THE ED MYLETT SHOW - The Dangerous Weapon You Use Against Yourself | Ed Mylett

Episode Date: January 10, 2026

What if the most dangerous weapon sabotaging your happiness, confidence, and momentum isn’t out there but something you use against yourself every single day? In this mashup episode, I’m bringing together powerful conversations that expose one of the biggest silent killers of fulfillment and success: comparison. I sit down with Lewis Howes, Rachel Hollis, Dr. Robert Waldinger, and Dean Graziosi to unpack how comparison quietly drains our joy, distorts our self worth, and keeps us stuck chasing someone else’s version of success instead of our own. I break down why comparison is the fastest pathway to unhappiness and how it sneaks into every area of our lives, from our bodies and finances to our relationships and sense of purpose. You will hear me explain why it is never your current situation that creates misery, but the story you tell yourself when you compare it to a different time or a different person. This episode is about learning when comparison must be put down and when it can be used strategically as leverage to create real change. Lewis Howes opens up about the internal pressure to measure up and how comparison nearly stole his peace during seasons of growth. Rachel Hollis shares why comparison is the death of joy, especially in a world fueled by social media highlight reels, and how shifting your focus inward restores confidence and clarity. Dr. Robert Waldinger brings the science, revealing what decades of research say about happiness, fulfillment, and why chasing external validation never delivers lasting satisfaction. And Dean Graziosi gets real about how comparison can either paralyze you or fuel your next level, depending on how you use it. This mashup will challenge you to separate happiness from achievement, and to understand the difference between your higher self and lower self. I walk you through how to stop competing in areas where comparison only creates pain, while learning to harness it intentionally when it is time to grow, improve, and evolve. If you have ever felt behind, unfulfilled, or quietly frustrated despite doing “everything right,” this conversation will hit home. By the end of this episode, I want you to feel lighter, clearer, and more in control of your internal world. You were never meant to win someone else’s race. You were meant to master your own lane, live with intention, and build a life rooted in peace, progress, and purpose. Key Takeaways Why comparison is the root cause of unhappiness in nearly every area of life The difference between using comparison for misery versus using it for motivation How social media amplifies comparison and what to do to protect your peace What decades of happiness research reveal about fulfillment and self acceptance How to shift from external validation to internal confidence When comparison can be used as leverage to create meaningful change The mindset shift that allows you to pursue success without sacrificing joy This episode will help you put the weapon down when it is hurting you, and pick it up only when it can truly serve you. 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ←  ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   ➡️⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FACEBOOK⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LINKEDIN⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠WEBSITE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Be sure to follow the Edmilet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. you'll never miss an episode that way. Now on with the show. Welcome back to Max Out, everybody. I'm Ed Milet, and today's program, I think, is going to go a long way to help you find more happiness and more leverage to go become successful simultaneously. So we're going to talk today about comparison and how it affects our happiness level and how it can affect our drive level.

Comparison in every area of our life can either be used as a weapon to create complete unhappiness in our life or it can be utilized as a catalyst to help us succeed at the highest of levels. I want you to remember something. Comparison is the pathway to unhappiness. I'm telling you that in every area of your life where you find unhappiness, you will find comparison. In fact, the antithesis to that is also true. When there is no comparison, you cannot create unhappiness in your life. That's a pretty bold and powerful statement, but it's true.

We only feel unhappy in our lives when we compare something to maybe something in our life that was a different time, maybe perhaps when we were wealthier or in a different relationship or we were healthier in some level comparing our current conditions to previous ones that comparison is what creates the unhappiness is actually not the condition itself or perhaps you're in a relationship where you compare it to a previous relationship you had and how they treat it or how you felt at that time perhaps you compare this time in your life just to a simply a different time and that comparison will always create unhappiness in your life if you can remove yourself from comparing both yourself to a previous time in your life, a previous condition, a previous situation, or even comparing yourself to other people in your life.

This is a recipe and a formula for unhappiness. Every single time in your life where you're experiencing unhappiness, you are doing a comparison to something. It's the contradiction between your current situation, current relationship, current body, current finances, current anything, and something exterior. Either a previous time in your life, a previous person in your life, or you comparing yours to someone else's. It is an insidious disease that so many people in society suffer from today, particularly because of the advent of social media. We watch someone's video of what they're

doing on a Friday night, and it's not what they're doing that makes us unhappy. It's comparing what they're doing to what we're doing that makes us unhappy. It's seeing people laughing and jovial or jet-setting or seeming to be having a great time compared to what we're doing, and that creates unhappiness. It's not the success of people you know that's making you unhappy. It's your comparing your situation to the success they're having that creates unhappiness in your life. So for those of you that are struggling and saying, you know, one of the things I suffer from is I'm just not very happy very often. I can tell you that that presence of unhappiness, you will always link to a comparison of some sort, either in your own life or in other people's

lives. And just being aware of that fact and stopping the comparison, embracing this. moment, embracing this time, knowing that you can't go back to that previous time, knowing that you can't be in somebody else's life. You're not going to have that other body right now. And so if you're looking to be happier, I can promise you, the number one key that I would give you is to stop the comparison game. You'd say, well, that's not completely true. I mean, what if someone passes away? That makes me unhappy. There's no comparison there. Let's take the most extreme example. Or when someone's sick in my family, you know, someone in my family's got a really bad illness, that makes me unhappy. That's not a comparison. In fact,

it is. The fact of the matter is that when someone gets sick in your family or passes away, what you do in your mind is you compare it to when they were healthy. So that comparison of I wish they were healthier again, that is a comparison between the previous situation and the current condition. If someone passes away, it's comparing the time that you had them. That's why people say, if I could just have one more moment with them, if I could just have another conversation, it's comparing it to when you had the moment. It's comparing it to when you had the conversation. And so those are extreme examples,

but we reduce it all the way down to anything right now in your life that you say, it brings me unhappiness. There's no joy there. There's a comparison happening that's not serving you. It's so important to take a look at it because I really believe most people think, and I've covered this before from a different angle, that if I can just change my exterior circumstances, I will be happier.

And that's because they're comparing their current circumstances to someone else. That'd be like somebody sitting in their home, who's unhappy in their current home and saying what I'm going to do is I'm going to rearrange the house and then I'll be happier and so they rearrange the exterior furniture the exterior conditions of the house and then when they sit back down they're still unhappy so they go okay well I'll do is I'll rearrange the exterior of the house again or the interior of it they fix it again and they're still unhappy the reason that's so important is when you accept the fact that it's not the external conditions of your life that create happiness what creates happiness

in our life is realizing that we are not our possessions, we are not our titles, we are not our recognition, we are not our accolades, we are not our popularity, that we're perfect as we are, we're perfect as we are, then we begin to accept ourselves and love ourselves as we are is when we find true happiness. But comparing yourself to another time where maybe you had more recognition, you had a better title, you had more influence, will always lead you to a pathway of unhappiness. Now I'm not talking about self-finding. love in the sense that you just accept everything in your life and you sit around. What I'm suggesting to you is happiness and success are often two different things. Happiness comes from

acceptance. Happiness comes from surrender and loving ourselves as we are. Because if we think we're just going to rearrange the furniture and then we're happier, we still live in the house that is us. We are still housed our souls, our hearts and our minds are still housed in the same home, which is our body. And if we can't be able to be. to love it without the comparison of some change. We're never going to love it. We will always be trying to exchange the furniture of our life. We'll always be trying to change the exterior. So many of you achievers are listening to this right now and you're nodding and you're saying, my gosh, that's why I'm never happy. I'm always thinking if I could just exchange the furniture,

if I could just change the external conditions, then I'll be happy, then I'll be happy, then I'll be happy. And every time you switch the furniture, every time you change the conditions of your life, you find yourself very short-term finding happiness, and then right back to the unhappy state, that's because you keep comparing your situation to someone else's. No matter how good years is, you have to compare it to someone else's recognition, someone else's wealth, someone else's supposed happiness, someone else's relationship, someone else's body, someone else's confidence. And that comparison is flooding you with unhappiness no matter how good or how bad the external conditions of our lives are. Now, having said that,

We've now found a formula, haven't we, that we know when we compare to something, it creates unhappiness in us. This is a key to success now. So we know to find happiness in our lives, we have to stop comparing. However, when there's an area we know we must change, stay with me here, when there's an area we know we must change, now we use comparison as a weapon to our advantage because most people are motivated by avoiding pain, right? That's their motivation, to avoid unhappiness. And so I use comparison as a weapon as a catalyst to get leverage on myself to change. So I'm

very conscious when I'm feeling unhappiness in an area that I'm not conscious of changing to not do comparison. But when it's an area I must change, I do use comparison as my own weapon to get leverage because the gateway to get people saving me all the time, how do I get leverage, How do I get drive? How do I get that voiding pain thing? Comparison. Comparison. So it's a two-edged sword.

