The Game with Alex Hormozi - Finding the Middle Ground: Balancing Pragmatism and Risk (with Dean Graziosi) Pt.1 - May‘23 | Ep 572

Episode Date: August 5, 2023

"You can't go into it looking for the wrong outcome." Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on Own Your Future Podcast with Dean Graziosi to discuss how to own your decisions and not let others have power over your life. He shares his personal experience and tips on how to gain confidence in decision-making by stacking proof and chunking down achievable goals. This is part 1 of the interview.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Check out the episode on Dean Graziosi's YouTube Channel!Timestamps:(2:40) - Owning your own future(13:30) - Stay in the game to make better decisions(21:32) - One thing that scares you at night(25:53) - Navigating through uncertainties adviceFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

If you have nothing going for you, it's another way of saying that you have nothing to lose. And so it means that you have endless shots on goal. And so you should be the most prone to taking action because there's nothing holding you back. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more per customer, and how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. And today, to say this gentleman is a friend, I think everybody says that when they first do an interview. This is my buddy.

Alex, our guest will interview here in a minute. and I met via text effort. And we spent like six months or year getting to know each other. I laughed every morning at our text. You know what we laughed at before I introduced the formal stuff? It was a time where both of us waited to invest in cryptocurrency. And we both talked about it. And we both equally went in the day it reached its peak.

Am I lying? And then we decided that it crashed after that, that we would not invest anymore because we didn't want to hurt the rest of the investors. So anyway, we built an amazing friendship via techs. We got together and hit it off. He is truly one of the smartest marketers I've ever met. Smartest businessman. He is an incredible husband.

He's a dear friend. He's a good human being. And I'm so glad we got to know each other. Yes, he's built five companies in like record time over $120 million. Exited out of multiple companies. Now he's got a massive portfolio of companies that he's a part of that do over $200 million a year in revenue. He's on fire.

He owns acquisition.com. You see them all over social media. I'm so glad to have my friend here. Alex Hermosie. What's up, man? That was like the nicest intro. Thank you. I'll do my very best to live up to that.

It's true, man. And listen, the fun part, I wish we could share some of the text. I literally remember being at the gym and I couldn't get back to a next set because I was still laughing so hard. So it's been a fun relationship. You know, call it to Own Your Future podcast. You know why? because Tony and I, Robbins and I, did a challenge about three years ago. We called the Own Your Future.

And I was on a podcast and someone said, why would you want to own your future? And my reply was, well, shit. If you don't own your future, someone else is going to. And that hit me. And I watched everybody's comment was like, oh, oh my God, because you don't think about that. Your career could own you. Your old beliefs could own you. Your current income because you're not stretching yourself to finally launch that business

you were going to could be owning you. And I think at the end of the day, we all want to own our calendar. We want to own our decisions. So that's why I went that way. So we'll get into some fun stuff and we can go personal because we're friends. But I love that question. What does that mean to you? Like, what does it mean to Alex to own your future? So I mean, I think it means high agency. So meaning like when we're kids, it becomes real, we learn what the world means through other people. And so like you're, you know, you have hookah and he's like, what does that mean? And what is that? And so you're literally telling him what things mean. And so like the first things we learn are only from the few people around us that tell us how to interpret the world.

And then once we turn 16, 17, 18, 20, 23, all of a sudden we're like, I don't know of everything that every one of these people who told me what things mean were right. Yeah. And so we spend the rest of our lives trying to unlearn what everyone has told us meant and then make up that meaning for ourselves. Wow, it's such a, what a, that's an amazing and true, because the word to come in the hand, you're trying to decipher. Is that my father's perspective? Yeah. Or is that reality? And what is reality? Yeah. Yeah. And so that, so my, you know, my goal personally has been to dissect decisions and think like, is this a decision that I'm making because I believe this or because of what I want other people to think about me as a result of this decision? And we're social beings. We care about what other people. think. And I don't think we're ever going to like get completely rid of that from us. I mean, you'd have to be, you know, Gandhi or whoever, you know, Buddha, right? But at least if I can try and be aware of how much something might influence me, then at least gives me the wherewithal to say, okay, warning flags. This is a sensitive subject that your dad always wanted for you. Be extra

