The Game with Alex Hormozi - Legacy Is A Myth | Ep 580

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

"We're wishing for something that will literally never happen.” Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) discusses his belief in optimistic nihilism and how he uses mental frameworks to manage stress and anxiety in entrepreneurship. He argues that legacy is a myth and that understanding our insignificance can lead to better decision-making.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.Timestamps:(4:33) - No inherent meaning, like weather(5:12) - If it doesn't matter in 500M years, doesn't matter(10:05) - Legacy doesn't matter(12:23) - Leaving things to kids doesn't benefit them(13:50) - Law of large numbers(14:52) - Imagine bad things happened a thousand times before(16:57) - Exercise: Failure resume(18:52) - The only real legacy is leaving the human race betterFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

And so if you gift someone who's not prepared for a gob of potential energy that they did not earn or learn how to wield, it will ultimately burn them up and consume them. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to sell more stuff to more people in more ways and build businesses worth owning. I'm trying to build a billion dollar thing with Acquisition.com. I always wish Bezos, Musk, and Buffett had documented their journey. So I'm doing it for the rest of us. Please share and enjoy. No one will remember you. And that's a statement that bothers a lot of people.

And if that does bug you, then you probably should look away from the rest of this. And my team was going back and forth on even posting this because they're like, dude, there's so many people that are going to disagree with this. And I'm okay with that. And this is not me in any way saying that my beliefs should be your beliefs or that your beliefs are wrong. I am simply explaining my beliefs. And the reason I'm doing that is because I think one of the hardest parts of entrepreneurship

is managing emotions and managing anxiety and managing stress so that you can make higher quality decisions. And high quality decisions are one of those things that compound over a long period of time because we make hundreds and hundreds of decisions every single day, every single week for our business. And it's many small micros that can go all the way up. You know, 1% better every day compounded for 365 days. It's 37x what you started. And, you know, 10% or 0% goes down to zero at the end of the year. And so managing my mental state has been a continuous learning experience for me. And the set of beliefs that sits at the core of that

is what I would consider optimistic nihilism. And to be clear here, there's a lot of people feel like nihilism was really negative thing. And that's because they ascribe some sort of meaning to the word. But it really is just that you don't think that things have inherent meaning. It doesn't mean that there isn't any meaning in the world. It doesn't mean that there is a global meaning that we all have to agree to. As a result of that, there are downstream implications that affect my behavior. And I think have positioned me to be less stressed about things that come up and as a result make better business decisions. And so this is why I show this. And if only some of these things make sense for you? Awesome. None of it makes sense for you. Awesome. If it all makes

sense for you, awesome. So the big picture for me was a lot of people take a lot of work and stress a lot about what other people think about them. And I'm not going to say that I'm here like I don't care what anyone else thinks. That's not true at all. I think I use these frameworks to try and remind myself that other people's opinions don't matter as much as I think they do. And for me, reminding myself that I'm insignificant and in the long and eventual universal scale, am irrelevant, allows me to look at my failures and laugh a little bit. And so rather than say, oh my God, this is the end of the world, it's really on a 500 million year time horizon, I am a being that exists for a blip of time and then will disappear from existence. And one of the

things I was telling a friend of mine, as he was telling me all the things that were stressing him out, said, you know, if you zoom out far enough, you can't even see the earth. earth. And he started laughing and we both started laughing together because it's like we, we like to exaggerate these things in our mind because that's what our brains trained to do. It's what keeps us alive is making things seem into problems. They've actually tested this is that like you will still always find the same number of problems, whether they're rich people problems or they're poor people problems. They are still problems nonetheless. And so at least realizing that allows me to not judge the fact that I have problems as it being bad.

Because if I don't believe things have inherent meaning, that it means that I can control the meaning I ascribe to things. And so, for example, let's say that I get into a car accident, right? That would be for most people a bad experience. Now, how you look at that can depend. It could be like, okay, well, there's a law of large numbers. I've been alive for this many days. It's probable that I'm going to get in one of these accidents. On the flip side, you could also think, hey, you know, how amazing. I got to experience this part of the human experience. I got to check that off the list of things that I got to survive, right? Like, crazy to think about something like that, but like, what else you're going to do? Would you rather just like sit there and sulk and just say like this is ruined my life?

Like I don't think that's going to be an advantageous response. And so the core of all of these things that I have sits from the fact that I can create and destroy meaning as I see fit, number one. And the big wrapper for this whole thing is that entrepreneurship is a stressful road. And so if you're somebody who like get stressed out or feels anxiety or fears overwhelmed, then these are the tools that I've used in my toolbox to combat those things when they come up. So this, There's going to be a list of mental frameworks that I apply to diffuse stressful situations in my life. And so let's start from the top. Number one is that I don't believe that things have inherent meaning.

