The Iced Coffee Hour - The Biggest Lies You’ve Been Told About Money | Tom Bilyeu on Wealth, Love, and Poverty

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Netsuite: Take advantage of NetSuite’s FREE KPI checklist: https://www.netsuite.com/ICED Streamyard: Start creating high-quality content easily with https://clickurl.ca/ICH-StreamYard NEW: Join us at http://www.icedcoffeehour.club for premium content - Enjoy! Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - INTRO 00:43 - You need to keep your ego in check 06:12 - Understanding business at a high level 11:30 - Lessons from 650 self-help books 15:59 - How to turn YOUR truth into OBJECTIVE truth 27:38 - This too shall pass 31:50 - How to keep pushing EVEN AFTER you achieve your goals 40:03 - Why hustle culture is a necessary evil 48:02 - Why Tom isn't having kids 01:02:05 - Managing marriage and avoiding divorce 01:15:34 - Why journaling is so important and how to do it well 01:27:19 - Tom's biggest insecurity 01:30:54 - "You HAVE to read these books" - Tom 01:31:39 - The meaning of life... or lack thereof *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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They are going to give everything. They are going to sacrifice relationships, fun, partying. You're just going to sit on the sidelines and be like, I shouldn't have to do that. Fine. But you're going to get eaten alive by all of the people that are willing to do that. And in that moment, I learned one of the most important pieces of advice that I have for people. And that is... Tom, thank you so much for coming back on the iced coffee hour.

This means a ton. Every single time I come to your house, aka two times. I am just flabbergasted. I am gobsmacked. This is a, it's a mansion, it's beautiful. It's one of my favorite houses I've ever seen in my entire life. It's in a great location. You have this mansion. You sold a company for a billion dollars. You're married to the love of your life. You also have impact theory where millions of people on a daily basis take your voice as gospel. They worship your opinion. You're an incredibly intelligent and accomplished person. How do you keep your ego in check? That question is always very interesting to me.

So the punchline is that I have failed so many times in my life that keeping my ego in check is the world's easiest thing. I don't even have to think about that. If you are living at the edge of your ability, which I hope that people are, you're going to constantly fail at a thing that you're trying to do. Now, it's exciting because it means that you're constantly pushing your abilities and you're actually getting better, but it also means that every step feels precarious. So I don't move through the world with precious few exceptions being like, oh, I got this.

It's like, what am I doing? Why am I walking this razor's wire? I've already been successful, but that's just not how my mind works. So I want to see, like the central question of my life is how good can I get at the things that matter to me. And to do that, you really do have to put yourself in a position where it's adapt or die. And so if you imagine when you're in the gym, it's easy to understand. Like there are just some weights you cannot pick up. the humility of trying to pick up a weight and not being able to do it, or trying to pick up a

weight, you can't do it and somebody else warms up with that weight. You know, I'm in the intellectual gym every day of business. And it's the same thing. There are some weights I pick up that other people look at me in awe, and then I watch people warm up with the weight that I can't move. So if you are playing hard enough, humility will find you, you won't have to seek it out. What do you think the balance is between confidence and caution? because you obviously need confidence to forge through and build such a big business and, you know,

had the willpower to push through that. So there's got to be a balance, right? Is it 80-20? This one is deeply personal. So I think the marker of a real entrepreneur is that you can tolerate an extreme amount of risk. Because when I think about the amount of risk that I played with in my life, I actually wouldn't advise other people to do it. And so the best advice I can give to somebody who's looking at the entrepreneurial path and saying, do I want to go down this is if there's anything else that you think you could find joy in doing in life,

go do that thing. Because stability matters. Like there's a real thing to stability. Stability, the people with the strongest home lives can take the biggest risks. So what that means is if you have stability, then you can go take these big risks. But if you're already on this just completely unstable footing because you're constantly betting things in a way. way that makes you deeply uncomfortable. Some amount of your brain power is just on risk mitigation and all of your fears and you're not going to be able to be bold. There's an idea in, I think it's

F1 in racing where the day you retire is the day you're no longer willing to go for the gap, right? Because when you move for that gap to get around another car, it's usually the most dangerous thing you're going to do on the track that day. And this is how people get injured and killed. And there will come a point in your career where you're no longer willing to go for that gap. And that's when you know, okay, I'm not going to be able to win anymore with that hesitancy. And there is a similar thing in entrepreneurship. You can't be reckless, though. So it's the balance for me isn't so much, you know, how do I make sure that I'm on terra firma and take big risks? The balance is really, is this risk the right risk to take? Because if you're just blindly

putting it all on black or whatever over and over and over, you're just guaranteed to lose. There's no strategy. But if you have strategy, then it becomes, okay, what, how many chips am I willing to put on this bet to see, like, if we can really get that gap? And that's going to be hyper individual and you're going to be wrong a lot, which is why rule number one of business is avoid a mortality event. So when I'm putting chips on the table, I'm saying, okay, you try to get close.

What are the odds that this succeeds? Oftentimes, the odds are way against you. And so you just say, okay, I need to be able to. survive if this is a loss. And this is the thing about giving advice about entrepreneurship that breaks my heart because it's not enough to be a good person, to be kind, to want to do great things for the world. You also have to be good in that moment to know exactly how many chips to put on the table, to be accurate in your assessment of what the odds are that this will actually get accomplished. And then you have to have that willingness to say, even though it seems

pretty impossible, I'm going to do it anyway, knowing that I can't figure it out from the shore. I have to dive in, I have to swim, I have to be out over my head before I can actually figure out the path. And that's where most people just are not going to be comfortable. Because in that moment, when you're out over your head and you still haven't found the path yet, that's emotionally devastating, especially when hecklers in boats next to you are making fun of you. They're saying what an idiot you are. They're saying, I told you back on the shore that this was going to end up just like this.

Now, if you get in the boat, you lose. If you swim back to shore, you lose. If you keep pressing forward, you might win, but you also might drown. That's entrepreneurship, man. That and then really understanding business. And this is the thing that I am really trying to get across to people.

It's not enough to have big balls and swim. You actually have to understand business. What's something that people need to understand about business? in our last podcast, you said that no matter what, you could fall back on making $2 to $3 million a year working for another company, teaching them what you know. What are some of those things that you know that people should know if they want to get into business?

Okay, so this is the hard thing that I find with giving business advice. I'll give you broad advice because I despise when people won't give an answer. But the reality is if you pick a problem in your business, then I can really help you because now we have specifics and we can start drilling into a problem. at a high level, the answer is easy, but it's going to make it seem like, oh, I understand the physics of progress. Now I'm ready to go. So the high answer is the physics of progress. There's only one way to make progress in anything. I don't care if it's being a better parent, getting laid,

better relationships, or building a business. It is simply, I have a goal. I know what my goal is. I'm very precise on what I'm trying to accomplish. It's where most people fail. It's are super vague. But you're going to be really clear. Then I need to identify the obstacle. Okay. Being able to identify the obstacle, the rarest of humans can do that. And so another trap where people get fooled because they think they understand the concept, but they just don't have the skill set, either because they haven't done the reps or their brain just doesn't work like that. And so they're never able to actually identify what's stopping them. But a good question to ask is, I know where I am, I know where I want to be. Why won't I automatically get where I want to go? There's some obstacle. If you can get that

right, then you're going to come up with your best guess, aka a hypothesis. What's my hypothesis? and what I would need to do in order to overcome that obstacle and make meaningful progress to my goal. Again, most people are terrible at that. First of all, they probably didn't have clarity on where they're trying to go. Then they did a very bad job of identifying the real obstacle that's standing between them and where they're trying to get to. And then the experiment that they decided to run actually was dumb and was never going to overcome that obstacle anyway, which they had misidentified because they were vague, right? Like this is where all of this begins to fall down.

But if you can do the physics of progress well, hyper clear goal, clarity on what one of the probably many obstacles are that stand between you and your goal. And then you come up with a very well thought out thing that you can do that's going to help you overcome that. And then you do that. Now, this is the real big part of this. And I hope somebody in your fan base is actually drawing this out so that they can visualize this. Okay. So you just ran the experiment. of what to do to overcome the obstacle to get to your goal,

but it failed. This is like the pit of death that you can find all failed entrepreneurs in. Here, you have to be completely willing to stare nakedly at your inadequacies. In that moment, you have to say, okay, all 10 fingers of responsibility you're pointing back in me.

This wasn't because of COVID lockdowns or anything like that. I have done something wrong, but I don't yet understand what it is. Otherwise, I wouldn't have failed in my experiment. So I'm going to look at this failure, which, by the way, you need to have metrics going into the test saying, I expect this written down. I expect this test to yield this result so that you don't trick yourself. Did it yield that result?

Yes or no? No. Okay. Why not? It's all my fault. That much I know. So now I'm going to figure out what I could have done differently to get the result that I actually wanted. And now I have a better informed hypothesis of what to do the next time.

This is a scientific method recontextualized for business. So now I'm smarter this time and I'm going to redo my experiment, which will hopefully make more progress. But the reason people all die in that dip where it didn't quite work the way that they thought it was going to is they point all 10 fingers at the external world. They do not accept full and complete responsibility that their life is an exact reflection of their choices. Every failing in my life, every single one of them is because I did not do the right thing. That means that I wasn't good enough yet. I wasn't not smart enough yet, whatever, but it's all my fault.

And people hate that. People are already typing in the comments as they hear me say these words, that that's a dumb way to view the world, whatever, whatever. Just telling you, it's the only way to make progress. Although before we go into that, we talk a lot about business in this podcast, and running a business could be tough. And if you run a business, you know that managing a bunch of different softwares and spreadsheets and plugins can be incredibly time inefficient,

and a lot of the times, it takes a lot more effort than what it's worth for. But with today's sponsor NetSuite, all you have to do is remember these three numbers. 36,000, 25, and 1. 36,000 because 36,000 companies have already upgraded to NetSuite and stop doing things like typing in manual data entry or sifting through scattered information. 25 because NetSuite has spent 25 years helping businesses drive down their costs. And one, because NetSuite is an all-in-one solution that allows you to manage all of your KPIs or key performance indicators with one efficient system. NetSuite can help reduce mistakes that come from manual data entry, and trust me, there are always mistakes, and also they'll prevent the busy work from scaling with your business.