careful around decisions that impact, that go in this direction. And so I can just take that extra pause of space and say, okay, is this really me or is this because I'm, want him to think this about me. Wow. And like, dad is really just a foil. It could be your brother, your sister, your spouse, your ex-wife. You know what I mean? That rival or the competitor, whoever it is, the moment that I realized this in my life

was I was 19 years old. And at the time, I was an angry 19-year-old like some of us are. And probably unrightfully so. But I really disliked both my parents really heavily. And I remember thinking to myself like, they messed me up. I have all these anger issues. Like, I hate everyone. I'm alone.

I'm a lone wolf, whatever. And I remember catching myself, blaming them and thinking to myself, that means that I give them all the power in my life. Like, wherever I point the finger of blame is also where the power follows. It's like power follows blame. Yeah. And so I was like, well, what am I going to do about it? Because maybe they did wrong me.

It doesn't really matter. It's only me who can, who can own. my own future because otherwise they're going to own my future for the rest of my life. And then the thing that made it crack for me was the idea that the people that I hated the most owned me. That was the thing. So it was like, so these people that I hated and blamed, then flipping it from the blame to they own me, they have power over me. I was like, I never want them to have power over me. And then that was actually the first real crack I had in like the dam of trying to like make my own life and start, that was when I decided to not be pre-med because that was what my dad wanted me to be.

And like, there were many steps on this, you know, this journey. But the first one of like just not being a doctor like him and being just saying like, I want to get into business because it's like I'm way more interested in this stuff. Like you can imagine I was like shaking to try and tell my dad this. But yeah, it was like, I blame them. They owned me. I don't want that. Yeah.

You know, I want to dissect this little. And I can't wait to talk about some business things and things that I know people need in today's world. But this is more important because what I always, I love the term going upstream. I know it's simple. It was a term I heard Tony Robbins talked about the medical field, right? It was a doctor pulls into a medical office and there's a stream by and there's someone drowned and he goes in.

You've heard this before. And he goes and saves him. And another doctor pulls up. He's like, help me save this next person. Save this next person. And finally a doctor pulls up and looks and he goes, come help us. And he drives away and he stops. He goes, hey, how come you're not going to help us?

He's like, I'm just going to drive upstream and see who's throwing these people. in. Right? It's like you're never going to give them all. Let's just stop the bastard throwing people in the stream. And that's stuck with me so much that everything, the reason I love this podcast about business, about marketing, but really I want to go upstream because the human condition that so many people are watching and listening right now, they think it's the marketing thing or the sales thing or the invention they have to have or maybe they didn't have the right employee. But really when you go up to that next level, there are things sabotaging us to that we're put in our lives by parents, by a teacher, by an experience, by a bad relationship.

And if we don't solve that, then there's no way we can go downstream and clear up all the people. Right. So thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that because I would bet to say there's so many people watching today, listening today, that don't realize that someone else is owning their decisions based on the past. And I'd love to know going deeper on what you shared is how did you really, how did you make that? Like, what was the thing? 19 is young to be able to recognize that. I probably recognize that in my 30s.

Some people maybe never. And the question I'll say is, would you take any of it back? Because I think if you blame, like, if you blame your parents up to that, they didn't support me, they want to be a doctor. And if I'm not a doctor, I'm nobody, I'm a loser, I'm pathetic. You'll never make it. We can laugh about some of the things we've talked about. But like, you're not going to make it.

You're going to be a loser. You're blowing your. your life, nothing will ever work. And then when it does work, you don't get the credit. They're like, well, you got lucky it'll probably fail anyway, right? How do you get to a point to realize, sorry, I see you shaking? No, how do you get to the point where you go, wow, thank God they did that because it drove me to be stronger, faster, more innovative, more creative, and now you get to, you know, own your decisions. Yeah. I think, I think it's an over-time process. Because I mean, I certainly think when I was 19 years old, I was not there.

