The Game with Alex Hormozi - What It Really Takes to Find 'The One' | Ep 688

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

”The person you spend the rest of your life with will have the largest impact on who you become.” Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) explores the profound influence of choosing the right life partner on individual happiness, personal growth, and achievements. He emphasizes the correlation between well-being and strong relationships, the importance of shared values and growth, and the role of self-improvement in attracting a compatible partner, offering valuable insights for those seeking contentment through meaningful relationships and self-betterment.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:(0:37) - The impact of your significant other on your life(1:42) - The high standards in finding 'the one'(2:59) - The three camps of single people(4:22) - The importance of self-improvement in attracting a partner(7:11) - Aligning life goals and values in a relationship(11:45) - The philosophy of happiness and meaningful work(15:18) - The role of usefulness and mastery in life satisfactionFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

It would be harder for me to find someone now than to find someone when I did that. Finding somebody who basically would have gone through the same stimuli that I went through over the last decade with Layla to get to where right now, it would be almost impossible to put someone else through the same gauntlet so they could be shaped the same way. 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 wished Bezos, Musk, and Buffett had documented their journey.

so I'm doing it for the rest of us. Please share and enjoy. The person you spend the rest of your life with will have the largest impact on who you become, what you achieve, and how happy you are. But most people spend more time deciding what car they want to buy or what neighborhood they're going to live in than the person they're going to marry. And that's dumb. When I was in college, there was a graph they put on the board in my economics class that said that there's a 0.71 correlation between your subjective well-being and the strength of your relationship with your significant other. And so I was like, oh, so like everybody cool wants to be happy, which is we'll just put a pin in that for a second. But if that is their stated desire, you have a 0.71 correlation between the strength of your relationship with your significant other. And if you pair that with amount of time spent with friends, family, kids, alone and spouse over time, alone and spouse go up and everything else crashes down to like almost nothing. And so the person, that you're going to spend the most amount of time for the rest of your life with is going to be your spouse or partner, whatever. And so it makes sense to think about who you're going to be with.

I think people wildly underestimate how important it is. And the amount of single people that I see right now who are like, I don't want to be on the apps. The apps don't work. It's like, we're talking about finding the one person you're going to be with for the rest of your life. They're going to spend the most amount of time with out of all humans by like a wide, margin and you're like, I don't want to go on more than 10 dates. It's like, so you just want to spin the wheel 10 times to just pick whatever of the 10 that you get that you're like, I guess this one doesn't suck. And then that's it. That's the rest of your life. It's like, I just want the rest of my life to kind of not suck. I just don't get it. So like it's kind of like the inverse

of selling. Like in sales, you have a pipeline and you know what your conversion percentages are. The thing with finding significant other is you only need to find one. And I remember when I was way younger, like in high school going to college where, you know, some girls like, what are you looking for? We're like on a date thing and it did not go the way she was expecting. I was just like, these are all the things I'm looking for. And she was really discouraged. And she was like, wow, looks like you're just trying to find a unicorn. I was like, well, I only have to find one. She basically was making the insinuation. Well, so few people are going to meet those standards. And I was like, right. If everyone meets the standards or most people meet those standards,

how unique is that person? Probably not that unique. So I think, I believe in having exceptionally high standards, only second to the standards you hold yourself to. And I think there's a huge issue right now with all the single folks who are like, I want that unicorn. So either you've got like camp number one, I'll take anyone with a pulse. And like, that's one way to do it. But I think that you'll long term, you're just going to get the scraps of society, which sucks. Camp two, which is probably the more prevalent one, which is why so many people are struggling, is I want to have this amazing person. But I suck. But they should be so amazing that they, They should see me for who I am deep down, like deep, deep down.

Like, not like deeper, even deeper, like really deep down. They should be able to see that, right? Even though I'm fucked up and I don't have a job and I'm overweight and I'd never stick with my commitments and I never follow through. Like besides all that, and I lie sometimes. You know what I mean that I haven't been faithful for like past relationships. But still, and I'm not complimentary and like I don't have any values that they aspire to be it.

I actually really have nothing going for me. But besides all of that deep, deep down, I'm amazing. They just knew how to look. Right. That's like camp two. And I feel like that's a lot of people. And then camp three is, you know, I saw this meme that went like all over the internet, which is you can consolidate all of the relationship gurus dating advice to be successful. And they were making fun of that. And I was like, yes. That is at the end of everything. That's it. Right. And so like you can learn a hundred different hacks and most of them are about deception. Like realistically, like most of

the dating hacks that I see are about posturing and making people see you a certain way. But the thing is, on a long enough time, rise, they're going to figure out who you are. And so, like, it's short-term long-term. And so people don't want to do the harder long-term work of just, like, being somebody worth being with and want to find out how they can, like, optimize their dating profiles. And don't get me wrong. Like, it's an ad. So get nice images.

Sure, like, maybe spend five minutes on what you're going to have every single potential prospect in your life see. Okay, that makes sense. but the real work is like, okay, you go on the date, now what? Right? Like, you still have to, like, be somebody that somebody might want to be with. So I'm a big, like, big domino believer, which is, like, if I solve this one big thing, can I make all of the rest of these things go away?