So get a full picture of your business and help make better decisions faster. And you can start by downloading NetSuite's popular KPI's checklist for absolutely free at netsuite.com slash iced. Again, that's netsuite.com slash iced to get your free KPI's checklist today. NetSuite.com slash iced. And now what that said, let's get back to the podcast. You did a video, a Tom Talk, like two years ago or something. about an analysis on 650 books on success that you had read up until that moment. I want to know, first of all, why did you read 650?

Because I feel like you could have got, like 50. You know what I mean? There's diminishing returns between 50 and 650. I feel like buy a lot. And then also what were the key takeaways of those ultra-successful people? What's preventing people from being successful, at least with what you've learned from those 650 books? First, let me separate the headline of a YouTube video from the reality.

reality. So I've probably read way more than 650 books, but obviously not all on one subject. And I think it's very important for people to have a very broad understanding of how the world works. So when we talk about the physics of progress, you have to get good at knowing where you want to go, the obstacle standing between you. That obstacle is the world. It's other people. It's what the human brain is like. So if you don't understand psychology, if you don't understand personality types, if you don't understand personas, if you don't understand economics, like there are a thousand things you might not understand, and that's going to keep you blind. And so you're going to keep doing these really basic guesses at what is going to allow you to leapfrog that obstacle and get to your ultimate goal. A given analogy, the more words you have for different shades of blue, the more shades of

blue a person can actually see, because you're giving a category in the brain for it to disambiguate those different shades. This is real. There have been studies on this. And so when you learn more, through life experience, it doesn't have to be a book. And honestly, at this point, I probably watch more YouTube videos than I read books. Whatever, you're getting knowledge in a condensed form where other people are telling you, hey, I went through this whole thing, and here's what I took away from it. All of that reading, all of that YouTube watching is giving you different shades of blue. Now, when you have all of these different elements that you can plug these ideas into,

you have a much more nuanced understanding of what's stopping you and what the potential options are. Like one thing I find with beginning entrepreneurs where I can really help them is just I've done so many deals now. I know options. I know things like they'll skitch out for six months over, oh, do I go into this deal? Do I not? And I'll ask one simple question. What's your out? What do you mean?

What's your out? Do you have a 30 day out where you retain all of the IP that you came in with? They retain all of the IP that they came in with. And so if this doesn't go well, you can back out at 30 days for any reason whatsoever. get everything back that you started with. Because if you have that, what are you worried about? Try it. Go into the deal, right?

But it's not understanding all the different deal flows out there. So same thing with deal structure. You can build something or you can buy something. For most beginning entrepreneurs, the thought of buying something is the most terrifying thing ever. They don't understand. You can actually buy something through future profits. So this stuff starts getting complicated,

but this is why I read, right? I have a lot of shades of blue. I understand how to structure a deal. or how to work with an employee that somebody else might have thought, oh, there's nothing we can do. And so you just have so many more options on the table because you have, instead of only learning from experience, you're learning from the experience of others.

And so you can take in just an immense amount of options. It's hugely important. So to further the analogy, I found that this whole idea of shades of blue happens in language as well. So I'm learning Greek because my wife is Greek. And so it's been amazing. But what I find I do is I will take words that sound like the 30% of the language that I actually understand.

And I cram it into like, oh, that sounds like this, so it must be that. Or some variation of that, right? It's a conjugation of a word I understand. And you can really lead yourself astray with that. So I'll give you an example in English. For somebody who's never heard English before, when you say leak or lick, to them it's like, That's the same word, right? But we know leak and lick are wildly different words that mean very different things.

But when you're trying to cram those two ideas into the same thing because it's all you understand, you end up in a very misled place. Reading, encountering information, talking to other people, it's just letting you learn the whole language of life or the whole language of business or to see those 52 shades of blue so that you can really begin to discern different patterns. that other people are going to miss. The human brain is on autopilot a lot. And when it's on autopilot, it's drawing different patterns, recognizing different things and drawing assumptions,

maybe unfounded assumptions about certain things. And then it can cause a shift in beliefs to see a belief that's subjective as objective truth. And you went on about this, I don't know if it was a Tom talk or a podcast, and you said that this can cause a lot of destruction and relationships, This can ruin your job. This can keep you poor. Mistaking opinion for objective truth.

How can a viewer, or just anyone in general, recognize these beliefs that they have are not the objective truth? And then how can they get closer to the objective truth? Okay. Yeah. This is the big one. Here's how you accept that it is true that your beliefs are not accurate. it. The human brain is running a simulation that you call your life. Now, I don't need you to believe that you're actually in a computer simulation, just accept that your brain is not reporting back

objective reality. It couldn't. Now, how do I know that? So I'm looking at your jacket, it's green, I'm looking at yours, it's like tan, orange, brown. And I'm just reading that as color, but the reality is that a certain number of photons and a given wavelength of light is reflecting off that back to my eye. Now, if I needed to do the calculations of all of that to determine the quality and the color of those objects, I'm going to get eaten, right? Especially if it's a discerning that those are orange stripes in the bush and not another leaf. So we need to not see things as they are, which in the case of vision is photons of a certain wavelength reflecting off of an item. We instead need a very rapid interpretation of that, green, blue,

orange, whatever. Once you understand, and what I'm about to say is literally true, you can only detect 0.0.0.035% of the available electromagnetic spectrum. So what we think of as everything, right, as we look at, we're seeing everything. The reality is you see less than, you know, a half a percent is absolutely minuscule amount that we see. That's your brain, just going all that other stuff. It's too much. I don't need it in order to survive. So cool, your brain is running a simulation that is designed to keep you alive long enough to have kids that have kids. It is not optimized to fulfill you or to make you happy or to make you win at the game of entrepreneurship, just to keep you alive long enough to have kids that have kids.

Okay, that's at school. All right. So once I accept that my brain is reporting very limited information and it's giving it to me in a way that isn't accurate but rather useful, now I'm just like, okay, well, wait a second. If my brain is interrupting the flow of quote-unquote reality to distill it down into useful, what if it's ever wrong? And if you've ever seen an optical illusion, you know that the brain is wrong. It's often wrong. And since I know you guys deal in money, man, we know people make dumb decisions when it comes

to money because there's so much emotion. So the problem is when we use the computer as the dominant analogy for understanding the human mind, we get led very astray. Because even in the face of the loss of a loved one, a computer just keeps running. We'll run perfectly fine in a dysfunctional household as it will in a happy household. Doesn't matter. Humans are completely the opposite. We make decisions based on emotion.

The emotion comes first and then we lather rationality on top of it. And oftentimes that rationality has nothing to do with what's actually happening. So as I look at the brain and I think about that, I'm like, wait, that's me. That's what I'm doing. So hold on a second. I need to have a different metric for what is true other than emotion, which is what most people use. I am angry. Therefore, I must have a reason to be angry. Therefore, they must be wrong and I must be right. Otherwise, I wouldn't feel like this. Not true. All of that is because you've been building beliefs and values over the course of your entire life.

That's culture. That's being raised. And so now you filter a action to your response based on how it makes you feel. because we know from neuroscience that your body will give you the emotion first, and then your brain will justify the emotion. And people always justify it. They don't go, hey, I'm not going to believe this. I'm not going to trust this emotion. So I just don't trust my emotions. I'm like, I'm having an emotion.

It means something. It's tied to a belief or usually if you're feeling angry. It's tied to insecurity, if I'm completely honest. And so in business, I have just found, it does not make sense to make decisions based on insecurity or emotion. it makes sense to base that on what am I trying to achieve? So everything comes back to the physics of progress. What is that goal?

What's the obstacle standing between me and that goal? Oftentimes it's my emotion, which is why I say a lot of times people don't understand. And so now I'm going to say, how do I discern what is true? And this is where, if I could just speak to everybody on X, formerly Twitter for a second, boys and girls,

the whole point here has to be to figure out what is true. So you need to know what is ground truth. to even get that close, you have to understand what your North Star is. So I will say my North Star is to reduce human suffering and increase human flourishing, which I will round to what I call fulfillment. Not everybody's going to share that North Star, but that's mine. So now I'm saying, okay, I have a goal and my brain is a prediction machine. So if, based on my beliefs and my values, my simplified interpretation of what's going on,

I should be able to make a prediction. If I do this, I will get this outcome. Now, if I do that and I get that outcome, then my base assumptions were correct, and I'm close to ground truth because I can predict the outcome of my actions. If I think, oh, here are all the things that I believe to be true about this situation, and therefore it makes this hypothesis, and then I do the thing, and I don't get the result I expected, there is by definition something wrong with my base assumptions. Now, if people will run that quick assessment and say, oh, there's clearly something that I have

misunderstood about this situation, which is why I did not get the desired outcome, then they can actually make the physics of progress work. But unfortunately, most times people don't go, oh, there's something wrong with the way I view the world. They say the world's out to get me, unfair business practices, whatever, whatever. But before we get into that, if you guys are looking to create high quality content just like us at a very low cost, unfortunately, unlike us, we strongly recommend you guys try out our sponsor, StreamYard. For those unawares, Streamyard is a live streaming platform that allows you to create really high quality content with just a click of a button. All you need is a camera and an internet connection, and from there, you could stream content

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And now what that said, let's get back to the episode. Let me ask you this, because you're talking about not leading with emotion. But what about intuition? Why do some people just have an intuition that they lead with that says this is what I should be doing because I feel it? My emotions are telling me that's the right choice. Let me follow it and it turns out successful. Well, there are definitely going to be times where that works perfectly. And so the question becomes, what is it about their intuition that is serving them?