It was the first crack. And the thing was just like, I was so angry. And so the idea and like I define power is just like influence over someone else's events, things, people, et cetera. And so like they were influencing my decisions, which means they had power over me. And it just sickened me to think that these people that I was so angry about. I'm not saying it was right or wrong, but like at the time that these people, I didn't want to give them that power. And so I even think about this now sometimes, even like big business decisions. etc. A lot of times we say like society tells us or society trains us, whatever. But if you really

like listen to it, there's usually like two or three voices or maybe just one. Yeah. And it's like sometimes you're surprised. And so one of the exercises I do when I have these decisions where I'm like, I feel like I'm pooled in multiple directions. The thing I think I, the thing I know I want to do and the thing that I have been trained myself to do that's not the thing I want to do is I just try and name the person who's stopping me from doing it. And so I remember there was like when I was selling one of the businesses. This was like the first massive deal that we were going to go through. I started playing these voices, just one particular entrepreneur that I know. And I was like, he's going to think that this isn't enough money. Now, mind you, it was a big exit and it was totally

made up in my mind. But I had to write down his name and say, like, will I let this person stop me from exiting this company? And when I saw it, it just seemed so small. And I was like, no, I'm not going to give him that kind of power over my life. I'm going to give this guy is going to influence my decision. It's going to change the rush of my life. Because of a voice I have in my head that he doesn't even know I'm thinking about him. And you know what? Before we go to him, it sounds so silly as you write it. Once you wrote it down, it was silly.

But how strong are those voices, all of you listening, watching right now, that says, oh, you're too young for this. You're too old for this, right? All of it. You had someone and said, you don't sell that company unless it's 200 million. And you're getting lots of zeros. And you're like questioning it until you wrote it down and go, am I going to allow him?

And I think that's a big takeaway today. is if something is holding you back in your life and you think it's your own insecurities, of course it is or your own beliefs. But write down, I love that. I'm going to do that next time. It's literally write down, am I not going to do this because of? And do you really want to give them that power? And it's so interesting when we talk about insecurity because most insecurities belong to someone else.

And so it's like, who owns this insecurity of mine? And why did I inherit it? Right, because insecurity comes from other people's judgments. So you can't be insecure about something. unless there's someone else making this judgment. Otherwise, there would be nothing to be insecure about. And so naming who owns that insecurity, it takes it from this really amorphous thing to like,

it's John? Really? Yeah. Wow, it is John. And sometimes it takes a couple, you're like, no, it's not my mom. No, it's not, you know, it's not my uncle. You know what? It's that my colleague.

I work with him every day. And I think that if he knew I quit my job, he would think I was like, not cool. or it's the guys I used to go to school with. If they know that I quit my job, they would see me as a loser. Like my senior year. Or a dreamer.

Yeah, like, it's not going to work, right? And they have all these good jobs and, like, I'm going to quit my stable job to go to this thing. And I used to think, like, there's going to be a short-term time where they're all making more money than me and they can buy things that I can't.

So here's a quick question. If there's all of us have to make the next side of the decisions. The opposite side, like the main side is, don't let people unqualified, talk you out of what you want how to life. your broke friend telling you how to fix your relationship, or a broke friend telling you how to do your business, or a single friend on the relationship, right?

We know that. What helps fuel the confidence to keep going, right? Because we all question ourselves. How many times have we both, you're an inch away from signing the deal? Yeah. Starting the new. You bought a company yesterday.

Yeah. There's always those moments right before you stroke a check with lots of zeros or start a new company, start a new relationship. Say I do. Say I don't. Yeah. Right? This is enough or this is the beginning.

Yeah. All of those moments, I believe, I'm going to digress here for a second, I believe pressure, at least with me, when I'm under pressure, I can resort back to the man I used to be. Right? I think I'm growing. If I'm not climbing, I'm sliding. I'm growing emotionally, physically, like spiritually. And then you get under pressure and sometimes you take a step back and you make a decision

of the man that you were running away from or want to grow from. So if you can be bold enough to take that uncomfortable action to say, no, I'm going to sell this company because it makes sense for me. I'm not giving that power to John. I'm not giving this power to my parents. What keeps you in the game so you can continue to make better and better decisions for you? So is this? I want to make sure I understand the question. There's the what makes me confident to make the next, to own my own decision rather than listen to someone else versus what keeps me going in terms of the bigger goal. Yeah, I think the first one.

