The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 71 - Why You SHOULD Take Personal Responsibility: Matthew Hussey

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. In this weeks moment we uncover exactly how you can take responsibility in every area of your life. Matthew Hussey walks us through how to take a step back, reflect, and see our own actions from the perspective of others. Taking the wider view is always a good idea - for ourselves, in our relationships, in our friendships, and in our careers. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/xK3A11jtBsb Matthew: https://www.instagram.com/thematthewhussey/?hl=en https://twitter.com/matthewhussey? Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos

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 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. One of the three lines of like, I guess, business, but life in general, and also with relationships is, and I really wanted to ask you this, because it's something that I'd seen in my DMs from people. People sometimes message me about relationships. And one of the things that I find concerning when I meet someone in their personal development journey, or in my DMs

talking about their boyfriend, or in other facets of business, is when I identify a lack of personal and self responsibilityresponsibility. Where you meet certain people in life where they just can never seem to take responsibility. They never want to like look in the mirror and ask themselves the question, what role have I played in this? And I sat with Lewis in London on this podcast

about a week ago or two weeks ago or something. And one of the things that really astounded me about Lewis was when he said something about his ex-partner, even if it seemed like a fault on the surface, he would say, and that's on me, and then end the paragraph with why he was responsible. Even if it was like, you know, she wouldn't let me have females on my podcast

or something like that, then he'd say, and that's on me. And I remember thinking, damn, this guy's going to go far. So what role have you seen that partaking personal responsibility has on the positivity of your outcomes in dating, life, business, and everything in between? Well, I think that to start with it, it makes you a much more likable person. Amen. The idea of extreme ownership is in some ways powerful, but we all know there are things that have happened in life that are not our fault at all. There are things that we, trauma we have experienced that it would be insulting to say that

we have to take responsibility for these things. It would be sinister in some cases to suggest that. But if we can get into the habit of genuinely saying, you know, how this is affecting me is something I can take responsibility for. And if I do, it actually gives me a shot at feeling better about this thing. It actually gives me a chance of improving it. Because if I say I'm powerless, then I can't have it both ways. I can't say I'm powerless and I have no responsibility over how I feel and then make it better.

I have to say, okay, this thing is happening. It's not that it's happening is not my fault. That someone is making my life really, really difficult right now with what they're doing, their behavior, their abuse, their whatever. That is not my fault. But I want to get really curious about how I can handle this in a better way, in a more productive way. And the one of the things, our mutual friend, Lewis Howes, who you're talking about, one of the beautiful things about him, both in front

of the camera and behind the camera, is that he is, Lewis is not a complainer. Lewis is someone who, he'll talk about the things that he's struggling with right now, or he'll talk about the things that he's trying to work on, but it's never from a place of being the victim. It's always from a place of what can I do, which I think is different. People, I think, what part of the problem for a lot of people is they conflate the idea of ownership with fault. And that takes us into some really dangerous territory. It's not your fault that something's happening, but you can take responsibility for how you turn that into art.

I thought about confidence a lot in my career and the injustices of confidence, right? Because we are not distributed things equally in life. We are not distributed things equally at birth. We're not distributed opportunities equally. You know, it's super easy for anyone who's objectively decent looking to talk about, you know, how easy it is to go and approach someone or do this or do that. And you're like, you cannot even imagine what it is for someone who has been rejected their entire lives. They are starting from a completely different position than you in their confidence. It's so easy for someone to say, you just need to be confident. Okay. Start from where I'm starting from. And then tell me that, you know, the confidence is a really, again, it can be a very insulting concept,

but I do believe that there's a, there's a TV show called Chopped. And I'm probably, I'm not familiar with the show. But so I'm probably going to get wrong the concept. But in my head, the concept of this show is very, very interesting from the point of view of confidence. I think the chefs get given different ingredients. So it's like just lucky dip. What do you get? What's interesting is if you get a basket of ingredients and I get a basket of ingredients,

we're both getting judged on what we make of those ingredients. In that format, it's what are you able to do with what you have and what am I able to do with what I have? And I think there's something really fascinating about that because we spend so much of our lives mourning our ingredients, really being upset or frustrated about what the ingredients are that we were given. Imagine that you're not being judged on anything but how great a chef you are. Because that show isn't about ingredients, it's about chefs. Or imagine life isn't about ingredients, it's about chefs. Don't aspire to have the best ingredients. Aspire to be the best chef. And the best chef is going to be the one who can be the most creative with the ingredients that they have. I'm fascinated by that because if I apply that to my own life,