So your brain is a prediction engine. It is constantly trying to learn from its environment and say, when I do this, I get this result. Now, if you have a very strong track record of trying a thing and getting a vision, very predictable result. Now it's like it will come to you in the form of emotion, which at the risk of derailing your whole podcast, I would just say it's probably warrants taking a second to say, what is emotion? So emotion starts in the body, not the brain. Read Lisa Feldman-Barritt's book how emotions are made. So your body will cough up an emotion. The reason it coughs up an emotion and not an idea is that you can process data faster and vaster in the subconscious. So the subconscious is

taking in data from your gut, from your skin, from your blood vessels from everything. You're never consciously aware of it, but you're getting all these signals, which is why I will say if you have anxiety, it probably starts in your gut, not in your brain. Set that aside. Just for now. I like that. I like that. I want to come back to it. I know that one's important to you. Very. But we'll rock with this idea for a second, that the body and the mind are creating the emotion together. And so it's going to speak to you in a form that the subconscious can understand and react to very quickly, which is emotion. Language is a far more narrow bandwidth communication form. So you're going to get a feeling. Move away from the bush. Do this deal. Whatever.

Now, if your intuition is trained very well, then you might really be right. You're never going to be right 100% of the time, but you might really be right. And it's like, hey, that intuition, because it is trained, is serving you well. If that intuition is poorly trained or its intuition built on a different arena and now it no longer applies to this new arena, then you're in for a rude awakening. You're talking about anxiety. Let's come back to that. It starts in the gut. Wouldn't anxiety start in the brain because you're overthinking certain things? And maybe you're thinking so many scenarios at the same time that you, this could happen, this could happen, this could happen. And then you go spiral into the worst case. Wouldn't it start there? Yeah. So it is a two-way street.

So what I would say is if you're not in a bodily state where you're prone to anxiety, you can start thinking all the negative thoughts you want and it just never seems to catch fire. Whereas if you are in a state, and I know because I live this nightmare, if you're in a state where you've just massively disrupted your microbiome and you're thinking negative thoughts, now, again, the emotion starts in the body, you're feeling off. And you ask yourself, why am I feeling off? And then your brain goes, oh, you're feeling off because you've got that test coming up. You're feeling off because you don't know how you're going to make rent. And then you're like, yeah, that is why I'm feeling off. And now it begins to escalate. You start thinking, I really am worried about that.

And then you start feeling more and more anxious. It takes two to tango. But if you've ever heard of generalized anxiety disorder, that's where people feel anxious. And they have no idea why. They have nothing to pin it to. That alone, which I have experienced, and it is horrible, I'll just tell you right now. I'm not thinking anything negative. I'm in the middle of something amazing. I've got no looming deadlines. Nothing bad is happening. There, I mean, I don't remember specifically But I'm sure, even on the day when I got all my wealth, which is the story, I think we talked about last time, even on that day, I'm sure I had moments where I was anxious and was like, why am I feeling anxious? There's nothing bad in my life right now. Bodily.

It's just kicking off. Once I solved that problem through diet, it didn't make my anxiety go to zero. One, I'm prone to anxiety. My mom is prone to anxiety. So there is certainly going to be a genetic factor. And then there is, if I'm thinking about negative things, it is for sure going to make me feel more anxious, no, matter what. If I have a legitimate thing to be anxious about, it's for sure going to make it worse. So it's not like it's only the body, but there's an accelerant, a massive accelerant, when you

haven't addressed the concerns of the body. What I do, because sometimes I get in this train of mind where I overthink everything, and I think the worst case scenario is going to happen. So what I've learned, I read it in a book somewhere where someone told me to do this, write down everything that's bothering you, just put it down. And usually it'll be two to three to three. five things, come back to it in a month or six months, and then think, did any of that ever happen or did it matter? Every single time I've done that, I've looked back at him. It's like, it was so silly. It was so stupid. I think that's a really smart way to handle, I need to keep moving forward. And so I need some sort of what I'll call a pattern interrupt. I need a way to pattern interrupt

these negative thoughts. And for me, it's this two shall pass, right? The ancient Buddhist saying, which is just unbelievably wise. Like, that one's great. And there's a more modern version from Phil Jackson, the coach. Unbelievable guy. He wrote a book called 11 Rings. Absolutely fantastic. I encourage anybody to read it.

But he says, things come together. Things fall apart. And accepting the transience of both good and bad emotions, I think is really useful. It's like, hey, this really may be as bad as I think. This really may be a problem in my life. This may actually change the course of my life, but I'll laugh again. How do you get over the fear of loss? I don't think you do.

So I'm not a person that I'm not trying to get rid of the negative voice in my mind. That one, it just has not seemed possible. So if you gave me a magic button and said that I could press it, I might, might, though the negative voice does make me take things seriously, although mine feels maybe a little more supercharged than it needs to be. But yeah, I'm not trying to get rid of that negative voice. I'm trying to leverage it as a habit loop trigger. So I want to get into an empowering habit loop.

I need something to remind me. The thing that actually reminds me to step into an empowering mindset is often the negative voice, saying you're never going to win. This is bound to lose. This is all overwhelming. Whatever. Then you go, ah, cool.

Thank you for reminding me. Boom. You can't stop me. I can do anything I set my mind to. This is about the physics of progress, getting in that mode and just exercise. and getting this done just by shifting into that what Jordan Peterson calls a micro personality, which I think is the right way, because I have a weak micro personality, and then I have a strong micro personality. And at times, I will flip from one to the other. What is a micropersonality?

So he refers to it with an alcoholic. And he says, when an alcoholic is desperate to get their next drink, they will lie, they will cheat, they will steal. It's like, is that really them? Or is that them in the grips of alcoholism. And if you can get them sober, they'll stop acting like that. I thought, ooh, that is so true, man. And so all of us have like these micro personalities when you're afraid, when you are feeling confident. Like, you just act and think in a different way. It's a whole nest of neuronal firings, if I'm honest. Like, if I were going to reduce it down to what's actually happening, like you're just in a different pattern of brain firing. And so all of a sudden, you feel differently. And that feeling allows you to act differently, to be more bold, to take more

risks or conversely, you're feeling worse, which then makes you more likely to step back, to be protective, to turtle up. When you're in the wrong micro personality for the situation, you've got to switch yourself. And this is why coaches and generals are so powerful because what they're able to do is move an entire team or army from one micro personality, retreat, fear, whatever, into the other one where it's like attack, move forward. and if you can shift a group of people's micro personality, which as a CEO is a big part of your job,

then you can do things that other people think are impossible. But it's not easy. We spoke with Mark Manson, if you know who that is. Very much so. Yeah, that was a few days ago, four years ago. He said after he released his book and it was a success, like the day after was one of the worst days of his entire life. He also spoke to someone else after he'd been struggling with this like post-success,

sale accomplishment depression, who I think exited their startup and they were extremely successful. They sold it for a bunch of money. And that person was struggling as well. Did you experience something similar after you sold Quest Nutrition where you had a state of depression, a loss of sense of self, maybe? Or were you just ecstatic? Definitely not. So I learned that lesson. I am very glad. So I went through the same thing, just not at the sale of Quest. So when I was back at Awareness Technologies, the first company that I was trying to get rich with, I was worth on paper $2 million, and I thought, okay, I'm a multimillionaire, I'm miserable.

My wife just pulled me aside and said, you are so unhappy that if you don't change, it's going to ruin this marriage. So I was like, whoa, this is weird. So I was like, how am I living the cliche of money can't buy happiness? Square knows that in hospitality, efficiency is everything. That's why the system lets you take payments. track sales, handle inventory, manage staff, send invoices, and keep up with finances all in one place.

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you will earn a tremendous amount of respect for yourself. So it's really in becoming capable of what I call the championship performance that matters. Winning the championship ring does not. So if your whole career is about winning the championship ring and you're not building yourself esteem around becoming the kind of person that can win a championship, when you finally get that championship ring, then you're going to be like, what was all this for? I don't feel differently about myself. No, how could you?

A championship ring is never going to make you feel differently about yourself. Money is never going to make you feel differently about yourself. So you've got to decide what do I value in me and other people? Am I acting in accordance with that every day? And then intentionally build your self-esteem and your identity around that. Because no one, and I mean no one, can guarantee that you'll ever win a championship. There's so many great athletes. They never won a championship.

And, dude, the brutality of life is they're forgotten. because they didn't win that championship. So I get it. I get why it matters and people want to play for that and they want the world to think that they're extraordinary. A hundred percent.

And that need, that sickness is powerful. It's part of what drives me. I left Quest on a Monday, started Impact Theory on a Tuesday. Is that mental illness? Is that a need for something that I can't fill in myself?

Partly? Is it also that I want to do something wonderful in the world that I know better than to tie my sense of self to success? Yes. Is it a recognition that the only thing that's ever going to matter is, are you pursuing meaning and purpose? Yes? And so it is a cornucopia of desires, competing desires, of negative things about being a human, positive things about what you want to do. As long as you're in control of that, you'll be fine. As long as you understand that you will

never exit a company for so much money that you never need to matter to yourself or to anybody else again. Just doesn't work like that. Yeah, I think for Mark, his big thing was that he felt like the bar had been set so high by his success that from a personal progress standpoint, he could never live up to that again and that the best is behind you. Does that ever cross your mind where you worry about like, have I peaked, have I done as much as I can? Does that ever worry you? It does, but it isn't the thing that I think about a lot. So I would consider that the negative voice. So I can't get that out of my head, right? I don't want to live the last 30 years of my life, irrelevant, unable to do what these young whippersnappers can do. Like, that's hard, man.

And so for guys, when I heard this, what I believe to be a truism, it really landed for me. The worst day of a man's life is the day he realizes women find him harmless. That's terrifying. when women are like, oh, he's so cute, because you're like a little old man. Dude, that's brutal. That is a brutality that comes for us all. And so in business, yes, do I fear that for sure. But I recognize that as the negative voice. I recognize that as the same voice that tells me I'll never be good enough.

So I know better. So pattern interrupt, use that as a habit loop trigger to remind myself to step back into my empowered micro personality. I'm not going to spend time there. So what I want to think about is, hey, right now today, what am I doing that is not only exciting for me and making my life better, but makes the lives of other people better. And that will inevitably change as I grow and try different things. And I'm cool with that. I've got a whole thing on phases, which we can talk about later if you want, but I think it's very important to understand what phase of life of my inn right now.