We use it against ourselves too often in our life that gives us misery and unhappiness and takes our bliss away. And not enough of us leverage the power of unhappiness using comparison to our advantage. For a perfect example. Right now I'm not in the physical shape that I want to be. I am comparing myself to the previous fit version of me. And this discomfort, this dislike. this pain, this unhappiness that I'm flooding myself with by using the weapon of comparison

to my advantage is a catalyst to get me going forward. I shared a story on social media the other day. I was at the gym and I was working out and already not feeling great about how I've looked. I've had enough people comment, man, you're looking. When you're a fit person or if you're a male and you're kind of a, I don't know, a bodybuilder or whatever, but you have muscle on your body. When people see you, they haven't seen you for a long time, they'll say things like to you, hey, you're looking pretty lean. Look like you're slimming down. That's not what you want to say to someone who's sort of muscular, right? And that's usually code for you don't look as good. You're shrinking, right? And so I've been hearing that lately for people. I had a good

friend of mine hug me the other day and he's like, wow, I can get my arms all the way around your back. He used to have these huge lats. Couldn't even get my arms around. Your arms were so big too. Like, wow. So I'm working out at the gym and a young man's behind me and I hear him say, hey, hey, and I finally lift my earphones off and he says, Mr. Milet, would you please get out of the way so I can look at myself in the mirror when I'm working out. I'm not. kidding you and I looked back at him and I went are you crazy I won't even give you the words that I really said to him right and and I just will leave it at that so he let I let him know that that wasn't an appropriate thing to say

to me but what I did is I used it as leverage when I left there I'm like my gosh two years ago no one would want me to get out of the way no one would talk to me like that but right now I look so average or bad he's like get out of the way so I can look at somebody who's really jacked up and fit right and I'm leveraging that comparison to what I used to look like to my advantage that's causing me to eat cleaner. I'm telling you, since that's happened,

every meal that's been put in front of me, I think about in slow motion. I can see it in slow motion. Him telling me to get out of the way and me feeling like the most out of shape, not fit human being on earth. And what I was doing was comparing myself to the two year ago version of me

when I was much bigger. And that comparison is giving me leverage. Okay? And so I will use leverage to get me to do things. I will let people, see, a lot of people say, that would knock a lot of people down. But that's not what it did to me. It gave me fuel to my fire.

The winners use fuel to their fire. They'll use comparison as a weapon. When I see people succeeding in different areas, I don't use the comparison of them doing it to create unhappiness with me. I will use it tactically in specific situations to cause me to want to move away from how I feel about that comparison.

Either to my previous body, my previous wealth, my previous energy, my previous influence, Mike, my cameraman and I were just talking today outside and I said to him, you know, I used to be better speaker than I am now. And I said, man, if you'd have seen me years ago, you'd have seen the energy I brought, how dynamic I was, how articulate I was compared to this version of me now. And the reason I'm doing that is I want to get better as a speaker. I'm using that comparison. It makes, it gives me pain and unhappiness to think about the kind of communicator I am now compared to how I viewed the previous situation.

So I compared it to give me leverage to improve, to make it a catalyst to change. I understand when to use comparison and when not to. When I want to create a situation of change, I will leverage comparison to my advantage. When I want to create a situation of bliss and happiness and I'm feeling unhappy in an area, I just always evaluate when I'm comparing at that time,

and I remove the comparison, and it creates a happy situation. Remember this. When there's no comparison, there's always happiness. Where there is no comparison, unhappiness cannot exist. Comparison and unhappiness only coexist together. And so I will only leverage this very dangerous thing called comparison when it's an area I must change in my life to get leverage. For those of you that want to create change,

it's okay to leverage it from time to time. But when you become addicted to the mechanism of comparison to get you going, to competing to get you going all the time. When you're always competing against others, always comparing with others, people say, well, there's a difference between competing and comparing. Truthfully, not much.

And the fact of the matter is, to compete against somebody, you are typically comparing where you are to them. It's not necessarily a bad thing. But when you leverage that mechanism over and over, it's a pathway to unhappiness, when a woman goes out in the evening and she's feeling great about how she looks that evening,

and she walks in, and she immediately compares herself to the other people in the room. She will inevitably find a woman that she thinks is more attractive than her, and it steals your unhappiness for the entire evening. Men, same thing, where maybe you've had some financial success and you're proud and you've gone out and your, whatever,

your new car or your new suit, or you've got a new watch on, or whatever, is you're just feeling good about yourself. And then immediately when you go out, you begin to compare yourself to other men or other people. And what it will do is immediately, steal all your joy. Or if you're a couple and you're having a beautiful date night and you happen to observe, you're comparing to other couples in the restaurant, for example, and there's just some couple who's more affectionate or holding hands differently or he opened the door for her and you

immediately steal your joy and create unhappiness for the evening. When you compare the treatment of your partner in the relationship to how your girlfriend's husband or boyfriend treats them, or if you're a male in a relationship and you compare it to how one of your friends, you wives or girlfriends treats them, you've immediately created a formula for unhappiness. You will never win the comparison game if your outcome is happiness. You will win the comparison game if your outcome is change or pain avoidance. So you've got to get clear in what your outcomes are. There's areas of your life where comparisons should never exist. And in most times that's your relationships with other people. Don't compare to a previous

time in your relationship because it'll create unhappiness. Don't compare to other relationships or other people. So I understand in my life, where to use this weapon and where to put it down. And if you want to create more bliss, if you want to create more connection in your life, you need to learn to put the weapon, the very dangerous weapon, the very insidious weapon

of comparison down most of the time, and only pick it up where you want massive change. And the truth of the matter is there's probably one or two areas of your life at any given time that you're really working on changing and you can harness the power of the comparative relationship to your advantage there. there but what vast majority of us do and I know this from my own experience is we're

always in comparison mode we're comparing our home our relationship our fitness our happiness our strength our energy our looks our brains our accolades our achievements to other people all the time and we wonder why we live unhappy almost all of the time it's because you're always comparing you lose that every single time you think well no sometimes I compare it I'm ahead it's not how your brain works your brain's eventually looking for the person that you lose to. Your brain is eventually going to find the better looking funnier, wealthier, fitter, happier, better relationship-having person to wire you for pain. It's a part of our brain that

was wired all the way back for survival mode in order to keep us functioning. The reason that this is so important is we both have two parts of ourselves. We have a higher self and what I'd call a lower self. And it's okay to live in both those places. But most happy people live in their higher self-state the vast majority of the time. The higher self-state is very inward. They're focused on themselves. They're focused on creating bliss and happiness. And their only thing that they ever focus on outside of there is their spirituality, the universe, their God, their connection with something bigger than them. Our lower self is always external. But we need to have that lower self, because that lower self is that catalyst that gets us to move. That lower self does

compare. It's a matter of having a life of both of success and fulfillment, happiness and achievement. Happiness is achieved in the higher self by not comparing and not going external, not thinking the external furniture our life or external people or comparing outside of ourselves or comparing to a different time outside of ourselves. That person right there that doesn't do that, they end up living very happily. The person who achieves leverages the lower self by competing and comparing when needed. And remember this also. The more we begin to learn about ourselves is always a win. The more we have a break through. through in a discovery, there's probably some things I've said today that have made you think.

There's probably some things you're evaluating and seeing in yourself that, or maybe you were blind to before, and just that discovery is a win. The more we begin to evaluate and discover what our thoughts really are, what our behaviors seem to be, our habits and our patterns, the more we become self-aware, the more we have the capacity to live as the higher self, and the more powerful it is when we leverage the lower self and we leverage comparison. And so don't beat yourself up over what I've covered today. Self-awareness and self-discovery is what life's all about. And it's a win, even if you discover something about yourself you're not proud of,

even if you discover something about yourself that you wish didn't exist or that you wanted to change, that's discovery. That awareness is 80% of the step to changing it. And so give yourself some credit today for being aware, for being honest. Oftentimes when content like this is covered, people sort of like to check the box of who they'd like to be and that it doesn't apply as opposed to who they really are. The truth is everybody listening to this, and the man speaking this to you,

is too often in the lower self, too often creating unhappiness in our lives, including me by comparison to previous times, other people, other conditions in our lives. And so today my challenge to you is to live as the higher self, to create more happiness with less comparison, to only leverage it when needed, but leverage it to achieve,

but to find happiness will always. found in the higher self where we're not looking outside. You can probably tell, by the way, I've delivered this to you today that it's something that I'm working on myself. Self-awareness, self-discovery, self-improvement, and achievement, or an ongoing process that never ends as we try to max out our lives. It's not something we figure out and now we've got it. There's always another level of awareness, of discovery, of performance that we can find in our lives. And if today helps you do that just a little bit, an extra discovery, a little bit more awareness, maybe something you would teach to someone else. If it was just a little bit of a breakthrough, then today was

progress. And it was for me just to be covering it. Isn't it easy once you stop doing something to realize, oh, that was working and you don't realize it until you've stopped. And so if you've been looking for something easy to stick with that actually makes you feel better, this might be for you. When you look what's in IMA's daily Ultimate Essentials drink, it brings together 92 high quality nutrients. What's wild is it actually replaces 16 different supplements. So you don't have to juggle all these pills and stuff. You get it in one IM8 drink. So give your body what it deserves with IM8.

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You know what I love about AI? What's that? You can find it everywhere. And on our podcast approximately correct, we talk about the surprising places you might find AI. Like, AI in sports. AI in video games. AI in growing plants. AI plus creativity.

AI in bionic limbs. It's really amazing. And we get to talk to the people who are doing these amazing, unexpected things. And talk about the science behind AI. So join us, approximately correct, an AI podcast. You can subscribe anywhere you get podcasts or on YouTube. Start the interview with my next guest. Just want to remind you all that you can subscribe to the show on YouTube

or follow the show on Apple or Spotify. We have all the links in our show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Awesome, this day right now, this lady to my left, been working so hard to get her on my show. This is Rachel Hollis, everybody. for those who you that don't know who she has been living under a rock. And so I'm going to give her a proper introduction.

I'm so glad you're here. I'm so excited. Oh my gosh. Of course. This is like a dream. It's going to be awesome. Yes. So this lady, if you don't know her, there's something wrong with you, but I'll give her the proper introduction.