I can do 100 tiny tweaks and hacks to try and find a girl who's out of my league. Or I can just make myself so worthy that I can get any girl no matter what league she's in. And if I just do that, I don't need to optimize my profile. I don't need to have all these things because if I just have, that I'm fine. And so I've just, I've tended to try and find that one thing in business, in fitness, in relationships, and that served me pretty well. Because some of the younger areas are like, man, like, I can't find girls because I don't have a job and I don't have money, but like these girls are so shallow? It's like, are they? Or it's just like having a career or being

ambitious, just a proxy for other values. And it's just an easy litmus test for them. It definitely changed over time. When I was in high school, it was different than it was when I was in college and different than when I was a young professional versus now. Earlier on, it was probably far more exclusively about fun and aesthetics. So, like, they have to look a certain way and they have to do what I want to do. Actually, if we chunk up, it probably has been that. It's just that what I want to do is changed. And so, like, when I was younger, it's like, I want to have fun. I want to do shit. You know what I mean? Like, I want to travel around. I want to be spontaneous, whatever. And as I've gotten older, I was like, I want to do big shit that will be hard. And I need someone who can handle that.

And so it's just a different type of person. Now, some people are growth oriented in general. and they shift with their seasons too. Like, Layla and I joke that, like, we're like, I'm really glad we didn't meet in high school. Because, but to be fair, when we were in high school, we were actually in the same, in the same, like, part of life. Like, she was just like a crazy partier, and so was I. And, like, that was, like, the season.

And we were like, we're going to go 10 out of 10 on that. And then we both went 10 out of 10 on school and had the same thing. We were like, we were absolute belligerent idiots for the first, you know, year of college. And we're like, wait, this isn't how I want to live my life. And both of us, like, cleaned our act up. So we lived really parallel life in that way, and then we left home and pursued fitness. Like we have a lot of parallels, like Persian dad, mom from France, split, like really interesting parallels lived with dad.

At the second half lived with Mon earlier. Like we have a lot of really interesting parallels. But anyways, I think the number one thing for me has been the ability to grow. Because if someone cannot adapt with new information, then even if you find somebody who's amazing now in 10 years, you will have changed. and if they haven't are capable of change, then you're guaranteed that you will grow apart. Well, because even if one person stays the same, the other person keeps growing,

there's going to be a gap. The second thing is that they enjoy doing the things that I do. And I think there's a micro level and a macro level. So micro level is like, having somebody who's into fitness just makes my life easier because, like, I'm going to go work out. And I had been in relationships where, like, they saw me working out as like a take.

Like, this could be time we're together, but instead you're going to go to the gym. And like, no. You know what I mean? Like, I don't want that. like if anything this is me investing in making the person that you want to be with better so like why would you not want that and so if somebody solved it that way that would be a you know a deal breaker and then there's the macro kind of interest which is like do you want to go after the same things as me and

i've always wanted to do epic things i want to do really big stuff and to do really big stuff do you have to overcome really big hurdles and obstacles and hardships for extended periods of time without reward and i needed somebody who could level one understand that. Level two, support and cheer for that. Level three be in the trenches with me. Now, I probably would have been fine with level two or level three. I just happened to have met level three. And now that I have seen that, I could never go back. But I could absolutely, having not seen what level three looks like, probably been ignorantly happy at level two. 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. We can out more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed them. 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 has to 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.

There's probably level two things that Layla and I have right now that I just don't know what level three looks like, but I'm content with level two because I don't know anything better. So growth, interest in the small interest, in the big. and making sure that we have aligned values. No one's willing to do hard things. That's why most people don't. Most people just like go on autopilot and then die. I'm a huge advocate of first dates.

Just go on tons of them. And then I think just being willing to maintain the bar that like, this was good, not great. And just not taking a good to a second date. It was probably tough for a lot of the first dates I went on because they were like, hey, let's hang out again. And it might just be because either they thought I was some amazing dude or I would say more realistically,

they thought it was a good date, but their bar for what was enough of a match was just lower than mine was. I just didn't, like, they were in their career, they didn't seem like that interested in business stuff. I mean, and for me, that's always been a hard one because I love business and I only talk about business and I think about business, and that's all I do all day.

And so if somebody wasn't into that, I could probably make the argument of like, okay, well, they'll be my respite away from this. But that presumes that I need a rest away from doing what I want to do. So like there's this idea that I've been trying to explore a lot more lately, which is around the concept of work life balance. Sure, there's like work life harmony, work life integration, but I think even the idea of work life balance presumes they are opposites. And so whenever anyone asks that, I already know what their views are. And so I've always

wanted no work life balance because they're just life in general. And there is no balancing. It just is. And so I think if I had somebody who didn't see, the world that way, which is most people, that would be tough. I would say also it would be harder for me to find someone now than to find someone when I did that. Now, I could find hookups, pretty girls, blah, blah, blah, like that, for sure, easier now. But finding somebody who basically would have gone through the same stimuli that I went through over the last decade with Layla to get to where right now, it'd be almost impossible to put someone else through the same gauntlet so they could be shaped the same way.