Live your life for that phase, but with an acknowledgement that phase is temporary. And so don't do things just because on my deathbed I will feel differently. But don't be blind to the fact that you will feel differently on your deathbed about the moment that you're in right now. And so there is some like hedging your bets, right? So like I am very wise to make my marriage my number one priority. Business comes second. But business is a huge part of my life. Even though I know when I'm on my deathbed, I'm not going to be like, oh, man, I'm so glad that I worked all those hours.

I get that. I already know that's coming for me. So I'm very thoughtful to make sure that there is something that is awesome about the failure. In fact, that's the right way to think about it. Don't ask yourself, what would I do if I knew I couldn't fail? Because Dodds are you're going to fail. Instead, ask yourself, what would I do and love every day even if I were failing? And so I try to live my life like that where I'm like, hey, I'm in here.

I'm covered in the blood of my enemies. Like I'm fighting. I'm doing the best that I can. But I might die on this battlefield. And so I had better have really believed this was worth dying for. Well, some of it I feel like is you have different chapters throughout your life. And maybe when you're younger, that's the time where you could spend all of your efforts building a business.

When you're older, you can't quite do that as you could when you're 25, let's say. So maybe your priorities shift over time. It's more relationship-based. Then over time, maybe it's children if you have children. And it just can develop over time. I think that is a very complex statement that as the interviewer, I will let you guide the conversation, but I've got a whole thing about how to think about meaning, purpose, kids, relationships as you move forward. My advice for the average person, which of course nobody listening

to your podcast thinks they are the average person, but beware of trying to escape that. The average person should have kids. The average person should get married. Now, I don't have kids. So I get it if people want to discredit me on this. The reason that I say that, though, is all I think about is fulfillment. What is going to fulfill you? And I think that the reason having a family is so fulfilling is that's what nature needs. Nature is going to give you the greatest rewards for doing what it wants you to do. And what it wants you to do is survive long enough to have kids that have kids. And so if you do that, it is going to be gratifying, which is why people say, oh my God, like, you know, I've had all this success, but the only thing that matters to me or my kids. Cool. So nature has given us that.

it's a very difficult job to do well but if you understand that its purpose is purpose itself then I think people will be fine and you eschew that at your own risk and I say that to myself I would love to talk about your thoughts on hustle culture and why you are such a big proponent of it personally I tend to agree more with the hustle culture that when you're in your 20s especially it's the time to grind put everything else aside and work and then you could take it easy if you want to, you have the choice in your 30s or 40s to take the foot off the pedal. What are your thoughts on that? This is a question of physics.

So, dear boys and girls, men and women listening to this show, you have no moral obligation to seek success. I want fulfillment for you. And that has very little to do with the pursuit of money or worldly accolades or anything like that. But if you want to be successful, your goals will make demands. and the reality is the only way to do it is to work long hours, work hard, and work smart. That's it.

And so you are up against, the reason I say this is physics, you are up against the second law of thermodynamics, which says rightly that all things move towards chaos and that the only way to bring order to that chaos, which would be a business that actually sells profitably, the only way to bring that kind of order is to pour energy into the system. And so I mean literally, you are going to turn sunlight, which turns into plants, which animals eat, and you either eat the plants or the animals, but you really turn sunlight. You're going to turn sunlight into cellular energy that you are going to direct at growing a business. And so you're going to have to pour an inhuman amount of energy into a system where you're going up against people like me.

And I'm doing everything I can. I'm building a video game right now. Dude, I'm doing everything I can to crush the souls of every other. other person making a video game. I want to beat them all, not most of them, all of them. I want to stand atop. Now, of course, some percentage of the game developers out there feel exactly the same, and they want to crush me, and they want to stand atop of the pile. What are you going to do? You're going up against an army of people like that, that they want to play this game to win, man. They are going to give everything. They are going to sacrifice relationships, fun, partying.

And what? You on the outside? Because you think hustle culture, is bullshit, you're just going to sit on the sidelines be like, I shouldn't have to do that. Fine. But you're going to get eaten alive by all of the people that are willing to do that. So it's just a question of physics. Do you think someone can outsmart you if they work maybe more creatively?

Of course. Dude, look, Elon Musk is outsmarting basically everybody in the game. All of us. Dude, when I think about how little I've achieved compared to what he's done, it's insanity. It's insanity. So yeah, maybe his brain is just wired in such a way that despite how malleable half of us are,

that his 50% that's hardwired is just so badass. Also, maybe he does work harder than me. Maybe he is outworking me. Cool. Then he's getting his just desserts. Here's the hard truth, man. If you want to play in a meritocracy and you all should, that means that you all have to accept.

You might not be the Michael Jordan or the Elon Musk of your era. It just is what it is. And so they're going to be people to outplay me. and I'm going to do my best. I'm going to play to the absolute bleeding edge of my abilities. But remember, my self-esteem is not built around success. My self-esteem is built around the sincere pursuit of becoming capable of winning a championship that matters. The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road, that's the Volkswagen Tig One.

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The reason why I don't like some aspect of it is because I feel like it's giving this assumption that if you grind every single day, you make crazy sacrifices, relationships, time, money, effort, energy, et cetera, even your 20s, you could waste that away, not waste, but like sacrifice that to get an ends that is kind of like over-glorified and especially kind of like, I would say put in tandem with fulfillment. Like a bunch of money, a bunch of status, fame, et cetera, will not necessarily make you 100% fulfilled, fulfilled as you alluded to earlier. And I feel like with hustle culture, they're kind of putting that on some sort of pedestal where like that will make you happier.

That will fix all of these underlying issues. And so these people are going into hustle culture, hustling because they're not okay at that given moment. And they think, oh, if I do all these things and sacrifice all these things, I will be better, which I don't necessarily think is the case. And I think that's kind of an undertone of hustle culture. I think it's fine. If originally they're aware 100% of all of the different avenues that they have,

the sacrifices that they'll have to make in order to get to what they actually want, rather than what they think they want, then I'm fine with that. You had a podcast with Justin Waller that I found very interesting because he was very, I would say, obsessed with the word choice, that he wants people to have choice. And I agree with that in this conversation we're having right here, as long as they have all of the information that they need to go down any avenue that they want, rather than just like people saying, oh, build a big business, make a bunch of money, that will make you happy.

It's like, okay, well, what other avenues do you have? Do you have all of the information that you could possibly garner before actually, you know, sacrificing your 20s, using up all of that effort and energy, et cetera. Yeah. So what I will say is you need to know what you want in life and you are going to have to pay, assuming you want something grand, you are going to have to pay a very heavy price to get that. That just is the truth. And so again, going back to the idea of hustle culture good, hustle culture bad, it's just hustle culture reality. You will lose to the person who outworks you. You just will. You're going to lose the person that doesn't.

does all three things. They work harder, smarter, and faster. And of course, it's a combination. Like we talked about with Elon Musk, he may be so smart. Maybe it doesn't have to work as hard or whatever. The smartest person working harder than anybody else for more hours is always going to be the person that wins. And so what I want people to understand is what is winning? You need to figure it out. Now, to me, it is self-evidently fulfillment. That is nature's reward for doing the thing that it wants you to do. It's the proxy. Nature only has so many levers. So raising a kid, It means something. It's purpose.

I mean, people just talk about that endlessly. Okay, so the mechanism we have is meaning and purpose. It doesn't have to be on kids. What are you going to point that at? Can be kids. That could be an extremely fulfilling life, but it could also be building a business. Now, a lot of this, oh, God, this gets so complicated. A lot of this has to do with your value system.

What do you value? So for me, one of the things that I value is maximizing my skill set so that I can bend the world to my will in order to make the world a better place for more people in the way that I define it. Okay. So now I'm going to go out and again, only value myself for the sincere pursuit of that, not the accomplishment because I'm not a moron and I know the accomplishment will never matter. I will simply look for the next thing. You cannot eat a meal so satisfying, you never need to eat again. So no matter how much you win, you're just going to want to win again. I accept that. That is the nature of being a human being. But man, if I've got somebody that comes to me and they

say, I want to achieve what you've achieved. I sit them down and I say a very short set of things. Number one, do not value yourself for accomplishment. That is a fool's errand. Value self for sincere pursuit. You with me? Yes, cool. Moving on to the next thing. Money's more powerful than you think, but it's not what you think. Money will not make you feel better about yourself. So if you think that money is going to solve that wound between your father thinking you're a dumbass and you know, you achieve that and your father's going to suddenly respect you, which is really just a proxy for you're going to respect yourself, it won't work. So whatever damage you have, you're going to have to address it. Money won't do that thing. But money is the great facilitator.

Elon Musk is going to colonize Mars because he has enough money to build a rocket that's reusable that's going to get us there. Without the money, he's never going to be able to pull that off. We have to accept the realities and stop talking bullshit about what sounds good. There's an economist named Thomas Sol who I encourage everybody to look up. He has one of my favorite quotes. He said this 20 years ago, so I'll replace the number that he used then with the real number now. The last 50 years have been marked by exchanging what worked for what sounds good. Don't do that. You want to do what works. And the reality is building your self-esteem around sincere pursuit will make you respect yourself. Busting your ass and doing very hard things to

garner a set of skills that allow you to serve not only yourself but other people will make you respect yourself. Succeeding and having a ton of money will come at an extreme. ordinarily high price and there are no guarantees you will sacrifice endlessly to get there but if you get there it will open up vistas of opportunities that simply are not available to other people there are ways to harness other people's money and not even have to do it with your own and if you get very good at convincing people with money to give you money to build something hey great that's another path there are many ways to get where you're trying to go i just hope that where you're trying to go is fulfillment in terms of fulfillment what was your process like

in deciding that you did not want kids. I know you've elaborated on this quite a bit. It's a highly contended matter because a lot of people feel very strongly that it's your duty to have kids to spread those lovely genes. I don't know that they're wrong. So here's what I will say to that.