So she's written six books. Her six one has gone crazy and has made her a rock star literally in the personal development world. She has a number one podcast in the world right now. her book is blowing up she's a sought after speaker she's got more speaking dates than she knows what to do with right now and she's really making a difference in the world she's changing the world she's the new face of personal development she is i'm just going to tell you there's just not enough women in this space and then one comes along it doesn't just kind of get into the space but

just literally dominates it and takes it over like you have and so i have so many questions to ask you because our phone conversations have been so beautiful yeah because you're so self-aware and honest and I think that's what's made you resonate with so many women and men in the space because I want everyone that's listening to this because I know the women right now are going thank you for having her and we've got your full attention but I want the men to know something there's not that many people in the personal development space where their content alters and moves me and you do that for me and so men you got a lot to listen to today as well and this lady has my full and complete endorsement okay I want you to all to know that I also want you to know

something everybody that one of the reasons I do this show and that I have so important to me that you were here today is I just don't I think the world is more divided more divisive and more angry than it's ever been and there needs to be a force for good in the world and I think that force for good people it's a grassroots movement it's entrepreneurs it's mothers it's fathers it's good people say hey we love each other we don't agree on everything but we love each other we're all put here as the foundation of our faith is that we're all brothers and sisters right and so we're here to help one another and that's what this is doing today you said something the antidote of that in girl wash your face which if you've not gotten this book

men and women both go get this book it's it's it I've probably never read a book so quickly one thing about the book that's really interesting I wanted to tell you too is that usually when I have a book I highlight the parts that I like and this book was so good that I probably should have highlighted the parts that weren't meaningful to me because there's so much just highlighter all over the book it's really true it's just like every page I'm just like thank you one thing you say there she say and this is true for all of us we need to drop this she's a comparison is the death of joy and the only person you need to be better than is the one you were yesterday so speak to that

just for a second well this is a massive I don't know if men experience this but this a massive problem with women is they're constantly comparing themselves to her life to her Instagram feed to her kids to her marriage they're comparing their real life to someone else's highlight real and so they are forever coming up lacking they forever feel like they're not enough And I get it because the times that you tend to compare yourself are when you are most insecure about something. So you're like, well, I'm not sure how to do this. I'll look outside myself to find the answer.

I always talk about when I was a new mom, that that was when I was most insecure. And so I would look at Pinterest, I would look at magazines. I would try and see like, how does celebrity moms do it? And then I would just cry in a puddle on the ground because I couldn't get it together.

I'm like, oh, she's got six-pack abs with a, two-month-old baby and I'm still in the jeans that I was wearing, you know, at nine months. So comparison is the death of joy. And not only does it kill your joy, it kills your motivation. It kills your energy or your desire to move forward. It makes you more insecure. And so I'm like, put your head down. It's like a math test in eighth grade. Keep your eyes on your own paper. Like, focus here. Stop looking at what everyone else is doing. Stop paying attention to her life and live your own. Yes. You have like start in this space. The the only person you have to be better then is who you were yesterday. So that is my that's my why. That's my that is what I am on

earth like what is my greatest value in the world is I want to be a better version of myself every day. Like I might not always get there but every day I'm striving. I want to be a better mom and wife and leader and teacher and writer and everything. It's like man, whatever you're doing, doing do is unto the Lord, like every day I'm trying to be better. And so, like, it doesn't matter if I'm not as great as 50 million other people, as long as like, am I better than I was yesterday? Yeah. What cogent advice?

You're special. Like, this, you're special. What you're doing is special. And so good. Along those lines, let me ask you some things people wouldn't ask you. Yeah. Life's changed for you, right? And I think anytime people listen to this, maybe you step to a new level or a new space.

Yeah. Do you talk about anxiety earlier? I know the answer to this, but I don't want you to answer it for them. But do you still find yourself with anxiety about the next level, the next space? Also, there's some pressure. I think sometimes I've stepped out. I don't want to fall either. So speak to that for those, there's people at different levels, but there are people who are like, I've got to a new level.

I got to a new promotion. Or I have started a business. There's something new. And then that extra can. I think anxiety can hit. Are you experiencing any of that? Why are you dealing with it? What's the solution?

Well, I'll tell, like, this is such an incredible story and, like, a brag on who you are and your heart. But after the book surpassed everything. And I, for months after it came out, really struggled. It was very overwhelming for me. And I, if you can't tell, I'm a fixer. And I don't like to live in a state of any kind of suffering. So for months, I'm struggling and I can't get past.

and I read every book and I'm listening to the pot. I'm trying to everything and I can't. And it was something you said on your podcast one day that really resonated with me and it was like, it was the answer to prayer. After months of searching, you said something like, with professional athletes that you had coached that there comes a time in their lives and careers

where the success surpasses the vision that they had for themselves. and they will unintentionally start to self-sabotage because they're so uncomfortable with where they are, and that was me. And I was like, holy crap. And it was as simple as you were like, dream a bigger vision. Yeah, that's right.

You need a bigger vision. So that was such a gift. But navigating this has been, has been a lot. And it does feel like, holy smokes, this is a lot of responsibility. And I do, now I have worked my butt off get here. Yes. But I also believe God gave me this platform. And so that is a massive responsibility and I want to do that well. Yes. So yeah, it's a lot to, it's a lot to navigate. And I want to

acknowledge that you're the right person and you were chosen to do this and you are special. Like, your whole existence has prepared you for this moment. Like I really believe that about you. And one of the other things I've told you is that I also want to help you. Like I also think the other thing when you step into that new space is to dream that bigger vision and also to seek out and surround yourself with people who are going to support you and believe in you and push you and hold you accountable and don't be afraid to ask for their help people like me people like you at the right time we want to be there for you I want to help you create this change because you're pioneering you're trailblazing like in in five years and in 10 years there are going to be

other they're not going to be another you but they're going to be other women in this space creating a movement, making a difference, but you're really doing it right now, right? I'm so, I'm so proud of you. And people today are seeing why. Like, you're just a reservoir of realness, but also like real depth, real information. This content, you don't hear other places. And so that was a great conversation. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Welcome back to the show, everybody. I have to tell you something. Today is a topic. I've wanted to discuss on the show since it started, and I've been looking for an expert.

I've been looking for the right person to deliver this information. Today's topic is happiness and well-being. Longevity of your life as well, because they're correlated. And there is a study that is called the study of adult development, which is the single most fascinating study of my lifetime. I can't even believe this study exists. I literally can't. It's fascinating what they've been able to do here.

and the man who was the current director of that study is my guest here today. He's also among many of his accomplishments. He's the professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. So he must know a little bit about what he's talking about, right? And we're going to talk today about the all-time amazing study, 85 years long, by the way, guys, almost, on happiness with real evidence. This stuff is not going to be opinion. This is evidentiary information. So Robert Waldinger, welcome to the show.

Thank you for being here. Thank you. I'm really glad to be here. You have to start out. out and take your time, please, by explaining the study, first of all, because it's mind-blowing what the four directors, I think there's been four directors of the study, if I'm correct, what has been able to happen in tracking these people, who they are, how it started. Let's elaborate on that first. Sure. So the study started in 1938. And it is the longest study of the same people

across time that's ever been done. 724 original people then brought in spouses, brought in children. So now we have two generations, over 2,000 people who've been studied year after year for their whole lives. And that's what's so unusual. Most research gets done in snapshots, just taking a snapshot today of something. And so what's rare is that the study has continued. usually studies closed down because too many people drop out.

Do you want me to tell you a little bit about what's in the study? Yeah, the first thing I think is first because it's two very different groups of people that you studied these men. I think it's important to know the backgrounds of the people that were studied so that the information is applicable to the people listening or watching. Absolutely. So started out with one very privileged group and one very underprivileged group. The privileged group was a group of Harvard College sophomore. 14-year-old guys who their deans thought were fine, upstanding young man. And it was a study of sort of normal development from adolescence into young adulthood.

So, you know, of course, if you want to study normal development, you study all white guys from Harvard. Like, you know, right. So we're possibly having to explain to NIH why they should still fund us. And then the other study was started at Harvard Law School. And it was a study of juvenile delinquency, but it was a study of how some children from Boston's poorest and most troubled families, how those kids were able to stay on good developmental paths and not get into trouble. And so it was a study of thriving, but a study of children who were born with so many strikes against them. Yeah. The fascinating part is some of those neighborhoods are where I was born.

And so what drew, yeah, that, yeah, right. So that's what drew me to this study is because I'm at a stage of my life now where I do interact with people that have come from privileged backgrounds in their life. And obviously I have some privilege based on, you know, my ethnicity, et cetera. But to interact with different people and I've always had this fascination to people from these wealthy backgrounds or privileged backgrounds end up being happier than people from a not so privileged background or a neighborhood like where I grew up. And the date is. Do you want the spoiler or no? Yeah, let's do the spoiler first. And then we're going to talk about what actually leads to real happiness, everybody, today. But spoiler alert is what?

I'm really open to knowing myself. Okay. The spoiler is that the well-to-do privileged people were not on average happier than the inner city underprivileged group. No different. Well, no different, though. So the underprivileged group wasn't necessarily happier than the privilege group either, though, correct? That's correct. That's correct. And there was variation. We had some really happy people in both groups, some really unhappy people in both groups and everything in between. Okay. So one last thing I want everybody to understand. And we're going to get to the data. Because listen, ultimately, the game of life, I had a situation happen. I'll share this with you several years ago. I've had the good fortune of building wealth in my life. And I was building this very beautiful mansion, the first one I ever built. And it was a very stressful day. And I was in a bad mood. And I was angry.

And I walked into what was the kitchen of this home that was being built for me, really angry with the contractor and life and, you know, you just all about me in the moment. And as I walked in, the gentleman that were working on my kitchen, the finished carpenters were all people from Mexico, men from Mexico. And they had their mariachi music playing and they were dancing and singing and doing work that they were excellent at doing and loving their craft and being good at it and enjoying the company. and the other relationships of the other men that were working with them. And I remember watching them thinking they're not making any money. They're sending most of this money back home to their family just to survive. Frankly, probably most of them aren't even in our country legally at the time.