I just go, whatever thing that just happened, I wish didn't happen. Whatever thing that's happened to me this year that is so painful, so devastating, so whatever, whatever that thing is, it just became a new ingredient in my life. I can either judge myself on my ingredients, which if I do that, I'm always at the mercy of the next thing that happens in my life. Something cataclysmic could happen in my life and I lose everything. And then what? I'm going to judge myself and my life on my ingredients. To me, it's always how great of a chef are you? Ingredients are luck of the draw. Being a chef is something we can continue to get better at our entire lives. And it's actually the

antidote to whatever happens. If you're a great chef, you can cook something out of whatever you have. It's such a, it's such a powerful analogy. And it really, really did like, yeah, I sort of do what you probably do when you hear an analogy, you kind of test it from multiple scenarios and it really stands up. And I was thinking then again about when we look into that basket of the ingredients we're handed if we if we believe that the ingredients we were handed are inadequate or inferior to the chef stood next to us we're probably also going to prepare the meal with a certain level of pessimism that's going to result in a worse dish anyway and the the agony also of looking over at someone else's basket of ingredients and going fucking oh they got, they got the ribeye. Look at me. And that, you know, cause we, we both know the

negative power of comparison and how it can drive down performance, belief, confidence, and all those things. But it's a beautiful, beautiful analogy. And sometimes imagine if you took pride in being able to still make, even if you knew like this ingredient is, this one sucks. Like there's no getting around it. These ingredients I have right now suck. But you took pride in, look what I can make out of this. I get you made something amazing with your truffle salt and your caviar and your uni. Like I get you did something amazing with that.

No shit. Look what I just did with kelp jerky yeah it's a it's a real powerful um analogy for privilege as well isn't it you know a hundred percent because you then you realize i'm in a different game altogether. This is why comparison is so insidious because what am I going to do? Compare myself to someone who got a completely different basket of ingredients and say, and by the way, the basket of ingredients isn't just what you got in life in terms of circumstances or parents or whatever, education, your basket of ingredients is also what you got here. You have a sharp mind. Thank you.

Now, you've no doubt honed that mind. You've respected it. You've honored it by reading and by educating yourself and do all of these things but you also started with a sharp mind yeah probably i'm really it's funny because i'm really bad at math english and everything i'm good at the thing i honed but you're right i definitely had a predisposition but your speed of like you hear something and you i've watched you in in in interviews and when you talk your speed of how you assimilate information and draw patterns, you're good at pattern recognition, which is why from a philosophical standpoint,

there's a strength there, right? Because you're good at pattern recognition. These things, you just won the lottery on that one. Like with your brain, you just happened to win the lottery on that one. Right? This is going to be my confidence button. I'm going to get this clip. You won the lottery. That's right. It's a 60 second emotional button. Those ingredients extend to everything.

They extend to everything. You couldn't have grown up in the most dire circumstances, but have a sharpness of mind that other people can't even relate to. And for that reason, if you know how to double down on that thing, anything can happen. I love the idea. And I think that everyone could benefit from a kind of acceptance of just, I'm starting from where I am. Forget starting from when you were a baby and you know, all of the circumstances you were born into and so on. I'm talking now. Forget what's happened. Forget everything you've done. I had a great brain, but then for 10 years, I did a bunch of drugs and then I hurt myself and then blah, blah, blah, whatever. Doesn't matter. I think about it like this. Imagine that you woke

up into your life right now and your only job was to make the most of that life. So forget the years that Steven has already had, you're 29 right now. So forget the 29 years that have already happened. You, this brand new soul is waking up this morning into Stephen's body at 29 with whatever his opportunities are and whatever his problems are. It would be awesome. You'd be so happy for the opportunity.