes after being an imposter is growth and so i i would encourage everybody listening to this podcast to get yourself in a situation where you feel like an imposter where you feel like the least intelligent or least qualified person in the room

or conversation or boardroom you're in. It seems like the most ROI conducive place to be. And when you encounter procrastination, throw yourself at it. I always end my podcast by talking about relationships and other personal things. So I'm going to make this podcast the same. If you've gotten to the end of this podcast,

I feel like you deserve some kind of reward. So what shall I tell you about my life that's very, very personal? For the first time in a long, long time, I am completely, completely happy in regards to my relationship life and my personal situation. I found a real sense of peace and balance.

For the first time in my life, I talk about my family a lot in this podcast and how running my business has really made me a shit family member in many regards. And I've done a number of things this week that I think have brought me a little bit closer to my family. But over the last couple of months anyway, I've been more engaged with my family than I have in recent years. This week, I bought my mum new teeth, which I was super proud of. It's crazy. My mum's quite conscious about how her teeth look, right? And she's been very conscious for a number of years. And being able to buy her new teeth has been more rewarding than anything that I could buy myself. I've now been able to, with my brothers and sisters, buy my dad a continual supply of healthy food that gets delivered to his door. Again, you know, I spend money on myself, I bought a Gucci bag, etc, etc. Nothing is more rewarding than being able to buy those things for

my family. And when every time that I, you know, send the money or I buy something for my friends and for my family. It's this amazing reminder about the true value of giving, the true value of hard work, the true value of success, and really why I do all of this shit. And I think much of my personal brand in the last year has been focused on helping my audience realize what really matters the most. And that's what matters the most. It's those intrinsic things that you do for yourself, not for Instagram or for likes or for validation from the outside world, the things that you do for yourself and the people that matter the most. And here's a bit of a bit of a breaking news story for those that got to the end of this podcast. I am now writing a book and I've been writing this book for the last six months. And in this book, I've put

all of the ideas that I've never shared online, but the ideas that I think are the most important of all. So as I've been producing content and YouTube videos and podcasts, the ideas that I think are most powerful, I've kept for my book. And I'm super, super excited for all of you guys to read it. I'm in fairly early stages of getting it published and distributed at the moment, but I think you're really going to enjoy it, and I've put my life, my soul, and everything into this book. So yeah, in the next couple of weeks,

I'm going to ask all of you to help me pick the title of the book. I've got three options at the moment, but I need your advice. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It's an incredible honor that anybody would get this far into this podcast. If you have, do me a favor, review it on the app store or wherever you're listening to it. If you can, that'd be amazing. And if you do, leave your name.

I love to see the people that are engaging. I tend to see the same names over and over again. And that makes me super happy when one day I get to meet you. But the other thing I'd love you to do is to give me feedback. Send me a DM, message me and let me know what you think. Because your feedback is ultimately shaping this podcast. And it's ultimately what makes me sit down every week and deliver it. So thank you so much.

I appreciate it tremendously. And yeah, remember to keep this to yourself. Bye.