And I remember thinking to myself, if the game of life is happiness, they're winning and I'm losing. And it was a really watershed moment for me in my life that I think this work really points to as well. And so that's why your work matters so much to me. One last thing I want to have them understand, too, is the nature of the study, everybody. I'll let you elaborate. But this is not just about sending somebody a survey and they answer it back. Some of the intimacy of even the connections that you have with these people in their homes, even. So elaborate on that so they know the depth of the study.

Oh, yeah. So when they came into the study, you know, all boys and young men, workers went to their homes, interviewed their parents, wrote notes about what was being served for dinner, what the disciplinary style was, all those things. And then elaborate medical exams of the young men, psychological exams. And then as they went through their lives, we began to bring online different methods of studying well-being. So, audio taping them, videotaping them, talking to their partners about their biggest fears. we drew blood for DNA, which I think is so cool because in 1938, DNA wasn't even imagined. And here we were studying it, putting people in the MRI scanner and scanning their brains while we showed them different pictures.

We brought them into our laboratory and deliberately stressed them out and then saw how they recovered from stress. So all of this as different angles on the same big question about what makes people thrive as they go through life. How do you measure happiness? That was the last thing I wanted to understand. How do you know if they're happy? Well, we asked people. That's one way. But, you know, we had people who said they were happy but didn't look happy.

So we asked other people, do you think your partner's happy? Do you think your dad's happy? So we asked that. We also videotape them, like having an argument with their partners and then watched, like, how angry did they get? Was their affection still there? So we did all kinds of things as a way to get at happiness from different angles. It's amazing, you guys.

I told you all. So here we go. Now we're going to get into it. Now we've laid the groundwork. So what's it turn out? Let's not a complete spoiler alert because there's so many layers to this. What makes one happy? Is it the pursuit of a goal?

Is it wealth, achievement, religion? What are the things that you found make somebody happy? Yeah. Well, we found that it wasn't those things. So it wasn't wealth. It was not achievement. It wasn't fame. And we had people who had all those things in our study.

Some other people, you know, we had John F. Kennedy. We had Ben Bradley, long-time editor of the Washington Post. And I can only tell you those names because they talked. about it themselves. Otherwise, we protect everybody's privacy. But wealth, fame, achievement didn't do it. Religion didn't do it. Now, what that means is it didn't mean that they made you unhappy. It meant that wealth, fame, high achievement, religion are simply different from well-being, different from happiness. Okay. Now, that said, what that means is we have famous people who were happy, famous people who were unhappy, all the way down the line, right?

Now, that said, what we also know is that having your basic material needs met is crucial to your happiness. So when they do studies of this, they've studied, well, how much does your happiness go up as you make more money? And what they find is that your happiness does go up. until you reach about $75,000 a year annual household income. This is a few years ago in the U.S. But basically to have your basic needs met.

And then after that, as you make more and more money, you know, up to $75 million, you know, a billion, your happiness doesn't go up much, a little bit, not really very much. Interesting. And that's important. I like the distinction you made, what is important, too, was that happiness is an emotion. So as your wealth goes up,

you may potentially be able to contribute more, give more. There are things of that nature, protect people. So it's not that there aren't positive emotions correlated with achievement or wealth, but happiness turns out not to be one of them. Well, you know, and let me qualify that a little bit, Ed,

because it's important. So getting a badge of achievement. So the ultimate achievement, what, the Nobel Prize? doesn't make you happier or less happy. But doing work that's meaningful to you, that does make you happy. That is a source of fulfillment. So it's not the badge itself, but doing the work. So let's say, you know, you're bringing a lot of ideas to a lot of people.

And I expect that means something to you. I expect you care about that. You're right. And we think of that as a source of well-being, a source of happiness. Well, I think it's correlated to where you're going, though. I think contribution involves something in life, which is other human beings. And so the nature of your work is so profound because if people can really understand this, they can link it back to the contributions and achievements of their life because they involve

where you believe real wealth comes from after this study, which is where I want you to really elaborate on this because I think everyone needs to hear this. This is it, guys. This is a moment in many of your lives where it's going to confirm what you intuitively. probably what you already probably think, but maybe needs confirmation and maybe needs more intention, a little bit more focus. I think sometimes I'm going to be more intentional about getting more money or I'm going to be more intentional about getting a bigger house or getting this promotion. And when I get there, then I'm going to be happier than I am now. And we put our

intentions there potentially most of our lives and many of the people in the study, missing the very thing that would have brought them the emotion everyone on earth wants more of. You don't want the jet. You want the jet because you think it'll make you happier. You don't want to be fit and super ripped and attractive. You think it'll make you happier. So what we're really seeking, that conversation behind everything, in my opinion, is we want to be happier. And so what is that thing?

You go ahead and elaborate. Well, that thing is our relationships with other people. What we found studying these thousands of lives is that the people who have, had the warmest connections with other people and who made that a priority in their lives, they were happiest as they went through their lives, but also they stayed healthiest and they lived longer. Interesting. And that's the thing.

Actually, we didn't believe that when we started to find it. In the 1980s, our data began to show this. And we thought, oh, this might be a fluke. This might not be real. And then other studies began to find the same thing. because the question was, I mean, it stands to reason, I'll be happier if I have happy relationships. But how could good relationships make it less likely that you get coronary artery disease

or type 2 diabetes or arthritis? Like, how could that be? So now we've been spending the last 10 years in our lab and many other labs have been studying this, trying to understand how do relationships actually get into your body and shape your physiology. And so that's what we're studying. Is it the amount of relationships you have or the quality of the ones that you maintain in your life? It's not the amount. So there's no set number. Like one of the things we know is that we're all like some of us are introverts shy. Some of us are extroverts. No, nothing wrong with being shy. And we know that that introverts want fewer people in their

lives that being with a lot of people is exhausting for introverts and that's perfectly healthy and normal so there's no set number of friends or connections you should have what we do believe is that everybody needs at least one or two relationships that where they feel like this person will be there for me if I really need them that what at one point we asked our original participants we said, who could you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared? List everybody. And most of our folks could list, you know, several people, but some of them could not list anyone. And some of those people were married and they couldn't list anyone. No way. Wow. Yeah. So we think that everybody, whether you're shy or a party animal, you need at least one or two

people who are your go-to safety net people. That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Milet show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on with the show. There's something unique about you, Ed, that's no one else. And I'm not saying this because you're here.

I don't think I've said this to anyone on the show. There's someone unique about you that I don't think I've ever experienced around anyone else. There's an essence, there's a presence, there's a power, a command, an authority, a humble confidence, there's like this essence about you. Thank you. And I'm really curious, what do you think made you you? What were the elements growing up that made you all the things you are now?

Was it the pre-13, kind of everything that happened with your parents? Was it stuff more from school? Was it a relationship that really kind of flipped these things on for you? What were the elements early on that made you? this commanding kind presence today. Well, thank you for that. Thank you. That's nice to hear.

Because by the way, I love people that have that combo. Like, I love people with a lot of self-confidence, a lot of humility. Because if people, a lot of humility that have no self-confidence, you're kind of dragging them through life as a friend. Someone with all their self-confidence, no humility, they're going to burn out. They're going to make a mistake. They're not curious. They don't grow.

I think that even the reason I'm in the personal development space, why do I believe so much that people can change? I watch my dad do it. And then in my case, I had to learn these things, man, to be like a baseline functioning person. So my default personality is insecure. Even today. Even today. Come on.

Very much. Very much. How is that the default? You wake up and you say, I'm a nobody or what? What's the story? I lack this. I'm fooling everybody. Really?

They really knew, you know, pretty, some imposter syndrome mixed with just like tremendous. I was bullied as a kid. dad was an alcoholic. I wasn't a real big guy. The only thing I wasn't good in school. The only thing I was good at was sports. A lot like with you, you were a great athlete. So my default is tons of insecurity. So that's probably never going to go away the humility part. So the part that I've worked on really hard is the self-confidence part. And so I've got all the stuff in the book on those tips and what have I done to build it? Because I had to get there just to get to baseline. And then I'm like, this stuff works. What if I refined it and made it my own?

and started to build these other strategies and stuff. So the confidence part is the thing I'm always going to have to work on. Even today, even with all the success and the, you know, the massive show and the big businesses and all the homes and everything that people see. Yeah. The truth is, yeah. What else do you need, though, to feel more common? I don't need other things. It's an internal game.

I don't need other stuff. In other words, the stuff is really fleeting and temporary. So I don't need another, you know, I bought an island lately, you know that, right? Like, when I bought this island, they didn't make me more complex. They didn't make me more confident. It just was something that I've always wanted to be able to do. But it's not stuff. What needs to happen for me is that I'm most confident when I'm living in my intention,

which is to serve, which is to help other people. When I'm not doing that, Wayne Dyer, when I met him really, really young, told me, you're going to change the world, Ed Milet. And I'm like, and then he, I'm sure he said this to a lot of people, but he complimented me. I met him on a beach. We watched the sun come up together in Maui. Yeah, I was running on the beach.

We lived. Yeah, I was running on the beach. What was he like? I never met him. Incredible. So we became a dear friend of mine. But I'm running. You know, you get up before the sun comes up. I'm running on this. I'd won this incentive trip. And there's this bald dude running towards me with this hairy back. I'll never forget this sweaty hairy back. And it was so long ago because I had a Sony Walkman on. Wow. And he had one. And he ran by me. I go, that was Wayne Dyer. And I said, Dr. Dyer, you changed my life. And he had this deep voice like mine. And he pulls his head. He goes, well, I doubt that. And he goes, I bet you changed him. life. But he goes, how did I help you? And then he walked towards me and we get emotional. Like God's been so good to me. We sat on this beach together and watched the sun come up for about an hour and a half. And about an hour into it, he goes, you're going to change the world. And I'm sure he said this to a lot of people. And he's like, and it's, you're very talented. You're brilliant. You're a good communicator, you know. And he goes, and that's not the reason why. And he was writing a book at that time called The Power of Intention. That's great book. Great book. Incredible book.