And so that's like one of the pros of like, if you do get married young or find a partner young, is that you guys can go through kind of the hardships together. And I think that creates a really deep bond. That being said, there's nothing wrong with like achieving a lot of stuff and then finding a girl who's above your former threshold. I think both paths work. I've seen both paths work.

I just know the one that I did. There's two concepts I'll bring up on this. So one is people who want to be happy treat it like, I want to eat so good, I'm never hungry again. Or I want to sleep so well, I never need to sleep again. But I think happiness is much more like that than it is this achievement thing that you like check a box off. It doesn't really work that way.

Secondly, I think that all the people that I know who obsess about happiness are the least happy people. Outwardly, sure, but they're the ones who are like committing suicide. Nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do. but I'm just saying, I worry about that because it's a goal that by having it as a goal, it automatically sits outside of you, which means there's space between you and the goal, which means you're not actually happy. My goal is to be happy, which means you aren't right now. So I have made meaning, which is ironic because I don't find things inherently meaningful,

but I have found meaningful work as I deem meaningful to be the thing that I derive the most joy from. And so I have it broken down to a more tactical level, which is what days have I enjoyed and looked back on and been proud of myself for that day? And over probably a three or four year period, I just looked at the good days and the bad days and the bad days had in common. I looked at what the good days had in common. I've just over time minimized the things that happened on the bad days and maximize the things that happen on the good days, even to big investments. Like, I am much happier when I work out, rather, not even much happy when I work out. When I look back on, on my day. This was a good day. Almost always has a workout in it. And usually with people I like.

And so workouts take probably longer for me than most people because I'm not the, I'm in and out in 45 minutes and I did my morning routine and I can send out 40 emails from whatever. Everyone's different. But for me, I work out for like two hours. It's because I like to. And so I do it. And I do it with people that I like. And so I'm willing to invest the time because like what's the point anyways. Like, why make all the money? To what? Enjoy it? Like, I enjoy doing that, so I do that every day. I like writing. So I write for, you know, four to six hours a day. And there's probably the two biggest activities that I do. And if I can write with somebody that I like, then I do something I like with people I like. And I think that that's probably been the simplest formula

is doing things you like with people you like and trying to maximize as much time as I can on that bucket. And then everything else I try and minimize as overhead or outsource. I think the research study probably had something to the degree of, like, people rating themselves on subjective well-being and then also rating their strength of relationship with spouse. So it had a very strong correlation. But, like, again, that's because most people are like, why am I not happy? They also see a problem with them not happy. They have it as an expectation of the world and the universe that they should be happy. And to the same degree, people have an expectation that life should be meaningful.

Like, why does life need to be meaningful? Why does the universe need to make you happy? It doesn't. You can choose that, but it's just like not a requirement. And so they think there's something wrong with it when reality, like, you're a lot. live and you might procreate, you might not, but like, that's the only reason that you're here on the relationship video, broke my wedding ring. It's a sign. I don't know, Silicon. It's like my third one. I break him every like two years. Well, that's really what it comes down to. So like if I,

if I boil it down, like happiness is is fleeting because you get hungry again, you get sleepy again, meaning you can only really tell at the end. Like, did I do something that contributed? But on the day-to-day perspective, I can know that what I'm doing is useful. And if what you're doing is not useful, then I think that that's harder. And I also think that men and women are different here. So we use like happy, I hate the term in general, but like, I think men and women want different things out of life. And I think we bucket them together.

It's also the same degree like why therapy with men doesn't work necessarily the same. We have to have a different approach. People think men need more love. And I just don't think that's true. I think we want more respect. And like you get respect from being useful. And so I make that the goal. Like no one casts aside a man who is useful.

And being useful is an attractive trait. Like if you see someone who's really good at something, it's a contributing member of society. They do stuff like that help other people. We want them here. Like you get status from that. And so that means that skill mastery in a very real way can help you attract them you want, which is why I indexed a ton of my life around getting better at stuff.

So like, and also from my, a stress perspective. People are like, I'm, I see sometimes these podcasts from successful entrepreneurs and they're like, man, I'm still worried I could lose it all tomorrow. I don't have that. Like, I'm genuinely not afraid of losing it all tomorrow because I have lost it before and I got it back. If you were lucky, because there are guys who get lucky. And if you are lucky, then absolutely you should be worried about it because if you do lose it, you don't know how to get it back. But if you have skills, then like, I know that I can go to any business and help grow it. And that's valuable. That's useful. And so even reframing the word value is usefulness is probably also an

easier way to do it for people to kind of like comprehend. But I think if you make that the goal, it also takes it away from you. Well, I have a friend who's single and struggles because he's not happy. Successful, but not happy. And so he obsesses on happiness. And I was like, do you know that when you obsess on happiness, all you do is think about you all day? It's all you're doing. You're just Think about you all fucking day. How useless.