I see them much more like the weather, meaning some people say sunny days are good and rainy days are bad when they are really just weather. Because if you are in a drought, a rainy day is good. And if you on a drought, a sunny day is bad. And the flip side would be reversed if it was your wedding. Right. And so the only thing that has happened is just a circumstance or a condition. And then we ascribe meaning to that thing. And so if we can control what that meaning is, then it means we can influence our own emotional response to it.

And if the whole idea of being a good decision maker is controlling our emotional response, then having tools like this can be really helpful. The next one is that a lot of people like to say, if it's not going to matter in five years, it shouldn't matter for five seconds or whatever it is. I like to take that a bit further and say, if it's not going to matter in 500 million years, it shouldn't matter for five seconds. Now, some people take that and think, wow, then you don't think anything has meaning. And the answer is yes, that is the point.

And so for you, it might be a bad day, but it's going, like, we are all going to eventually be forgotten. And as much as that bothers people, it's like, do you know who your great, great-grandparent is? You probably don't even know their name. Like, you probably don't even know their name, let alone anything about them. You probably don't even know their name. And we have this because we're so self-centered, think that everyone around us is going to sing our praises and hang our pictures on the wall and just sing kumbaya to us every single night after we're

gone. And the real real is, why do we give a shit if we claim to not care about what other people think? Why would we care what they do and talk about us after we're dead? Right. And so I'm going to talk to you about a lovely lady named Betty White. So Betty White was somebody who was really early on race integration. She was a golden gal, a huge, huge personality. She lived in 99, didn't make it to 100, which is sad. You probably haven't thought about her until I brought this up. And she died about a year ago. And the thing is, is that she lived an amazing life, an incredibly public life, very financially successful, the top of her skill, beloved by all. And A, you either forgot about her or B, you didn't even know her name we begin with. And so how arrogant are we to think that now everyone on earth

is going to remember us? Like, you probably don't even know any Indian celebrities at all. We're alive today. you probably don't even know any Chinese celebrities who are alive today. Probably don't know any Russian celebrities who are alive right now, right? And so we're so arrogant that like not only do you think that like we're going to matter after we die, you probably don't even matter right now. And those are the celebrities. Forget the normal people, right? It's just ego.

And this is why I think so many people get bothered by a lot of the stuff that I say here is because they want to reject it because it makes them feel bad, the idea that they don't matter. Now, obviously there's going to be a lot of counter people that wear shirt. to say you matter. And I don't agree. And I think by thinking that way, you set yourself up to be upset at the world because it means that you feel anything as a slight because the underpinning of sealing like you matter is that you deserve things. And I hate the word deserve because it sets an expectation that we are bound to not see fulfilled. And so if you see suffering as unmet expectations, you can either change the conditions or you can change the expectations.

And one of them happens in your mind and the other one forces the entire world to change. And the crazy thing is people will demand that a universe who doesn't know they exist or care change to their will, which it won't. And so they self-inflict their own suffering or anxiety or overwhelm when they're in business. It's not fair that this competitor down the street opened up. It's not fair that they're copying my ads. It's not fair that they're undercutting my prices. You're ascribing a meaning to it.

All that we know is that it happened. That's it. And so we could say how cool it is that I get to have this experience of competing with somebody so I can tell the story later. Because at the end of the day, we're all going to just collect our experiences and then we're just going to cast them in and then die. And so again, this is not meant to trigger anyone. This is just how I view the world and has been helpful for me. Because on another level, like as our current understanding exists of the universe, the sun is going to continue to expand until it eventually engulfs the earth and we all die in a heat death. unless we become a multi-planetary species, all of the stuff that we're going to do, everything that you've ever done, the books that I write, the videos that I make,

will eventually all get melted into nothingness. And so when we have this worry that one of our videos or our post didn't get a lot of likes, it just really doesn't matter. And I'm not saying that I don't feel the feelings. I'm saying I remind myself of these things so that I don't feel them as much or as long. So let's imagine something bad has happened, all right, today in this moment. Now, I'm going to take you through a timeline. So if we go three months into the future, it probably won't matter that much.

And here's how I'll prove it to you. Can you think of something that happened three months ago that bothered you? Does it bother you now? Probably not. So we can use that evidence to project in the future that the current moment won't matter then. And if it's not going to matter then, why should it matter now? Real quick, guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything. And so the only ask that I can ever have of you guys is that you help me spread the words.

So we can out more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products, and have better experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share this podcast. So the single thing that I ask you do is you can just leave a review. It'll take you 10 seconds or one type of the thumb. It would mean the absolute world to me. And more importantly, it may change the world with someone else. Belief number three is that your legacy doesn't matter.