Yeah. So I'm a big believer, and this is a little bit contrarian, that proof is the best type of evidence for a trait. And so rather than say like, I'm, I'm honest, I'm honest, I'm honest, but like you're a crook. Like all the evidence points of the fact that you're a crook, like I think that when you say that on some level, you don't believe you because you know that's not true. Yeah.

And so I try and look at, okay, what experiences or things I've done in the past can I transfer that are close enough to this new thing? So if I built a sales team at a weight loss company and then I really want to do this new gig that's at a chiropractor joint and it's also building a sales team, can I say that that skill is going to transfer? I have high confidence that I'll be successful in this thing. That would make sense for me. If I had built six sales teams over my career, I'd probably be even more confident. Right. And so the thing is, like, if I'm listening to this. You're borrowing confidence from another experience in your life. And so the problem is, what do you do when you're at zero?

When you're like, I'm not confident. I haven't done anything good, right? I've got no achievements to my name, et cetera. I think that you're delusional because it's like if you were able, like, all you have to do is chunk down and think, okay, well, what did I, what did I do? Like, let's be real. What did I do today? That was good. Well, I woke up. Okay, cool. I got out of bed. Okay. Well, I showed up to work on time. Okay, so I'm punctual. You know what? I always show up to work on time. That's okay, I do do that, right? And I respond to things pretty quick. Okay, I do. So I'm responses. So it's you chunk down until you're like, okay, what things can I say that I have proof that I'm good at? And then those become things that you can stack on top of one or other because it's not delusional because let's say, let's say mom says, you're not, you're blah, blah, blah,

but you're like, no, no, no, I hear you. But I have proof. So like, I get you of your opinion, I have facts. And so my goal in life has always been to stack as much proof as I possibly can to support that I am who I say I am. Even if you have to embellish a little bit of that proof, right? Like, even if you say, I know I only did it at this level. Oh, yeah. But that same thing could get compounded 10 times. It just I didn't have the eyeballs yet, or I didn't have the experience yet.

Or the time. Or the time yet. Right? Yeah. I love that you're listening to the podcast. If you ever want to have the video version of this, which usually has more effects, more visuals, more graphs, you know, drawn out stuff. Sometimes it can help hit the brain centers in different.

different ways. You can check on my YouTube channel. It's absolutely free. Go check that out if that's what you are into. And if not, keep enjoying the show. And so that was, that's always been my goal, is like, can I, can I stack enough evidence to give enough proof that I am who I say I am? And then, so let me ask you, when you want to make a decision, if you stack enough proof, you look at the evidence and you say, I'm going to be pragmatic and say, I did it here. Yeah. I'm going to do it here. Yeah. What keeps you moving forward with that decision? When you make a decision. I'm asking you. When you make a decision, do you just go no matter what? Do you burn the boats or are you one step at a time? This is proving itself. Because I just know one thing. Yeah.

There's a middle ground between burning the boats and dipping your foot in. Yeah. Right? Take the island, burn the boats or let me just put my foot in the water and see there's a middle ground. Yeah. But I see sometimes where people are, they don't realize. I know we're going off in a different direction, but I think this is really important. They don't realize deep down. They're waiting for it not to work. They're pretending they're moving forward, but they're actually looking for evidence of it not working so they could say, see, Alex wasn't a great partner, or Bob's not that into it, or nobody 50 years old wants to lose weight, they don't care. Like they don't realize, it's like when you're sick and you Google it. And like, I do have a brain tumor, right? You're not looking for,

no, it's a headache, take a time. Right? So how can we help people realize that you can't, you can't go into, if you decide, I'm going to be pragmatic because I have proof, I have past experience, I'm going to do it. Yes, you want to test, but you got to go in looking for the right outcome. It's a really tough, because I see this, even, and you know what, and this is everyone who's listening, it happens at every level. Every level.

I talk to founders who are doing $100 million a year. And I'm like, well, have you tried this? And they're like, yeah, we tried that. I'm like, oh, we tried this. And I'm like, oh, we tried that. I've tried to this. Oh, we tried that. And I'll name six other things.