If I had an infinite amount of years to live, I would have kids. The reality is we don't have an infinite number of years to live. and I, when I see people that have kids, I thank them for their service, completely unironically, the same way that I thank people in the military, because it is a very important thing to do and somebody has to do it. And it is only because of the service men and women that I get to live and enjoy the freedoms of this country and not have to have served myself.

It is only because of people that are having parents that I'm able to live and not have kids myself. Now, I've dedicated my life to helping kids. So the whole mission of impact theory is to make sure that nobody gets to the age of 15 without encountering a growth mindset through entertainment in the hopes with my passions, my talents, that's the thing that I think I can contribute most meaningfully to. I do think that we all have a duty to help the next generation come up strong. I do think that matters.

And I would really encourage people to embrace that idea. Anybody that wants to have kids, man, I want to see. you have kids, I think that's very important and I will certainly thank you for your service. But at the same time, people need to choose the life path that's right for them. So why did I choose it? One, I never wanted anything to distract me from my wife. Two, I never wanted anything other than my wife to distract me from my business. And I had a plan through my business to generate the meaning and purpose that I think kids often bring to somebody.

But I do think it is a high risk plan that I do not encourage most people to pursue. zoo, I think, as I was saying earlier, most people should have kids. So a couple things. What if having kids deepened your relationship with your wife? And what if having kids also made you more relatable and gave you insights and experiences data information that you could then share to more people and make an even greater impact on impact theory? Yeah, it is very possible that all of that is true. We all have to make decisions with imperfect information. And so, you know, this goes back to the phases thing. So in the current phase of my life, in every phase that's led up to this, when I asked myself,

do I want kids? The answer is always yes, but I want to not have kids more than I want to have kids. And that's always been the conundrum. So for a long time, Lisa and I were like, in 18 months, in 18 months, in 18 months, we'll have kids. And just every time we got to that 18 month mark, it was like, no, I still don't want kids right now. But what if you're 60, right? And then you decide that you want kids or 65. Well, so I'll ask an even harder question.

What happens when I'm 80 and I regret not having children? And I know now that I will regret not having children when I'm 80, barring some massive medical breakthroughs. So I have chosen a path in life that I know guarantees me a certain regret. And so how does one deal with that? And is it the wise choice? That's the real. The magnitude of the regret, though, is where I feel like there could be, you know, because

I'm sure you've read Stumbling on Happiness. Maybe. So his whole thing is that, like, we don't know what happiness is. Our brain is a prediction engine. And we think we can accurately predict how we will feel in the future. But the truth is, you have no idea. Absolutely no idea. And I'm wondering if maybe, like, you know, come 65, come 80, whatever, like, you think you'll have guilt.

You think you'll have regret. But it could be a different level of it. Beast, yeah, something that I don't see coming. Let me ask. One, I have to acknowledge that that is a possibility. Okay, so again, we are all making decisions with imperfect information, but let me ask you, if I brought my dog down right now and I sat her next to you, would you weep openly for your lack of sense of smell?

How do you go through life? Imagine my dog, I'm not making this up, my dog can smell if one of her favorite humans was here a day ago and what mood they were in. You can't. Do you feel any sense of deficit? I don't feel any sense of deficit from not having a kid. Now, it's entirely possible that if I suddenly had that sense of smell and then lost it, that I would weep for the loss of that sense of smell because my brain now understands what it is that I'm missing. But for better or worse, because I have big brothered at a level, most people will never do.

And I was very involved, very involved with a kid from 8 to 16-ish. very involved. I got a taste of what it's like to be a parent, to love somebody just irrationally, to have them love you back. And I'm talking to the point where this kid begged is the right word to me to basically become his father and to take him in and let him live with me. And so we were very close. And I was like, oh, wow, I get now the realities of this. And as any parent will tell you, It is a big brothering for somebody is a small fraction of what you experience when it's your own child. That is the first thing they will tell you, so I get that. But they will also tell you that it's a very complicated thing and that it isn't all upside,

that there is some pretty big downsize. It has a very big impact on your life. And so I've tasted it enough to know. Having kids would be amazing. If I did it, it would clearly manipulate my brain chemistry to the point where I would say this is the most profound thing that I've ever done. I can't believe I waited this long. What was I thinking to not have kids?

Right? But without doing it, I don't have that sense. Without doing it, I'm like, in fact, I'll ask parents, again, thank you for your service. And I say this not to challenge your decision. I say it so people can understand mine. What if I told you that not having kids would deepen your relationship with your significant other to truly share a life with somebody and to build. things in this world is unimaginably gratifying and that I have a prediction. I don't know that this

is true, but I have a prediction that marriages without kids are happier than marriages with kids. Now, studies have been done and kids for sure diminish your overall life satisfaction. There are other things that go up and I forget the exact curve and it might come back like when you're in your 60s, but from like the time you have your kid until after all of them have left the house for a significant period of time, it diminishes your overall sense of well-being. So having kids is an act, the ultimate act of sacrifice. It's beautiful, it's wonderful, amazing, and I hope people do it. I think it is the most obvious life path to go down if you want to be fulfilled. I just want to be so clear about that. But there is another side to that coin, and it's pretty bright and sunny

over on my side of the road. So now, having said all that, I can think of nothing worse, literally nothing, than losing a child because of what it would do. I get that. Like, everything would shift in my brain, and I'd be like, I can't believe,

I didn't do this sooner. And that's why the death of a child, even to somebody like me who does not have kids, that is clearly the most horrifying thing a person can go through. Ben Shapiro, we had him on the show. He has a quote, he loves saying, which is like humans experience emotion

on a scale of like zero to 10. and then you get married. Then your emotion goes from negative 10 to 20, right? Something bad happens to your wife. You feel more intensely than you ever felt before when you were single. Then you have kids and you remove those ranges entirely. I mean, it's just negative infinity to infinity. And I also think that there's like a sense of beauty and fulfillment that can come from experiencing something,

even if it's negative, so deeply, because I feel like it can transform you more, spur action more. And in the long term, be more fulfilling. changing than any other thing. Agreed. This is why I think most people should have kids. Have you thought it through very, very deeply? Are you sure? Well, so remember, I want to have kids.

I just want to not have kids more than I want to have kids. So no one has to convince me that that would be a beautiful life path or that I have missed something in not choosing that. I have, I refer to it as a mental illness. I don't mean that to be flippant. I mean, but this is how problematic this is in my life. life. There is one true fact about being a human that bothers me so much. It has caused most of the suffering and failure in my life. And that is, you can be anything you want in life, but not everything.

And so I can't both be a parent and not a parent. I have to pick a path. Now, I've obviously chosen my path. And that will have consequences. Being a parent has consequences, right? Whatever life you choose, you're not going to get to run the control and say, what would my life have been had I not or what would my life been if I did. So you just have to pick your path. And then the important thing is you have to have the psychological defenses against when you're 80 and you're like, oh my God, I'm going to die and there's going to be nothing of me to leave beyond. And I am well aware that, look, impact theory for as many views as we've gotten and for as many people as we'll discover it, hopefully after I die, man, that shit will be here today and gone tomorrow. Like,

there will be another person long before I'm dead and gone that replaces me, my audience dies, whatever. Like I don't think in terms of what are things beyond me. I think only how will I feel while I'm alive about the fact that there will be nothing that lives beyond me. And I know there's such a huge evolutionary push at my back to make sure that I care about that, that that is going to be a problem. So I need to have mental defenses.

So my wife and I already talked about this and what are going to be the things that we do to have next generation people in our lives as we get older where we're able to impart some of the wisdom that we've gleaned which will make us feel good I'm sure we'll completely reduce the scale I doubt I'll be on YouTube at 80 who knows play this clip you know in whatever 30 years um but yeah I doubt that that's how that will play out I think I will be like a a light switch that one day has turned off and I don't worry about it anymore and it's only what I think now question for you since you put your wife ahead of your business if she came to you and says I changed my mind today let's have kids would you be a thousand percent on board that would be a very serious conversation because we would go back to

and this is really going to make your audience hate me so the conversation that my wife and i had went like this hey i'm fully here for it if you want to have kids let's have kids i'm ready but i want to be clear about what i want from my life i want to build companies and that means i'm not going to be the one getting up in the middle of the night, I will hire you a night nurse. I don't expect you to do anything I'm not prepared to do. I'm more than happy to earn enough money that we can do that. And at the time I said this, we had enough money that I could do that. And so I was like, you sleep through the night too. Cool. I'm here for it. But I'm not going to be changing diapers. I'm not going to be getting up in the middle of the night. I'm going to be building the business.

I'm not going to be home every night at five or six for dinner. If you're cool with that, then I'm ready. No problem. I would never ask you not to have children. As a mother, I have to imagine as a father it feels like it would be easier that there's less evolutionary pressure at my back than there would be for a woman so it's like if you want kids a thousand percent now if she was like I want you to stop running companies and I want to have a kid and like I want you to be here at five o'clock every night I'd be like ooh we are now misaligned and let's look at how we find something that we're both going to be happy with now I have learned one immutable truth life is all about compromise, I want my wife to be happy. And so we would find a path we have with every

difficult problem we have ever faced, including my wife going from housewife to entrepreneur, which if you want to do something hard, try that. That was certainly not an easy path to walk. And we found the other side of that. Like it might be that if I had kids, like it would just end up being way better, a thousand percent. But can we admit that there's also a possibility that it just doesn't end up suiting me? And it ends up being something where I'm like, man, kind of bummed that I had kids and now I can't take it back and so just like in business I'm always asking what's my out in this contract as long as I have an out man I'm good with kids there's no out adoption oh I mean it's not weird that no we got we did okay

but part of me thinks part of me thinks though in terms of successful people having kids and the kids maybe not turning out as they should some of that I feel like is the unhealthy obsession that people compare the kids with their really successful parents and the kids cannot forge an identity that's of their own because they're constantly compared to the parent. And if they don't live up to that or exceed it, then they're seen as a failure. Why didn't you do that? You had all these resources.