So number one, let's assume that you define legacy as material assets that you accumulate. Okay. So the F degree of this, and this is something that I'm fortunate to be able to share with you, is that my great, great, great-grandfather was a ruler of the Qajar dynasty in Iran. And so he had 400 kids. So I'm not that related to him. All right? Just like your progeny, won't be that related to you either. But anyways, great-great-grandfather, I actually keep forgetting his name. Guy was a king, right? I don't even remember his name. And yeah, like, and he conquered the fucking world. Or born into it. It doesn't really matter, right? He sat on the top of material wealth and power, and me, four or five generations later,

don't even know his name. I know the dynasty was a part of. Right. And so, I think it was Hormos Khan, I think was his name. Anyways, point being, I don't think about him every day. I think about him literally only to make these about how it doesn't matter. And so your progeny probably won't think about you. And so when you die and then you pass your stuff on, part of people were like, okay, well, I have my material assets. Well, okay, well, those are going to get divided up a zillion times over and get fought over with a bunch of people who don't know how to make money or manage money until they don't get squandered. So we know that's going to happen on a long enough time horizon. Okay, great. Check that box off. Now, let's talk about your values and your beliefs, right?

And that's what you see as your new legacy, which I think is a more noble legacy if we had to compare the tip. But even then, let's do the second version of legacy, which is just having children in general, is that you're like, I want to proliferate my genes, which is super Darwinian of you, which is awesome, if you want to call it awesome, or it can be bad or it can be whatever you want. And so let's say you have lots of kids. And let's see those kids have lots of kids. And let's say those kids have lots of kids and lots of kids and lots of kids. Well, guess what happens?

Is that five generations from now, you're one half to the fifth related to those people. They're 164th you. And that's like five generations. It's not that much. Right. Like you're just great, great, great, grandfather. That's all that is. It's like, talk about like great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great.

There are one, one thousandth you. Are they really related to you? Are they just humans? If they're just humans, which means that the eventuality of this equation, if you just keep adding the numbers, is that your progeny will just be humans, then if you care so much about them, you might as well just care about everybody today. Ah, kind of nice when you think about that way. And so that's the genetic argument. Okay. Number four, leaving things to your kids doesn't benefit them for a variety of reasons. Number one is that timing of when you give it to them probably won't matter.

Here's some stats for you. So the average person gets inheritance in their late 60s because their parents die in their late 80s or whatever. And when that happens, they already are old and don't need the money. So if you are going to give your stuff to your kids, you should give it to them when people deem it the most impactful in the lives, which is between 24 and 35. Because that is where you can materially change someone's living conditions, the education that they can provide to their kids, whether they can have child care. Those are huge changes in someone's life when they're in their 60s. Their die is more or less cast, right? And so one, if you're going to leave it, them, leave it to them when a time it's impactful. Two, leaving it to someone in general or giving

it to someone hasn't earned it tends to alter their behavior in a negative way. So how many people have seen like the trust fund kids that just completely lose their minds and spend all their money and get into drugs because they have no challenge. They have no hardships. Everything has been removed from their lives. And then basically the real hardship becomes themselves. And so I think we benefit from struggle on a character. development perspective. And I see money as potential energy to be exchanged. And so if you give someone who's not prepared for a gob of potential energy that they did not earn or learn how to wield, it will ultimately burn them up and consume them. Number five is law of large numbers, which is,

let's say you have a bad day. A lot of people want to say, I need to change everything about my life because I had a bad day. But if I were to say, hey, you have 365 days in a year and a top, you know, a bottom 10% day, do you expect that to be a good feeling day? Well, no. Okay. Well, 365 days, bottom 10% days, we'd be 36 days a year. Well, there's 12 months in a year. That would mean that you'd have three of those per month, almost one a week. Wow, I get a bottom 10% day once a week. Well, that sucks. Yeah, on the flip side, you have top 10% days once a week too. And so I see these things because a lot of times we want to change our behavior and attribute some outside force that something happened when it might just be randomness. Like, if you have 365 days,

you're going to have top 10% days and bottom 10% days with the exact same conditions. So does it mean anything? Not really. And so for me, that helps me deal with the fact that sometimes I'm like, oh, this is a bottom 10% day. It's all it is. Don't need to change anything. Bottom 10% day. I'll give you another one that I borrowed called the Frame of the Veteran, which is from my good friend Dr. Cashie, which I think this is number six, which is if something bad happens, imagine that has already happened a thousand times before. And I will tell you the first time I ever used this, because how ridiculous this is. So I got this new flannel. I know. and my housekeeper cleaned it incorrectly.