And he goes, you really intend to help people. And he goes, all these things with your father and your upbringing and all that ed. He goes, that's all made you. And he goes, you have such a heart to want to help people. And he goes, would you do me a favor if we never meet again? And we ended up meeting many times. I said, yeah. And he said, never link your confidence to your ability.

Because I know you struggle with your confidence. If it's predicated on your abilities or your achievements, you're always going to be chasing it. He goes, but if you'd link your confidence to your intentions. man do you have beautiful intentions and that is something I knew about me I know I have a good heart and I've never forgotten that so when I do a podcast or a speech I just connect to my intent you know and it's it's been the one thing that's brought me confidence because if you said hey you got to be confident because you're great or you got a house or you have a plane I go yeah but but if you go you got to be confident because you have beautiful intentions to help you but I go

mm-hmm I'm not to list you might be right yeah yeah and that's where my confidence comes So as an athlete, I gain confidence from results, from actually getting the result of becoming better. Yeah, right, I was not good. Right, I was not good, and then I put in the effort, and all the mistakes or the failures of the feedback, well I like to call it,

gave me the lessons and taught me how to get better to accomplish the result that I was looking for. To achieve the goal, win the game, or just improve my abilities. So what I'm hearing you say, link, also link confidence to intention. Some people say link it to the effort, right? Like the effort that you show up, that you just keep showing up,

and others talk about the results. Should we be thinking about it? There's two, I have a whole, I call it the Holy Trilogy in the book of self-confidence. What is this? But the Confidence trilogy is faith, have confidence. So if you're a person of faith, no matter what you believe in, it's amazing to me how people that believe in energy, quantum energy, or they believe in they're a Christian like me.

And I believe in both, by the way. Yeah. But whatever their faith is, that they have it on Sunday. a Bible study or they have it when they get together with their friends or when they meditate, but somehow when they walk into a business meeting, they're alone. So why are you alone then, but you're not alone these other times? So I'm never alone. So that's number one.

Number two is my intention. And third is my associations change my confidence. But here's the biggie. If you don't have self-confidence, here's what you have. You have a really bad reputation with yourself. Yes. You have built a habit of not keeping the promises you make to yourself. We've all heard this before.

But there's a level. I have a chapter in the book called One More Standard. Here's how I built what I would call almost superhuman confidence in spite of my insecurity. Think about that. Superhuman confidence in spite of my insecurity. And that's exactly what you just said. It's an effort play. If you don't have self-confidence, you've never kept the promises you make to yourself.

Check that box. If you have self-confidence, you've started to keep the promises you make to yourself. If you want to have superhuman self-confidence, you keep the promises you make to yourself and one more. So if I'm going to get up and I'm going to work out and I'm going to do 10 reps in the gym, I do one more. If I'm going to do 45 minutes on the treadmill, I do one more. If I want to make 10 contacts in a day, I do that and one more. If I'm going to tell my daughter I love her every day, I'm going to do that and one more.

And so that higher standard, because in life, we don't get our goals, we get our standards long term. And so if your standard is one more, what starts to happen is you go, I'm willing to do things. Other people aren't willing to do. And I combine that, that I have great faith, great associations, and I intend to help people. This is a formula to build wonderful self-confidence and never lack humility when you have it. So when did you learn this one more mindset? Was this from your dad early on? It's from my dad.

So we talked about this, you know, a little bit earlier, but my dad had these couple theories he would always say to me. And so one was when he got sober, he gave it one more try. He was going to stay sober one day at a time. And then my dad, there's no dreaming in my house. There's no like my jet, you know, I've been blessing like multiple airplanes, right, in my life. My jet was in almost walking distance of my dad's house. He's never been on any of them. Wow.

And I would say to my dad, I would say, hey, let's go play golf in Maui. Let's go. There's these great golf courses in the ocean. And my dad would say, well, why would I go all the way to Maui to play golf with my favorite person, my son, when we can play Aaron Chino? It's not about there. I want to be with my son. So my family had none of that stuff. But my dad knew I was a dreamer.

And my dad would always say, you know, I was one decision away from changing. my life the whole time, one choice. And he'd say, Eddie, you're not as far away from these dreams as you think you are. And I'd say, really, Dad? And you go, no, you're actually a lot closer than you think. But because you think it's so far away, you behave in accordance with that belief system, and it always keeps it that far away from you. So how do we bring our dreams closer to us? The first thing is, that's a great question. The first thing is you need to believe and know that you're one decision, one relationship, one meeting, one book, one thought, one something away from a completely different life.

And when you know that, then you begin to look for them. And so in the second chapter of the book, I have a thing in the book called the matrix. And your matrix is your reticular activating system in your brain. It's the filter for your entire life. Okay. And this filter reveals to you the world that's in front of you. Again, an example of it is, I just, I like what Musk is doing. So I just bought a Tesla.

I drove it here today. I got a Tesla too. Model X or what do you got? I got a plaid. Okay. Wow. It's a good one. Nice.

And so I bought this plaid. And all of a sudden, man, everywhere I, go there's teslas you know this everywhere I'm like whoa I see it everywhere another way three lanes over other side they're like freaking Tesla this is crazy they were always there why did I see them before because they weren't part of my RAS so the key thing I teach you in the book how to slow down time and create the matrix of your life when you make the testless of your life those relationships those meetings those thoughts those encounters you can very easily do this

but there's a process of repeated visualization you do that's not complicated it's chapter two of the book and it will shift you the other component to I have a in the book called Become an Impossibility Thinker and a Possibility Achiever. Here's how most people's frameworks. They don't have an RAS program, they're not intentional, so they keep getting. If the things most important are your worries, fears, anxieties, problems, bills, you will continue to have people, places and things revealed to you that confirm it. And if you operate out of your memory and your history, if this is your pattern, your framework, you will continue to find those things.

You need to learn to operate out of your imagination and your dreams. This is a different framework for life. work for life. Imagination is different than dreaming. Imagination causes you to create dreams and thoughts that never happen. When you imagine something, you create a space. Once you have a thought, this is powerful, when you have a thought, you create a space that did not exist in the world before you had that thought. And that space now exists. And the way your brain works and your life works and the universe works is it tries to furnish that space, whether it's a negative or a positive thought, it starts to hear things that wouldn't hear. That's why

like when you're in a crowded room and they say Lewis, you can hear Lewis auditorily over all the noise. Why it's in your RAS? It's why you see the Tesla. Okay. So it the key thing is being able to operate at this imagination. Why is imagination so important? When you were a child, three, four, five years old, you were probably happier than you are right now. Why? Two reasons. A, you were closer to God. You had just been with God more recently. And two, you operated out of your imagination. You didn't operate out of a history and a memory because you didn't have one. And slowly over time, by the time you were 10, 11, 12 years old, loving people installed their limiting thoughts and beliefs, their software into you. Because most things in life are caught, not taught.

You catch them. Wow. And so now you're starting to operate of history and memory, and you repeat it, and your RES begins to see the things that reinforce that history and memory. And so you basically have the same life over and over again with a different cast of characters in a different environment, but the same emotions. You have the same emotional home. My dad, used to say to me every call bro till the day he died and I'm 50 years old he blah blah blah whatever time of last thing he would always say to me be careful be careful and I go careful with what I don't know I never knew but what is that programming from the time you're eight years old be careful hey go to school be careful so what that they're operate out of this fear

thing right all that I need to be careful but don't make this risk don't take that business is don't start a podcast don't get on that stage and speak don't do this don't do that you say that to an already unconfident, insecure person, he met it lovingly. By the time I'm 50 worth hundreds of millions of dollars, be careful. He didn't even know he was saying it to me. But what was he doing? He was installing, God bless him, his limiting beliefs into me as a little boy. So a lot of these things that you believe, you were defenseless when you started to believe them. They were installed in you by loving people who were around you. And even though your life may look differently, your emotional home, the four, five, six emotions you experience pretty regularly might be very familiar

your parents, one or two of them, right? And so you need to look at your emotional home. What's your most powerful emotion and the emotion that you wish you could let go of? Love is the most powerful emotion in the world. We will all do everything for love. If there were more love in the world, the way we treat one another, the way we express our thoughts, you know, you'll do anything for love, right? So love is by far my most powerful emotion.

It's like, I love you. Then like when I just saw you, we didn't just, like, people, we didn't just hug for like one second. Yeah. this better than I do. I hold people, I make it uncomfortable because I just want to hug and love on people. But it's not uncomfortable, bro. Right, right.

Because the reason you're so successful is you truly do love people. And you come from that place. And I know we're bigger dudes and like, like that's a beautiful expression of a man. A real man is capable of real love. That's the sign of real strength. So that's the most powerful one. And then for me, I know the emotion that I wish I didn't have. It's chaos.

Really? How often do you experience chaos? Less because I'm aware of it. but I'm going to tell you all the time until about five years ago, even when we first met. Why? I used to even say this. Man, I operate great under chaos. Man, you should see me operate under chaos.

Most people can't handle chaos. I'm calm under pressure. Well, the reason for that was I grew up in an alcoholic home. So I'm very familiar with chaos. It became a very familiar emotion. And what we do is we gravitate towards the familiar emotions in our life, even if they're not ones that serve us. And I don't think there's negative or positive emotions. I say this in the book.

They're just are. Fear isn't negative. Fear and abundance is negative, but some fear, being afraid to do this podcast, they to some extent causes us to prepare. So a dose of it was given to us in the caveman day so T-Rex didn't eat us, right? So some fear is good.