And I think that screws a lot of people. Yeah. Agreed. And I've thought a lot about that. My kid would grow up rich as hell. What do you do about that? So that was another reason I didn't want to have kids. read the power of myth, unbelievable.

And it talks about coming of age rituals and how people used to be like, all right, go kill a bear or whatever. Some percentage of the kids got mauled and killed by the bear. And just that's what it is. And it's like, yeah, but you kind of got to do something. And so I didn't know if with my personality, I could watch my own kids suffer and just stand back

and be like, good luck. I didn't trust myself to do it. Now, of course, if I did it and I had kids, I'd find ways. I'm not delusional. I'm just saying there were a lot of things. things where I was like, uh, that doesn't sound fun. I don't know that I want to do that. So last time we had you on the podcast, you said something about relationships that was like,

I don't know, seeing the fifth dimension for me, right? So like you said that a lot of divorces happen after it was like 25 years and you originally thought it was because the kid is now 18. Turns out it's just because the two people have completely different worldly views than each other because they see life through a lens. Their lens gets more obscured. The more experiences they have, the more situations they've been in, the more relationships they've had, et cetera. I want to know what are the foundations of a happy marriage, like these things that you should actually be focusing on. Everyone says be open, be honest, et cetera.

So what are like the most key things? And on top of that, if your wife does not look good in a dress, do you tell her? So we'll start with the easy one. If your wife doesn't look good in a dress, you need to tell her. Yeah, a hundred percent. You know what, Mark Hanson had the same answer. And he was so sure. of it. So sure of it. Let me tell you why. Everybody needs to be so sure of this. When your wife is a

bag of wrinkles or she's fat while pregnant and you look over at her and say, you look so beautiful, I have never been more attracted to you in this moment, knowing that you're carrying my child. Like, I just, I am overcome. She'll believe you. Because the time that she looked bad in that dress, you were like, you don't look good in that dress. And that is literally what I tell my wife. When she asked me something hard and I tell her the truth. I'm like, I need you to believe me when you're 80 and you're a bag of wrinkles and still I look at you and I say, you are beautiful. I am still attracted to you. I'm still into you that you know is the truth because in moments like this where it would have been so much easier to lie, I didn't. Also in that moment when I needed it to count, you knew.

Yeah, I agree with that. That's something that I've gotten a lot better about. Macy's been very upfront where she wants me to be completely honest with her. If she asks me a question, does this look good? Yes or no? What do you think of this? In the beginning, it was easier for me to say, it's great. Because to me, it's just, you know, I don't want to upset somebody. But I've gotten really good at saying I don't like it,

and I feel so uncomfortable saying something like that. Like anything that could be hurtful, I just crawl up and I hate it. But it's been something that it's a moment. muscle that I've been building of just being completely honest in terms of like my opinion on something. It will pay you dividends. So on the topic of relationships and success, for the viewers watching, maybe they have a girlfriend, maybe they have a fiance, maybe they have a wife. What would you tell them if they're trying to have the happiest and most fulfilled relationship, which you would probably argue is one of the most important things that you could possibly do in your

entire life to the best extent that they could possibly have? Okay. So number one, there's a reason and everybody says communication, but communication has to include the definition of words. So you're going to be using words that mean different things to each of you, and it will cause a lifetime of disconnecting. So one word that Lisa and I took the time to define was important. So if I say this is important to me, it means I do not care what you're doing.

Drop it and address this thing, which means you can't say it very often. So when Lisa and I get into contentious moments is when something is only meaningful, but it's not important. So it's like, I'm not going to use the word important on this, but it is meaningful. And so now the person's like, okay, well, I have to weigh it against all the things that I'm doing and whether I'm going to drop this or not, whatever, and do the thing for you.

But once we established, hey, this is important. We had a chip basically that we could lay at any time that said, I need you to come, help me address this, whatever, pay attention to this, come to my show, whatever the thing is. And that was life-changing. Because before it was like, the person would say, oh, this is important to me. you thought, oh, important. It means it's like, you know, in your top five or six things, whatever. That's how maybe the other person defined important.

And it was causing all these fights. The next thing is never argue about the tea. All right, what do I mean by that? The biggest fight Lisa and I ever got into was over a cup of tea. And I'm talking screaming match, man. So we were going on our first vacation in like six years, something ridiculous. And it was for one night. And so I didn't want to go because it was time away from work.

I didn't want to spend the money because we were so broke. and but she was like it's you know important we got to do it so I'm like okay so we're going on that day wake up and I'm like cars packed ready to go at like 8 a.m or whatever I'm ready to walk out the door so that we can get to the hotel so the moment you know whatever three o'clock they'll let you in the room they'll let us in the room and I can get the most out of my dollar to get in the room that's what I'm thinking it's not what I say what I say is why you having a cup of tea and she's like oh I just want to have a cup of tea now for her it was oh my god He's not taking a day off in six years.

This is amazing. We're finally going to get to spend some quality time. I want to take things slow and just relax and enjoy my time and not feel like there's an agenda and I have to be somewhere. There's no time schedule. But she's not saying that. She's just saying, I want to have a cup of tea. So now I'm like, hold on.

We're taking a day off and you're going to have a cup of tea. And she's hearing, yeah, we're taking a day off so we can relax. Yes, I'm going to have a cup of tea. And so we're arguing, arguing, and finally I get her in the car and we're still arguing about the cup of tea because she's now mad and can't enjoy her, We are driving to the vacation destination. We're yelling at each other.

I am so angry and so irate that she doesn't care about the massive sacrifice that I've made, the money that I'm wasting on the stupid vacation. And she's so annoyed that I still, even on vacation, won't just take time to spend with her with no agenda and nowhere to be. Of course, none of this is being said. We're just arguing about the cup of tea. I turned the car around on the freeway and I'm like, we're going home. This is going to be a waste of time.

And as I turn the car around, there's a voice in my head screaming. There is no way. This is about a cup of tea. So what the hell is actually happening? And in that moment, I learned one of the most important relationship pieces of advice that I have for people. And that is speak in insecurities. And so as I turned the car around, I said, I'm afraid that I will never make good on my promise to make you rich. And I told your dad that when he thought I was going to feel.

fail and make you poor, which so far is all I have done. You are at home clipping coupons. I'm getting emotional now, remembering what it was like to be in that phase. You're at home clipping coupons. You would have been better off staying with your dad. And so for me to take a day off is terrifying. To not be working right now is the scariest thing I can think of. And the only way that I can justify it is if we maximize every dollar.

And so we are literally standing at the check in counter when they say you can now go in your room so that the room I'm paying for, we're able to get every minute of use out of that. And she was like, whoa. She was like, I'm afraid that I'm losing you to work and that I never see you and that we never spend quality time together anymore. And now all of a sudden we're actually saying the truth. We're saying that neither of us were, not even like I realized I needed to articulate this out loud. I just had all of this baggage, my value system, my beliefs, my fears were all there. And I just reacted to the cup of tea.

And I didn't know yet at the time not to distrust my emotions. I felt the thing. That thing had to be right. So I reacted. She felt the thing. She had to be right. So she just reacted. So now we have a rule in our relationship.

If one of us is angry, guaranteed an insecurity has been triggered. So the person who can the most quickly identify what the insecurity is and just name it wins. Because you'll diffuse the argument. Because if you really love each other and the person's like, yo, this is where I'm coming from. It's ugly. I need to work on it. My insecurities are mine to deal with. You should not just have to forever deal with my insecurities.

But I'm going to say it out loud and name it so that I can improve upon it. And in this moment, I'm just asking for a bit of grace as I process through this and deal with this thing. And then you have to reciprocate that you never, and I mean never weaponize somebody's insecurities against them. because in my marriage, my wife knows how to destroy me. Destroy me. She knows every insecurity that I have, exactly where they're located, how to press right on them,

and just completely destroy me. Because I have given myself over to her and said something akin to, as long as you love me, I can lose everything else. Not something akin to that. I've said those exact words. As long as you love me,

I'm good. And so I can lose all my money. Everyone can think I'm an asshole. But if I've made you proud, if I've protected you and made you feel loved that made you feel like my number one, I've won. And I can exist in a world where we have nothing but each other. And that is terrifyingly comforting.

So that means that even though I could end every single argument we ever have by just going, hey, you're doing that thing that you've already admitted that you suck at or whatever. And don't fucking bring that up. Shut your mouth because you know insecurity over here and you know you're bad at this. You're not thinking right. And it would end the argument. And it would also end my marriage. And so never, ever, ever weaponizing.

your insecurities against that person, even when it means you could get the upper hand, you could win the argument, whatever, whatever, you just can't ever, ever do it. When you're elevating that person and they legitimately feel better about themselves when they're around you than when they don't, when they're not, that's a magical place. But you really do have to be very protective of that bubble. And then something that not nearly enough people think about, you got to have sex a lot. How often? I mean, depends on your age, honestly.

my poor wife, when we were in our 20s, two a day was my like go-to. What do you mean your poor wife? My poor wife, because her number was not two a day. I'll just say that. And over time, it definitely becomes a far more reasonable number. But you should be having sex weekly for sure, maybe multiple times a week, even as you get into your 40s and 50s. I'll report back on 60s when I get there. But your hormones do change.

There's no doubt about that. So it becomes different. But you do not want to become roommates. How do you recognize your own insecurities? Because I try to think, like, what are the things that people could say to me that would really, really hurt me? And to be honest, I don't know if it's certain things rather than certain people. Because I have certain people that I have very close to me, like my parents, my best friend, my brother, et cetera. and they can say things, but it's not the fact that they're saying this exact thing that

pushes that button in me. It's just the fact that it's someone that I really admire, someone that I have to hold to high esteem, and if they say something critical of me, that I think is very fair. Obviously, it's going to hurt me, you know? So how do you recognize, like, really what you're insecure about? Or do you have those insecurities? They're just so far hidden. Well, so there's two really interesting questions in there. One, how do you recognize your insecurities? I think everybody recognizes their insecurities because there's a bodily response to it. Now, whether they recognize what triggers the insecurity is a totally different question. Oh, I'm worried that.