And I'm like, oh, okay, you're right. You're screwed. You're just never going to succeed. And when I say it like that, they're like, well, and I'm like, well, which is it? And all of a sudden, because like some people like to be contrarian because of like, that's their nature. They just want to disagree. They want to prove it wrong. They want to buy the course, attend the workshop and then prove that they're a special snowflake. And I think you just look at, like, you can look at yourself in the mirror and be like, you're right. You are a special

stuff. You are never going to succeed. Now what? And I think on some level, if you get, if you, if you get to that point, then it's like, well, you have nothing to lose. lose. And I think in some ways, that makes you more dangerous than anyone. Yeah. And it's, it's funny because, like, it's all about how you frame the position, right? And I used to tell, because we had a big, so friend was listening, we had a big gym licensing company. So we had thousands of locations. And people would try and come into space and be like, well, how am I going to compete with you? You've got this big brand, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, you don't realize the advantage you have because, and I'm going to, I'm going to wrap this up to the point. I was like,

if you were, if I were you, and I'm coming up against me, I'm going to say, you're never going to see Alex. Alex is never going to help you with your gym, is never going to do X, Y, and Z. You're just a number to him. He's got this massive thing. To me, you're going to get me. It's going to be personalized.

I'm going to be super responsive. I was like, that's your position. I was like, on the flip side, my position is going to say, I've been doing this for a decade. I've got more success stories than every single other person put together. And are you going to trust this kid in his mom's basement who has no track record compared to me?

Both positions have advantages. And so right now, the thing is that if you're day one, you never get this back, but you get to be underestimated. There's no advantage to being overestimated, unless you're weak, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But right now, no one will see you coming. If you have nothing going for you, it's another way of saying that you have nothing to lose.

And so it means that you have endless shots on goal. And so you should be the most prone to taking action because there's nothing holding you back. What do you have nothing? I love that. It's just, it's literally just voices in your head from your mom who say that you're not going to win. And you say, you're right, mom. And then you keep doing it anyways. Yeah.

I love in Agmendino's book. I love the world's greatest sales. It's one of my favorite books. And he talks about in one section, most people let their mindset control their actions. What if you let your actions determine your mindset? Do it when you don't feel like doing it. Move forward anyway.

And I think that's the part I wanted to share today before we get into what's next is how do you get the momentum when you're scared? It's the uncomfortable action. And I would just say it's whatever it takes to get you to move. forward. If it's saying, thank you for the telling me I'm not going to make it. I'm an underdog. That means no one will see me coming. I must do it anyway. Like, whatever it takes for you to move forward, we must. And I think that's why I love these conversations, because each thing will impact somebody says, today's enough. Today's the day where I'm not settling.

Today's day, I will say yes. I will say no. I will move forward. One thing before we move forward, I want to ask you is, dude, you're in amazing shape. I worked out with you. It's really difficult to work out with you. You're so freaking ripped. You've sold your company. You're buying other companies. You decided to go on social media. Dude, it's been fun watching you. You've skyrocketed to the top. You're all over the place, which is awesome. What's one thing no one would know that still makes you scared at night when no one's around? Because most people think when they see success that you've killed all the demons. There's no dragons left to slay. Yeah. But is there still something that goes, man, I could go broke or this could go wrong or I'm not good enough or

I think it has it has it obviously I think it shifts over time. It does. I think and I think the answer if you'd asked me a year ago would have been different than it is right now. But the thing is that that keeps me up is not being good enough to accomplish what my dreams are now. So like I there's there's I, my dreams have expanded because of the proof that I have now. So now it's like I'm setting goalposts that are bigger than I can really imagine. And my fear is getting to the end of my life. life and not having accomplished those and then think like, I guess I wasn't good enough to do that

thing. And I think that like, and I think I've had a little bit of time to be like, all right, is that really, you know, and I play the mental game with myself, but I would say on some level, that's still a thing that keeps me up. Yeah. And the reason I ask you that is because I have similar figures and no one would ever think that. And it doesn't mean it should stop you from moving forward. It doesn't stop you. You still get up every day. You still love what you do. You still move forward. you still make mistakes, you still have some fears, you still wake up some mornings, go, what the hell am I doing, right? Isn't enough? When you sold your last company, you could have been done. You and Layla could be doing whatever you wanted. You went right back in, investing the money