Some anxiety is okay. Some frustration, some anger is appropriate. It's to the dosage level. And we get these four or five of them. For me, some chaos is okay. It's fun. It's exciting. It's exhilarating, right?

But getting it every day, every week, all the time. And so how do you get rid of it? Well, one way you get rid of it is just be awareness. When you have an awareness of a thought, it loses its impact and power over you. It almost becomes like this, I'll do it. I'm like, I'm doing it again, aren't I? I'm doing the chaos thing. Everything's great right now. All the houses are paid off. My kids are happy. Mary, do a great woman, got great friends. I'm doing the chaos thing again, aren't I? You dummy, you're doing it again. And it kind of loses its power over you. So I have a chapter in the book

called One More Emotion and How to Take an Inventory of the Emotions You Have, And so, yeah, man, mine's definitely love and the one I don't want is chaos. Because chaos causes me to act out of anger and frustration. It can depress me. And your intentions are not going to be as, I guess. It's pure. It's a gateway emotion. Chaos is my gateway emotion to the ones I don't want.

Chaos gives me stress. Chaos gives me anger. Chaos gives me frustration. Chaos gives me fear. So it's a gateway emotion. What is the result when you create from that space of chaos? It's funny. I have found the ability to externally create,

create something pretty productive. But stay with me on this. But the process in getting there is destructive. The process in getting there is not beautiful. And I used to think, and a lot of successful people... It's like forcing your way to get the results. Almost through force. Yeah. You know?

And the... And I still do it sometimes. I'm thinking of a situation this week where I did it. And I used to think, well, that's a superpower, though, because I've created all these external... Look what I made. Look what I did. And I'm doing it because of that. The truth is I did it in spite of it. You did. And there's a lot of things in our lives that we have linked to our formula, our recipe of success that we hold on to, that you've done in spite of those things, not because of those things. So you're 51 now, 52, 51?

When you were 40, on a scale of 1 to 10 of the self-confident happiness joy scale, 10 being like you loved yourself fully, you were peaceful, you had an abundant mindset, you were had inner peace, you know, joy. one being you hated yourselves you were miserable you're in chaos 24-7 where were you on that scale at 40 okay the real answer is probably a three okay of happiness uh-huh and but if you met me I could convince you that it was probably an eight that you were super happy and you had it yeah probably a three and since your father passing where are you now probably a nine really yeah and I no longer feel the need to convince you uh-huh because I've learned that this has already existed within me. I didn't have to go get it.

I just had to allow myself to experience it. And it took me a long time to treat myself in such a way that I allowed myself to feel these things that have always been there. I had them when I was a little baby boy. I just lost them along the way in these patterns and programs that were installed in me and my experiences. And I got to share something with you, brother, that just dawned on me. I wrote this whole book.

And two weeks ago, I had this. This is just for me and you, but everybody can hear it. Sure. And I've always tried to disqualify myself. I've always, you're not this. Why is that? It always shocks people, even people that know me really well. They're like, not you.

I have that, but there's no way you have it, right? Yeah, you're too confident, too talented, too, all these things. And I don't know that I'm too talented, but I think I can fake it pretty well. And I disqualify myself because, you know, the truth is that maybe for a while, everything that I got that was loved when I was a child only came when I had achieve something. So I started to conflate early on in my life recognition and significance with love. In other words, my dad would love me if it's the home run. My dad would love me if I get straight A's. And so then when I would feel these things. But something really amazing, and I also like I'm really big at holding myself, I love

to beat myself up with mistakes I've made. I did this, I did that, I should have done this, I didn't do that. And I've always thought these mistakes, these weaknesses of mine, disqualify me from being happy or helping people. And this amazing breakthrough. The one decision that changed my family forever is my dad's decision to get sober. And it changed my family forever. I'm talking to you because my dad made that decision. And I've always been so proud of my dad for that.

But this is just two weeks ago, 3.15 in the morning, I wake up. I'm crying. And I wake Christiana up. I go, babe, someone helped a dad. And she went, what, honey? I said, someone helped dad. She said, what do you mean? I said, babe, I never thought about this.

And my dad's darkest, worst moment of his life in some coffee shop or some room somewhere, some precious soul helped my dad. Reached out to him, talked to him, talked to him, and got him sober. Wow. And I said, babe, that's not the powerful part. And I have no idea who this person is,

but I wonder if they know the difference they made in Max and Bella's my children's lives or your life or the millions of people I've helped. That one decision they made And she goes, oh my gosh. I said, I never thought about this beautiful human being. Always gave the credit to my dad, but some stranger helped him. And I said, babe, this is the bananas part.

Do you know what qualified them to help my dad? They're messed up life. Wow. They were an alcoholic. They were a drug addict. Little did that person know. The things they were the most ashamed of, the biggest mistakes of their lives. When they were using drugs and drinking and stealing it, that was qualifying them to change my dad's life.

And all of us, we run around carrying these bags of, I'm not qualified because I made this mistake. I had this bankruptcy. This relationship didn't work. I did this thing you don't know about. I'm so ashamed of. And that's why you're qualified. That's the thing that qualifies you. The humanness in you. You are the only human being with your combination of gifts that you were given, whatever they are, and your experience. And real human beings help real human beings by being vulnerable and transparent saying, I know where you are. I've messed up worse. I've made greater mistakes. I felt more, I know that depression, I know that anxiety, I know that shame, I know what that feels like. That beautiful soul who was a drug addict and alcoholic, they didn't know all those mistakes they're making were leading them out of their heart.

And they finally got to a point where their intention was to help my father. In the lowest moment of his life, they changed my dad's life. And they changed mine and maybe me and you were changing a few today because of that person's mess. It's crazy. Is that crazy? That's amazing. I know. I know. Love them and thank them. That's amazing, man. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next guest. Welcome back to the show, everybody. I have a man here who's become such a dear friend of mine and a trusted advisor. I've only had one other person on the show three times. So you are now breaking a record, brother. You are a rating. machine. But more importantly, you bring such value every time you're here. And when we're done

talking, every single time we've done this, I go, oh my gosh, this is going to get millions of downloads because it made me better. And every time I'm with you, I feel better. I smile more. I feel better about myself. And I learn things about how to win, how to succeed, how to persevere. So, Dean Graciosi, welcome back to the show, my brother. So good to be here. And I have to tell you're the best, you're the most gracious host ever. And to this day, still, Our two podcasts. Yep. Every day, I send you some of them.

Every day, I'm like, best podcast ever, best podcast. And I've been on a lot. And it's because you're so gracious, because you care so much. And the reason people are following you and listening, and I know I'm speaking for the people listening is because they know you care. Thank you. They know that you have me here for a third time, not for any other reason, except you think it will bring more value.

And I hope I don't let everybody down. You've got a lot of options. You're here with us. It'll bring more value to them. And that's why I love your success. I love how your book is crushing it. Thank you. The world needs more, Ed.

There's a lot of talk in personal about breaking patterns. I talk about all the time you do, Tony does. There's also a lot of power in leveraging them. And this idea, there's two things that are going to move every human being, Dean's told you. It's either to avoid pain, moving from pain or to gain pleasure. Absolutely. And usually most human beings, I think in general pain avoidance is the stronger of the mechanism, but it works for both people.

You need to know which one moves you. So you've already said, yours is pain. avoidance. Yep. Right. So is mine. The truth is, I've become a pretty big dreamer visionary guy, but I wasn't.

Yeah, it took me a long time to get there. Long time to get there. And the fact is, I only really got really good at that after certain dreams were achieved. But why? I had to figure out which one moves me more, okay? Avoiding pain moves me more,

even to this day. Why? It's more familiar to me. Yeah. I grew up in pain. So go take a look at the video of your life. Did you grow up in a really beautiful environment with lots of love and dreams and bliss and all this great stuff?

Maybe your mover is more, dreams and bliss. If you grew up in some pain, chaos, angst, fear, anxiety, stress, that's probably your pattern. And instead of trying to spend all your life breaking that pattern, there's parts of it you need to break, your behavior from it. But the mechanism itself for change for me is pain and pain avoidance. I'm familiar with lots of pain. And so to this day, why do I prepare for speeches or podcasts or things so bad? Is it because I want the pleasure of a great podcast? Yeah, that's there. No, you don't want to screw up? I don't want to screw up. I don't want to make them I don't want it not to be good.

Why do I work so hard is to make difference in the world, obviously. I don't think anybody listening would know the kind of work you put in it. Seriously. Or you either. I don't think they know that you started at 3.30 going to do four podcasts. You're going to jump. You're going to go take a suit. You're going to go do an event tonight.

You're going to get up in the morning, fly someplace. I don't think anybody would realize it. Are you doing that because you want to sell more books or you doing it because you don't want to sell just one? I'm doing it because I don't want to just sell one. Right. Now you've evolved because you know every time a book gets in someone hand, you get to change their lives.

I do. So if you just nailed it, I was just going to say the other part of it is impact for me. Right. So you know the impact. But you're not saying, but I know for a fact, you're getting up tomorrow morning subconsciously. Yes. Not saying, I'm getting up tomorrow because I don't want to say. You're getting up subconsciously because you don't want to fail. I don't. That pain hurts. And everybody told us we weren't going to make it. And our parents probably thought we weren't going to make and all that kind of stuff. It's a major driver. And by the way, my impact, stay with me on this. Because I know you're this way too because you grew up in pain. The impact I make still comes from pain, meaning this. I know so many people are in pain. And because I connect with their pain, their lack of belief in themselves, they're feeling invisible, they're hurting right now, they want to be happier. That connection of pain is still the impact I want to make. So a lot of it is connected somehow to pain in my life. And it is for you too. It's like one is avoiding the pain of failing or not being successful or not ending up in heaven, which is that picture of who I'm capable of becoming? Like do I really want to just get to heaven or is it the pain of not becoming that man? It's both. But also even the impact part where I go I want to make an impact in people's

lives is because I connect with pain. I connect with the discomfort. And you want to get it out of them. I want to get it out of them. Yeah. So that's a major driver for me is pain. And I know my map and I know my pattern. And that's why so many athletes, by the way, when their career is over, they have a very difficult time. One, their identity was tied to their athleticism, but also there's no pain to avoid anymore. Now they're getting pat on the back. You were great. I loved your games. There's no pain to avoid. There's nothing to fill. So I got to think you're that way too. I am. And the only reason I share that is because I hope you don't use pain. to be successful for the rest of your life.