So, for instance, I once got in a big fight with my then-fiancee on a game of pool. And we were playing a game of pool, and I was winning. And it came to the eight ball, and I had the shot, perfect. And she came up and whispered something really sexy in my ear. But it made me miss the shot, and she ended up winning the game. and I was really pissed. And I remember thinking, wait a second, I can either take advantage of that sexy thing

that she whispered in my ear and have one kind of night or I can be pissed that I lost this pool match and have a totally different kind of night that is way less fun. And I was like, why am I going with the fighting over the losing the game? And then I realized, oh my God,

I have a base assumption that if I'm not better than her at everything, she won't find me sexually attractive. And then I was like, that is really stupid. Because who on God's green earth would want to be in a relationship with somebody who's better than them at everything? Every time you turn around, you are the lesser person. People want to be needed.

They want to be like your partner, you're equal. Now, hopefully you're good at different things because then you both get your opportunities to shine. That was a huge breakthrough for me. So, but that took me a minute to understand. Oh, I got pissed because I'm insecure about this thing. over here. So now I may be unusually good about relatively quickly identifying what is that cause because I made myself a promise a long time ago I'd never lie to myself. I may lie to other people.

I'm not saying I don't lie to other people, but I don't lie to myself. And so if the answer is, oh, you think she won't be sexually attracted to you unless you're better than hurt everything, I'm like, wow, that's really icky. And that's like so weak-minded. So that allows me to then deal with it because I'm willing to face it. But for people that have a harder time with that journal, And you want to be able to any belief you have, you should be able to write in a single sentence with no commas, parenthetical, just like a single clean sentence. I feel this way because, boom. And until when you write that single short sentence, it feels like a puzzle piece clicking into place, you have not figured it out.

And just keep journaling. There are times I've journaled on some ideas for like 25,000 words. That's basically a novella. And it will just, for whatever reason, that idea is complicated. And I can't untangle it. not to get it into something simple. I could probably explain it in a paragraph, but that means you don't understand it well enough yet.

How do you start journaling? And this is something that you have to physically write down, or are we talking like you could just be at a keyboard? How do you start? Keyboard's fine. I use a keyboard. And I would literally, oftentimes, my journal entry starts with U-H-H-H-H-H-H dot dot dot.

Where I'm just like, I think. And so whatever is in my mind, I type. And there's something about the synchronicity of having to think it and type it that slows my brain down enough and forces me to actually take it from the emotional, right, which is that subconscious communication and forces me to pull it through that narrow bandwidth of words to be able to actually get a hold of the idea in a conscious way where I can now manipulate it in my conscious control. I have just found that journaling is one of the most insanely useful things. But you can also journal verbally. I think this is why a lot of people like to talk. like I just need to talk it out.

And so my wife and I will do that. And we ask, and this is, hey, another marriage tip here that is very common knowledge, but so few people do it? At the beginning of a conversation, my wife and I will say, do you want me to just listen or do you want me to offer solutions? Guys just want to give solutions. It drives me crazy. Yeah.

My wife, I feel your pain. It makes sense to want to fix it. Correct. What's the point of talking about it if you're not going to find a good answer to that question? If you just hear it out, it also sometimes solves it, you know? No, but the solution is. If you're like, two plus two could be this. I'm like, it's four.

It's four. But also, isn't it more powerful in the long term for them to figure it out on their own? They're building up a muscle. They're getting a skill. But if we're not working towards a solution. If it's like two plus two, I don't know what it is. But you're just the clutch that they lean on at that point. No, but it could be working on a solution together.

No, it's just hearing about like. It's you feeding the solution. No, for me it's like two plus two could be this. But like, you know, I don't say that. But I'm just saying, like, hypothetically, it could be not. working towards a solution but just like you know talking about are we talking about this or are we talking about something else right now I don't know what we're talking about we got to talk about the team okay so I will say that you both have extremely important points so you do need to let

the person talk so they can figure it out on their own because they're effectively journaling out loud and you need to give them the space to work through the ideas and then the other side is that if they really aren't trying to work towards a solution like if they're not trying to come to understand it so they can do something about it then it's fruitless and you're going to death loop. And so my wife and I have, you know, I mean, an intuitive sense of when to pull that card, but we'll say to the other person,

you're death looping. So it's like, this isn't now about understanding. You've already repeated that you understand it. You're still not doing anything about it. So now let's talk about that. Because there is a point at which, like,

it's just too frustrating to sit here and like go through the same thing again and again and again. But I would say for the health, the emotional health of each person, you do want to give them a pretty large leeway to think through that problem. How does it not seem insensitive when you say you're death looping? Oh, well, this is where... Like, how do you balance the two?

Like, I want to listen to you versus like, and she's like, no, I'm not death looping. I'm not. You just, you know... There might be times where I see the emotional state that she's in and I'm like, hey, you're looping around this idea and, you know, is there, you think there's anything else you might be struggling with, or that might be bothering you. And then there are going to be other times when, like, hey, you are now death looping.

So you really have to be sensitive, man. And the same thing with being an entrepreneur. Like there are so many things that people actually have to understand. And this is why I worry a little bit about the age of YouTube and entrepreneurship. So I used to offer a course called business decision making. Worst title for a course ever. But actually the only course that people need. And the point of the course was to teach people how to solve novel problems,

which is what an entrepreneur is. but if you want to make a lot of money, sell a course on how to market or get leads or whatever because that's what people think they need. But the reality is your business will not last long if you can't solve novel problems. Getting into like the rats nest of all the nuance, of all the factors that come together,

that really is the only way. And so the only way to get through some of this stuff is just a ton of repetition so that you start to understand the nuance of this situation, that person in this particular emotional state, it all has to come together for you to know exactly how to play that given moment. Is it difficult for you to place 100% trust in another person? Not really.

Not if you do it in increments. So take Lisa and I. One, you have to be a good judge of character. Two, you have to spend time with them in order to better understand what they're like. Three, you have to understand that, of course, there are going to be things you're blindsided by. So you know what human nature is. You know that people are capable of lying. And so what you have to trust is that have I done enough due diligence to really understand

who this person is at their core? Have I seen them in different situations? Have I seen them under duress? You know, we've been together long enough. So even, I didn't even tell Lisa that I loved her until we'd been together for, I don't know, had to be close to three months. And so, and then like where I was like, I fully trust you. I mean, you're looking at a year, two years.

I mean, like, you know, it is. It isn't binary. I don't trust you at all. I'm keeping you at arm's length. It's like, hey, you know an insecurity of mine. Do you ever use it against me? Oh, wow. No, they haven't.

You come up with agreements about like the word important. Do they show up when you use the word important? You agree that you're not going to abuse the word important. It's the kind of thing you should only use a few times a year. Are they using it a few times a week? You have all these things. It's when people trust their emotion that they get themselves into trouble. But I distrust my emotion.

So if I'm like, oh my God, this person's amazing, I bet I could just give my entire life over to them. It's like, well, that's the feeling, but I haven't seen them in enough scenarios. And so I think it was Reagan that said trust but verify. So you do need to extend some trust. Otherwise, if you're constantly like, I don't trust you and closing people out, they're never going to reciprocate. And you're going to end up in this sort of, you're constantly pushing each other back stance. And I don't think you're going to get where you need to go doing that. What are some arguments that you feel like every couple should go through to learn about the other person?

I think of an argument is something that's contentious. I don't know that it needs to be contentious. Now, contentiousness may arise from being very pointed, blunt, I would say, what I call being aggressively myself. So the number of times I've been in an argument, whether in business or in my relationship, where I'm like, I can end this argument right now. And I will say these words out loud. I can end this argument right now. You've extended the olive branch. But the reality is that isn't how I feel.

and you're misunderstanding my position. So my position is actually this, which then will reopen the argument. And an argument that you could have swept under the rug and been done with in 20 minutes may now go on for two hours, three hours, whatever. But it is what it is. You have to get to the point where you can steal man each other's argument and say either, ooh, I understand you and now I agree. Or I understand you and will articulate your position so well that you will say the words back to me. You understand my position perfectly. And so that's what Lisa and I will do.

I'll make my team here at Impact 3 do the same. Here's how I see your position. Do I understand it perfectly? And they'll say yes. No, no, no. Say the words, you understand my position perfectly. You understand my position perfectly. Okay, cool.

So now as we continue this debate, you know it's not because I don't understand. So don't come at me again saying, no, no, you're just not understanding something. You've agreed. I understand your position perfectly. So now what we have is a difference in values. It's not that I don't understand you. So now we're having a collision of values. and how do we navigate a collision of values

and going back to relationship of any kind, you need to have rules of engagement around how you navigate a collision of values. And if you can both articulate the other side so well that you'll each say, yes, you understand my position perfectly, now you're just like, okay, I understand you, you understand me, neither of us are going to yield on our value system, so how are we going to deal with this?

And then you just come up with whatever you think is reasonable for dealing with that. But oftentimes, a collision of values ends a relationship. And how do you find a compromise in a situation like that? Depends on how badly you want to stay together. So with Lisa and I, there's one thing we, we legitimately can't get to the other side of. And this is because it isn't important enough. And we both feel violently that the other person is

wrong. So I believe that life is really about becoming efficient. And so as I'm walking towards a car door, I want to make sure that I have the key fob out and I press the button right so that it beeps as my hand grabs it. And I can sit in. There's not even a half second pause anywhere. Your face tells me, you get it. I do everything in life like that. And to me, there are huge consequences. My success in life, I think, is largely due to my just absolutely relentless obsession with efficiency, getting things done as quickly as you can in as few movements as possible. So in life, though, Lisa likes things to be tidy. So she likes things to be put away, which is anathema to being efficient, because now I don't know where things are. And to make things worse, my wife doesn't believe in putting things in their place.