And so it's like a nice material and it shrunk, which obviously looked even better. I'm kidding. Anyways, part of it was that it shrunk and then it wasn't like soft anymore. It got like all like those little like hairy beads all over. It's like when you wash wool. And in the moment, it was an expensive flannel

and I was kind of annoyed. And then I remembered the frame of the veteran. And I was like, okay, what if every time I washed a flannel, it always became like this and every flannel I had was this way and this just just how flannels were. What would I think? And I was like, I wouldn't think this was a big deal. And just like that, it was gone.

Something that would have been an annoyance just wasn't anymore. If you're stuck in traffic and you're not normally stuck in traffic, but every time in this hypothetical world, the frame of the veteran, every single time you got into a car, you'd get stuck in traffic. Would you be bothered by it? Probably not. Why? Because you're accustomed to it, you expected it.

And so what it means is we can basically retroactively alter our expectations and project a fictitious past onto our present so that we can alter how we respond to it. And so for me, the frame of the veteran has been very valuable. If you've been broken up with and it feels heartbreaking, But if you figured every single time you meet somebody, you're going to have a heartbreak on the thousandth time, how would you feel? Probably not that big of a deal, which means it can be not that big of a deal right now if you choose for it not to be. So a lot of us wish that we don't have problems, but problems are constant and sometimes they're a sign of progress. Because if you solve a problem,

then you create another problem. So if you solve your marketing problem, what do you create? A sales problem? If you solve your sales problem, what do you create? A customer success problem. It's called the never-ending cycle of problems and solutions. And so the idea is that we're wishing for something that will literally never happen. We want to live a problem-free life. But instead, in my opinion, we should try to choose which problems would you prefer? Because there absolutely are better and worse problems. And so for us, let's just see if we can do better problems that we can solve.

But wishing to eliminate problems is in and of itself something that will create a permanent problem in your life. So number eight, I think, is an exercise called a failure resume. in. I'm going to make a separate about my failure resume. I'll share with you guys. But a lot of people like to make their resumes about their accomplishments. But what I think that does is it gives us an inflated mental image of ourselves. And so if you make yourself a failure resume, I think it creates the equal opposite situation, which is you're like, man, I have really messed up a lot of times over and over again. And there's a lot of valuable things you can take from that. Number one is that, and probably the most important, I am still here.

And I think if there's one big takeaway from that, it's like, you have survived. And this actually leads to a frame in and of itself, which is, if it kills you, whatever this problem is, it won't matter because you'll be dead. And if it doesn't kill you, it means you can handle it. And so either way, you win. So when someone's like, I can't stand this, the statement in and of itself is self-conflicted. You can't stand it because you are standing it. You may be uncomfortable, but you are literally a living example of the fact that the statement was false. And if you truly can't stand it, you will die, in which case you won't need to stand it. So pretty much your default situation is standing, which I think is kind of cool. And so back to the failure resume is that you're like,

I am still here. Number two, none of those events, which felt like the end of the world, actually did end my world because I am still here. Number three, if you have any measure of success in your life, which everyone does, you just have to change what you're measuring on, you were able to have all of that failure and still have a level of success, which in some ways, I think is like a little bit of a sense of humor. Like, you can be like, wow, I'm such a dunce. Like, I can't believe I did all these things. I can't believe I'm still here. And I think what it does is rather than talk about all your accomplishments and set yourself up for a big ego failure, basically sit from the exact opposite, which is like, I can't even believe them here. What a win.

And the rest of this is all gravy. And again, I am not. not saying that every one of the frames that I just gave you are things that I always have operating at every single hour of every day. But they are tools that I deploy when I am feeling not as good. And if you want my two cents, so here's my number nine, I believe that the only real legacy is leaving the human race better than you found it. Not because they will remember you, because they won't. And even if they did, why do we care about the approval of people who aren't even alive yet. Fun fact. You can't say that you don't care about the opinion of others and yet care a lot about what people who aren't even alive yet will think about you while you are dead.

So I see education as the ultimate legacy as the ultimate thing that we can pass on. And so that is the reason that I've dedicated my life to doing that and passing on whatever learnings that I have because I feel like if all of us accumulate knowledge, which we all do in some settings, if we don't package that and pass it on to the next generation, that, in my opinion, is a waste of a life. Because everything that we have right now, the cameras that you're, you know, that this is being recorded on, the phone or the screen that you're watching this on, or whatever you're listening to this, like there are many past humans who live their entire lives to make one advancement that other humans pick that baton up and moved the ball forward. Many people who are

faceless and nameless to us today, but have made our lives better. And to me, that is a purpose that for me inspires me to continue to want to work even though I know they will not remember my name. And in many ways, because they don't remember my name or won't remember my name, it actually adds a lot of levity to my life because nothing is that big of a deal until I die. And when I die, it won't matter because I won't have to deal with it anyways. So the TLDR is that no one will remember you and that's okay.