and buying companies. So what you just said about taking the action anyway, right? I think that going back to what we were saying earlier about giving yourself that proof, that evidence, it's like all you have to do is get the first piece of evidence. And so it's like if you just take one action, then you can start labeling yourself as like, I am somebody who takes action because I have this proof right here. And so it's it's just stacking. And then you stack two or three of those. And you're like, you know what? I'm on a streak. And then you're like, I am the type of person who does these things. And you said the mindset preceding the action, right? This is the, this is the point that I was trying to get to. If the actions lead to the mindset, then it means that the actions give you the

evidence of the mindset you should have. And so. That's a really good point. Right. I love that. And so that gives like the actions become your evidence. And so if you're like, well, I have no evidence, then it's like, then you can make evidence. And that's how, and guess what? That's how everyone else did it. What do they say about entrepreneurs? You make shit up and then you make it real. Yeah. I mean, that's really what we do. And we, and to fuel that is the evidence. You know, if anybody could see our, it's funny. It's kind of like we have fun alter egos sometimes when we text. Oh yeah. The insecurity is that come out. I'm going broke. I'm losing. I'm done. It's over. Can I borrow money? We had this. We had this.

joke about we help each other whenever we can when it comes to our businesses, just simple stuff when we brainstorm. And I said, hey, if you sell your company for that much money, I want everything to the right of the decimal. And I still have the check. I think you sent me a check for 46 cents. It was awesome. I was hoping for 99 cents. But as we joke, there is truth in everything, right? We joke, oh my God, you know, what if the dollar collapses. Yeah. What if this country keeps the media and politicians keep making us think we should hate each other and we're so polarized that we're not focusing on the big prize. We're worried about the little things when other countries are exponentially growing and other companies

starving. Like there's there's so many things that we're distracted with it. And right now people have a lot of worries. Are we going into a recession? Could it be a depression? Could the dollar actually be replaced in 20 years, 50 years? Two years? Yeah. I don't. Right? These some people are thinking I don't even that's I don't care about that and some people are worried every day about it But there's so many things right now that are have been uncertain especially since COVID happened three years ago Yeah, you know, it's like they're the the rules of the game seem to be changing and I think it's caused this level of Uncertainty and fear that I again I said earlier if when you're under pressure you kind of resort back sometimes when you're in your pressure you freeze So I don't want to get into if the dollar is going to collapse and if we should invest in

crypto or gold or real estate or companies or T-bills. We could spend days on that, I know. But how do you get people, how would you suggest people get clarity to navigate through this? That's kind of the upstream question. It's a big question. But wherever I go now, it depends on where somebody is and what their economics are. But most questions people will first say, is Dean, what should I do in my cash?

or can I actually make cash right now? Or should I actually want dollars? Should I invest in India in China? Right. But upstream, how do you get people to get out of that uncertainty mode so they can make clear decisions? So I have a couple of mental exercises that I actually go through for this. And so I try and reframe reality in a couple of ways. One of them is I try and play out the absolute hypothetical worst scenario, right?

And so the worst scenario is I die. Okay. Then I won't be worried about it because I'll be dead, right? It won't affect me. Okay. So like one degree less than that. It's like, okay, well, what if I go, like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm deduced to the, I have absolutely nothing. It's like, okay, well, real talk, there are homeless kitchens and there are, there are places that I could, that I could crash and eat and whatever.

I'm like, okay. So I probably won't starve. So actually probably won't die in the actual worst case scenario. And when you look at people for subjective well-being in poorer countries, there's often people who are happier on average than us in the U.S. And so I think I reframe it as like, well, what problem are we solving? And so if it's like, well, I'm worried about AI. Is it going to take my job? And will I lose all the money?