So like, you go into a workshop and it's got every tool outlined. And so you know exactly where it goes. I can get behind that. No, she just needs it to be away out of sight. So you open a cupboard and everything's a fucking mess, but it's in the cupboard. That drives me bananas. Now, she can articulate my side of it to where you would think she's going to be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that is better. And I can articulate her side, which has to do with how she was raised and anxiety about things not being tidy, yada, and you would think I'd be so empathetic that I'd be like, okay, I get it. When in reality, we're both like, this is dumb. The way you do it does not make any sense, all things considered. and so we've had to come up with compromises

because it's not important. I'm not going to blow my marriage up over that. So it's like we come up with certain rules and things like that and we deal with it. This might be too personal. Is there anything that you would be willing to blow up the marriage for? I love this.

I love to future interviewers, I love when people ask me questions we're like, should I ask this? I don't know. Those are more fun. If anybody ever asked something that I don't want to answer, I will not be offended.

I'll say, I'm not going to answer that. But this one's great. So what would I blow my marriage up over? So if my wife cheated on me, that is, you will not find Tom being like, we reconciled. That is a betrayal that I am not interested in trying to work my way back from. That's really the only thing I was once asked if Lisa hit me because hers is cheating and beating. If I cheat on her or beat her, done, finish, there's no coming back. Trust me, my wife is so stubborn.

She means it. Great news is I have no interest in either of those. But for me, I was asked once if she hit you, would you end the relationship? And the answer was no, because I'm not physically afraid of her. So it wouldn't trigger a cascade of things that I would worry about. So for people who legitimately have reasons to be afraid of their significant other, I get it. Totally understand. That is not a judgment on anybody.

But that's my stance. It's the only thing. If she weaponized an insecurity against me, that would put us in very dangerous territory. And so that I would say, hmm, like, I get. it people make missteps but I would like to point out that that was you just weaponized my insecurity against me for the first time in whatever 21 years of marriage we'd really have to sit down and talk about how did we get here what made you do that how do I know that you're not going to do that in the future because that is going to make me hesitant and I wouldn't be in a

marriage where I can't give myself over completely to the person there's just too many sacrifices in a marriage to make that work that'd be the only thing that I'd really be worried about if we ended up having if she wanted me to give up my ambition That would be another one. That was when I told her when we first got engaged. It was like, you can ask me to give up anything except my ambition. I don't know who I am without it, and I don't want to know who I would be without it. What are your biggest insecurities, if you're comfortable to say?

My biggest insecurity, and, God, people in my audience are just going to be sick of hearing me say this. But it's the honest truth. My biggest insecurities that I'm not smart enough to accomplish the things that I want to accomplish. And that sounds easy enough to say, but it really messes with me. What do you think it is about that that messes with you so much? Because is it your identity is at risk of you just being the one who's like, I'm Tom, I did all of this. It's tied to that the growth mindset will save you from virtually everything because what it says is, hey, just because you failed at that thing and you're a loser right now, doesn't mean you have to be a loser tomorrow or even later tonight, right? You can get a better skill and then perform better and have the impact on the world.

that you want to have. If the lesson life teaches me is that I run out of potential before I run out of time, that's rough. That's like playing a game that you know you're going to lose. And so then, and look, I can already see the defense mechanisms I would put in place. Like, hey, to be the kind of person I want to be, I'll play my guts out, even though I know I'm going to lose. Okay, cool. And I would shift my thinking over to that.

So I have defenses against the dark arts. but yeah that really will be disappointing that would be disappointing if I'm not able to accomplish the things that I set out to accomplish because I have a limited um what do they call it G factor that'll be sad is G factor just like a raw intelligence type thing okay because you also said that like you think accomplishments are 50% effort 50% like intelligence so you're referring to that other 50% of just like the innate yeah I don't know if I've ever said it that way the way I would normally say it is you're 50% malleable and you're 50% hardwired. Okay.

So we are not blank slates, which I think there is some confusion about in society at large these days. You cannot turn anybody into anything. Just biology is real. And so accepting that part of my biology is my level of intelligence, it's like I've been able to do a lot with the intelligence that I have. And so that's pretty cool. But when I try to grasp concepts that somebody like Einstein,

seem to grasp pretty easily. I'm just like, Jesus. Do you think that insecurity is serving you, or do you think it would be better if you conquered it? It's a good question. I don't know. So I get some, like I have enough of a fear that I'll never be enough, that it pushes me really, really hard.

And certainly the world has gotten things out of me that they wouldn't have gotten out of if I was just like, yeah, no, I'm totally good with who I am. This is all good. I don't need to get better. I don't have anything to prove. I think, like, secretly, this is why I say I don't think the goal should be to get rid of the negative voice.

I think that evolution is pretty brilliant and has been like, no, you need to feel like you have something to prove in order to get you to go conquer the very terrifying and very dangerous world around you. So I think that insecurity probably serves us all. What do you think is the biggest problem with humanity today or society? Whoa. Keep it brief, by the way.

30 seconds. Yeah. Okay. People don't distrust themselves enough. I kind of agree with you. And that's what Stumbling on Happiness, the book I just referenced, is a lot about. People have way too much confidence in themselves. Minds are brains are developed to recognize patterns, too positively affirm itself.

It's always going to be biased and you're going to think that your God. Everyone has a bit of narcissism. Narcissism. Everyone has it. And I completely agree with you. Yeah. Preach, brother, preach. Let's get some book recommendations.

For those listening that want to expand their minds, which books would you recommend? Okay. So I have a reading list. People should check out. free. Mindset is the most important book in the English language. If you have not already adopted truly a growth mindset, you are going to fail. Extreme ownership by Jocko Willink, I think is just massively important. People really need to understand that. Obstacle is away by Ryan Holiday. Another banger, if you want to understand how you fail your way to success, those three will

get people started. And then if you're an entrepreneur, you need to read Elon Musk's biography by Walter Isaacson, not because I think it's going to make you like him. It may make you dislike him. But you're going to understand George Bernard Shaw's quote about all progress depending on the unreasonable man. Why do you think we exist here? What do you think is the meaning of this? I don't think there is any meaning other than what you ascribe to it. I think you are the result of rules of physics that got set in motion, maybe by a 12-year-old doing a science experiment on a supercomputer somewhere in the future. But nonetheless, there are just laws put in motion and we are the result. How confident are you in that?

that I am more confident than anything else that I've encountered in life. But strong convictions loosely held. If I get information to the contrary tomorrow, word, remember, I am trying to get to ground truth. When I act as if there are just a bunch of physical rules and as long as I adhere to those, I move forward towards my goals. When I act like that, I actually move forward towards my goals. Every time I act in any other way, someone else is going to come and save me. There's a benevolent being that has my best interest at heart. I don't move where I want to go. I can manifest something. Do you feel like it helps people to have a higher power?

Yes. I think there are tremendous reasons to believe in a higher power in terms of emotional well-being. But in terms of building your company, not so much. Are there certain things that you identify with that you don't think you'd be able to accept the truth if it were otherwise? No. I don't see anything that serves me to, if it is true, there's nothing. Anything that diminishes your sense of self. That's the only thing where it's like, okay, you're probably still going to get because you're likely to react overly negative to it for the average person.

Like, for instance, if you could just say to me, Tom, look, supercomputer said you really aren't smart enough to do what you're trying to do. Now what do you do with that information? That'd be tough because I'd be better off to take that advice and go, okay, cool, I need to scale back my ideas. I don't know. You've got me at the edge of what I've thought through. So if somebody handed me like for real, for real, bro, you are not smart enough to do the thing that you're trying to do, it would be wise for me to pick a slightly different path or to find a partner where I could like offer assistance to the thing so I could still be around the thing that I love and contribute in the way that I'm truly capable of doing.

But I wouldn't want it to damage my sense of self such that I don't keep striving because I live in great fear that I never maximize my abilities. So in that case, it would be better for you not to know. Maybe I don't know because if I were going to implode at the knowledge, which is an emotional problem and not a truth problem, then yes, it'd be better that I didn't know. But if I can take that knowledge and say, okay, cool, I never valued myself for the success anyway. I value myself for the sincere pursuit. I shouldn't need to be number one. If I need to slot in behind somebody else and be a part of their vision because they really are smart enough, but I can contribute and like just be a killer here for this, I should be able to deal with that emotionally. And it's,

it means that I will actually get more towards my goal. So I'd be confronted with, is this about feeling like you're cool? Or is this actually about achieving your goal? If it's actually about achieving your goal, then you need to shift what you're building your self-esteem around. So I would like to think, even in that, I would truly be better off because I believe in myself that I could adjust to that emotional reality. But it's tough.

It's like, would I want to know that I have Huntington's disease? Nothing you can do about it. So you're just going to have to deal. But I think I would want to know because there are things I can do lifestyle-wise to at least push it off. For the average person, for most people out there, do you think that they should shift their value system to point towards realism? Or do you think that they should shift it to point towards beliefs that they have that serve them that aren't necessarily objectively true? Like a blissful sort of ignorance.

Well, I would never say cultivate blissful ignorance, but I have a rule that you should only do and believe that which moves you towards your goals. Now, the reality is the truth is almost always the thing that's going to move you towards your goals. So you really do want to get close to ground truth. Again, you're just trying to get to, I can predict the outcome of my actions. So yes, I do not overemphasize, hey, go find out what is true. I emphasize go figure out what's useful. But blinding yourself to the truth is almost certainly a rapid path to failure. Tom, thank you so much for coming on the iced coffee hour.

Part two. Guys, part one, link down below your channel, link down below. and I mean I could talk to you for like 12 hours I want to do this for like six hours and just like we could have dinner here we just keep talking it's so good anytime gentlemen is there anything that you guys are fun as hell is there anything that you want to mention to our audience

anything you have coming up anything you want to uh well hey the thing that I'm not known for but spend an inordinate amount of my time on is a video game we're building called Project Kisen check that out I am freakishly proud of what it's becoming and it is the game environment where you get to pursue empowerment. So come check us out.

Please check it out, guys. Link down below. Thank you everyone for watching. And until next time. Thank you. I love that. Thank you guys.