But you can use it as that launching pad. Yeah, it's a leverage. And you can use it as a launching pad to start the business, to show up for the challenge, to play full out, to do something uncomfortable, right? The term I've been using since COVID is we all need to take more uncomfortable action. Did it surprise you that I said,

I don't want to just sell one book or did you think that's what I was going to say? I knew that's what you're going to say. Okay. Yeah, because it's me, right? I play like I'm 10 points down. Tony and I are doing this challenge, right? We're going to put a million people in it. That's the goal.

Last year we put 900,000 in, right? Crazy. And it changed a million people's lives, right? This year, I attack this, Ed, as if two people are going to show up. Because I know if you show up, I know the end result. I saw hundreds of thousands of comments a day of like, oh my God, I didn't know it was going to be like this. Oh my God, I love you, Tony. I love you, Dean.

I love you. Thank you. And you know that driver, just like the comment. I see the comments coming in for your book. You want to sell another 200,000 copies in the next two weeks so you can help people. I will play like I'm 10 points down through this entire challenge. I will rehearse. I've already watched the last two years that we did this.

I watch what Tony did. I watched what I did. He's doing the same thing. We're prepping. If people are going to show up, even we want to deliver something that's transformational, but I'm going to look through the lens of not wanting to fail still because that's how that's the, I'm avoiding the pain of it not working at the level of the impact that I want to make.

Yep. Right. And I know we went down a couple different. rabbit holes, but I just want to give people permission today heading into a recession, heading into a shifting world. Again, I hope it doesn't, but it looks like an economic winter is here. I'm going to tell you, use whatever leverage you can use to move. Just move in a direction, investigate, look where the puck is going, look for something different, explore, question every story that comes into your head, know your enemy, that story that's already screwed you over and

cost you too much. You know that. How do you shift that story? How do you barricade it? How do you not let it in. How do you talk to someone? Like whatever you got to do, I just believe this is a crucial time. I do too in people's lives. I think that what you do the next, there's this analogy in anti-aging. David Sinclair, Dr. David Sinclair's been on my show a few times and he goes, hey, if you can get to like 75 in this day and age, you're probably going to live to 100. If you can get to 75. Wow. And in the world today, I really believe that if you can get this next two years nailed. Yeah. You've got 20 year type multipliers of wealth, bliss. and happiness in your life if you can get the,

but if you don't these next two years, I think the difficulty of getting there is magnified by a huge factor. I think right now is a chance to get way ahead. That same analogy to get to 75, gets you to 100. I think if you can get these next two years, just momentum.

You have to make millions of dollars, but you just get momentum. You get in your groove. You get moving. But if you stay stagnant, another couple years, you don't get something going. The longer you do that,

it's harder to get that sucker going again. And I feel like it'll be much harder. Are those people that get moving now? By the way, it might evolve. You may start marketing one thing right now and it evolves into something else over time, but you've got to get in motion right now. Do you agree with that?

Oh, true story. I heard somebody say it's a strategic byproduct. How many times in life have we had a goal? And when we have the nerve to go after the goal, we find something that's a strategic byproduct of the goal. It's way bigger, way bigger. You never thought you'd have one of the top podcast in the world, one top books in the world.

It's a strategic byproduct of you going all in on your businesses wanting to impact others, right? point. That's a great point. So know that when, whether it's God, the universe, reward you for just having the nerd to go after it. And usually your goal, you're something so much bigger or something different that actually aligns with you. There's a couple things I think as we, as we're at this point in the podcast, I want to say this is a couple of things. If you're going to protect yourself, build a moat. Build a moat on your emotions. And what I'd say is, the news is going to get worse. That's a fact. Conversations with your negative friends.

is going to get worse. That's a fact. I would say, if you really want to stop dabbling, you know, it's somebody who said they want to lose weight, but when no one's watching, they're eating the wrong food. Or someone says they want to start the business, but when no one's watching, they're binging out on Netflix. You know if you're that person, and I'm not knocking it.

If that's who you are, enjoy it, live it. But don't say you want it. Don't talk out of two sides of your mouth. Like either go all in, burn the boats and do it, or just accept the life that you have. Like, I hate to be real, but you can't lose weight and not work out and eat, Like it just doesn't, where you can't make more money, have Ed's life or someone else's life that you see.

You can't have that without putting the work in. So if you're going to put the work in, you have to have the mindset to be committed and dedicated to it, right? We have to be disciplined. What Rob's discipline is lack of confidence, insecurity, uncertainty, whatever word you want to use. So here's what I'm going to share. What are the things that make you uncertain or lack of confidence? I would build a moat around those things. If there's certain people in your life that are going to make you feel insecure, believe me, it's going to feel worse during a recession and a tough time.

spend less time with them or find a way to be a mirror or be a Teflon. If watching the news, whether it's CNN or MSNBC or Fox, whatever one you want to watch, if when you watch the news, you get frustrated, you get scared, you get uncertain, you get pissed off. Stop watching the news. You need that energy for you. So what I'd say is I would figure out the things that rob your confidence and rob your certainty. And this is going to sound like, oh, Dean's really smart, is do less of those. Like, especially over this next year.

You want to take a challenge, go on a 30-day news diet. Don't talk about it. Don't watch the news. Don't talk and spend 100% of that energy on you 2.0. Take the next 30 days and do not surf the internet. All of you are getting sucked into. Let me just see what Ed Milette did. And an hour later, you're like, oh my God, I just burned an hour online, right?

I would say just find the things. Avoid the things that rob your confidence. Don't talk to the negative people that are hurting you. Don't focus on your weaknesses. identify who your villain is, who that inner story that's already cost you too much and protect yourself against it.

Investigate to where the puck is going. You do those things in this time you're ahead of 95% of the world and they're simple. That's not, I didn't give you a business plan. I gave you just the foundation of what can make you thrive

in this shifting time. When I hear you say all those things I think about energy, I think about do things that preserve and increase your energy and don't deplete them. So if there's people around you that rob your energy,

you got to reduce it. There's things you're doing that take your energy, whether it's worry, fear, surfing the internet, watching news, those other things. Energy, you know, and we all talk about it. I don't know who's first at it or whatever, but energy is influence. We've talked about this a lot. Tony talks about it a lot. You do, I do. And energy is also the most important commodity you can possibly have in your life.

And you're going to watch a bunch of people, whether you call it words, thoughts, etc. You're going to watch a lot of people starting now through the next two or three years of their lives. You're going to watch their energy change. Yeah. You're going to watch their vibrational frequency. shrink you're gonna watch them shrink and that's incumbent upon you to feed your energy right now that's podcast that's books that's events that's a challenge like what you're doing right now with Tony you got to feed your energy highest energy wins highest energy will win and though amen to that

and I'm gonna tell you everyone's energy is going to evolve and change it is difficult when everyone's thriving why everyone's energy is pretty damn good high energy will stand out now positive energy optimistic energy, movement energy, momentum energy is going to stand out more than ever. And you're going to see energy change in your investments, in your mindset, in your businesses, all over the place. So I want one shift at the end because it's for me. And I told you when we were getting ready to do this, I said, I want to ask you, this seems uncorrelated, but it's not.

It's totally correlated because it comes from a pain point from you. And it comes from a place of a sanctuary that can preserve an increase energy. which is personal relationships. And so particularly your marriage to Lisa. So you've been honest on my show before. And by the way, this is completely correlated to everything we said. Because you said on the show before in the past, hey, man, first time around, probably didn't have that thing wired the right way.

At some point, I knew I wasn't probably with the right person for me, wonderful person, but not right person for me. I wasn't a world-class husband. Yep. You've said this before. And you are a world-class husband to Lisa. It's also a true story. It is.

When I think of you, and by the way, you're easily one of the most brilliant business minds I've ever met. You are probably the best marketing mind I know. And you're a very diverse man between your understanding of real estate, human dynamics, interpersonal relationships, energy, influence, I mean, all the different business markets that you're in. You're a very unique man. And, you know, I hold you in the highest regard. You're one of the few people on the earth that I call for counsel in certain areas. So obviously, same to you, brother.

Thank you. And of all that, I don't admire you anywhere nearly as much for those things as I do for the kind of husband and father that you are. And I think one of the, I think you show me the quality of your relationships. I think Tony was the first to say that. I'll show you the quality of your life. You have such a massive high quality of life. And I believe that's because of your relationship with Lisa and your children. Why is it so good?

In other words, what's been the key from you going to be in? Not very good husband the first time around. To like, if I think of the list of the best husbands I know that have the best, real intimate, loving, real, not perfect relationships with people. I don't know that you don't occur first on my list. You know, maybe there's two or three people that all come up at the same time, but you come up on that list. What's been the key for that and how important is it to your outward success in business? Because there's a correlation from when you met her to millions and millions more dollars in your bank account, too. It is. And thank you for saying that.

You're so kind, Ed. It's why your podcast does so great. You truly serve from your heart. And thank you for the kind words. My wife's going to listen to this podcast and smile from here to years. She loves you, brother. She's binging on your podcast right now. Good, good.