It's like, well, you'll probably be just about as happy and unhappy as you are right now because all of those things presuppose a single assumption, which is that your circumstances dictate your mood or your happiness. And so if, and all you have to do is listen to, you know, anybody who's made lots of money, whatever the thing is for you. They got the Grammy, they made the movie, whatever it is, right? They all get there and they're like,

it didn't make me any happier. Yeah, you can change the thing. And so we ask these questions about what if all these circumstances change, but it has an underlying assumption that because the circumstances change, I'm going to become less happy. And that's what our fear comes from.

But if we disconnect our circumstances, because if Victor Frankel in the Holocaust, and I think about these examples, because like I try, and think of hypothetical extremes or like the millions of people who've been slaves in general across countries across time periods they all somehow actually managed to have kids survive you know like and keep doing and don't be wrong i'm saying it's horrible but i use it as an example of how bad circumstances can be and yet humans continue to survive and so the the problem mind

right will always find new things to look at have a Because it wants to keep you alive, right? Because that's its objective, but it doesn't want to keep you happy. And so if we can just simply break the connection of the underlying assumption that whatever happens, whether it's the dollar or the yen or AI takes over the world. Because I genuinely think, I'm like, well, if AI takes completely over everything, I'm like, then my 401K doesn't matter too much. Right. Right. So like, I worry about these things that in the hypothetical extreme that I'm also worried about wouldn't matter.

And in my opinion, I'll probably be just. just as happier as unhappy as I am right now, or as I have evolved in my awareness, which will be disconnected from outside circumstance. And so that's... But why I asked you out? Because I know so many times that we've had conversations, you have mental models or a framework around certain thinking, because that is so powerful. Thinking about the worst case scenario, and if that actually did happen, would you be happier or less happy? And the fact of the matter is, I don't think it changes at all. I'm going to give you one. So everybody who's listening to this right now you remember when you were younger you were poor

and you had nothing and guess what you still probably think about that as the good old days yeah true story and so like why are we so afraid of going back to a scenario that in the future today we might be in the good old days yeah and it's like it's a weird mental frame right no the crazy part of that is if you're living in a future that could go wrong you're preventing yourself in the present from being all you can be yeah totally right and if you live in the present saying these might be the good all days, you will take more risk. You will have more courage to move forward. You will make bold, uncomfortable decisions in the moment rather than sitting on your hands hoping things don't go sideways. One of my buddies, my closest friend is a philosopher. I know that sounds ridiculous,

but that's like pretty much what he does. And he gave me this frame called the frame of the veteran. And so imagine you lose all your money, right? So it's a terrible thing. Actually, let's go, let's go, I'm going to go micro really quickly and then we'll scale it up. So let's say you're in traffic, right and you hate traffic traffic sucks okay well if you if you're not in traffic normally and then you're in traffic it's terrible but if every time you got in the car from here until the day you die there was always traffic what would happen you would just get used to it yeah right and so you become a veteran it's just something that like this is just how it always is and so if you can if your mind can mentally weather itself to get to that point then it means that you can apply that same frame to this

moment that's inconvenient, I had this shirt that I liked a lot. And my cleaning person messed it up. It sounds ridiculous. And I thought about this. And I was like, well, if every time, and it just shrunk too much, that's all it was. And I was like, well, if every time I washed a shirt had always had this level of shrinking, I was like, would I really care? And I was like, well, no, I guess not. I was like, okay. I'm done with it. And that was it. But like, I just remember, that was the first time I ever used the frame of the veteran because he just told me. And then I just got to apply it immediately. And so I just give it a shot. If you're like, really stressing about stuff.

So I love that framework. And I always think about, I heard Ed Milet say this once. I always used it. I always thought of, imagine meeting the person you could have been at the end of your life. Ed Milet, I think he said one time, it's like, imagine if God played you a video of the man or the woman you could have been, if you would have been bold. And if you were at that moment of someone, you know, God has an iPhone, pulls it out and said, hey, Alex, if you weren't so afraid, if you didn't go against what your parents,

said, if you went and been a doctor, you life would have been okay, but this is who you would have been. You're like, oh my God, what would you wish? Yeah. Let me go back and do it again. Yeah. Wish granted, right? If we can put ourselves in that moment, we can give ourselves that wish of saying, no, no, this is not one of those things I want to regret at the end. Yeah.