I'll tell you, first thing I'll share, just like a business, is if you have the nerve to recognize that the reason your business might not have worked or your marriage might not have worked or your relationship mightnard. If you're, if you have the self-awareness and the nerve to look in the mirror and say, it was probably you.

Even if it wasn't all you, but if you have the nerve to say that, and I remember going through divorce and freaking out because, and I won't go deep on this because I think I shared it on previous one, but I was freaking out for my kids because I was a child of divorce

and I didn't want them to feel. You know, you know, you get it, right? Totally. So I was freaking out about that. And then I remember thinking to myself, I wrote down a list of, what was unacceptable in a new relationship? What could not be and what could be.

And on my could list, Ed, was I need someone that loves a crazy entrepreneur, that's into health, that's into personal growth, someone who will love my children as if they're their own. That's a task for a step person, step parent, right? And I wrote down this long list of all the things that were a must. And something hit me in that list and I'm like, damn, I have nerve to ask a step person. for that. Right. Right. And in a moment, I recognized that for me to attract that, I had to become a better man. It had nothing to do with finding the perfect woman. I had to be the better

man to attract that type of woman. And I worked on me. I got a love coach. I unlocked the, you know, holding back the full extent of love and all the things we could share. But here's what I would say when it comes to relationships. Just this, you know, advice only from a guy that knows he messed up in the past, but I am in the greatest relationship in my life, is imagine never keeping, a couple of things that came out of what I realized. Imagine never keeping score in a relationship.

Imagine having the nerve and the confidence to just go, I'm going to be the best version of me and I hope I get it back. And not say, you know, I've been doing, I watch relationships unravel when someone says, the husband says, I work my tail off, I provide for her. She doesn't have to worry about anything.

She doesn't have to pay the bill. She has someone to clean her house. She does all this. And I come home and she's, you know, no dinner. Keeping score. Right? You're keeping score. And when you start keeping score,

as soon as you start keeping score and it's not even, how do you go to bed that night and be intimate? How do you have passionate connection if you're keeping score and thinking I'm doing more than her? Or I'm taking care of the house. He has no idea what it's like to juggle two kids and take care of all this stuff. And he's out flying around, having fun, you know, he's working, but at least he gets to be out. I'm stuck in the house. Man, there's the intimacy's gone.

Right? And then once the intimacy's gone, then people start thinking, man, someone else would love the way I work. Someone else is the way I take care of things. Right? So one is not keeping score. Here's the toughest one. That's big. Here's the toughest one.

Imagine, I know this is going to sound crazy and some of you're going to be like, yeah, whatever, dreamer. Imagine feeling love when you give it rather than when you receive it. I fell in love with making my wife feel loved. I love for that woman to look at me and she, like, there's five people in the room and she looks over and I'm staring at her. Like, she's, like, I just saw her for the first time and she catches me and I watch her flage. We've been together five and a half years. I could stare at my wife when she doesn't realize it. And if she catches me, her cheeks will get red.

Like she gets nervous even thin. And she's like, like, what are you looking at? What do you look at? And she'll come over. She's like, you, right? I find, it took me years. I found a way to feel love when I make her feel loved. So I don't need her to love me back.

But here's the thing. Right. Because I don't keep score, my wife tries to outdo me. Because I feel love when I give her love. She tries to give me more love, right? And I know maybe that takes the right partner and you might be thinking yourself, yeah, Dean, you found the right partner. I would say I have an amazing woman.

But I also know that I did all the opposite crap in the previous one. And this is, I'm going to steal this from Tony. One of the best advice I ever heard was, imagine if you treated the end of relationship like the beginning, would there actually be an end? You remember in the beginning of a relationship, you're like, everything's bliss, and you're all in, and you're listening eye contact,

and you wouldn't dare look at your phone at dinner, and now you're three years in and at dinner she wants to tell you about what happened with the kids today, and you're like, yeah, let me just, what was that? Hold on, babe, let me just look at my phone one second. Would you have ever done that in the first week of your relationship or on a first date? And that just, that hit me,

and people a lot of times will ask me, is like, I don't know where my relationship is. I'm like, what if for the next 90 days, you just went all in and pretended like you guys just met and you were dating again? At the end of 90 days, you might have a completely different situation. That's so good. Yeah.

That's so good. You are so good. I don't know. Fed your business life having that part of it. Not even a question. Like, the funny part is so many people say to me, what happened to you like four years ago? Man, you just got more dynamic.

You're more confident on stage. It was definitely that because the last thing I'll say is, on this is I had more, I've had more success than I could have ever dreamed possible, a good zillion times more than what my dreams were. I have two, I'm now three and a fourth on the way, but I had two amazing children that were just humble and sweet and kind and my business is thriving and good friends, but I didn't have love in my life and I didn't have connection and I wasn't a good husband, right, because I wasn't happy. And I probably, when you're incongruent, when not

all things in your life are lined up. I never could have understood the power that while I was in it. I just said, no, I should be happy. No, my relationship isn't great, but we co-parent good, and we got great kids, and the business is good, and we got the great house. I just wasn't in alignment, Ed. I was kind of living a lie.

And when I finally shed that, and now I get to be the man, like, and I know you know me, but, man, imagine the wish that if anybody put a hidden camera on you for a week, and then your wife, your friends, and the world could watch it and go, wow same guy on camera same guy on a podcast same guy when no one was watching that congruency has taken the restrictions off my business has doubled my life is doubled my happiness is doubled i've

attracted dear people in my life like you and other people because i think that i just get to be me at all times beautiful brother gosh it's so good i got one last question for you and i want you to answer this in all sincerity i know you always do but this is a biggie is it all it's cracked up be. Let me tell you what I mean by it. You know, having a loving relationship, becoming a wealthy man, you know, making the contribution you make is a tremendous amount of work. And there's going to be a season in one's life where it's not all those things and you're going to be working and working and working. And there's this part when you're doing it, you're like, is it even really worth it? Is it even really worth it? Because I think oftentimes we've all

at that one rich person who's also miserable, which there's a lot of them. They get a lot of money and you're like, I don't even want to be like them. You know, I was a server as a busboy at the whole enchilada in Diamond Bar when I was in high school and college. And it seemed like a lot of the guys with money that came in were the bigger jerks. And it started to make me think, I don't even know if that's worth it, you know. And the reason that it seemed like the, because the real rich guys didn't act like rich guys. Yeah. So when they'd come in, I didn't know it was that guy. But I, I went a phase of my life that I think because you're on the other side, it's easy to forget. But I think there's a lot of people that are considering coming to this challenge,

considering change in their life, they're considering it. And then there is a part of them where they're like, I don't know if it's worth it. So I'm being, I'm going to you to answer this honestly. Is it? Or is it different than you thought it would be getting to this other side? You're on the other side. You don't feel like you are, but you are. You're very wealthy.

You've got a beautiful family. You know, you make a difference to the world. You got rich friendships. Your life's not perfect. You know, the day-to-day of life can be really difficult for all of us. But was it worth it? And what's it feel like to get to the other side? Sell us the dream or the nightmare of it.

Yeah. Beyond worth it, but questioning it. I've questioned it on and off since the beginning. And there are only moments of questioning it. And then you get clarity and realize the other side. So here's what I'd say is if someone's listening to you, Ed, what you've done, and I want to say this publicly, what you've done so elegantly to help the world see is that your visibility, your notoriety,

your podcast being the top podcast, your book, people get to see someone who's been wealthy or is wealthy and also an amazing human being. Thank you. And success without fulfillment, success without joy, success without balance is probably the brokest you could be. So here's what I'd say.

Where I'm fortunate is I started working on me, at the same time I was working on making money. And I think that is the gift I would love to share with all of you. I believe all of you, every single one of you has the, has the opportunity to make unlimited amount of money. I know that sounds, it's easy, like, it's easy for you to say now, Dean, but believe me, if Ed can make it, Dean can make it, we all have this amazing opportunity. But I'd say work on you as much as you work on marketing, as much as you work on sales.

because when you find that harmonious balance, and you know, we both, you probably too, I've been off, I've had more money than emotional intelligence. Me too. And that's not a cool thing. And some people have great emotional intelligence, but they can't make any choices.

And they're like, they want to do more, they want to donate more, they want to travel more. They want to retire their husband. So he has to stop working this crappy job. So they have the emotional intelligence, but they don't have the money to give them the freedom. That harmonious balance of two,

I mean, it's the greatest gift you could give anyone. It's why we're doing a free challenge. It's why Tony, listen, you don't have to work. Tony doesn't have to work. I'm blessed. I know it sounds like, hey, we're a bunch of rich people. It's not that.

Like, I'm working harder now than I've ever worked in my life, and I have more now than I've ever had in my life because I want other people to see that you can have this rich balance where you can have a, I mean, I just got here. I don't want to get a spoiler alert,

but I just got to meet your kids for the first time, right? I met your wife a bunch of times. I got to see your kids. And watching that you get to bring this family that you shifted this generation. You have two humble children. Thank you.

It will always question it. Problems will never go away. One thing I want to say, you will just get better at handling bigger problems. You want to make more, handle bigger problems, right? So you will handle problems more. You will turn into someone who wants the bigger problems because you know there's a bigger paycheck on the other side of bigger. You solve a bigger problem. You get paid more, right?

So problems won't go away. I'll tell you that. You'll just handle them more. Like you said in your book and like Jim Rohn said, for things to get better, you've got to get better, right? So you'll get better at doing those things. You will have times where you question it, but every day in my life I wake up and I'm so effing grateful that I get the freedom to do what I want to do to coach the little league, to drive my kids to school, to do what I want when I want to do it. And that's that's the ultimate freedom and I would die for it, Ed. I had a great answer. I'm so proud of you.